Nothing screams independence like the $12 bacon, egg and cheese foot-long pretzel roll (kinda like a log) at the Great American State Fair which, purportedly, leaves as bad a taste in your mouth as an insurrection. One food reviewer even called it “an impeachable offense.” Makes me yearn for the good ‘ole days: you know, funnel cakes, cheese curds, and violent reflux. Happy 4th of July everyone!
There's a TV series called Cub Camp about a couple in Canada who rescues orphaned bear cubs, rehabilitate them and release them back to the wild when they are ready. It's think it's on the National Geographic channel or Disney +. It was soooo good!
I once ended up with a great horned owl chick when someone shot the mother. I was working in a lab where we had live mice, so as Oliver got older, I would feed him the live mice while he sat on my lap, watching TV. When he was big enough, I took him to a game farm and let Oliver go.
You mention that the lab had live mice, but you didn't outright say there was a *surplus* of them. Which life-saving medical research project came to a grinding halt for lack of rodentary subjects, I wonder?
I worked in Franz Halberg's lab at the University of Minnesota back when God was a baby. Franz started the field of chronobiology. We would inject mice with a dose of a lethal drug that kills 50% of the mice. We would inject them every hour, and it soon became clear that the LD 50 varied over the 24 hours, reflecting a circadian rhythm.
Franz was the one who convinced me to go into primary care, because he believed my true skill is connecting the dots in the real world. Over the decades, I developed my CARB syndrome concept to explain our epidemics of obesity, metabolic syndrome, and common brain disorders: https://carbsyndrome.com
I am one of the old guys (86) who agrees with you that most of us, no matter the shade, are decent people who care about their neighbors and people in need. I also believe most of these people would be categorized as the "deplorables" by a well known politician. Good ole decent hard working normal Mericans.
Well, since you brought it up. . .this good ole decent hard working normal Merican thinks that voting for another well-known politician is, in fact, deplorable. Here's why:
Statements — fact-checking databases
Washington Post Fact Checker Trump claims database. Catalogued 30,573 false or misleading claims across the first term, averaging 21 per day.
Mueller Report (Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election), Department of Justice, 2019. Primary source on Russia contacts and obstruction findings.
Brennan Center for Justice. Timeline of the Trump Administration's Efforts to Undermine Elections. (They also maintain the Supreme Court Shadow Docket Tracker on second-term challenges; the administration made 19 shadow docket applications in its first 20 weeks — as many as the Biden administration made in four years.)
CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington). Tracks corruption, DOJ and military weaponization, regulatory retaliation, and information suppression. https://www.citizensforethics.org
UC San Diego Library's consolidated list of trackers — the best single index of what's out there, curated by government-documents librarians. https://ucsd.libguides.com/usgov/trumptrackers
News archives — running coverage
Reuters and Associated Press topic pages on the Trump administration. Wire-service reporting, minimal editorializing.
ProPublica's Trump administration coverage. Investigative reporting on personnel, contracts, and agency conduct.
Happy Birthday, Dave!!!! (Not shouting. 🎂) But Dude, you gotta step it up on the rock band names! The obvious winner would be (drum roll if you want one): The Toenail Clipper Kidney Harvesters. Thank GOD we were born in America and not China!!! Not having my body parts forcibly harvested from me is another reason why America is so great. Happy Birthday tomorrow to us all! 🗽🎡🎠🎇🎆
I would like to suggest a dark horse: The mobster who did the Reflecting Pool has a patent on his product "Nano Bubble Ozone Technology." (Drop the "Technology.")
Dave, okay so best get started on that hitting the big 80 posting for next year in case you get further distracted. My old guy advice starts with Don’t trust a fart, and goes downhill from there. I think there should be be some sort of birthright for each male over the age of 8 to received a free package of firecrackers to properly celebrate the fourth or to try to blow up random objects. Granted the lawyers will have a 100 page release of liability with each mailing, but then that should help the postal service be profitable, so two birds with one stone so to speak. Anyways, happy birthday! Don’t spent it all crashed out on the sofa.
