April 29, 2020

Image there's no Trump/It isn't hard if you/Are a conservative WaPo columnist/With Biden pulling you through/Image Scranton, PA/Ooh Ooh Ooh Ooh...


ADDED: I didn't watch Hillary's endorsement of Joe Biden, so I was challenged not merely to "image" her as President but also to "image" what was so "priceless" about whatever she said about getting "pulled" through Scranton. I found the transcript though. It's nearly an hour long, and my time is not priceless. I would watch it for $1,000 and let you know what I think. But I will scan the transcript... perhaps only for the word "Scranton"... I'll "scran" the transcript... okay:
So for me, this is a moment that we need a leader, a president like Joe Biden.... And we share a common experience and a love of Scranton, Pennsylvania. When my great grandparents came from England and Wales, they ended up in Scranton and my grandfather and then my father grew up in a house on Diamond Avenue and while the randoms were living on Diamond Avenue, the Bidens were over on North Washington Street. And I’ve had a lot of time to visit Scranton, talk about Scranton with Joe and one memorable occasion we were there together and he said, “Hey, let’s go see the house that I lived in when I was a little boy.” And if you know Joe Biden, you know the words were out of his mouth and we were racing to get there. And of course we got there and he talked his way in.
Ugh! Ever had former owners of your house show up one day and try to talk their way in? Ever gone to a house you used to live in and try to talk your way in? On question 1, my answer is sort of. They weren't very direct about it, and they did not get in. On question 2, I have gone to look at the 3 houses I grew up in and each time I considered how hard it would be to go inside and realized that there was no way I would even go up to the homeowner and let them know I lived there when the house was new and I was a little child. As for trying to get an invitation to go inside... hell, no!
It wasn’t hard because the woman who was at home immediately recognized him and knew him.
And when you're a star, they let you do it.
And then we went through the house with Joe regaling me with these great stories about his dad, Joe Sr. And his mom Gene [sic, should be Jean] and the neighborhood. He was pointing out the window telling me who lived where when he was growing up. He told me one story that I loved. He said he was getting ready to go to a junior high school dance and he didn’t have any cufflinks. And so his very creative mother [Jean] got him a nut and bolt, and made a pair of cufflinks for him. But I think he said he was mortified by that. And he’s told her that and she just looked at him and she said, “Joey, if somebody says something to you about your cufflinks, you just say, what? You don’t have a pair like that.” It was that kind of love of family, that unconditional support that led Joe to be the extraordinary family member and father that he’s been through all the tragedy that so many of us have followed from afar, but know how deeply he connects with people who have similarly suffered a tragedy....
WAIT A MINUTE: "while the randoms were living on Diamond Avenue"?! Must be the Rodhams...

Hilarious. Hillary and her family were randos.

147 comments:

ndspinelli said...

"Conservative" Andrew Sullivan is less ridiculous.

n.n said...

Obama, the boyfriend. Clinton, the girlfriend. Biden, the boy next door.

Charlie said...

You had me at "conservative columnist".

Michael K said...

Hillary has a long history of enabling sex abusers. Starting with Bill.

Craig said...

Is that really a good visual for Biden right now? Him pulling a woman through somewhere?

Nonapod said...

If Hillary won in 2016, what do people think may have happened?

Would things have played out differently with Harvey Weinstein and Jeffery Epstein?

Would there still have been massive growth in the economy without Trump's deregulations and tax cut?

Would we still have a significant presence in Syria? Would Soleimani still be alive?

And how would Hillary have handled the current crisis? Do people believe she would have shut down flights to China as soon as Trump did?

Jake said...

She’s a hoot!

Bay Area Guy said...

I keep getting Jen Rubin mixed up with Michelle Goldberg, mixed up with Cruella De Ville.

Why won't these unattractive non-babes leave me alone?

Shane said...

Amazon is an amazing success story, and Bezos obviously a brilliant, dedicated businessman ~BUT for the Washington Post, and its employing obvious, delusional antagonists like Rubin. The Washington Post has its place and is welcome to its forum. The Rubins and Max Boots are either duplicitous or delusional, but still a voice to be heard as their patron sees fit.

But for Bezos the Washington Post just seems a lark, and a one-off almost designed to hobble the Amazon machine. There's often an inherent self-destructiveness in the truly successful. I am happy Bezos' seems so relatively innocuous so as to be a distraction, and not a destroyer ala The StayPuf Marshmellow Man.

Mark O said...

How terribly I shudder to imagine what might have been.

Limited blogger said...

Oh, believe me I can image where we'd be if Hillary had been elected.

It drives me forward with a resolve that I could never have imaged I'd have.

Lyle said...

Jennifer Rubin sucks at what she does for a living. Still, she is essential and is paid accordingly.

wendybar said...

Bahahahahahahha….Good one from "Conservative" WAPO opinion writer. Just who are they fooling. They are an arm of the DNC.

Polyzen said...

Yeah, I guess $1000 might get me to watch: but with the sound muted!

madAsHell said...

I think Ms. Rubin missed the part where Joe fell asleep during Hillary's endorsement.

madAsHell said...

If Hillary won in 2016, what do people think may have happened?

The corona virus would just be a bad flu season.

Lucid-Ideas said...

I would've given Biden a big high five for Tara Reid.

Not so much for Tara Reade.

Regardless, I hope he gets nailed with Covid and/or passes away loudly sometime in the next 4 months.

Oh...and Clinton too.

P.S. I have information that may lead to the indictment of Hillary Clinton. Come at me fuckos. Wear fashionable body armor.

MikeR said...

"Watching HillaryClinton speak you cannot avoid imaging what might have been." I agree with that! Missed a bullet.

daskol said...

