I hope the journalistic popinjay Jake Tapper is at work on a chronicle of Agent Orange's obvious senility and how this addled egomaniac is being used by the likes of Miller and Vought to advance white "Christian" nationalism.
The esteemed writer of the Sentinel thinks that the Agent will run for president in 2028's sham election "if he is still physically healthy." Really? He does not look physically healthy in 2025 and is certainly not mentally healthy, why should that be a barrier?
I have a very low threshold for shame, and if often results in feeling second hand cringe for people who are, well, shameless. That’s how I feel whenever I read anything by John Kass. The word “petulant” just immediately comes to mind.
Interesting. My wife also has a low threshold. As a child, The Lucy Show was too cringe for her. As an adult, she cannot stay in the room if Curb Your Enthusiasm, or Fawlty Towers is on TV.
I don’t normally comment on the quips, but… the glue stick one was in the Tribune’s Pickles comic a few years ago. I still chuckle. And the hotel with fluffy towels reminds me that we used to get our towels (and ash trays) at Sheraton hotels. They had that nice monogram S.
For the Sanitary and Ship canal (credit to my best friend AI)
A new name for Chicago's Sanitary and Ship Canal that alludes to its purpose and has a fitting acronym could be **Waterway for Urban Sanitation and Navigation** (WUSAN).
- **Waterway**: Emphasizes the canal's role as a navigable channel.
- **Urban**: Nods to Chicago’s metropolitan context.
- **Sanitation**: Highlights the canal’s historical role in managing sewage and improving public health.
- **Navigation**: Reflects its function for shipping and transport.
- **WUSAN**: A pronounceable acronym with a clean, memorable ring.
Sounds Chinese. We should probably worry about how that AI works. :)
But I do like the way the answer demonstrates the total lack of creativity in the answer. It merely substituted alternate words without the least sense of place.
I like it! I understand why they want to change the name but am attached to it for historical reasons. Keeping the reasoning for the canal would be a nice move
I'm all for the spam filter. It's not too hard for me to discern and create a contact for legit texts that first get marked as spam. That would allow it through in the future. Over time I'd curate what gets through and not.
Same for surveys. I'd choose to keep them as the spam they are while others are free to accept and create a contact that would make it easy to identify in the future.
I'd like a spam filter for all of the political messaging and texts I get during local, state and national elections. I guess they're the 21st century version of the crap we used to get in the mail.
Without accurate polls we might need to just vote for the person who we think would be best. Perish the thought. With ranked choice voting that might not be bad.
I agree with what you say about Pritzker being honest about the gerrymandered map (and I love Pritzker). Let's go ahead and say, "yes our map is gerrymandered too, and it sucks we have to do it. Why don't the Republicans join us is federal legislation that will outlaw the practice nationwide? Until then, as long as they are super-gerrymandering states for political advantage, then we have to do the same to counter them."
The problem for Pritsker is that he would first have to make two admissions. First, that Ilinois has been politically gerrymandered for decades, so it has nothing to do with the current political situation. Second, that when he ran for governor one of his campaign promises was to have a non-gerrymandered map and that he would veto a partisan map. Again, he changed his mind on this when no one believed that Trump could make a comeback. But it was a good way to collaborate with the corrupt Mike Madigan in ensuring the power of the Dem party.
I will also repeat the comment that I made on Tuesday. I believe the harm to Illinois state and local politics is far greater that any potential swing in federal congressional seats. The fear that seats would swing dramatically presumes that the Dems would be unable to field competitive candidates in competitive races. I don't see any reason why centrist Dems would be uncompetitive in non-partisan districts.
The GOP has only 3 reps in Congress. Does Pritzker plan on simply eliminating the GOP from the federal level in Illinois? What the GOP is doing in Texas, Indiana, and other places is downright evil. But I cannot support simply disenfranchsing GOP voters in Illinois.
i was listening to a podcast recently, where the panel was critiquing the proposed gerrymanders by both the repubs & the dems.
one of the panelists even alluded to the origin of the term, 'The term gerrymandering is a portmanteau of a salamander and Elbridge Gerry, Vice President of the United States at the time of his death, who, as governor of Massachusetts in 1812, signed a bill that created a partisan district in the Boston area that was compared to the shape of a mythological salamander.'
however, he and all the other panelists mispronounced the both the term 'gerrymander' and the Gov's surname, as does almost everyone i've ever hears speak the term/name - they're correctly pronounced with a hard g, not a soft g.
