Yeah No

If Trump and now Musk have changed my husband's mind on anything it's that sometimes government is best left up to politicians and not business people without an understanding of how certain things work. This was one of the main reasons my husband at first supported Trump - because he was "fed up" with the "ineffectiveness and waste" of traditional government. Trump's "drain the swamp" mantra resonated with him. But since then as it has become obvious that Trump and now Musk don't know WTF they're doing and are causing real damage, my husband has seen the wisdom in leaving politics to the politicians. Sometimes you can't just go in with a hacksaw and improve things. You have to know how things affect each other and not upset the delicate balance of the "economic ecosystem". Not to know this can cause real damage, like we're seeing now. Sometimes there's a reason things are the way they are. My mother used to tell me that when I asked why things couldn't be different. You can't just go in like a bull in a china shop and expect everything to change because you want it to. Often real change takes time because it's very political and complicated to get it to happen without causing a mess and alienating entire countries. We're learning that lesson in a big way right now.

They don't have to accept the position, although I'm sure some of them might feel like they're between a rock and a hard place on that because not accepting it would be political suicide. Judging from Marco Rubio's face, he might be among them. But yeah, speaking of being damned if you do and damned if you don't, this is an example of that. Of course Biden is probably ultimately responsible for that and Dems. were being kind to Biden at first but their delay in pushing him to step down cost the party because they didn't have many options at such a late date. Harris was probably the best choice they had at that point. And I don't think she was a bad choice, but she didn't have time to work up a decent campaign. I also wonder how prepared for it she was. It was thrust on her when she wasn't exactly expecting it. That might have hindered her success too. Ah yes, actually Anne Hutchinson was a big deal in my classes. NYC was early in honoring women and minorities in history. My teachers were very progressive that way. But my Dad also contributed as he was at heart a history teacher and I was his favorite pupil, LOL! If he had not grown up poor in the great depression he might have had the opportunity to go to college and become one. And WWII derailed him and started his career in the Army.

That's interesting! Trader Joe's fruit on the bottom yogurt stayed like the "old" yogurt for years so I used to buy that but it changed over to the thinner type about 5 years ago now. Speaking of Wegman's one is finally opening in CT in July but it's about an hour from here in Norwalk. My husband is often in that area for work so I'm sure he'll check it out, but I plan to make special trips there too. I hope they open one near me soon. Interestingly Google says the formula has changed over the years, most significantly to increase the sodium level to "improve stability and quality". Yeah, right. 😏 Also whole eggs and egg yolks became the third ingredients on the list but it's not clear what they were before that. A lot of customers claim it's different in taste and consistency than it was years ago but I haven't noticed any significant change in taste myself. The closest "dupe" to Hellman's I've found is Aldi's mayo., but it just lacks that certain "somethin' somethin'" in terms of taste so it's a deal breaker for me. Meanwhile I love their Ketchup despite being a Heinz purist for years and all their mustards. It sure saves a lot of money. I find that Hellman's squeeze mayo is noticeably different in taste and texture from the regular jar and not in a good way in my opinion but smeared on a sandwich it's hard to tell the difference. I haven't checked the ingredient list but I'm sure it's different from the regular jar, if only to make it easier to squeeze out of a nozzle.

I saw a dozen supermarket brand eggs for $8.00 today. Fancier brands are $9.00 and $10.00. Thank goodness our next door neighbors with a chicken coop keep us in eggs. Catching up - I never ate bananas and sour cream. I always ate them in yogurt. Then I started making banana/yogurt smoothies about 30 years ago. Later I added strawberries or blueberries. I still make them. Speaking of yogurt, does anyone remember the way yogurt used to be? I mean before it got ultra processed and smoothed out and before Greek yogurt became a thing? I seriously miss the old Dannon yogurt with the fruit on the bottom that was thick and actually had lumps in it! Sometimes I feel like I'm the only person that remembers this. That and the fact that it used to come in 8 oz. containers, not 6 oz. Also I love mayo. but a lot of my Italian relatives didn't grow up with it so they didn't like it. My mother didn't grow up with it but she was born in the U.S. and even though she didn't eat it at home she ate it in restaurants and loved it. For me it's Hellman's or nothing. I can compromise on a lot of condiments but somehow that's not one of them. I've never tried some of the gourmet brands mentioned. One day I'll have to try them. And re: banoffee pie, I've been making my own recipe of that for years now. My own reduced fat/sugar version. I'm an anglophile from way back and have eaten it and sticky toffee pudding in the UK. Recently I ate at Hell's Kitchen restaurant at Foxwoods Casino in CT and Gordon Ramsay's sticky toffee pudding was as good as I had in England. But I expect no less from him!

