Nice selection Jack. Dvořák Is a favorite of Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh symphony. I wasn’t familiar with him until a few years ago but have come to appreciate his work.
Went to the East Bumfuck amphitheater last night to see Don Felder – a little live music for Mrs. P’s birthday. Beautiful night for it. At 76 he puts on a great show. LP was impressed with his playing and that’s not easy praise to get.
Thank you, Jack
Devorak is a wonderful post-convention choice.
The New World Symphony is breath-taking.
Pogo, Mr. Ivy would’ve enjoyed Don Felder. Myself was not a big Eagles fan due principally to the number of hours I was forced to listen to Hotel Calfornia during root canals. Coincidentally, a lady seated behind us at the Gipsy Kings yelled out for Hotel California which I thought was just her acting drunk or stupid but I discovered she knew something I didn’t.
https://nebraskaexaminer.com/2024/08/06/nebraska-u-s-senate-candidate-dan-osborn-criticizes-kelloggs-closure/
“…the company has spent the past decade trying to cut its labor costs despite running profits of $19 billion before COVID-19 and $21 billion after.”
“Is this a retaliation from the strike?” Osborn asked. “It’s definitely within the realm of possibility. But there are three other plants with the exact same wages. Omaha is the biggest. Seems unlikely that they would close that one.”
From the CEO who advised struggling folks to eat cereal for supper, a retaliatory closure for a strike to send a message to others.
Eat the CEOs.
“The morning after being called out on national television by United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain during the Democratic National Convention, Stellantis has confirmed it is delaying plans to reopen the shuttered Belvidere Assembly Plant.”
“A year later, one company wants to go back on their commitments in our contract,” Fain said, donning a red UAW T-shirt emblazoned with “TRUMP IS A SCAB” across the front.”
“The UAW is threatening a national strike against Stellantis for allegedly violating a labor agreement reached last year in which it committed to investing $5 billion to restart the plant in Belvidere, Illinois, and hire back thousands of workers.”
“The automaker said, however, it stands by its commitment and warned the UAW against taking any strike action.”
“They say they want to ‘delay’ reopening Belvidere Assembly but they really want to kick the can past our contract expiration so they can suddenly cite ‘market conditions’ again and never open this plant, never repair the damage they’ve done to thousands of autoworkers and their families,” Fain said in an email Tuesday.
Jack… great choice!
Ivy… been to Walden Pond many times. That view is from where there is built a replica of Thoreau’s cabin. I find going there better than any church I’ve ever attended.
We’re in deepest, darkest West Virginia right now. Here’s how we know.
These folks are so lost.
Stay safe.
That sign could be 3 miles down the road from me.
Fugging idiot. Dumbass heaps praise on section of wall built by Obama, criticizes section built (partially) under his watch. WaPo.
MONTEZUMA PASS, Ariz. — A brown ribbon carved a straight gash across a vast, flat desert basin, the only mark of human civilization visible on this wilderness. The partition charged up a steep hill in Montezuma Canyon, then suddenly stopped. Extra pieces lay in piles nearby, rusting monuments to an unfinished campaign promise.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump came here on Thursday to heap praise on the structure standing to his right — “the Rolls-Royce of walls,” he called it — and lament the unused segments lying to his left. Joining him there, Border Patrol union leader Paul A. Perez called the standing fence “Trump wall” and the idle parts “Kamala wall,” after his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.
Those labels were inaccurate. This section of 20-foot steel slats was actually built during the administration of President Barack Obama. Trump added the unfinished extension up the hillside, an engineering challenge that cost at least $35 million a mile. The unused panels of 30-foot beams were procured during the Trump administration and never erected.
“Where you were, that was kind of a joke today,” said John Ladd, a Trump supporter whose ranch extends along the border, explained while driving the dirt road along the barrier, the gapped panels making a flipbook out of the shrubby trees and grass on the other side. “Had to be in front of Trump’s wall, but you went to Montezuma, and that’s Obama’s wall.”
The Cochise County Sheriff’s Office confirmed that the barrier next to Thursday’s campaign stop was built during the Obama administration. The Trump campaign and Perez did not respond to questions about the discrepancy.
“If Kamala truly wanted to close the border and continue building President Trump’s wall, she could go to the White House and do it today,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “Only President Trump will get it done.”
….
But the reality on the ground was not as straightforward as the “Build the Wall” chant that electrified his campaign eight years ago suggested. His vow to finish the wall, now formalized in the Republican Party platform, highlights the uncomfortable fact that he did not finish it in his first term, and Mexico did not pay for it, as he once promised it would.
….
