66 thoughts on “Sunday Serendipity”

  1. jack, thanks
    ~~~ surely you’re not referring to the erstwhile prez 45 ~~~ 

    from the urban dictionary:
    Someone who hangs at the train station or bus stop or anywhere public all day long, usually asking for a cigarette, spare change or pocket lint. Usually unemployed and unemployable, using nothing but slang, and usually impossible to get rid of, until threatened with violence.

  4. Bid, thanks for the “uterus” emoji. In the run up to Roebember it could come in n handy.
     
    Laughter. I laugh at Dumbass all the time. I’m not sure whether he, Oliver or Colbert provides me the most in an average week. 

  5. Harris rallies support during first fundraiser: ‘We are the underdogs’ (thehill.com)

    Attending her first fundraiser as the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, Vice President Harris told a room of more than 800 people in Massachusetts that “we are the underdogs” to rally support for her new campaign.
    “We got a fight ahead of us and we are the underdogs,” she said according to the National Public Radio. “But this is a people-powered campaign and we have momentum.”
    Harris is expected to have raised more than $1.4 million from the fundraiser, according to the Associated Press. The fundraiser was only expected to raise close to $400,000 when it was originally scheduled when President Biden was still the Democratic nominee for president. 
    According to the Associated Press, musician James Taylor and some of Massachusetts’ Democratic heavyweights attended, including the state’s senators, Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, former Gov. Deval Patrick and Rep. Richard Neal. 
    Since taking over as the presumptive nominee earlier in the week, Harris has raised more than $120 million. In her first 24 hours as a candidate for president during the 2024 cycle, she raised more than $81 million, which is a record. 

  6. Comic Opera. Perfect for watching MAGAts squirm…

    JD Vance acknowledges white supremacist attacks against wife Usha

    His “defense” of his wife is so measured, maybe because they need the votes of the white supremacists who are attacking her (like Nick Fuentes, the guy who dines at Mar-A-Lago).

    “Look, I love my wife so much. I love her because she’s who she is,” he told host Megyn Kelly on her show Friday. “Obviously, she’s not a white person, and we’ve been accused, attacked by some white supremacists over that. But I just, I love Usha.”

    https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4795119-jdvance-wife-white-supremacist-attacks/

  7. Vance on Trump: “A morally reprehensible human being”

    More emails showing Vance trashing Trump: “The more white people feel like voting for Trump, the more Black people will suffer.”

    Excerpts From JD Vance’s Emails to a Transgender Classmate he supported for years but then abandoned when he got into politics.

     Free link.. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/27/us/jd-vance-emails-transgender-classmate-highlights.html?unlocked_article_code=1.-k0.vpt1.7BVAKd2qlF5k

  8. Vance on Trump: “A morally reprehensible human being”

    opus esse uno, unum cognoscendi

  9. Claudia Conway

    Separation of church and state. Period. As a woman of the Catholic faith, I still cannot stress enough how important our separation between church and state is. America is a melting pot of different cultures, beliefs, and stories. Enough. Pushing Christian ideals at a legislative level is not fair.

  13. I just want Harris to make the right call.  Republicans now already are deep into buyers’ remorse over Vance or whatever his name really is. It’s tough, picking the right VP. Trump messed up, McCain did too. Quayle was good for a few laughs way back when.
    Now Harris must make the proper choice. I have been in the Shapiro camp for weeks, but damn it, if he is axed because of his faith and stances , so be it. Shapiro gets it thrown at him from both sides, some plaudits, some poison arrows, from both Jews and Arabs. Harris may just go all-white Protestant and select the Lutheran Walz, who amazes me with his strenghts, his resume of his whole adult life, his speaking style, his enthusiasm.The Gaza war is horrible, and I believe Shapiro possibly could work in his capacity as VP to help end it. I know many USA voters don’t, can’t distinguish between anti-right-wing-Netanyahu’s barbaric policies being challenged, and anti-Semitism. Personally, I get called anti-Semitic for my criticism of Netanyahu, while I am all for the 80% of Israeli Jews who want the bastard thrown out and into prison. Netanyahu is the reason Israeli border defenses were compromised on October 7, after all.I believe Josh Shapiro has a firm grasp of The Region and would be a great asset to Harris regarding USA involvement there. And if Harris sees differently, again, I will support her decision. Being a native Hoosier, living near South Bend until I was 42, I would love to see now-Michigan (Traverse City) resident Pete be selected, but I see no momentum.So it is Shapiro for me, with Walz being OK too. I have also written how Beshear would help the ticket.Think this is easy? Nope.https://forward.com/news/638442/josh-shapiro-israel-palestine-antisemitism-arab-muslim/
     