Maple MAGA, I found out recently that that's a thing! My husband and I went on a cruise to the Caribbean at the end of February and we overheard a young Canadian couple from a small town in Alberta talking to an American couple. The American man asked them how they felt about Canada becoming the 51st state and the Canadian husband replied that they were in the minority of Canadians because they actually want to be the 51st state! I would have moved away to avoid listening to them but this was in the dining room when we were eating so I couldn't just get up. But at least my husband and I shared eye rolls as they talked. Thank goodness we didn't hear any other political talk on our cruise. I was happy to get away from it for a while.

I am of Italian descent and a home cook, and sodium sensitive. My solution has been to buy anchovies with less sodium in them. Wild Planet makes low sodium anchovies: https://wildplanetfoods.com/collections/anchovies I did the math and 3 ounces (which is a LOT of anchovies) only has 360 mg. of sodium while the same amount in the Cento brand would have something insane like 5,000 grams of sodium! Wild Planet also makes low sodium canned sardines. BTW, the idea of a vegan puttanesca with miso in it makes my Italian stomach turn. I just don't get it. Many people put down non-authentic ethnic foods but somehow Italian food has been adopted as American and therefore is seen as fair game for all kinds of bastardization. And I'm not a fan of that. Although I have been known to eat at Olive Garden and not hate it, LOL.

I've been trying to focus on other things but I'm seriously afraid to look at my retirement accounts. I have not lead an easy life financially and did without to have money for retirement, and now that my retirement is here, it's being threatened from all sides. This and Social Security. I am so livid I can't see straight about this. I don't know what to do. I need some serious financial advice, not the same old BS I get from my "financial guy". I can't keep seeing my balance go down at age 66. I am not a millionaire and after today I'm probably even that much poorer. I should have put my money in a freaking mattress! Someone has to put a stop to this madness. This guy is FUCK NUTS. Please, let's just stop with the charade already. He's going to ruin this country and all of our lives before he's done. And BS his base all the way. And the SUCKERS will buy it! They'll go down with the ship for his asshole and take all of us with them. Seriously, someone in government has to put a stop to this! Why is no one doing anything???

For some reason all this is making me think of "Sixteen Tons", another song I remember from childhood: You load 16 tons, what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt St. Peter, don't you call me 'cause I can't go I owe my soul to the company store

I feel both of your pain. I don't know what I would do right now if my husband hadn't seen the light about Trump. You have my sympathies. My husband doesn't like talking about politics especially these days because it makes him too upset. I get it, so I don't pressure him. But sometimes he does open up about something. Today we were talking about Trump's grievance politics and how it's no answer to anything but just a big axe to keep grinding forever that culminates in nothing but more hatred and racism. It felt good talking to him about that. We really haven't talked much about this subject. It felt cathartic and reassuring for me to know that he gets it. Sometimes I don't know how much he does and then he comes out with something like this. Most of the time I talk here about politics or to friends as 99% of them feel the way I do. And some call me when they need to rant about it because they know I'll listen and join in with them. BTW, even on my HS class Facebook page everyone's been getting more vocal lately with the ranting and posts about Trump. It's good to know that so many of the people I went to school with as a kid and teenager see the truth about this.

LOL, I get the joke!! I lived very close to the Major Deegan and my father would often ask that question when we drove on it. He even had a running fictitious off-color biography for him that he would keep us in stitches with as we rode. They also theorized that maybe someone owed him a favor and that's how he got a highway named after him. Of course, that road was really Interstate 87, otherwise known as the NYS Thruway. The part in NYC. If my father had known that he was in the Army Corps of Engineers maybe he would have felt differently about him. And being an architect with McKim, Mead and White would impress my architecture buff husband. But he's still been an unknown to pretty much anyone for as long as I can remember.

I actually think they've been trying to make Connor less quirky or at least that's where they might be trying to take his character. Noise music is a thing, it's not that out there. If he finds a niche in the music business somewhere he will bloom. I think he may just be a late bloomer. He's an introvert but whenever he does show parts of himself he doesn't seem so weird. He's definitely not as weird as Sheldon if you scratch the surface. I'm hoping that's what they're going to do with him over time. Or that too, but my money's on music since that seems to be his interest.

