It was a lovely day here in Madison, Wisconsin. I got out of the house twice. First, at 10 a.m, I took a break from my morning's blogging session to walk over to the church to vote. Yes, as I've told you many times, we vote in a church. We had to wear masks and show IDs. That was an odd combination, and the woman who checked me in looked at my photo and then spent extra time earnestly examining the top half of my face. I got through voting before Meade, so I waited in the hallway. I passed the time reading a big collection of Post-It notes — prayer requests relating to the pandemic:
Back at home, I did lots more blogging — and some other things — before throwing myself out of the house at 4:30. I got in plenty of steps down by the lake — listening to David McCullough's "1776" — and I took this one photograph:
Posts
34 comments:
"We had to wear masks and show IDs. That was an odd combination, and the woman who checked me in looked at my photo and then spent extra time earnestly examining the top half of my face." This is why I gave up trying to write satire.
Post-It notes — prayer requests relating to the pandemic:
there's a pandemic over there? Sorry to here it! I guess i should give thanx that i live west of the Mississippi. We haven't had a pandemic here for years.
Taibbi on the Mar-a-Lago raid: As of now, it’s impossible to say if Trump’s alleged offense was great, small, or in between. But this for sure is a huge story, and its hugeness extends in multiple directions, including the extraordinary political risk inherent in the decision to execute the raid. If it backfires, if underlying this action there isn’t a very substantial there there, the Biden administration just took the world’s most reputable police force and turned it into the American version of the Tonton Macoute on national television. We may be looking at simultaneously the dumbest and most inadvertently destructive political gambit in the recent history of this country.
Prayer notes and masks? Jesus fucking christ.
That said, the only place reamining in my life where masks (and often covid tests) are required....at Froedtert Health and my infectious disease doc (surgical infection from a hip replacement). So much for fucking science.
"For our many divisions among family and friends".
Favorite prayer.
Having been involved through business (one part of my business is janitorial and sanitation supplies) and personal membership in churches for many years, I'm trying to guess the denomination by the few prayer requests pictured. All churches have prayers for the people they know who are suffering, no clues there.
The requests don't sound fundamentalist or evangelical. I'm ruling out Baptist, AOG, non-denom mega church. Nothing Catholic I can see. I will exclude denominations that don't have clergy. I'm guessing a mainline liberal church with clergy: Methodist, Episcopal, Presbyterian, or Lutheran. I'm guessing you voted at a Lutheran church.
Don't tell me how the book ends!
We've voted in churches for years. We just had our local races for all manner of judges and magistrates plus the DA and county mayor. The longtime DA (White woman R) was trounced by one of the u's law profs (White male D) and the incumbent county mayor (B/black male law prof D) beat a young challenger handily (White male county commissioner R).
Neither of the Congresscritters (Memphis & Suburbs D, most of West TN outside Memphis R) even had to advertise, their support is so solid in primaries and generals.
A lawyer friend sent an email to many, making his own recommendations for judges after being asked by others (not me). I didn't recognize most of the names or the offices, but after the polling he also sent out that he was largely disappointed in the results--too many people elected in his opinion on the basis of race and party (which he didn't include in his choices).
I may get a chance to ask him more in a few weeks, at a "cocktail party"! I can't believe it myself--we never would have had one, or called it such, in the old days. My wife and I haven't been anywhere together with other non-family adults in years.
Remember we were talking about apparent dissonant words when said together, like "open secret" and "sordid boon"? I heard one on the radio today: Nobody is a Nobody, a Morgan & Morgan commercial.
I got this when I googled it.
Re The Raid: it's just one prong of the offensive--the IRS has been in reserve but has finally been released.
The D's keep spreading shit to dig through and insisting there's a pony in it. Given their record so far, they're either very confident or very scared.
Plus, never underestimate Joe's . . . y'know, the thing.
Okay, Google freaks me out.
One time I clicked on an ad, she was a hot woman in lingerie. For weeks, I swear to God, for weeks I had hot women in lingerie pop up on every frickin' search I did. Ukraine war? Hot women in lingerie. Walt Disney is frozen? Hot women in lingerie. It was distracting as shit. I use Google for work, damn it. I don't need these semi-pornographic lingerie ads popping up 100% of the time. I probably clicked on it more than once, okay. But I didn't buy anything, Google! It took me weeks to shake that one off.
