Sunday Serendipity

By Jace, a Trail Mix Contributor

One more Christmas selection to finish out the season. Lively, and upbeat.

Enjoy the music but most of all enjoy the day. ?

More Posts by Jace

Share

32 thoughts on “Sunday Serendipity”

  2.  As one who has trouble walking and chewing gum at the same time, holy shit – Fiddling and dancing at the same time?That is a wonderful arrangement and piece of choreography. Great find, Jace. 
     
    XR, if we’d gone to the title game in August you wouldn’t have gotten the opportunity to brag on the Gophers. 

  8. Jace… you obviously saved the best for last!
    Flatus…  one of my favorite pieces of music!  I wish your Cleveland Browns much luck today.
    Sturg…  finally…  you’ve been missed!

  10. general -ly speaking , not a good day for the twit.
     
    wapo:
    Retired Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the former commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, sharply criticized President Trump on Sunday, calling him immoral and untruthful and taking aim at his foreign policy decisions.
     
    In an interview on ABC News’s “This Week,” McChrystal told host Martha Raddatz of Trump, “I don’t think he tells the truth.” The general also responded affirmatively when asked whether he believes Trump is “immoral.”
    [continues]
     
    and also from wapo:
    A few months ago, a senior Trump administration official wrote a controversial anonymous op-ed in the New York Times that said forces within the administration were working to rein in President Trump’s potentially damaging whims.
     
    In a recent interview, Trump’s departing chief of staff basically confirmed that’s exactly what has happened for the past two years.
     
    A Los Angeles Times interview with John F. Kelly published Sunday says:
     

    In the phone interview Friday, Kelly defended his rocky tenure, arguing that it is best measured by what the president did not do when Kelly was at his side.

    […]
    But at the core of Kelly’s comments was the same thing: a top Trump administration official suggesting that the political novice in the White House makes decisions with his gut and without much regard for the information that the smart people around him try to give him. The idea that Kelly regards his biggest success as standing in Trump’s way is a pretty strong indictment of Trump as a person and of his presidency. It is also perhaps a warning of what’s to come as Trump is increasingly surrounded by yes-men and -women.
     
    All of these are the comments of a man who knows his legacy will be tied to Trump — and who isn’t entirely comfortable with that. The Times asked him about exactly that in its ending:
     

    Asked why he stayed 18 months in the White House, despite policy differences, personality clashes, the punishing schedule, and a likely lasting association with some of Trump’s controversies, he said simply: duty.

    “Military people,” he said, “don’t walk away.”

  11. Don’t you think he is more amoral?
    The only thing propping him up now is the senate.     And the biggest proper is the turtle.   So now Mitch are you a hero or a gooper goat?   What do you want people to remember about you.  How you obstructed Obama?   How you enabled the worst president ever?   Or…..
     

  13. If you in the Confederate Army and told to build a fort in the middle of no where in Virginia, off the coast of the Chesapeake Bay, to prepare for the Union Army arriving, yet you, and everyone else knew, the Federal troops were not in the region, what would you name the fort.  This is a great story and fun to visit.  It is a bit off the beaten and not so beaten path.  I will post something later.

  15. Sturgeon,
    I can’t break through on my tablet.
    Have to use my phone to post any thing. The tablet and the phone both use safari. Go figure.?

  17. new year’s day
    black eyed peas cooked with hog jowls,  collards cooked with bacon, cornbread or hoe (johnny/journey) cakes depending on what’s easier.
    what else?   mustn’t mess with the mythical mojo

  19. New Year’s Day menu?  Don’t know yet. 
     
    I do miss one of the fun things that was a yearly event.  A politician and his wife held a Bloody Mary and buffet at their house.  Invitation only (unless you were a politician or staffer).  I would bring a large pitcher of my kick ass Bloody Mary’s with baby octopus or small shrimp in it.  I did the first it the first year just to see if anyone would notice.  They did, all the little octopus were gone, same with the shrimp.  So each year I did the same mix and it would all go be consumed. Least you think someone threw the little critters away, I saw people scooping them out for their drinks.  This event ended when he left office.

  20. When in doubt ask a young person. My son just updated my tablet and I can now post from it again. Much easier than my phone!?

  21. Dinner @ friends’ home. Chicken w/old vine zin for me. Chicken w/gewuertztraminer for Sweetie.

  23. Apologies in advance for my bandwidth violation. I promise that I shall be a better trail hand next year.
    magicvalley.com
    Lawsuit claims Idaho’s ‘physicians-only’ abortion law is unconstitutional
    GRETEL KAUFFMAN gkauffman@magicvalley.com
    4-5 minutes

