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  2. If you feel refreshed by failing to see any recent headlines about a certain New York developer recently, then why break the spell?

  3. Trump had one of his Hatefests down in Alabama yesterday.

    When he advocated that those on attendance get vaccinated,he was met with boos.

    We are now witnessing the phenomenon of the movement now subsuming the leader.

    In other words, while Trump remains the leader of his movement,his followers are now letting him know when he strays too much from their views.

    Reacting to the boos,Trump quickly pivoted to the Orwellian “freedom” talk which has become the refuge of Republicans when confronted with a hostile reaction from their party members ,unhappy with their verbiage on trying to alleviate the deaths and sickness ftom Covid.

    The Republican Party 2021

    • Yet we were told here that if Biden were to just give Trump some “award” for the vaccine developing on his watch the MAGAs would crawl over glass to get the vaccine.

      Maybe it’s still Biden and the Democrats fault that Trump got booed for encouraging vaccination.

      • Trump is now the leader and the captive of the trash.

        They will still support Trump ,but now realizing their power in the Republican Party ,he must conform more than he previously did to their hates and prejudices .

        So here we have Trump initially taking the responsible and even moderate approach ,then quickly backtracking after realizing that the trash weren’t prepared to follow him that far.

        Trump?DeSantis?Hawley?Cruz?…they are now captives of the trash and their talk and actions must take such into account.

          • For anyone that cares?

            Matt Gaetz Gets Married

            Vanity Fair: “Coming off a sweep through the Midwest that included stops at the Iowa State Fair and a rally in Des Moines with Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz got married.”

            “In a quiet ceremony on Catalina Island off the coast of California, Gaetz and Ginger Luckey tied the knot. For a guy who craves the spotlight, the event was uncharacteristically understated.”

            • Heavy flooding striking parts of Tennessee left at least 16 people dead and 51 unaccounted for, local authorities said on Sunday.

              The latest: The water had begun to recede on Sunday, per the Washington Post, but officials announced an 8 p.m. curfew and pleaded for caution…

              More…

  4. “ For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind: … ”

    Hosea 8:7 (1611 Authorised [K. James] Version}

    • Storm’s up by u DSD?

      We have the winds picking up from the tail of things

      We Should have rain for another 12 hours or so

  5. Don Everly ,of the early rock n roll duo the Everly Brothers ,has died at age 84.

    The Everlys influenced many of the later 60s and 70s rock stars ,including the Beatles.

    RIP

  6. I’m very sad to see that, Jack.

    They foresaw Pandemic Life with uncanny precision six decades in advance:
    Counting flowers on the wall,
    That don’t bother me at all;
    Playing solitaire ’til dawn,
    With a pack of fifty-one;
    Smoking cigarettes and watching “Captain Kangaroo”;
    Don’t tell me, I’ve nothing to do!

    … and don’t forget to wake up little Susie
    What’ll we tell your mama?
    What’re we gonna tell your pa?
    What’re we gonna tell your friends,
    When they go “Ooh-la-la!”

  7. Silly me (blame a fading baby boomer memory):

    Counting Flowers on the Wall was by the Statler Brothers, not the Everly Brothers.

      • Over 30 years ago when I was in high school people joked that the Rolling Stones Steel Wheels tour should be called “Steel Wheelchairs”. Most of the Stones were still in their 40s then.

        I saw them play on their next tour–Voodoo Lounge–in the mid 90s. They played for several hours, it was a great show

        I know aging rockers can’t live forever but this one hits me kind of hard. RIP Charlie Watts

        • The ‘bad boys’ that lasted longer as a group getting their ‘satisfaction…..

          Bless’m

          • The band had already hired a stand in for Watts when he bowed out of touring a few weeks ago. I knew immediately, what with his age, that this was a bad sign.

            The band will likely play on until Mick or Keith drop. My money would be on Mick going before Keith, what with his heart scare a couple years ago and the renowned “indestructibility” of Keith.

            There’s purportedly another album of new material on the way from both them and the Who. That’ll be interesting, their last albums released almost six decades apart from their first.

  10. Delta Airlines has announced that unvaccinated employees will be charged $200 more per month for health insurance and must submit to a weekly Covid test.

