Home » Open thread 9/23/22

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Open thread 9/23/22 — 24 Comments

  1. Biden’s symptoms of dementia are getting more and more obvious, so that, sometime, very soon—perhaps even in a few days or a week or so– whoever is actually running the Presidency of Joe Biden won’t even be able to put him in front of a camera anymore.*

    No one apparently wants a President Harris, so what will they come up with?

    From now on just various “representatives” in front of the cameras, and not Biden himself?

    Or, perhaps no more in person appearances, and under cover of some sort of bullshit excuse all we will be seeing from now on is an electronic avatar, that we are all supposed to believe is actually Biden in the flesh?

    See https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2022/09/22/the-saddest-most-senescent-joe-biden-video-yet-n1631446

  2. Swanson Foods was based in Omaha. Gilbert Swanson was the son. The company was sold to Campbell’s Foods. It didn’t innovate.

    Gilbert tried to start a fast food place with Johnny Carson: Here’s Johny. One of the buildings still stands.

    I was involved with a legal dispute with the Swanson Foundation. Some “financial advisor” bilked the Foundation out of money. The AG took over the Foundation.

    I know one relative moved to Napa and started a winery early in the 70s or 80s. He’s the winner in this story.

    Omaha does have a Swanson Library. That’s it.

    Added. W. Clarke and Elizabeth Swanson founded Swanson Vineyards in 1985. Swanson Vineyards was sold to Vintage Wine Estates in 2015. The winery on Manley Lane can produce 42,500 gallons of wine a year, according to Napa County planning records.

  3. I did some research on the subject of WWII soldiers who developed lung cancer trying to sue, based on being given cigarettes as part of their C and K rations.

    Apparently, when the decision was being made on whether or not to include cigarettes in these ration packages, these cigarettes where presented as a benefit, as a morale booster.

    I know that in later decades the tobacco companies had research testifying to the harmful effects of cigarettes, but did these companies have this knowledge much earlier, before the start of WWII?

  4. My Mom was a heavy smoker. Smoked Pall Malls, unfiltered. Sometime later she switched to menthol filtered something. She died of a stroke at age 61.
    I remember the TV dinners. We thought they were great.

    Stock market down right now, over 500 points, under 29000. How low will it go? See that it is expected that gas prices will start going back up.

  5. My older brother had a Hitachi pocket radio with something like 6 or 12 transistors. It was perhaps a little more advanced and smaller than that Sony model and fascinating to me when I was a little tike.

    The stock market looks like a slow motion capitulation now. Although I suspect that the final capitulation at a market bottom is almost always a rapid drop before the turnaround. Those short sellers are aggressive and are probably responsible for creating bottoms.

  6. Lots of fun 1950’s stuff, my decade of grade school and Jr. High.

    As far as cigarettes in the military, even in 1967 when I was going through a Jungle Warfare course, eating C-Rations, we had four cigarettes neatly packaged, sealed in cellophane, with every meal and it was nice when we had a break and a sergeant would yell, “Fall Out”, “Light’em if you got em.”

    Overseas in the 1960 cigarettes were $2.00 per carton because there was no tax on them at all and they were appreciated when soldiers were doing their military stuff. I sat inside a ‘super secret’ free standing building inside an old Luftwaffe hanger in Germany intercepting ‘commie’ morse code on a manual typewriter working eight and at times twelve hour shifts.

    We had ashtrays built into our heavy typing tables and for me, pack of cigarettes on the left side and a cup of coffee on the right side with two big, hot, 80 pound, R-390A radio receivers in a rack next to me. Our workspace was a long narrow bay, there was always a cigarette haze in the air and the walls after more than a decade of round the clock year round use had a brown patina of nicotine. I did that for three years, I was not a heavy smoker but most of us did a fair amount of smoking with the cheap prices and it kind made us feel better because that’s what smoking does. I quit smoking in 1970 when I left the Army, that was 52 years ago and at times seems not so long ago.

  7. I was a PEZ fan as a child and loved using the dispensers so much that I’d often reload the candy so I could dispense it again. I now have great neices and nephews who also love PEZ, but only for the candy. After watching them discard the dispensers and eat the candy right out of the package, we started buying the refills in bulk. Saves money and keeps the dispensers out of the landfill. My contribution to the environment.

  8. Lots of people smoked. Not all died of lung cancer, although a friend of mine died of it at age 51 just five years ago. My grandfather smoked Camels without filters for probably seven decades and died of heart failure at 93. He quit smoking at about 88 when he began having trouble running to catch buses.

  9. The stock market is very concerning. Thankfully, there’s a weekend to may be cool down. I noted when I checked the markets today that crude is now at around $78 and falling, So I would expect gas to follow. That will help the Ds, but may be overshadowed by the deep recession and the stock market falling. Got into a conversation with a little old black lady (80yrs young she told me) while in the waiting room at the eye doctor this morning. She was not happy with her coffee prices at all, or all the shootings in the cities.

    My retirement income is unfortunately tied to the market. Though about 6 months ago my daughter, who does this for a living, helped me reallocate much of my TIAA into less risk accounts. She thought it not a good idea 4 years ago when I took out an guaranteed annuity with part of my total TIAA savings, but that now is looking much better to me.

  10. I don’t think the gas prices are going to make people much more likely to turn out to vote for Dems, considering how much it costs to buy groceries.

  11. Having grown up in the 50s, these are all familiar. And smoke? We all did. I started around age 22 and quit around age 32, when my youngest was born. Just took the pack out of my pocket, thew it in the trash, and never went back to it.

    I’ll have to agree with Kate about the cost of groceries being a strong influence on the November elections. Even with cheaper gas, groceries are still a killer.