I saw an election analyst from PolitiFact (?) that said Dems could not increase their seats because they are already maximally gerrymandered. He said the Voting Rights Act favored Democratic districting, so they got fewer legal challenges with respect to minority majority districts. He estimated that without the Voting Rights Act that GOP states could gain 20 seats from revised districts. The Texas re-districting will be interesting because all of the revised districts will be majority Hispanic, which I expect will still be challenged.
re trump using his emergency powers to take over law enforcement in DC, here's a section from the link he provided -
'What does the term “posse comitatus” mean?
In British and American law, a posse comitatus is a group of people who are mobilized by the sheriff to suppress lawlessness in the county. In any classic Western film, when a lawman gathers a “posse” to pursue the outlaws, they are forming a posse comitatus. The Posse Comitatus Act is so named because one of the things it prohibits is using soldiers rather than civilians as a posse comitatus.
What are the origins of the Posse Comitatus Act?
The Posse Comitatus Act was passed in 1878, after the end of Reconstruction and the return of white supremacists to political power in both southern states and Congress. Through the law, Congress sought to ensure that the federal military would not be used to intervene in the establishment of Jim Crow in the former Confederacy.'
wow, so the origin of the Act is to support Jim Crow in the South. i'm guessing this will be among the facts whitewashed [how appropriate in this context] from the Smithsonian.
The comment that our president didn’t know what Pearl Harbor was reminds me of the movie Animal House. Maybe he watched that for his information. Hopefully, people get that reference.
great reference to one of the great scenes in one of the great movies of all time! tho john belushi was surely smarter - much smarter - than our Dear Leader.
however, i doubt our DL ever watched Animal House. if he did, he wldn't have liked it - he has no sense of humor.
I remember hearing about that the demented, deranged moronic traitor didn't know about the attack on Pearl Harbor back in 2017, when some admiral was flat out shocked over that.
But never, ever forget, he also paid other students to take his tests when he was in college!
As for Kass, I guess all he had in life to make him happy are his unending grievances against you & others more liberal than he is.
My guess is that Kass actually thinks like the John Birchers of the 1950s & 60s & believes Eisenhower is a Communist. Eisenhower admired Marshal Zhukov of the Soviet Union, their main general who flat out crushed the Nazi Wehrmacht with his armies going west!
Speaking of obsolete sounds… I had a coworker who would check his voice mail after lunch everyday. He would have his phone on speaker, and we’d all hear the beep, beep, beep, as he entered his password on the touch buttons. Someone realized that each button had a different tone, and was able to log in and change the password one time. Fun times in the 1990s.
good one. reminds me of an experience in college back in the '70s [oops, i've outed my age range].
there was a blind guy at our school who had developed a much higher sense of hearing, and ability to whistle, than the average human. after much practice he was able to replicate with his whistle the exact tones for each key on a key-punch phone - and make long distance calls free for himself and friends.
his hijinx eventually got him caught - but it made for a great story.
Speaking of blind guy…, I was a Freshman at U of I and there was a blind guy in the dorm. One time I saw him on the quad and walked with him back to Hopkins Hall. When we got there I realized that I was so distracted talking to him that I had just followed him home. Being led by the blind. I’m still impressed by him from this memory.
I was 4 South in 78/79. A few doors down from Calvin Thomas who later played football for the Bears. I can tell stories about him. He was like our version of the Fonz. Scary, but we were in awe of him.
just read mary schmich's column 'Note to Jeff' - wow, what a reminder; and so eloquently written.
i failed to reconnect with a long-time friend in the final 6 mos before she passed ~3 yrs ago. i probably even failed to return 1 or 2 voice mails from her during those 6 mos. she was so full of energy, even into her 80s, i felt i always had to be prepared for a long, boisterous conversation whenever we spoke.
we met in the late 1980s. i was on a special assignment, working for a grp supporting the reform of CPS. she had been working on that reform for 20 yrs by then, known by some as the 'godmother of chicago public school reform'. while we often agreed on little else, especially in politics - we shared a deep belief in academic achievement for children, school choice and the separation of church and state.
as soon as i heard of her passing, i felt the guilt. i later attended a memorial service for her, and spoke with many of her family members, whom i knew, if not well. it made me feel good, or feel better. but didn't wash away the guilt.
but like mary S' columns, it reminded me: don't wait. don't worry about what you [I] say, or how you say it - just reach out, touch someone, with words, and good intentions.
