Thursday, June 27, 2024

The Debate is Tonight. What's your coping mechanism?

 


45 comments:

  1. I expect my coping mechanism will be the "off" button. I thought I remembered seeing at least part of Nixon vs. JFK, but evidently my recollection is faulty.
    -----Alan

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  2. Two items from The Guardian:

    The EU is expected to sign a security agreement with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Thursday, pledging to keep delivering weapons, military training and other aid to Kyiv for years to come. The agreement will lay out the EU’s commitment to help Ukraine in nine areas of security and defence policy – including arms deliveries, military training, defence industry cooperation and demining, according to a draft seen by Reuters.

    European Union countries agreed a sanctions package against Belarus on Wednesday, EU diplomats and Belgium said, to try to close off a route to avoiding restrictions on Russia. “This package will strengthen our measures in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, including combating circumvention of sanctions,” Belgium, which holds the EU presidency until the end of June, said on X.

    ----Alan

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  3. I'll not be watching. Cheetolini sets off my gag reflex too strongly. -Susan

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    1. I'll turn it on, but my coping mechanism is reserving the right to turn it off. --nordy

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  4. Freak event probably killed last woolly mammoths, scientists say [Click] Study shows population on Arctic island was stable until sudden demise, countering theory of ‘genomic meltdown’
    ——Alan

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  5. ‘No chain stores, but moose on every corner’: as Colorado herds thrive, clashes with people rise [Click] I encountered moose in Alaska; what I particularly remember about them is that they were very unimpressed with humans.
    ——Alan

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    1. A common item in the Alaska stores was a "moosequito"--- a piece of dried moose poop decorated with wire legs and wings to resemble a huge mosquito. What the Alaska mosquitos lack in size, they make up for in their numbers and interest in humans.
      ----Alan

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    2. It occurs to me to wonder how it would have worked to introduce Norwegian (European?) moose, which are far smaller than the North American ones.
      ----Alan

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    3. I seems I was mistaken about Norwegian moose--they are not so small as I thought.
      -----Alan

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  6. Five charged over alleged plot to bribe Minnesota juror with $120,000 in cash [Click] I think the juror ought to receive a finder’s fee [10%?] for turning the money in.
    ——Alan

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  7. I probably won't be back from dinner until well after the debate has started. And don't really know where to find it. Or the replay, if any. I've never actually seen Trump talk and don't think I should rely entirely on second-hand descriptions of snippets.

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    1. {listener}
      The debate is being televised by CNN, and other stations will co-offer it.

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    2. Yes, I went to CNN.com. Took ma a few minutes to figure out what to click on to see the debate. To the best of my memory it has been more than a quarter century since I watched anything on TV.

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    3. Come to think of it, I have watched Bears games more recently, although I switched to radio some years ago.

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  8. {listener}
    Wil and I are in New Castle NH staying at Wentworth By the Sea (look it up!) for our Anniversary. IF we watch the debate, we’ll be doing so in crazy luxury.
    Tomorrow (our 50th) we will walk the grounds of Wil’s alma mater (in Durham NH, the town in which we had our first apartment). We’ll be staying at Three Chimneys Inn there, and relaxing. Then, on Saturday morning, before we head home, we’ll be at Wil’s brother Andy’s burial. Not how we hoped to spend that day. But c’est la vie.

    By the way, it’s fun to tell you this as NO ONE else knows where we are.

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    1. RCP Great American Stories: Kinky Friedman's Quote [Click] Reminds me of Calvin Coolidge, who could be downright hilarious, but he had to tone it way down because so many people didn’t recognize his dry humor.
      —-Alan

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  10. This is a local story that I think has larger implications. A cop who shot and killed an unarmed black man was convicted of murder.
    (Seattle Times) KENT — A King County jury convicted Auburn police Officer Jeffrey Nelson of murder and assault Thursday for the 2019 shooting death of Jesse Sarey, a historic verdict that came under a law born from anguish and anger over unnecessary police violence.
    --nordy