    Great news!(although I would have increased it to a thousand dollars)

    Hopefully more companies will follow their lead.

    • I think many more will. Strange how this all could be avoided if only everyone got vaccinated. Hey James, did you get your jab yet?

      • Your insurance usually charges less if you don’t smoke; why not less if you’re vaccinated?

  11. The Federal Communications Commission proposed a record-breaking $5 million fine against right-wing political operatives Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman on Tuesday, after an investigation by the agency found that the two men appeared to have violated US robocalling laws.

    The decision, which is not yet final, follows charges by Michigan’s attorney general last year linked to hundreds of robocalls allegedly created by Wohl and Burkman and designed to discourage voting in the 2020 election. The robocalls allegedly warned listeners that voters’ personal information would be used against them by credit card companies and police departments.
    In May, New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a separate lawsuit against Wohl and Burkman over similar allegations of voter suppression.
    If affirmed, the proposed FCC fine against Wohl and Burkman would represent the largest ever brought under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, the FCC said. The law outlaws robocalls sent to consumers who have not previously opted into receiving the calls….

    By Brian Fung and Chandelis Duster, CNN
    Updated 9:53 AM ET, Wed August 25, 2021

    https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/25/politics/fcc-fines-jacob-wohl-jack-burkman/index.html

  12. A Quinnipiac Poll finds that 59% of Floridians don’t want Dr. Death DeSantis to run for President.Meanwhile school districts throughout the state are openly violating Deaths hysterical anti mask edict.

    1

    • Could those numbers hurt his Governor run next year?

      The Fed’s have told school district’s in Florida and Texas that their federal money WILL continue even if DeSantis says no masks and they still require them…..,,

  13. A few months ago, Gov. Ron DeSantis, Republican of Florida, declared his hands-off approach to COVID-19 “a tremendous success.” Politico announced that he had “won the pandemic.”

    But then came the hypercontagious Delta variant, which continues to hit Florida harder than anywhere else in the country.

    The result? DeSantis just added another, less flattering distinction to his résumé. When COVID first surged across the Sun Belt last summer, the average number of Floridians dying of the disease every 24 hours peaked at 185, according to the New York Times’s state-by-state COVID database. The same was true over the winter.

    A few days ago, however, Florida’s daily death rate cleared 200 for the first time, and today it stands at 228 — an all-time high.

    This makes DeSantis the first (and so far only) governor in the U.S. whose state is now recording more COVID-19 deaths each day — long after free, safe and effective vaccines became widely available to all Americans age 12 or older — than during any previous wave of the virus….

    Andrew Romano·West Coast Correspondent
    Yahoo! News
    Wed, August 25, 2021, 5:00 AM

    https://news.yahoo.com/florida-is-the-only-state-where-more-people-are-dying-of-covid-now-than-ever-before-what-went-wrong-090001893.html

    • Man sentenced to 6 years in prison in Michigan governor kidnap plot

      Ty Garbin is among six men charged in federal court but the only one to plead guilty so far….

      More…

  16. Boston Mayoral Candidates Forum

    Wednesday, September 1 | 5:30 p.m.

    The Massachusetts Women of Color Coalition (MAWOCC), The Boston Globe, League of Women Voters (LWV) of MA and LWV Boston, Massachusetts Women’s Political Caucus, Women’s Pipeline for Change, Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy, UMASS Boston, and the Massachusetts Multicultural Society of Boston cordially invite all Boston Mayoral candidates to participate in a moderated forum. Candidates will discuss women’s issues and issues related to women of color.

    • Sen. Robert F. Kennedy’s assassin was granted parole Friday after two of RFK’s sons spoke in favor of Sirhan Sirhan’s release and prosecutors declined to argue he should be kept behind bars.

      The decision was a major victory for the 77-year-old prisoner, though it does not assure his release….

      More…

  18. I’m posting here because comments are closed at the Supreme Court term article that James & Jack were discussing.

    For once, I think James is probably right in saying “ain’t gonna happen”.

    Because the Republican Party will (in any foreseeable future) control more than a third of the federal House (>145), more than a third of the U.S. Senate (>33) and at least one legislative chamber in more than a quarter (>12) of the States.

