Mother’s Day Forum
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FILED UNDER: Open Forum
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Today is Mother’s Day. It is a bittersweet day for Dear Wife. Our son Daniel died 14.5 hours after he was born.
We’ll be visiting the cemetery this morning on the way from church. The cemetery, where my mother is also buried, is a little over a mile from the condo DW and I live in and on the most direct roads back and forth to church.
DW and aren’t doing special today. We’ll be eating dinner at home. I will be cooking lamb chops later today.
Oh and here is a laugh for mother’s day.
Trump crypto wallet tokens held mostly by foreign sources:
“Link“
Can you spell “blatantly unconstitutional foreign emolument and screamingly obvious bribe?” I knew you could!
Trump administration poised to accept ‘palace in the sky’ as a gift for Trump from Qatar: Sources
But her emails. But he’s too old. But she has a strange laugh.
More fodder for the continuing debate over Trump’s mental state:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/is-trump-out-of-touch-senile-nuts-or-something-worse/
@Bill Jempty: I’m so sorry. I imagine it’s something you never get over.
Charlotte Clymer speaks for many of us:
Swell. Really swell:
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/pediaflow-research-babies-heart-defects-trump-administration-rcna197155
I have been thinking about how we can make government more accountable to the people, and I keep circling back to a parliamentary system in which the parliament can vote “no confidence” in a leader, and a leader can dissolve parliament and call for new elections.
It’s unrealistic that we could ever make such a huge change in the United States, but I think I thought of a way that we can mimic that situation with a simple constitutional amendment – to wit:
Article 1:
“The President of the United States can be impeached and convicted on a simple majority vote in both houses of Congress
Article 2:
Upon impeachment and removal of a president, the Vice President assumes the presidency for an interim period not to exceed 90 days while presidential elections take place to fulfill the remainder of the impeached president’s term.
Article 3:
All provisions of the 22nd Amendment remain in force.
It feels to me as if such a provision would make the office of the presidency more centrist and more accountable to Congress and to the people generally, and it would naturally temper and restrain the ever-more-powerful, unitary executive’s desires to take radical action.
I’m not completely sold that Article 2 even needs to be there, but I feel like somebody will game the system without it.
Thoughts?
I rarely get political texts. The last one was from the Makanda Township (Jackson County IL) Democrats reminding me of the local election in April. They didn’t ask for money just my vote. It was the second or third political text I have received this year.
I do get political emails every week. Along with notices that I have won a coffee maker from Costco or that I have been pre approved for a no interest Bank Americard or Master charge. Obviously they have not seen my credit score.
The only emails that I might open are from senders that I recognize. It takes less than a minute every day to delete the others.
I’m retired. I’ve got the time.
@Tony W:..interim period not to exceed 90 days while presidential elections take place…
Does this assume that the primary/caucus system to nominate a candidate that currently takes months will be crammed into the 90 days (first 30 days of that time?) and then leave 60 days for candidates to campaign for the election?
While we are at it we might as well eliminate the Electoral College and have a national popular election and forget about the states role in this vote.
@Tony W:
You need to clarify that the Article 1 impeachment can’t be used again until after the election. Otherwise as I read the language, which may not match what you think it says, nothing stops a Congress where party A holds both houses and party B holds the Presidency, from impeaching and convicting the President, then doing it again as soon as the VP is sworn in as President, then the Speaker is elevated.
Contrary to historical US Constitutional precedent, spell out the details. Let us not leave things up to the SCOTUS to decide.
@Tony W:
Article 0: The president of the United States, or the felon rapist usurping the role, may be investigated, indicted, tried, and convicted while in office. Conviction of any criminal charges will also result in removal from office.
@Mikey:
The point is for the rapist to get a free luxury widebody jet. There’s no way the Air Force and the Secret Service will agree to simply allow it to be used as a presidential plane. a lot more goes into the VC-25 than just being a 747 no matter how luxuriously appointed.
There’d have to be a retrofit of lots of stuff, from security measures to coms to other things, and that would take years. So it will never get used for that, but the rapist gets it afterwards.
Of course it’s illegal and corrupt. But by the time the lawsuits are done, and the Leo court finishes delaying things even more, no one will give a damn or the rapist will be dead.
Meantime the wingnutsphere will spin it as a brilliant cost-cutting move.