Somewhere between conspiracy theories and the sky is falling - I agree there is a pattern of pushing to see how far the potus powers can extend. "NG isn't needed in DC - crime has been dropping over years." This is a more passive use of NG than sending to riots in California a few months ago. In short - everyone is talking about the slippery slope - but no one is salting the sidewalks. Wait until some martial law is declared. (PS is there a vaccine being worked on for TDS? :P ) 2) Gerry's Meandering ad the Guv - Could we trust a federal solution at this point? 3) Canal rebrand: Does bear ship in the canal? Dump and Haul Canal. Clean up your chip. 4) Trump news: Don't forget "President Trump announced he will host the Kennedy Center Honors this year, after he previously installed himself as chairman of the board." Also, "fact checking" at the Smithsonian Institution 5) There is obviously some dark shaow government operatives in all political offices. First someone grabs the Epstein list from Bondi's desk, now someone grabbed the pension report from Mayor's desk. What document will go missing next (Hmmm... Constitution?) 6) Sounds. I'd say "typing" is still around - still a muted version of the clappity clak of manual typewrite. Gas pump? really? I'd say the slide of your computer mouse. Maybe truly typewriting. Phone rings - heard internally. 7)) Green light. I'll have to reconsider "The Dig" A fan of Ralph Fiennes - but always felt the trailers gave away the whole movie
Claiming an emergency in order to grab power is a classic authoritarian move. I was predicting Trump will resort to it even before he took office this year. I wasn't even aware of the many different laws out there that Trump is using, basically gifted to a tyrant by legislators past and present, either too naive or actually pining for a strongman to take over.
Every step Trump takes is simultaneously an escalation of a previous one and a preparation for the even bigger next one, always testing and stretching and weakening the boundaries, flooding the zone and overwhelming the opposition. Like a greedy soulless billionaire that he is, he can't be satisfied, someone with a deep-seeded grievance that can't be redressed, or an addiction that needs constant and increasing doses of the power drug.
you make good pts - but it's hard to predict someone with trump's authoritarian propensity and flat-out mean streak would ever become POTUS at the time the laws were passed.
could/shd the legislators at the time have foreseen trump, MAGA and trumpism? or taken taken into acct the possibility, however small at the time, for such an occurrence?
seems you're making the assessment with 20/20 hindsight.
Excellent comment! A lot of the pre-war reactions to Hitler were based on no one anticipating what Hitler was capable of doing. When the Constitution was written and in a lot of the laws and regulations written since then, no one anticipated Trump and his followers. There has always, in this country a certain amount of belief in the goodness of people and the need to avoid over regulating government as well as the people. Trump and his minions are attempting to take advantage of that in any way. Let's remember that when creating the role of a national leader, the colonials were assuming they still needed someone to head the government. They simply didn't want someone with the power of King George III. Even with so-called "emergency powers" the founders of this country neither envisioned nor wanted someone like Trump to exercise so much personal authority. Not even Alexander Hamilton, who didn't believe most ordinary citizens had the knowledge or education to know how to run the country or vote, wanted another royal ruler or government.
think of the most authoritarian POTUS, pre-trump - who would that be? nixon? FDR?
let's assume nixon for a moment, tho i'm open to other nominees. could the legislators during nixon's tenure, and immediately post-nixon, have foreseen trump & trumpism? i suppose they shd have prepared for someone worse than nixon - but as authoritarian as trump?
if a hypothetical POTUS such as trump had been described to legislators back in the 1970s - or anytime before - i suspect the vast majority would have responded, 'no way could such a man be elected POTUS!'