    And, unless the U.S. Supreme Court, including its most conservative Justices, lurches in an utterly different direction, there’s no way that Republicans — having stretched way past the limits of traditional convention to squeeze three younger conservative Justices for lifetime terms — would make those terms shorter and risk having a Democratic or centrist President replace any of those Justices with someone with more liberal views.

    • Thank You DSD…….

      I don’t think Biden is up any changes either in the court size……

      • No need to thank someone for agreeing with you (though there’s no need for me to reject thanks).

        That’s what’s wrong with this place: everyone takes everything so personally. Every six months since James set this up over a decade ago, someone gets so upset that he (never she) leaves in an angry huff.

        Opposing an idea, or even criticising performance, is not some kind of personal attack, and shouldn’t hurt anyone by making him feel it is personal.

        • Speaking for myself, I don’t get upset when someone disagrees with me. I do get upset with deliberate lies by one person only, and I get frustrated when one person doesn’t appear to understand my point, or struggles to communicate articulately.

          Simply because James states emphatically that people leave because they feel attacked doesn’t make it true. They mostly leave for other reasons.

  19. Indiana University completed a study on who contributes to racial justice causes. I am embarrassed to report that whites were the least likely to contribute.

    But what I found even more disturbing was that non-religious people were more likely to donate to Social justice causes than religious people. That is quite an indictment of organized religion (or at least some religions).

    • I can totally affirm the truth of the statistic about religious versus non religious. The vast number of people I know from my last Church, within one of the more Liberal denominations at that, have “ghosted” me over my political ‘heresies,’ this topic foremost among them.

  20. That is certainly NOT true among all denominations. Although blacks only represent a small percentage of Unitarian Universalists, the church is committed to racial justice. The UU Church I attended while living in NJ when had a giant Black Lives Matter banner on the church.

    Here is rhe Unitariam Universalist position on racial justice:
    https://www.uua.org/racial-justice

  21. I think frustration is the reason people sometimes leave, mainly cause of the points Zreebs listed.

    I presume there was the hint of sarcasm in DSDs shout out to James’s “told ya so.”No one in his right mind would believe that the Republicans would ever consent to changing the Supreme Court.I originally thought that “told ya so” routine was sort of self effacing, that James was saying it tongue in cheek Then I realized that the guy really thought he was “educating” us here.Simce almost all of these TYSs are so self obvious ,they bespeak nothing so much as one of his many delusions.

    I don’t think CG will ever return.The bizarre manner in which he left would require him to East so much of the proverbial crow that his personality wouldn’t allow such.

    • It is truly frustrating that our host clearly doesn’t understand many of the issues here. It has, at times, made it more frustrating to post given his lack of comprehension.

      Besides, I hear Barack Obama telling me to stop arguing and do something. The Recall now has my attention.

      I hope Jack is wrong and Corey does return with his own special form of whatabout Republicanism from years ago. Unfortunately for Corey his party moved back to the stone age four years ago and isn’t coming back.

      • Everybody here knows CG’s name, and I bet nobody even thinks of him by his new name. If I recall correctly, James had him banned and therefore CG changed his name.

        I thought we treated CG fairly. Perhaps we crossed the line every so often, but so did he. I mean nobody ever even threatened to call his employer, and nobody published potentially embarrassing information about his past.

        I don’t think CG has to eat crow if he returns. I hope he does return too. Right now, 75% of the posts here are from the same person.

        • Oh I disagree.

          The bizzare reason he left ,as best I understand is as follows:

          After he was banned,James requested he return to provide an” alternative view.”He “gracefully “ consented on condition that NO ONE( emphasis added) be allowed to use his given name.He then returned ,although James never revealed this “ secret agreement “ to the rest of us.

          After his return, Keith continued to refer to him by his given name without any public objection from him.

          For reasons unknown,one day ,after DSD had inadvertently used his given name,he revealed this “secret agreement” and essentially demanded it’s enforcement.James basically blew the whole thing off after CG challenged him to enforce it.

          And with that he left.

          Yeah ,if he returns ,after Keith has made it clear he will continue to address him by his given name?Then he is ,in effect,conceding that after he had made this mountain out of a molehill ,he is dropping his “ demand” and implicitly admitting that it was all a bunch of bs.Thats called, eating crow.