What makes America great is not just Walmarts and Waffle Houses, but people like you, and the guy who surgically removed the Loud Log, and the Log Lady who took the screaming woodpeckers to a brighter future of battering their beans against another tree, and even the people who actually care enough about maintaining standards of grammar that they can’t stand run-on sentences. (Suggested band name: The Screaming Woodpeckers.)
Dave, you optimist you! Happy Birthday!!! And many, many more because without you Friday mornings would be so much less fun. It was such a sweet story and I am now filled with hope...for wildlife. I too have birds...a mourning dove made it's nest in my fern and apparently it's very against the law to remove it, especially since it now has two eggs in it. Google says: "Leave it alone if it’s active — disturbing it can harm the birds and may result in legal penalties!" Who knew? There will be bird poop all over the balcony and my fern, but this is America and I will let those birds live! Thanks for the inspiration.
For Poll #1, I had to put "A bit less positive than Dave," though I WANT to be in the first category. Then, I am reminded of one salient fact that keeps coming up for me here on Substack, and that is that immediate demographic strongly influences our perception of "society." This article kinda makes me want to move to Florida.
Then again, I know in my heart of hearts that I do NOT want to move to Florida, because we are currently experiencing a wave of life-threatening heat and humidity up here in NH such that, when I took the dogs out before 8 AM this morning, I already almost died. I fully expect to be dead by this afternoon. My understanding is that Florida is like this about 200+ days out of the year, so if I moved to Florida, I'd be Extremely Dead. Thus, it's probably a bad plan.
Happy Birthday Dave🎂🎉 I think I speak for all of us paying subscribers when I say thank you for not retiring as soon as your Social Security and Medicare kicked in.
First of all, Happy Birthday! Here’s to the next 79 years!
Second, thanks for saving the baby birds!
How many drinks before you struggle to pronounce “semiquincentennial” three times fast?
I've been saying that as "semisusquetennial" for weeks now. Then I actually READ the word. What an American.
Zero drinks.
Great name for a rock band, by the way.
Zero.
In my case, one shot of bourbon.
I did it without any drinks. No brag, just fact.
AMEN!
Nothing screams independence like the $12 bacon, egg and cheese foot-long pretzel roll (kinda like a log) at the Great American State Fair which, purportedly, leaves as bad a taste in your mouth as an insurrection. One food reviewer even called it “an impeachable offense.” Makes me yearn for the good ‘ole days: you know, funnel cakes, cheese curds, and violent reflux. Happy 4th of July everyone!
Twinkies , deep fat fried
I’m Scottish, and I am offended. You deep fry *mars bars* , laddie!
I love people who help critters and other people. They are the best. They also seem to avoid living in D.C.
There's a TV series called Cub Camp about a couple in Canada who rescues orphaned bear cubs, rehabilitate them and release them back to the wild when they are ready. It's think it's on the National Geographic channel or Disney +. It was soooo good!
I once ended up with a great horned owl chick when someone shot the mother. I was working in a lab where we had live mice, so as Oliver got older, I would feed him the live mice while he sat on my lap, watching TV. When he was big enough, I took him to a game farm and let Oliver go.
You mention that the lab had live mice, but you didn't outright say there was a *surplus* of them. Which life-saving medical research project came to a grinding halt for lack of rodentary subjects, I wonder?
I worked in Franz Halberg's lab at the University of Minnesota back when God was a baby. Franz started the field of chronobiology. We would inject mice with a dose of a lethal drug that kills 50% of the mice. We would inject them every hour, and it soon became clear that the LD 50 varied over the 24 hours, reflecting a circadian rhythm.
Any tips? My circadian rhythms suck. Big time.
Fix your brain if you fit the CARB syndrome pattern: https://carbsyndrome.com
Well, damn, William. I eat absolutely no lousy food. Maybe I have a brain worm..
