Author: Raymond

 
From Margaret and Helen:

No jello-salad. I’m serious about this. The only thing that jiggles at my house this Thanksgiving will be your Aunt Trudy after a few glasses of wine.

I’ve lived a long life and along the way, I’ve collected a few nice things. I don’t put them away for company and I don’t put them away for family. Eventually your child needs to learn the meaning of the word No. Let’s make that happen today. We watch football in the family room on TV. We throw footballs outside on the lawn. And when you do go outside, shut the door behind you. I don’t need to air condition the whole neighborhood. And if Mr. Briggers next door tells you to stay off his lawn, tell him to stay off my last nerve. I swear, that man is the one bad bulb that ruins the whole string of lights.

If you want to talk politics sit next to me, but if you own a MAGA hat be warned. Your President is an asshat and I’m old enough to speak my mind regardless of your precious feelings. If I were you, I’d practice don’t ask, don’t tell because even when I mind my Ps and Qs, I can still spell bullshit.

No jello-salad.

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From The Journal of Improbable Research:

If students are placed in a situation where they are required to choose between either being deprived of food, or being deprived of their smartphone, which option will they be most likely to go for? A recent study from the Department of Pediatrics, University at Buffalo Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, New York, has attempted, by experiment, to find out…

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From driftglass:

Back in the Year of Our Lord 2006, as the Bush Administration was beginning to collapse under the pulverizing weight of its own criminal incompetence, corruption and hubris, the loud and proud Bush Regime supporters were making great sport of begin mocking us lefties as alarmist idiots and reveling in our Liberal tears.

But because Republicans — the former Party of Personal Responsibility — are fundamentally weak and cowardly and incapable of taking personal responsibility for their shitty decisions, as the collapse of the Bush regime accelerated past the point where reality-denial-in-force could keep it at bay any longer, your humble scrivener predicted that Crazy Uncle Liberty would, in very short order, begin denying Bush faster and harder than Peter denied Christ. From me in 2006:

In five years, having voted for Bush will have become the parachute pants of this decade.
[…]

But I was wrong.

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From The Onion:

“We’re excited to show off one of the strongest rookie classes in years, as all sorts of up-and-coming boyfriends have burst suddenly onto the scene this year, and we’re really excited to spring them on you at Thanksgiving dinner,” said Milwaukee-area aunt and league chairwoman Joanne Keyes, who hinted that the release of several prominent boyfriends from prison might provide a welcome shake-up during this year’s festivities.

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From Iron Knee at Political Irony:

Donald Trump continues to lead his devoted followers in chants of “Lock her up!” at his rallies, because Hillary Clinton famously used private email for government business while she was secretary of state. So of course, we now find out that Ivanka Trump has been using a personal email account for government business. Ivanka used a Microsoft email account to communicate with Cabinet officials, White House aides, and others.

And it isn’t just Ivanka of course.

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From Ted McLaughlin:

An infrastructure bill is needed, and a bill to fix Obamacare. Both would make the public happy, and if done right, might even have enough support to get through the Senate also. But neither is going to be easy to do, and it will take some time to hold hearings and write a bill.

There is something else that would make a better start. It could be done very quickly, and has the support of a substantial majority of Americans. It is to raise the minimum wage significantly.

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From Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit:

After her dad spent months on the campaign trail, bleating about Hillary Clinton using a private email account, one might suppose that everybody in Team Trump would have known not do do that.

But it’s apparent that the Trump Family regards obeying the law as something for “the little people” to do.

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From John Scalzi at Whatever:

Thank you for calling the customer service line of Vacuubot, purveyors of America’s finest automated vacuum cleaners! In order to more efficiently handle call volume, we rely on automated responses. To continue in English, press one. Para Espanol o prima dos.

Let’s continue in English. Which Vacuubot product are you calling about? For the Vacuubot S10 model, press one. For the Vacuubot XL model, press two. For the Vacuubot Extreme Clean model, press three.

Congratulations on owning the Vacuubot Extreme Clean Model, America’s most thorough and comprehensive automated vacuum cleaning solution! If you need to order additional components for the Extreme Clean, press one. If you have a repair query, press two. For all other questions, press three.

You have additional questions. If you need help connecting the Vacuubot Extreme Clean to your home network, press one. If the Vacuubot Extreme Clean is conflicting with other automated home machines, press two. If the Vacuubot Extreme Clean has decided to purge your house of all living things, press three.

Congratulations on activating purge mode! While purge mode was designed to eradicate small pests like insects and spiders, in some models a beta software build was inadvertently released that also includes larger targets, like pets and some humans. We’re sorry for the inconvenience. To continue, please press one. Be aware that by pressing one, you are absolving Vacuubot and its owner, BeiberHoldings, Inc, of all legal and medical responsibility.

You pressed “0” to speak to a human representative. The current wait time for a human representative is six hours and fourteen minutes. To return to the automated response system, press one.

Welcome back to the automated response system.

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From Frances Langum:

Martha McSally “conceded gracefully” but Stacey Abrams didn’t? Shut up. McSally did not have a vote-suppressing Secretary of State Brian Kemp running against her, but that did not stop Rich Lowry from making the comparison.

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From The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser:

And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. (Mark 16:15,16)

Those of us raised in Christianity recognize these verses as the “Great Commission,” the charge to go forth and spread the message of Christianity to the rest of the world. As the only Christian religion in the western world for nearly 1500 years, the Catholic church took this message seriously. Since the Edict of Milan in 313 CE decriminalizing Christianity and gaining Emperor Constantine’s patronage, and later the Edict of Thessalonica of 380 CE making Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire, the Catholic church was intertwined with government for centuries. Spreading a religion is quite easy when supported by the government.

Some Evangelical Christians have taken the Great Commission seriously as well, raising large sums of money to support missionaries to proselytize the “lost” throughout the world. Sometimes the “lost” include Catholics, who are not considered “True Christians” by many Evangelical sects. Anyone who is not part of “True Christianity” is considered “lost” and thus ripe for evangelizing. Evangelical Christians are also exhorted by their pastors to proselytize to their neighbors, friends, and coworkers. Where I grew up in the Bible Belt, most of the people I knew were more or less the “right” type of Christians — Southern Baptists as we were, a variety of other types of Baptists, Church of Christ, Methodists, Church of the Nazarene, etc.

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