From Pine View Farm

Pastry Passtimes 0

Many years ago, when I worked in a corporate training department, one of company’s police officers (yes, the company had its own police force) was detailed to my department. He was good cop and a good person.

If you wanted to get under his skin, all you had to do was make a crack about cops and doughnuts. He found the stereotype offensive, plus he really did not like doughnuts.

And I’m sure he really wouldn’t like the new spin the Houston police has put on cops doing doughnuts.

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Facebook Frolics 0

Copywrongs.

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QOTD 0

Naomi Klein:

Politics hates a vacuum. If it isn’t filled with hope, someone will fill it with fear.

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A Tune for the Times 0

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Love, Love Me Do 0

Does this remind you of anyone in the news?

Inquiring minds want to know.

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This New Gilded Age 0

Robert Reich sees a strategy emerging from the Trumpled chaos. Here’s a bit:

He’s (Donald Trump–ed.) implementing a plan to make the wealthiest people in America far wealthier and more powerful, including Trump himself, and to turn American democracy into a giant corporation run by a handful of absurdly rich men.

He thinks he can accomplish this by getting the rest of us so angry at one another— over immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, abortion, diversity, and the like — that we don’t look upward and see where most of the wealth and power have gone.

Now. to be fair, I’m not sure that Donald Trump is capable of thinking in terms of a such long game; he seems to live in the moment. But some of the persons behind him (think Project 2025, for example) most certainly are. Our new generation of robber barons founded those “conservative” think tanks as part of their long game to return us to the 1890s.

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Still Rising Again after All These Years 0

Thom is astonished. I’m not.

All pretense is off.

The racism and misogyny of today’s Republican Party are fully out of the closet.

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Suffer the Children 0

It’s a Republican family value.

Donald,  holding a club:  I want to start this new mandaate by sending a clear message about how brave and powerful I am.  Out-of-Frame Voice:  Great.  Should we bring you Putin them?  Trump:  What?  No.  Voice:  China.  Trump:  No.  Voice:  Iran?  Trump:  No.  Any other dictatorship?  Trump:  No. . . . Bring me a few brown kids from their school.

Click for the original image.

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“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0

Yet another “responsible gun owner” feels empowered to display his portable phallus on the nation’s highways.

We are a society of stupid.

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It Was a Gaming Smash 0

Florida Man.

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QOTD 0

Herman Hesse:

Those who cannot think or take responsibility for themselves need, and clamor for, a leader.

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A Tune for the Times 0

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Dis Coarse Discourse 0

Lane Crothers spots the thumb on the scales.

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“History Does Not Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes”* 0

On Holocaust Remembrance Day, Will Bunch heard a chilling rhyme. A snippet (emphasis added):

Just eight days into Trump’s second term, the terror is real, not just for the hundreds who’ve been handcuffed but for the many more feeling the same impulses as Anne Frank and her family once did, to disappear from view. “Almost nobody is sending their kids [to school] in case they’re taken,” a fearful Venezuelan mother named Amanda, in a New York City shelter, told a reporter for The City. In California’s Kern County, the annual citrus harvest has ground to a halt because migrant farmworkers have already stopped showing up.

The irony of all of this — good people cowering in their attics, praying to avoid getting cuffed and shipped thousands of miles away by camouflage-wearing soldiers — happening on Holocaust Remembrance Day is almost unbearable.

________________-

*Mark Twain.

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The Crypto Con 0

Jacob Silverman talks with Sam and Emma about the growing threat of greater US government involvement in crypto, with state and local governments pondering active investments in the scam-centric industry, and how a Trump presidency will likely expedite that.

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The Party of Flaw and Disorder, One More Time 0

Donald Trump speaks to a crowd of red hats,

Click to view the original image.

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Executive Disorders, Reprise 0

To watch the blizzard of executive orders issuing from Donald Trump’s White House, it seems that Trump thinks that executive orders are pronouncements from Caesar’s throne, sweeping all else before them.

My old Philly friend Noz, who, I would note, has some legal training, points out that they are not nearly so sweeping as Trump seems to think:

Also Executive Orders, while treated as legally binding, they are the least binding of any form of law in the federal government. The priority for laws in the federal system is like this: Constitutional Provisions > Statutes > Regulations > Executive Orders.

I urge you to read the rest of his post. Methinks it most timely.

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It’s All about the Benjamins 0

Back when I was a young ‘un the college football season ended with the New Year’s bowl games. Now, it’s still going on shows no sign of ending. Meanwhile, I’ve lost almost all interest in professional and college college-level professional sports. (And, yes, I think there’s cause-and-effect there.)

At Psychology Today Blogs, Tess M. Kilwein takes a look at some of the recent changes in college sports their potential effects on “student” athletes, noting that “(t)hese . . . developments in college athletics pose both benefits and risks to student-athlete mental health.” Here’s a bit of her article:

Many college athletic teams now face year-round commitments. These increases in off-season training and competitions have left reduced room for the rest and recovery necessary to prevent burnout among student-athletes. Student-athletes are more susceptible to physical and mental exhaustion, including overtraining syndrome, than ever before.

Furthermore, student-athletes face a reduced ability to enjoy a typical college experience. Opportunities to engage in formal clubs and organizations or informal social activities outside of the college athletic environment are becoming increasingly rare for student-athletes and can result in further isolation from non-athlete peers.

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QOTD 0

Nancy Astor;

The first time Adam had a chance, he laid the blame on women.

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Addicted to Screens 0

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