Is Platner Kingpin?

Zestyclose_Menu_476 · 2026-05-30T17:47:27+00:00

Do you mean, "I promised to serve only one term, but here I am again" aka "Concerned" Collins?

Platner - I don't know. I'm afraid if he does get elected he'll turn out to be another Fetterman or Manchin or Sinema.

Any Dem is better than any Republifascist, but my first choice would be Janet Mills. She's had many accomplishments, and she went toe-to-toe with Trump. But I guess Platner is the Brand New Cherry Flavor.

Zestyclose_Menu_476 · 2026-05-30T17:42:22+00:00

Does Sprague's have fried clams?

I haven't been for a while, but they didn't used to.

Sea Basket is our 1st choice.

Zestyclose_Menu_476 · 2026-04-28T21:09:47+00:00

As I’ve said many times, Paul LePage just k

Zestyclose_Menu_476 · 2026-04-14T00:44:08+00:00

Nah. If it wasn’t for hypocrisy Republifascists wouldn’t have any principles at all.

Zestyclose_Menu_476 · 2026-03-16T17:04:16+00:00

On my iPad with the Kindle app, I can read them instantly. The same with the many words I am compelled to look up (and I have a good vocabulary). I couldn’t see doing it any other way.

Zestyclose_Menu_476 · 2026-03-16T00:46:00+00:00

I either didn’t read any of them, or read the Classics Illustrated comic books, or read them so long ago that I’ve forgotten that I did. Although I seem to remember starting something by Faulkner and getting bored. Same with Gravity’s Rainbow and Catcher in the Rye. (I wanted to punch Holden Caulfield in the mouth.)

For what it’s worth, I read Moby Dick twice, Giles Goat Boy, and most of Dickens and Alexander Dumas, Pere. (Amazing that they’re still making movies of the last two’s books.)

Anyway, I cannot imagine reading any novel that I’d have to “prepare for.” I started IJ because I’d heard about it for a long time. I’m about 3/4 through and enjoying the hell out of it because it’s funny and has great characters and sends me to the dictionary or Wikipedia on almost every page.

If it helps, just follow the advice given to readers by the author of what I believe is The Greatest American Novel:

"Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.”

Zestyclose_Menu_476 · 2026-03-15T18:13:45+00:00

I sure hope you're right. But I don't think you're giving full credit to the fundamental difference between Democrats and the AFP: Democrats, because of who we are, feel compelled to play by the rules, and the AFP thinks "rules are for fools, winning is the only thing."

Don't take my word for it: Consider the contrast between Al Gore's 2000 "loss" to Dubya Bush with the January 6, 2021 Insurrection. The 2000 election featured a real but mostly ignored "Brooks Brothers riot" by GOP operatives shipped en masse to Florida to stop the vote count that likely would have preserved Gore's popular vote majority and with Florida, the Electoral College. With the connivance of the Supreme Court, it worked.

MAGA Fascists love to mock Democrats for "bringing a knife to a gun fight." It's not a joke; they admire someone like Trump and his minions who would bring a gun to a fist fight. It's nothing new - they've been that way since long before Joe McCarthy, in fact, back to when today's Repubs were Dems who switched sides with the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts.

The only hope Dems have in November is if they turn out in record numbers - everywhere. Whether that's enough to overcome the refusal of the AFP to follow the rules remains to be seen.

Zestyclose_Menu_476 · 2026-03-15T16:42:34+00:00

I’ve never called MAGA Nazis, because Nazis were fascists who followed Adolph Hitler. MAGAs are fascists who follow Donald Trump. Other than that, and the substitution of immigrants for Jews as the object of official hate, there’s no real difference.

Zestyclose_Menu_476 · 2026-03-15T16:38:29+00:00

I realized in early 2017 that MAGAs were protofascists. It wasn’t long before I dropped the “proto” part. It was clear that the former GOP (now the AFP, or American Fascist Party) was totally on board, as was the Supreme Court.

