By Jace, a Trail Mix Contributor
What could be more fitting for a New Year than a dance? A polka no less. The Champagne polka by Strauss for your enjoyment.
Enjoy the music, but most especially enjoy the day!
Happy New Year to you all! ?
[This thread will remain live through New Years Day]
More Posts by Jace
Perfect polka for this cold morning. I have already used my fireplace more times than all of last year.
Ben Barres, a brain researcher and scientist died, again too young. His story is very interesting. He was also transgender. sigh.
Another weekend morning and the wait for stupid tweets from the head moron. These should be hot as NY Times posted another Papadopolis story, which may be the one that is election critical. But only for the start of the downfall of SFB. I think another timeline of Russian agent SFB life is in order.
Roll-out the champagne barrels as there are no empty barrels on the trail! A hearty and happy New Year to the trail, especially Jace. So glad you are here every Sunday.
The regression-du-jour continues under the recused AG as he brings back debtor prison in time for the New Year under the repressive and expensive, debt piling tax cuts for the wealthy. Remember those old cartoons with humans wearing barrels and nothing else? Us, the US citizens. Perhaps, the repugs will try to get two of us in a barrel to save barrels for the rich.
On top of the regression-du-jour? Repression-du-jour. doj under sessions/miller cabal want to change census to repress immigrant population.
Once again the trumpence junta and their exorbitant costs to change and destroy our institutions when the census has been addressing the immigrant issue for some time. The repugs always morphing the census to suite their agenda and remember that stupid bachmann woman from MN? She wanted to refuse the census.
I hope 2018 is better for human life, but it sure seems like it got a lot cheaper last year and it doesn’t live as long as it used to.
Why does pence go to liberal Aspen for his vacay? The white shadow prez is perhaps, not as scary, but just as dangerous as his boss. The Indiana Religious Freedom Act…like moving our embassy to J-salem is how life would be under mike! IRF from 2015. Ironically, it is believed the state of NM spurred the state legislation.
the Indiana statute explicitly makes a business’s “free exercise” right a defense against a private lawsuit by another person, rather than simply against actions brought by government. Why does this matter? Well, there’s a lot of evidence that the new wave of “religious freedom” legislation was impelled, at least in part, by a panic over a New Mexico state-court decision, Elane Photography v. Willock. In that case, a same-sex couple sued a professional photography studio that refused to photograph the couple’s wedding. New Mexico law bars discrimination in “public accommodations” on the basis of sexual orientation. The studio said that New Mexico’s RFRA nonetheless barred the suit; but the state’s Supreme Court held that the RFRA did not apply “because the government is not a party.”
Holy ouzo! Thanks for the p-los link, bb, as it discredits the repug call about a leaky and biased fbi. sessions has known about this all along.
George Papadopoulos, who served as a foreign policy adviser to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, told Australian diplomat Alexander Downer that Russia had political dirt on Trump’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, after a night of heavy drinking in May 2016. Less than a month earlier, he had been told that Russia had emails that would embarrass the former Secretary of State. That information came courtesy of Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese professor with contacts in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who, in April 2016, told Papadopoulos he’d learned the Russians had “dirt” on Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails.”
One more for the road…I am off to the morning glory.
WH insider and sessions’ boy, stephen miller and p-los in constant contact during 2016. covfefe boy edited trump’s speech.
SJWNY – Will and Grace is a classic example of the supporting cast sometimes overshadowing the leads. It was so noticeable that in one of the last episodes of the original run, there is a scene with the Karen and Jack characters together in a bath tub, complaining that they are just “Supporting players in the ‘Will and Grace show.'” Laurie Metcalf should win the supporting actress Oscar for Lady Bird.
Blue – Surprised the new episode with Jane Lynch didn’t rally you more to the side of the Will and Grace re-birth!
bbronc and bw, that ny times story re what papadopolous said dovetails with this one:
Former Watergate prosecutor: ‘Conspiracy,’ not collusion, is main issue in Russia investigation
Nick Ackerman, a former Watergate prosecutor, said Saturday that the big issue in special counsel Robert Mueller investigation is not whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia, but whether it conspired to steal emails from prominent figures in the Democratic Party.