Every time I see or hear Hillary, I get a warm rush of positive feelings for Trump, the only and incredibly unlikely thing that stood between her and the presidency. Whatever happens, nothing can take that away from Trump, or from us. She's so so creepy.

tcrosse said...

My sister was reading a story in her local newspaper about a woman who was cruising the neighborhood where she grew up. At the old homestead there was a woman in the front yard with a couple of kids, so she struck up a conversation. She was invited in to check the place out, now considerably modified. The payoff to the story is that it turned out to be the house where Sis and I grew up, when it was new.

tim maguire said...

I have not, but if I did, I would be completely straightforward about it--I lived here as a child, would it be ok if I looked around for nostalgia's sake?

I was with my wife once when she knocked on the door of the house where she lived as a college student and the kid who answered the door didn't let us in. When he closed it, we heard him shout to his roommates, "they're cops!"

Jupiter said...

There are people in America -- lots of us -- who wake up in the morning, wondering where we'll find the strength to get up and face another day. And then we remember -- "Hillary Clinton will never be President."

Spiros said...

The Washington Post and New York Times amplified Chinese disinformation on Remdesivir. This drug was developed by Gilead Science but the Wuhan Institute of Virology applied for a Chinese patent on Remdesivir for treating the COVID-19 infection:

https://www.inquartik.com/inq-china-coronavirus-patents-gilead-portfolio/

According to the creeps, the drug would not live up to its hype. The drug was not a magic bullet. The results of clinical trials were disappointing. And on and on. What the hell?

As an aside, Ms. Rubin hates Donald Trump. She tweeted in 2018 that Trump will resign 10 minutes before next inauguration so Mike Pence can pardon him. Back then it was Putin 24/7. It's odd how journalists don't care just how crazy and delusional their Russia conspiracy stuff sounded back then. Anyways...

Dave Begley said...

Biden fell asleep during Hillary's endorsement of him.

Would Joe fall asleep during his debate with Trump? That's entirely possible.

madAsHell said...

Image there's no Trump.

Imagine?

Rosalyn C. said...

I caught a glimpse of Hillary making her endorsement and thought how well she looked -- bright greens and summery background. Clearly she had her hair done and her make up was perfect. People came in to do that for her. Of course that's not allowed for you and me, right?

Bushman of the Kohlrabi said...

It would be interesting to see Jen's business plan for a post Trump world. She's enjoying all sorts of extra leftist love now due to her defection from Trump. Once he's gone, she instantly becomes an unnecessary useless idiot to those folks. I suppose she can try to rebrand herself as an ultra lib but there's already ton's of competition for that from people who don't have her conservative baggage. The Never Trump constituency will be completely irrelevant so I don't see much love there either. It kind of makes me wonder if people like Jen aren't secretly pining for Drumpf to pull it out so they can preserve some kind of relevancy.

Nonapod said...

wendybar said...Good one from "Conservative" WAPO opinion writer.

Yeah, I've heard that this Jennifer Rubin person claims to be a conservative. Of course anyone could claim to be anything. Nancy Pelosi could suddenly claim to be a conservative too I guess.

Coincidentally I myself am an NBA star, a NASA astronaut, a billionaire who invented the letter 'Q', and a secret agent all at the same time.

PM said...

Okay, Hillary's dethpicable.
That said, I live in a 1910 house and was delighted when a family brought their aged gramma for a walk-through of where she grew up. They brought old photos, stories, etc. Didn't suck.

PB said...

What might have been? A continued crime spree.

rehajm said...

Image is hip and happnin speak for imagine.

rehajm said...

It isn't hard to image a third world hellhole if Hillary had been elected.

rehajm said...

I can't read Scranton and not think of three things: Parkour. Parkour. Parkour.

Spiros said...

Random is typically defined as something without pattern or objective. Something that is perfectly unbiased. But Ms. Rubin uses the word differently. Are the "random people" she mentions somehow inconsequential or strange? Are they exciting or absurd or dull. Are they outcasts or distasteful in some way? What's going on?

robother said...

Now I can't get that image out of my head: two gray mediocrities on your front doorstep, followed by an hour or so of Joe pulling Hill through the house, spinning one yarn about his golden youth after another. Lowell George put it best:

Off our rockers, actin' crazy
With the right medication we won't be lazy
Doin' the old folks boogie...

Gray Porn. It can't be unseen.

320Busdriver said...

So the dollar I spent on a month of Wapo was too much.. Got it.

tcrosse said...

Hillary administers the Kiss of Death.

Lurker21 said...

My parents took a long slow drive around the old neighborhood and the people who live there now called the cops on them.

Achilles said...

madAsHell said...
If Hillary won in 2016, what do people think may have happened?

The corona virus would just be a bad flu season.

This is true.

But now that they have seen how many sheep are in the US they will be ready the next time they get a chance like this. Obama is kicking himself.

If Hillary was in charge right now I would bet on a never ending "shutdown."

Chris N said...

1. Jen understands the technology and makes it work for her
2. Jen beautifully balances her own competing interests/factions, like economic conservatism and feminism, and the biases of the WaPo/D.C. bubble. She lives in the real world
3. Jen understands her enemies, and strategizes.
4. Jen shows, but doesn't tell. Facts first.

As a man, I can proudly say Jen 4 Prez! I'm with Liz! Hilary, gal pal or what?

Gropin' Joe our Nation turns it's lonely eyes to you.

readering said...

Last summer I did walk through an open door into the lobby of an apartment building I had lived in as a boy. It was much fancier 50 years later.

narciso said...

there's only so much fishbarrelling you can do,

henge2243 said...

So his mom bought him a shirt with French cuffs but didn’t buy him cuff links? The slow apple does not fall far from the tree.

Martin said...