Smugglers have breached the barrier thousands of times, including while Trump was in office. The wall has been tunneled under and climbed over. It has been walked around and sawed through. It has not stopped migration any more that it has stopped drug and human smuggling, most of which happens at ports of entry.
Continues.
… just like he did before. /s
Honest to god.
We’re back over the line Pogo, in Craig County VA
The new underground railroad.
https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/trump-harris-election-08-25-24/index.html
“In May, he said that in 2010 a parasitic worm had crawled into his brain and died, causing health problems.”
”Weeks later, Vanity Fair published an article featuring a former part-time babysitter accusing him of sexual assault.”
“The same article also featured a photo he sent to a friend which he implied depicted him eating a dog.”
”Earlier this month, he said he placed a bear carcass in New York’s Central Park in 2014, an incident that drew international media attention at the time.”
“The latest story, originally shared by Kennedy’s daughter Kathleen “Kick” Kennedy in a recently resurfaced 2012 interview with Town & Country Magazine, details how Kennedy once used a chainsaw to cut off the head of a dead whale carcass that had washed up on the shores of their family’s home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. He then drove the whale’s head back to their home in New York on the roof of the family’s minivan, according to the interview.”
Buried in the weirdness is a sexual assault charge.
Just drove by Springsteen’s getaway. 3,000 acres and a herd of buffalo. Paint Bank VA
Roger Miller singing You Can’t Roller Skate in A Buffalo Herd and following up into Chug-a-Lug Chug-a-lug live at Austin City Limits
Roger said he’d always been about 2 weeks ahead of his time.
Renee, today’s nature was an extension of historian Douglas Brinkley’s essay
Walden Pond: An Endangered Treasure
On September 6, 1847, Henry Thoreau left his small house at Walden Pond and moved back into the town of Concord. Having lived at Walden Pond for over two years, he was, he would write, “a sojourner in civilized life again.”
from CBT: “Stellantis, the automaker behind the Ram brand, plans to indefinitely lay off up to 2,450 factory workers in the U.S. later this year. The layoffs are tied to discontinuing the Ram 1500 Classic, an older version of the popular pickup truck produced at the Warren Truck Assembly Plant near Detroit, Michigan. Since introducing the new-generation Ram 1500 in 2018, this model has primarily served as a budget-friendly option for entry-level buyers and fleet customers.
The decision to end the Ram 1500 Classic production is not entirely unexpected, especially with the recent update of the current Ram 1500 for the 2025 model year. While production at the Warren plant will cease, operations at a nearby facility, where the newer Ram 1500 is built, will continue without disruption.
Despite anticipating the Classic’s phase-out, the lack of a replacement vehicle has raised concerns among local governments, workers, and the United Auto Workers (UAW) union, representing the plant’s employees. The layoffs are expected to begin as early as October, with the final number potentially lower than the announced figure, depending on whether some employees can be reassigned to other positions within the company.
UAW President Shawn Fain criticized Stellantis leadership, particularly CEO Carlos Tavares, for the decision. Fain expressed frustration over the layoffs, pointing out that while Tavares received a 56% pay increase, thousands of autoworkers are losing their jobs.
Personally, a red letter day I cannot shake from memory. 55 years ago today I and 45 other men from my home county in Indiana boarded a bus for Indianapolis for indoctrination + induction into the armed services…I missed by a week of being sent to the US Marine Corp and my group all went into the US Army at Fort Knox, Kentucky. From there, Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Fort Ord-Monterey, Nha Trang, Viet Nam, and Fort Lewis, Washington, all in 2 years.
I came out bitter and unemployable and got sick and had to drop out of college because of the illness and total poverty. My plan was to become a teacher and high school baseball coach, but when I got well I had to scour the area for a paying job, and found a good one as a metals analyzer in a lab, then a better job where I got my UAW card after a while. I was so damn proud of that card! I had to hold back welled-up tears of joy. I served my local at different times as shop steward and trustee and I still vote in UAW International elections. Shawn Fain in my guy all the way. He’s from Kokomo , Indiana, where he starred in high school basketball for the KHS Wildcats. Then came the long ascension to UAW International President. He knows Trump for what he is: a rotten scab bastard.
Ivy…. Thoreau did not live that far off the grid. He built his cabin on the far end of Walden Pond on land owned by Emerson. He went there to write… but also to work through his grief over the loss of his older brother, John… who died of tuberculosis (it eventually did in Henry as well). He walked to town most days and took his brother’s place working in the pencil factory that his family owned.
None of these facts were hidden. But you know how people like to idolize. When they find out that Thoreau went to see his family almost daily in downtown Concord… their bubble of a person living alone in the woods is burst.