     

  14. And we’ll never have to vote again…
    Donald J. Trump
    @realDonaldTrump
    Jul 28, 2024, 12:41 AM

    By this time next year, America’s borders will be STRONG, SEALED, and SECURE. Inflation will be in FULL RETREAT. Our economy will be roaring back. Optimism will be surging. The American Dream will be thriving again for citizens of every race, religion, color, and creed. Law and Justice will reign all throughout our land. Freedom will be restored. The flame of liberty will be burning bright. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the worst administration in the history of our Country, will be a fading memory of the past—And our Great Silent Majority, including the once forgotten men and women of our Country, will be the ones shaping America’s magnificent future when I am the 47th President of the United States!

  15. why TF wasn’t Team Biden releasing statements like that?!
     
    Nice work, Team Kamala 👍 👍

  16. What’s interesting Bink this is the same staff writing these Harris statements who were writing Biden’s. They’ve been unleashed, apparently muzzled before.

  17. Dexter, enjoying your observations, glad you’re weighing in. I too have been getting a kick out of Walz. In researching him I discovered this series of public service ads that he does with his daughter. They’re really funny…

  20. Thanks, Jack. 
    Great excuse for me to post from Central City, CO where last night Mr. Ivy and I attended a rollicking performance of The Pirates of Penzance currently on stage at the vintage Central City Opera House. 

  21. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_City_Opera_House

    The Central City Opera House is located in the Central City/Black Hawk Historic District in Central City, Colorado, United States. It was constructed in 1878.[3] It has offered operatic and theatrical productions that drew prominent actors and performers in the late 19th-century, and in the early 20th-century it was a motion picture theater.
    The opera house was designated to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.[2][a]

  24. Jack,

    Thank you for a dose of much needed comedy.

    This also brings back memories of the deep dark ages when children actually got a broad liberal arts education in high school.  My very first opera performance was Rossini’s Barber of Seville performed in our school auditorium with a troupe that made the rounds of the system.

     

  25. Kamala: JD Vance doesn’t couch his hatred of women.  

    Geo. Conway: -Ethan Allen reclined to comment

  26. Lindsey G is giving great sound bites for Harris today.  “She is for The Green New Deal and Medicare for All.”   That last one might even be popular with the MAGAt base.

    BTW, the resident MAGAt here says they believe there is nothing nefarious about anything Orange Adolf and his Jumbo Douchebag have said or are saying.   If it was in the past, they’ve changed.  If they’re saying it now, I’m the one misunderstanding the meaning and intention.

    Beware the gaslighters! 

    ps – Keep your gas tanks full.  Changes coming to gas & oil before mid-August, just in time for the DNC.

    pps – I think Poo-tin will tell Vance to drop out on 8/19 & tRUMPsky will make his VP nominee a woman, trying to steal the DNC’s thunder during convention week…because it’s the MAGAt/Repugz who think of women as DEI fills.

  27. I kinda wish people would stop singing Leonard Cohen’s song “Hallelujah” as if it were some kind of spiritually uplifting thing just because he used the word hallelujah.

  28. Union folk are not warming to Kelly despite his shift on some issues. The AFL-CIO’s airline attendants president Sarah Nelson, an up-and-coming leader, called him a “non-starter” today. But she was full of praise for Gov. Walz as a “reliable friend” of labor.

  29. in re Unions being on board with democrats:
    If Herman’s Hermits were opening for the Beatles it would still be standing room only.  
    Get the best guy or lady and explain to the unions where it is their bread is most effectively buttered.

  31.  
    An interesting long read this morning. A Reuter’s article on the illicit manufacturing of fentanyl and the ease of setting up your own lab.  They bought everything you would need to make $3 million dollars worth of fentanyl for $3600 and did it all online. 