It is very hard to imagine what value Hillary Clinton's endorsement has for Biden. They are both prominent members of the Democratic establishment and anybody who likes Clinton already liked Biden.

And I can imagine if Hillary had won--we would now be about 1/3 of the way down the path from the old America of liberty and a democratic republic, to Airstrip One from "Nineteen Eighty-Four".

Kevin said...

Imagine if the Liberal commenters on Fox were all pro-Trump.

Donna Brasile petting her dog telling people that voting for Biden makes you a bad person.

It seems crazy, but the reverse is exactly what's being forced on America.

AllenS said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Bilwick said...

"Conservative" . . . conservative statist. When I was a kid, "liberals" called them "responsible conservatives." That is, docile, well-mannered conservatives, no threat to the Plantation.

AllenS said...

In the mid nineties an elderly woman showed up at my place with a bunch of nicely dressed young people and told me that she grew up at my place, and that her parents lost the farm during the depression. I let her in and finally we got to what is now my computer room, and she pointed at the north window and said that when her grandmother died, her open casket was there. Then she turned around and pointed at that wall and said: "this is where my father embalmed her." My girlfriend and I looked at each other and silently mouthed: "WHAT?!"

Ann Althouse said...

“ So his mom bought him a shirt with French cuffs but didn’t buy him cuff links? ”

Yeah, I didn’t believe that. Plus, I think shirts with French cuffs come or used to come with 2 attached buttons on each cuff so you don’t need to supply cuff links unless you want to.

But maybe it was a rented tuxedo...

Amadeus 48 said...

Yeah. I remember going to Bloomfield Hills with Jen Rubin and Mitt Romney. Jen used to image Romney as president. She says he had this great story about how when they got to Cranbrook Academy, Mitt told about this kid who needed a haircut to keep from failing gym class, and Mitt and his buddies did the best they could. By the time they got done, the kid had to go full Bezos. Mitt told him if he got teased to say, "You don't have one like this." Then Mitt showed her how to put a dog in a cage on the roof of the car. "They love it up there", Mitt said. "But they poop all over the roof. We used to do the same with Tagg, Matt, and Josh when they got snippy."

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

ok we 'imaged', ...and lo!

" And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed." --Rev 13:15

Amadeus 48 said...

"Yeah, I didn’t believe that."

So many lies. Don't you get tired of the lies?

robother said...

The shallow end of the Gene pool. But they like to splash and make a lot of noise.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Who wants to listen to the megalomaniac screechy lecture deep state corruption queen?

Rubin Does!

TJM said...

Jennifer Rubin is dumber than a stump so she fits right in at the WaPo, China's favorite newspaper

henge2243 said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
MadisonMan said...

And Rubin is considered Conservative! Slavish devotion to Hillary is not Conservative.

If Hillary were President, her husband and daughter would be 100s of millions of dollars richer.

Each day is a good day because Hillary is not President. Even a rainy rainy day like today.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

"Priceless"

It's too bad they couldn't get big $$$ for that.

Skeptical Voter said...

I can "image" both Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton.

My "image" of Joe Biden involves a little boy in the corner with a pointed dunces cap.

By contrast my "image" of Hillary Clinton also involves a pointed cap--high and black with a brim. But wait, there's more! There's also the broom she rode in on.

Bay Area Guy said...

Imagine there's no Rubin
It's easy if you try
No WaPost on our doorstep
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today... Aha-ah...

rcocean said...

Is there anything more ridiculous than Hillary and Biden, two very old, elite globalists, millionaires many times over, pretending to be "Jus' plain folks"?

Hillary went to Wellsey/Yale, was first lady of Arkansas when was she was 31, was first lady when she was 44, Senator at 54, and Secretary of state. Not to mention a millionaire many times over. She's lived in a wealthy NY suburb for almost 20 years now.
Biden is a million many times over and got elected to the US Senate in 1973 when he was 31 years old. He's spent the last 47 years as a powerful well-to-do member of the elite. BTW, Biden left Scranton when he was 10 years old.

MadisonMan said...

AllenS, that's a great story! At some point I want to go back to my boyhood home -- Dad sold it 5, 6, 7 years ago -- and see what's changed, but it's probably too soon.

rcocean said...

Jennifer Rubin and Max Boot have to be two of the biggest liars in political punditry. They were never "Conservative" they just played one for Leftists who read the WaPo.

I'll add Mona Charon to the list, who just endorsed Joe Biden for President!

rcocean said...

I'll go read the transcript when I have time. Like althouse I had no desire to listen to it.

Michael K said...

I caught a glimpse of Hillary making her endorsement and thought how well she looked -- bright greens and summery background. Clearly she had her hair done and her make up was perfect.

I saw a bit of it and noticed that, too. Frankly, she looked like the corpse at a funeral the makeup was so thick.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

Hillary is pushing hard for fake polls and fake elections.
So the US can fake count/ballot harvest (Like in CA) and she can win next time.


exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

A few years ago, my brother took his kids on a walk through the neighborhood we grew up in and he pointed out our old family home. As it happens, the couple who owns the home now were outside and he struck up a conversation with them. They invited him and his kids inside to have a look around. He never would have tried to talk his way into a stranger's home, but since they offered he was happy to go in. He said the present owners did a beautiful job remodeling and redecorating the place. He was still struck by how small the house was. There is more than enough space for 2 people. There were 7 of us - sharing 1 bathroom.

Our old neighborhood was solidly blue collar when I was a kid but over the years, yuppies and trendy millennials have discovered the charms of Bay View bungalows, which were mostly built in the '20's and '30's. When I visit the area now, I'm struck by the coffee shops, tattoo parlors, cute little restaurants and rainbow flags, which have replaced bowling alleys, corner bars and diners.

