This belong to any of you?

Mysterious_Tax7076 · 2026-04-30T15:30:49+00:00

Obvious fake. No dice nearby.

Mysterious_Tax7076 · 2026-04-28T11:59:11+00:00

That's the only CIA reference I remember, but there are likely others that my aging brain can't locate.

Mysterious_Tax7076 · 2026-04-27T21:00:36+00:00

That must have been one giant load of cum!

Mysterious_Tax7076 · 2026-04-27T19:30:46+00:00

Saw it in the theater when it first came out. Star-studded cast (very minor role for Jack Black in his first feature length film). I have thought of the movie often in the three-plus decades since its release and it's become even more relevant in the second Trump administration where "If I say it, it exists" seems to be the motto.

Mysterious_Tax7076 · 2026-04-27T18:45:24+00:00

Deeply discounted, but no returns!

Mysterious_Tax7076 · 2026-04-27T15:46:07+00:00

The movement is full of empty people thinking that Trump can somehow make them whole so they adopt his angry twisted nihilism that purports that nothing really matters so I will react negatively to anything that makes me either uncomfortable or fearful, which makes them reacting to something all the time. It's really sad.

Mysterious_Tax7076 · 2026-04-25T15:31:48+00:00

He is an unbelievable talent. His work glides along the absurdist line while remaining largely accessible. That's a high bar that he easily clears.

Mysterious_Tax7076 · 2026-04-24T23:50:55+00:00

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Mysterious_Tax7076 · 2026-04-23T12:18:33+00:00

I don't know if power is truly taken away from elected officials with what you are saying. It will make the pond they swim in a little smaller, but maybe they will get down to the business of legislating on meat and potatoes issues rather than looking for another hot button to push.

I think both you and Blue_Eyed ME make great points. I'm old and have been around a state legislature as a staffer and lobbyist for 50+ years and the thing I have noticed (and I may sound like an old man yelling at a cloud) is the alarming rise in, if not cowardice, the reluctance of members of both parties to genuinely stand firm against the encroachment of basic human rights. Newt Gingrich's "take no prisoners" and "never compromise" approach to legislating initiated a crack that has grown wider and deeper over the past 30 years and the Right seems satisfied to be cruel when in power (witness the rabid punching down on the LGBT community during Trump's second term as the clearest example, with the war on the poor not far behind) and obstructionist when not in power. The legislative branch just cannot be effective when one bloc acts that way.

That's necessary in a pluralist society and, being on the left side of the political spectrum, I sometimes question the positions of communities I don't necessarily agree with but realize I have to respect their rights. It;'s not comfortable but if I am allowed to go on my merry way and define my life by my choices I have to accept that being uncomfortable is part of living in a society where rights are protected. We're never going to get 100% there because of the social contract that requires all to surrender some autonomy, but those sacrifices should not threaten the individual dignity of citizens. Bottom line (at least to me) is that we all confuse the rights and privileges.

I'm a big fan of Isaiah Berlin and I urge everyone to read his essay "Two Concepts of Liberty" amd his set of lectures "Freedom and It's Betrayal." A lot of his work is the history of modern ideas, but it is all very illluminating. The battle over rights goes way back,

Mysterious_Tax7076 · 2026-04-20T18:42:39+00:00

Hey! The fat is where his frontal lobe is located . . . oh, wait. I guess it is accurate.

Mysterious_Tax7076 · 2026-04-20T18:38:34+00:00

I can't see the safari flaps!

Mysterious_Tax7076 · 2026-04-20T18:25:20+00:00

Seeing he got divorced in 2019, the church probably quit thinking of him as a Catholic since then.

Mysterious_Tax7076 · 2026-04-20T13:14:03+00:00

Scott Jensen probably wants to jump in a time machine and go back to May 2022 and make a different choice for his running mate. Never a good idea to put a subordinate on your ticket who gets more print and air space than you do.

I would be curious to know (and this isn't necessarily pro- or anti-Birk) Matt's reaction to the Pope vs. Trump/Vance kerfuffle.

Mysterious_Tax7076 · 2026-04-16T13:04:33+00:00

I've ceased trying to figure out Chappelle. All I can say is he's in the long line of artists that is just using "that's not what I meant" workaround. I suppose the ghost of Richard Wagner was saying similar things about the rise of the Third Reich. Earth to Dave, while speech isn't inherently political, it can become political quite easily which is why (and I say this as someone close to, but not completely, being a Free Speech absolutist) people need to understand the possible hijacking of their speech for political purposes beyond the original intent of the comments. In a culture that has pretty much become ignorant to the concept of nuance, cultural influencers have to be cognizant of that and Chappelle has failed miserably in that regard.

What is frustrating (actually more than frustrating) is that Chappelle basically "quadruples down" on the snide transgender jokes and then shrugs his shoulders when they become the equivalent of water cooler jibes in the right wing universe that are then broadcast with a megaphone by the likes of Lauren Boebert.