    At the tap of a buyer’s smartphone, Chinese chemical sellers will air-ship fentanyl ingredients door-to-door to North America. Reuters purchased enough to make 3 million pills. Such deals are astonishingly easy – and reveal how drug traffickers are eluding efforts to halt the deadly trade behind the fentanyl crisis.

    A lot of interesting information in this article. It seems that fentanyl manufacturing is a lot like we saw with crystal meth. Any yahoo in his singlewide parked in the woods can make it and everything needed can be shipped to his door. As long as he has bit coins.
    Jack


  32. I so wish Pete B could be the VP nominee.  And to some degree I think it would make sense … in this way:  remember before Biden withdrew, there was no real excitement being generated, especially among the younger generations, about defeating Trump.  Now, instead of them allowing the old white male establishment determine the course of history, they seem to have been mobilized by this change in nominee. (Hope the excitement carries through to November.)  Black women are uniting and now going to work.  White women of the D persuasion are getting excited and committing to working harder.  I venture to guess that most of the folks who have up to date been inclined to say that they are voting for a 3d party candidate, which I think will cause the reelection of T if it happens, mostly the younger generation, … most of these folks are  no longer going to sit back and not get involved and not vote for a D ticket b/c they will be so offended by the hate being spewed by the R’s towards women/gays/minorities/disenfranchised that they will now vote for the ticket that has modern thinking, enlightened, “can’t go backwards” persons on the ballot.  Is this just wishful thinking on my part???  

  33. I am not the biggest fan of Beshear only for this reason … I saw him being interviewed on a news program and he tried to be cute …. making a joke intended I believe to have a “Soundbite” that might gain traction.  It fell flat, and in my opinion he looked kind of trite and silly.  I fear that he would be too inclined to “take the bait” and respond to what Vance would say in a debate in a way that does him no good, instead of getting back to factual data and information with a seiousness that says he is a smart man like Pete B can do.

  35. https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/07/26/mark-kelly-supports-the-pro-act-why-it-matters-to-his-vp-prospects/74534343007/ 

    “Kelly, D-Ariz., told HuffPost on Wednesday that he would support a pro-union bill that has floated, inconsequentially, in Congress for years.”

    “Kelly previously had expressed reservations about at least one provision of the bill but never signaled outright opposition to it.”

    “My parents were both union members,” Kelly said in reference to his upbringing in New Jersey to parents who worked as police officers. “I come from a family of cops and firefighters, all union members. When I was younger at the Merchant Marine Academy serving on merchant ships, all union ships.”

    Get on board the rocket; we’re not going back, we’re going up.  I think he brings Independents and whatever old school Republicans who are still out there looking for a home.  He’s not anti-union.

    Yeah, I like Pete but sadly, I think this country is still pretty unevolved (and some are devolving), and Kelly is the way to go if he and Harris are compatible.

  36. Bitcoin, illegal drug manufacturing, money laundering, mobsters, tRUMPsky.  Connect the dots, la, la, la! 

  38. MJ, I agree about Beshear. Was very open to him but he is coming across kinda green, not ready for prime time in the television auditions.

    Not that it is the decisive factor but I’ve decided Walz is the best of the lot on TV because he articulates the message well with a dose of genuine, cringe-free humor. The Army Sergeant/High School teacher demeanor is real and very appealing.

  39. https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/28/europe/hungary-viktor-orban-russia-irrational-west-intl/index.html
    “Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbansaid on Saturday Russia’s leadership was “hyper rational” and that Ukraine would never be able to fulfil its hopes of becoming a member of the European Union or NATO.”
     
    “In the next long decades, maybe centuries, Asia will be the dominant centre of the world,” Orban said, mentioning China, India, Pakistan and Indonesia as the world’s future big powers.
    “And we Westerners pushed the Russians into this bloc as well,” he said in the televised speech before ethnic Hungarians at a festival in the town of Baile Tusnad in neighbouring Romania.
     
    “Orban, whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency, has sharply differed from the rest of the bloc by seeking warmer ties with Beijing and Moscow, and he angered some EU leaders when he went on surprise visits to Kyiv, Moscow and Beijing this month for talks on the war in Ukraine.”
     

  40. https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/28/americas/venezuela-presidential-election-polls-open-intl-latam/index.html
     
    “Venezuelans headed to the polls on Sunday to vote in a highly consequential presidential election in which the country’s longtime strongman, Nicolas Maduro, will face one of his greatest political challenges yet, say analysts.”
     
