The Wheel: Trolling: Thanksgiving is my Favorite Holiday

Trolling from November, 2018:

Nov 2 2018: Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Porous as it is, it's the last bulwark against Christmas advancing even farther forward in the calendar.
Nov 2 2018: RT @BisforBerkshire: "On eve of vote to expand Arizona school voucher program, audit finds fraud aplenty *Parents spent $700K in school voucher money on beauty supplies, apparel; attempted cash withdrawals*" azcentral.com
Nov 3 2018: Spoiler alert: Richardson is not getting Amazon HQ2. Neither is any other north Texas city.
Nov 3 2018: RT @moak_barry: "Honestly people - in what world at what time in history other than red GOP Texas in the 21st century does an Attorney General under indictment not resign? And now he’s running for re-election with the full backing of the GOP and evangelicals."
It's indicted Texas Atty Gen. Ken Paxton who he is talking about here. I'm afraid I don't know what other world this would happen on. It's not like Putin stuffing the ballot box. Texans are voting for Paxton willingly.
Nov 3 2018: How in the world can decent Republicans vote for Ken Paxton? Try explaining your vote to your kids.

After the jump, more trolling.

Nov 6 2018: Bohemian Rhapsody (2018): If you like the music of Queen, you'll love this movie. If you like historical accuracy and innovative moviemaking, well, you'll love the music of Queen. Still, it's just a movie. It's a cautionary tale of temperamental genius. But mostly fun. B-
Nov 6 2018: Just received a robo-call from the Linda Koop campaign directing me to the wrong polling location for my precinct. SMH. How are you going to increase spending on public schools and simultaneously lower property taxes if you can't even find the right polling location?
Nov 6 2018: By the way, I don't even live in Linda Koop's district. Double SMH.
Nov 6 2018: RT @paulkrugman: "Wyoming has <600K people, 86% white, 24% with Bachelors degrees. New Jersey has 9 million people, 58% white, 35% with Bachelors. Each is electing one senator."
US political institutions are simply not representative.
Nov 6 2018: Hey Twitter peeps, does anyone know when Election Day is? Asking for a friend.
Nov 6 2018:
I'm justifiably outraged.
You sometimes let people get under your skin.
He's easily offended.
-- A tip of the hat to Sydney J. Harris.
Nov 6 2018: The top-trending Google search term in the United States on Election Day 2018 is "dónde votar."
Nov 6 2018: RT @sahilkapur: "Colin Allred (D) defeats Rep. Pete Sessions (R), @NBCNews projects. Sessions is the chairman of the House Rules Cmte. Big pickup for Democrats."
Thank you, Beto.
Nov 6 2018: RT @quorumreport: "sen. huffines concedes to nathan johnson in sd 16."
Big win for public schools.
Nov 6 2018: Pete Sessions, Don Huffines, Linda Koop, Lisa Luby Ryan, all swept away. And many more GOP seats escape with narrow victories. I did not see that coming.
Nov 6 2018: It just occurred to me...tomorrow we get to wake up to find out who is running for President.
Nov 7 2018: Expect Republicans in Congress, having added trillions to the deficit with massive tax cuts to the rich, to suddenly become fiscal hawks and complain about those same deficits. #ItsOnThem
Nov 7 2018: Anyone who thinks the world is fair, that God is looking over us, that good things come to good people, just remember...cancer, earthquakes, hurricanes, Ted Cruz...
Nov 7 2018: Senator Lindsey Graham: "We’ve got to address the suburban women problem."
Graham is the problem. The GOP is the problem. Suburban women definitely are not the "problem."
Nov 7 2018: One of the better results of the 2018 mid-terms: "The House Intelligence Committee will resume protecting Americans rather than covering up for Russians."
Nov 7 2018: RT @JesseLehrich: "300,000 people gain access to health care. Idaho, Utah, & Nebraska all expanded Medicaid tonight."
One of the better results from yesterday's election.
To @AngieChenButton: "You escaped the wrath of education voters this time, but your slim margin was hardly a ringing endorsement. You say you are "for education" but you haven't delivered school finance reform, or even told us how you'd solve the problem."