“I think the big enchilada here is the conspiracy to break into the Democratic National Committee in violation of the federal computer crime law and to use those emails to help Donald Trump get elected,” Ackerman said on MSNBC.
“All of that is motive as to why Donald Trump and others were endeavoring to obstruct the investigation, and why Donald Trump told [former FBI Director] James Comey to let the investigation on [former national security adviser Michael] Flynn go,” he added. “All of this is going to come together in 2018.”
[….continues….]
In spite of how terrible verizon “on demand” is I have seen a couple of the Will and Grace shows. It fits the bill for what I watch television for. Fun with a touch of liberal bias and not heavy on the need to think for myself. I am looking forward to the first of the new season to show up on Netflix.
One of the biggest laughs I got when I was doing college lectures on LGBTQ issues, heavy on the “T”, was when I was a few minutes late for one of the classes at the University of Denver in 2007. I showed up slightly out of breath, and apologized with, “I am sorry for being late. I was watching Will and Grace”. The students just roared. They were like most of my classes, tense because we were going to talk about LGBTQ people, heavy on the T. The ice broken, it was one of my better sessions.
Jace
Heel Toe and away we go into 2018
Dumb Donny is already on a verbal diarrhea diatribe. Naturally praising himself and attacking the woman whose popular vote still haunts him. It must rankle know the person who is worth a hundred of him was wanted by more people then and the numbers who feel that way grow daily.
No resolutions, just wishes:
jace & xrepublican – good health & happiness ( which extends to everyone )
TravisC – continued good health news
Blue Bronc – more time home on your boat because there were fewer disasters
More Toby! pictures ( & patd’s poochies)
Regular posting from DaveB & sidekick Jamie about movies, entertainment because life is multi-faceted
Whskyjack’s neighborhood kids grow up to a long, healthy, happy life
Continued posting from all regulars, oldsters & newbies. Thank You for who you are.
I’ll second your wish list SJ, all good
Jace – A beautiful selection!
daveB – The only good thing about the Will & Grace reboot, for me, is Megan Mulally. Her performance by Rosario’s casket was amazing. I will stick with reruns of the old series.
sj – How about sitcom stars that have transcended their shows: Ray Ramono filming with Al Pacino.
Wherever you are on the trail today, stay warm. (Maybe hell has finally frozen over?)
See ya next year!
Jace… Bravo!
Happy New Year everyone!
bid… I saw that Dallas was 24 degrees yesterday… to us that is normal winter weather. Can’t imagine what it feels like to you.
I hope this morning that I have upended my coffee cup for the final time for 2017. Best wishes to all and mucho gracias to Craig for his diligence in providing the trail over which we trudge, and to Jace who provides us the with the music that keeps us going from week-to-week, month-to-month, and now, year-to year. And to all, the companionship that makes sitting around the campfire cooking marshmallows and looking at the stars a truly rewarding experience.
Oh, at 1400 we’ll be sitting in the arena watching the tip-0ff of the South Carolina Bulls v Texas A&M in the season opener of league play for Women’s NCAA basketball. USC is rated 4th currently and is the defending national champion. I am tremendously proud of the team and their accomplishments on and off the field.
rr – It feels like my childhood. I moved down here. Wind chill is currently 14, with a bit of freezing drizzle. (Wind chill up in my native state is 26 below, at the moment. Glad I moved South, but Florida sounds better each year.)
Settling in for a “Newhart” marathon and multiple naps.
Happy New year all you trail mixers. Enjoy and be safe!
Thanks for the well wishes and the comments on the music.?