Watergate is probably an apt comparison in that CREEP attempted to steal an election. What was most stupid about it was that the Democrats were totally messed up and it wasn’t necessary. The major difference was that not even CREEP went state to state and tried to disenfranchise voters. They attempted dirty tricks to try and make Muskie look bad. But he did pretty well on his own. No, Trump is still in a class by himself. His campaign people make CREEP look like a Boy Scout troop.
Speaking of which, do people still say "ka-ching" to express excitement for receiving money? I think that cash register sound has pretty much gone extinct in real life.
Totally agree with Eric, "Adolescence" is a masterfully written, acted and filmed four-part series that will really hit you hard. Just want to note that when it came out, there was some confusion in which people got the impression that the crime in the series was an exploding problem in the UK--young boys killing young girls with knives due to Incel internet indoctrination. Prime Minister Keir Starmer even called the fictional series a "documentary." Knives are a huge problem in the UK, where they don't have guns, but not this particular type of crime. Here's one good podcast on "Adolescence" featuring what is apparently the only academic Incel expert--I heard him on a couple of other podcasts as well. This podcast is from the online heterodox magazine "Quintette.": https://quillette.com/2025/04/05/incels-facts-and-fictions-adolescence-2/
Thanks, a great comment and link. I also thought it was interesting that the host did not know about drill rap. Drill rap originated in Chicago and is part of the toxic gang ethos that is so dangerous and destructive. Similarly there is Narcocorrido that celebrates the drug gangs. It would be more socially beneficial for the artists to have addressed these as opposed to the virtually nonexistent problem they chose. Particularly since there will be a large portion of the audience that will not know the stats. I hope the film does not have the political resonance in the US that it had in the UK.
I hope the journalistic popinjay Jake Tapper is at work on a chronicle of Agent Orange's obvious senility and how this addled egomaniac is being used by the likes of Miller and Vought to advance white "Christian" nationalism.
The esteemed writer of the Sentinel thinks that the Agent will run for president in 2028's sham election "if he is still physically healthy." Really? He does not look physically healthy in 2025 and is certainly not mentally healthy, why should that be a barrier?
I have a very low threshold for shame, and if often results in feeling second hand cringe for people who are, well, shameless. That’s how I feel whenever I read anything by John Kass. The word “petulant” just immediately comes to mind.
Well, he definitely puts the Jack in Jack Kass…
Sound we won’t hear in 25 years: Donald Trump’s voice.
Interesting. My wife also has a low threshold. As a child, The Lucy Show was too cringe for her. As an adult, she cannot stay in the room if Curb Your Enthusiasm, or Fawlty Towers is on TV.
I don’t normally comment on the quips, but… the glue stick one was in the Tribune’s Pickles comic a few years ago. I still chuckle. And the hotel with fluffy towels reminds me that we used to get our towels (and ash trays) at Sheraton hotels. They had that nice monogram S.
For the Sanitary and Ship canal (credit to my best friend AI)
A new name for Chicago's Sanitary and Ship Canal that alludes to its purpose and has a fitting acronym could be **Waterway for Urban Sanitation and Navigation** (WUSAN).
- **Waterway**: Emphasizes the canal's role as a navigable channel.
- **Urban**: Nods to Chicago’s metropolitan context.
- **Sanitation**: Highlights the canal’s historical role in managing sewage and improving public health.
- **Navigation**: Reflects its function for shipping and transport.
- **WUSAN**: A pronounceable acronym with a clean, memorable ring.
Sounds Chinese. We should probably worry about how that AI works. :)
But I do like the way the answer demonstrates the total lack of creativity in the answer. It merely substituted alternate words without the least sense of place.
I like it! I understand why they want to change the name but am attached to it for historical reasons. Keeping the reasoning for the canal would be a nice move
I'm all for the spam filter. It's not too hard for me to discern and create a contact for legit texts that first get marked as spam. That would allow it through in the future. Over time I'd curate what gets through and not.
Same for surveys. I'd choose to keep them as the spam they are while others are free to accept and create a contact that would make it easy to identify in the future.
I'd like a spam filter for all of the political messaging and texts I get during local, state and national elections. I guess they're the 21st century version of the crap we used to get in the mail.
Without accurate polls we might need to just vote for the person who we think would be best. Perish the thought. With ranked choice voting that might not be bad.
