May 30, 2019

At Little Bug's Café...

tree fungus at quarry ridge

... you can talk all night.

88 comments:

JackWayne said...

I’ve had a marathon of reading comments in English sites about Farage and Johnson. I think Johnson has a problem. If he falls out I believe Farage has a big opening. Daniel Hannan in particular is a peculiar weathervane but he is down on the Tories being able to get a No Deal without an election.

Wince said...

Was Mueller forced to issue a clarification today retracting much of his statement?

rhhardin said...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qieqnpF2yR0&feature=related

Debussy, Passepied

I'd only heard it played in practice, this guy is a pro. Uses every dimension.

Drago said...

EDH: "Was Mueller forced to issue a clarification today retracting much of his statement?"

Well, "forced".

How about, hey Bob, you know, you misled the nation yesterday and we have you on the record saying the opposite of what you claimed....tell you what, why don't we issue a joint DOJ/OLC "clarification" to clear up this.....uh....."matter"......

JackWayne said...

Two amusing things about the comments: the Remainers absolutely despise Farage and use the same sort of class insults that are used on Trump while the Brexiters say that Farage is OK BUT he has his issues. To quote Megadeth, “You said I wasn’t kind. Yeh, just not YER kind.” The Second is that the Brexiters are shy voters. They won’t come out for Farage but you can tell from the comments that they kind of trust BoJo and if he falters the implication is that Gove and the other dwarves will not get the vote and Farage will. They want to Brexit and will vote that way in the general.

Drago said...

JackWayne: "the Remainers absolutely despise Farage and use the same sort of class insults that are used on Trump while the Brexiters say that Farage is OK BUT he has his issues."

We are seeing the same thing in Canada where the conservatives are rising in many provincial races and are polling above Trudeau.

And why not? Why would Canada be exempt from all movements sweeping the entire West due to the undeniable and repeated failures of the world neo-liberal order?

The neo-liberal order could reform itself and stop these movements in their tracks, but instead they have decided to replace their voters.

Not. Smart.

n said...

Looks like a Wood Tick to me. Not just any bug...

wild chicken said...

EDH where did you read that about Mueller? J can't find anything.

JackWayne said...

This SNL joke is for Althouse.

traditionalguy said...

Fungus among us.

tcrosse said...

The Democrat governor of Nevada, Milwaukee's own Steve Sisolak (UW-M 1974) has vetoed the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, (NPVIC) which the state assembly had passed.
“Once effective, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact could diminish the role of smaller states like Nevada in national electoral contests and force Nevada’s electors to side with whoever wins the nationwide popular vote, rather than the candidate Nevadans choose”, he explained.

traditionalguy said...

Funny watching Disney, HBO, etc. saying that they cannot shoot their movies among a population of immoral perverts so they are leaving Georgia

traditionalguy said...

They will shoot movies in Hollywood instead.

JackWayne said...

"This Is A Black Swan Event": Futures, Peso Tumble As Trump Unleashes Tariffs On Mexico "Until Illegal Immigration Stops"

Kim Jong-Un Executes Four Officials Over Failed Trump Summit

2 headlines on Zerohedge that are oddly connected.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

I'd be fine if Hollywood was aborted. from planet earth.

Big Mike said...

@n, I think it's a beetle.

narciso said...

Farage is public school (dulwhich) while Johnson is university (cambridge I believe) one was a metals trader the other an editorialist

Wince said...

Hannity. I couldn’t find any press accounts myself.

The media giving Mueller’s astonishing yet obvious walk-back a good leaving alone?

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

Don't let AOC into your garden. That thing could easily be construed as a Racist Vegetable.

(who-- the fungus or AOC??)

madAsHell said...

Hey, is Howard Schulz still running for President??

I think Jay Inslee is as well, but I never knew you could step on such a short pecker.

madAsHell said...

oh yeah....I think people that search for wild mushrooms have a death wish.

Full disclosure.....I won't even eat Mushroom Cream Soup.

tim in vermont said...

I went searching for morels, now today I found a tick attached to me. Drat! I had found one on my pants, but I thought I had scanned well enough. The waiting begins, I guess.

Bay Area Guy said...

Mueller's walk back shows, again, how inept he and his team are.

1. There was no Russian collusion at the outset;
2. According to Mueller, they couldn't indict Trump.

So, a sane person might ask, what the fuck were you doing for 2 years?

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

@nobody
Supposedly only 25% of ticks carry Lyme. But check that stat.
(Check that! Stat!!)