We are going to a New Year’s Eve party in our neighborhood fireworks and a bonfire….however unlikely that we will make until mid-night The party really doesn’t start until 8:30 or so but Mr C wants to go at 7
There has been some end of the year ruminating about how to cover SFB
I think they should stop covering any story based on a Trumplie or they should report the facts and the lie about them and why he is lying.
best gift a friend gave me for Christmas which should be bundled up by the bushel and sent to Puerto Rico (if someone hasn’t thought of it already). looked it up on amazon for consumer reviews and was impressed…. also impressed as to how cheap.
d.light S2 LED Task Light, Rechargeable Solar Lantern
bbronc, red cross should stock up on these for next time the lights go out.
hey, if mixers are a mind to, let’s do a care package of these from us to those in the dark next catastrophe…. kinda on the order of sturge and cbob’s Haiti project.
can’t end the year without a rousing auld lang syne
for the nostalgic, an excerpt from
wapo: Dave Barry’s Year in Review: Russia Mania, covfefe and the Category 5 weirdness of 2017
[….]
January
… which begins with the nation still bitterly divided over the 2016 election. On one side are the progressives, who refuse to accept Donald Trump as president, their reasoning being that:
1. He is Hitler.
2. He is literally Hitler.
3. He is LITERALLY WORSE THAN HITLER.
On the other side are the Trump supporters, whose position is:
1. You lost!
2. You whiny liberal pukes.
3. SHUT UP, LOSERS.
So there does not appear to be a lot of common ground between these positions. Nevertheless as the year progresses, the two sides will gradually find a way — call it the open-minded generosity of the American spirit — to loathe each other even more.
[….hilariously continues…]
Once upon a time, we had a president who could read. He had a New Year’s tradition of letting us know his favorite books and music from the year past. Fortunately, the tradition continues even if his Presidency is over. From Barack Obama:
The best books I read in 2017:
The Power by Naomi Alderman
Grant by Ron Chernow
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City by Matthew Desmond
Janesville: An American Story by Amy Goldstein
Exit West by Mohsin Hamid
Five-Carat Soul by James McBride
Anything Is Possible by Elizabeth Strout
Dying: A Memoir by Cory Taylor
A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
*Bonus for hoops fans: Coach Wooden and Me by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Basketball (and Other Things) by Shea Serrano
My favorite songs of 2017:
Mi Gente by J Balvin & Willy William
Havana by Camila Cabello (feat. Young Thug)
Blessed by Daniel Caesar
The Joke by Brandi Carlile
First World Problems by Chance The Rapper (feat. Daniel Caesar)
Rise Up by Andra Day
Wild Thoughts by DJ Khaled (feat. Rihanna and Bryson Tiller)
Family Feud by Jay-Z (feat. Beyoncé)
Humble by Kendrick Lamar
La Dame et Ses Valises by Les Amazones d’Afrique (feat. Nneka)
Unforgettable by French Montana (feat. Swae Lee)
The System Only Dreams in Total Darkness by The National
Chanel by Frank Ocean
Feel It Still by Portugal. The Man
Butterfly Effect by Travis Scott
Matter of Time by Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings
Little Bit by Mavis Staples
Millionaire by Chris Stapleton
Sign of the Times by Harry Styles
Broken Clocks by SZA
Ordinary Love (Extraordinary Mix) by U2
*Bonus: Born in the U.S.A. by Bruce Springsteen (not out yet, but the blues version in his Broadway show is the best!)
but if you don’t have the time or inclination to read the entire year by barry, here’s his conclusion:
Finally this hellish year, which by any standard of decency should have been canceled months ago, draws to a close. The American people, wearied by the endless scandals and the relentless toxic spew of partisan political viciousness, turn away from 2017 in disgust and look hopefully toward the new year, which by all indications will be calmer and saner.
We are of course joking. By all indications the nation is going to spend 2018 the same way it spent 2017, namely obsessing spitefully over 2016. So the best we can do is enjoy the brief reprieve offered by the holidays. In the spirit of the season, let’s try, as a nation, to forget about our differences, at least for a few days. Let’s remember that we’re all Americans, and let’s give our friends and loved ones, whatever their political views, a big old holiday hug.