    “Some people told CNN that they were there to vote for the future of their country, which has seen an exodus of Venezuelans fleeing economic collapse.”

    “I’m doing this for my children and my grandchildren,” voter Amelia Perez told CNN, saying she has three sons, one of whom is living in Washington, D.C. “I want him to come back and I don’t want my children to leave. All the rest of my family already left.”

    “Maduro, who took the mantle of the ruling Chavismo movement after his predecessor Hugo Chavez’s death in 2013, is seeking his third consecutive six-year term in office. Of the nine other candidates running for the presidency, his biggest challenger is a unified opposition movement that overcame their divisions to form a coalition known as the Democratic Unitary Platform.”
     
     

  41. https://english.elpais.com/opinion/2024-03-07/captive-democracy.html
    “Candidates from all over the world — Trump in the U.S., Bolsonaro in Brazil, Maduro in Venezuela — seek to reach or stay in power for one main reason: it is the only way to avoid ending up in jail”

    “Trump wants to be president because being president is the only way not to end up in jail. That is what the most influential democracy on this continent has been reduced to: its position of greatest dignity and nobility has been reduced to the card in the board game that allows the player to get out of jail.”

    “In Venezuela, a corrupt regimethat violates human rights every day has to stay in power at all costs, because Maduro and his kleptomaniacs know that some form of justice will await them with its mouth open as soon as they lose an election, and that is the best incentive not to lose any, even if it is through cheating, intimidation and persecution.”
     
    “What is happening in Nicaragua is even more obscene, if possible, but basically it is the same: what really prevents the ridiculous couple in power from getting off their tiger is the certainty that the tiger would devour them immediately, as Churchill said happens to dictators, if only because of the damage they have done while in power: the suffering they have caused, the lives they have destroyed in front of the blind gaze of their accomplices (and in front of the conniving nonsense of a certain Colombian ambassador who marched in favor of Ortega).”
     
    ps – Bibi in Israel. 
     
     
     

  42. https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/26/middleeast/uk-drops-plans-to-challenge-icc-arrest-warrant-netanyahu-intl/index.html

    “The British government has dropped plans to oppose the International Criminal Court’s application for an arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over alleged war crimes in Gaza, according to UK news agency PA Media.”

    “This was a proposal by the previous government which was not submitted before the election, and which I can confirm the Government will not be pursuing in line with our long standing position that this is a matter for the court to decide on,” said a spokeswoman for the UK’s new Labour government, which earlier this month replaced a Conservative government led by former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
     
    “ICC prosecutor Karim Khan announced in May he was seeking arrest warrants for Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders – including Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar – over charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

  43. Al Gore

    As a prosecutor, 
    @KamalaHarris
    took on Big Oil companies – and won. As
    @VP
    , she cast the tie-breaking vote to pass the most significant investment in climate solutions in history, the Inflation Reduction Act. That’s the kind of climate champion we need in the White House. With so much at stake in this year’s election – from strengthening democracy in the US and abroad, to expanding opportunity for the American people, to accelerating climate action – I’m proud to endorse Kamala Harris for President.

  44. Pete Buttigieg is very good at this. On FOX today host tried to interrupt him when she realized where he was going but he powered right through:

    “Crime is down under Joe Biden and crime was up under Donald Trump. Now, I don’t know how often that gets reported on this network, so if you’re watching this at home (looking directly at camera) do yourself a favor and look up the data … why would America want to go back to the higher crime that we experienced under Donald Trump?”

  45. Basically, Stump is always given a pass in the press because EVERYBODY knows he’s just totally full of shit.  So naturally everything which comes out of his mouth is just More Shit.   No more elections?  Oh, just more Chump shit.  

    So:

    They don’t cover the things he says because everybody knows he’s full of shit.  
    As Brother Dave used to say…..”Ain’t that weird?”

  46. WSJ polls less than a month apart.

    Beginning of July:

    DEM enthusiasm for nominee 37%

    GOP enthusiasm for nominee 70%

    End of July:

    DEM enthusiasm for nominee 81%

    GOP enthusiasm for nominee 85%

  48. “Look, I love my wife so much. I love her because she’s who she is,” he told host Megyn Kelly on her show Friday. 

