On the road, my sweetie always gets the side nearer the bathroom: purely pragmatic based on who always needs to use the facilities more often during the night. At home, we never change. Still, I couldn't claim "never, ever." Do other people really make their "frequent flyer" partners walk all the way around the bed in the middle of the night in an unfamiliar hotel room?
I pretty much always get bathroom side when traveling, but if it's the opposite from my home side, sometimes I'll surrender it. We usually request a king, but I confess if it's 2 queens I enjoy the me time.
i can't remember even one time, in 43 yrs of marriage, and some pre-marital 'overnights', that we've slept on the opposite-of-usual sides of the bed. coincidentally, hotel rooms are almost always designed with my side closer to the bathroom [whew 😉]
Luck of the draw! Hotel rooms tend to be mirror images of their neighbors on either side, with bathrooms adjacent. Less expensive to build and easier for repairs if there's one set of plumbing risers for every pair of rooms, located in the wall between them. (I think I just outed myself as a recidivist condo board member. What other non-plumber ever learns this stuff?)
Re bedsides. Same side at home. Yes. But on the road we switch sometimes but not randomly. My husband always gets the side closer to the bathroom because I am a light sleeper and the farther I’m away from hearing him get up in the middle of the night or sense him trying to navigate around the bed the better.
I sleep on the side closer to the door. My wife suggested that 41 years ago in case of an intruder. Oddly, that puts me on the opposite side in my FL home vs my IL home, but I’m closer to the bathroom in both locations! 😉
The few people on your list who are Trumpers or Trump whisperers always cite hatred of elites as a driving factor for MAGA voters (often "liberal elites"--i.e., educated informed people). The standard bearers of this anti-elite movement are a pampered man-child who inherited large sums from his slumlord father, has never been called to account for his crimes, bankruptcies, cheating, etc., and lives a life of vulgar luxury; and a man who went to Yale Law, made millions in Silicon Valley, had his Senate seat bought for him by his billionaire tech pals, and poses as a hillbilly. Some horny handed sons of toil!
Most such Trumpers cite "hatred of elites", but it's hatred directed at others (women, people of color, LGBTQ, immigrants, and other "others") that are the uniting thread for most, IMO.
I would suggest to all those who are not a fan of either party to vote 3rd party rather than for someone you also dislike.
If you live in Illinois Harris is going to win the state and it doesn’t matter who the double haters vote for. So might as well vote for someone else and show both parties that you want them to move more to the middle.
Let me be the first to criticize this apparently sound thinking by saying that if you don’t vote for Harris, you are voting for Trump. That’s what people reliably say when I tell them I’m not going to vote for someone I don’t support, which in this election is both major party candidates.
I think the correct thing to say is that if you don’t vote for Harris in a state where your vote could affect the outcome, you are making it more likely that Trump will be elected. There is really no disputing that formulation, I think.
It's certainly true that votes in some states matter more than in others. However, I think it would help to have as large a vote for Harris as possible -- i.e. big turnout and 0% for 3rd parties or write-ins -- because a showing of overwhelming vote total for her may help tamp down claims of vote-stealing from the Trump campaign. Then if you're not happy with Harris/Walz policies, lobby the hell out of them for 4 years, but don't use your vote to protest now.
The Trump camp is going to claim election theft regardless of the vote differential. Do you think that if Harris wins by, say 25 million votes that Trump will consider that margin to be too decisive and that he’ll go ahead and concede? Of course he won’t.
I think that anyone who isn’t pleased as punch with either Harris or Trump owes it to themselves to vote for a third party candidate, or write one in. Why shouldn’t they? There’s certainly no risk. There is less certainty that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow and set in the west than there is that Illinois will vote Harris/Walz in November, so what would the purpose be of voting for anyone that you aren’t all in for?
You are right that Trump himself and his campaign operation won't be deterred from claiming the election's stolen no matter the number of votes he loses by. But as we've seen, it takes a lot of other people to wreak havoc after an election. I'd like to think that the many people who supported his false claims last time and paid a steep price -- from the J6 folks now in prison, the "alternate" state electors and attorneys who've been indicted -- might be deterred this time, perhaps with the encouragement of their family, friends, and employers to not get thrown under the Trump bus again.