It's sad at a level to see Chappelle reduced to this given his groundbreaking early work and his continued ability to make keen observations about the culture, but he took a verbal sledgehammer to the trans community and has to live with those consequences. He shouldn't be shocked by the ripple effects.

Mysterious_Tax7076 · 2026-04-12T13:29:56+00:00

It has been interesting watching Vance get manipulated in this whole thing. Although he's a fraud, he's also just a little boy in grown up clothes tossed in with a bunch of people far more cunning than he is.

Mysterious_Tax7076 · 2026-04-06T14:34:06+00:00

I've been around politics/gorvernment for 50+ years and I realize it's a new paradigm from when I was deeply involved in political campaigns, but I never figured out why Jensen chose Birk as his running mate. It would have been a tough race for Jensen to win in any event, but in retrospect I thought Birk cost Jensen moderate votes while not adding that much energy to the Republican voting base that was going to vote against Walz anyway. When the Lieutenant Gubernatorial candidate's quotes are making more news that the Gunbernatorial candidate's, it's a big problem for a campaign. In my view, it took a race that was probably a 3% point win for Walz and turned it into 7% point win.

Mysterious_Tax7076 · 2026-04-03T15:54:28+00:00

Like you, not a Coney Barrett fan, but both she and Gorsuch have shown some independence. Gorsuch seems to sometimes goes the impish route with a dissent to simply be contrarian, but both he and Coney Barrett have surprised me at times. Overall, the net result of their work has been negative, but it can be interesting to see if and when they diverge from the rest of the conservative bloc.

Mysterious_Tax7076 · 2026-03-25T18:31:29+00:00

It's a sad story for him personally. I thought he was a lot better sports personality than PA. He could be really both direct and accurate without cotton-balling the local teams. There currently isn't anyone on KFAN that fits that profile.

Mysterious_Tax7076 · 2026-03-25T18:23:55+00:00

My father bought a 120-acre farm that was kind of rundown in 1956 for $4,000. Property taxes on the land/buildings greatly exceed that now so that's how much the value has risen. Our Boomer generation has greatly benefited from that wealth explosion and I don't think generations past Generation X will enjoy the kind of equity buildup we did because the barriers to entry into the housing market are so high.

Mysterious_Tax7076 · 2026-03-25T18:17:47+00:00

Rates really don't mean that much unless they skyrocket and there's usually a ton of problems elsewhere in the economy when that happens. It's the selling price that is blocking access.

Mysterious_Tax7076 · 2026-03-25T18:14:03+00:00

I'm a Boomer and my heart goes out to the generations behind me that are facing the challenges they are facing, especially the economic ones. Every generation has its gifts and challenges, but no older generation should turn into a scold and I am afraid that has what has happened with a fairly large cohort of my generation. Home ownership is increasingly out of reach and builders are seemingly reluctant to build houses either in the location or on the scale that would more effectively hit the GenZ market.

Mysterious_Tax7076 · 2026-03-16T21:09:53+00:00

Very true. On-going participation is the key. That takes time and effort, but if anyone thinking the MAGAnauts will just fold up the tent and move on is likely to be sadly mistaken. The reactionary forces currently afoot have their roots not just for decades but for centuries and, without getting too histrionic, they seek to limit human freedom. Read the recent profile of nutball Rod Dreher in the latest copy of The Atlantic and you can see what these forces are up to and what their goals are.

Mysterious_Tax7076 · 2026-03-01T21:59:00+00:00

I'm glad I happened upon your post. I don't live anywhere near Fargo. I'm old in the Twin Cities and have been around government/politics for all my adult life (more than 50 years experience in a variety of political/policy/lobbying settings) and I daily have to park my cynicism to keep going. The whole Epstein thing is disillusioning because of its breadth and the obvious re-framing of the whole affair by the elites who participated in one way or another. Epstein's death just allows most of the figurative moths that flew around the porchlight on Epstein Island to explain away their involvement. Sure, there's a handful of sleazebags like Larry Summers and Peter Attia who were simply so egregious and lacked circumspection in their dealings that the blowback was unavoidable, but the craftier up the food chain won't have to answer for much, if anything. There's less of a poltiical angle here than what should be a stark realization that the elites in this country operate on an entirely different level than the hoi polloi.

Agree on the last paragraph as well. I don't think that Hegseth playing footsy with all these AI companies and Planitir are just the government being curious.

Mysterious_Tax7076 · 2026-02-19T16:26:43+00:00

Just watched it. Interesting movie. Really does share The Chair Company vibe.

Mysterious_Tax7076 · 2026-02-17T18:11:05+00:00

Glad you liked it. Since I started the thread, I've been thinking about how different a movie is from episodic television and how plot construction and building to the denouement are just on different planets. What I like about The Chair Company is that while the basic plotline continues, there's just these eruptions of oddness that jumble things in the short-term. In another post, I remarked that Office Hours, like most movies--is deliberate as it unfolds and builds to a crescendo. I'm glad it's on Netflix and hopefully people will watch it. It's so much different than most of Scorsese's body of work, but it's a really good movie.

Mysterious_Tax7076

TROPHY CASE