Nov 8 2018: RT @ShimonPro: "Former NJ Governor Chris Christie is under consideration to become Attorney General, replacing Sessions."
I was really, really hoping Ted Cruz would be available for the job. Not that I think he would make a good Attorney General, just because...well...how can I put it?
Nov 10 2018: RT @BakerLuke: "Merkel and Macron mark the end of the First World War One one hundred years ago with a solemn ceremony in Compiegne. Trump decided not to go to a ceremony at a US cemetery near Paris because the weather is a bit rainy."
Trump skips the ceremony marking the Armistice ending WWI.
Expect him to take credit for the Armistice itself.
Nov 10 2018: 2020 Presidential race is on. Scary thought: "Donald Trump, in 2011, tweeted repeatedly that Barack Obama would get us into a war to get reelected. I think that’s a very dangerous thing in the mind of a president to connect war with winning elections."
Nov 12 2018: RT @jimsciutto: "New satellite photos show #NorthKorea is expanding, not shrinking, ballistic missile bases."
Kim Jong-Un lured @realDonaldTrump into a poker game and is now cashing in his considerable winnings.
Nov 13 2018: Expect 2022 to be a good year for GOP in Texas. Trump will be gone. A Dem president will be facing backlash in his/her first midterm elections, and, most important, GOP govt in Texas will have another round of redistricting to patch things that went wrong in 2018.
Nov 13 2018: Peter Simek: Amazon’s analysis did not reveal an optimistic outlook for Dallas's ability to attract a highly skilled technical workforce, adequately fund and deliver quality secondary and public education, and improve its public transit system.
Nov 14 2018: RT @CNN: "Scientists behind a study that found the world's oceans were warming faster than previously believed have said their work contained errors, which means they cannot reach conclusions with such certainty."
Good news, world. Doomsday pushed back. And, oh yeah, this is how science is done. Peer review, error admission and correction, all leading to better science.
Nov 14 2018: Headline: "2018 Turnout Was the Highest of Any Midterm in More Than a Century."
You've got to hand it to Trump. Despite the best efforts of his own party to suppress the vote, Trump's presidency inspired the best get-out-the-vote effort in a century. Keep up the good work.
Nov 14 2018: RT @ericawerner: "House Republicans-elect look pretty different from House Democrats-elect."
Slow but inevitable demographic doom for the GOP in side-by-side photos.
Nov 15 2018: Free Solo (2018): Documentary of first free climb of El Capitan. Fascinating look at psyche of a thrill seeker driven to take insane risks. Nice guy, but by watching am I encouraging behavior that could kill him? Should I feel guilty? Still there's that stunning photography. A-
Nov 16 2018: A Gentleman in Moscow: A count is sentenced to lifelong house arrest in the Metropol Hotel. Learn Russian history and witness 20th century Communist rule through his aristocratic eyes. The friendships, family, luxuries, hardships, and cold hard politics. A-
Nov 17 2018: Scores of Texas Republican legislators on ATPE's "Teach the Vote" scorecard: Linda Koop voted for public education 100%. Angie Chen Button only 62% (well below the average GOP legislator). If someone had to lose the election, it should have been Button.
Nov 18 2018: RT @PublicCitizenTX: "A new national study of state and local tax systems says Texas has the second most unfair system in the country."
We know how flawed Texas's school funding system is. This suggests just how flawed Texas's tax system is top-to-bottom. Almost anything would be fairer than what we have now. I have to assume that "fair" is not the goal of the legislature.
Nov 18 2018: Headline: "JUUL pulls flavored e-cigs from shelves, shutters social media."
Awww. It was just a week or so ago that I even learned what a "JUUL" is and now it's gone.
Nov 20 2018: A Private War (2018): Like a "moth to a bloody flame," Marie Colvin is a journalist addicted to war. The war scenes are violent, bloody and heartbreaking. But the scenes of Colvin's PTSD and alcoholism are just as raw here. I left feeling helpless and depressed. A-