    TWIN FALLS — A legal challenge to an Idaho law limiting who can perform abortions could make abortion services more accessible for Magic Valley residents if it is successful, proponents say.
    The lawsuit, filed Dec. 14 by Planned Parenthood and the Seattle-based advocacy group Legal Voice, argues that Idaho’s law requiring abortions to be performed by a licensed physician is unconstitutional.
    The suit points to research demonstrating that advanced practice clinicians — a class of medical professional that includes nurse practitioners, physician assistants and nurse midwives — are medically qualified to “safely and effectively” provide abortion care as well.
    Idaho is one of 42 states with such a requirement, according to data from the Guttmacher Institute. It’s the second state to have the law challenged in court after Planned Parenthood filed a similar lawsuit in Maine in 2017.
    “A lot of states passed these physicians-only statutes in the wake of Roe v. Wade, in large part because there was a concern about unskilled, untrained, unlicensed providers providing abortion care,” said Kim Clark, a senior attorney with Legal Voice. “But the delivery of medical care has changed drastically since these laws were passed.”
    Under the current law, women often have to travel long distances within a narrow window of time in order to receive an abortion, Clark and others behind the lawsuit say.
    There are five abortion-providing facilities in Idaho, including three Planned Parenthood clinics in Twin Falls, Boise and Meridian. A shortage of physicians in Idaho, particularly in rural areas, exacerbates accessibility-related challenges, the lawsuit’s plaintiffs say.
    If the statute were changed to let advanced practice clinicians perform abortions, the lawsuit’s plaintiffs say, existing clinics could offer abortion services more days a week, with the potential for additional new clinics to open. Ninety-five percent of Idaho counties do not have a clinic that provides abortions, with 68 percent of Idaho women living in those counties, according to data from 2014.
    Rep. Fred Wood of Burley, a retired physician and chairman of the House Health & Welfare Committee, said he was not aware of the law before Thursday. As far as he knows, Wood said, discussion of changing the law has never come up in the Idaho statehouse.
    One of the lawsuit’s plaintiffs, Mary Stark, is an Oregon-based nurse practitioner who previously lived in Idaho and has worked in Planned Parenthood clinics in Twin Falls and Ada County.
    In Twin Falls, a physician is present in the Planned Parenthood clinic just two days a month — meaning that if a woman chooses to have an abortion, there are only two days a month which she can do so. However, there is typically an advanced practice clinician at the clinic about four days a week.
    The Boise Planned Parenthood has a physician in the clinic about one day a week, but an advanced practice clinician is in the office six days a week.
    While working in Twin Falls, Stark said, she often saw women who traveled hours from neighboring areas — and while working in Boise, she saw some who drove from Twin Falls because they weren’t able to arrange their schedule around the two-day-a-month window.
    “The woman would have to decide, ‘Can I rearrange my life around that one day or do I have to continue this pregnancy?’” Stark said.
    Twin Falls County Prosecuting Attorney Grant Loebs is listed as a defendant in the lawsuit, along with the Attorney General Lawrence Wasden, Ada County Prosecuting Attorney Jan Bennetts, and members of the State Board of Medicine and State Board of Nursing.
    Loebs said his office has never had to enforce the law locally.
    In neighboring Oregon, where she is currently based, Stark is legally permitted to perform medication and aspiration abortions. She is also allowed to administer medication abortions in Washington.
    “It’s like my skills magically dry up when I cross the border,” Stark said.
    The Attorney General’s Office had no comment on the lawsuit as it’s considered pending litigation, a spokesman for the office said.

  24. Well, it’s the last day of 2018 and I have to admit I won’t miss it. There were a few bright spots amidst the horrendous political events, but by and large those bright spots were not in the world of politics. I’ll generate a post later. In the meantime, we can start bidding 2018 adieu. 

  25. today’s Question:  why does the times square ball go depressingly down instead of an uplifting hopeful up?
    must be same reasoning that is behind the political party conventions different balloon procedures; i.e., gopers’ balloons condescendingly descend upon the crowd and the dembats optimistically (like ever hopeful Charlie Brown football attempts) ascend with the crowd spirits.

  26. XR, the hypocrisy of the states “protecting“ pregnant women is stunning. They are protecting the votes from their “pro life” base and don’t give a flying fuck about the pregnant women, their aborted fetuses or the kids born to women without the means to get around their oppressive laws. 

  28. Trump is having a Twitter meltdown this morning.  He’s speaking of himself in the third person and contradicting statements made by others who were passing along what he said yesterday.  He is showing definite signs of mental deterioration. 

  30. Good morning to all hands and happy last day of 2018!
    After having last week off, I’m doing some work today. Then my Lady and I will hermit the evening away. We’ll probably pop a Marvel flick into the Blue Ray, with a dinner of tuna casserole. We rarely make it to midnight anymore. We used to observe the east coast new year at our 21:00 PST, but now that we’re in MST I don’t know if we’ll make it to 22:00. So we shall ring in the new year whenever we roll out of bed tomorrow.
    Regardless, we’re looking forward to what lies in store in 2019.

  31. Can someone figure this out for me?

    “An all concrete Wall was NEVER ABANDONED, as has been reported by the media,” the president said. “Some areas will be all concrete but the experts at Border Patrol prefer a Wall that is see through (thereby making it possible to see what is happening on both sides). Makes sense to me!”

    Sounds to me like it was abandoned.  I’m with Kelly on this issue.

  32. And while my understanding of the stock market is rudimentary at best, here’s one explanation for the rise in the market last Wednesday:

    Beleaguered investors may want to thank pension funds for the stock market’s biggest daily jump in nine years last Wednesday, which helped set the stage for Wall Street’s first weekly gain in an otherwise gloomy December.
     
    Strategists at Wells Fargo said that the market’s last-gasp rally last week may have been driven by buying from pension funds who needed to rebalance their portfolios towards stocks and out of bonds in to keep asset allocations in line.
     
    As of Dec. 20, they estimated defined-benefit pension plans for U.S. corporations needed to shift around $64 billion of funds into stocks before the end of the year.

    * * *
    The market’s post-Christmas climb appeared to come from nowhere in holiday-thinned trading, leading some to point the finger at pension funds who need to tweak their portfolios before the end of every month and every quarter. Pension funds need periodic readjustment as outperformance or underperformance in one corner of the pension fund’s assets can put its allocation out-of-kilter with its target weighting.

    So the Wednesday gain was more like a financial version of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic than a reflection of any confidence in trump, the market, the economy or anything else. Figures.

Comments are closed.