Back when I was in grade school New York City public schools had fantastic teachers and gave students a spectacular education that was hard to beat even back in the day. My husband dropped out of HS in his senior year and has a GED but he's better educated than a lot of college grads. are today. Same was true of my Dad, who also got a GED after dropping out because of WWII. But probably if your teachers taught it, this stuff didn't grab you. Not that I blame you. I'm still learning things I somehow missed. It only grabbed me because as a kid I wondered who this guy Thomas E. Dewey was that they named the Thruway after. And Herbert H. Lehman was who they named a city college after near where I lived. And because I had parents that were lifelong FDR fans and talked about him a lot.

Oh I think it's both but in his first term he was more careful not to let his lack of knowledge and ability show to the general public because he wanted to get reelected. He knows that he's likely not going to run again so he doesn't care about how it looks now. I remember how in the early days of his first term he even tried to act downright "presidential" and how much of a strain that looked like for him. Of course that didn't last long but now it's like the wheels have completely come off the bus....

I don't know whether that says more about your memory or the quality of your education, but I remember learning about many former NYS governors, including Averill Harriman, Thomas E. Dewey (as in the NYS Thruway), Herbert H. Lehman (as in Lehman College), and of course my parents never let me forget that Franklin D. Roosevelt was governor for a short time when they were little. It's probably just the way I am but even at a young age I was very aware of such things. I was 5 when JFK died but I remember the day he died very well and can recount it in detail with mental images still clear in my mind. I'm probably among the youngest people alive today that can remember it that well. My husband is 2 years older than me and doesn't even remember it as well as I do, so I'm sure that part of this is just that I was a little precocious for my age. It was a hard thing for anyone to forget that lived through it, though. You were a kid when Nelson Rockefeller died. There were rumors that he died of a heart attack while having sex, which was never substantiated but it became a subject for comedians to poke fun at as I recall. I always thought that was sad but I admit I laughed along with them. That off-color stuff probably didn't reach you because you were quite young at the time, and that was for the best, I think.

It wasn't all that mattered to my husband, otherwise he would have voted for Harris instead of sit out the election. And it's not all that matters to anyone who says it or even cries over it, but it sure seems to matter a lot to Republicans. They seem to be obsessed with it and want to claim it's all about that, or that she is black or whatever else fits their grievance narrative. I don't even think the only reason Harris lost was because she was a woman. I am aware that there were other reasons that people might not have found her a great candidate. But even if she had some shortcomings in the big picture they paled next to those of Donald Trump. For me even party ideology takes a back seat when choosing between them - he is that bad, bad for the country and the world in general. To me he was clearly the inferior choice next to her. Getting fussy about gender identities and the like was not the most important consideration, but a lot of people couldn't see beyond that. I'm sure a lot of them are seeing it now, though. And many may not ever be ready to admit it. I don't ask my husband about it but if things keep going like this I fully expect him to come to me one day admitting that he regretted not voting for Harris even though we live in a blue state and she would have won anyway. I'm married to him for almost 45 years and can predict him pretty well by now, lol.

Given some of the outright blunders he's already made since being reelected and has had to change course on, and the vacillation over tariffs and other policies, I'd say he's showing himself to be even more unqualified than in his first term if that's even possible.

Oh, you mean "likeable" like Trump is? Because I don't think he's very likable but YMMV. Compared to him I think Hilary is a veritable "Ms. Congeniality", LOL. And I also don't think Trump is very well qualified either. Why do those things only seem to matter when a woman is concerned? Trump can be as nasty as he wants and come from zero political experience but a woman has to be qualified to the letter and somehow seen as "nice" and not offensive in any way. It's an incredible double standard. Yup like I pointed out above. I was a kid then too.

I've known a lot of people over the years who've not gotten positions because of quotas, myself included many years ago. Unfortunately it made some of them bitter and susceptible to Trump's grievance politics. Most of these people were middle class or lower and couldn't afford the setback. Some didn't really recover that well or find positions as good, sadly. I definitely think there needs to be a better solution to the issue but it's a tough one to solve, unfortunately. I just don't think buying into Trump's and MAGA's grievance politics is any solution at all. It only perpetuates divisions and racism, it doesn't solve it. Digging one's heels in and saying "what about me?" is not a solution. Just my opinion.

Well, I think it's about time we had a female president given how many countries all over the world have had female leaders, some of them in countries that we perceive to have even more misogynistic cultures than ours! Even my husband feels that way and even though he didn't vote for Harris he was sorry if only because it would have been nice if a woman had finally won. I had a web page open a while back with the stats on which countries have had female leaders, and it's mind blowing how many countries are on that list all over the world! We are actually the exception! So I don't have a problem with wanting to encourage female candidates. And Hilary was in a class by herself and would have run anyway. No one had to "put her up" as a candidate and she certainly had the qualifications. It's my impression that Harris is not intending to run for president again but is considering a run for governor of California. So that may have been why he reacted that way, not because he doesn't support her or think she's qualified. I don't think it is, it's just that some have that opinion and some don't. These people were all from NY and CT, but I don't think that's the issue.