Francisco D said...


Shout out to all you Trump cultists. You need help to get your minds right.

The hive mind worked for me. I am at peace knowing that Big Brother loves me and will care for me.

- Inga

Drago said...

TradGuy: "Funny watching Disney, HBO, etc. saying that they cannot shoot their movies among a population of immoral perverts so they are leaving Georgia"

Posted elsewhere on the web today: Disney will refuse to make more childrens movies in Georgia until Georgia agrees to allow the killing of children.

narciso said...

Couldn't let all that office space go to waste, so they spent money on travel to Europe thr middle east and everywhere in between, probably spent a lot of money dining journalists

reader said...

Ticks are supposed to be bad this year. Vector control is warning that ticks with tularemia (rabbit fever) have been already been found. So dogs are at risk. The ticks were found in same canyon in which a mountain lion attacked a little boy. The mountain lion was found and killed because it was agressive and didn’t appear to be afraid of people. I’m not trying to connect the two incidents.

I’ve already found a tick crawling across the bath room floor. Yuk.



Lewis Wetzel said...

Why do so many college students accept what they are taught in college as incontrovertible truth? You don't have to do a lot of research to discover that the "woke" picture of the world is flat-out wrong. In the workplace, racial discrimination and discrimination based on sex has been illegal since the 1960s. There are biological differences between men and women that cannot be altered by hormones and surgery. A free marketplace will always distribute scarce goods more efficiently than the government.
Yet it seems that if a college prof tells them "what you learned from your peers and your parents, and in grade school and secondary school was wrong," they seem to accept it without question.
Maybe they are fooling themselves into thinking that, because they paid for it, what they are taught has greater value than the free education they received before they were adults?

Lewis Wetzel said...

"Blogger madAsHell said...

oh yeah....I think people that search for wild mushrooms have a death wish."
I have a sibling who is into hunting wild mushrooms. Gives him a practical reason for a happy hike through the woods. I said the same thing as madAsHell to him. He told me that it's not that hard to avoid bad mushrooms. If you are in doubt, bite off a tiny piece, and spit it out if it is bitter, but you really shouldn't be in doubt at all.

narciso said...

This is more than a simple firing:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-usa-purge/north-koreas-kim-jong-un-carrying-out-purge-after-hanoi-summit-collapse-chosun-ilbo-idUSKCN1T02PD

Churchy LaFemme: said...

I think Florida is too colonized to do it, but it would be funny if FL passed a heartbeat law. Whatcha' gonna do, Disneyworld?

narciso said...


Indeed:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-48435902

n.n said...

racial discrimination and discrimination based on sex has been illegal since the 1960s

That changed with the conception and development of diversity. Can you believe that there are still people who indulge in color judgments? Weird.

narciso said...


Sure why not,

https://www.breitbart.com/crime/2019/05/30/colombia-court-orders-release-farc-terrorist-accused-drug-trafficking-technicality/

narciso said...

So the farce get 10 congressional seats, appointed not elected

Bay Area Guy said...

The Warriors got whipped tonight. Hats off to our Canadian bacon, er, I mean, Canadian brethren in Toronto. They have a gutty little team.

Yancey Ward said...

It will be interesting to see who the Tories choose for PM. I am on the record that they will end up choosing another Remainer who promises to heed the Brexit vote, and then does nothing to bring about Brexit. So I think it will be Hunt, and definitely not Johnson or Raab.

Yancey Ward said...

I see Trump is taxing Mexico for all the Central Americans they allow to transit the country to the US border. Sounds like Mexico might have to build a wall between themselves and Guatemala/Belize.

Ken B said...

BAG
Yay Raptors!

Lewis Wetzel said...

Here are a pair of interesting & conflicting essays about David French. French is the #NeverTrumper promoted by Bill Cristol as an alternative to Trump in the 2016 election. This is the anti-French piece from First Things, by Sohrab Ahmari, the opinion page editor of the NY Post:
https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2019/05/against-david-french-ism
And here is an answer to Ahmari, from French's colleague at National Review, Michael Brendan Dougherty: https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/defense-of-david-french/
Ahmari wins on points, I think, because he is more direct. He names French, the positions he takes, and attacks them. Dougherty's defense of French is a call for unity.
The most interesting part of the tit-for-tat is Ahmari's claim that French's problem is that he endorses the Protestant idea of individual autonomy. Ahmari attacks this notion on religious grounds. The only basis we have for making collective decisions about how the individual shall behave are ideological, these decisions must be made if we are to have a common culture, and religion (explicitly Christianity) is a better choice than nationalism or Marxism. Dougherty doesn't quite seem to understand Ahmari's argument. Dougherty thinks that Ahmari is attacking French, and not "Frenchism."

narciso said...