One time, I am not kidding, I search for something -- can't remember what it was. Let's say it was popcorn. And then, a week later, I get junk popcorn mail in my mailbox. Not my e-mail, I'm used to corporations spying on me and sending me junk e-mail, I got a whole fucking fake e-mail account to try to corral all my junk e-mail. This is my mailbox! Google somehow went offline and sold my shit to whoever the fuck sends junk mail in the mail. I was like, it's escalating. Next I'll do a search and the fuckers will be knocking on my door. Some fucking algorithm put together my search history with my mailing address. That will take the wind out of your sails and make you think twice about trying to find the dark web. Holy shit.
But you know what's worse than Google spying on me and knowing all my shit? It's fucking Apple not knowing me at all. Apple is convinced I want Las Vegas slots on my iPhone, and that I want to eat gummy bears to lose weight. And now Apple apparently thinks I'm a woman who is into Harlequin romances. "You run into the bathroom stall to hide from Alpha. But he knows you are in there. He can smell your desire." Apparently Apple thinks I'm a 300-pound, submissive bottom of a woman who just wants to suck on gummy bears while she pulls the slot machine app where she can win zero money.
Google scares me and Apple depresses the shit out of me. So there you go.
I keep asking myself: what possible classified documents could Trump possess that cannot be located somewhere else, or that public release would trigger national security concerns?
The nuclear codes? They are frequently and routinely changed.
Or how about just embarrassing or inculpatory: Potentially explosive evidence of criminal wrong-doing on his part----after years of the FBI , DOJ and Special Council going over every freakin' aspect of the guys life, and coming up with....bupkis?
Yes, it's illegal to possess classified information, but as Turley has pointed out, it's never been treated as a criminal matter. So, why the guns-drawn raid for a matter otherwise considered a civil issue, with discussions/negotiations between the parties, subpoenas and the like?
If there's nothing to support these unprecedented actions, Biden, Garland, and Wray--and the Democrats--- will have more political dogshit on their shoe heels than they will ever be able to scrape off.
Masks? Strictly virtue signaling. But Madison is chock full of that type.
there's a pandemic over there? Sorry to here it! I guess i should give thanx that i live west of the Mississippi. We haven't had a pandemic here for years.
Madison progressives love their masks. If asked, must would elect to wear them indefinitely. It’s wholly a political statement unrelated to public health.
sad about McCullough. I've read a number of his works, and just finished rereading (actually listening) 1776 just a week ago. He did good work.
Since we l I'm in northern Ohio, I found the Pioneers quite interesting. Was that his last book? It might have been - 2020. Being a transplant, I never realized that Ohio was settled first from the river and not Lake Erie, and a lot of initial settlers were from New England.
Interesting discussion of the attempt to bring slavery into the Northwest Territories.
The Dems wanted $5 trillion to achieve their goals. They got 1/10th of that and they are saying they're victorious. Remember this - they can achieve their goals with 1/10th of the money they asked for.
There's something weird about the situations we see around us. Russia in the Ukraine is using a nuclear power plant as a shed to store artillery shells while endeavoring to present its war as a reasonable mission to save Europe. Meanwhile someone sent the FBI into Mar-A-Lago because of a rumor that Trump had papers stamped "Classified" stored there. The papers had been declassified but still had the "Classified" stamp on them which is usual with declassified material. They don't erase the stamp. The FBI didn't ask any questions about the provenance of the papers before it charged in and it has wrecked itself by this stupid haste. These aren't smart, ruthless maneuvers by crafty leaders; these are dangerous blunders; and who is really responsible for them? Do we even know that?
The 4 shiite muslim men killed in Albquerque?
You can now, officially, memory hole that one:
"Police said Tuesday that they were investigating whether a string of murders that have shaken Albuquerque was motivated by a Sunni Muslim father’s anger over his daughter marrying a Shiite Muslim."
It now never happened at all.
Inga, gadfly and Howard hardest hit.