5 REALLY FUNNIES in today's QotWs. unfortunately, the other voters so far don't seem to agree as to which were the REALLY FUNNIES.
I agree with what you say about Pritzker being honest about the gerrymandered map (and I love Pritzker). Let's go ahead and say, "yes our map is gerrymandered too, and it sucks we have to do it. Why don't the Republicans join us is federal legislation that will outlaw the practice nationwide? Until then, as long as they are super-gerrymandering states for political advantage, then we have to do the same to counter them."
It sucks we have to do it??
The problem for Pritsker is that he would first have to make two admissions. First, that Ilinois has been politically gerrymandered for decades, so it has nothing to do with the current political situation. Second, that when he ran for governor one of his campaign promises was to have a non-gerrymandered map and that he would veto a partisan map. Again, he changed his mind on this when no one believed that Trump could make a comeback. But it was a good way to collaborate with the corrupt Mike Madigan in ensuring the power of the Dem party.
I will also repeat the comment that I made on Tuesday. I believe the harm to Illinois state and local politics is far greater that any potential swing in federal congressional seats. The fear that seats would swing dramatically presumes that the Dems would be unable to field competitive candidates in competitive races. I don't see any reason why centrist Dems would be uncompetitive in non-partisan districts.
The GOP has only 3 reps in Congress. Does Pritzker plan on simply eliminating the GOP from the federal level in Illinois? What the GOP is doing in Texas, Indiana, and other places is downright evil. But I cannot support simply disenfranchsing GOP voters in Illinois.
i was listening to a podcast recently, where the panel was critiquing the proposed gerrymanders by both the repubs & the dems.
one of the panelists even alluded to the origin of the term, 'The term gerrymandering is a portmanteau of a salamander and Elbridge Gerry, Vice President of the United States at the time of his death, who, as governor of Massachusetts in 1812, signed a bill that created a partisan district in the Boston area that was compared to the shape of a mythological salamander.'
however, he and all the other panelists mispronounced the both the term 'gerrymander' and the Gov's surname, as does almost everyone i've ever hears speak the term/name - they're correctly pronounced with a hard g, not a soft g.
I saw an election analyst from PolitiFact (?) that said Dems could not increase their seats because they are already maximally gerrymandered. He said the Voting Rights Act favored Democratic districting, so they got fewer legal challenges with respect to minority majority districts. He estimated that without the Voting Rights Act that GOP states could gain 20 seats from revised districts. The Texas re-districting will be interesting because all of the revised districts will be majority Hispanic, which I expect will still be challenged.
re trump using his emergency powers to take over law enforcement in DC, here's a section from the link he provided -
'What does the term “posse comitatus” mean?
In British and American law, a posse comitatus is a group of people who are mobilized by the sheriff to suppress lawlessness in the county. In any classic Western film, when a lawman gathers a “posse” to pursue the outlaws, they are forming a posse comitatus. The Posse Comitatus Act is so named because one of the things it prohibits is using soldiers rather than civilians as a posse comitatus.
What are the origins of the Posse Comitatus Act?
The Posse Comitatus Act was passed in 1878, after the end of Reconstruction and the return of white supremacists to political power in both southern states and Congress. Through the law, Congress sought to ensure that the federal military would not be used to intervene in the establishment of Jim Crow in the former Confederacy.'
wow, so the origin of the Act is to support Jim Crow in the South. i'm guessing this will be among the facts whitewashed [how appropriate in this context] from the Smithsonian.
The comment that our president didn’t know what Pearl Harbor was reminds me of the movie Animal House. Maybe he watched that for his information. Hopefully, people get that reference.
I get it.
great reference to one of the great scenes in one of the great movies of all time! tho john belushi was surely smarter - much smarter - than our Dear Leader.
however, i doubt our DL ever watched Animal House. if he did, he wldn't have liked it - he has no sense of humor.
I remember hearing about that the demented, deranged moronic traitor didn't know about the attack on Pearl Harbor back in 2017, when some admiral was flat out shocked over that.
But never, ever forget, he also paid other students to take his tests when he was in college!
As for Kass, I guess all he had in life to make him happy are his unending grievances against you & others more liberal than he is.
Kass probably thinks Eisenhower was more liberal than he is.