Happy Mother’s Day. We all have one.
The first half of the opinion piece linked, the author highlights Trump’s suggested “birth incentivization policies” ($5,000 per baby — this while taking an axe to existing child care/education program !!! ). Trump’s ideas are likened to those of the Putin and Mussolini regimes — state encouragement of baby production while systematically killing off citizenry with the typically bad behavior of authoritarianism.
And it is likely correct as the author concludes, that the current decline in birth rates among most “industrialized” societies, stems from anxiety over an increasingly uncertain future as cultures roil with political and ideological change.
The post-WWII baby boom of the last century might serve as a recent confirmation of such a phenomenon. It makes sense that the Western world’s baby making behavior was back on track once the uncertainty of global war was resolved. People also had acquired more available time for lovemaking after the warfighting was over.
But this opinion piece in today’s Guardian, like others on this topic, fails to consider another significant multi-generation shift that has been trending for quite awhile. Scanning the arc of my lifetime, peering back as far as my grandparents’ young adulthood into the earliest part of 1900, our personal lifestyles have evolved radically up to this point in time, now that our own children are of child bearing age.
When my grandparents were young adults, radio was a new cultural phenomenon. Entire families gathered around at appointed times weekly to specific programs for their weekly moment of amusement. Then off to work and/or tending gardens (or farms) that provided necessary subsistence. Eating outside the home consisted of family picnics. Engagement with culture’s 24/7 content spewing onslaught of distraction was non-existent. And they generally had large(er) families. Child mortality rates were higher, but the differential rates worked out to net population growth.
Now we have so many distractions, and so many pathways to self fulfillment, self gratification, self amusement, self distraction. One can fill up their entire lives and not miss a beat for parenthood. In our cultural center of personal identity, “self” reigns supreme — but because there are unlimited options, and much more available time than ever before. In fact, more options than time, as we all know too well.
This Mother’s Day, I’d like to thank the memory of my really great mother (and father), for “taking the time,” because I wouldn’t want to have missed this experience, “for the world.” It keeps me guessing. I’d also like to thank my wife for being a really great mom to our kids. They keep me guessing!
Quick pop quiz:
Who is Siggy Flicker?
1. A porn star who was paid $100,000 hush money by Trump
2. A star of the Real Housewives of New jersey who was just appointed to the Holocaust memorial Board
The correct answer is… #2
Sometimes I feel bad for wishing that Trump strokes out and ends up drooling into his oatmeal. Then I read something like this and realize that he truly is an example of pure malevolence.*
* In all fairness, she isn’t even close to the worst appointment to the Holocaust memorial Board. That would be Sid Rosenberg, who was kicked off Don Imus’ program for being too racist. That would be like David Duke saying he wouldn’t associate with someone because they hated Jews too much. Rosenberg’s greatest hits include saying on the air: “One time, a friend, he says to me, ‘Listen, one of these days you’re gonna see Venus and Serena Williams in Playboy.’ I said, ‘You’ve got a better shot at National Geographic.’” Rosenberg also referred to Venus Williams as an “animal. He was subsequently rehired after an “apology”.
Another of his remarks: In May 2005, Rosenberg was once again fired from Imus in the Morning, this time for comments about singer Kylie Minogue, who had recently been diagnosed with breast cancer. According to a May 25, 2005, New York Post article, Rosenberg said: “She won’t look so pretty when she’s bald with one [breast].”
Sounds like a thoughtful man bursting with compassion. Why put on scholars when you can have Sid Rosenberg.
@Mister Bluster: The more I think about it, I’m fine letting the VP finish out the president’s remaining term, but also subject to impeachment, and on down the line of succession.
I’m not overly concerned about the Speaker becoming president. If the president is that easy to remove, then they will behave in a bipartisan, citizen-forward manner, or they will be out of a job.
@Michael Cain: I think I’m okay with that scenario – if Congress wants to impeach president after president and elevate the Speaker, or the Secretary of State, or whomever, eventually we’ll get somebody who is well liked/respected by a majority of Congress.
But I’m sure I am missing some scenario where bad things happen.
@Kathy: While I appreciate the sentiment behind your Article 0, my goal is to rise above the current situation and create a more accountable executive.
