It's a short but good article—

There are two reasons, I think, why court packing is no longer in vogue. The first is that the judiciary has acquitted itself, in the eyes of Democrats anyway, by swatting down Donald Trump’s voter fraud claims. That included the Supreme Court, which decided 7-2 not to hear a case that sought to throw out election results in four states, with Barrett joining the majority. The second reason is that the last thing Biden wants right now is to spend all his political capital waging intra-governmental warfare. A president’s first 100 days are about soaring visions, unaffordable spending packages, top-dollar payoffs to constituencies, appointments of loathsome rich guys to ambassadorships in European micro-states; what they’re not about is screwing around with the most trusted branch of the federal government.

Every time I see someone who identifies as a pansexual the first thing I notice is that they often have an unhealthy relationship with a skillet:

https://mobile.twitter.com/PinkNews/status/1361623103479058433

I guess I'm not the only one who noticed this:

https://twitter.com/Philip3no/status/1361661678413357056

Get ready for four years of more mental gymnastics:

https://mobile.twitter.com/jbarro/status/1361720082200547331

Dittos

Sometimes I wonder if South Park's Skank Hunt internet troll episode was inspired by Stephen King's online behavior.

https://twitter.com/StephenKing/status/1361828447551643651

Every time I see someone who identifies as a pansexual the first thing I notice is that they often have an unhealthy relationship with a skillet ~ Sixclaws at February 17, 2021 8:41 AM

Most of the people I see announcing sexuality beyond bi-, homo-, or hetero- seem to be people who are struggling in that department to begin with. Don't now if that's because their non-traditional sexual leanings left them isolated; or if they're announcing it out of a desperation to open up their dating pool.

==========

Dittos ~ Crid at February 17, 2021 9:17 AM

I have to steer clear of Twitter for a while. The gravetop dance-a-thon has reached vulgarity overload.

I mean, I haven't listened to the guy in over a decade and I was never what you'd call a regular listener. I just like to get a variety of viewpoints and would catch him on a rare occasion when I was late to work or driving when he was on - not often.

He did do a better job of entertaining than Air America, which left me frustrated that, with the best writers in Hollywood in its corner, the Left could do no better than that dumpster fire.

Both Al Franken and Janeane Garofalo were professional entertainers and they were stultifying as radio hosts. Listening to them made me appreciate that he was able to do that job day in and day out with consistently high ratings.

@Conan,

To paraphrase Donald Trump: I have never seen a skinny person drink diet Coke.

They don't make diplomas like these anymore:

https://twitter.com/OptimoPrincipi/status/1361980297919803392

Conan— Agree in all respects. He was never going to get regular attention here. But over decades, in an enormous number of samplings while punching-for-tunes, he was obviously a supremely talented performer. So when someone spitefully belittled him, I'd wonder if the spitehead had a realm of life where they worked with such skill, let alone earned such adoration. You might not like Zydeco, Klezmer or C&W, but you can tell when someone's working to make the customer satisfied. The politics were almost coming along for the ride: He made people happy, something conservatism has often needed.

> I have to steer clear of Twitter
> for a while. The gravetop dance-
> a-thon has reached vulgarity
> overload.

Hours later I'm breezing through the Twitter feed with my usual (alcoholic-metaphor) fervor, and thinking, "Man, I run in good circles!'… Because a lot of people I folo are saying "You shouldn't say meenthings about dead peeple," but nobody I want to hear from, no matter how leftoid has been notably rude.

Amy's blogging friend Cathy quoted a reader of her website: "Your comments are a sewer!" The same is true of Twitter, indisputably! It attracts corrupting squadrons (literally) from international actors who mean America harm.

But after the 9th birthday, each of us is responsible for what we choose to read, and not to read, always & evermore. Twitter tries to massage user choices, but an adult mind will make the effort to resist the slutty manipulation.

A well-trimmed and -hedged Twitter feed is, remains, in February 2021, a powerfully enriching garden.

If you like finance stuff, Levine of Bloomberg has a been a warm and GENEROUS ray of light in the last couple of weeks… I only learned about him as Gamestop was going down.

His columns are quick-moving, cheerful, savvy, funny, professionally informed & backgrounded (often by Levine himself), and loooonnngg. And good. They say there's no conversation like shop talk... But Levine's a like the guest at the cocktail party who enjoys explaining what's happening to the host's new neighbors while old office friends bicker over by the fireplace.

Today's piece is typically fuffilling.

Limbaugh as described in a 2004 piece which is actually about other things—

He is accused of being rude, mean, arrogant, hateful, racist, deliberately dishonest, and wild-eyed in manner. His audience is supposed to consist of automaton followers, who are so obedient to his every whim that they call themselves ditto-heads, so ignorant that they aren't even aware of their status as mindless rubber stamps.

The only problem with all this is that it's not true. Limbaugh's fabled ego is in large part a manufactured persona, one that cleverly counterpoints his confident and often satirical monologues about politics. Every time he returns to his standard self-congratulating refrains -- "I, in my infinite wisdom, have figured out more than the amateurs in the audience can do by themselves," "I, who can discover the truth, making zero mistakes, with half my brain tied behind my back" -- he is winking through the airwaves at his ditto-heads, reminding them that they are hearing personal opinions inflated with sarcasm and a profound sense of fun. He is sharing his most important message of all, not to take it all too seriously, because in that direction lies misery.

That's why one of the most enduring, and sometimes infuriating, aspects of Limbaugh's radio persona is his insistence on a Reagan-like optimism. Many of the ditto-heads, far from echoing his pronouncements, try to penetrate that optimism with anecdotal evidence from the heartland of the myriad ways that American liberty and culture are in decline. He is unfazed by such sermons and seeks to reassure them that all is not lost. (The term ditto-head by the way arose from the amount of time wasted in the early years of his show by callers who couldn't make their point without first telling him how grateful they were that a conservative was finally on the air after generations of the liberal media monopoly. He asked them to stop this practice and simply say "ditto" instead.)

Nor is he mean. He is courteous to callers, and even when it becomes obvious that the angry person at the other end of the phone has lied to the screener in order to vilify him, he allows them to make their principal point, and he attempts to respond with reason or humor rather than hostility. He may hit the kill switch after an exchange or two, but usually he does so only after a caller has begun repeating himself -- the equivalent, on radio, of the dreaded 'dead air.'

Yes, he uses inflammatory terms and nicknames -- feminazis, the French-looking senator Kerry, etc -- but...

(That third paragraph is why ORD & Raddy pissed me off so much yesterday.)

Never had more than a single glass of wine in New Orleans… Well, maybe a Hurricane at O'Brien's once, back in the day… That's something you have to do while you're young enough to survive all the sugar.

But this place makes you woozy just by looking at it.

I had a hurricane at O'Brien's on a trip to NOLA years ago. Hurricanes came up in conversation with the bartender at Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop. I told her I wasn't a fan of the city's signature drink because it was too sweet. So, she made me a much better hurricane - more fruit juice and less raw sugar. Never went to the Carousel Bar, however.