My guess is that Kass actually thinks like the John Birchers of the 1950s & 60s & believes Eisenhower is a Communist. Eisenhower admired Marshal Zhukov of the Soviet Union, their main general who flat out crushed the Nazi Wehrmacht with his armies going west!
Speaking of obsolete sounds… I had a coworker who would check his voice mail after lunch everyday. He would have his phone on speaker, and we’d all hear the beep, beep, beep, as he entered his password on the touch buttons. Someone realized that each button had a different tone, and was able to log in and change the password one time. Fun times in the 1990s.
good one. reminds me of an experience in college back in the '70s [oops, i've outed my age range].
there was a blind guy at our school who had developed a much higher sense of hearing, and ability to whistle, than the average human. after much practice he was able to replicate with his whistle the exact tones for each key on a key-punch phone - and make long distance calls free for himself and friends.
his hijinx eventually got him caught - but it made for a great story.
Speaking of blind guy…, I was a Freshman at U of I and there was a blind guy in the dorm. One time I saw him on the quad and walked with him back to Hopkins Hall. When we got there I realized that I was so distracted talking to him that I had just followed him home. Being led by the blind. I’m still impressed by him from this memory.
my brother lived in Hopkins Hall [3rd flr] frosh yr ['78/79], as did my son ['05/06], 4 doors down
I was 4 South in 78/79. A few doors down from Calvin Thomas who later played football for the Bears. I can tell stories about him. He was like our version of the Fonz. Scary, but we were in awe of him.
just read mary schmich's column 'Note to Jeff' - wow, what a reminder; and so eloquently written.
i failed to reconnect with a long-time friend in the final 6 mos before she passed ~3 yrs ago. i probably even failed to return 1 or 2 voice mails from her during those 6 mos. she was so full of energy, even into her 80s, i felt i always had to be prepared for a long, boisterous conversation whenever we spoke.
we met in the late 1980s. i was on a special assignment, working for a grp supporting the reform of CPS. she had been working on that reform for 20 yrs by then, known by some as the 'godmother of chicago public school reform'. while we often agreed on little else, especially in politics - we shared a deep belief in academic achievement for children, school choice and the separation of church and state.
as soon as i heard of her passing, i felt the guilt. i later attended a memorial service for her, and spoke with many of her family members, whom i knew, if not well. it made me feel good, or feel better. but didn't wash away the guilt.
but like mary S' columns, it reminded me: don't wait. don't worry about what you [I] say, or how you say it - just reach out, touch someone, with words, and good intentions.
Somewhere between conspiracy theories and the sky is falling - I agree there is a pattern of pushing to see how far the potus powers can extend. "NG isn't needed in DC - crime has been dropping over years." This is a more passive use of NG than sending to riots in California a few months ago. In short - everyone is talking about the slippery slope - but no one is salting the sidewalks. Wait until some martial law is declared. (PS is there a vaccine being worked on for TDS? :P ) 2) Gerry's Meandering ad the Guv - Could we trust a federal solution at this point? 3) Canal rebrand: Does bear ship in the canal? Dump and Haul Canal. Clean up your chip. 4) Trump news: Don't forget "President Trump announced he will host the Kennedy Center Honors this year, after he previously installed himself as chairman of the board." Also, "fact checking" at the Smithsonian Institution 5) There is obviously some dark shaow government operatives in all political offices. First someone grabs the Epstein list from Bondi's desk, now someone grabbed the pension report from Mayor's desk. What document will go missing next (Hmmm... Constitution?) 6) Sounds. I'd say "typing" is still around - still a muted version of the clappity clak of manual typewrite. Gas pump? really? I'd say the slide of your computer mouse. Maybe truly typewriting. Phone rings - heard internally. 7)) Green light. I'll have to reconsider "The Dig" A fan of Ralph Fiennes - but always felt the trailers gave away the whole movie
Claiming an emergency in order to grab power is a classic authoritarian move. I was predicting Trump will resort to it even before he took office this year. I wasn't even aware of the many different laws out there that Trump is using, basically gifted to a tyrant by legislators past and present, either too naive or actually pining for a strongman to take over.