Maybe you are just meant to be different--and special!
Wow -- I'd never even HEARD of chronobiology! (But now I wouldn't be surprised to see the concept turn up in a future post on Dave's Substack.)
Franz was the one who convinced me to go into primary care, because he believed my true skill is connecting the dots in the real world. Over the decades, I developed my CARB syndrome concept to explain our epidemics of obesity, metabolic syndrome, and common brain disorders: https://carbsyndrome.com
U of M ftw!
Or a crossword puzzle I’ll try to remember til
Tomorrow
OMG!
I am one of the old guys (86) who agrees with you that most of us, no matter the shade, are decent people who care about their neighbors and people in need. I also believe most of these people would be categorized as the "deplorables" by a well known politician. Good ole decent hard working normal Mericans.
Well, since you brought it up. . .this good ole decent hard working normal Merican thinks that voting for another well-known politician is, in fact, deplorable. Here's why:
Statements — fact-checking databases
Washington Post Fact Checker Trump claims database. Catalogued 30,573 false or misleading claims across the first term, averaging 21 per day.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-claims-database/ Wikipedia
PolitiFact's Trump file. Rated statements on a six-point scale from True to Pants on Fire.
https://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/
FactCheck.org (Annenberg Public Policy Center). https://www.factcheck.org/person/donald-trump/
Actions — first term
Mueller Report (Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election), Department of Justice, 2019. Primary source on Russia contacts and obstruction findings.
https://www.justice.gov/archives/sco/file/1373816/download
House Intelligence Committee, The Trump-Ukraine Impeachment Inquiry Report, December 2019.
https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/the_trump-ukraine_impeachment_inquiry_report.pdf
Final Report of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, December 2022.
https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/GPO-J6-REPORT
Senate Intelligence Committee, Report on Russian Active Measures Campaigns (Volumes 1–5), 2019–2020.
https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/publications/report-select-committee-intelligence-united-states-senate-russian-active-measures
Actions — second term (Jan 2025–present)
Brennan Center for Justice. Timeline of the Trump Administration's Efforts to Undermine Elections. (They also maintain the Supreme Court Shadow Docket Tracker on second-term challenges; the administration made 19 shadow docket applications in its first 20 weeks — as many as the Biden administration made in four years.)
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/timeline-trump-administrations-efforts-undermine-elections.
Brookings Institution Regulatory Tracker. Second-term regulatory and deregulatory actions with status and litigation.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/tracking-regulatory-changes-in-the-second-trump-administration/
CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington). Tracks corruption, DOJ and military weaponization, regulatory retaliation, and information suppression. https://www.citizensforethics.org
Just Security Trump Litigation Tracker (NYU Law). Every major lawsuit against second-term executive actions, with case summaries and filings. https://www.justsecurity.org/107744/tracker-litigation-legal-challenges-trump-administration/
Lawfare. Ongoing legal analysis of executive actions, immigration operations, and separation-of-powers disputes.
https://www.lawfaremedia.org
Committee to Protect Journalists. Press-freedom incidents involving the administration. https://cpj.org
ACLU State of Civil Liberties tracker.
https://www.aclu.org
UC San Diego Library's consolidated list of trackers — the best single index of what's out there, curated by government-documents librarians. https://ucsd.libguides.com/usgov/trumptrackers
News archives — running coverage
Reuters and Associated Press topic pages on the Trump administration. Wire-service reporting, minimal editorializing.
ProPublica's Trump administration coverage. Investigative reporting on personnel, contracts, and agency conduct.
https://www.propublica.org
You need to get a health hobby.
TMI, I just exploded
Fair. But that's kind of the point.
Sorry, I accidentally replied to the wrong comment and had to delete it.
