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Canna, For Cee’s FOTD, Sept 9, 2024
The Numbers Game #38, Sept. 9, 2024. Please Play Along!
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Welcome to “The Numbers Game #38”. Today’s number is 159. To play along, go to your photos file and type that number into the search bar. Then post a selection of the photos you find under that number and include a link to your blog in my Numbers Game blog of the day. If instead of numbers, you have changed the identifiers of all your photos into words, pick a word or words to use instead, and show us a variety of photos that contain that word in the title.
This prompt will repeat each Monday with a new number. If you want to play along, please put a link to your blog in comments below. Below are my contributions to the album:
Completely Finished!!!!
Thanks to Eleanor Vogt for sending me this humorous bit of information:Is it “Complete“, “Finished“, or “Completely Finished“? No English dictionary has been able to adequately explain the difference between these two words, “Complete” or “Finished“.In a recent linguistic competition held in London and attended by supposedly the best in the world, Samdar Balgobin, a Guyanese man, was the clear winner with a standing ovation which lasted over 5 minutes. The final question was: How do you explain the difference between Complete and Finished in way that is easy to understand?Some contestants said there was no difference between “Complete” and “Finished“.Here is Mr. Balgobin’s astute answer: “When you marry the right woman, you are Complete. When you marry the wrong woman, you are Finished. And when the right one catches you with the wrong one, you are Completely Finished.He won a trip around the world and a case of 25-year Scotch.
Think!!!
The above is from the timeline of Mark Hagland:
This is one of the pieces I posted on Facebook and asked you to read, but those not subscribed could not read it. The other was too long to take a screenshot of. Sorry.
Heather Cox Richardson, Sept. 7, 2024
Many of you may get her daily letters, but just in case, this is another one I feel it is so important for everyone to see.
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By rights, tonight’s post should be a picture, but Trump’s behavior today merits a marker because it feels like a dramatic escalation of the themes we’ve seen for years. Please feel free to ignore—as I often say, I am trying to leave notes for a graduate student in 150 years, and you can consider this one for her if you want a break from the recent onslaught of news. Yesterday, Trump ranted at the press, furious that the American legal system had resulted in two jury decisions that he had defamed and sexually abused writer E. Jean Carroll. He was so angry that, with his lawyers standing awkwardly behind him, he told reporters: “I’m disappointed in my legal talent, I’ll be honest with you.” Today, Trump held a rally in Mosinee, Wisconsin, a small city in the center of the state, where he addressed about 7,000 people. A number of us who have been watching him closely have been saying for a while that when voters actually saw him in this campaign, they would be shocked at how he has deteriorated, and that seems to be true: his meandering and self-indulgent speeches have had attendees leaving early, some of them bewildered. In today’s speech, Trump slurred a number of words, referring to Elon Musk as “Leon,” for example, and forgetting the name of North Dakota governor Doug Burgum, who was on his short list for a vice presidential pick. But today’s speech struck me as different from his past performances, distinguished for what sounded like desperation. Trump has always invented his stories from whole cloth, but there used to be some way to tie them to reality. Today that seemed to be gone. He was in a fantasy world, and his rhetoric was apocalyptic. It was also bloody in ways that raise huge red flags for scholars of fascism. Trump told the audience that when he took office in 2017, military officers told him the U.S. had given all the military’s ammunition away to allies. Then he went on a rant against our allies, saying that they’re only our allies when they need something and that they would never come to our aid if we needed them. This echoes the talking points put out by Russian operatives and flies in the face of the fact that the one time the North Atlantic Treaty Organization invoked the mutual defense pact in that agreement was after the attacks of September 11, 2001, in support of the U.S. He embraced Project 2025’s promise to eliminate the Department of Education and send education back to the states so that right-wing figures like Wisconsin’s Senator Ron Johnson can run it. He reiterated the MAGA claim that mothers are executing their babies after birth—this is completely bonkers—and again echoed Russian talking points when he said these executions are happening—they are not—but “nobody talks about it.” He went on: “We did a great thing when we got Roe v. Wade out of the federal government.” He reiterated the complete fantasy that schools are performing gender-affirming surgery on children. “Can you imagine you’re a parent and your son leaves the house and you say, Jimmy, I love you so much, go have a good day at school, and your son comes back with a brutal operation. Can you even imagine this? What the hell is wrong with our country?” Trump’s suggestion that schools are performing surgery on students is bananas. This is simply not a thing that happens. And then he went full-blown apocalyptic, attacking immigrants and claiming that crime, which in reality has dropped dramatically since President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris took office after a spike during his own term, has made the U.S. uninhabitable. He said that “If I don’t win Colorado, it will be taken over by migrants and the governor will be sent fleeing.” “Migrants and crime are here in our country at levels never thought possible before…. You’re not safe even sitting here, to be honest with you. I’m the only one that’s going to get it done. Everybody is saying that.” He urged people to protest “because you’re being overrun by criminals.” He assured attendees that “If you think you have a nice house, have a migrant enjoy your house, because a migrant will take it over. A migrant will take it over. It will be Venezuela on steroids.” He reiterated his plan to get rid of migrants. “And you know,” he said, “getting them out will be a bloody story.” He went on to try to rev up supporters in words very similar to those he used on January 6th, 2021, but focused on this election. “Every citizen who’s sick and tired of the parasitic political class in Washington that sucks our country of its blood and treasure, November fifth will be your liberation day. November fifth, this year, will be the most important day in the history of our country because we’re not going to have a country anymore if we don’t win.” He promised: “I will prevent World War III, and I am the only one that can do it. I will prevent World War III. And if I don’t win this election,… Israel is doomed…. Israel will be gone…. I’d better win.” “I better win or you’re gonna have problems like we’ve never had. We may have no country left. This may be our last election. You want to know the truth? People have said that. This may be our last election…. It’ll all be over, and you gotta remember…. Trump is always right. I hate to be right. I’m always right.” Trump’s hellscape is only in his mind: crime is sharply down in the U.S. since he left office, migrant crossings have plunged, and the economy is the strongest in the world. Then, tonight, Trump posted on his social media site a rant asserting that he will win the 2024 election but that he expects Democrats to cheat, and “WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again. We cannot let our Country further devolve into a Third World Nation, AND WE WON’T! Please beware that this legal exposure extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials. Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.” Is it the Justice Department indictments that showed Russia is working to get him reelected? Is it the rising popularity of Democratic nominees Kamala Harris and Tim Walz? Is it fury at the new grand jury’s indicting him for his attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election and install himself in power? Is it fear of Tuesday’s debate with Harris? Is it a declining ability to grapple with reality? Whatever has caused it, Trump seems utterly off his pins, embracing wild conspiracy theories and, as his hopes of winning the election appear to be crumbling, threatening vengeance with a dogged fury that he used to be able to hide. — Notes: https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-migrants-bloody-story-border-control-deportation-1950386 https://www.politico.com/news/2024/09/06/trump-press-conference-nyc-legal-cases-00177765 https://www.cbsnews.com/news/migrant-crossings-plunge-near-level-lift-biden-border-crackdown/ X: atrupar/status/1832509585195757752 harris_wins/status/1832504561602351540 |
Two Items I’d Like to Share!!
I have two posts I made to Facebook that I don’t know how to get onto my blog, but I’d like you all to see them. Here is my Facebook post: https://www.facebook.com/judy.dykstrabrown
for the Sunday Whirl Wordle #670
Happy Beginning, Sad Ending
I lick the dust of whispered words spreading ’round the town,
then clear their vileness on the sleeve of my wedding gown.
I escape to the river, to swim my sorrow away.
Who would have guessed this ending to my wedding day?
Though my breath comes fast and shallow, I keep up the pace,
trying to avoid the cruel truth that I can’t face––
that spin of fortune’s wheel that brought about the end
of the shortest marriage on record, as I chanced upon my friend
in the wedding venue’s kitchen, avowing love and kissing
the one that I’d just married, whom I’d sought when he went missing!
For The Sunday Whirl Wordle the prompt words are:breath cruel escape river away sorrow kitchen licked dust whispering spin gown Image by Tiko Giordad on Unsplash.
Wine Glasses, for Lens Artists Challenge 315, Sept 8, 2024
For the Lens Artists Challenge, we are to photograph a common object.
Wasp (Or Hornet?) Haven
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This nest outside the window of the upstairs bathroom is at least 2 feet from top to bottom. All of those black spots on it are wasps busy building their home. It is so close to the entrance that it is hazardous for those entering my gate from the street, so it will have to come down. I usually leave them alone if they are in a position that doesn’t inhibit entry or departure from the house. Their last one they built under the stone decking by the pool and hot tub and they had a tiny entry spot it the side of the pool above the water line. That one I think I finally discouraged them from using–but only after a friend was stung while using the pool. I hate killing them and we usually just remove the nest and they follow it to wherever we dispose of it and build a new nest nearby. This time we’ll put it in the lower garden. Do you see the smaller wasp nest on the wood beam to the upper right of this big one? Its circumference is probably the size of a dessert plate or small dinner plate.
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 