  12. It’s not just groceries either. Most goods and services that households regularly rely on have increased in price over the past year or so, in some cases quite significantly. The estimated Consumer Price Index (CPI) for 2021 – 2022 has increased by 8.6%. Put simply, households are spending thousands of dollars more annually during the Biden era than in the Trump era. That’s not something that can be ignored are downplayed for normal voters.

  13. Brought back lots of memories. Culture plays such a huge place in our lives. Never cared much for TV dinners, fortunately Mom and Dad didn’t either.

    My paternal Grandfather was a heavy smoker, never gave it up and he too died at 93. His youngest son, never smoked and died of lung cancer at 74.

    physicsguy,

    Were I younger and had the assets, I’d be looking at ways to invest in commodities. The worse the recession, the less people buy, so company sales have to decline, which has to negatively affect the company’s stock valuation.

  14. Regarding groceries and other household items: my weekly household goods spending is about 175% of what it was 2 years ago, if I were still buying all the same things. My husband is an avid receipt saver, so I have those from 2020 to compare to today. Same stores, same items.

    What used to cost me around $125 is now close to $220. Because of that, I’ve changed how I shop and I now make WAY more of our own food, + we built several raised beds for vegetables and herbs in our suburban back yard.

    The bread I really like is a small loaf from a bakery based in the PNW (where I live) that is thinly sliced and I got mad the day it was over $5 (at Walmart) so I decided to make my own. I’m proud to say I now make a delicious whole wheat loaf that’s soft and perfect for sandwiches and toast, and I practiced and learned how to slice it thinly and straight. It costs me less than $0.75 per loaf to make.

    Now, I retired at the end of last year so I have more time to do this stuff (and happen to enjoy it), but these are very significant increases. You can’t NOT notice them.

  15. my grandfather died at 84, from a stroke, but complications from smoking, my younger uncle was 54 my older uncle was 73, he was the younger one by birth
    any fool can see that smoking is bad for you, I could have been more popular in college if I did smoke,

  16. In high school I realized I wasn’t cool and there was no way I was going to become cool.

    I embraced it. The cool kidz smoked. So I didn’t.

    Dodged that bullet.

  17. Gwynmir,
    I started making my own bread last summer! Dave’s bought the organic brand I had loved for years and then shut it down. I tried every multigrain out there and finally gave up and borrowed a bread machine from a friend. Found a label from my old brand online and started experimenting. Took about a dozen loaves but now I have AMAZING bread for a fraction of what I used to pay. Friends are clamoring for it and I’m happy to oblige. One friend is from Germany, the daughter of a bakery and cafe owner and she said it’s the only bread she’s ever had in America that tastes as good as German bread. That years birthday present was a Zojirushi.
    Maybe the Zombie Apocalypse won’t be so bad afterall…

  18. The rumor is that gas prices will go up after the election and the reserve will be empty at that point. Biden may be gone next year. If he’s not, judging by his “Defund the Police” turnaround, he might try to backtrack, though I doubt it. Whoever is telling him what to do, the conditioning has set in and will be hard to reprogram.

    There are two kinds of “cool kids.” There are the popular kids, and there are the loser alienated Existentialist No Future Goth kids. By the time I was in high school the successful popular kids probably weren’t smoking anymore, but the loser alienated Existentialist No Future kids who would be calling themselves punks or Goths a few years later were, so I smoked. Thank you, Bogart, Kerouac, Camus. Looking back it’s hard to say if either group were really that cool. Eventually, I did quit.

    Way back then, someone told a friend that she wished he had parents who smoked so that he wouldn’t smoke. I think it was like that with tattoos. If you had an uncle covered in Navy tattoos from the Big War you might be less likely to get a tattoo, and if your parents had to put out ashtrays for him and his unfiltered camels, you might not have picked up the smoking habit either. On the other hand, if your parents were health-obsessed, you might have been tempted to light up, just to flip them off.

  19. My brother played with Matchbox cars, and my parents smoked Camels. My dad always had his Zippo lighter in his pocket; I can still remember the smell, and the sound, when he used it.

    I read an astonishing statistic recently in an article about the nature of lung cancer in non-smokers. It said that only around 20 per cent of smokers get lung cancer! Not what we’ve been told.

  20. Molly, Dave’s is the brand I used to buy, but it was too expensive so I had changed to a local Franz bread, and now that is over $5, hence the effort to make my own.

    So great that you experimented and perfected your bread recipe! It’s not even a chore at all…I get a lot of pleasure out of making it (and eating) it, as your friends do yours.

    I used to have a Zojirushi (and even ground my own wheat) back when I was homeschooling my kids, but now just a KitchenAid mixer and my oven, plus the best bread pans in the world from King Arthur.

  21. Reference bread making; sort of related if you happen to knead your dough before baking.

    Years ago I had a tour of a ceramic tile manufacturing factory. Besides all of the machine made tiles (batching, mixing, forming, and firing), they showed us a work station where they made specialty hand made tiles. Workers made up the clay batch and then hand kneaded and pounded it to obtain the desired workability. Comment was made that that must have been a really undesirable job, but the come back was “No, workers liked that job because all of the pounding and kneading allowed them to release their stresses, etc.”

    So happy kneading! Nix the bread making machines??

  22. Geoffrey:

    Cool your speculation jets, it is inferred by Sub Brief that who and what breached the pipeline are known, but not yet revealed:

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RUNFTjbjI1E

    A US copter with a dipping sonor doesn’t tell you what they were listening to. The Roosian submarines have been very active in the Baltic for a long time (inconviemient).

    But, but, but NATO, and Sweden.

  23. Brain E:

    Gee wouldn’t it be nice if Vlad hadn’t invaded Ukraine (or maybe it is nice, eh)?

    What does Vlad have on his cheerleaders?

    Corruption is also what occurs when an invader has shot you and yours and you are left out for natural processes to work.

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