Every step Trump takes is simultaneously an escalation of a previous one and a preparation for the even bigger next one, always testing and stretching and weakening the boundaries, flooding the zone and overwhelming the opposition. Like a greedy soulless billionaire that he is, he can't be satisfied, someone with a deep-seeded grievance that can't be redressed, or an addiction that needs constant and increasing doses of the power drug.
You said it!
you make good pts - but it's hard to predict someone with trump's authoritarian propensity and flat-out mean streak would ever become POTUS at the time the laws were passed.
could/shd the legislators at the time have foreseen trump, MAGA and trumpism? or taken taken into acct the possibility, however small at the time, for such an occurrence?
seems you're making the assessment with 20/20 hindsight.
Excellent comment! A lot of the pre-war reactions to Hitler were based on no one anticipating what Hitler was capable of doing. When the Constitution was written and in a lot of the laws and regulations written since then, no one anticipated Trump and his followers. There has always, in this country a certain amount of belief in the goodness of people and the need to avoid over regulating government as well as the people. Trump and his minions are attempting to take advantage of that in any way. Let's remember that when creating the role of a national leader, the colonials were assuming they still needed someone to head the government. They simply didn't want someone with the power of King George III. Even with so-called "emergency powers" the founders of this country neither envisioned nor wanted someone like Trump to exercise so much personal authority. Not even Alexander Hamilton, who didn't believe most ordinary citizens had the knowledge or education to know how to run the country or vote, wanted another royal ruler or government.
well-stated.
think of the most authoritarian POTUS, pre-trump - who would that be? nixon? FDR?
let's assume nixon for a moment, tho i'm open to other nominees. could the legislators during nixon's tenure, and immediately post-nixon, have foreseen trump & trumpism? i suppose they shd have prepared for someone worse than nixon - but as authoritarian as trump?
if a hypothetical POTUS such as trump had been described to legislators back in the 1970s - or anytime before - i suspect the vast majority would have responded, 'no way could such a man be elected POTUS!'
unfortunately, they'd've been wrong.
Watergate is probably an apt comparison in that CREEP attempted to steal an election. What was most stupid about it was that the Democrats were totally messed up and it wasn’t necessary. The major difference was that not even CREEP went state to state and tried to disenfranchise voters. They attempted dirty tricks to try and make Muskie look bad. But he did pretty well on his own. No, Trump is still in a class by himself. His campaign people make CREEP look like a Boy Scout troop.
More obsolete sounds: 35 mm film motor drives and SLR camera shutter clicks. Listen to Duran Duran's "Girls on Film" for perfect example.
A ticking watch.
The sound of coins being returned in the coin return tray
As long as there are slot machines that sound will never be truly obsolete...
Last time I was in a casino they didn’t have the clink of coins. It spit out a paper voucher. What a letdown.
Speaking of which, do people still say "ka-ching" to express excitement for receiving money? I think that cash register sound has pretty much gone extinct in real life.
I bet there are people that would need to have the time sig setting intro to Pink Floyd’s “Money” explained to them.
Or “Freeze Frame” by the J. Geils Band, both great songs.
Totally agree with Eric, "Adolescence" is a masterfully written, acted and filmed four-part series that will really hit you hard. Just want to note that when it came out, there was some confusion in which people got the impression that the crime in the series was an exploding problem in the UK--young boys killing young girls with knives due to Incel internet indoctrination. Prime Minister Keir Starmer even called the fictional series a "documentary." Knives are a huge problem in the UK, where they don't have guns, but not this particular type of crime. Here's one good podcast on "Adolescence" featuring what is apparently the only academic Incel expert--I heard him on a couple of other podcasts as well. This podcast is from the online heterodox magazine "Quintette.": https://quillette.com/2025/04/05/incels-facts-and-fictions-adolescence-2/
Thanks, a great comment and link. I also thought it was interesting that the host did not know about drill rap. Drill rap originated in Chicago and is part of the toxic gang ethos that is so dangerous and destructive. Similarly there is Narcocorrido that celebrates the drug gangs. It would be more socially beneficial for the artists to have addressed these as opposed to the virtually nonexistent problem they chose. Particularly since there will be a large portion of the audience that will not know the stats. I hope the film does not have the political resonance in the US that it had in the UK.