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    1. I saw that, and of course hope it helps. I was involved in the investigations of a fair number of police involved shootings, and testified in several such cases, in both state and federal courts. In my interactions with police over the years I came to be of the opinion that the old cops were often better controlled than the young ones; furthermore, that the cops' training these days can induce or exacerbate paranoia, at least among some of them. Then there were the alcoholic cops. Locally the chiefs of police for a very long time seem to have been crooked as a dog's hind leg. Which reminds me that I saw a headline that the (fairly) new Chief of Police just resigned; gotta read about that.
      -----Alan

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  11. Well, I get the impression that Mr. Biden’s performance was OK, but not overwhelming. So far there is one good cartoon to come out of it. [Click]
    ——Alan

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    1. Ate a bit eaarlier than usual, so I only missed the first 10 minutes or so. The analysts all seem to be saying Biden lost it in the first three minutes. I thought what I saw wasn't bed, except for the weak closing statement. What I mostly noticed, though, was how often Trump simply didn'st answer the question asked.

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    2. Good cartoon

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    3. ^^ {listener}

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  12. {listener}
    I’ll keep the honest President with the cold, rather than the guy with the lies.
    Historians rank DT as worst President

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    1. I thought the top rankings of Lincoln and FDR were right, but why was Obama seventh? --nordy

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  13. I think we just lost the election. --nordy

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  14. {listener}
    Van Jones of CNN just said that on the one hand we had a man who sounded terrible but told the truth, who looked terrible but had great policies.
    And on the other hand we had a man who sounded good and lied terribly, who looked good but had terrible or no policies..

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    1. Yes, but this debate was more about which man looked--not was--.more fit to be president. --nordy

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  15. ‘Here I found respect for who I am’: the French citizens who choose to leave [Click] “[Many] highly qualified French citizens from Muslim backgrounds have left the country in recent years.”

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  16. I watched most of it, and I thought Biden got shellacked. Trump kept him constantly on the defensive; mostly he was just trying to respond to Trump's lies. Maybe it was the cold, but he looked and sounded weak. Trump came off as vigorous and a lot of people will see that and not the lying. --nordy

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    1. Here’s the first pass falsehoods tally:
      *Trump 30, many quite wild
      *Biden 9 (one retracted), in some cases just got a number wrong.

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    2. ^^ {listener}

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    3. Is it too late to open the Democratic convention? I don't know the delegate count. --nordy

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  17. My vote means nothing, since I live in California. Aside from Bill Clinton and Bernie Sanders, Democratic presidential candidates don’t pay us any attention at all. [Granted that Hillary Clinton held one tiny invitation-only event in the smallest auditorium at the local junior college.] I will never forget how President Obama showed that he cared about us not at all—— he couldn’t spare five or ten minutes for the crowd assembled to greet him, just got off Air Force One and onto Marine One and left for a fund-raising Big Ag lunch a couple of counties away, combined with a ridiculous photo op. I have been thinking about voting PSL [Click] this year; their candidates don’t have a snowball’s chance in Hell of being elected dogcatcher, but that means they can’t do any harm. But I am slowly drifting back toward voting for Biden and Harris this year. Biden has always seemed rather too far to the right in foreign affairs for my taste, but has done very well in domestic matters, all things considered. I have a personal grudge against Kamala Harris, whose misbehavior as District Attorney of San Francisco caused me a lot of trouble— I was tarred with the same brush for years and years afterward. She was head of HRC’s campaign in California, and earned a reputation for working behind the scenes in Sacramento as Attorney General; but she may have learned a significant amount as understudy to Biden. Well, we will see. As for electoral prognostication, I still have far more confidence in Allan J. Lichtman than in any poll, collection of polls, or newspaper editors. Harrumph.
    —Alan

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    1. Yeah…I’d love to vote for Bernie. But I am certain I will vote for Biden over DT. No contest.

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    2. Whomever or whatever the national Democratic Party nominates will win California. It wasn't always that way, but it has been for a long time now.
      ----Alan

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    3. ^^ {listener}
      That was me on the unsigned post.

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