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Irwin F Fletcher

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Posts posted by Irwin F Fletcher

  1. Great couple of meals over the weekend in New Orleans. Had dinner on Friday night at GW Fins. That meal was fantastic. Started with the wahoo ceviche and the lobster dumplings. Wife had the Parmesan crusted halibut and I went with the Scalibut (scallops and halibut).

    Spent part of the afternoon on Saturday listening to jazz at Bacchanal.

    Saturday evening we enjoyed dinner at R'evolution. Started with their version of char-grilled oysters and the blue crab beignets. Wife enjoyed the shrimp with blue corn grits and I went with the scallops and summer truffles.

    Sunday brunch at the Ruby Slipper.030b2d83e9bb1dc53915648364fea537.jpge67a58a8a5f11731991ed88c904b9720.jpg95e4c0d85d04a7e30808d183c7f4a4bc.jpgcf814c1adfb2dd500c8d402e1e437aad.jpg46e3e788a430cd4162968aef8dc387a9.jpg267c2cad3c68398e09a96bb82612c784.jpga5d81a66f55c29fdaafb44959e11c09d.jpg

    • Hook 'Em 5
  2. From the "No Shit" department, Trump is Team LIV as one of his courses will host the upstart Saudi-backed Tour:
    https://www.mediaite.com/trump/trump-sides-with-saudi-backed-liv-tour-over-very-disloyal-pga-in-fiery-truth-social-post/
    Former President Donald Trump took the side of the Saudi-backed LIV Golf tour over what he called a “very disloyal PGA” in a Monday morning post on TruthSocial.
    LIV is the controversial start-up golf tour backed by Saudi millions that have led many top pro golfers to leave the PGA tour, namely Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, and many others, who have received enormous and guaranteed payoffs for their participation. Saudi Arabia has long been criticized for their poor record on human rights, which has come to light recently in part due to the state-sponsored murder of Washington Post writer Jamal Khashoggi.
    In Trump’s purview, golfers that are remaining loyal to a “very disloyal PGA” are basically suckers because when there is an “inevitable MERGER” with LIV, they will get nothing. Trump wrote:
    All of those golfers that remain “loyal” to the very disloyal PGA, in all of its different forms, will pay a big price when the inevitable MERGER with LIV comes, and you get nothing but a big “thank you” from PGA officials who are making Millions of Dollars a year. If you don’t take the money now, you will get nothing after the merger takes place, and only say how smart the original signees were. Good luck to all, and congratulations to really talented Cam Smith on his incredible WIN!
    It’s conceivable that the PGA and LIV could one day merge, though there is no real indication that that is something that will happen in the foreseeable future or ever. Trump’s suggestion that the start-up tour would one day be on a level that makes it a potential merger target for the PGA is a very charitable portrayal and one that can only please the Saudi backers with whom Trump has bragged about having a terrific relationship.
    Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner reportedly received roughly $2 BILLION in money to start his own investment portfolio.
    Politico’s Andrew Desiderio reports that 9/11 families, on Monday, voiced their “extreme frustration and anger” to Trump in a letter — blasting his decision to host a LIV tournament at his Bedminster course laster this month.
    “It is incomprehensible to us, Mr. Trump, that a former president of the United States would cast our loved ones aside for personal financial gain,” the families wrote. “We hope you will reconsider your business relationship with the Saudi Golf League & will agree to meet with us.”
     
    A true "Kiss of Death" always comes with a Trump endorsement. I'm guessing the LIV Tour has about six months to a year left before it dies off now.
    • Hook 'Em 4
  3. Pulled the trigger on another Marathon. Picked up a GSAR Anthracite (black). Any recommendations for a local jeweler or watch shop in Houston that I can take into to get sized/remove links? It's got double screws seated in loctite.

