Friday Reads

 Obit:  Singer/musician Alan Osmond, the oldest of the singing Osmond Family, died April 20.  He had battled multiple sclerosis for some 40 years.

Snip:

Alan Osmond was the oldest member of The Osmonds, a world-famous family of musicians from Utah. He lived with Multiple Sclerosis for four decades, which forced him to retire from performing.

Alan Osmond is survived by his wife, Suzanne, eight children, 30 grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren. He is also survived by his sister Marie and his brothers, Virl, Tom, Merrill, Jay, Donny, and Jimmy.

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The  animals got their revenge.

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Wednesday Night on the Obit Page

 Musician Dave Mason, 79, a founding member of the UK group Traffic, died Sunday.  He had been in ill health for some time.

Snip:

Mason began his career with Traffic, giving the psychedelic band their biggest British hit with “Hole in My Shoe.” He left the band shortly after the single climbed to Number Two in 1967, an early indication of the wanderlust that became his signature. Over the course of his career, Mason played on sessions by the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, and George Harrison, playing alongside Eric Clapton on a tour with Delaney & Bonnie and Friends, and even spending time in Fleetwood Mac in the early 1990s. He’d later joke that “I’m kind of the Forrest Gump of rock,” a declaration he made to USA Today while promoting his 2024 memoir, Only You Know and I Know.  

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Democratic congressman David Scott, 80, has died.    He is the fifth member of the House, four Democrats and one Republican, to have died this year.

Snip:

“In more than two decades in Congress, Congressman David Scott served the people of Georgia’s 13th District with unwavering dedication and honor,” Clark said in a statement Wednesday. “He leaves behind a legacy woven into the very fabric of our community, our state, and our nation.”

Scott spent 20 years as a Georgia state senator before his election to the House in 2002, rising to a senior post on the chamber’s Financial Services committee along with his role on agriculture.

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French actress Nathalie Baye, 77, has died.  She was known for her versatility in the parts she played over the  decades.

Snip:

It was not just the quantity of her roles but the quality of her performances that earned her accolades. Baye won four César awards, the French equivalent of an Oscar, two of them for best actress. Three of them, for Every Man for Himself (1980), Strange Affair (1981) and La Balance (1982), were won in successive years.

Her big break came when Truffaut cast her first in his 1973 comedy La Nuit Américaine (Day for Night), then five years later as the lead role opposite himself in the historical drama La Chambre Verte (The Green Room, 1978) based on Henry James’s short story The Altar of the Dead, first published in his collection Terminations in 1895.

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Some Reads for the 21st

 It is clear the Trump administration is going after their political enemies.

This is totally bizarre.

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Virginia says "fuck you" to Donald Trump.

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Demented Don goes off on yet another tirade.

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A Few Reads

 Some veteran journalists are calling on more media people taking the Orange Idiot to task.

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The antiabortion nutcases finally let the cat out of the bag and want to jail women who have abortions in some insane attempt to punish women for having sex,

That is all this bullshit ever was.  It is an attempt to return to the double standard and to shore up patriarchy and its institutions like marriage and the nuclear family.

It is ultimately a losing cause.

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A Few Sunday Reads

It is no secret whatsoever why Trump supporters continue to support him:  They are just like him--selfish, greedy, bigoted, authoritarian, stupid pieces of shit.  It ain't rocket science.  Beginning with the Reagan era, such undesirable traits in a human being were suddenly turned into fashionable, virtuous traits and labeled "conservative."  The country has been on a downhill course ever since. 

There is no excuse for extremist dipshits like Nick Fuentes, Joel Webbon, and Doug Wilson to have any kind of forum.  Their viewpoints are identical to the Ku Klux Klan, and they should be marginalized as a result.  The danger is we have the internet, which puts so many of these crackpots into contact with each other, and the extremism becomes amplified.

Trump makes it even more acceptable to have utterly vile, sociopathic beliefs.

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Some Saturday Reads

 The day congressional Republicans can do an honest day's work for an honest day's pay is the day they have any business pushing "work" requirements for people eligible for SNAP benefits.

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The race of the year so far is this running of the Oaklawn Handicap:

A Few Friday Reads

 It was so gratifying to read about the Ken Martin family of Oregon, where their car and their remains were finally recovered and identified after 67 years.  Some theories about foul play were common over the decades, but it appears it was just a tragic accident after all.

They disappeared during the Christmas holidays in 1958, with two of the daughters' bodies having been recovered a few months later.  However, the parents, Ken and Barbara Martin, and their daughter, Barbie, were not found until recently.  

Snip:

Investigators found the remains in the Columbia River within the wreckage of the family’s car. The Hood River County Sheriff’s Office said it has concluded its investigation and found no evidence of a crime.

The Martin family vanished in December 1958 while reportedly traveling to the Columbia River Gorge to gather Christmas wreath greenery. Months later, searchers discovered the bodies of two daughters, Virginia, 13, and Susan, 11, downstream. Despite extensive searches at the time, authorities never located Kenneth, Barbara or their oldest daughter, Barbie, who was 14.

The case saw renewed attention in November 2024 when diver Archer Mayo claimed to have discovered the old station wagon in a part of the river known as “the pit.” The vehicle was submerged in 50 feet of water. It was upside down and buried, nose first, under sediment and rock.

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Trump kissed Charlie Kirk's grieving widow, Erika, at a rally in Arizona today.

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