November 19, 2018

At the Hot Pepper Café...

fullsizeoutput_2d94

... say what you like.

53 comments:

Anita Villegas said...

Hi Ann! Thank you for your great influence, and maybe that on me, too, and all you stragglers, too. Best.

chickelit said...

Pax capiscum

Roughcoat said...

Photo of Carlos Castaneda?

Ralph L said...

I hadn't noticed the tentacles on the carpet yesterday.

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

invite Scoville over for a review

wildswan said...

Continuing my quest to find out why Scott Walker lost, I read an interesting article about a new Democratic canvassing technique which the Democrats credit with their success in Michigan. It is called the silent canvass. A candidate and a canvasser walk through a neighborhood and the candidate never speaks, just listens. By this means, they actually found out what was on people's minds and how they put their ideas. This worked better than Headquarters in Brooklyn using Facebook data mining as was done in 2016, or so the story says. The same thing was done in Milwaukee before the 2018 election but I've never seen the effect analyzed. Still, if silent canvassing works, Republicans should be doing it.

Humperdink said...

I asked my stepson why he didn't eat ice cream. His response: "Because you can't put hot sauce on it".

wildswan said...

I think silent canvassing would work especially well in areas hostile to Republicans. If a Democrat came around to me and kept their mouth shut and let me talk they would actually hear that support for Trump is not coming from racist bigot freaks. They would hear the reasons and it would not be like Facebook. So I can imagine that a silent canvass might turn up information about how Democrats think that would be important to know. Of course I think I already do know what they think because I have so many Democratic relatives who aren't at all shy with their opinions. But perhaps I am misled by being near so many articulate people. Perhaps time going on and Trump proving that he can get jobs back is filtering down in some complex way and changing how many people think, though it has no effect on my "open-minded" relatives. The more liberal, the more "open-minded" they are, the more they all say the same and what they say is the same as what they said two years ago. Just louder and more hysterical.

stephen cooper said...

Ann, the other night you said you lost friends - or acquaintances - on at least one occasion when people were told, by you, that most of your commenters voted for Trump (and before that Bush) on purpose .....

you are better off without such unkind prickly people in your life, but that being said, I not only voted for Trump in the general, he was my preferred candidate in the primaries, and that being said ....

don't judge me until you know what I think about the world ....

I want reparations for every single American who was ever arrested by the totalitarian police officers of my youth, who used to happily arrest - that is, cowardly, arrest, with all the force of government, and mistreat someone - simply because that someone had, somewhere in their house or car or clothes, a few leaves from an herb that naturally grew in their homeland. That was evil on the part of those police officers, and if any of them are reading this, well, if you have not repented already, repent now, you were a tool of evil powers.

I want every person who has criticized people with gender dysphoria to experience, at least for a moment, the repentance we all should fell when we have said mean things about people who have not walked a mile in our moccasins.

I want Clinton and Bush and the other Bush and Cheney and Obama and Samantha Power to apologize for their laziness and for their unkind frame of mind, in which they considered American military members pawns to be used against other powers --- but most of all I want Bush Senior to apologize for lying, again and again, and I want Bush Junior to apologize for imposing on the Army soldiers of his day Rules of Engagement that he, in his drunken youth and rich middle age, would never have lived by. Clinton and Obama are, or course, beneath contempt when the question is whether they were fit to be commander in chief, they did not disappoint me, but little Bush did. I did not expect much of poor chubby Clinton and poor phony Obama, so I do not much care about their apologies ---- of course I do care about the question of whether they wake up or not, to a world in which it was they who were unfair and unkind and to tell the truth, sort of scarily ignorant .....

I want freedom of the press, and you do too, so there's that.

I want the New York Times to be sued for millions and millions of dollars for their evil and continuing support of Walter Duranty and his legacy.

That is just 5. like I said, you are better off without crabby self-righteous liberals who dis-friend people for good opinions in your life, and I am sure you know that : but pray for them, Ann. God loves us all, it is not that hard to figure out, God loves us all. No matter how well or how badly we understand the "issues of our day".

David Begley said...

“I want the New York Times to be sued for millions and millions of dollars for their evil and continuing support of Walter Duranty and his legacy.”

First Amendment and statute of limitations.

narciso said...

Yes and what are the odds any of their concerns will be addressed, trusting the Democrats is like trusting teenagers with cad keys and alcohol.

Darrell said...

Never trust teenagers with the cad keys.
Or Democrats with anything.

stephen cooper said...

David Begley ---


they recently doubled down, thereby waiving the statute of limitations (the legal principle is generally called the tort of defamation, or intentional infliction of emotional distress. First Amendment is a defense, but not an absolute defense, to repeating a vicious lie)

narciso said...

Rules of engagement haven't probably changed since Beirut, the state department legal brain trust probably insisted on it.

