Growing up together

A veteran singer and she's only 110

 

Representatives from 49 states

Today is a very important day

It's NATIONAL CROISSANT DAY

Finding Mama

 

Courtesy of our Florida correspondent

Hedge Funds vs S&P

 

The next Domingo?

Decca thinks so

He sings his own song

 

Courtesy of a childhood friend

A Sad Occasion

The Pillsbury Doughboy died yesterday in Minneapolis of a yeast infection and traumatic complications from repeated pokes in the belly. He was 71. 

Doughboy was buried in a lightly greased coffin. Dozens of celebrities turned out to pay their respects, including Mrs. Butterworth, Hungry Jack, the California Raisins, Betty Crocker, the Hostess Twinkies, and Captain Crunch. The gravesite was piled high with flours. Aunt Jemima delivered the eulogy and lovingly described Doughboy as a man who never knew how much he was kneaded. 

Born and bread in Minnesota, Doughboy rose quickly in show business, but his later life was filled with turnovers. He was not regarded as a very smart cookie, wasting much of his dough on half-baked schemes. Despite being a little flaky at times, he still was a crusty old man and served as a positive roll model for millions. 

Doughboy is survived by his wife, Play Dough, three children: John Dough, Jane Dough and Dosey Dough, plus they had one in the oven. He is also survived by his elderly father, Pop Tart. The funeral was held at 3:50 for about 20 min. If you smiled while reading this, please rise to the occasion and pass it on to someone having a crumby day and kneading a lift.

Courtesy of a child friend

Ave Maria

A member of the U.S. Congress in 2021

This video shows Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) harassing David Hogg, a survivor of the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Why? Is this why she was elected?

Covid and Carbon

A Trump Governor

Exorcising the election

As is obvious, people have differing views on the 2020 election. One of the oddest view is that of Rev. John Zuhlsdorf, a Catholic priest from Wisconsin. He conducted exorcisms to cast evil spirits out of Dominion voting machines as he felt they had slanted the election in Biden's favor. He felt so strongly about the issue that he posted videos about the exorcisms on YouTube. He also claimed that the bishop approved his work. The bishop denies that and Zuhlsdorf has left the state.

Come fly with me

From a childhood friend

A different kind of mask

He's found a friend

A Covid Shanty

Jonah Ho was 5 years old

Dancing in the movies

Courtesy of a Duncaster resident

THE Version of Amazing Grace

She's only 12 years old

Courtesy of a Duncaster resident

Missing his closest friend

Breathing and Stress

American Aspiration

Friends

 

I'm not a fan but

Both Lady Gaga and Jennifer Lopez did a good job. They added to the event.

Their opinion

A group of international activist and scholars have sent a letter to Biden giving their views of what he should do. There are some sensible and interesting ideas:

We recommend that you join the UN and 140 world leaders in supporting a people’s vaccine, namely a universally available, affordable, and patent-free vaccine to help end the COVID-19 pandemic. 

We propose an investment of $200 billion in the Green Climate Fund. 

We propose that the United States take the lead in ending Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provisions in trade and investment agreements that allow corporations to sue countries for millions and even billions of dollars, when labor, health, and environmental regulations tamper with their expected profits. 

The United States must help create a Global Social Protection Fund that marshals global resources to meet the urgent needs of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people. 

We recommend, as a first step, that you renew and increase funding for the U.S.-China Clean Energy Research Center. 

As the world’s biggest spender on the military—more than the next ten countries combined—the United States can help reverse the dangerous rise in global military expenditures by cutting $350 billion from the Pentagon budget and working with China and Russia to reduce global tensions. 

We also propose that you close Cold War–era bases in Europe, shut down the Africa Command, and stop new base construction on Okinawa. 

We urge you to take the lead in removing weapons from war and potential conflicts, first of all, by honoring its signature to the Arms Trade Treaty and pushing the Senate to ratify it. 

The United States can also dramatically reduce the threat of nuclear war by adopting a no-first-use posture and, with Russia, extending the New START arms control treaty. 

We also believe that the United States should honor its signature to the Rome Treaty and this time actually ratify the accord in the Senate. 

We urge the lifting of broad-based economic sanctions, the issuance of Special Drawing Rights from the IMF to enable countries to address the economic crisis resulting from the COVID pandemic, and the restoration of humanitarian aid to sanctioned jurisdictions.

Saying goodbye to President Trump

Feel like screaming?

You are not alone. Screaming is one way to express your feelings in these difficult times. An elementary school teacher, Chris Gollmar, has created a hotline site, Just Scream!. Just dial 1-561-567-8431 and, no matter whether you are unhappy, terrified, frustrated, elated, etc., you’ll have the opportunity to let yourself go.

Gollmar opened the hotline in November and it will stop accepting calls on January 21. So far, the site has received 70,000 calls. Personal phone numbers are not stored, and all calls go to an answering machine -- so interacting with a real person isn't required.

We learned about Just Scream from our Florida correspondent.

One view of the last four years

Today is Martin Luther King Day

Inside The Riot

Thoughts on Thinking

A nice tune for Sunday

Courtesy of our Florida correspondent

Sea shanties are a big hit on Tik-Tok

Accompanying the vaccine

Two artists.

Staying in a potato

And it's only $200 a night



Courtesy of our Florida correspondent.

