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Cruising Alaska
I spent my last post expressing my disappointment that Holland America Cruiseline’s standards seem to be slipping. Today is the last day of our “cruise”, although the last couple of days are here in Denali National Park, which is definitely in the interior of Alaska. The bulk of our cruise was along Alaska’s southeast coast.…
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What the hell Holland America?
We’re back cruising again! This cruise is fundamentally different than the dozen or so others that we’ve been on, as it’s the first one “sailing” north that we’ve been on, and by north I mean we’ll end up at Denali National Park in Alaska and not dealing with tropical heat. In fact, parts of Denali…
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Republican stunned bunny syndrome
I came across a picture of Kari Lake the other day. Lake ran for Governor of Arizona last year, lost and immediately claimed the election was rigged. The look on her face was priceless, but epitomized our modern Republican Party. I imagine Donald Trump looked the same way when someone told him he lost the…
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U.S. default – time to run to the hills?
In case you’ve missed it, it’s possible that on June 1 the United States won’t be able to pay its bills because we’ll have breached an arbitrary debt limit. This is hardly a new threat. So far, parties have been able to extend the debt limit because despite a lot of brinkmanship ultimately both parties…
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Biden’s fine for a second term
There’s a new alarming poll from the Washington Post: 58% of Democrats want someone other than Joe Biden to be their 2024 party’s nominee for president. I don’t. I want Joe Biden as the nominee because he’s best positioned to win the election and deliver results to the American people. I guess I can understand…
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Most Christians aren’t
The other day I came across this article about Montana legislator Kerri Seekins-Crowe. The state has been debating banning gender-affirming care for transgender minors. She’s a Republican, which is almost expected in Montana. What brought her into the news is she proposed the legislation, she has a trans youth and she said she would rather…
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I don’t like Disney, but not enough to see it suffer
The Florida legislature and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s war on Disney is something of a Rorschach test for Republicans, not to mention a scary and revealing look at how far Republicans will go to (yes) cancel opponents they don’t like. It doesn’t bode well for the future. If you are having trouble envisioning what authoritarianism…
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How to lose forty pounds without hardly trying
About a year ago I decided to lose weight again. I weighed nearly as much as I ever had. They say one of the sure signs of insanity is to do the same thing again and expect a different result. So likely if I went on another diet I would just end up putting it…
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Ignoring the law legally
It’s abundantly clear that Republicans are finding federalism inconvenient. In a federalist system, power is distributed between the federal and state governments. States can’t do certain things that the U.S. Constitution delegates to the federal government, and visa versa. “Inconvenient” means these states want federalism when it works for them only. What’s new is that…
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Gloves off
My sister and brother in law are finally retiring. My brother in law is a private plane enthusiast and was looking for an airpark to live at: basically a community of houses on a private airpark shared with neighbors like they used to have in Friendswood, Texas. The good news is they found such a…