Re Bush sr, what exactly do you think he lied about in particular, re Iraq central America all of the above.

FullMoon said...

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Monday issued "rules that will govern White House press conferences going forward" in response to the behavior of CNN's chief White House correspondent, Jim Acosta, earlier this month.

Sanders laid out three rules for reporters in attendance at future press conferences, adding that if they fail to comply with any of the rules, they may face "suspension or revocation of the journalist's hard pass."

The three rules include: limiting reporters to one question before they must yield the floor to other journalists; asking a follow-up question or questions only at the discretion of President Donald Trump or another White House official answering questions, before then yielding the floor; and "physically surrendering the microphone" to White House staff when applicable for the next questioner.

https://freebeacon.com/politics/huckabee-sanders-issues-rules-reporters-follow-press-conferences/

narciso said...

The New York times got Vietnam wrong from the outset (halberstam then salisbury) Cuba (Matthews) Iran (various) el Salvador (bonner) those are just appetizers

rcocean said...

As my Mom would say: Chile today and hot tamale.

rcocean said...

Why not just rig the mic to produce an electrical shock after 60 seconds?

steve uhr said...

So my wife is shopping for a hat on her computer and now im bombarded with hat ads on my iPhone. This is not a good thing. Privacy is dead.

Birkel said...

Saw a pepper that is 1.6 billion Scovile units hot.
They use it to kill nerve endings for people with chronic pain.

stephen cooper said...

narciso ---
Bush Senior was a good guy in his 20s.

He was a loser in his teens.

As President, he lied about

(a) taxes - everyone knows he lied when he, in a sad way, though he was imitating Clint Eastwood (read my lips) but what he was really doing was lying about whether he would raise taxes or not

(b) dozens of times, the lying older Bush cheated on his beloved spouse, by groping yougn women in a dishonest way

(c) during the Persian Gulf War, the lying older Bush criticized Saddam for using what the lying Bush called "weapons of terror" because Saddam launched missiles, with an accuracy of about a mile, at American force concentrations that were almost a mile wide. I despise Saddam, the great evildoer and the great shame of Iraq and of his blasphemous claim to be a holy Muslim, but Bush lied about those Scud missiles - they were not weapons of terror, as older Bush called them, if they were aimed - as they were - at military targets. Don't get me wrong, Saddam was a total dirtbag, but old Bush lied.

(d) the older Bush claims he loves America but he supported his sons in political campaigns against better men who cared more about America than Jeb! of Dubya! ever will. Sorry to say, I cannot prove that --- but I am telling you, it is true.

(e) and one more time, the older Bush sexually molested many women, over their clothes, but it was still rude and nasty and sexual, and the little Bush, instead of saying that his father suffered from dementia, or suffered from some other condition that would excuse such nastiness, was silent. OK, being silent is not lying but then there is this:

the lack of courage to speak out against that which is wrong is in itself wrong (Aquinas, Solzhenitsyn, Basil Fawlty...., actually, Manuel, if you remember)

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

though I saw it all around
never thought I could be affected
thought that we'd be the last to go
it is so strange the way things turn

drove the night toward my home
the place that I was born, on the lakeside
as daylight broke, I saw the earth
the trees had burned down to the ground

don't give up
you still have us
don't give up
we don't need much of anything
don't give up
'cause somewhere there's a place
where we belong

--Peter Gabriel

narciso said...

Gosh do you remember where those missiles were aimed between 1980 and 1988 Iranian cities now the Iranians did the same with their silkworms you know what was their preferred payload. Scuds were Soviet silkworms were Chinese prince bandar got a host of them in the mid 80s.

stephen cooper said...

That being said, despite his groping of innocent young women, in spite of his lies and his laziness and his stupidity, I like the guy because he kept Dukakis from being the worst President imaginable.

Yes, worse than President Hillary Clinton would have been, she was just a puppet, Dukakis had his "own ideas", the poor little man.

narciso said...

Yes the tax pledge was foolish to disregard, it was part of his contest with Bob dole who has grown on me after all these years.

stephen cooper said...

narciso - I spent about ten days in the range of those missiles, I am not afraid of death, I made people laugh when the missiles exploded nearby, almost close enough to kill but not close enough --- trust me, I know what I am talking about --- well I was in my 20s, fighting the Iraqis in that weird way that military people fight an enemy when the enemy can kill them but all they are doing is organizing people to fight the enemy ---- and like Bush, who was at his best in his 20s, I was fun to be around back in the day, even when missiles were exploding nearby --- (my friends and fellow soldiers who were killed are buried in military graveyards in Michigan, Texas, Virginia, and on and on. I know what I am talking about).

Don't get me wrong, I like the older Bush, I don't blame him for lying so much in his long life. But I am not going to say he was not a liar. He lied about what was going on in wars that he should have been fully and Christianly responsible for., and fully truthful and transparent about. And he wasn't! That is not good! Also, in his old age, he sinfully grabbed with his old man hands the bodies of young women who deserved to be treated with respect! That is not good, that is, actually, really bad. Let us pray he repents!