This house is typical of the area:

https://www.booking.com/hotel/us/comfortable-3-br-craftsman-bungalow-in-milwaukee-39-s-bay-view-neighborhood.html

Gracelea said...

My house is almost 150 years old (built 1872), and we've had several people who once lived here stop by. It was a rooming house for 60+ years, so there have been a LOT of residents. One lady even came back with some ancient film with images taken in the late 1940's, which was interesting. Since we've had tens of thousands of people through our house on tours, we had no problem with showing the former tenants around.

We also had a young man stay in our Airbnb, who found us while doing genealogical research on his family- his great great grandfather was the original owner of our place.

Michael K said...

In the mid nineties an elderly woman showed up at my place with a bunch of nicely dressed young people and told me that she grew up at my place,

I had the opposite experience. I stopped one day to take a photo of my family home years after we left. It is in South Shore in Chicago. Once that was the nicest neighborhood in the city. Now it is crime ridden and the most violent area of the city. The black present owner of the house saw me and came out to see who I was. He insisted on giving me a tour and then asked if I could send him photos of it when we lived there. I felt so sorry for him. He is trying to live a middle class life in a hell hole.

henge2243 said...

But maybe it was a rented tuxedo...”

Seems unlikely that an eight grade dance would be formal. Then again, it’s not like the story is coming from George, “I can not tell a lie”, Washington or Abraham, “Honest Abe”, Lincoln.

Bay Area Guy said...

"Watching @HillaryClinton speak you cannot avoid imaging what might have been."

It's remarkable that these idiots are still traumatized by the 2016 election results. They were told by the NYTimes, the polls and Nate Silver that Hillary had it in the bag!

What happened?!!?

Well, your brilliant girl lost because she mis-read Wisconsin voters. And, since that time, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch joined SCOTUS. And we've had 3 years of excellent economic growth. and low unemployment, until now.

And Trump successfully fended off the bullshit Mueller probe and the bullshit impeachment hoax.

This one -- the coronavirus scare - is much tougher, because there are dead bodies and scared people. True, the dead bodies are mostly older folks in nursing homes, and the scared people are white collar, middle class folks who can afford to work from home, but nonetheless, they are scared.

So, nobody cares what Rubin thinks about politics. Folks want to figure out how to return to work, and do it safely. And not feel scared.

Hopefully, the summer and sunshine and common sense will start to prevail, and La Rubin will fade back into intellectual obscurity.

Chris N said...

So I'm out on Market Street, but that's where the McTierney gang is, see. So I make eyes with a coupla of their boys. Bad dudes. Tough hombres.

The chase is on and I'm running for my life down Market. My buddy's uncle runs Lancier Ford on 5th, so I crawl under a Model A until the coast is clear. Beautiful car.

Nowadays I swim nude laps in front of the Secret Service gals and read intel.

Todd said...

Watching @HillaryClinton speak you cannot avoid imaging what might have been. Also her account of @JoeBiden pulling her through his boyhood home in Scranton, PA is priceless

Thank GOD I have not eaten lunch yet, that would make me lose it all.

Watching puppies play is priceless. Watching your child take its first steps is priceless.

Watching an old shyster gush about another old shyster when the end goal is to butt f*ck the entire county is just disgusting.

Bob Boyd said...

@ AllenS

Do you believe in ghosts?

Meade said...

There is no way I would let Joe Biden enter my house. For any reason. Even if he wore a mask and gloves. I don't like my things being judged, touched and fingered. Joe Biden has a long reputation for being a little too touchy-feely. Toothy. Sniffy.

Also, if you let someone into your house, how do you get them out? Even with a court order, some people simply refuse to leave. You might tell them you work in the morning and start to laugh. They tell you they don't and the next thing you know they're sleeping in your bath. Or worse, you wake up to them performing their digital workmanship and then turning your good wooden house into a campfire?

Automatic_Wing said...

Nut and bolt cufflinks, really? Did he wear them in the coal mine, loading his 16 tons with Neil Kinnock?

Whoever in the Biden campaign is in charge of making up Blue Collar Origin Stories ought to be embarrassed.

doctrev said...

"There is no way I would let Joe Biden enter my house. For any reason. Even if he wore a mask and gloves. I don't like my things being judged, touched and fingered. Joe Biden has a long reputation for being a little too touchy-feely. Toothy. Sniffy."

Good for you, Meade. He's blustery and incredibly aggressive, but unless his goons force his way in there's not a lot any Biden could ever do about that. As long as Americans have guns, tyrants can still tyrant- but they won't do it with the same staff they had yesterday.

"And when you're a star, they let you do it."

Uh oh, Professor, even in context this sounds bad. Celebrities- better yet, people with actual power- can just bludgeon their way up your skirts, and people are just expected to take it. Even if they believed Clinton, Weinstein, and now Biden are all innocent, I guarantee you young women all over the country know the REAL rules: submit or be destroyed. And when they stop believing in feminism- what do you suppose they will believe in, hmm?

Ron Winkleheimer said...

You have to understand, Jennifer Rubin knows who the right sort of people to run the country are, and Trump is not her sort.

Amadeus 48 said...

Meade at 11:02.

I see you talk a good game about maintaining boundaries at Meadhouse.

What if a Native American came to your door to reclaim his land or to collect rent. His first words: "Property is not theft, but that treaty was. Pay up! Howard Zinn let me see the truth."

Meade said...

Nor Hillary Clinton. She strikes me as the sort of person who, if you let her into your house and ask her a simple question about why she lied to coverup her husband's serial sexual harassments, would answer by asking "where is your bedroom? Is this your pillow?" and then she'd sit on your pillow and rip one.

Ron Winkleheimer said...

But maybe it was a rented tuxedo...

Every time I have rented a Tux it came with the necessary accessories.