@Kathy: “There’d have to be a retrofit of lots of stuff, from security measures to coms to other things”
For sure, which is why it’s not a gift that benefits the U.S. in any way. He will have a simple-minded expectation that the Air Force can do some stuff to the plane and he can ride around in it. But it will likely take effort, time, and a lot of money to retrofit it to Air Force One standards, perhaps being completed just in time to allow for de-retrofitting and transfer before January 2029.
The retrofit won’t be this simple (Saving Private Ryan).
@Tony W:
By setting up conditions where in the sort of hyper-partisan environment we currently have, a political party in majority can impeach the President? Color me skeptical.
@Mikey:
Rick Wilson called the plane a “flying brothel.”
A minor but interesting thing (ymmv)
In the UK Mother’s Day, or, to use the old form, Mothering Sunday, is movable.
It’s the second Sunday of Lent, three weeks before Easter, so can be any date in March, iirc.
It was 30 March this year.
The old name of Mothering Sunday came from the tradition that children in domestic service or apprenticeships were given a holiday to visit their mothers, and “the mother church”on the day of the mid-Lent relief from fasting.
Happy Mother’s Day to the women of the WWII WASP (Women Airforce Service Pilots), whose contributions are memorialized at the National WASP WWII Museum in Sweetwater, TX, but whose existence has been removed from the Army’s website.
Mothers Day is a tough one for my youngest sister and her husband. They lost their only child, my nephew, in an auto accident in Sept. 2022.
@JohnSF:
We celebrated Mothers Day today. We went to Forbidden Planet (I bought a queer tarot card deck) and an astrology store. I almost bought a book about chaos magic and the financial crisis. It advocated taking a large amount of psychedelics as the start of the journey and I am here for it. My kids got me some crystals.
Then we had Punjabi food that was awesome. It’s also our Mother’s Day tradition to get Indian food.
Now we’re treating the kids to what sounds like rocky beating on a slab of beef but is actually me getting punched in the back cause it makes my back let go and feel better. I was out late dancing with Miss Bashful. That was amazing. But now my back hurts.
@Mikey:
According to this it’s illegal.
https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/reagans/reagan-administration/presidential-gifts
I’ll bet he gets away with it anyway. Because no one has the balls to stop blatant corruption.
@Beth:
Wow, Forbidden Planet is still there?
Cool.
One of my regular haunts back when I lived in London in the 1980’s.
As you do.
“Mushroom soup, anyone?” lol
And Ozric Tentacles or Astralasia at high volume.
(That was the 1990’s; I enjoyed the 1990’s. 🙂 )
Also, had a friend who did back massage, but sometimes I suspected she enjoyed inflicting it a bit too much, lol.
Also: Punjabi food is always a good plan.
@Kathy: “There’d have to be a retrofit of lots of stuff, from security measures to coms to other things, and that would take years. So it will never get used for that, but the rapist gets it afterwards.”
They’re claiming that the air force will do the transformation, and that it might take months or even years.
And Pam Bondi’ “precedent” for allowing Trump to accept a $400 million gift from a foreign government is that Reagan was allowed to have his (discontinued) Air Force One to hang in his museum. Completely the same thing!
@Gromitt Gunn:
wtf?
If that happened in the UK the government would be lucky to survive the week.
What next, the 99th Fighter Squadron gets cancelled?
This week, being the 80th anniversary of VE Day, the dwindling living veterans of that have been celebrated. And (for actuarial reasons) a considerable number of them have been women.
One might think the least anyone could do is not to slight their contributions at this point.
As quite a few have said, this is likely the last decadal remebrance when any of those wonderful and heroic people are still with us.
ftlog, can MAGA not have a shred of decency?
@Bill Jempty:
Thanks for sharing that. I am sorry you and your wife have to deal with that solemn reminder. It’s a testament to your relationship that it survived such a tragic event.
@JohnSF:
Bwa haha hahaha hahaha hahaha
And a belated but sincere wish for a happy mothers day to all the mothers everywhere from Luddite.
I don’t have much feeling towards most holidays, including mother’s day. I reflect every day that being a parent is a joy, a privilege and a responsibility. My child is the person I love the most on this entire planet. Even when she gets mad at me over baby carrots.
@Dutchgirl: I feel that so hard. 😉 My kids are the best thing I’ve ever done, the people who can push my buttons the most, but I’m also still so proud of the people they are becoming.