I vote in a church, too, but several laws passed and signed by the NC government requiring photo ID have been enforced only once in the last 15 years or so. Not my idea of Federalism, when another state's laws are approved but ours aren't.
For an "archive violation"?
One of my friends is on vacation in Rome, and he went to Vatican City yesterday to see St. Peter's Basilica. He sent me a couple of pictures, and I replied that I hoped he had said a prayer for our nation while he was there.
The Progressive GESTAPO is working overtime. Just WHAT are they hoping to find?? https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/08/somethings-happening-here-feds-seize-cell-phone-of-trump-ally-house-rep-scott-perry-day-after-mar-a-lago-raid/
I've mentioned I'm a little color blind, so don't know what you're seeing - but the splay of colors and textures in that pic is just wonderful for me - easeful.
" Russia in the Ukraine is using a nuclear power plant as a shed to store artillery shells while endeavoring to present its war"
If you believe everything you hear out of a war zone, you still have some growing up to do. These are nazis we are talking about, just do a search on Ukraine and nazi, but set the time frame from 2014 to 2021 to cut out the war propaganda, mostly, and you will see that nazis in the Ukraine was a huge subject of western reporting, including the New York Times. I don't believe Nazi propaganda, and what would it benefit Russia to create an environmental disaster in a country they hope to rule, and provide NATO with a pretext to join the war?
That last bit about a pretext to draw NATO into the war tells you the likely truth behind the situation. My guess, by the military situation on the ground, as best I can determine it, is that NATO wants no part of a hot war with Russia. NATO won't be popping champaign bottles in the Kremlin by Christmas.
Funny stuff
This raid has given me a lot of opportunity on Twitter to point out stories to people who trust the FBI that NPR, the Washington Post, and The New York Times never told them about, like the FBI lawyer Clinesmith's guilty plea for fabricating grounds for a FISA warrant to spy on Trump
Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi brought her son Hunter Biden Jr., on her Asian trip so that he could make some fancy deals whilst she had a secret meeting with the chip manufacturer, that she and her husband used insider trading to get richer from...She benefitted her family with this trip that could start WW3. It's things like this that piss people off when they are attacking Trump and his supporters when there is PLENTY of evidence in the offices of the Progressive party that would bring TRUMP down if HE did it. https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/08/info-corrupt-nancy-pelosi-went-asia-risking-wwiii-increase-personal-wealth/
"nazis in the Ukraine was a huge subject of western reporting, including the New York Times."
Right, the Ukrainians are Nazis, that's why they elected a Jew as head of state.
You can't present a picture of what's going on in the Ukraine or any Eastern European country using the methods appropriate to countries like the US or England which have continuous invasion-free histories. Since 1914, the Ukraine was controlled successively by the Russian empire, the Reds, the Whites, the Soviets during the period of the Ukrainian famine (the existence of this famine was denied by the NYT at the time), the Nazis (seen simultaneously as liberators from the Soviets who caused the famine and as tyrannical occupiers), the Soviets and finally, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, by the Ukrainians (whose safety was guaranteed in exchange for them giving up nuclear weapons), parts of Ukraine are now occupied by the Russian Federation. Ukrainian oligarchs paid Hunter Biden a large salary; Joe Biden stopped the Ukrainian investigation into corruption.
Even now in the free Ukraine there are people secretly selling out the country to the Russians, unbelievable as that may seem. They hope for position in an occupation by the Russians. And in occupied Ukraine there are people assassinating the sellouts who are in power there.
How do you write the history of an Eastern European country? or comment on its politics? I'm convinced the Ukrainians are straining toward freedom from Empire. They've been under all the Empires and they hate them all - Russian, Austro-Hungarian, German, Soviet, Nazi, Russian Federation, Currently, this is shown their resistance to Russia which is presenting itself as Empire's heir. They're going as well as they can from Empire serfs to free men in a Republic. That is theme of their history and of this war, as I see it.
Inflation was only 8.5% for July! Whoopee! The inflation rate should continue falling since inflation is always the result of excessive money growth and the Fed has been holding the M2 money supply constant since the beginning of the year.