No, scratch that. No hugging! Give your friends and loved ones a formal holiday handshake, then back away slowly with your hands raised in plain view.
Then have a happy new year. Or at least try.
Note to all and particularly Papadopolis: Never Never absolutely Never drink with Australians.
My one experience with this phenomenon happened in 1980. I refer to it as “The Friday night they took prisoners and finally released the hostages on Sunday afternoon”.
Being the type that learns a lesson once taught, this has never happened again. lol
aljazz: Happy New Year! Cities across the world welcome 2018
Festivities have begun around the world as revellers cheered the advent of the New Year, with Australia, New Zealand and Japan being some of the first countries to bid farewell to 2017.
In the Australian city of Sydney, more than an estimated one million people gathered to watch a spectacular fireworks display in the harbour.
[…continues…]
Happy New Year to all. We’re off to our favorite Middle Eastern restaurant, Mama Ayesha’s, for dinner with friends, but coming home before the magic hour.
OK, Jace, dammit, I’m done with complementing your damn musical selections – for 2017. Goddammit, I ain’t giving you another compliment until January 7, 2018 – unless of course you post something between now and then. 🙂
So everyone have a Happy New Year and stay safe out there.
Best place for New Year’s celebration was a friend in a small town up in the foothills above Denver, Colorado. The party started about 4pm MST. We celebrated the time zones and ended with Newfoundland time zone. We were on the road before the drunk driver sniff zones and the rest of the drunks. Besides avoiding over drinking and getting busted, we had a lot of fun.
Just ordered the traditional New Year’s Eve pizzas. No desire to cook tonight
So I spent about an hour and a half making cioppino for Mrs. P and LP. Just ate it. Not bad if I do say so myself. I used Epicurious’ recipe for the broth. 5 stars. I added cod, shrimp, bay scallops (because Mrs. P doesn’t like scallops) oysters (because I REALLY love oysters) and little neck clams. I’m going to have a great nap digesting this before I wake Mrs up to drink champagne and say goodbye to 2017 – a year that in my mind will live in infamy. Pardon me, but fuck 2017.
If Berkeley Breathed can face 2018 this way, so can I …. but it does take a special sort of penguin to do it well.
Gullah goes to Harvard
https://www.charlestoncitypaper.com/TheBattery/archives/2017/12/19/harvard-introduces-gullah-class-taught-by-a-charleston-born-artist
brrr, it’s 4 degrees right now in ky wilderness and puppy poopy & doody duty is not fun come 5:00 in the morning
but anyway and anyhow
HAPPY NEW YEAR !!!
bu (sans layers of woolies, coat, mittens, polar cap & hood) says i’m a wuss.
what’s a little ole 4 degrees and wind chill below that to a 6 month old full of life puppy ready to meet what brings her in 2018
happy new year to toby and all the other trail pets from bu, billie bob and bodhi
A happy new year to patd and her fur babies…climate change is all about trying to cool down Mother Nature. The cold many are feeling? A sign of one of the warmest years on record.
Please remember the birds! They need water more than food at this time of the year. Last year was the first year that hubby and I noticed that the toes on the doves were whole again…after our big freeze of 2011? Many birds lost part of their toes to frostbite.
Price of gas rising while the 1% stay warm and toasty.
It’s 4 below to the east of the ky wilderness in bgwv. At anything below 0 F I’m a wuss, but prefer to think of it as knowing better…
mika’s rundown this a.m. on the trumpRussia timeline sure underlined a case of conspiracy and added a few more likely indictments for lying to the feds by a cast of thousands.
twit, you are soooo toast
axios: Tina Smith to take Al Franken’s Senate seat this week
…. Franken’s resignation takes effect on Tuesday and Smith will be sworn in by former Vice President Walter Mondale the next day, per the AP. Smith, who served as Dayton’s chief of staff prior to becoming his running mate in 2014, was the likely frontrunner.