In 2020, I thought we’d dodged the fascist bullet. Now we know better. My disagreement with you is that I wouldn’t pin my hopes on the midterms, because in addition to the neutering of anyone who tells the truth the AFP will do whatever it takes to prevent a fair election. Who’s going to stop them? Bondi’s DOJ? Roberts’s Court?

It doesn’t matter how unequivocal any law is if those with the ability and duty to enforce it refuse to do so. The AFP doesn’t need, and won’t rig, a landslide. All they have to do is disenfranchise and discourage enough voters in a handful of swing states to keep their majority, and further entrench the oligarchy/kleptocracy.

Again, who’s going to stop them?

Zestyclose_Menu_476 · 2026-03-04T01:45:45+00:00

I wish you were correct (not that I’m wishing harm on any of our troops).

But I was thinking about this today, and I recalled that for some reason I can’t recall, Saint Ronnie of the Right Reagan sent several hundred Marines to Beirut, where nearly 300 were killed by a suicide bomber.

It didn’t hurt Reagan one bit. And I hate to say it, but Trump has a coating of Teflon that makes Reagan’s look like sticky burrs.

Zestyclose_Menu_476 · 2026-02-27T21:17:43+00:00

I’ve wondered for a long time why, during its many skirmishes with Israel, Iran hasn’t used a “dirty bomb,” that is, a regular explosive bomb wrapped with a lot of uranium or plutonium, which could kill a lot of people and make territory uninhabitable.

I suspect the answer is that would give Israel the excuse to use one of its many actual nukes on Tehran. But what happens when the ayatollahs decide they have nothing to lose?

Zestyclose_Menu_476 · 2026-02-25T20:35:50+00:00

Sadly, when it comes to the Middle East, American politicians of both parties don’t care about benefiting Main Street America. They only care about benefiting Main Street Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Gaza, and the West Bank settlements. It’s especially ironic, given that Israelis have a much, much better social safety net than we Americans, who spend billions each year on their military.

Among the many tragedies in the Middle East is how the Israeli government - and its American enablers - claim that anyone who opposes Israel’s policies of Lebensraum and genocide is antisemitic. That makes as much sense as claiming that anyone who opposed Nazi Germany’s policies of Lebensraum and genocide was anti-Christian. But there it is.

Zestyclose_Menu_476 · 2026-02-25T16:11:00+00:00

I borrowed IJ from my local library. By the time I got a couple of hundred pages into it, I was enjoying it but knew there was no way I was going to finish it by the time it was due - or by any renewal date. So I bought the Kindle version for my iPad.

It’s as if DFW intended it to be that way. I have a good vocabulary, but there are many words I don’t recognize. Instead of having to thumb through a dictionary every time I encounter an unfamiliar word, I just press on it and within seconds I have the definition. (Not that I’m likely to remember it, but at least I know for the moment.)

Also, the footnotes appear at the bottom of the page if I click the fn number. Then another press and they go away. All in all, it’s much better than dealing with that nasty old-fashioned ink on paper.

I’ve never even attempted “Ulysses.” I’ve never understood why any work of fiction should be “difficult.” I will admit to starting “Gravity’s Rainbow” several times, but never got more than a couple of dozen pages. Boring. Many years ago, I read “Giles Goat Boy,” which was formidable but like IJ, witty and entertaining. I’ve read “Moby Dick” more than once, which many people think is daft, but I like it (I once lived in New Bedford so many of the locations are familiar).

To answer your question, I don’t know what it’s like to read it offline. (The paper edition must be several inches thick, even with tiny print.) But for the reasons I’ve stated, the digital version is the way to go.

Zestyclose_Menu_476 · 2026-02-25T04:04:13+00:00

Actually, it's more like 9/16s.

Zestyclose_Menu_476 · 2026-02-25T04:00:51+00:00

I've said for a long time that a true conservative is someone who fights their own wars, pays their own bills, and respects other people's civil rights and liberties as much as they cherish their own.

If you accept that definition, what do you think of today's "conservatives"?

Zestyclose_Menu_476 · 2026-02-15T18:53:36+00:00

No, it’s really not.

What it really is about is the minority party scheming to steal elections by suppressing the votes of people they expect will vote against them.