My dad took me and my brother to see the shack he grew up in once. It had mostly fallen in.

AllenS said...

We lived in a house on Dellwood St in Roseville MN when I was young (K-3rd grade early 1950s), and was invited over to the house my friend was renting (early 1970s), and it was next door to that house I used to live in. When I got there the new owner of the house I lived in was talking to my friend. I told him I used to live in his house, and he had this big smile on his face when I said that, until I said: "Does the basement still flood when it rains hard." The smile was gone. Gone, gone, gone.

Meade said...

"What if a Native American came to your door to reclaim his land or to collect rent. His first words: "Property is not theft, but that treaty was. Pay up! Howard Zinn let me see the truth.""

I'd say: "Are you enrolled? Show me your tribal card, Elizabeth."

Lurker21 said...

By virtue of his position Biden is ex officio a member of the elite, but he seems so clueless that we need to qualify that with phrase like "ex officio."

Amadeus 48 said...

Meade at 11:13.

Meade, the resentment runs deep, I see.

Hillary is just the way God made her.

She should never be anywhere near power.

If you want a taste of executive Hillaryism in action, study the life and works of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (Heil Whitmer!) of Michigan. Not only does she know what is best for you and everyone else, she really wants to put the hard smack of authority behind it. And because you protested without permission, you get three more weeks of detention. You have no one to blame but yourselves.

Lurker21 said...

Also, if you let someone into your house, how do you get them out? Even with a court order, some people simply refuse to leave.

Tell me about it. Alexander Woolcott came over for dinner in 1941 and we still can't get rid of him.

Todd said...

Watching @HillaryClinton speak you cannot avoid imaging what might have been. Also her account of @JoeBiden pulling her through his boyhood home in Scranton, PA is priceless

Thank GOD I have not eaten lunch yet, that would make me lose it all.

Watching puppies play is priceless. Watching your child take its first steps is priceless.

Watching an old shyster gush about another old shyster when the end goal is to butt f*ck the entire county is just disgusting.

rcocean said...

I've always lived by the Tom Wolfe motto: You can never go home again. I had a great childhood, but why go back and see the old house? My brother, sister, and I did go back and revisit an old Lake/beach near our house, but that was only because it was a hot day and we wanted the kids to have a swim.

rcocean said...

Meade's writing better comedy than SNL. A low bar, I admit.

Sam L. said...

I had the granddaughter of the man who had the house (1893) I was living in come to the front door, and invited her in and showed her around. She told us how it was when she was growing up there.

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

Nut and bolt cuff links? How delightfully blue collar!

Inviting himself into his former childhood home? How charmingly ingenuous, in a creepy-old-man-with-no-boundaries fashion!

Rory said...

I recently moved back to the hometown, and while looking for a house my boyhood home came on the market. I couldn't bear to go there and take a look, because it would be with knowledge of the gerry-rigged plumbing and non-code wiring we had done, not to mention the crap buried in the yard.

bagoh20 said...

Some people have a real talent for coming off completely out of touch when they are trying to act in touch. Just have a damned policy, a vision, something real I can at least want. You being corny and weird is not something I want anywhere.


Joe Robinette Biden left Scranton when he was 9 yrs old. He got his first hair transplant one year later in Delaware. He's not really a Pennsylvanian.

tcrosse said...

If I were touring the old homestead I would be tempted to make up some really spooky Fall of the House of Usher shit to entertain the current owner.

Jupiter said...

readering said...
"Last summer I did walk through an open door into the lobby of an apartment building I had lived in as a boy."

So did it look any different, now that you've transitioned?

bagoh20 said...

The house I live in now has a strange and mysterious history. It was once owned by Italians who sold catholic religious clothing for priests, choir, etc imported from Italy. The house is arranged for selling clothing and having large gatherings. A guy who grew up there as a child came to my door about a year after I moved in and answers some of my questions, but now I have many more. He told me that they would have huge 300 person events with music and entertainment. There are speaker wires going to all the trees on the property, and there are strange unexplained fixtures and infrastructure burred in the ground running all around the 1.2 acres. It's very mysterious, but my ghost-loving girls say they don't think it's haunted. That's a relief. I was glad he showed up, and I wish I could talk to him more. He was a chef on the Vegas strip somewhere, but I lost his card.

FullMoon said...

Chris N said... [hush]​[hide comment]

So I'm out on Market Street, but that's where the McTierney gang is, see. So I make eyes with a coupla of their boys. Bad dudes. Tough hombres.

The chase is on and I'm running for my life down Market. My buddy's uncle runs Lancier Ford on 5th, so I crawl under a Model A until the coast is clear. Beautiful car.


C'mon man! Here's the deal,That story so scary, made the hair on my leg stand up-not a joke.

Ann Althouse said...

“ Uh oh, Professor, even in context this sounds bad.”

Does no one get sarcasm anymore?

DavidUW said...

The only way the cufflink story happened is if he/his mom picked up the shirt at a second hand store and didn't notice the cuffs. a rented tux comes with links. and the store-bought french cuff shirts have those little plastic ones that are useless except in an emergency.

more to the point, the whiplash from all these endorsers changing horses when joe gets dumped for a less demented, less rapey candidate will be amusing.

narciso said...

speaking of fishbarrelling,

http://patterico.com/2020/04/29/justin-amash-forms-exploratory-committee-for-presidential-run/#comment-2349432

FullMoon said...

tcrosse said...

If I were touring the old homestead I would be tempted to make up some really spooky Fall of the House of Usher shit to entertain the current owner.

4/29/20, 11:52 AM


Native Californian. Usta do 20 or more small jobs a week for real estate people. Would tell new homeowners/renters from out of state the house was built on Indian burial ground or, looking up at sky, say "Sure feels like earthquake weather"

Josephbleau said...