What’s next: Smith, who plans to run for the remaining two years of Franken’s term in a special election in November, told the Star Tribune that doesn’t yet know if she’ll take over the outgoing senator’s committee assignments — Judiciary; Health, Education, Labor and Pensions; Energy and Natural Resources; and Indian Affairs. However, Smith reportedly said she will take on much of Franken’s staff — about 50 employees would be in Washington and Minnesota.
something to think about on this 1st day of what’s left of thinking… or what’s left of being allowed to think…. or simply just what’s left.
from the guardian: Neurotechnology, Elon Musk and the goal of human enhancement
At the World Government Summit in Dubai in February, Tesla and SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk said that people would need to become cyborgs to be relevant in an artificial intelligence age. He said that a “merger of biological intelligence and machine intelligence” would be necessary to ensure we stay economically valuable.
Soon afterwards, the serial entrepreneur created Neuralink, with the intention of connecting computers directly to human brains. He wants to do this using “neural lace” technology – implanting tiny electrodes into the brain for direct computing capabilities.
Brain-computer interfaces (BCI) aren’t a new idea. Various forms of BCI are already available, from ones that sit on top of your head and measure brain signals to devices that are implanted into your brain tissue.
They are mainly one-directional, with the most common uses enabling motor control and communication tools for people with brain injuries. In March, a man who was paralysed from below the neck moved his hand using the power of concentration.
But Musk’s plans go beyond this: he wants to use BCIs in a bi-directional capacity, so that plugging in could make us smarter, improve our memory, help with decision-making and eventually provide an extension of the human mind.
“Musk’s goals of cognitive enhancement relate to healthy or able-bodied subjects, because he is afraid of AI and that computers will ultimately become more intelligent than the humans who made the computers,” explains BCI expert Professor Pedram Mohseni of Case Western Reserve University, Ohio, who sold the rights to the name Neuralink to Musk.
“He wants to directly tap into the brain to read out thoughts, effectively bypassing low-bandwidth mechanisms such as speaking or texting to convey the thoughts. This is pie-in-the-sky stuff, but Musk has the credibility to talk about these things,” he adds.
Musk is not alone in believing that “neurotechnology” could be the next big thing. Silicon Valley is abuzz with similar projects. Bryan Johnson, for example, has also been testing “neural lace”. He founded Kernel, a startup to enhance human intelligence by developing brain implants linking people’s thoughts to computers.
[….continues…]
My New Year’s predictions regarding the WH?
trump will continue to devaluate the real estate of the moral high ground.
Expect the potus exacerbation to climax this year.
Having a lazy day today. Spent most of last night watching a 3 Stooges marathon on a local Boston station. Even got to see the infamous Niagara Falls episode.
yeah… like most of you… I too hope that 2018 is better than last year…
The kid in that Gullah goes to Harvard post has it down pretty well, but he still doesn’t sound quite like the people I grew up with.
This is an old record (50’s-60’s) by an old white guy with his thoughts on the Gullah
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HkPPSNXUbGA
Warning: contains some rather offensive language
We are 10 days with the high never getting above freezing, This morning it was -7 right now it is all the way up to -2
But hey we are warmer than Barrow Alaska by 1 degree. Yesterday we were colder by a degree. Progress I guess. BTW if you are wondering where barrow Alaska is, it is that northen most point on the top of old man Alaska’s head. You know, next stop the North Pole.
Jack
Happy New Year, Everyone ! Let’s ALL make this the very best possible 2018. We CAN do it.
I drank two too much last night. I had a death-dealing cold last NYE, so I spent that evening in bed, coughing and sneezing instead of enjoying convivial boozing. So, last night I drank enough to make up for the previous NYE. I drove us home from the parties through -10F air and a stiff breeze w/o incident, although the intersections were glazed black. My fellow drivers seemed to be worse in the early evening, 7 pm than at 1 am. Amazingly enough I feel pretty good this morning. It is an omen.
A New Year Sweeps Clean.