My husband was more of a "Rockefeller Republican" when he was a Republican, but he's grown more fiscally liberal in his old age. I found it interesting when he told me that it actually benefits us more in old age to be more economically liberal. I don't know if that's true but I'm not unhappy he's loosened up a little bit on this. I think Nelson (or "Rocky" as we used to call him) is more well known among people in New York State than elsewhere in the country and younger people there would definitely have heard of him either from their parents or in school. He was NY governor from 1959 to 1973. That's a long time! Oh wow, I sure wish you were closer to me! I have a huge Lionel transformer from the '50s or '60s that needs to be repaired. I have a lot of trains - some in their boxes, mostly O gauge but also some HO. My parents had a set when I was a kid and my uncle collected them too so I inherited them.

Interestingly if you would believe this, a lot of people want to eliminate the entrance exam to get into my old school, The Bronx HS of Science, on the basis that too many Asians get in! Also problematic is that fewer black students are getting in than was the case even 50 years ago when I went there, but that's also in part because less of them are taking the test. As of 2018 the racial makeup of the school was 66% Asian, 23% white, 6% Hispanic and 3% Black. 50 years ago when I went there it was probably about 75% white, 10% Black, and the rest split between Asian and Hispanic. I don't know the solution to this issue but I am not in favor of eliminating the entrance exam and I think at least some of the problem comes from how many of each race actually takes the test to get into the school. So that's one issue that needs to be addressed too.

I can't disagree with you there. It looks just as bad from a different angle to start off wanting a minority candidate. Democrats made this mistake pressuring Biden to nominate a black woman for his running mate in the 2020 election, which he did, which of course got Republicans all up in arms about it. I even winced at it. Didn't they realize how it would only give Republicans reasons to gripe about her being a "DEI" hire? I thought that was a mistake. Thank you. I was actually going to ask my doctor when I saw her the other day but we had so much else to talk about I forgot!

I've always liked Melanie and had no idea she was a Kiwi until this episode. Hearing her real accent was delightful! I first saw her on "Two and a Half Men" as Charlie's "stalker" next door, but they didn't mention that role here. I think her grandfather was probably better off not knowing what a scoundrel his father was, although it's sad that he searched for his parents his whole life with no success. This story touched me because my own mother married a man during WWII that unbeknownst to her was a bigamist. Her army chaplain found out he was already married and gave her an annulment. She was devastated and didn't get married again until she was 30 to my father, a really great guy. Debra's story actually touched me as well as I'm 1/4 Jewish on my Dad's side and I've always wondered if any of our relatives stayed in Poland/Russia. I know a lot of them left earlier than Debra's family in the 1880's and lived in the East End of London until the turn of the 20th century when they came to NYC. I keep finding evidence of more of them in the U.S. But I still don't know if any stayed behind and what might have happened to them. It would be chilling to find out my great grandparents had siblings or cousins that died in the Holocaust. If that was the case my father and I never heard about it.

I don't know if a lot of otherwise non-racist Republicans realize that arguments like this are used by the racists among them (i.e. Trump himself) to hide their racism behind the guise of "fairness" and "colorblindness". I mean, who doesn't want things to be fair and candidates to be qualified, right? But in reality they're using this argument to make non-racist white Republicans think that Democrats are the "unfair" ones for nominating "unqualified" black people "just because they're black", when meanwhile that's not even the case. What better way for them to make white people think they have a grievance over Democrats not being "fair" to them? This is one of the reasons my husband backed away from the Republican party. He felt duped and used by stuff like this. And once again this is another example of how everything Republicans try to pin on Democrats is really true of themselves. They try to act like Democrats are the "real" racists and favor non-whites meanwhile they are hiding their own racism toward non-whites in the process!

I think what Soapy and some other Republicans object to is thinking that Democrats nominate someone black just because they're black and their qualifications are secondary. But that's overwhelmingly not the case if you really look at the person's qualifications, and where Wes Moore is concerned that should be more than obvious. It's sad that we even have to think twice before nominating a black person. It should happen anyway. But for now it probably has to be a conscious choice to do so otherwise it wouldn't happen even when it should. And that fact doesn't automatically mean that they aren't more than qualified for the job. And besides, how many white people have been nominated and WON elections that weren't "the most qualified" candidate? Since when should that even matter to Republicans when Trump can get elected. If his "qualifications" mattered to those who voted for him, he never would have been elected!