"And because you protested without permission, you get three more weeks of detention."

I think they should have a second protest in MI, just to see if we get 3 more weeks, 6 more weeks or 9 more weeks, I sure hope total weeks is only arithmetic and not geometric (oh no! EXPONENTIAL!).

bagoh20 said...

Vote for me. I'm 50% less demented and rapey than the other guy.

Kevin said...

Does no one get sarcasm anymore?

Donald Trump: Nope.

bagoh20 said...

"Does no one get sarcasm anymore?"

The age of that's not funny.

FullMoon said...

Joe was in junior high but left Scranton at ten years old? Obviously a scholar.

FullMoon said...

Meade said...

Nor Hillary Clinton. She strikes me as the sort of person who, if you let her into your house and ask her a simple question about why she lied to coverup her husband's serial sexual harassments, would answer by asking "where is your bedroom? Is this your pillow?" and then she'd sit on your pillow and rip one.

4/29/20, 11:13 AM


And scatter the feathers?

FullMoon said...

"Does no one get sarcasm anymore?"

Have to order it "to go" around here during lockdown.

doctrev said...

Ann Althouse said...

Does no one get sarcasm anymore?

4/29/20, 12:01 PM

Given that the statement was a concise summary of the fact people will indeed let you invade their homes and bathing suit areas if you have enough raw power and influence, the irony could be mistaken for being earnest! You've looped the extreme of sarcasm all the way back around to sincerity.

Unless- wait, is that statement itself a sarcastic reference to Donald Trump claiming sarcastic purposes? Am I hiding sarcasm behind obtuseness, sparking a vicious cycle of ambiguous speech? Have we created a singularity, a SARCASTULARITY if you will, in which all meaning and purpose dies?

All is consumed! Which is great because nothing matters.

Yancey Ward said...

The only difference if Shelob had been president is that the press would have been writing hagiographies to her performance on the exact same results. Even worse, if the results had turned out worse under Clinton, they would still write hagiographies to her and blaming Republicans for the anything bad happening.

Tomcc said...

As one would expect the "old guard" Dems are lining up behind Mr. Biden. But does he do anything to excite the AOC wing? Perhaps he doesn't have to, not being Mr. Trump is enough to get their votes.
A few years ago when visiting my family in Pittsburgh, I took my mother and sister back to the street where our family home was. It's in the suburbs, so we could easily stop and look. Wouldn't think of knocking on the door. It was nice to see that the current owners obviously had children; my parents raised eight of us there. The advantage of Zillow is that you can ogle the place from the comfort of your own living room. If you're lucky it's been listed and you can take a virtual tour!

Achilles said...

Ann Althouse said...
“ Uh oh, Professor, even in context this sounds bad.”

Does no one get sarcasm anymore?


Well you have proven yourself to be pretty gullible.

You also voted for Hillary so supporting rapists and enablers is one of your things.

Yancey Ward said...

The house I did most of my growing up in burned to the ground my first year in graduate school in 1988. I have visited the property itself exactly once in the last 32 years (in 2007). In this link, I just looked at it again on Google Satellite view. The house stood starting about three feet on the top side of the square concrete slab that was my basketball court growing up and is centered in the image. The only other remnant of my family's presence there is a railroad tie car ramp my father installed in 1978 so that he could work on the family vehicles- you can see it is still there on the left side of the concrete slab. All the dogwoods my parents planted in the yard are now gone. This is the first time I have looked at this- it made me mist up a little bit.

Lurker21 said...

This wasn't just a drop by and chat. It was an official campaign stop with photographers and reporters.

It wasn't spontaneous and impromptu. You don't have vice presidents and presidential candidates going anywhere that hasn't been checked out by advance men and the Secret Service.

It wasn't impulsive on Biden's part and it wasn't a surprise to the people who lived there.
What might make it interesting is that the 91 year old woman who lived in the house had been living there since the Bidens left and remembered young Joey.

Yancey Ward said...

There is a scene in The Road where Viggo Mortensen's character stops to show his son the house he grew up in. It is a powerful scene because the decay was so poignant- it just highlights all the hopelessness the father was feeling

I'm Full of Soup said...

This post makes me consider cutting way back on my use of Amazon as a protest [ miniscule I know] against the DNC propaganda in the Wapo.

Nichevo said...

Gray Porn. It can't be


Yeah? Go to one of those sites and search "Liz Warren and Mike Pence"

stevew said...

"Does no one get sarcasm anymore?"

I learned through personal, painful experience that this medium is a poor one from communicating sarcasm. I always expect that a comment or phrase that seems out of character, or overly genuine and serious, is sarcasm.

As for Biden, he's just a liar, a fraud, and not too bright. /NOT sarc.

Achilles said...

Yancey Ward said...
The only difference if Shelob had been president is that the press would have been writing hagiographies to her performance on the exact same results. Even worse, if the results had turned out worse under Clinton, they would still write hagiographies to her and blaming Republicans for the anything bad happening.

It would have been just like H1N1. Or Ebola.

But now that the left has seen how much power they can grab during an event like this expect this to happen every year from here on out.

narciso said...

heh:

https://www.redstate.com/bradslager/2020/04/29/when-charlie-sykes-and-the-bulwark-compare-the-pandemic-to-vietnam-it-requires-a-war-of-words-in-the-form-of-a-covid-war-diary/

Stephen said...

This is a strange post.

There is nothing wrong with asking to see one's old home. I've done it, and so have my kids, and people have made similar requests of me. It's never gone badly.

It's twisted, or seriously confused, or both, to equate a request of this kind with an uninvited pussy grab.

Temujin said...

I wonder if Biden took the time to sniff the hair of the person living in his old house when she allowed them in? Now that would have gotten my vote.

Clark said...

