Thursday’s Forum
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The Florida headline of the day- ‘Fake nurse’ arrested in Florida after seeing more than 4,000 patients
Trump Names Himself Chair of LA Olympics Task Force, Sees Role for Military During Games
1936 Olympics, anyone?
It’s been 10 days since trump announced a deadline of “about 10 or 12 days from now” for Russia to act on ending the war in Ukraine.
@Scott:
There’s already an Organizing Committee…so WTF is he doing? Stealing some valor? He will be the lamest of ducks in 2028.
The current Taco so-called administration reminds me a lot of Mao’s disastrous Great Leap “Forward”*.
At one point people were starving, while Mao proclaimed China was producing so much food Chinese should be eating six meals per day.
Now it’s “we’re going to be so rich” and “trillions in manufacturing investment,” while unemployment and inflation go up.
*Why the bleeping hell have historians not renamed this policy to reflect its actual effects?
@Scott:
@Daryl:
Oh I see, it’s another example of Dear Leader being manipulated. A sentence seen on this venue often;
This is an opinion piece but I have little doubt, based on other recent events, that its conclusions are correct.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/columnist/nancy-armour/2025/08/05/trump-olympics-task-force-2028-los-angeles/85527459007/
The bidding process began in 2015 and the games were awarded in 2017. So Trump is injecting himself into a decade old effort.
Have you ever worked with someone who did nothing and took all the credit? Those kinds of people are universally beloved.
If you have seen the renderings for Trump’s proposed Ballroom Addition to the White House, and you have any sense of design, then you are likely as aghast as I am.
I was encouraged to find an e-mail from the AIA in my inbox this morning (nice to know they are doing something with my dues). From the email;
It will be interesting to see how this all plays out as Trump sees himself as the ultimate arbiter of taste and culture.
Blech….
On this day in1942 the 1st Marine Division landed on Guadalcanal, a Japanese held island in the Soloman Islands, beginning the first American offensive land campaign of WW II. The campaign went on for the next five months of bitter jungle fighting until in January 1943 when the last of the defeated Japanese Army escaped by sea.
Assuming that Trump is actually ordering a new national census, when does he imagine that useful results will become available?
The Census Bureau is just now beginning to gear up for 2030.
If Trump expects a new census to justify redistricting (or creating new districts) before 2026, he should have “ordered” it three years ago.
What data from the 2024 presidential election is important to counting the “whole number of people” ?
I anticipate no difficulty with this plan:
One teeny, tiny little question: which Arab nation is going to win the right to police occupied Gaza on behalf of Israel? No, no, don’t all rush at once, form an orderly queue.
Checking in from Beth Israel Hospital in Boston. Just wanted to say hi to everyone.
@CSK:
WTF? You OK?
A couple of notable passings-
Golfer Mike Hill passed away at age 86. Hill won only three times on the PGA Tour but 19 times on the Senior circuit. He was known to a quiet man, the reverse of his brother Dave who was arguably golf’s most famous gadfly*.
Dame Stella Rimington has passed away at age 90. She was the first woman to head the UK’s MI-5. After that career ended, she turned to writing the Liz Carlyle espionage novels. I have read some of those books and enjoyed them. They are 20 times better than a farcical thriller I just finished reading that I bought for .99** at Amazon and that’s 98 cents more than it was worth. Mike Bond’s garbage won’t deter me from picking up the rest of the Carlyle series. RIP Mike Hill and Dame Stella.
*- Dave Hill said about a US Open golf course that all it was missing was ’80 acres of corn and a few cows.’
**- My dung beetle book was priced .99 cents too but readers at least knew there was going to be lots of sh## in the book.
@Michael Reynolds:
Thanks for asking. I had a fasciaotomy on my right leg because of an occlusion on July 11.
I don’t comment much, but I’m reading others’ comments with enjoyment.
@CSK: Put down that fork full of salisbury steak and macaroni and cheese and tell us what’s going on.
Oh I see you updated us. Get well soon. Now wash down that hospital food with a Shasta or Diet Ginger Ale.
@Michael Reynolds:
They are all standing in the Q for the loo instead.
@CSK: can you say that in American?
Sure is good to hear from you, regardless.
@CSK: Yay! A CSK “sighting” 🙂
I hope you are on the mend very soon. I miss you! xo
@CSK:
I hope they let you out soon.
Why don’t hospitals have express checkout options?
This makes me absolutely livid.
US Air Force to deny retirement pay to transgender service members being separated from the service
Not only will these airman have retirement pay taken away, they will have benefits, including medical benefits, taken. It is theft.
Petty, spiteful.
At some point someone will break and violence will occur.
@Bobert:
I’m completely certain the constitution does not allow for such a census. I’m 99.9% certain all courts would strike it down, except the fixer court.
As to the 2024 data, I think that’s MAGA code for something.
The idea is not to count undocumented immigrants. Allegedly because this gives blue states outsize representation (has anyone looked at the Senate, like, ever?) But if it’s enacted, it will turn out there are no undocumented immigrants in Texas anymore.
@Bill Jempty: @becca: @Kathy: @Jen:
Aaahh, thank you!
Per NBC, Dean Cain (Superman) is being made an honorary ICE agent.
We live in Bizarro World.
On lighter stuff, I’m reading another time travel novel, Time’s Eye by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter*. People from the 21st and 19th centuries (don’t ask) meet two notable, rather well documented ancient civilizations. that’s fine, I mean, use time travel for something, right? But they turn out to be exactly as described in history books. So much so, that our heroes of the present and near past can figure them out rather well.
I find that a bit disappointing. take the opportunity to make something up. there’s a lot, and I mean a LOT, that doesn’t get recorded, and doesn’t make the history books. Like how ordinary people lived and what they thought. Even in highly cultured societies like Greece and Rome, and in merchant societies like Phoenicia, the vast majority of the population were illiterate, especially those lower down in the economic order. these people, alas, left few records, where they left any at all.
Some of what is known of poorer people, to boot, is what the more affluent, literate classes wrote about them. Like the Egyptian story of the eloquent peasant. Which, at that, tells more about the elite than the peasantry.
* It’s a trilogy, and a bit past halfway though the first book, it’s been 99% buildup. I got it because the other book by these two authors I read, Light of Other Days, was very good.
I actually went to high school with him. I’m not sure why he was here in this podunk town, I think it had something to do with Hirsch buying out so many ranches, but he was a typical cowboy asshole. That said, that’s a young age to die.
https://www.ksl.com/article/51357724/brandon-blackstock-kelly-clarksons-ex-husband-and-former-manager-dies-at-48
On the way home from My wife and daughter’s dance class tonight, noticed we were past by the convoy of oversized pickup trucks with their large American flags and Trump 2028 flags.
Sure glad somebody’s winning besides the ugly orcs (voice recognition technology correcting my pronunciation of ogliarchs?).