Well six of one...ahmari who recently converted to catholicism knows of what he soeaks.

narciso said...

Gerson and Williamson are of like minds, max boot (who ahmari has filleted in the past dies not.

mockturtle said...

I got a great photo of a group of grizzlies along the Alaska Hwy in the Yukon on my way to Tok, AK, this morning. They looked fat and sassy and golden brown. I've seen far more bears, black and brown, so far than I did in 2015.

Lewis Wetzel said...

Narciso, what annoys me most about the #NeverTrumpers (explicitly French and his NR colleague, Jonah Goldberg), is their idea that Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, et alia, are operating in a free market environment.
They are not. Choosing to publish on Youtube rather than Vimeo for your enterprise is not like choosing between Goodrich and Goodyear tires for your car.
The intellectual defenders of free market capitalism on the Right seem to not understand how free market capitalism works at all. The goal of free market capitalists is to rent-seek and eliminate competition, because this is how you make investors happy. Duh!

Bay Area Guy said...

Canada has only 37 million people. That vast, Arctic wasteland has only 37 million people? It's probably double the size of the US with 1/10 the amount of people.

I'm struggling to make a point here, but don't really have one.

Beat the Raptors!

narciso said...

Its just their boast of how they get health care right among other things is silly considering we have 9 times their population

Crazy World said...

These are interesting times we live in. If President Trump would get a dollar for every time he is mentioned he could pay off the National Debt!
MAGA

Quaestor said...

It's probably double the size of the US with 1/10 the amount of people.

Don't let that Mercador projection fool you.

Big Mike said...

@Bay Area Guy, keep up the good struggle, but Canada and the US are are nearly the same in area — Canada is about 3.85 million sq. miles to the US 3.79 million sq. miles.

Big Mike said...

@Michael K., did I read that you were trying to replace the ramrod for a flintlock? Try Dixie Gun Works or Track of the Wolf. But I prefer percussion.

Michael McNeil said...

The thing about Canada's 37 million people in basically the same area as the United States is that, as answers.com puts it: “75 percent of Canada's population lives within 100 miles of the American border. Essentially all Canadians live within 600 kilometers [<400 miles] of the US border.”

stevew said...

"So, a sane person might ask, what the fuck were you doing for 2 years?"

Of on a wild goose chase looking for something, anything, he could contort into a crime committed by Trump. Bupkis. And he would still be looking if that corrupt and partisan SOB Barr hadn't come along and forced him to stop.

As for that mushroom: eating wild mushrooms is, to me, carries a similar life risk profile as attempting to summit Mt. Everest. Not gonna do it, not even a little nibble to see if it is bitter.

Low 50's and rain for the last few days, appears to have blown through and we are today blessed with a glorious, warm and sunny day.

I love this time of year.

tim in vermont said...

It hasn’t rained for three days, a new record for this spring. I was planning on building a cold frame in my garden, but it’s been way too muddy to do any digging there. Maybe today’s the day!

Anne in Rockwall, TX said...

Claus Von Bulow has died. An odd coincidence that the movie "Reversal of Fortune" has been recommended in these comments the last few days.

Anne in Rockwall, TX said...

Also, if you get the strep infection that has been floating around the last couple weeks, insist on a Z Pac. My doctor tried cephalex on me and I got worse. Three days worse. I think it pretty much messed up my left ear. And I already lost most of the hearing in my right ear. Sigh.

rehajm said...

What hole did they dump Christine Blasey Ford into? With her education and background and life experience she should be the biggest public advocate for women- we’re talking Steinem level- and yet, not a squeak.

Surprising...

tim in vermont said...

An American University professor who has correctly predicted the last nine presidential elections says President Trump will win the 2020 election unless congressional Democrats, “grow a spine,” CNN reported. Allan Lichtman, a political historian, said Democrats only have a shot at the White House if they begin impeachment proceedings against Trump

I guess he looked at how well it worked for Republicans against Clinton and decided that he wanted the Democrats to get some of that action. This is one more case where a guy has gone off the rails due to TDS. One more Democrat who is *sure* there *clearly* is a pony under all of that horse shit that they just haven’t found yet.

stevew said...

