Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

There’s always a light at the end of the frog.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

The Supreme Court is corrupt. Democrats must win in November and force court reform.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

In short, I come down firmly on all sides of the issue.

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

We won’t go back.

Bogus polls are all they’ve got left. Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls a year from now.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

Republicans would impeach Biden if he bit into a whole Kit Kat rather than breaking the sections apart.

It’s a doggy dog world.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

No Justins, No Peace

“Why isn’t this Snickers bar only a nickel?”

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

You cannot shame the shameless.

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Soonergrunt wrote at Balloon Juice from 2011-16.

Twitter: @soonergrunt

Soonergrunt

Open thread, elections, Trump arrested, and some union stuff. Bonus Freddie

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Well, Trump finally got indicted and arrested. We’ll see what becomes of it, but if the last several years have taught us anything at all, it’s to be patient and keep our expectations low.

The Liberal won the Chicago Mayoral race and the fake moderate lost. The Chicago PD Police union claims that 800 to 1000 members may quit. I say that’s a good start.
The Wisconsin State Supreme Court election is complete, and the Liberal Janet Protasiewicz won. Her opponent’s concession speech is one for the ages.

Christ, what an asshole.

Thanks to Joe Biden’s rejiggering of the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, I am now, as of yesterday morning, DONE with student loan repayment.
We took student loans when we were both in school and had first one, then two kids and I wanted to keep the apartment heated and my kids fed and my GI Bill, helpful as it was, wasn’t cutting it year-round. After years of Navient lying to me about my loans and program eligibility, it all gets wiped away in a year after my previous payments were counted. And they’re going to refund 38 payments. I made 158 when 120 qualifies for forgiveness. So it’s going to save me about 26K, and about 11K back.
Frankly, we need to do this for everybody, public servant or no. Trying to better oneself and one’s lot in life shouldn’t lead to a lifetime of indebtedness before one even begins and there are people who are retiring after 30 years in the workforce and still owing college debt.
I don’t care where you come from, or what your level of education is, or what your trade is. If you can’t see how morally wrong and destructive that is, then I don’t even want to know you.
Seriously, the guy who works 30 years or more and still owes college debt? That would have been me. I can’t say enough how light feel now that weight has been lifted off my shoulders.

Our union, American Federation of Government Employees Local 4016 is doing very well. Four months after recognition, we’re up to 100 dues-paying members, and we haven’t even done our first real membership drive yet.
When I’m asked by people why we have a union and why we think people should join the union, my answer is that a majority of the workforce that was asked voted for one, so THEY think they need a union, and people are coming to us every day. We’re preparing now to bargain our master agreement. We know we won’t get everything we want, but we’ll sure do our damndest to take care of our 954 member bargaining unit. We have members in every state in the union, and every US territory.

Lastly, Freddie is a real pain sometimes. Lucky for him that he’s so damn cute.

Open thread, elections, Trump arrested, and some union stuff. Bonus FreddiePost + Comments (76)

He’s Freddie.

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Freddie stopped responding to Archie a couple days after he got settled in.
We took him to the vet, and she told us that he was eight to nine months old and severely undernourished.

Well, we got him fattened right up. In a few weeks he’s doubled his weight and he’s doing very well. We’re very pleased with his overall health but we are concerned about this persistent kennel cough that has continued even after a couple rounds of antibiotics and the inoculations.

The other thing we love about him is his huge personality, and how he plays with his toys all the time, and does everything he can to get you to play with him. It’s like he didn’t get any of that before he was rescued.

I hope this post finds you all happy and healthy and dealing well with this weather. Here in Tooele, we’ve got about 165% of typical annual snowfall, and a couple more inches tonight, apparently.

On another note, I am the Interim President of the American Federation of Government Employees newest local, #4016.

We’d been trying for years to get a union election at USDA OCIO, but we just kept hitting one wall after another. I’ll go into details later, but suffice it to say that we’re off to a new start, and we’ve had to hit the ground running.

I hope to be posting a little bit more around here in the future.

Consider this an open thread as well.
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He’s Freddie.Post + Comments (50)

He’s either Freddie or Archie

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He seems to respond to either one, and not much else. We got him from a rescue that said they got him from a puppy farm that was raided in Missouri. He appears to be a poodle mix, four to six months old. Very tiny and snuggly with my wife and daughter but kind of suspicious of me, but last night he did sleep up in the crook of my arm and chest.
Vet appointment on Thursday. He seems pretty healthy overall. Still waiting on the rescue to give us all the paperwork on him. This morning we brushed out his coat and got it de-matted some and he looks great.

 


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What He Said

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“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice, — is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.”
― John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy

What He SaidPost + Comments (254)

5 years and 3 days ago John gave me the keys

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And I promptly crashed the blog into the ditch.

We’ve dug out the Christmas decorations and started tossing them around. We’ve got the garage door openers installed, and the new snow blower is really something. So far, we’ve had two <3-inch snow falls, so I may not get to really give a work out for a while. We do get lake effect snow here in Tooele. Last year one storm dropped four inches in Salt Lake City, and two feet in Tooele.  It’s jacked up when you’re hoping for that.  And of course, the more snow we get, the better the skiing will be up in the mountains. I’m looking forward to that, too.

