Shtuff.

What kind of man reads the blue heron blast? Men like this one.  Trying to hire KJ as my jackalantern this year. But he might have to lose the bumper sticker.












Looks like Mike Bradford finally has the bar-b-que open back at Spavinah, OK. Best to him, hope he kicks ass. Has worked very hard to actualize his dream. I predict it will be a huge success. That is Mickey Mantle country. Mike hits a home run.

Paul M. sent this timely cartoon along for you political types.

Interesting article in the WSJ by John Steele Gordon yesterday, Things that make you go hmmm.

Unfortunately it is behind a paywall but if you can get access it is an interesting read.

Lena sent a little story over about chutzpah:

A little old lady sold pretzels on a street corner for a dollar each.
Every day a young man would leave his office building at lunch time and as he passed the pretzel stand he would leave her a dollar, but never take a pretzel. 
This offering went on for more than 3 years.
The two of them never spoke.
One day as the young man passed the old lady's stand and left his dollar as usual, the pretzel lady spoke to him for the first time in over 3 years.
Without blinking an eye she said: "They're a dollar and a quarter now.

Not a lot more to report. I was fairly happy with my interview, think Mark Sublette did an excellent job. In retrospect there was a lot of stuff I didn't get a chance to cover. Maybe I can get a part 2 some day?

Spent a great day celebrating a birthday with friends in Los Angeles. Had a disappointing lunch at Canters. Their thirty dollar whitefish, sable and lox plate has shrunk in half. Tried to make up for it in tasteless lettuce and too many capers. How many could a person eat? The rye bread was heavy and compressed like it never got baked. Tasteless. I yelled at the wife for not getting corn rye, felt like a heal when she said it was corn rye. Who knew?

I will miss John McCain a lot. Long time readers know how often I have defended he, Graham and Flake over the years. We need more independent thinkers and we need more people willing to go against their own crowd occasionally. I don't often agree with Joe Manchin, especially environmentally but I think that he will be a much better leader in West Virginia than the GOP pick. Life is a succession of compromises.

With the Mueller probe starting to gear up and  the midterms approaching, Libs are starting to get a little giddy. Starting to pile on. Interesting article at the New Yorker, Talk of the Town this week. How bad is Trump on the Presidential scale? Would you believe he makes Nixon look like Mother Theresa? Read Jill Lepore's Measuring presidents misdeeds.

William Leuchtenburg, ninety-five, supervised the work from T.R. to L.B.J. “However much Richard Nixon deserved impeachment and the end of his Presidency,” he says, “what he did does not match the Trump Presidency in its malfeasance, and in the depth of his failure as President.”