I visited the house I grew up in in the UP once since my family moved out of it. It had been turned into a bread and breakfast. The owners were very happy to show us around. Had they not been, we would have bowed out gracefully. It is now a fraternity house.

narayanan said...

Shane said...
Amazon is an amazing success story, and Bezos obviously a brilliant, dedicated businessman ~BUT for the Washington Post, and its employing obvious, delusional antagonists like Rubin. The Washington Post has its place and is welcome to its forum. The Rubins and Max Boots are either duplicitous or delusional, but still a voice to be heard as their patron sees fit.

But for Bezos the Washington Post just seems a lark, and a one-off almost designed to hobble the Amazon machine.
-------------============
or Bezos' way of keeping 'enemies closer'

Ralph L said...

Remember, a vampire can't enter your house unless you invite him. Don't fall for the story about his old coffin hidden in the cellar.

Leland said...

Paul McCartney visiting a home he used to live in, knocking on the door, and being invited inside.

Amadeus 48 said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Jim at said...

Biden and Hillary show up at my door for a walk-through? Sure.
That's what the pit in the basement is for.

mikee said...

I am a completely unfamous person. I've visited my old dorm on my alma mater's campus and been invited into my old room immediately and with great amusement by the occupants. They showed me the old place and it hadn't changed at all in 30 years. I gave them some cash to have a nice dinner out, on an old alum, and asked them to return the favor in a few decades. They were delighted with the gesture and promised to do so.

Ficta said...

"Does no one get sarcasm anymore?"

"Oh, irony! Oh no, we don't get that here. See, people ski topless here while smoking dope, so irony's not really a high priority. We haven't had any irony here since about '83, when I was the only practitioner of it. And I stopped because I was tired of being stared at." - Steve Martin as C.D. Bales in Roxanne

narayanan said...

Could Joe just may be playing senile geezer to fake out Trump ?

this story was told in Promises to Keep, by Joe Biden 2007

https://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=3736731&mesg_id=3736731

PatSeg Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Nov-19-07 12:56 AM
Original message
My favorite Joe Biden story-Nuts and Bolts


Thought I'd lighten things up a bit with the "nuts and bolts" story.

JMW Turner said...

First up: has anyone noticed that Governor Gretchen Whitmer resembles a member of the cast of "Wicked"? Complete with mean bitch eyebrows and a scowling, down turned mouth. Only thing needed to complete the character is green skin.
Next:A tale of one city. One time in the mid nineties my father, for some reason decided to ride around the neighborhood of my childhood in Atlanta's SW side, stopping in front of our old house he had built in the late forties. By this time the vast suburban neighborhood had flipped from lily white in the fifties and sixties to totally black in the seventies. My father was a good looking gent in his seventies, clean shaven, the same forties back combed haircut he had all his life, clad in the retired middle class uniform of a plaid broadcloth shirt and beige windbreaker. While he sat in his Cadillac gawking at the house and neighborhood, an Atlanta police cruiser being driven by a black cop sided up to him and asked my Pa what his business was in the neighborhood. Being questioned by the cop for being there got all over Dad, but when he related the incident to me, I found it amusing. My father had been profiled for driving while white!

Clark said...

I wrote "bread and breakfast" above (instead of bed and breakfast). Bread on the mind, I guess. I've started a new sourdough starter and I've been checking it pretty often. It is looking good: transitioning from bubbly to frothy. Yum. Can't wait for crusty, crunchy sourdough bread fresh from the oven. It took a pandemic to get me doing this again.

Richard Dolan said...

"And when you're a star, they let you do it."

That's basically what Trump said on the infamous tape that the MSM used to try to sink him in 2016. No doubt, Biden (and Hillary!) have the same view of things.

Darkisland said...

I rather like the nut and bolt cufflinks idea. I don't believe it but I like it. Next occasion I have to wear cufflinks will problem be my granddaughter's wedding in 5-10 years.

I'll go to West Marine and buy 2 5/16 capscrews with female capscrew and a couple washers (always practice safe screwing. Always use a washer and make sure the nut consents.)

West because they sell shiny ss fasteners.

For extra nerdiness, I might look for torx head bolts.

Or, if I wasn't fussy id just buy them like this.

https://www.cuff-daddy.com/screw-silver-cufflinks.html

I also found gold ones for $6,500.(maybe you can find them on amazon via the portal.)

John Henry

Darkisland said...

Spesking of nuts and bolts, why is a "nut", distinctly a male appendage, considered to be female.

John Henry

Louie the Looper said...

And of course we got there and he talked his way in.... It wasn’t hard because the woman who was at home immediately recognized him and knew him.

That’s hilarious! The woman recognized Biden but not Hilary? How humiliating. Hahaha!

Darkisland said...

2 house visiting stories from recently watched tv

I binged both seasons so may have the wrong one. In season 9of Curb Your Enthusiasm, larry answers the door to find a little old lady who used to live there. She wants to see the house so larry let's her in and she starts complaining about the rug, wallpaper, colors, furniture. She really gets upset about her beloved ficus tree which is not doing well under larry. Later she comes back and steals it.

I rewatched season 1 of Fargo. (great show) the evil Lorne Malvo goes to Lester's old house with a knife looking to kill him.

Some kids are in the yard so he asks for their dad. Dad comes out, says he's the new owner, doesn't know where Lester lives now.

As Malvo is leaving he turns to the kids and says "you know 2 people were murdered in this house, don't you?"

John Henry

Jim at said...

It's twisted, or seriously confused, or both, to equate a request of this kind with an uninvited pussy grab. - Stephen

Instead of continuing to misrepresent what Trump said and did, maybe you could spare some of your expertise over on the Biden thread.

Unknown said...