@JoanieWimmer Your expression of this line of thinking is exactly what I was "presponding" to. The closeness of the election doesn't cause my 3rd-party vote to swing in one direction over the other. Distilled, it sounds to me like this:
"This is a close election - every vote matters. Are you voting for A or B?"
"Neither, I don't like either one. I'll vote for C, whom I like a lot."
Thank you, Marc Martinez, for your comment on tariffs. One bit of historical context to add. Since the early 1800s, low tariffs tend to follow prosperity, not lead to it initially. The United States is a great example. We had high tariffs in the 1800s and the early 1900s. This helped our industries grow--at the expense of higher prices for consumers. Only when we became a wealthy country did we lower our tariffs. Today, I think we should push back against high tariffs from wealthy countries but accept them when imposed by poor countries.
I get the New Yorker every week and every week I enter the caption contest. I never win, yet I think my captions should win.
And sometimes I think I could write an SNL skit that would be funny. For example:
Kenan Thompson dressed in a suit addresses the audience “Today we have some prominent Republicans here to discuss Laura Loomer and the Trump campaign.”
Tulsi Gabbard, “Laura is providing a women’s viewpoint on the Muslim community…SHE IS NOT THERE FOR SEX!”.
JD Vance,”True Americans are repulsed by the smell of curry, I should know, I have experience in that area…AND SHE IS NOT THERE FOR SEX!”
Lindsay Graham, “Laura is helping Trump reset his roots with New York City and 9/11…SHE IS NOT THERE FOR SEX!”.
Tim Scott,”Where is Melania by the way, well anyway…Laura IS NOT THERE FOR SEX!”
Then Kenan smiling that smile of his There you have it, looks like we agree on only one thing…and then everybody yells to the audience “SHE IS NOT THERE FOR SEX!”.
Lorne, so you like it…wait…don’t call…wait for a callback. Okay.
Guess I will go back to my specialty, sophisticated Dad jokes:
No, but I'd love to be a story editor for a few TV shows I watch. They often make no sense.
The worst lately is Dick Wolf's remake of his original Law & Order show. Many episodes last year, its second were a mess, totally illogical, with the cop characters breaking the law & the lawbreakers they were after so appallingly stupid, it was impossible for them to be the rich & powerful people they were portrayed as!
But the last season of the long running law & Order: SVU, also had many episodes that were mind blowingly idiotic!
It's become very obvious to me, there is a shortage of good script writers out there & many of the best writers have gone to cable or streaming, so as not to have to censor themselves on the altar of out of date broadcast TV standards.
I have no idea for a script or even the ability to write one.
What I could do is go through it & make it logical & make sense.
I'm a huge fan of Roger Ebert's concept of Idiot Plot, where everyone is an idiot, because if they weren't, the movie would be over in five minutes! The same for so many dramatic TV shows lately.
The iPhone one reminds me of my elementary school principal, she wore the same blue dress for eight years I was there! She must have had a dozen of them. She also lived with the "adjustment teacher" as she was called, we were too young to understand they were lesbians! Our parents knew & later told us they didn't care.
Dollar value of life: The numbers cited are the the amount of cost which should be incurred to save a life. I do not recall where, but I once read an article which showed that *how* a life is lost matters a lot. For example, we will pay much more per life to save them in air travel than we will on roads.
It also raises the question of whether some lives are worth more than others, like the value of lives of people who live in neighborhoods with have ShotSpotter. Of course, it is an opinion. What should we make of Brandon Johnson's valuation of lives?
No one would ever admit that they think some lives are worth more than others (even to themselves), but which safety measure are put into place and where implies an answer.