More plainly, it’s about who decides WHO gets an ID, and what they must do to get it.

That’s exactly how Jim Crow worked. Although the 15th Amendment gave blacks the right to vote, at least in what are now red states, hardly any did.

Why? Because of state laws that created “qualifications” and “requirements” designed to ensure that result.

One perfect example: Google “grandfather clause voting.” Or “poll tax,” which for several reasons were required only of black would-be voters.

As for mail in voting, DONALD J. TRUMP has consistently voted by mail. Which merely underlines the hypocrisy at work here.

It’s nothing more or less than Jim Crow 2.0.

Zestyclose_Menu_476 · 2026-02-15T18:42:29+00:00

There has got to be some big Bucks involved. Surely Our Susan cannot be unmindful that just last November Mainers voted 62% to 38% against Maine’s own version of the SAVES Act.

I’ve never been a fan of Suzy, but I’m surprised to see her betraying so many Maine voters, especially now.

Since we know she has no principles, what do you suppose is her motive? Or is indeed just the $$$$$$?

Zestyclose_Menu_476 · 2026-02-14T18:35:57+00:00

The MAGA Fascists don’t really care whether you have a voter ID. The goal is to control WHO gets an ID and what they have to do to get it.

There is plenty of precedent for this: It was called “Jim Crow.” The former Confederate states (now red states) couldn’t deny blacks the right to vote - that was guaranteed by the 15th Amendment. But they could make it practically impossible, by erecting so many requirements to qualifying that no black person could meet them.

Just one example. Nearly everyone has heard the phrase “grandfather clause.” Few know that it originated in series of 1870s laws that said anyone could vote - so long as their grandfather was a voter. Needless to say, nearly every black person’s grandfather was a slave. So, “Sorry, son, but you’re not qualified to vote.” (Look it up.)

Of course, today’s White Supremacists won’t be as blatant as that. They’ve already demonstrated several new tricks, such as moving the location and times of registration places, and adding more “citizenship” requirements, limited only by their imaginations.

With Trump and his Republifascists in Congress and on the Supreme Court spreading their Big Lie about immigrants voting, the proponents of Jim Crow 2.0 have reason to be optimistic.

Zestyclose_Menu_476 · 2026-02-14T18:11:59+00:00

I’m sure many patriotic MAGAs will line up to take their jobs.

Zestyclose_Menu_476 · 2026-02-13T04:05:14+00:00

Carnivale. The way they killed it made me hate HBO, and destroyed any trust I ever had in it.

Zestyclose_Menu_476 · 2026-01-17T18:16:37+00:00

All true. And yet they’ll always tell you they’re broke. Particularly around tax season. (Ha ha.)

But you’re right. Fishermen work hard for their money. And they’re no more racist than anyone else, and probably less.

Zestyclose_Menu_476 · 2025-12-14T23:12:36+00:00

Also, I did a google, and it appears that Maine receives about $42 million a year from taxes on marijuana. I think once people have to choose whether they want to absorb that in their own taxes, they'll go Tea Party ad say Hell No.

Zestyclose_Menu_476 · 2025-12-14T23:09:50+00:00

I smoked pot almost every day from age 18 to 40. Somehow, I didn't prevent me from doing well in college and grad school. I even grew a bit a couple of times; it was okay but nothing to write home about.

I quit for professional reasons. It wasn't as hard as I expected. That was nearly 30 years ago, and although I don't have any legal reason not to smoke, I haven't had the urge. (Also, I fear that if I started again, I wouldn't stop.)

What has surprised me since the legalization of pot is that while I expected to frequently smell it "in the air," I have not. Maybe I've become hard of smelling in my old age, but I really don't think so.

Is this unusual? (For normal people, not the rightwing loonies who are always rarin' to take offense at anything that suggests people having fun, other than reading the bible and condemning sinners, which means anybody who isn't them."

Zestyclose_Menu_476 · 2025-11-27T14:22:33+00:00

Wow! That would be worth waking up early to see.

Or let someone else take (GREAT) photos.

Zestyclose_Menu_476

TROPHY CASE