          Given his persona here I can’t see him doing that.

          • There was no secret agreement……

            People give their handles

            I go by that

            For EVERYBODY

            Keith and the guy go back a long ways

              • Corey said a lot of things.

                Including an accusation that I suggested another blogger kill themselves.

                James wants people here posting and Corey’s return meant mega posts.

                I doubt the “agreement” included a request that I not be allowed to call him by his proper name, that came later when the label became too annoying for him.

                My theory, the use of Corey Gross on a search engine reveals posting history during work hours.

                After his threats to me, I find that ironic.

            • It was a long time ago. People forget the details over time – even if they genuinely think they remember everything. My best guess is that James’s version sounds more realistic, but who knows? It wouldn’t be the first time that I didn’t share CG’s version of the truth.

          • CG’s political arguments usually are conveniently devoid of facts. So he will just do what he usually does, and just ignore inconvenient truths that his political philosophy can’t adequately explain.

            If he returns, he will just pretend that nothing happened. I’m fine with that. I really am.

            • Speaking of CG,Tate Reeves the Republican Governor of Mississippi ,whom CG earlier said was doing a “good” job with Covid ,told a Republican fundraiser that Mississippians weren’t that scared of Covid because they were mostly Christians and “,,,believe that living on the earth is but a blip on the screen, then you dont have to be so scared of a thing.”

              Also could be an argument for suicide I presume.

              The Republican Party 2021

  22. (Hamilton) Ohio Little League team beats (Sioux Falls) S. Dakota 5-2 in the Tom Seaver semi-final of the L.L. World Series in Williamsport, Pa.

    Both teams happened to dress in red and come from what are now Red states (Kristi Noem & the Cheneys vs Rob Portman & the DeWines).

    Despite my politics (I could instead have recalled Geo. McGovern and John Glenn), it was hard not to cheer on the South Dakota team, who while behind 5-2 in the bottom of the last (6th) inning, loaded the bases and would have won on a single home run or a series of singles.

    At 3:30, two blue states, Hawaii and Michigan (coincidentally dressed in blue) play in the Hank Aaron semi-final.

    With no international participants due to Covid-19, tomorrow’s final will decide the champion.

  27. New Public Policy Institute poll in CA shows 58% opposed to recalling Gov Gavin Newsom. 39% in favor.

  29. The school district in Waukesha, Wisconsin, voted in June to opt out of President Joe Biden’s free-lunch program, with one member arguing that children and families could become “spoiled” with free meals. Nearly two months later, after widespread criticism, the district opted back in and acknowledged it didn’t know how many children go hungry.

    The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported on Monday that in a 5-4 vote, the Waukesha school board rescinded its decision and opted back into the pandemic free-lunch program, which gives meals to all K-12 students regardless of income.

    Superintendent James Sebert had asked the members to reconsider. After weighing feedback, the board’s president, Joseph Como, said he hadn’t been aware of all the situations of hunger in the district.

    “I appreciate your input very much,” Como said at the meeting on Monday, according to the Journal Sentinel. “I eat every meal every day. I cannot relate to being hungry. I’ve been blessed.”

    Another member, Greg Deets, said he had voted to opt out of the program because he hadn’t known the extent to which students in the district go unfed.

    “I made the earlier votes without really looking at all the implications and I wasn’t really informed and I apologize for that,” Deets said. “The truth is that many of our students are hungry throughout the school day and we have the ability to do something about that.”

    But other members didn’t feel the same way. At the meeting, the Journal Sentinel reported, Karin Rajnicek, who made headlines for saying free school meals could make students and families “spoiled,” defended her comments and said she’d been speaking from her own experience of feeling spoiled by free meals for her children.

    Other members described the board’s changing course as giving in to intimidation.

    “If it’s food and free lunch today, it will be forced masking, forced whatever-we-want-to-do in schools because the mob will have the power to tell us what to do,” Anthony Zenobia said, according to the Journal Sentinel….

    https://news.yahoo.com/wisconsin-school-board-president-backtracked-141209240.html

  31. One decade ago today, probably my very dearest friend died. I’ve moved past the point of thinking about Tim(TPL) every day and have begun the process of moving on with my life, but every so often I do think of him again, though less with remorse than gratitude these days. As President Biden himself has said many times, “There will come a day where the thought brings a smile to your face before it brings a tear to your eye.”

