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Weekend Open Thread

by thebesig••75
Mardi Gras season (informally Epiphanytide) comes with its own version of the Christmas cake: the king cake. Whoever gets the slice with the baby in it is on the gun to purchase the next king cake. (Getty images)

This year’s Mardi Gras is on February 16, 2021. We are already in the Mardi Gras season, which runs from January 6 through February 16. If you have a birthday during any of these days, you have the option of having Mardi Gras decorations and a king cake. This season is informally also known as Epiphany Season, sandwiched between Christmas Season and Lent Season. Enjoy your weekend.

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75 thoughts on “Weekend Open Thread”

    1. Rats of the Cong Sarge, way to keep the Coveted Title of King Of FIRST in the Army Column.

      Now maybe the whiners and haters will get their panties unbunched…or not. Let me be the FIRST to buy you a refreshing beverage.

        1. “Airpower Baby” Or as we like to say, “Aerial Artillery Platforms”! You do recall that branch of the service was FIRST called the ARMY Air Corps. My bad Sarge, older Brother is a retired Wingwiping Chief. Wasn’t sure if AF ever really used rank in addressing one another. I always thought they were just called, Bill, or George, or anything…including Sue. (Apologies for the paraphrasing of Johnny Cash)

    2. Nice on Sarge.
      I just got in from the Range.
      Oh, excuse me, I was busy SHOOTING!!!! WHOOOOOO!!!
      Chip

        1. Depends on how much money you allocate to food, I guess.

          Or what you spend your “stimulus” check on.

    1. damn, not even trying… just happened to swing by. Happy Weekend… now I am back to seeking dental/vision insurance that doesn’t make me wait 6 months to get a routine filling done.

  7. Hack Stone should have checked in sooner, but that beer reefer down in the gender neutral cave ain’t going to fill itself. Hack picked up a 30 pack of PBR st the Bethesda Exchange for $17.99.

    Unfortunately, Hack’s suggestion to the TAH Admin for the WOT Headliner did not make the cut. With that being said, please join Hack in wishing a Happy 98th Birthday to WWII veteran and comedy legend Larry Storch.

    During WWII he served on a submarine tender, the USS Proteus, with Tony Curtis. They became lifelong friends. Storch and Curtis appeared in eight movies together, and, in 2003, both were in the (theatrical) musical version of Some Like It Hot (1959) that toured across the country.

    Inadvertently set in motion the Cary Grant line, “Judy, Judy, Judy . . . ” during one of his nightclub acts. Legend has it that Storch was in the middle of a Grant impersonation when Judy Garland walked in. Apparently, this is how he addressed the star. Even though the line was never said in any of Grant’s movies, Storch’s impression inexplicably stuck and was often used by other impressionists.

    The two preceding paragraphs were copied from his IMDB Biography, so don’t blame Hack if it is not entirely accurate.

    1. Only one Guinness in the fridge tonight, buTTTTT we have some Johnny Walker beside it.
      I will endeavor to persevere.

      1. “Endeavor to perservere.” That is my favorite Chief Dan George line from the “Outlaw Josie Wales.” I use it all the time, but have to frequently explain to friendly Gen Xers and my grandchildren where it came from.

      1. Unlike our beloved Commissar, I hear the corporal earned a CAB for his combat service with F Troop.

    3. Saw a Jimmy Cagney tribute (yeah, that dates me) in which he stated “Just for the record, I never said ‘you dirty rat.’ I did, however, say ‘Judy, Judy, Judy’.”

    1. Double edged sword for Dominion, they might have to prove the machines and software did not cheat.

      1. Dominion is not going to like the discovery stage. Plus, they have to prove a fact, as opposed to opinions she voiced, was false.

    1. Guess they’re just adopting the Democrat playbook. As Rep Maxine Waters (D-CA) advised her constituents, “Let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up. And if you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them. And you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.”

      1. It was equally abhorrent when she suggested it. I like to believe most Americans can adhere to a common decency of action, even if they vehemently oppose the ideas and character of others. It’s a bad sign for society if our inclination is to justify our stupidity because the other side started it. That’s only understandable in children.

        1. I’d like to think that too. Reality is that when one side constantly sinks to new lows, the other side starts to go low too. “When they go low, we kick them.” Sound familiar?

          It’s real rich that the Democrats have for years now incited violence, refused to condemn violence and insurrectionist behavior, and outright lied about Trump and other Republicans’ responses to these incidents (the “very fine people” intentional misquote for example). Rich irony that they can incite (or at a minimum tacitly condone) violence. That’s even supposing that you believe that Trump incited anything. Nothing he said this week exceeding anything said by any number of Democrats over the last half-decade.

