laripu

Kasich still has some regressive views. You can check them out here. Ok, still, much better than Trump. Compared to Trump, everybody appears to be Mother f**king Teresa. Yes, including, potentially shutting down Congress and SCOTUS and declaring an emergency to get ultra vires dictatorial powers.

I like using my slow cooker. From what I've read, the instant pot uses pressure to do what a slow cooker does in a small fraction of the time. I have questions: Does any plastic come in contact with food? Is the food container coated with non-stick chemicals or is it glazed ceramic like a slow cooker? Any problems like explosions when cooking with pressure?

There used to be certainty, when the Catholic Church ran Europe. All you had to do was obey your priest and be a good serf for your feudal lord. All he wanted in return for accepting your obedience was a share of your crops and droit de seigneur. If you don't speak French, that means the feudal lord's right to rape every woman in his village on her wedding night. Now that's certainty! As knowledge accumulated, some things got more certain, but most things became less certain. We started to see that there's much we don't understand We knew that we don't know much. Then along came Heisenberg, and slapped certainty in the face with the facts: there's much that we not only don't know, but also can't know. We know for certain that we can't have certainty! Plenty of people still want the certainty they can't get, and both drug manufacturers and TV evangelists make a lot of money pretending to supply it. In some sense they're in the same business. (Yes, software engineers too. I'm just as guilty. Mea maxima culpa.) In the end we all have a date with entropy. I wish us all well on the road to that certain eventuality. Yes, that's me, trying for some certainty for my soon to be old age. Yep. I do know that full well. I remember Monday, October 19, 1987, the day the stock market crashed so bad that day was called Black Monday. It's glued into my memory with the bitterness of adult tears, because my father had his date with entropy, died, on Friday, October 16, 1987. I lost nothing on that Monday, because I had nothing. That's also certainty.

Stan Rogers died n 1983 at age 33 in an aircraft fire, probably of smoke inhalation. Here's the song above:

Here's one from 1978, from long-deceased Canadian folk singer Stan Rogers, written for Nice Scotia fishermen. THE JEANNIE C. (Stan Rogers) Come all ye lads, draw near to me That I be not forsaken This day was lost the Jeannie C. And my living has been taken I'll go to sea no more We set out this day in the bright sunrise The same as any other My son and I and old John Price In the boat named for my mother I'll go to sea no more Now it's well you know what the fishing has been It's been scarce and hard and cruel But this day, by God, we sure caught cod And we sang and we laughed like fools I'll go to sea no more I'll never know what it was we struck But strike we did like thunder John Price give a cry and pitched overside Now it's forever he's gone under I'll go to sea no more Now a leak we've sprung, let there be no delay If the Jeannie C. we're saving John Price is drowned and slipped away So I'll patch the hole while you're bailing I'll go to sea no more But no leak I found from bow to hold No rock it was that got her But what I found made my heart stop cold For every seam poured water I'll go to sea no more My God, I cried as she went down That boat was like no other My father built her when I was nine And named her for my mother I'll go to sea no more And sure I could have another made In the boat shop down in Dover But I would not love the keel they laid Like the one the waves roll over I'll go to sea no more So come all ye lads, draw near to me That I be not forsaken This day was lost the Jeannie C. And my whole life has been taken I'll go to sea no more

Almost anyone would be better than Trump. As long as we're guessing, I think they'll run Pence. The Republicans now have a problem. They've shown and understand that about 70% of their support comes from hateful wingnuts, aka "the basket of deplorables". That's about 35% of the country. What will they do with this understanding? Will they continue to cynically pander to bad people, or will they morph into an actual conservative alternative to the Democrats? Will they try to win with conservative ideas and lose most of the 35% or will they head down the paths of the Southern Strategy, Willie Horton hate incitement, xenophobia, scapegoat blaming, and playing politics to win rather than to serve? My guess is that they will play to win until the ratf**king dirty tricks are shut down by SCOTUS. If voter suppression and gerrymandering are stopped, they'll have to do the hard work of convincing people that they have something better. Things can change. But at this point in time, they really are the immoral minority.

I don't think he'll be the nominee. And if, somehow, he is the nominee, he'll choose the running mate closest to himself in ideology, and that will be Elizabeth Warren. And if, somehow, he is elected...he'll die during his first term from preventable health problems because he'll disregard them and work way too hard for a man his age. He's sincere, and at his age that sincerity may kill him. I'm for Buttegieg, and since he has little chance, for Warren. Bernie Sanders needs to stay in the Senate for now, until Trump is gone, and then retire before the end of his term.

Good lyrics too: https://songmeanings.com/m/songs/view/3530822107859587736/

I don't believe that is true of all military members, and not even of most. I do believe it is true of some. Probably a small percentage. There are 1.3 million people in the US military. One tenth of one percent is 1300 people. If Trump could gather one tenth of that to shut down Congress, 130 armed loyalists ... the consequences would be ugly, shameful, and hugely damaging, internationally.

Below is a link to a question and answer from Quora. I know neither the person who asked not the person who answered, but I really like the answer. He draws a contrast between personal conservatism, where we live a measured and correct life, and don't impose anything on others, against the moralistic "conservatism" that judges and condemns. The first kind, personal conservatism, is ... liberal. Here's the link: https://qr.ae/TW2YBa

I heard this girl on SNL that I'd never heard before. She's a big talent. I expect great things to come from her. Billie Eillish, 17, and her brother, Finneas O'Connell 21.

That would be great and I hope you're right. But I can't be 100% certain. What might be an instructive example is Russia's 1993 constitutional crisis, where then Russian President Boris Yeltsin illegally dissolved parliament, illegally cancelled the constitution and announced a new one that gave him greater power. Later he cut off electricity, phone service, and hot water in the parliament building. He had the army on his side. Yeltsin won, and as a result Russia has a near-dictatorial presidency. Trump could do such a thing before either the House impeachment vote or Senate trial. Beside cutting services, he could have a small cadre of loyal armed military or ex-military people guard the Capitol Building to prevent Congress meeting and debating - and certainly prevent impeachment or trial. His rational would be that Congress was trying to make an illegal coup and he just needed emergency powers to clean it up. Then you've got a President for Life, and the 35% that support him no matter what would be thrilled. Some would fight for him and there would be deaths on both the pro-democracy side and the Trump side. It would be like trying to get control in a game of Hearts. Of course he might try that. I'm more or less confident that he wouldn't succeed, but it would be a very bad thing for the country. He'd eventually be brought down, but after that every other country in the world would justly see us as a banana republic. The damage would take decades to repair, and that, after all, was Putin's goal from the beginning.

That's good. I hope you're right. For sure, not every single member of the military support him. They probably don't like how he treated John McCain. So the military as a whole won't support him. But can you imagine the scandal if some small number, heavily armed, refused to allow him to be removed from the White House? That would certainly be a national crisis.

He always accuses others of his own failings. I occasionally scan a conservative forum. (Really stupid, but the way.) Since we all noticed that Trump accuses others of his own failings, people on that conservative forum are saying exactly that about Democrats. Another thing I notice is that they're also calling most Republicans RINOs. That tells me they're not really interested in a democracy, they want a Trump dictatorship. So I'm guessing that no matter what kind of cruel stuff or corrupt stuff Trump can invent, his solid supporters will like it. What happens if he's impeached and convicted or voted out in the election, and refuses to leave? Will the military support him? Can he convince them that the constitutional impeachment process is a coup as he's been saying?