Saturday Morning Sip

 Happy Hands Off! Saturday!!! Get out there and make some NOISE!!!!

 ...but first... MEMES!   

Fine point

 Not to put to fine a point on the state if the economy, but Yahoo Finance changed their icon from the Yahoo!  "Y!" to an exclamation point...  

Unloading a lot of my investments this week.  Moving a bulk into the bond market.  I did that when Bush 2 came into office, and that remained a stable safe harbor while the rest of the market whip-sawed.  Did not move the money out until well into Obama's 1st term. 

Your Daily Meme, Swimsuit Edition

 Happy Friday!  

These are swimsuits!  Anything else is just an excuse to hide. 

Hello, Mr. Daly!  Show 'em how it's done!

Thank you, New Yorker.

 Spot on.

 

Cover - The New Yorker - April 7, 2025

 In case you were wondering the reference...

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb 

 

...and it ends with Elon walking.

 

Morning Coffee Roundup - Saint Upid.

 Saint Upid.

 

How are the market futures looking this morning, Donny Dumbo?

 

 (Thank you, Mistress Maddie, for the meme - I'd like that on a prayer candle, it will shove nicely up the kind folks asses who voted for this absolute moron.)

 

We need everyone.

 

I have written here about my family history with activism; where my courage was summoned from. That was my story. It is not everyone’s story.

I am organizing a local Hands Off! Rally this weekend to coincide with the nationwide day of protest initiative. At this time, there are over 1,000 rallies slated across the country for April 5. When I first began to publicize the event, I had a handful of close friends – of my vintage – whom I thought would want to be a part of this groundswell.  Initially it was all positive. 

That was then.

After weeks of President Dicktater Trump administrations regimes "American Gestapo" ICE, carrying out unconstitutional arrests and deportations, vocal threats against anyone considered and “activist”, labeling activism as “terrorism”, most all of those friends have politely backed out of the event – citing just an overwhelming sense of fear. Fear of being identified, fear of retaliation; maybe not immediately, but down the road. I can’t, in good consciousness, tell these dear friends “It will be okay!”, when… that okay is mostly uncertain. That I, myself, am having some rising fear for the safety of my family, if my black husband decides to protest with me - will he be opened up for attack just by the color of his skin? The best I can offer my friends is my sympathy and my understanding of the decisions they… each of us… have to make to stand up to dictatorship and authoritarian rule. That decision has to come from a personal place; and to respect that decision if it does not jibe with mine.

As Dr. Jordan Fields put it:

 

Stay safe.

Onward!

Rade

Your Daily Meme

 

ICYMI - Corey Booker on fire.

One of hundreds of highlights of Senator Booker! To paraphrase Obi Wan, "The spine is strong in this one!"

What's in a name?

 I give to you...

                                                                     

Dick Cheese Head

The funky, skunky stank that just won't leave no matter home many times your wash. 

 

The Morning Coffee Roundup

 

RIP - Nick Rivers

 

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Val Kilmer, the brooding, versatile actor who played fan favorite Iceman in “Top Gun,” donned a voluminous cape as Batman in “Batman Forever” and portrayed Jim Morrison in “The Doors,” has died. He was 65.

Kilmer died Tuesday night in Los Angeles, surrounded by family and friends, his daughter, Mercedes Kilmer, said in an email to The Associated Press.

Val Kilmer died from pneumonia. He had recovered after a 2014 throat cancer diagnosis that required two tracheotomies. 

Of course, let's not forget his role as "Nick Rivers" in the ZAZ classic "Top Secret!".   

RIP, Val.

 

Your Daily Meme

 

Three months sober.

 

I passed my three months mark! It has been three months since I ordered anything off Amazon.

I thought it was going to be hard to sever that relationship. For the past decades, buying on Amazon became ubiquitous, omnipresent... malignant. We would go into a box-store / retailer, see something that we liked, get the product name and serial number, then look it up on Amazon for a “better price” and order it. It got way too easy to go to the Amazon website and just order whatever. And then I watched as the price of goods through the site rose to that if we would have just bought local. Often (in my experience) charging more to buy through them than through a retail outlet. "But it was AMAZON! I didn’t have to leave the house!" I developed a pit in my stomach every time I had to hit the checkout button. 

I’ve flipped the script. When I see something that I like, I may snap a picture of the item and serial number, and search Amazon for vendors… and then go to the vendor or retail outlet website (which Amazon does provide in the product description) and buy directly from them. I’m retired. This is not taking much more energy out of my day. The last piece were two parts we need – filters for the refrigerator and furnace. When we bought these components a few years back, I just started an “Auto Ship” on Amazon for the seasonal replacement parts. I got notified a couple weeks ago that the latest were about to ship.  I went to the manufacture sites and set up an auto ship directly from them. There was no difference in cost. None. I canceled the Amazon orders and the repeat function.

If Bezos can afford to buy (and destroy) the Washington Post, the James Bond franchise and send rocket-powered dildos into space, not to mention how badly he treats his Amazon workers, along with kissing the SCROTUS ring, Jeff certainly does not need any more of my money.

I have grown to feel the same way about seeing stacks of Amazon boxes in the neighborhood recycle bins as I do about seeing a Tesla. Disdain. But that uneasy pit in my stomach about shopping on Amazon is finally abating.

Three months sober.

Your Daily Meme

Those darn French.  How dare they set an example for the rest of us.