          I mean, you have one half of the voting population of the country that’s been called racist, sexist, traitorous Nazis. Look up labeling theory if you aren’t already familiar.

          1. But that’s the point – you see all these things, and squarely blame the left, and I can go find liberals who’ll point out all the similar stuff the conservatives did, and blame the right. Neither side is going to agree on who started it, or who was worse in a certain regard – there’s absolutely no ground to gain there.

            But, hopefully, there’s still a common ground in the agreement that, as Americans, we can -and should- do better, maybe by extending a modicum of respect to the other side, even in disagreement.

            I mean, you have one half of the voting population of the country that’s been called racist, sexist, traitorous Nazis. Look up labeling theory if you aren’t already familiar.

            You and I differ quite a bit in our politics, but I hope, with few exceptions, you can agree I generally treat people here fine. I don’t call people racists, or traitors, or whatever. Yet, not infrequently, I’m called a useful idiot, or a communist / socialist / un-American or something like that. And I rarely even fault people; I don’t care what people call me. I still try -and yes, sometimes fail- to be respectful to people whom I vehemently disagree with.

            That’s all I’m saying we should do. People can disagree, and will disagree, but it’s easier to have a conversation when you’re not shouting that the other side is something reprehensible. And a little conversation would help this country, I think.

            1. Personally, I think it’s childish, but at the same time? The politicians are childish and to paraphrase a great writer the Left has done it’s best to smear, “Like diapers, politicians should be changed frequently.” If they start to feel uncomfortable ignoring their constituents and this sort of behavior draws attention to it, resulting in change? I’ll roll with it.

              Both parties need to go the way of the Whigs.

            2. I hope you know, because I think I’ve said it before, but I do respect you coming here and sharing your viewpoints. Especially with the hate you sometimes get.

              I completely agree that we should be able to have civil disagreements. When I disagree with a Democrat’s viewpoint, I just acknowledge it as a difference of opinion. It happens. Two people rarely see eye-to-eye on everything.

              The problem is that to the Democrats, if you don’t agree with them you’re not just wrong, you’re evil. This isn’t a new phenomenon either.

              At the birth of my niece my mom and I went to the hospital. We met my brother’s in-laws in the family waiting room. I knew they were card carrying, raving lefty Democrats (get Christmas cards from the Clintons and Obamas type). We’d never talked politics before, because I generally don’t and I already knew they didn’t share my opinions. I read the first page of the paper, this is mid-GW Bush Administration, and the headline is something like “Senate Republicans…”. Mother-in-law sees that and says, word for word, I’m not embellishing, “Can you believe it? I just wish we could put all the Republicans in one place and just kill them all.”

              The thought never crossed her mind that I’d disagree with her. Here she is, 15 years ago, advocating genocide over those who disagree with her politically.

              The left in this country, with the full support of the Democrats, encourages violence against their political opponents. Physical violence, verbal violence, economic violence, etc. You rarely see that coming from the right and when you do, it’s roundly denounced.

              1. We are told we are bad people, most especially whenever someone non-Left plays by even a little of the Left’s rules.

                “Now don’t be hateful!” Says the smiling one behind the truncheon-swinging Sturmabteilung

                Melodramatic, but a useful meme.

                “Lose gracefully, damn you!”

            3. Biden said he’d like to take Trump “out behind the gym” and Kathy Griffin posed with a likeness of his severed head, but please go on with your “both sides” rhetoric.
              If we scaled the state back down to a manageable size politics would probably return to something that most people wouldn’t see as so threatening or existentially important. But of course the left had never seen a problem that they didn’t also see a new government program to address (and by address I mean “create a giant bureaucracy to employ political allies but never actually make the problem better and often worse”) so that’s not an option.

            4. “And a little conversation would help this country, I think.”

              I couldn’t agree more, LC, but that’s rather difficult when our side of the conversation is censored as hate speech when it’s really nothing more than disagreement.

              It’s not conservatives stifling free speech and the more reasonable on your side, like you, better wake up to that reality, before your moderation eventually becomes perceived as hate by the same totalitarians now trying to suppress us.

              “First they came for the…”

              1. Upset Bug Tech and they’ll drop the banhammer on you… they they may disclose who you are to others.

                1. The Walk Away Facebook page already ate a banhammer supposedly. Moderate lefties are in their sights already.

                  It’s why I’ve scrubbed most of my social media’s already limited presence and I’ve stopped using most of their services, youtube being an outlier and most of that boils down to the sheer amount of adblockers and whatnot bleeding that ad revenue out. I’ll support the creators in other ways.

                  1. Kristallnacht and Night of Long Knives are a joint operation, this time.

                    SiPo/NKVD are contracted out.