Thanks for reading.

stephen cooper said...

Bob Dole is a good guy.

Darrell said...

taxes - everyone knows he lied when he, in a sad way, though he was imitating Clint Eastwood (read my lips) but what he was really doing was lying about whether he would raise taxes or not

It wasn't a lie. Bush, in effect, was made to change his mind. He was lied to by Democrats--Rostenkowski in particular-- telling him he had to raise taxes to cover the bank failures and FDIC payouts. There was a very popular radio show at the time, Money Talks, and the host-- Bob Brinker-- started to go on about bank failures and how the whole system was going to collapse. He did it every show for most of the show. Bush was duped into thinking he was saving Americans.

narciso said...

As for better people Janet Reno, you're familiar with the fuster case, one of the creepiest of that epidemic of witch hunters, Lawton chiles how he deliberately set relief efforts back during hurricane andrew.

stephen cooper said...

Also, I have probably confronted, about a dozen times, angry people who wanted to commit crimes, and talked them out of it .

But the former friends of Ann who don't like her Trump voting commenters, because they don't understand us, don't want to hear about the times I :

- talked down an angry dude who was in the middle of road rage by telling him I was a parole officer and he could shoot if he wanted but he would be better off just forgetting about the whole thing, he listened to me, his kids don't know how much they owe me for keeping him out of trouble and out of a 20 or so year jail sentence

- the time I showed up with my friends at the door of some arrogant trucker who told my friend he would kill him next time he saw him, in a show of support - our friend would not be easily killed: the trucker understood

- the times (two or three) I stared down drunken psychos, not young ones, middle aged ones, and they went home that night without doing the harm they wanted to do

-the times (when I was very young, before I was completely bored with psychopaths) that I tried to talk very bad people out of their hatreds. Those were long conversations (and you can see, if you understand what I am talking about, why I still have a tendency to comments that are too long), and I am not sure I succeeded. God only knows. But at least I tried. If you cannot say the same --- well, someday maybe you will have to communicate with a bad person. I will be praying for you.

Just another Trump voter, weighing in.

David Begley said...

Stephen Cooper.

Who is the plaintiff? What are the damages? Don’t be silly.

stephen cooper said...

Darrell - maybe not a lie.

But if you are lucky enough to be the one in a million, one in ten million, people who gets to be President ...

not only do you not avoid lies, you treat the Truth as something that deserves complete affection, the way a sick pet or a learning-disabled child deserves complete affection.

stephen cooper said...

David Begley ---

UNHCR has put people in jail for a lot less than the Gulag loving NY Times of the day was responsible for.

Sorry if you think I am silly. I guess I should have clerked for good federal judges, instead of just trying to tell the truth about the legal system.

stephen cooper said...

And yes, if you have to spend a few hours figuring out if the UNHCR has or has not put people in jail (answer - they have left people in jail, which is the logical equivalent: and no, they do not have criminal jurisdiction powers) - well, 50 years from now, the NY Times will be what it will be.

And if you can imagine, as I can imagine, how despised they will be for their lies over the years ...

well, I am happy to be criticized, but I cannot imagine a future, 50 years from now, where the NY Times has not repented and is still admired by more than a few free people

walter said...

Stephen Cooper said...
Bob Dole is a good guy.
--
One of Bob Dole's go to phrases.

narciso said...

Herbert matthews who felt the republic should have won, was fooled by Fidel, the company was fooled by the future mrs Raul castro, into believing Fidel was not a communist.

narciso said...

FWIW a war where bin laden was a beneficiary by proxy, probably wasnt a good result.

Drago said...

I came here hoping Stephen Cooper would open up.

Im willing to give him more time.

stephen cooper said...

narciso

well the result was good

Saddam and his cousins and nephews were raping about a thousand Iraqi women every week

and poor little Osama got excited, thought he would "strike a blow" against the West and gave up his billions to kill about 3 or 4 thousand Americans

the evildoer gave up billions to be an evildoer who killed 3 or 4 thousand --do the math, he gave up an average lifetime salary for every murder

the evildoer is rotting in Hell, and all because he had hatred in his heart.

There are about 5 billion people on the face of the earth, not many of them have spent more than a moment thinking about whether that war "had a good result"

Saddam the evildoer who shamed his fellow Muslims is dead

Osama the evildoer shamefully died

The Saudis are on the ropes

The Iranians who sent millions of their sons - the vicious fellows, they laughed at the thought of how many women would be left over for the cowards - are at the end of their rope

Saudi Barbaria is almost a thing of the past.