    Do you mean that love is love, JD?

  49. So lame, looks like Gov. Walz struck a nerve…

    Trump spokesman Steven Cheung:

    “Democrat potential VP nominee calls President Trump, who just had an assassination attempt on his life, weird. The only thing weird is Democrats and Kamala Harris supporters trying to gaslight everyone into thinking the shooting was staged. These people are deranged.”

  50. Remember when the pro-wrestling community acted offended when people rightly suggested that the sport was staged?
     
    i’ll bet self-described “pro-wrestling historian” Steven Cheung does, he doth protesteth too much

  51. Ever injure yourself with a flesh wound?  Cut yourself prepping dinner, hit your thumb with a hammer, knock your arm into sharp object?
     
    Is your first reaction “where are my shoes” or “ow ow ow ow ow **** this hurts ow ow ow ow”?

  52. Hey everyone! Just checking in from Michigan. Here in Ottawa County, as I’ve said before, this group of Republicans formed a PAC called “Ottawa Impact”. They won 7 of the 9 seats on the county commission during the last election. 2 of those winning candidates that election rescinded their membership in the “Ottawa Impact” PAC.  Ottawa Impact hired and then fired John Gibbs (a failed Republican Congressional candidate during the last election) as the county administrator. They replaced him on an interim basis with a retired sheriff named Jon Anderson who is now running for sheriff here in Ottawa County for this year’s election. As well as now being connected to the people of “Ottawa Impact”, he also runs a firearms dealership called “Bullet Hole”. New Republican candidates have emerged for this year’s county commissioner elections. They have formed a PAC called “Bring Back Ottawa”. The “Ottawa Impact” candidates have called foul on this and urged the new Republican candidates to withdraw from the election in an effort to show party unity. They have declined to do so. One of the Ottawa Impact candidates running again this time around was successfully recalled earlier this year. One of the local news stations have begun interviewing the various county commission candidates in each district. They started with District 1. The three candidates are Gretchen Cosby (Ottawa Impact), Jon Barry (Bring Back Ottawa) and Danielle Smith (A Democrat who ran before and lost). Jon Barry and Danielle Smith talked about themselves and why they are running for county commissioner. Gretchen Cosby declined to be interviewed. I think that’s standard practice for Ottawa Impact members. The less people know about them, the better.

  53. Early numbers suggest Kamala is defining herself, Trump attacks not getting through yet. Still time, but not much. As her “don’t know” numbers drop, almost all of it going to favorable.

    These are just favorability ratings, not matchups. Her movement from don’t know to favorable/unfavorable is what I’m watching right now, tells who is winning race to define her. Looks good for her so far.

  54. Two ABC/Ipsos polls a week apart:

    THEN (Last week)

    Harris favorable 35%

    Harris unfavorable 46%

    NET -11

    ——————

    NOW (This week)

    Harris favorable 43%

    Harris unfavorable 42%

    NET +1

    ——————

    THEN

    Trump favorable 40%

    Trump unfavorable 51%

    NET -11

    ——————

    NOW

    Trump favorable 35%

    Trump unfavorable 52%

    NET -17

    ——————

    THEN

    Vance favorable 25%

    Vance unfavorable 31%

    NET -6

    ——————

    NOW

    Vance favorable 24%

    Vance unfavorable 39%

    NET -15

  55. No reason to play nice…

    But to a cheering crowd of thousands, Trump quickly conceded the point: “No, I haven’t changed. Maybe I’ve gotten worse.”

    … says the Ear Plug 

  56. How much worry is enough worry? Like the old suggestion for prunes…is three enough, six too many? 

    I’m pretty sure voters are worried about the age and acuity of President Trump compared to Kamala Harris. How could anybody not watch the stuff he’s saying, the rambling on the trail, and not be just a little bit concerned?”
    — Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, quoted by Politico

  60. Those numbers you posted are bonkers, Craig 🤩 
     
    Maybe trump will flee to Russia, get drafted, and have to serve on the front line with the rest of the convicts

  61. The couch was asking for it.  Wearing slip covers like that is just looking for trouble.

  63. Get ready for the big crazy to start on 8/19 when the DNC is going on.  Orange Adolf will do anything for ratings.  

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