Impeachment of Trump is the "Only please, Br'er Fox, please don't throw me into the briar patch." scenario for the 2020 election.

Pelosi seems to know this and that continued investigations are a vastly superior method of disabling POTUS Trump. She also knows that it is still uncertain that the House could impeach. I heard last night that just 40 in Congress openly support and are calling for impeaching Trump, and they all are from safe districts.

So the theater and farce continue.

Mary Beth said...

Hillary Clinton is going to be the keynote speaker at the FyreEye Cyber Defense Summit. It seems like they are going out of their way to make a mockery of their company.

gilbar said...

Unknown said...
I think Florida is too colonized to do it, but it would be funny if FL passed a heartbeat law. Whatcha' gonna do, Disneyworld?


They'd treat it EXACTLY like they do China and Egypt
https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/netflix-disney-consider-boycotting-georgia-continue-partnerships-with-anti-abortion-egypt-anti-muslim-china

tim in vermont said...

I got a kick out of the statement from that LLR in Michigan who said that other Republicans *privately* support him. Impeachment is always a political question, and if they are afraid to say it out loud, that means that it’s a *political* loser, in their judgement and so, modus ponens, not justified.

tim in vermont said...

I may need to seek rehab for my limerick compulsion, but here goes anyway:

A certain Dem ran oft for president
He stole speeches from a member of parliament
When asked in good fun
What was making him run
He said t’was the perks and emoluments!

I guess I am from another time, and its memes what rule the day today.

tim in vermont said...

There once was a grifter named Joe
Whose wit worked a beat or two slow
Surgeons maintain
Once air touches your brain
You’re no longer sure what you know.

Hagar said...

I read Boris Johnson's book on Churchill.
At the end my question was: Why was this book written?

Hagar said...

and published?

tim maguire said...

Bay Area Guy said...
Canada has only 37 million people. That vast, Arctic wasteland has only 37 million people? It's probably double the size of the US with 1/10 the amount of people.

I'm struggling to make a point here, but don't really have one.

Beat the Raptors!


If you include Alaska, Canada is about the same size as the US in terms of square miles, but most of it is uninhabitable. Something like 80% of Canadians live within 100 miles of the US.

1/3rd of Canadians live in Ontario, where the liberals took such a pasting in the last election that they barely exist anymore.

stevew said...

America's Got Talent needs to add a limericks competition. Nobody wins in a landslide. :-)

dbp said...

The mushrooms look like some variety of yellow oyster, they might be pretty good. I would need to see the underside of one to confirm.

Andrew said...

"I've seen far more bears, black and brown, so far than I did in 2015."

Is there anything Trump can't do?

Big Mike said...

Essentially all Canadians live within 600 kilometers [<400 miles] of the US border.

But don’t forget the town or Churchill, on the shores of Hudson Bay and hundreds of miles north of the next town to the south. Population 900, give or take. It calls itself the “Polar Bear Capital of the World,” and on Halloween the kids Trick or Treat accompanied by well-armed adults.

tim in vermont said...

Don't encourage me, though Althouse deleted two of my best.

Andrew said...

"He told me that it's not that hard to avoid bad mushrooms. If you are in doubt, bite off a tiny piece, and spit it out if it is bitter, but you really shouldn't be in doubt at all."

Wow. That is a death wish. Or at least a liver dysfunction wish.

Show him this article from last year.

https://www.cleveland19.com/2018/10/17/poisonous-mushrooms-sending-people-hospital/

Fernandinande said...

The largest living organism is a fungus.

JAORE said...

"Pelosi seems to know this and that continued investigations are a vastly superior method of disabling POTUS Trump. She also knows that it is still uncertain that the House could impeach. I heard last night that just 40 in Congress openly support and are calling for impeaching Trump, and they all are from safe districts."

You never hear discussions on what would result if impeachment is tried and the left falls short of a majority. Pelosi must fear that as much or more than the fallout from impeachment passing in the house.

Bruce Hayden said...

“@Bay Area Guy, keep up the good struggle, but Canada and the US are are nearly the same in area — Canada is about 3.85 million sq. miles to the US 3.79 million sq. miles.“

But we are only tha close because of Alaska, and if it went where it appears to belong, with Canada, they really would have almost twice our landmass.

stevew said...

Btw, if that bug is what I think it is, I hope it dies a horrible, bad mushroom death.

Ann Althouse said...

The small animal in the photograph is NOT a tick.

Look closely. There are at least 2 ways to exclude its being a tick.