    I could do it myself, but don't have the tools. I searched Google and came across the "little watch shop", open to recommendations.d9d1b6b6d6ea56728248b30bbee3911f.jpg

    • Hook 'Em 1
    • Fuck Around and Find Out 1
  4. [mention=205]fattyflattie[/mention]
    FYI, I'm going to use the word gay here because it's easier to type, but when I say gay I'm talking about the whole spectrum, Lesbians, Gays, Transgenders, etc. 
    As requested:
    1.  Florida Legislature votes on a bill that would make it so that teachers can't talk about their spouses (if their spouse is of the same sex) to their students, nor have pictures of those spouses on their desk, nor can they be a safe space for their gay students, nor can they try to create a space in their classroom that is safe for gay students, nor can they talk about being gay.  The Florida Leg and DeSantis claimed this was scare tactics and that it was just about formal instruction not being allowed to talk about gay people to elementary school children.  But now it has passed, and school districts are trying to adhere to the law and these are exactly what the school districts are saying are no longer ok.  And DeSantis' spokesperson called all people against this bill "groomers," claiming that all of us who rightly called this out for the bigoted nastiness it is as people who are trying to turn kids gay so we can molest them.  
    https://www.eqfl.org/statement-equality-florida-condemns-anti-lgbtq-remarks-desantis-spokesperson
    2.  Here's Boebert calling "the left" groomers because a pre-school in North Carolina used rainbox colored flash cards
    [/url] 3.  Boebert again, talking about the Equality Act, which would make it illegal to fire people because of their sexuality says, 
    “We all know that that’s just the Democrats using a play on words. There’s nothing about equality in that act. If anything, it’s supremacy of gays and lesbians and transvestites,”
    So not only is she against gays having equal rights, but won't even acknowledge that concept of transgenderism.  
    4.  Marjorie Taylor Greene - I'm gonna be honest, too many options to pick from.  Here's a syllabus from GLAAD:
    https://www.glaad.org/gap/marjorie-taylor-greene
    5.  Back to DeSantis — Vetoed all funding for LGBTQ programs from the $101 billion state budget, including $150,000 for mental health programming to support survivors of the Pulse Massacre and $750,000 to house homeless LGBTQ children, as well as funds for Orlando's LGBTQ Community Center. The veto came during LGBTQ Pride Month and just days before the fifth anniversary of the 2016 mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub, one of the worst in United States history which targeted Central Florida’s LGBTQ and LatinX Communities, claiming the lives of 49 people.
    6. Sen. Tommie Tuberville - Lamented Chick-fil-A’s decision to stop giving money to anti-LGBTQ charities: “Isn’t it horrible when liberal activists ruin something good?”
    7. VP Mike Pence - supports conversion therapy, believing that since we chose to be gay, we can be shocked/counseled out of being gay, I guess.  Even Trump realized that Mike hates the gays.  He told reporters that Pence wants to hang us all.
    8. More Pence - Stated that LGBTQ-inclusive hate crime legislation would “silence” groups that promote so-called conversion therapy: “Finally, pro-homosexual activist groups such as the Human Rights Campaign have stated their belief that an ad campaign by pro-family groups showing that many former homosexual people had found happiness in a heterosexual lifestyle, contributed to the tragic 1998 murder of homosexual college student Matthew Shepard. There is no evidence that his killers even knew about the ads, and Shepard’s killers told ABC’s 20/20 that they were motivated by money and drugs. However, the danger here is that people use a hate crimes bill to silence the freedom of religious leaders to speak out against homosexuality.”
    9. Lt. Gov Ken Paxton, Texas - An Austin school dared to talk about the fact gay people exist during pride month.  This aggression will not stand, man!
    10. Ken Paxton again - Also is looking for a test case so he can get sodomy laws enforced in Texas again, now that the Roe overturn decision has gotten rid of a right to privacy.  
    11.  Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas - In his opinion concurring with the majority, claimed that overturning Roe calls into question marriage equality and sodomy bans, signaling that he'd be in favor of overturning both of those if given the chance
    12.  Texas Governor Greg Abbott - Issued a recommendation to the Texas state Board of Social Work Examiners that they remove protections for sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability. Following that recommendation, and without an opportunity for public comment, the board voted to adopt the recommendation and consequently Texas social workers can now turn away LGBTQ clients and those with a disability. “There is always a real possibility that trans Texans specifically could be turned away or dissuaded from accessing the medical resources they need. At a time when many in our community require services to make it through an isolating pandemic, attempting to grant providers a license to discriminate is abhorrent,” said Emmett Schelling, Executive Director of the Transgender Education Network of Texas.
    I could add a lot more, but I'm going to stop here.  There is a never ending stream of people in power not only saying things but acting on those things who are actively out to make the lives of LGBTQIA+ people worse than it is today.  This is known.  I'm taking you at your word that you just hadn't noticed it before.  I'll fall on the sword here and say that I do not spend nearly as much time here advocating for gay rights as I used to, but I'm happy to start that up again.  
    But if you are going to continue to support these people, I want you to understand the absolute cruelty against people who are different that you are supporting.  Condemning those things in a message board means nothing if you continue to vote for them.  
    "What about paying for those outstanding loans? I see your point and I agree the GOP is actual scum, but I'm voting for them none the less" - Fatty-the-bleeding-heart-knob/riffle-slobberer, probably
    • Rage+1 1
  5. When she was in HS, my daughter's car got flagged by a drug dog in the school parking lot because she had a bottle of ibuprofen in the glove box.  They called her out of class over the PA system.  And they confiscated the bottle.  
    This happened to my daughter a few years ago. She had a packet of Advil from an emergency kit in her car. Drug dogs reacted to her car as they were working the parking lot.