Nov 21 2018: RT @lisalubyryan: "Grateful to be a part of a church that encourages and supports their members to be salt and light in the world! #inspiration #powerofprayer #thywillbedone #humbled."
Separation of church and state is not valued in some local churches. The IRS rules against tax-exempt churches endorsing political candidates aren't valued, either. WWJD?
Nov 22 2018: RT @BeschlossDC: "Anti-Kennedy handbill passed out before JFK went to Dallas 55 years ago this week."
The more things change, the more things remain the same.
Nov 23 2018: Green Book (2018): Unlikely friendship blossoms between Italian-American driver and black pianist on tour of Jim Crow South, an inhumane era treated with kid gloves. Watch it for its characters, its history, or as a feel-good Christmas movie. Combination makes it Oscar bait. A-
Nov 23 2018: What you probably didn't hear from your drunk uncle at Thanksgiving: Undoing "Trumpian sabotage" has resulted in New Jersey’s health care premiums for 2019 being 9.3 percent lower than for 2018, and are now well below the national average.
Nov 26 2018: "Charley Wilkison, executive director of the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas, said members are in the uncomfortable position of having to fight Abbott's [tax] proposal despite endorsing him for governor."
Charley Wilkison? Are you sure his name isn't Charlie Brown?
Nov 27 2018: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018): Collection of six stories of Old West staples like the gunslinger, gold prospector, and wagon train, each given the signature Coen Bros. twist of dark humor. Great characters, epic scenery, winning music. A fresh take on an old genre. B+
Nov 28 2018: Every politician should be asked again and again if they accept money from Empower Texans, TPPF, Tim Dunn, Michael Quinn Sullivan or any of their front organizations designed to control state and local governments.
Nov 29 2018: Outlaw King (2018): I didn't expect to like it, but I did. History is compressed. The hero is remade as a sensitive leader. Muddy and bloody battle scenes, but the climactic battle is won by strategy. Movie has the feel of a Tolkien battle with orcs and dwarves. Is that good? B-
Nov 29 2018: RT @NateSilver538: "If he runs, Beto O'Rourke might hit that sweet spot where he gets a frontrunner's amount of media coverage but the coverage is smug and dismissive, which is also a positive since he'll get to play the underdog role."
"If he runs..."
lol.
Nov 30 2018: Killers of the Flower Moon: The white man's injustice to native Americans, the oil boom in Oklahoma, a former Texas Ranger and the birth of the FBI, and a murder mystery, all in one story, all real. Both tragic and maddening. Always gripping. B+
Nov 29 2018: Bret Stephens...
Before election: Why aren't Dems Walking Away with Mid-terms?
Election: Dems Win 40 House seats.
After election: Mid-term Results are a warning to Dems.
Why does Bret Stephens still have a job with NY Times?
Nov 30 2018: RT @SimonMaloy: "the NYT has been quietly updating Bret Stephens' bad post-midterm column and making it even worse." mediamatters.org
The New York Times is complicit. Not only does it not hold its own columnists accountable for bad analysis, it massages that analysis after the fact to make it look not quite so terrible. Whatever happened to transparent corrections?
Nov 30 2018: TIL: The problem at the New York Times didn't start with Bret Stephens changing his post-election analysis to sound not quite so wrong. Non-transparent editing of published articles by the New York Times is a long-standing problem that has been pointed out before.
Nov 30 2018: Headline: "America Is Headed For Military Defeat in Afghanistan."
Don't forget the Afghan victory in 1842 over the British, then still the greatest army on earth. Or the Afghan victory over the Soviet Union in the 1980s, then still a superpower. It took hubris on a grand scale for the US to think it would be different this time.

Monday, December 3, 2018

Trolling: Thanksgiving is my Favorite Holiday

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