Overall prices won't go down until the Fed starts decreasing the M2 money supply back towards the 1Q 2020 levels. That'll be hard since Democrats think they can spend whatever they want with no adverse effect on the economy. These huge deficits will required the Fed to continue to raise interest rates since they won't be able to monetarize the debt like they did in 2020.
I found McCullough's last book painfully boring, but I'm not from Ohio. The one about Americans in Paris was more interesting for me. I know most of his work from the television specials, and I enjoyed them, particularly the ones on the Brooklyn Bridge and the Johnstown Flood.
His son teaches history at the Wellesley (MA) public high school and delivered a commencement address, "You Are Not Special" that was reprinted and came out as a book. It's true, but it may not be what high school graduates need to hear (or at least it wasn't when I graduated high school). I thought sure, you aren't special, kids -- your parents didn't send you to private school. But it's not a complete downer. It's the work of a public school teacher who's weary or disgusted with his job and all the bullshit, but still has to end the speech with the required uplift.
McCullough is rather beloved of the typewriter community for having used the same old Royal KMM to write all of this books. Never took up the computer. Not sure I ever read anything of his though.
He has a small "shed", if you want to call it that, at his home where he did all of his work. A little tiny house with his typewriter and a few other things. Said he'd go out there every day to work for several hours. I wish I had one of those.
He discusses this in two films, California Typewriter (excellent) and The Typewriter (in the 21st Century) (okay, but not as good).
It has been my experience that someone who describes the day as "lovely" ia almost always a lovely person.
The church is First Congregational United Church of Christ, which, according to its webpage, "seeks to be a radically inclusive and welcoming Christian community, nurturing and affirming God’s creation and dedicated to serving all!"
Wikipedia has this about the UCC:
"The United Church of Christ (UCC) is a mainline Protestant Christian denomination based in the United States, with historical and confessional roots in the Congregational, Calvinist, Lutheran, and Anabaptist traditions, and with approximately 4,800 churches and 773,500 members. The United Church of Christ is a historical continuation of the General Council of Congregational Christian churches founded under the influence of New England Pilgrims and Puritans. Moreover, it also subsumed the third largest Calvinist group in the country, the German Reformed. The Evangelical and Reformed Church and the General Council of the Congregational Christian Churches united in 1957 to form the UCC. These two denominations, which were themselves the result of earlier unions, had their roots in Congregational, Lutheran, Evangelical, and Reformed denominations. At the end of 2014, the UCC's 5,116 congregations claimed 979,239 members, primarily in the U.S. In 2015, Pew Research estimated that 0.4 percent, or 1 million adult adherents, of the U.S. population self-identify with the United Church of Christ."
".. you will see that nazis in the Ukraine was a huge subject of western reporting, including the New York Times."
If you look you will see that the NYT find the subject of "Nazis" in the US to be a huge subject from the last millenium through to the current year.
There are some small groups of true Ukrainian blood-and-soil Nazis, just as there are some of the same ilk wandering around the US, mostly in Montana and Idaho it seems. But neither of them have any power or influence in their respective countries.
It's those Ukrainian Lutherans you got to worry about, is what I hear . . . they're barely a step from Ukrainian Congregationalists, and the world won't soon forget them.
In all seriousness, Rady's book about the Habsburgs (just finished, thumbs up) reminds me of the incredibly complicated religious history of central Europe. Hussites; Calvinists, Lutherans, and Unitarians (yes folks he said Unitarians) as far afield as Hungary and Transylvania; tolerance followed by repression followed by tolerance again. Not to mention the Jews . . .
Even after granting toleration to the non-Catholics (and having some pretty skeptical characters in the line) the dynasty's own self-image was as defenders and spreaders of the True Faith, above ethnicity, language etc. The Romanovs increasingly came to stress their Russianness and Orthodoxy as the justification for their rule; the Habsburgs could not identify with Germanness that way if they had wanted to.
There's a lot of food for thought in the decline and fall of that multi-ethnic, multi-cultural legal construct, as well as its peers in Turkey and Russia.
The hosts of the adult-beverages party I mentioned last night are a clergy couple. He just retired from the Wesleyites and she is UCC.
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