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Wednesday’s Forum
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24 responses to “Wednesday’s Forum”
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@Jen: I am seeing others saying that no, there is no tarp up, just the fencing, and the fencing appears to be fireworks-related. I think that makes more sense–a tarp around an open area like that would just blow off. So, ignore the above update.
What a strange time we live in.
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I finally got around to cooking the Xmas turkey yesterday.
I expected a long cooking day, but not this long…
Butchering the turkey to separate breast from wings and legs went ok, considering I’ve never done it before. Then various things went wrong. For one, I neglected to measure the room the roasting pan would take in the oven. I’d planned to cook the side of garlic potatoes along with the turkey, but the pan required so much space, I couldn’t fit the cast iron pan with the potatoes at the same time…
Oh, well. The turkey came out exactly as intended. I also managed to roast all the bones, scrape all the drippings and bits from the roasting pan, make stock, and make gravy. The only issue there were the wings. I intended to roast them along with the bones and add them to the stock, but they didn’t fit in the instant pot.
I froze some of the meat and all the remaining stock. I think I’ll make turkey enchiladas for next week.
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World Cup update: As of this morning, each of the 48 teams has played 2 of its 3 matches in the group stage. Seven teams (including Mexico and U.S.) have already qualified for the knockout round of 32 , and five teams (Türkiye, Tunisia, Jordan, Panama, Haiti) have been eliminated from the knockout rounds with one group match to play.
Little Cape Verde and littler Curacao can still advance, depending on their respective group third match results. Cape Verde’s chances are pretty good, while Curacao is very much a longshot considering their position in the group.
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Several days ago, I posted on this site that Hegseth’s policy making flu vaccinations optional for military personnel was unwise. There have been 222 cases at Lackland Air Force base with four hospitalizations and one possible death. The vaccine is now mandatory again. Seat belts, life vests in boats, and helmets in combat are under consideration as long as they don’t interfere with manliness.
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@Jen:
Perhaps the fencing is fireworks related, in part, but there is reporting that it is also meant to keep people away from the reflecting pool, such as this:“With the increase in vandalism by leftist activists, the fencing is going up earlier than originally planned to ensure no more damage is done to this historic site,” an Interior Department spokesperson told The Hill…
Probably the same Interior spokesperson who thought the reflecting pool harbored marine life.
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@Eusebio: Unsurprising, really. “Vandals” is the new “paid protesters” nonsense…
On a completely different topic, the only notable piece of bipartisan legislation to actually pass Congress is being held hostage by the President, until he gets his unconstitutional poll tax/voting bill passed. Sigh.
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Boy, are the top guys at the NYTimes pissed today. They spent days warning about how Mamdani — who they seem to hate far more than they could ever be bothered to hate the crook Eric Adams — was throwing away his political capital by throwing his weight behind three candidates in Dem primaries. How could he possibly go on once the establishment Dems all won their races?
Of course, Mamdani’s candidates won each race, even taking out the do-nothing chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. And today all the stories are about poor Hakeem Jeffries, who will have to deal with these upstarts, and the terrible damage to come once Republicans start calling Democrats Communists because of these elections…
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@Jen: The SAVE Act has all kinds of issues. But I’ve been advocating going further: A free, federally issued ID card for all American citizens. Now the right wing paranoids hate this but whatever.
Pros and Cons anybody?
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Two myths that simply won’t die:
1) Cars are so much more expensive today that they have priced the average person out of the new car market
2) Electric cars are even worse, all costing north of $50K (the average car price today), and usually well northTo this I present the Slate Pickup and SUV. The cheapest model, the entry level pickup, is $25K. Putting this in perspective, that’s equivalent to $8K in 1985. I don’t remember what I paid for my first new car, a 1985 Corolla, but Uncle Google tells me MSRP was $7100 to $9700, putting that $8000 closer to the lower end than the higher.