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

it's the Tough-Shit beetle-- it looks like the World's smallest violin

And if you listen very closely, it sounds like "My Hear Bleeds For You"

Bilwick said...

The photo looks like a pile of poo from a dog with a liver disease. I'm having it enlarged to frame and hang up on my bedroom wall.

Lewis Wetzel said...

"He told me that it's not that hard to avoid bad mushrooms. If you are in doubt, bite off a tiny piece, and spit it out if it is bitter, but you really shouldn't be in doubt at all."
Wow. That is a death wish. Or at least a liver dysfunction wish.
Show him this article from last year.
https://www.cleveland19.com/2018/10/17/poisonous-mushrooms-sending-people-hospital/


From the linked article:
"Even just half a cap off the top of a mushroom can be lethal for an adult human and a much smaller amount for any child,” said Dr. Christina Lindenmeyer."

So the bite and spit test seems like it works.

purplepenquin said...

"Why do so many college students accept what they are taught in college as incontrovertible truth?"

For the same reason so many church-goers accept what they are taught in church as incontrovertible truth. Or why so many Republicans/Democratics accept what their party leaders tell them is the incontrovertible truth.

Most people simply accept what they are being told is the truth as the truth and leave it at that. However - the Big Test of Life is taking all the available info and figuring it out for yourself, but unfortunately too many people fail that test.

Bruce Hayden said...

“You never hear discussions on what would result if impeachment is tried and the left falls short of a majority. Pelosi must fear that as much or more than the fallout from impeachment passing in the house.”

I think the best of both worlds for Republicans would be for the Dem controlled House to vote out articles of impeachment, and the Republican controlled Senate the laugh at them. The only way, probably, to get to the required 218 House votes would probably be for a number of Trump district Dem Representatives to vote for impeachment, and that would likely mean losing their seats in the next election. Probably the best chance that Republicans have of retaking control over the House.

Lewis Wetzel said...

"For the same reason so many church-goers accept what they are taught in church as incontrovertible truth."
How often do you attend church, purplepenguin?
A few months ago I attended my Lutheran Church's men's prayer group. We watched a short video on the life of the apostle Paul. In the discussion that followed, two of the six men present identified themselves as heretics -- one believed the Father was greater than the Son, and another did not believe that the Bible was more than a "book of stories." No one suggested they be forced to recant their sinful beliefs, much less burn them alive. Instead there was discussion (with occasional eye-rolling).
It depends on the denomination, of course, but there is not much in Christianity that is taught to be incontrovertible truth. These truths are usually expressed in the various creeds, and, at least in my church, while some congregants are happy to speak the words, they have deep problems with believing them to be incontrovertible truth.

purplepenquin said...

"How often do you attend church, purplepenguin?"

More than you're probably assuming I do - but not nearly as often as my mother would like me to.

"No one suggested they be forced to recant their sinful beliefs, much less burn them alive. Instead there was discussion (with occasional eye-rolling)."

Well, if THAT is the standard being used then (despite your earlier claim) there is not much in college classrooms that are taught to be incontrovertible truths either.

*shrug*

Jim at said...

What hole did they dump Christine Blasey Ford into?

Same hole as Roy Moore's accusers.

Nichevo said...

Ann Althouse said...
I edited this post to take out the reference to a song that I don't want to discuss here (the thing he sand with Zooey Deschanel in the movie "Elf"). I will delete comments that talk about the familiar controversy about that song, because it would be a very undesirable sidetrack. Go one step down to Little Bug's Café if you need to say anything about that (including anything about this comment of mine).

5/31/19, 6:46 AM


What I need to say, or rather ask, is, why are you such a freaking lunatic control freak, Ann? College professor? You should have taught third grade! You'd be the perfect dried-up schoolmarm.

You create more interest saying don't talk about it than there would have been in anybody talking about it. Oh my God they did Baby It's Cold Outside. When do the firing squads begin? Alert the freaking media. Is that the one you're talking about?

It's like Mike Sylvester or whoever goes on about purple elephants. Once you say don't think about purple elephants, it is impossible not to think about purple elephants.

What's inside your head is not like what's outside your head. Nobody here on this entire blog except you has any issues with Baby It's Cold Outside.

stevew said...

If you were responding to my comment, I didn't, and don't, think that is a tick. I know it isn't, I know what ticks are and look like. It looks like what we call a stink bug. A beetle of some sort they randomly appear in my house, always alone, and produce a very pungent smell when you crush them. I don't hate much in this world, but I hate those things!