JCM 11/13/2025 7:55:38 AM

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The shutdown It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing is over.

In my world a shutdown is a bad thing. Assembly lines stop. A plane can't fly because a part is not available. We drill down and figure out what happened and why, and what can be done to keep it from happening again.

There will be no such reflection taking place inside the Beltway.

In two years we will be back here again. 

JCM 11/13/2025 8:00:54 AM

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Seattle out Mandamied New York!

Katie Wilson defeats incumbent Bruce Harrell to become Seattle mayor

As far as I can tell her entire career is as an "activist", a socialist one at that. She's married with a child, lives with her husband in an apartment and her parents help pay her rent.

This should be fun.

preBoomer-Marinebrat 11/13/2025 8:45:34 AM

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Reply to JCM in 1:

It's on the political right, too.

4 months ago, I was in the local Republican organization office.  Two of us were discussing the evolution of culture since the Sixties.  I mentioned the drug culture back then, but before I could move on, another guy broke in.  Quite vigorously, he announced that "the fact that Willie Nelson is still alive and singing proves that marijuana is harmless and should be legal."

I began to mention that there were numerous scientific studies over the past 60 years .... and he sarcastically injected "SCIENCE!" and made a flick-off gesture with his hand.  I started to debate him, and others in the office immediately moved to get me to stop.  I turned and left.  I learned later that he's a local city policeman.  A few years ago, the State legalized certain components of the drug, and you can now see CBD and hemp stores in most of the strip malls.

The local Republicans have told me that today's National Party is exactly the same as it was 40 years ago -- just as righteous, just as conservative.  I was active at the local level then, 2 terms in elected office and occasionally had legislative dealings with the late Arizona State Senator Ann Day, sister to Sandra Day-O'Connor. 

(Today's 'Republicans' don't know sh*t about history, and have never heard the George Santayana quote: "Those who don't remember history are doomed to repeat it."  They're fixated on their smartphones, which partly explains how Donald Trump won office in 2016.)

BTW, I have zero respect for The Donald's content of character, based solely on his history from his childhood up to 2010.  I voted for him 3 times because the old McGovern Wing has turned the prior Democratic Party into something extremely worse.  There are no more 'Blue dogs'.  No one today knows what those were, nor does anyone care.

And unless you think from that paragraph that I might have been a Democrat, I turned 21 in '64 and voted for Goldwater, and in '86 in Arizona I voted for sh*tbag Ev Mecham because, after all, he was the GOP candidate.

JCM 11/13/2025 9:11:07 AM

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Reply to preBoomer-Marinebrat in 3:

WA the (R)s threw in the towel and don't even bother anymore. I actually despise the (R)s more than the (D)s. And loathe the (D)s.

In WA the ballot count fraud is institutionalized and nobody blinks. The Dalys, or Tammany Hall wished they had it this good. 

All the investigations into corruption that quietly whimpered and died. The Obamacare thing was the breaking point. We don't have Senate or the House or the WH, nothing they can do. When we gave them all three, oh this takes time... they should have the repeal queued and up ready to go.

This whole shutdown fiasco case in point. The Budget reform act of '97 requires a biennial budget. They can't manage that. So they do these bullshit CRs and kick the can down the road. With zero constraints. Then nobody talks seriously how the deficit and debt affect the economy and cost real people.

preBoomer-Marinebrat 11/13/2025 9:27:59 AM

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Reply to JCM in 4:
True.

And I think a large part of it is due to long-running shifts in what can be called the everyday culture, which spans political divides.

Today is heavily 'influenced' by newness, which broke out into the open in The Sixties.  It's not all about 'WOW!!', but is largely driven by The Media, which is.  The smartphone culture is everywhere.  (I don't own one and never will.  The content of those things is masturbatory.)

JCM 11/13/2025 9:41:35 AM

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Reply to preBoomer-Marinebrat in 5:

Tell me about.... phones are a curse. Especially for kids before they learn how to evaluate information they are getting. "It's on the net so it must be true". And if it takes longer than 30 seconds they lose interest.

Kosh's Shadow 11/13/2025 10:03:40 AM

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Reply to preBoomer-Marinebrat in 3:

Of course pot is dangerous. So is tobbaco, and just because you can find some old people who have been smoking cigarettes for years doesn't mean they are safe.

And today's pot is much stronger than when I was in college. My wife and I smoked pot years ago (but stopped a long time ago) and since she is a criminal defense lawyer, she smells pot on people at court. Says it smells like skunk instead of like some natural herb like it did back then.

buzzsawmonkey 11/13/2025 10:09:24 AM

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Reply to preBoomer-Marinebrat in 5:

Reply to JCM in 6:

Until "smartphones" became endemic, if you saw someone walking down the street talking to nobody visible you knew they were either insane, on drugs, or both.   Now, they're probably talking on, or to, their "smartphone." The smartphone has lowered the general population to the level of the "homeless/unhoused/de-institutionalized."

What gets me is the people who have to stop in the middle of a staircase---in a store, on public transportation---to "check their phone" instead of getting to the top, or bottom, of the staircase and out of the way of the other people trying to use it.   Of course, then they loiter at the top or bottom of the stairs, instead of moving.  The other day I was going down the stairs after getting off a subway, and a woman stopped dead in the middle of the stairs to "check her phone."  I said to her "There is nothing on your phone that cannot wait until you get to the bottom of the stairs," and she moved.

vxbush 11/13/2025 11:08:23 AM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 8:

The thing that I've noticed lately that is driving me crazy is women having conversations in the bathroom with whomever is on their ear buds. These people have no idea about a "private conversation" and don't stop to realize that I don't WANT to know their business. 

JCM 11/13/2025 11:27:42 AM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 8:

I see lots of people with ear buds or headphones. Oblivious to the world around them.

In my time on the FD, I picked up a couple people on railroad tracks, and I don't know how many pedestrians wearing headphones.

Kosh's Shadow 11/13/2025 11:38:53 AM

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Reply to JCM in 10:

They've now put up poles at railroad crossings to discourage people from wallking on the tracks.

And these have a frequent commuter rail service plus a lot of frieght.

When I was taking the commuter rail a couple of times the train was stopped because someone was hit on the tracks.

And one of those cases, the train engineer had that happen earlier. 

Now, these trains make noise and vibrations. They use the horn at grade crossings. But....

JCM 11/13/2025 12:23:47 PM

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Reply to Kosh's Shadow in 11:

Approaching trains are surprisingly quiet. Lots of rumble and screech when they are going by.

Kosh's Shadow 11/13/2025 12:48:47 PM

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In #12 JCM said: Approaching trains are surprisingly quiet

Not the ones run here - all diesel. Line is not electrified.