FWIW, this site shows that the 2026 Corolla starts at $24.2K, essentially the same price in constant dollars as 41 years ago, and you get far, far more for your money. There are 9 other cars on that list between roughtly $22K to $25K
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Republican food fight (maybe rock fight).
Trump cancels plan to sign major housing bill as he fights with Congress over the SAVE Act
Just hours before heading to Capitol Hill, Trump called the big, bipartisan housing bill Republicans hope to run on in the fall “of minor importance.”
President Donald Trump may be the head of the Republican Party, but when it comes to the Senate, Majority Leader John Thune is still in charge.
Trump, who will attend lunch with Senate Republicans at the US Capitol on Wednesday, is growing tired of hearing “no” from the Senate leader as he pushes certain controversial priorities, according to people familiar with his thinking. But Thune is sitting on as much support as any leader could with less than five months until the midterms, and is surrounded by some emboldened colleagues who are more willing than they have been in years to take on the Republican administration.
I’m rooting for injuries.
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@Scott: GOP senators flummoxed by Trump’s housing bill threat: ‘Inexplicable,’ ‘makes no sense’
Senate Republicans expressed shock and bewilderment over President Trump’s threat not to sign a highly-touted bill to address housing affordability, describing the move as “inexplicable” and making “no sense” at a time when voters are worried about rising costs.
GOP senators took some solace in the fact that Trump only cancelled a signing ceremony for the bill and didn’t outright threaten to veto it, which means that — unless Trump raises his veto pen — the legislation will become law after 10 days.
It’s a bully’s dominance move. You got to punch back or else.
No, dumbasses, Trump is not your friend.
He’s Regina George.
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Well, Musk has confirmed what I (and others) have long speculated: He bought Twitter and went all-in on right-wing politics because he had a trans daughter:
https://substack.com/inbox/post/200321328
Given the architecture, it’s clear he’s a terrible father. He doesn’t even seem to understand what the gig is, beyond having sex. Kids do things you don’t like. Kids do things that scare you. Having a child is like putting your heart on wheels and letting it drive around town. That doesn’t mean you do a crazy freakout. Stability is your number one contribution, because as kids, they aren’t very good at it.
And yeah, I know just how bracing it can be for your son to say, “Mom, Dad, I’m a girl”. I do not think of my own reaction, as it played out in real time as particularly enlightened, but I guess I always thought it was something real.
And here’s where I think/say/imagine a prayer for @Beth. I fear the worst. Starmer is out, but not soon enough. I wonder how the new guy will approach trans British?
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We decided to go up to Porto unaware that they were enjoying the festival of Sao Joao which is a very big thing there. It was quite a lovely experience. The custom involves banging random people on the head with little plastic hammers that make a squeaking noise – like dog toys. No one seems to know why, except that it used to involve hitting people on the head with leeks and this is a modernized version. When it gets dark they launch paper Chinese lanterns and at midnight it’s fireworks. Both banks of the Douro are jammed with people pretty much just walking and drinking beer and/or port and tapping each other on the head with the little hammers.
It is just completely innocent and sweet and silly. Interestingly, for a country that has decriminalized drugs I smelled not a whiff of marijuana. And I suspect there were no shootings or stabbings. Everyone was very well-behaved. Civilized. Despite Portugal’s hero Ronaldo leading Portugal to victory over Uzbekistan.
The unfortunate note was the traditional Sao Joao menu of food that ranged from bad to worse. I’ve been trying to give Portugal a chance, eating at regular-folks restaurants and upscale restaurants in Estoril, Cascais, Lisbon and Porto, and without a shadow of a doubt the best food is. . . Thai. The Portuguese are not cooks. I’m sorry, but there’s a reason there are almost no Portuguese restaurants in the US and about a million Italian and Italian-derived. They can broil fish and they can steam shellfish and that’s about it. The wine is cheap and it’s, OK. But just OK. The cheese, ditto. The bread same. They have one thing: pastel de nata. Love them, but custard tarts do not begin to balance off the boring, bland, unseasoned, garlic-free, flavorlessness of it all.