We’re down to the nitty gritty. So many polls but consistently close race within margin of error. Of the two debates - one pushed out a sitting president, one introduced a new candidate. I don’t think either changed people’s minds. It’s coming down to 8 states. I’m feeling that the undecided may simply stay that way and not pick a lane. While the Swifties and Oprahs and Dick Cheney (just kidding) are rallying the masses those extra Democratic votes mean less in Illinois than they do in PA WI MI AZ…
My college kid in Michigan is registered to vote here in IL but their roommate is trying to convince them to re-register in Michigan, as the roommate (WV native) is doing. They are each from states that are pretty well decided and feel that they could make a difference in the swing state where they go to school.
I didn't watch most of the debate. I knew what would happen. That doesn't make me a genius. We know what Trump is. He is utterly predictable. Harris didn't offer a lot of answers. She defended herself and Biden and told us what was wrong with Trump. There wasn't enough there to change anyone's minds. I don't find such occasions either educational or amusing. When one thinks about, the entire reason for a debate is to change minds, either to convince viewers to choose a candidate or switch from one to the other. I agree with the view that it changed few minds. Trump showed us what he always shows us. Harris didn't give us much to hang a hat on.
So, instead of showing that she is a real person who has had real life experiences, Vice-President Harris should have outlined her detailed plan for improving the economy?? In 2 minutes!
Sure, that would have worked so swell. People everywhere would have hung on every word about the GDP, the Feds role in setting interest rates, changes in the CPI, etc. Too bad she didn't try that!!!
There has to be some data on shotspotter available. Why isn’t it being used or discussed. If there isn’t any at least the suggested data such as you listed should lead to some discussion. I can’t recall what the Campaign promise was around it. The Mayor has to find a win somewhere I suppose. That win could flip on him.
I believe there's a bigger picture here and an inconvenient truth. Johnson is catering to those he wants to please and believe he needs to win reelection. I don't think all the facts and figures expressed in today's forum mean much to him. Now some might say "Why not? The white population had it all their way fir many years. Let the black population have their time." But that kind of thinking skews the truth. There are many reasons there is more crime in the black community. Want to blame it on historical racism? Fine. But that doesn't fix anything. It exacerbates things by allowing too many young blacks to use racism as an excuse for their actions. Academics use crime statistics to push this idea. Shot Spotter is not racist. It identifies gunshots and doesn't care about the color of the people firing the shots. As said in this forum, eliminating it doesn't help fix crime. Until fixing crime in minority communities, the statistics on everything such as traffic tickets, felony arrests, and Shot Spotter are always going to look racist. Johnson is shameless in using this to further his political goals.
Another angle for putting a dollar value on a life - monetary damages awarded in wrongful death civil suits. From what I'm reading the factors include lost earning potential and companionship to family, so a younger person with siblings, parents, an extended family, perhaps an education, would be valued more than a lonely elderly person. The stats I'm finding say the average awarded is about $1 Million, with the range from $500 K to $2 Million. Taking the $1 Million average, 85 lives saved are way more than worth the $10 M investment. It is a bit of a cold, maybe even macabre way to think of human life, but as EZ says sometimes we are forced to think in pragmatic ways.
A study based on the 2010 Census showed "Zorn" tied with "Ebersole" and "Callan" for 7,353rd place in the list of most common surnames in the United States. For more details on "Zorn" and other names, go to https://www.census.gov/topics/population/genealogy/data/2010_surnames.html.
What a cool data set! Too bad it’s not more easily searchable.
I downloaded the CSV file, clicked Command-F, and entered "Zorn" in the Find & Replace box.
I know there is also a search for first name. My dad is Lanny, and long ago I looked that up.
hey, thanks for this! my surname made the top 9000.
On the road, my sweetie always gets the side nearer the bathroom: purely pragmatic based on who always needs to use the facilities more often during the night. At home, we never change. Still, I couldn't claim "never, ever." Do other people really make their "frequent flyer" partners walk all the way around the bed in the middle of the night in an unfamiliar hotel room?
I have to admit that we often get separate beds on the road and are able to spread out like we can’t in our Queen.