Finnish peoples, and others, like to walk in forests to get calm, peaceful and happy. The forest is the happy place.
Mark Skywalker in Chicago.
If you’ve never seen the streaming series “Dickinson,” about Emily Dickinson, it’s worth watching. The episodes with guest appearances by Thoreau and Louisa May Alcott are hilarious.
Renee, I would venture Thoreau has many more defenders than detractors.
Blue Bronc, most Finns go off the grid for the entire month of August.
blue, I’ll check that out, thanks for the suggestion. Amazing how much literary genius resided in that one little town.
Dexter, so grateful you’re here with us today to mark the milestone.
Shawn Fain is a folk hero.
Pogo, I hope Mrs. P. had a blast of a birthday weekend.
and hopefully a new world it will be … one filled with more compassion and character rather than fear, hate and greed
thank you, Jack
Attribution: Blue Wave by Adam Zyglis, The Buffalo News, NY
Nottingham: Smart particle could hold climate change key (bbc.com)
Nice selection Jack. Dvořák Is a favorite of Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh symphony. I wasn’t familiar with him until a few years ago but have come to appreciate his work.
Went to the East Bumfuck amphitheater last night to see Don Felder – a little live music for Mrs. P’s birthday. Beautiful night for it. At 76 he puts on a great show. LP was impressed with his playing and that’s not easy praise to get.
Thank you, Jack
Devorak is a wonderful post-convention choice.
The New World Symphony is breath-taking.
Pogo, Mr. Ivy would’ve enjoyed Don Felder. Myself was not a big Eagles fan due principally to the number of hours I was forced to listen to Hotel Calfornia during root canals. Coincidentally, a lady seated behind us at the Gipsy Kings yelled out for Hotel California which I thought was just her acting drunk or stupid but I discovered she knew something I didn’t.
https://nebraskaexaminer.com/2024/08/06/nebraska-u-s-senate-candidate-dan-osborn-criticizes-kelloggs-closure/
“…the company has spent the past decade trying to cut its labor costs despite running profits of $19 billion before COVID-19 and $21 billion after.”
“Is this a retaliation from the strike?” Osborn asked. “It’s definitely within the realm of possibility. But there are three other plants with the exact same wages. Omaha is the biggest. Seems unlikely that they would close that one.”
From the CEO who advised struggling folks to eat cereal for supper, a retaliatory closure for a strike to send a message to others.
Eat the CEOs.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/2024/08/19/uaw-threatens-to-strike-against-stellantis-over-stalled-plans-to-restart-belvidere-plant/
“The morning after being called out on national television by United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain during the Democratic National Convention, Stellantis has confirmed it is delaying plans to reopen the shuttered Belvidere Assembly Plant.”
“A year later, one company wants to go back on their commitments in our contract,” Fain said, donning a red UAW T-shirt emblazoned with “TRUMP IS A SCAB” across the front.”
“The UAW is threatening a national strike against Stellantis for allegedly violating a labor agreement reached last year in which it committed to investing $5 billion to restart the plant in Belvidere, Illinois, and hire back thousands of workers.”
“The automaker said, however, it stands by its commitment and warned the UAW against taking any strike action.”
“They say they want to ‘delay’ reopening Belvidere Assembly but they really want to kick the can past our contract expiration so they can suddenly cite ‘market conditions’ again and never open this plant, never repair the damage they’ve done to thousands of autoworkers and their families,” Fain said in an email Tuesday.
Jack… great choice!
Ivy… been to Walden Pond many times. That view is from where there is built a replica of Thoreau’s cabin. I find going there better than any church I’ve ever attended.
We’re in deepest, darkest West Virginia right now. Here’s how we know.
These folks are so lost.
Stay safe.
That sign could be 3 miles down the road from me.
Fugging idiot. Dumbass heaps praise on section of wall built by Obama, criticizes section built (partially) under his watch. WaPo.
… just like he did before. /s
Honest to god.
We’re back over the line Pogo, in Craig County VA
The new underground railroad.
https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/trump-harris-election-08-25-24/index.html
“In May, he said that in 2010 a parasitic worm had crawled into his brain and died, causing health problems.”
”Weeks later, Vanity Fair published an article featuring a former part-time babysitter accusing him of sexual assault.”
“The same article also featured a photo he sent to a friend which he implied depicted him eating a dog.”
”Earlier this month, he said he placed a bear carcass in New York’s Central Park in 2014, an incident that drew international media attention at the time.”