Good results or not, the important thing, if you care about your fellow human beings, is this ...

old Bush lied, and the people who died under his orders are the people we should respect, not old Bush,

little Bush was not a mensch, he was just what he was, a man who sent other people into battle under rules of engagement that he, in his rich boy pride, would have disregarded ---- and he should be ashamed of himself. Good for him that he spent a few hours flying expensive planes that the taxpayers paid for, we all would have done the same when we were young and brave ---- and we were all brave when we were young ....

I am not angry, I am just a good American who understands the world, not perfectly, but not competely imperfectly, either.

Go ahead and tell me how much better than me you are, if you want. I have met many brave people in my life, maybe you are one of them too ....

Henry said...

walter said...
Stephen Cooper said...
Bob Dole is a good guy.
--
One of Bob Dole's go to phrases.


LOL. Young people today. They wouldn't get that.

narciso said...

I used to be surer about these things, the war was fought to defend Kuwait, one of their citizens Khalid sheik Mohammed was behind the first and second trade center attacks even now they are prolific funders for Islamic state.

stephen cooper said...

Drago, thanks

the day when Ann and Meade headed down to the capitol city to see what the protesters were all about, and when they were criticized in person

if I remember right, that exact day I (a) spent a couple hours at the local quiet Barnes and Noble (b) walked in my beloved North Virginia woods for an hour or too, and (c) I logged in that evening and was surprised to read about how rude everyone on the left was to Ann and Meade

I wanted to tell her that I, too, have been hated by people who do not want to listen to all I can say about the sadness I have seen in this world ....

but I probably did not comment that night ...

I probably typed in a Google search for "Sugar Sugar and Dawn Wells", or, if I was in a nostalgic mood, remembering my long-lost friends, the Hogan's Heroes theme song or one or two of the even more lovable "top 40" songs of the 1970s

the funny thing is this:

I do not know much, I am not a math whiz and am not a boy band or K-Pop type, but I know this:

I have been brave in my day, and I know, in my heart, that millions of others have been just as brave

it is that look you see in the eyes of the cat or dog who respects you, or the friend who does not disrespect you, or ...

and here I am talking about something that will only occur in the far future, ,long after my little acts of bravery and my little years of constant pain - or to be more accurate, constant lack of comfort --- are long gone ----that look that all - not some, but all - of my descendants will see in the eyes of the man or woman who loves them

and on and on, until eternity

God loves us the way we are but loves us too much to let us stay that away

if you are an exception to that


you don't mind that I said what I said

if you are not an exception

you know how much God loves everyone you love

and that is not nothing

that is the definition of not nothing



Anita Villegas said...

Bob Dole is a good guy. ruff. O, o, con tu permiso, roof.

Andrew said...

"So my wife is shopping for a hat on her computer and now im bombarded with hat ads on my iPhone. This is not a good thing. Privacy is dead."

I made the mistake of using my phone to look for a new (used) car. Now everything on my phone has car ads. Even the YouTube videos I watch are interrupted by car ads. I wonder how much money it costs them to invade someone's phone.

mockturtle said...

Andrew: Firefox AdBlock Plus

FullMoon said...

A guilt ridden departing governor Jerry Brown concedes that President Donald Trump is absolutely correct in the California mismanagement of the forestry. With the death of untold numbers of people –yet to be discovered– Jerry Brown knew immediate changes were needed to logging regulations to thin the California forests. Trump was right!

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/

stephen cooper said...

Anita, mi amiga ....

Dole's appointments to the Supreme Court would not have included Ginsburg, Sotomayor, Kagan, and Souter,

Sure he might have messed up and appointed Roberts and Kavanaugh, or their ilk.

But them again, maybe not.

Magna est veritas et preavalebit.

Look, this is our country: it is not the country of the rich,

and it will always be that way.

don't be fooled ....

Everything bad Dole would have done would have been something he would have quickly regretted,

That is why he is a good guy

not because he would have done the right thing

Sheila Burke, anybody????

because he would have quickly regretted doing the wrong thing

Come on , how can you argue with that ???



rehajm said...

How many scalps has MeToo claimed post Kavanaugh? More than zero?

...and where is Harvey at the moment? In a jail somewheee? By this time we usualky know minutiae of the daily lives of famous people behind bars.

Last I heard the cases against Harvey were ‘falling apart’ or some such.

gadfly said...

Blogger Humperdink said...
I asked my stepson why he didn't eat ice cream. His response: "Because you can't put hot sauce on it".

You most certainly can!

rehajm said...

Scientists have become PC signalling ninnies more concerned with politics than their respective fields.

rhhardin said...

Andrew: Firefox AdBlock Plus

ublock origin (also firefox) is faster and smaller. Adblock was churning up enormous amounts of memory and cpu time.

stevew said...

I use Startpage as my home page and search from there. Cuts way down on the ads that follow me around.

dustbunny said...

Now the table really looks like it’s floating. The support looks like the floor. Nice photos.