I pretty much always get bathroom side when traveling, but if it's the opposite from my home side, sometimes I'll surrender it. We usually request a king, but I confess if it's 2 queens I enjoy the me time.
i can't remember even one time, in 43 yrs of marriage, and some pre-marital 'overnights', that we've slept on the opposite-of-usual sides of the bed. coincidentally, hotel rooms are almost always designed with my side closer to the bathroom [whew 😉]
Luck of the draw! Hotel rooms tend to be mirror images of their neighbors on either side, with bathrooms adjacent. Less expensive to build and easier for repairs if there's one set of plumbing risers for every pair of rooms, located in the wall between them. (I think I just outed myself as a recidivist condo board member. What other non-plumber ever learns this stuff?)
Re bedsides. Same side at home. Yes. But on the road we switch sometimes but not randomly. My husband always gets the side closer to the bathroom because I am a light sleeper and the farther I’m away from hearing him get up in the middle of the night or sense him trying to navigate around the bed the better.
I sleep on the side closer to the door. My wife suggested that 41 years ago in case of an intruder. Oddly, that puts me on the opposite side in my FL home vs my IL home, but I’m closer to the bathroom in both locations! 😉
The few people on your list who are Trumpers or Trump whisperers always cite hatred of elites as a driving factor for MAGA voters (often "liberal elites"--i.e., educated informed people). The standard bearers of this anti-elite movement are a pampered man-child who inherited large sums from his slumlord father, has never been called to account for his crimes, bankruptcies, cheating, etc., and lives a life of vulgar luxury; and a man who went to Yale Law, made millions in Silicon Valley, had his Senate seat bought for him by his billionaire tech pals, and poses as a hillbilly. Some horny handed sons of toil!
Most such Trumpers cite "hatred of elites", but it's hatred directed at others (women, people of color, LGBTQ, immigrants, and other "others") that are the uniting thread for most, IMO.
I would suggest to all those who are not a fan of either party to vote 3rd party rather than for someone you also dislike.
If you live in Illinois Harris is going to win the state and it doesn’t matter who the double haters vote for. So might as well vote for someone else and show both parties that you want them to move more to the middle.
Let me be the first to criticize this apparently sound thinking by saying that if you don’t vote for Harris, you are voting for Trump. That’s what people reliably say when I tell them I’m not going to vote for someone I don’t support, which in this election is both major party candidates.
I think the correct thing to say is that if you don’t vote for Harris in a state where your vote could affect the outcome, you are making it more likely that Trump will be elected. There is really no disputing that formulation, I think.
It's certainly true that votes in some states matter more than in others. However, I think it would help to have as large a vote for Harris as possible -- i.e. big turnout and 0% for 3rd parties or write-ins -- because a showing of overwhelming vote total for her may help tamp down claims of vote-stealing from the Trump campaign. Then if you're not happy with Harris/Walz policies, lobby the hell out of them for 4 years, but don't use your vote to protest now.
The Trump camp is going to claim election theft regardless of the vote differential. Do you think that if Harris wins by, say 25 million votes that Trump will consider that margin to be too decisive and that he’ll go ahead and concede? Of course he won’t.
I think that anyone who isn’t pleased as punch with either Harris or Trump owes it to themselves to vote for a third party candidate, or write one in. Why shouldn’t they? There’s certainly no risk. There is less certainty that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow and set in the west than there is that Illinois will vote Harris/Walz in November, so what would the purpose be of voting for anyone that you aren’t all in for?
You are right that Trump himself and his campaign operation won't be deterred from claiming the election's stolen no matter the number of votes he loses by. But as we've seen, it takes a lot of other people to wreak havoc after an election. I'd like to think that the many people who supported his false claims last time and paid a steep price -- from the J6 folks now in prison, the "alternate" state electors and attorneys who've been indicted -- might be deterred this time, perhaps with the encouragement of their family, friends, and employers to not get thrown under the Trump bus again.
@JoanieWimmer Your expression of this line of thinking is exactly what I was "presponding" to. The closeness of the election doesn't cause my 3rd-party vote to swing in one direction over the other. Distilled, it sounds to me like this:
"This is a close election - every vote matters. Are you voting for A or B?"