Sure, they start with excellent seafood harvests, but that’s what the Japanese started with, too, and look what they did with it. This is a cuisine without ambition. My inner restaurant reviewer has reluctantly concluded that AIMA – Portugal’s immigration bureaucracy – did us a favor not giving us a long-term visa.
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That’s odd about the cuisine. There were two very good Portuguese restaurants within walking distance of my house when I lived in Cambridge, MA.: Casa Portugal and Portugalia. Sadly, the latter closed in 2023.
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And yeah, I know just how bracing it can be for your son to say, “Mom, Dad, I’m a girl”. I do not think of my own reaction, as it played out in real time as particularly enlightened, but I guess I always thought it was something real.
I haven’t been fortunate enough to be cursed with children (unfortunate enough to be blessed?), but that comment kinda strikes home. I would have zero issue with my child being any variation of LGBTQ+. I’d like to think that my immediate reaction would be “Okay” and a hug, but I have the fear that I would devolve into a cliche scene from a bad sit-com. If I ever get to that point, it’s my hope that I will have raised my child well enough to know that I love and accept them, and they can laugh at me being flummoxed by the details.
The daughter of a very good friend recently switched pronouns from “she/her” to “they/them”. I’m not sure about the greater context (other than I know that they’re at leat bisexual). After more than a year, I *still* have difficulty using they/them to refer to this person–because I’m old and set in my ways, not because I’m in anyway opposed to their choices.
In fact, that young person is one of the two people named in my will. You can love and respect a person, and still not be able to suddenly change 50 years of habit.
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He bought Twitter and went all-in on right-wing politics because he had a trans daughter:
He has lots of other kids, at least 13. You would think that even if he was going to regard a trans kid as some kind of defect, he would look at the 93% success rate. It’s way better than the build quality on Cybertrucks, for instance.
The Wall Street Journal reported that “sources close to Elon Musk” say that the number of children is far higher than known. (Per Wikipedia)
And there are likely other kids we don’t know about. He doesn’t have children so much as he has a breeding program with a whole lot of NDAs.
Given the architecture, it’s clear he’s a terrible father. He doesn’t even seem to understand what the gig is, beyond having sex.
A lot of his kids are in vitro. So, not even that much.
And he likely is practicing gender selection since they are almost all boys.
It’s important to remember that he’s not just a racist, a transphobe, and a sexist, but he’s also a eugenicist. A trans daughter suggests that perhaps his genes aren’t good enough, by his own metrics.
Is it wrong to hope that his gene line ends?
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@CSK:
But that won’t end it. Later will come the rumors of a troubled marriage, whether true or not. And then the inevitable breakup and divorce.
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@Mu Yixiao: Well, maybe there are parents out there that can just “Oh sure honey, whatever! Remember that I love you!” I’m not one of them. And I love her dearly, but it was a big earthquake in my world.
The other parents I’ve talked to are mostly of the “how can you not support and love them?” variety. Not all, though.
Funny story: I was at a D&D event where there was a couple with a teenage child who was using “they/them”. We get into a (in game) combat, and they do something really cool. I am playing a very boisterous, if not very bright, character, and I just (in accent), announce loudly, “That’s me boy!” I get waved off from across the table, so I immediately switch to “That’s me girl!” in the same voice. There is still shaking of heads, and so I switch again to “That’s me barbarian!” which was acceptable. Smiles all around. Lucky for me I’m playing a comical character, and everybody can just laugh at what a (well-meaning) dumbass he is.
I checked in with the person in question later – with an apology. It was accepted graciously as “no problem”.
My read on this person is that they are assigned female, but not particularly interested in the performance of femininity. So they are trying out “they/them”. I’m ok with that. Teenagers have figuring out who they are as one of their biggest jobs.