      1. See my reply to Mason above. One idiot’s lowering of the bar doesn’t excuse another’s embrace of that same low bar.

  11. I recommend Haydel’s King Cake. They ship it overnight – very fresh. If you choose you can also get coffee with chicory.

  13. The silencing of any opposition or dissent is in full swing. Because guilt-free confident folks always silence any possible criticism.

    Kristallnacht is next on the hard-left playbook. Watch.

    2. Big tech is silencing (again) and disappearing the POTUS. Most powerful man in the world. That should chill anyone who supports free speech. Agree or disagree with the man or the way in which he says it, but this is scary.

      1. There has been infinitely more violence coordinated through Facebook. Wonder if they’ll ban that?

      1. “Restoring order”

        “Reeducation”

        “Relocation”

        “Showers”

        Watch. Same playbook.

  14. Top 30

    I was out reconnoitering and acquiring birthday gifts for two grandchildren (and cousins) whose 10th & 12th birthdays we will be celebrating tomorrow.

    Did manage to spend a bit of my money Uncle Sugar so sweetly gave back to me on a couple hundred rounds of practice ammo, but haven’t been out to test it yet.

    Y’all have a great weekend!

  15. I must be getting old … I forgot about Friday and the WOT and all that good stuff. So to make up for it, here’s the trivia column. It means a great deal to me that you all enjoy this silly stuff I write. Thank you all!

    DID YOU KNOW…?
    Are there really religions dedicated to UFOs?
    By Commissioner Wretched

    Something special this way comes! A new year, 2021, is with us. The horrid 2020 is now consigned to the dustbin of history, where it should be.

    This is not to say that some of the holdovers of 2020 won’t be with us a while longer. I knew this virus wasn’t going away that quickly, though there were many who said, “Just wait until after the election.”

    If only it were that easy.

    But it’s time for our New Year’s resolutions, and you already know what my one resolution is – the one I promptly break.

    I resolve not to make any resolutions.

    With that out of the way, let’s get 2021 started off with some freshly-minted trivia, polished up just for you!

    Did you know …

    … babies start dreaming before they are born? (Granted, I have no idea what they would dream about, but it’s interesting to know nevertheless.)

    … the average life span of a hermit crab is 75 years? (Staying alone has its advantages.)

    … you may be a sufferer of arachibutyrophobia? In case you’re wondering, arachibutyrophobia means the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth. (I’ve often wondered why they can’t just call such things by the meaning, instead of the silly name. I still wonder.)

    … more than one “Mona Lisa” exists? X-rays of the famous painting by Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) have revealed three completely different paintings of the same subject. The person who sat for the portrait was Lisa del Giocondo (1479-1542). (Doing it until you get it right – one of da Vinci’s lesser-known qualities, it seems.)

    … there are religions dedicated to UFOs? Besides the Church of Scientology, the best-known is probably the Aetherius Society, founded in 1954 by George King (1919-1997) in the United Kingdom. King claimed to have received “commands” from “interplanetary sources” to become “the voice of Interplanetary Parliament.” If Aetherius is the best known, the wackiest has to be the Church of the Sub-Genius, founded in 1979 in Dallas, Texas, by Douglass St. Clair Smith (born 1953) under the pseudonym “Ivan Stang.” While Aetherius is serious, the Church of the Sub-Genius is basically a religious parody, using UFOs and a mythical prophetic salesman named J.R. “Bob” Dobbs – actually a piece of clip art showing a man smoking a pipe – to poke good-natured fun at organized religion, the world, and anything else that comes to their minds. (Arrive, Space Brothers, and show us the way! The way to what, I don’t know, but we need to see the way!)

    … a movie star almost caused part of the undergarment industry to go out of business? In 1934, the classic motion picture “It Happened One Night” premiered. One of the stars of the movie, Clark Gable (1901-1960), appeared in a scene without an undershirt. Wives all over the country suddenly stopped buying undershirts for their husbands, and the undershirt industry went through a serious downturn throughout the rest of the decade. (It didn’t take long for the wives to figure out that lack of an undershirt didn’t make their men look like Clark Gable, I betcha.)

    … some people in the United States still believe Elvis Presley is alive? Presley (1935-1977), long acknowledged as the “King of Rock ‘n Roll,” was a larger-than-life figure while still around and performing, so it’s not unexpected that there would be some who doubted his demise. But more than forty years after his death, an astonishing seven percent of people in the U.S. still think Presley is alive. If you survey just people under thirty – those who were born after the King’s death – you find around 11% think Presley is still alive and enjoying a life of peace and seclusion. (What percentage of them don’t even know who Elvis was?)