Happy Birthday, Dave!!!! (Not shouting. 🎂) But Dude, you gotta step it up on the rock band names! The obvious winner would be (drum roll if you want one): The Toenail Clipper Kidney Harvesters. Thank GOD we were born in America and not China!!! Not having my body parts forcibly harvested from me is another reason why America is so great. Happy Birthday tomorrow to us all! 🗽🎡🎠🎇🎆
I would like to suggest a dark horse: The mobster who did the Reflecting Pool has a patent on his product "Nano Bubble Ozone Technology." (Drop the "Technology.")
You got me thinking that "Dark Horse" itself would be a great band name. Naturally, it turns out there's already such a group:
https://www.darkhorseband.com/
...as well as:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Horses_(band)
Thanks probably to Dave's influence, I spend a lot of time every Friday thinking about band names. It's my (very) secret contribution to pop culture.
Or call it "Onanotechnology"
Dave, okay so best get started on that hitting the big 80 posting for next year in case you get further distracted. My old guy advice starts with Don’t trust a fart, and goes downhill from there. I think there should be be some sort of birthright for each male over the age of 8 to received a free package of firecrackers to properly celebrate the fourth or to try to blow up random objects. Granted the lawyers will have a 100 page release of liability with each mailing, but then that should help the postal service be profitable, so two birds with one stone so to speak. Anyways, happy birthday! Don’t spent it all crashed out on the sofa.
"Don't trust a fart" would be a good name for a rock band.
James-Why for males only?? There are many of us females who are still kicking!!!
Yeah, but you females have a reputation for not doing dumb stuff. Pretty much a male monopoly, or so we're told. :)
Lol, Steve, I think in your post there is some slight compliment being detected….
Any time I encounter the word "fart" in close proximity to a discussion of explosives, I head for the hills.
"Walmart, the only place you can buy an Engagement Ring, and Catfish Bait under one roof."
Happy birthday, Dave!
What makes America great is not just Walmarts and Waffle Houses, but people like you, and the guy who surgically removed the Loud Log, and the Log Lady who took the screaming woodpeckers to a brighter future of battering their beans against another tree, and even the people who actually care enough about maintaining standards of grammar that they can’t stand run-on sentences. (Suggested band name: The Screaming Woodpeckers.)
How about "The Chortling Woodpeckers"? That's the sound ours seem to make in New England.
Happy Birthday! And thank you for continuing to give *us* the gift of your writing every year. You are a gem!
Happy BD, DB!
Very clever, DD.
Ditto, BD.
Happy birthday, Dave!
You and I are both about one-third as old as our nation. That's either an inspiring thought, or a terrifying mental picture.
Happy Birthday, Dave!
"Today you are you! That is truer than true! There is no one alive who is you-er than you!"
---- Dr. Seuss
Dave, you optimist you! Happy Birthday!!! And many, many more because without you Friday mornings would be so much less fun. It was such a sweet story and I am now filled with hope...for wildlife. I too have birds...a mourning dove made it's nest in my fern and apparently it's very against the law to remove it, especially since it now has two eggs in it. Google says: "Leave it alone if it’s active — disturbing it can harm the birds and may result in legal penalties!" Who knew? There will be bird poop all over the balcony and my fern, but this is America and I will let those birds live! Thanks for the inspiration.
For Poll #1, I had to put "A bit less positive than Dave," though I WANT to be in the first category. Then, I am reminded of one salient fact that keeps coming up for me here on Substack, and that is that immediate demographic strongly influences our perception of "society." This article kinda makes me want to move to Florida.
Then again, I know in my heart of hearts that I do NOT want to move to Florida, because we are currently experiencing a wave of life-threatening heat and humidity up here in NH such that, when I took the dogs out before 8 AM this morning, I already almost died. I fully expect to be dead by this afternoon. My understanding is that Florida is like this about 200+ days out of the year, so if I moved to Florida, I'd be Extremely Dead. Thus, it's probably a bad plan.
Happy Birthday Dave🎂🎉 I think I speak for all of us paying subscribers when I say thank you for not retiring as soon as your Social Security and Medicare kicked in.
Especially since he has that fat newspaper pension!
Indeed! Thanks!