"Neither, I don't like either one. I'll vote for C, whom I like a lot."
"You're helping elect B!"
"???
Let's save our country first by voting for Harris/Walz. Then you can vote for whomever you want in 2028 because...we will have an election in 2028!
Thank you, Marc Martinez, for your comment on tariffs. One bit of historical context to add. Since the early 1800s, low tariffs tend to follow prosperity, not lead to it initially. The United States is a great example. We had high tariffs in the 1800s and the early 1900s. This helped our industries grow--at the expense of higher prices for consumers. Only when we became a wealthy country did we lower our tariffs. Today, I think we should push back against high tariffs from wealthy countries but accept them when imposed by poor countries.
EZ - Best crop of visual quips ever. ALL of them should be tied as the winner.
(P. S. - You need to correct your copy about your Readers disagreeing that only winning teams should make the playoffs, based on your survey data.)
I think he meant that readers disagreed with my view. They agreed with EZ's view that only winning teams should be in playoffs.
Sewing instructions -- once you get past the bad grammar.
I get the New Yorker every week and every week I enter the caption contest. I never win, yet I think my captions should win.
And sometimes I think I could write an SNL skit that would be funny. For example:
Kenan Thompson dressed in a suit addresses the audience “Today we have some prominent Republicans here to discuss Laura Loomer and the Trump campaign.”
Tulsi Gabbard, “Laura is providing a women’s viewpoint on the Muslim community…SHE IS NOT THERE FOR SEX!”.
JD Vance,”True Americans are repulsed by the smell of curry, I should know, I have experience in that area…AND SHE IS NOT THERE FOR SEX!”
Lindsay Graham, “Laura is helping Trump reset his roots with New York City and 9/11…SHE IS NOT THERE FOR SEX!”.
Tim Scott,”Where is Melania by the way, well anyway…Laura IS NOT THERE FOR SEX!”
Then Kenan smiling that smile of his There you have it, looks like we agree on only one thing…and then everybody yells to the audience “SHE IS NOT THERE FOR SEX!”.
Lorne, so you like it…wait…don’t call…wait for a callback. Okay.
Guess I will go back to my specialty, sophisticated Dad jokes:
What do porcupines say when they kiss?
Ouch! Ouch! Ouch!
Hey, I got a big laugh from my 4 year old nephew!
It's Kenan, not Kenyan!
The all knowing auto correct changed his name. I have now corrected it.
Did you ever teach grammar or had a proof reader’s job?
No, but I'd love to be a story editor for a few TV shows I watch. They often make no sense.
The worst lately is Dick Wolf's remake of his original Law & Order show. Many episodes last year, its second were a mess, totally illogical, with the cop characters breaking the law & the lawbreakers they were after so appallingly stupid, it was impossible for them to be the rich & powerful people they were portrayed as!
But the last season of the long running law & Order: SVU, also had many episodes that were mind blowingly idiotic!
It's become very obvious to me, there is a shortage of good script writers out there & many of the best writers have gone to cable or streaming, so as not to have to censor themselves on the altar of out of date broadcast TV standards.
So Garry, give us an outline of a script. It would be fun to review.
Expect it would be unique and interesting.
I have no idea for a script or even the ability to write one.
What I could do is go through it & make it logical & make sense.
I'm a huge fan of Roger Ebert's concept of Idiot Plot, where everyone is an idiot, because if they weren't, the movie would be over in five minutes! The same for so many dramatic TV shows lately.
The iPhone one reminds me of my elementary school principal, she wore the same blue dress for eight years I was there! She must have had a dozen of them. She also lived with the "adjustment teacher" as she was called, we were too young to understand they were lesbians! Our parents knew & later told us they didn't care.
As for Shot Spotter, why don't those 34 aldermen just impeach Johnson, that might get Conehead's attention!
Because they do not have the legal authority to do so.
Dollar value of life: The numbers cited are the the amount of cost which should be incurred to save a life. I do not recall where, but I once read an article which showed that *how* a life is lost matters a lot. For example, we will pay much more per life to save them in air travel than we will on roads.