    Proceeded to pull her out of class to open the car for a search. Ripped off the back of the front passenger seat b/c they thought she was smuggling hidden drugs.

    The wife and I tore into the principal (who we are good friends with) on the idiocy of tearing apart a car.
  6. Does the Supreme Court, as a creature of the society it serves and is part of, carrying many of that society's same flaws, sometimes miss that certain rights are inherent in all people, and then have to later correct itself?
    Yes.  See Plessy v. Ferguson leading to Brown v. Board of Education (the point that our own senior senator tried to make, but was too fucking inept to do, and too fucking dumb to realize he had it ass-backwards), taking a case that said that an entire racial group actually didn't have true equal rights, and correcting the fuck out of that idiocy.  Oh, and if you actually want to look at "longstanding history" (the apparent standard that Alito would have us apply), the overwhelming, almost completely unidirectional path of history, has been that society is slow to recognize and follow rights for "out" groups, but eventually does so.
    What we have never, ever seen -- from SCOTUS and frankly, in Western history (with notable exceptions, which are both relevant and analogous here -- I'll get to those) -- is a lurch in the opposite direction, voiding a right that has been recognized for a long-ass time (two generations).  We HAVE seen western societies lurch that direction before.  Fascist Italy.  Nazi Germany.  Various medieval governments and entities that afforded jews some protections, and then withdrew them and persecuted the fuck out of jews again when it was politically expedient.  In the class of "nations/societies that have had a right for an out/marginalized group, but then revoked that right," we are in super ultra mega shitty company.
    And underneath ALL of this is the actual right that got revoked.  The right to privacy as it relates to bodily autonomy.  Clarence Thomas said they are coming for the right to choose contraception, the right to engage in private, consensual sex with another adult regardless of gender and the nature of the act, and the right to obtain the benefits of state-sanctioned marriage without regard to the gender of the participant (fucking HYSTERICAL that he left out the 4th member of that group of cases, Loving, which acknowledged the right to his own interracial marriage....don't worry, Clarence, they'll come for that, too).  He's dead right, and I credit him for his honesty, even if it came about because he is a dumbass as opposed to being ethical and honorable.  You and your pals are too fucking stupid to realize what Dobbs actually does.  Dobbs is only facially about abortion.  It is really about the foundational issue that had to be decided before the matter of abortion could be reached: you do not have any constitutional right to control your own body.  Because we're a hung-up, retrograde society, we think that only relates to matters revolving around sex (contraception, buttfucking, gay marriage).  But it's so, so, so much more than that.
    Congratulations, conservatives.....you got what you wanted.  And all it does is give us a choice of future hellscapes.  Do you want the conservative one, where it's illegal to have any sort of sex except with your opposite gender spouse, in certain positions, with no contraceptives allowed?  Or do you want the insane, ultra-control "progressive" one, where you'll be longing for the days that all that was imposed were public mask mandates and vaccine passes?  Pick, but you no longer get to vote for "none of the above," because your body is no longer yours.  It belongs to whichever power faction happens to have control of the government at any given time.  Which obviates the whole fucking point of rights, which are supposed to be bedrock inviolable constants.
    Congratulations.  You did it.
    you-arrogant-ass-the-hunt-for-red-october.gif
     
    Fucking Hell! Thank you!

    "Shit fire and save the matches!"........next rounds on me at the ledge bar.
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