Washington D.C. January 6, 2021

Vaccinating

Distributing the vaccines

 

The Lesser Absurdities of 2020

Each year Conn Hallinan of Foreign Policy in Focus looks at some of the weird things that we do every so often, rates them in terms of absurdity and gives awards. He looks at about twenty areas and evaluates them in terms of absurdity. It's an interesting read. Here are the top three in his words.

The Golden Lemon Award goes to Lockheed Martin for its F-35 fifth generation stealth fighter, at $1.5 trillion the most expensive weapons system in history. The plane currently has 883 documented design flaws, including nine “category 1” flaws.

The latter, the Project on Government Oversight explains, “may cause death, severe injury, or severe occupational illness” to pilots and “major damage” to weapons systems and combat readiness (which sounds like those TV ads for drugs that may or may not treat your disease, but could also kill your first born and turn you into a ferret).

But the company got right to work on those flaws — not by fixing them, mind you, but by reclassifying them as less serious. As for the rest of the problems, Lockheed Martin says it will fix them if it gets paid more.The company currently receives $2 billion a year to keep some 400 F-35s flying, a cost of $500 million a plane. It costs $28,455 an hour to fly an F-35.

U.S. aircraft are following industrialist Norman Augustine’s prediction that war plane costs increase by a factor of 10 every decade. He predicted that by 2054 the Pentagon will be able to buy just one fighter plane.

The Silver Lemon goes to the U.S. Navy for moth-balling four of its Littoral Combat ships after less than two decades in service. All 10 Littoral ships apparently have a “fundamentally flawed” propulsion system. The ships cost over $600 million apiece. There are plans to build six more.

The Navy plans to build 82 ships overall in the next six years at a cost of $147 billion, including — at $940 million apiece — 20 frigates to replace the Littoral Combat ships.

The Bronze Lemon goes to the U.S. Army for spending $24 billion to replace its aging, 27-ton Bradley Fighting Vehicle with… ah, nothing? Not that it didn’t spend all that money. First there was the M2, but its armor was too thin. Then it built the Future Combat System, but it was too big and also had inadequate armor. Then they built the Ground Combat Vehicle, which was a monster and weighed three times more than the Bradleys.

Shall we dance

Courtesy of our Florida correspondent

Comparing vaccines

 

He can't stop laughing

A newcomer to the music world

From a childhood friend

Building for animals

More positive than expected

Keeping up her religious obligations

 

Music from the 1960s

Astrud Gilberto and Stan Getz



Sergio Mendes

Who are we?

The media is calling for Trump to leave

And it's not only the liberal media, such as the NY Times. The Wall Street Journal is also down on Trump. Here are some parts of the Journal's editorial:

"In concise summary, on Wednesday the leader of the executive branch incited a crowd to march on the legislative branch. The express goal was to demand that Congress and Vice President Mike Pence reject electors from enough states to deny Mr. Biden an Electoral College victory. When some in the crowd turned violent and occupied the Capitol, the President caviled and declined for far too long to call them off. When he did speak, he hedged his plea with election complaint."

“This was an assault on the constitutional process of transferring power after an election. It was also an assault on the legislature from an executive sworn to uphold the laws of the United States. This goes beyond merely refusing to concede defeat. In our view it crosses a constitutional line that Mr. Trump hasn’t previously crossed. It is impeachable.”

“If Mr. Trump wants to avoid a second impeachment, his best path would be to take personal responsibility and resign. This would be the cleanest solution since it would immediately turn presidential duties over to Mr. Pence. And it would give Mr. Trump agency, a la Richard Nixon, over his own fate.”

And it seems to be a world-wide movement.

In the middle of the riot

A day in U.S.history

A Living Wage

 

Getting back to normal - Pete Seeger at 90 (May 3, 2009)

 

12/8/1941 vs. 01/06/2021

Or maybe the comparison should be between March 1933 when Hitler came to power and today when we saw the results of Trump's unwillingness to accept reality.

I can't say that I was totally aware of Roosevelt's talk re Pearl Harbor (I was too young) but is there any real comparison between FDR's talk and Trump's?



FDR recognized that we had a major problem and he addressed it.

Some different ways of looking at Covid deaths

The Atlantic posits a couple of interesting ways of looking at deaths from Covid. They go beyond the simple numbers – such as 3,000 deaths a day – to numbers which reflect the pain and heartbreak behind each individual death, which often doesn’t register with the reader. For example, “Consider, for instance, that during the month of December, an average of about 1.7 people in the U.S. died from COVID-19 every minute.”

Here are the ‘other’ ways they use: 

ON AVERAGE, EACH PERSON IN THE U.S. WHO HAS DIED FROM COVID-19 WAS DEPRIVED OF ABOUT 13 YEARS OF LIFE.
ABOUT ONE IN 800 BLACK AMERICANS HAS DIED FROM COVID-19, WHILE ONE IN 1,325 WHITE AMERICANS HAS.
ROUGHLY 3.1 MILLION AMERICANS HAVE LOST A CLOSE RELATIVE TO COVID-19.

The article discusses the research involved in reaching these conclusions. Read it here.

How it should be

 

An armed Congresswoman

Perhaps it's an extreme but it is an example of the quality of our representatives



When do you think was the last time a Congressman brought a gun to work?

A tribute to Covid-19 victims

When will we have to deal with the next pandemic?

When will things be back to normal?

One term president

What 2021 looks like

What you can do

The oldest pianist?

 

The Passage of Time

Courtesy of  a Duncaster resident

Celebrations around the world

Russia is helping stray pets