One blessing about the cold, fewer idiots felt it necessary to step outside at midnight and empty the clip on their firearm into the air. Those that did quickly went back inside. So the annual ritual was much quieter and a lot shorter.
Jack
My immediate and overlying work for this year is to the Resistance and VoteBlue. All else is to support those goals to rescue America from total destruction by Russian agents.
ezra klein at vox: Incoherent, authoritarian, uninformed: Trump’s New York Times interview is a scary read
The president of the United States is not well. That is an uncomfortable thing to say, but it is an even worse thing to ignore.
Consider the interview Trump gave to the New York Times on Thursday. It begins with a string of falsehoods that make it difficult to tell whether the leader of the free world is lying or delusional. Remember, these are President Donald Trump’s words, after being told a recording device is on:
It almost goes without saying that literally zero congressional Democrats have said that there was no collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign during the 2016 election. Zero.
[…recounts/rebuts a series of nonsense in nyt interview….]
Imagine how we would react to literally any other president speaking like this. Trump has bludgeoned us into becoming accustomed to these kinds of comments but that, too, is worrying.
This is the president of the United States speaking to the New York Times. His comments are, by turns, incoherent, incorrect, conspiratorial, delusional, self-aggrandizing, and underinformed. This is not a partisan judgment — indeed, the interview is rarely coherent or specific enough to classify the points Trump makes on a recognizable left-right spectrum. As has been true since he entered American politics, Trump is interested in Trump — over the course of the interview, he mentions his Electoral College strategy seven times, in each case using it to underscore his political savvy and to suggest that he could easily have won the popular vote if he had tried.
I am not a medical professional, and I will not pretend to know what is truly happening here. It’s become a common conversation topic in Washington to muse on whether the president is suffering from some form of cognitive decline or psychological malady. I don’t think those hypotheses are necessary or meaningful. Whatever the cause, it is plainly obvious from Trump’s words that this is not a man fit to be president, that he is not well or capable in some fundamental way. That is an uncomfortable thing to say, and so many prefer not to say it, but Trump does not occupy a job where such deficiencies can be safely ignored.
bbronc, you’ve said many a time on the trail almost the same thing as ezra did in his “it is plainly obvious from Trump’s words that this is not a man fit to be president, that he is not well or capable in some fundamental way.”
I think the Haiti project was all CBob……
and I think while Ought-Seventeen was a real freak show, Ought-Eighteen is going to be even worse.
Just sayin’ Georgia versus Oklahoma in the Rose Bowl is wrong
Sturg, I went thru the Hahvad Gullah project with more than average interest. I bet your critique of the instructor has been mirrored by many other scholars. But, where do you draw the line on living Pidgin? What should be the future of the language?
BTW, when I went to Kroger on Friday, they were 50% off–won’t be long. How many do you want?
Ms Cracker, you are so right. Wisconsin should have walloped Washington 42-24 in the Rose Bowl. That said, ‘Ray Okies !
KC, I agree on the Rose Bowl. No PAC 10 champ versus Big 10 champ. Cats sleeping with dogs.
No XR, the okies looked good in the 1st half. Not so much in the 3rd quarter.
Pogo has NYD dinner duties. Traditional southern New Years dinner.
Mr Pogo,
Oh man, you’re right on that. The Okie’s needed more Mayfield in the 4th Qtr, or the 2 OTs. Congratulations to you and your Tide. From my perch, they looked like national champions.
I also think Wisconsin was screwed because of their very late loss to a very good Ohio State team. ‘Bama should have played the Badgers, and GA should have played either OK or Clemson. My opinion. Worth zilch.
Roll Tide !
“…Ought-Seventeen was a real freak show, Ought-Eighteen is going to be even worse.”
sturge, good thing like pogo I made sure to have hog jowls, black eyed peas and greens to start the year right then. wealth, happiness and good luck or hopefully just be able to get thru it with a full stomach… specially if it’ll be as bad as you predict.