“The latest story, originally shared by Kennedy’s daughter Kathleen “Kick” Kennedy in a recently resurfaced 2012 interview with Town & Country Magazine, details how Kennedy once used a chainsaw to cut off the head of a dead whale carcass that had washed up on the shores of their family’s home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. He then drove the whale’s head back to their home in New York on the roof of the family’s minivan, according to the interview.”
Buried in the weirdness is a sexual assault charge.
Just drove by Springsteen’s getaway. 3,000 acres and a herd of buffalo. Paint Bank VA
Roger Miller singing You Can’t Roller Skate in A Buffalo Herd and following up into Chug-a-Lug Chug-a-lug live at Austin City Limits
Roger said he’d always been about 2 weeks ahead of his time.
Renee, today’s nature was an extension of historian Douglas Brinkley’s essay
Walden Pond: An Endangered Treasure
https://issuu.com/discoverconcordma/docs/dcfall20.fullbook_lo-res/s/11009443
Some critics have questioned how far off the grid Thoreau really was.
https://austinkleon.com/2019/08/30/thoreaus-laundry/
Thinking of the laundry, the stranded astronauts only packed for a week.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/8/24/24226860/boeing-starliner-nasa-barry-wilmore-sunita-williams
from CBT: “Stellantis, the automaker behind the Ram brand, plans to indefinitely lay off up to 2,450 factory workers in the U.S. later this year. The layoffs are tied to discontinuing the Ram 1500 Classic, an older version of the popular pickup truck produced at the Warren Truck Assembly Plant near Detroit, Michigan. Since introducing the new-generation Ram 1500 in 2018, this model has primarily served as a budget-friendly option for entry-level buyers and fleet customers.
The decision to end the Ram 1500 Classic production is not entirely unexpected, especially with the recent update of the current Ram 1500 for the 2025 model year. While production at the Warren plant will cease, operations at a nearby facility, where the newer Ram 1500 is built, will continue without disruption.
Despite anticipating the Classic’s phase-out, the lack of a replacement vehicle has raised concerns among local governments, workers, and the United Auto Workers (UAW) union, representing the plant’s employees. The layoffs are expected to begin as early as October, with the final number potentially lower than the announced figure, depending on whether some employees can be reassigned to other positions within the company.
UAW President Shawn Fain criticized Stellantis leadership, particularly CEO Carlos Tavares, for the decision. Fain expressed frustration over the layoffs, pointing out that while Tavares received a 56% pay increase, thousands of autoworkers are losing their jobs.
Personally, a red letter day I cannot shake from memory. 55 years ago today I and 45 other men from my home county in Indiana boarded a bus for Indianapolis for indoctrination + induction into the armed services…I missed by a week of being sent to the US Marine Corp and my group all went into the US Army at Fort Knox, Kentucky. From there, Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Fort Ord-Monterey, Nha Trang, Viet Nam, and Fort Lewis, Washington, all in 2 years.
I came out bitter and unemployable and got sick and had to drop out of college because of the illness and total poverty. My plan was to become a teacher and high school baseball coach, but when I got well I had to scour the area for a paying job, and found a good one as a metals analyzer in a lab, then a better job where I got my UAW card after a while. I was so damn proud of that card! I had to hold back welled-up tears of joy. I served my local at different times as shop steward and trustee and I still vote in UAW International elections. Shawn Fain in my guy all the way. He’s from Kokomo , Indiana, where he starred in high school basketball for the KHS Wildcats. Then came the long ascension to UAW International President. He knows Trump for what he is: a rotten scab bastard.
Ivy…. Thoreau did not live that far off the grid. He built his cabin on the far end of Walden Pond on land owned by Emerson. He went there to write… but also to work through his grief over the loss of his older brother, John… who died of tuberculosis (it eventually did in Henry as well). He walked to town most days and took his brother’s place working in the pencil factory that his family owned.
None of these facts were hidden. But you know how people like to idolize. When they find out that Thoreau went to see his family almost daily in downtown Concord… their bubble of a person living alone in the woods is burst.
Finnish peoples, and others, like to walk in forests to get calm, peaceful and happy. The forest is the happy place.
Mark Skywalker in Chicago.
If you’ve never seen the streaming series “Dickinson,” about Emily Dickinson, it’s worth watching. The episodes with guest appearances by Thoreau and Louisa May Alcott are hilarious.
Renee, I would venture Thoreau has many more defenders than detractors.
Blue Bronc, most Finns go off the grid for the entire month of August.
blue, I’ll check that out, thanks for the suggestion. Amazing how much literary genius resided in that one little town.
Dexter, so grateful you’re here with us today to mark the milestone.
Shawn Fain is a folk hero.
Pogo, I hope Mrs. P. had a blast of a birthday weekend.
Ivy, thanks. I think she did.
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