My house visiting story echos the ones told here. I was driving through my old neighborhood in St. Paul with my boys, and drove by the Victorian that I grew up in, one of the first houses built when the neighborhood was subdivided in the 1880s. The guy who owned it was outside when we pulled up - he offered the tour, and I got to use the cliche “I like what you've done with the place” And it was true, too.

Narr said...

Goody! Still yakking about homes and haunts.

I need only drive a few miles in any direction to see all but two of the residences I and my wife have ever lived in (except when she worked and lived in Manhattan for a few years, and my moonlanding summer in Alexandria VA). Both my grandmothers' homes are there, updated, and Oma's I pass at least several times a week.

In 1948 Oma and Opa paid about $14k for a new, custom 3br/2ba, 2100 sf traditional place with a lot of extras on an acre, outside the city limits. But it is on the main drag and very quickly everything had mushroomed eastward (including my parents and us) accompanied by road-widening several times. It made mowing and raking the front yard a lot quicker, but much of the privacy and quiet was lost.

Oma died in 1984 and my three brothers and I agreed to renovate, under the leadership of the youngest, who knows all that stuff, and except for AH older bro we sweated our asses off and did a nice flipper-level job of it. One thing we left alone was the mighty wurlitzer of an old-fashioned gas oven-range-warmer-broiler-pressure cooker-griddle-deep fryer . . . it was the swiss army knife of domestic kitchen tech and she used to cook enormous multi-course meals on many Sundays, with German dishes she made or our Kraut family friends brought.

It had one owner from 1986 (we did pretty good, I was the agent) to about 2005, and then in 2016 (after I retired) I drove by one bright sunny day when a lot of people were out front,
so I went back, parked, and introduced myself--business cards in hand.

The folks couldn't have been nicer, and it was fantastic to revisit a place where the strongest memories were also the best ones. They had done all the things we only talked about--all new bathrooms, finished out upstairs, enclosed back terrace, turned the garage-shop into a small apartment, put in a pool, landscaped . . . and though they replaced what we did in the kitchen, they love the wurlitzer too!

They showed me everything and invited me to bring my mother (Oma's DIL, since passed) and remaining brother by, but we never did.

Narr
Too bad we couldn't keep it in the family!

Bay Area Guy said...

Jen Rubin may be slow on Slow Joe, but the NYT is not:

Democratic Frustration Mounts as Biden Remains Silent on Sexual Assault Allegation

I thought all woman had a right to be heard?

As two more women have come forward to corroborate part of Ms. Reade’s allegation, the Biden campaign is facing attacks from the right and increasing pressure from the left to address the issue. And liberal activists find themselves in a tense standoff with a candidate they want to support but who they say has made little attempt to show leadership on an issue that resonates deeply with their party’s base.

“It’s difficult for survivors to see that a woman who has more corroborating sources than most survivors have in similar situations is being tossed aside and actively being weaponized by cynical political actors,” said Shaunna Thomas, a founder of UltraViolet, a women’s rights advocacy group that is involved in the effort to push the campaign. “It would be an incredible moment of leadership for Joe Biden to show up.”

JML said...

" ...and then she'd sit on your pillow and rip one."

Nah. She'd have someone come over later and put that pillow over your face as you slept.

ken in tx said...

As a pre-teen in the late 50s, my Sunday dress shirt had French cuffs. My mom insisted that I learn how to insert the cuff links. The cuffs were stiff and thick and had to be folded just right. It didn't come with any emergency buttons. Later, I had Air Force uniform shirts the were convertible between links and buttons. They came pre-folded. That was in the 80s.

Anonymous said...

Anyone old enough to remember will recall that Johnny Carson, contrary to his on air persona, was famously introverted, always off by himself at parties; and from the many related jokes in his opening monologues, divorced two or three times.

He claimed Norfolk, Nebraska, as his hometown, where he graduated from high school, and he went on to graduate from the University of Nebraska. He started his career at Omaha television station WOWT.

Prior to that, just across the Missouri River, however, he lived in a series of small towns in southwest Iowa. His grandfather lived in and was once mayor of Logan. So I believe there were some roots there. His father was involved with rural electrification, however, and his family moved around as a result. He was born in Corning, but lived in Red Oak and Avoca, and maybe somewhere else. I don’t believe he mentioned these towns much, if at all, on the air. But some remembered him. And he would later donate a good deal of money, for various good causes, in each of these small towns.

Anyway, around about 1987, he made an impromptu visit to his prior home in Avoca with his new girlfriend, after one of his divorces. They flew into Omaha and drove the 30 miles on Interstate 80 to Avoca. I don’t recall if she was his last wife, which I believe possible, but I know they later married. This was personal and had nothing to do with his show. They were discussing where he grew up as I best recall, and on a whim, decided to visit the house in Avoca — the last Iowa town where he had lived and attended early elementary school.

So they stopped by the house, knocked, and were invited in and given a tour, with Johnny recollecting as they went. I couldn’t imagine that myself, that I would be prepared for that, which, by all accounts, went well.

They then went to the local restaurant, and with word getting around, reminisced with those fortunate enough to be there.

People who knew him said he was the same old Johnny from all those years before, just as if he had never left, very humble, just talking about old times, people and things they remembered, with good friends.

My cousin did her column on it in the weekly paper of a neighboring town. She had actually graduated from Avoca High School, though that town soon consolidated not long after that with other neighboring towns. People in the rural area between the two though were familiar with both.

I imagine that the Avoca paper covered it also. But it was completely under the radar otherwise, and not reported in any major news outlet that I am aware of.

Bunkypotatohead said...

At this point, who else would Hillary be endorsing? The only other candidate in the race is President Trump.

DeepRunner said...

Jennifer Rubin is a conservative as AOC. She's the prom date who never got asked to the prom.