    … the first bank-issued “credit card” was in 1946? John Briggs (1893-1966) created a “Charge-It” card for his Flatbush National Bank in New York in that year. The catch was that the card holder had to have an account at Flatbush National Bank, the card could only be used at local merchants, and the full bill had to be paid off each month, making it actually a charge card rather than a true credit card. The first actual credit card as such was issued by Diner’s Club in 1950. (The first actual credit card bill was issued the same year, too, darn it.)

    … you may recently have been involved in a logomachy? Before you go turn yourself in to the authorities, you might want to know that a logomachy is simply an argument or a dispute about words. (If the dispute was a nasty one, you may still need to turn yourself in.)

    … you can’t always depend on what the package says? For example, in boxes of a particular brand of instant oatmeal, the dehydrated “strawberries” and “peaches” are actually apples. In the same brand, the dehydrated “blueberries” are actually dried figs. (No, I won’t name the brand.)

    … a popular musical artist’s work is used to scare off pirates? The British Navy uses music recorded by Britney Spears (born 1981) to frighten off Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean. (There are any number of Britney Spears jokes I could make here, but I’ll just let this speak for itself.)

    … a pig is a hog, but a hog is not necessarily a pig? “Hog” is the generic term for all swine, but a pig is a baby hog less than ten weeks old. Once it becomes 10 weeks and one day old, it’s officially a hog. (And if you can keep that straight, you’re entitled to hog all of the glory.)

    Now … you know!

    1. Playing anything by Britney Spears is sure to drive me away.

      Thanks as always for some fun info!

    2. A pig is a baby hog. So, would a piglet be a bay pig that is a baby hog? And Hack is pretty darn sure that Porky Pig is more than ten weeks old, so Warner Brothers has been lying to all of these years.

  16. The Parler APP aka free speech is being blocked after Trump signed up on it.
    Electric overlords need a take down like Ma-Bell

    1. Apparently Twitter has banned Trump. But wait-didn’t the Supreme Court rule that Trump couldn’t block people from his Twitter because people had the right to see what the President is saying? If that’s true, how can Twitter ban him?

      Khamenei’s account is still up BTW, but all he ever does is threaten to wipe out Israel so Twitter is fine with him.

      1. Farcebook has disappeared the group, Walkaway, encouraging folks to walkaway from the demorat party, it had 500,000 followers. The also disappeared Biden is not my President, which had 1,750,000 followers.
        I wonder if BLM has been disappeared?

    1. Welp, there goes Hunter’s party supplies for the weekend.

      His daddy sniffs hair, he sniffs coke.

        1. They’ll have to reinstate the guys that were doing coke off Columbian hookers a few years back.

  18. The Democrat media is howling over Trump’s dissing of the Biden inaugural but PJ Media shows us how many House Democrats dissed Trump’s inaugural:

    Maxine Waters
    John Conyers
    Barbara Lee
    Jerrold Nadler
    Louise Slaughter
    Zoe Lofgren
    John Lewis
    Ted Lieu
    Joaquin Castro
    Alcee Hastings
    Jared Huffman
    Keith Ellison
    Mike Quigley
    Raul Grijalva
    Jamie Raskin
    Jan Schakowsky
    Luis Gutiérrez
    Ruben Gallego
    Karen Bass
    Tony Cardenas
    Alan Lowenthal
    Judy Chu
    Mark DeSaulnier
    Gerry Connolly
    Jerry McNerney
    Grace Napolitano
    Lucille Roybal-Allard
    Raul Ruiz
    Mark Takano
    Juan Vargas
    Darren Soto
    Rep. John Yarmuth
    Chellie Pingree
    Anthony Brown
    Katherine Clark
    Mike Capuano
    Bennie Thompson
    Lacy Clay
    Carol Shea-Porter
    Bonnie Watson Coleman
    Donald Payne Jr.
    Yvette Clark
    Adriano Espaillat
    Grace Meng
    José Serrano
    Nydia Velazquez
    Alma Adams
    G.K. Butterfield
    Marcia Fudge
    Earl Blumenauer
    Kurt Schrader
    Brendan Boyle
    Bob Brady
    Mike Doyle
    Dwight Evans
    Steve Cohen
    Lloyd Doggett
    Al Green
    Filemon Vela
    Don Beyer
    Don McEachin
    Pramila Jayapal
    Mark Pocan

    Another batch of Democrat congressional reps also boycotted though they claimed it wasn’t because of Trump.

    64. Peter DeFazio

    65. Adam Smith

    66. Dan Lipinski

    67. Frederica Wilson

    Fully one third of the House Democrats ditched Trump’s inaugural.

    2. See my new post, but in the new world order skipping an inauguration is incitement to violence and shows that you are not committed to a smooth transition of power.

    3. left: “Dammit! Don’t you stoop to playing by our rules! Lose gracefully! ”

      Next from left: ” dammit! We said ‘Obey!’ you oppressors!”

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