    RIP Tim. You were a better friend to me than you had any right to be.

    https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/76706612/timothy-peter-leal

    • I remember James announcing Tim Leal’s death to the blog. I think it was “Tim Leal is gone” or maybe it was “Tim Leal is no more”.

      Glad that the Ghost has fully recovered and has fond memories.

                • Daniel WAS a Democrat….

                  Then one election ….

                  Honestly I forgot which turned him off to the party….

                  He just switched sides and finally gave up after the abuse he got here…

                  We actually had several Republicans on the site….

                  Even a NY Republican….

                  But the place IS a Democratic strong hold….

                  The Republican’s here put up a fight and actually make things more interesting ….

                  But eventually?

                  They give up and slide away….

                  Probably to friendlier territory….

                  Some also turn to other things in their lives….

                  This place has been going since 2009….

                  P1 of course started us off a while ago….

      • I remember announcing it, in quite a haze admittedly, in the comments section and James front paged it.

        A couple of years ago, I’d gotten past the loss just enough to where I started to reckon with some of the more troublesome aspects of TPL’s political “compass,” as it were. Fondness for the Rebel flag, 9/11 trutherism, among other things. Truth be told, I do not know if my friendship would have lasted because I don’t know where he’d have gone in the whole Trump/Covid/Election 2020 mess.

        I do wish he’d have lived so he could have had a chance to experience personal things he’d never gotten the chance to in the first 32 years. There was a co worker I’d met last year who was close enough to the age he would have been, and I found myself wishing I could have introduced them. But she was crazy in her own right.

        He was a great friend in life, but I do wonder about the ensuing years if he’d had the chance to see them.

        • But whatever the speculatives and curiosities, if there was one thing I could have taken from all the time I had with him, it was living in a generous way. Having that in some of my most impressionable years definitely led me to where I am today.

  34. With just over a week to go, [Boston] mayoral rivals spar for second as Michelle Wu pulls ahead
    ¶ Candidates vie for chance to face off against the front-runner, seen as likely victor in Sept. 14 preliminary election

    By Stephanie Ebbert, [Boston] Globe Staff,
    Updated September 5, 2021, 6:21 p.m.

    In the final days of the preliminary election, City Councilor and mayoral candidate Michelle Wu was campaigning in the South End amid drums, tambourines, and dancing by Latinx supporters, who cheered her on with an impromptu and bullish refrain: “Michelle Wu … Va a ganar (will win),” they sang.

    Outside Housing Court in Boston, the vibe was far more somber at a press conference convened by mayoral contender Andrea Campbell to urge Acting Mayor Kim Janey to impose a pandemic eviction moratorium — Campbell’s latest effort to nudge her way into the news by needling Janey. Mayoral rival and Councilor Annissa Essaibi George soon piled on, suggesting Janey was doing too little, too late to protect renters, eliciting a rare, sharp pushback from the acting mayor, who has tried to stay out of the fray.

    With just nine days left until the election and early voting already open, the contrasting dynamics showcased a race in which polls suggest only one candidate, Wu, has a clear shot at advancing to the Nov. 2 final, while the other three women in the race are grappling in an intensifying competition for the chance to face off against her.

    “Kim Janey, Annissa Essaibi George, and Andrea Campbell are all fighting for that second slot,” said Democratic political consultant Mary Anne Marsh, who is not working with any of the campaigns and isn’t otherwise supporting a specific candidate.

    A closer look at the Boston mayoral candidates’ ideas for housing, education, and other key issues as election day nears
    The fifth major candidate, John Barros, the city’s former chief of economic development, is running far behind the women in polls.

    The shift has been most noticeable for Janey, who was riding high in polls earlier this summer but who slipped in recent surveys, and who appeared to adjust her strategy of ignoring her rivals last week as she sustained more criticism….

    https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/09/05/metro/with-more-than-week-go-mayoral-rivals-spar-second-michelle-wu-pulls-ahead/

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