We’ve got plans to replace the hideous carpet in the living room and the stairs and the common area upstairs. Hopefully in the spring. Daughter gets her braces off next week. She’s graduating in the spring, and we’re prodding her to decide where she wants to go for a family trip. I’m rooting for Yellowstone National Park, but it’s her trip.

So Donald J. Trump will be the President.  The dog has caught the car.  It will be interesting to see what he does with it.  I’ve already been approached by three co-workers about forming a union local.  I’ve been in contact with the union, and we’ll see what happens with that. I know a LOT of federal workers are concerned about our future. We’ll do what we can to operate in the new world, but quite a few people are polishing resumes.

5 years and 3 days ago John gave me the keysPost + Comments (53)

It’s a beautiful day in Utah. Open Thread.

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Doing some renovation on our house. There were relatively minor things wrong with it, with a couple of exceptions when we bought it, but it was a short sale so we got a very good deal on it.

Today, we’re moving a garage door opener from the big garage door to the small one. The opener on the big door is really undersized for the job, and even more so that the spring/counterbalance isn’t working. We’ll get that adjusted by a professional since everything we’ve read about adjusting or repairing it was essentially “YOU WILL DIE ARRRRRRRGH!” But in the meantime I can install the new, bigger one.
Fixed a couple of leaks, including a temporary repair until the spring, when we’ll pull the window in question and re-frame it. It wasn’t framed in properly and it’s 1/2 inch out of level/plumb, but for now it’s not leaking. It’s the window in the kitchen, so it puts off tiling the backsplash for now.  I didn’t figure out that it was out of plumb until I started layout lines for the backsplash and found it.  No way around it except to pull it and reframe it.
Getting ready to upgrade the main electrical panel and run some new circuits in the garage, basement, and the bonus room office. I can pull the wire and connect the outlets and even install breakers, but upgrading the panel itself needs doing by a professional for the same reason as above.  My challenges are nothing like John’s, though.
Landscaping–talked to the county extension office because I want to get the right plants in the right places and save water, and there’s a study going to start in the spring of some native grass/hybrid plantings. I volunteered for that. We’ll see how that goes.  We’re going to replace the water heater with a gas tankless heater next month, and we’re going to install solar panels on the roof as well.  There are a LOT of Green contractors here. People are very serious about this kind of thing here in this red state and there are a lot of state laws that support green building and renovation here.  It’s not like Oklahoma where the oil and gas interests run everything. Tourism is king here.
On the political side here in UT, this is what’s happening:
UT will NOT go for Clinton. It just isn’t going to happen. It MIGHT go to Evan McMullin (which would deny the EVs to Trump, which is almost as good) but I’m not holding my breath. Trump holds a steady 3-4pt lead over McMullin in the local polling, and local political reporters aren’t getting too excited. McMullin is pulling in the crowds, and he comes off as a clean-cut, reasonable person. That kind of thing is important here. The Mormons don’t like Trump, and McMullin is a nice alternative, but they REALLY dislike Clinton.  If it wasn’t for the fact that every single member of the UT delegation is a Republican, McMullin would have a strong chance at a House or Senate seat if he were to run and maybe he’ll primary somebody in a couple of years.  To get a feel for the Mormon mindset on politics, think of Mitt Romney. Handsome, articulate, not (overtly) a bomb-thrower, (appears) reasonable, etc.
The House campaigns are going about how one expects them. The UT3 has gotten particularly nasty but Mia Love will win. The Salt Lake Tribune “endorsed” her along the lines of “she’s useless and incompetent and probably corrupt, but the House is likely to stay Republican, so better to have an in with leadership than not.”  In the UT2, where I live, the race is between the incumbent Republican who makes a huge deal out of having been a B-1 Pilot in the Air Force and strong national defense.  The biggest single site employer in the district is the US Army, with Tooele Army Depot and Dougway Proving Ground.  His opponent is a Social Worker and Community Organizer whose main campaign thrust is about doing things for the people of the district like homeless shelters and increased access to healthcare–things the incumbent has ignored.  The Trib’s endorsement of the Republican incumbent in UT2 is essentially the same as the UT3 with the names changed.

It’s a beautiful day in Utah. Open Thread.Post + Comments (208)

The Republican Party is tearing itself apart. It’s about damn time.

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The following is from a Tweetstorm I composed yesterday in the hours before that shitshow of a “debate.” There are probably some spelling and grammar errors, because for the most part, I just copied and pasted from my Twitter account, @soonergrunt.

Someone asked me recently why I’m a dick to Conservatives who engage me on Twitter. I’m not to everyone. @RadioFreeTom is a notable example. There are others. But I’ll tell you the answer now. I came to political conscience in the age of Ronald Reagan. I liked him as a person, but I didn’t agree with him on much. But I respected him. He was my President, for one thing, but also my parents taught me that the other side were decent people who wanted what they saw as best for the country. They just happened to usually be wrong. And sometimes they were right. That kind of consideration is something I’ve rarely received in return. Rare enough that I remember a lot of those respectful interactions.  They stick out due to their rarity.

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The Republican Party is tearing itself apart. It’s about damn time.Post + Comments (218)