It also raises the question of whether some lives are worth more than others, like the value of lives of people who live in neighborhoods with have ShotSpotter. Of course, it is an opinion. What should we make of Brandon Johnson's valuation of lives?
No one would ever admit that they think some lives are worth more than others (even to themselves), but which safety measure are put into place and where implies an answer.
Since almost all of those lives saved by Shot Spotter are black, can we assume Conehead hates black people?
We’re down to the nitty gritty. So many polls but consistently close race within margin of error. Of the two debates - one pushed out a sitting president, one introduced a new candidate. I don’t think either changed people’s minds. It’s coming down to 8 states. I’m feeling that the undecided may simply stay that way and not pick a lane. While the Swifties and Oprahs and Dick Cheney (just kidding) are rallying the masses those extra Democratic votes mean less in Illinois than they do in PA WI MI AZ…
My college kid in Michigan is registered to vote here in IL but their roommate is trying to convince them to re-register in Michigan, as the roommate (WV native) is doing. They are each from states that are pretty well decided and feel that they could make a difference in the swing state where they go to school.
Encourage your child to do so! Every Harris vote in MI is important!
I didn't watch most of the debate. I knew what would happen. That doesn't make me a genius. We know what Trump is. He is utterly predictable. Harris didn't offer a lot of answers. She defended herself and Biden and told us what was wrong with Trump. There wasn't enough there to change anyone's minds. I don't find such occasions either educational or amusing. When one thinks about, the entire reason for a debate is to change minds, either to convince viewers to choose a candidate or switch from one to the other. I agree with the view that it changed few minds. Trump showed us what he always shows us. Harris didn't give us much to hang a hat on.
So, instead of showing that she is a real person who has had real life experiences, Vice-President Harris should have outlined her detailed plan for improving the economy?? In 2 minutes!
Sure, that would have worked so swell. People everywhere would have hung on every word about the GDP, the Feds role in setting interest rates, changes in the CPI, etc. Too bad she didn't try that!!!
There has to be some data on shotspotter available. Why isn’t it being used or discussed. If there isn’t any at least the suggested data such as you listed should lead to some discussion. I can’t recall what the Campaign promise was around it. The Mayor has to find a win somewhere I suppose. That win could flip on him.
I believe there's a bigger picture here and an inconvenient truth. Johnson is catering to those he wants to please and believe he needs to win reelection. I don't think all the facts and figures expressed in today's forum mean much to him. Now some might say "Why not? The white population had it all their way fir many years. Let the black population have their time." But that kind of thinking skews the truth. There are many reasons there is more crime in the black community. Want to blame it on historical racism? Fine. But that doesn't fix anything. It exacerbates things by allowing too many young blacks to use racism as an excuse for their actions. Academics use crime statistics to push this idea. Shot Spotter is not racist. It identifies gunshots and doesn't care about the color of the people firing the shots. As said in this forum, eliminating it doesn't help fix crime. Until fixing crime in minority communities, the statistics on everything such as traffic tickets, felony arrests, and Shot Spotter are always going to look racist. Johnson is shameless in using this to further his political goals.
Another angle for putting a dollar value on a life - monetary damages awarded in wrongful death civil suits. From what I'm reading the factors include lost earning potential and companionship to family, so a younger person with siblings, parents, an extended family, perhaps an education, would be valued more than a lonely elderly person. The stats I'm finding say the average awarded is about $1 Million, with the range from $500 K to $2 Million. Taking the $1 Million average, 85 lives saved are way more than worth the $10 M investment. It is a bit of a cold, maybe even macabre way to think of human life, but as EZ says sometimes we are forced to think in pragmatic ways.
I do wish your visual tweets had a larger size font. I use my iPhone everywhere and it’s impossible to read most of them, even with reading glasses
https://nypost.com/2024/09/14/us-news/abcs-linsey-davis-admits-fact-checking-of-trump-was-because-cnn-let-his-statements-hang-at-first-debate/
My remark about the mics being muted was that sometimes they were not, in fact, muted.