March 28, 2024

You may be wondering how the University of Utah's basketball team was even in Coeur d'Alene

The NCAA loves to hold March Madness subregionals in Spokane, WA. They've done it before and they've always received a lot of support from this city.

So...how better to show your love than to put both a men's subregional (eight teams) and a women's subregional (four) into Spokane on the same weekend?

Apparently the people who scheduled this disaster have never actually been to Spokane, because there aren't enough hotel rooms in the Spokane Metro Area to handle eleven college basketball teams and all their fans. (It was a good thing for us that Gonzaga's women's team played at home. They would have been stuffing fans down at the Coeur d'Alene Casino in Worley, the Edgewater Resort in Sandpoint, and Silver Mountain Resort in Kellogg if we'd have had to deal with twelve teams.) The NCAA granted Spokane an exception to policy that allowed them to house teams outside Spokane...and two teams, including the University of Utah's women's team, were housed at the Coeur d'Alene Resort. And you know the aftermath...once again, Coeur d'Alene is on the front page of every newspaper in the country for all the wrong reasons.

March 24, 2024

Is Trump's monetary revelation a delaying tactic?

I had a concerning thought: A few days ago Trump’s lawyers told the court that there was no way they could come up with the $470 million needed to file an appeal bond because no bank will save our asses after our client was convicted of defrauding banks..,so would ya accept twenty bucks and a case of Goya Beans for now and we’ll get ya some more money when our GiveSendGo begging campaign hits its goal? Then almost immediately the orange man went on his social media page and bragged about being in possession of more than enough money to pay the bond.

Is it possible, however unlikely, that Trump threw this out because he thought the court would stop the property seizures long enough to find out whether he really has that much cash on hand?

March 23, 2024

Would this be legal?

We know that Trump is going to lose A LOT of property in the next few days.

Would it be legal to, instead of trying to sell the property - which may not be possible and definitely wouldn't get you enough money to pay Trump's fines - declare it Property of the State of New York, hire a management company to run each one, and use the profits to reduce Trump's amount owed?

March 23, 2024

Idaho library board cancels Juneteenth

https://cdapress.com/news/2024/mar/23/CLN-drops-Juneteenth-as-recognized-holiday/

(Standard disclosure: this is from the newspaper I work for, and I have known the reporter who wrote this for...oh, probably ten years. She's awesome.)



Just so you know, Tom Hanley and Tim Plass were foisted upon us all by Brent Regan's Kootenai County Republican Central Committee. They ran for office on the platform that the libraries up here are just FULL of porn and they're gonna get all of it out of there. So far they've been entirely successful in eradicating the porn from the library, but since there wasn't any in the first place they didn't have far to travel to reach that goal.

March 12, 2024

Donald Trump restyles himself as a sleazy used car dealer

https://newrepublic.com/post/179761/trump-nickname-himself-classic-fascist-projection

In one of the "Truth" Social posts he transmitted calling for a debate between himself and President Biden, he said it would be between "Crooked Joe and Honest Don."

Come on. Next thing you know he'll be asking for "99 dollars down and 99 dollars a month for 99 months" to help him bail himself out of his legal troubles.

March 11, 2024

Vacation advice requested

This year I plan to take my bicycle on vacation - I already ordered a flight case for it.

I want to ride it in nice scenery and attend at least one MLB game. Maybe also go to an NASCAR race. And I do NOT want to go to a red state.

So…my thoughts are:

Drive to Seattle, take in a game at T-Mobile then fly to Maui
Drive to Seattle, take in a game at T-Mobile then drive to Portland
Fly to San Francisco, but that’s a very low choice because I went there last year. They have NASCAR but I’ve already done Sonoma twice and I’d like to do an oval.
Fly to Boston and do the race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway - I’ve seen Fenway from the outside but haven’t attended a game there. Maybe stay at the hotel in Devens, which would be sorta like old home week - when that was an Army base I trained out there twice.
Fly to New York on a week there are games at both parks; I’ve been to Citi Field three times but never Yankee Stadium. I’d want to rent a car to get out to Pocono Raceway.
Fly to Chicago. If I leave home on July 5 - you know there’s no fucking way someone who works at a newspaper will get off July 4 - I can do the Chicago Street Race. The Cubs play at home on the 6th and the White Sox play a home stand the next week, so that works.

March 7, 2024

Idaho GOP shoots itself in foot: 2024 GOP caucus turnout lower than 2012 GOP caucus

(This is an Idaho Capital Sun piece - the Capital Sun is sort of a media watchdog on the state government - that we picked up.)

https://cdapress.com/news/2024/mar/06/about-93-of-idahos-registered-republicans-didnt-vote-in-gop-presidential-caucus/

The Spokane Spokesman-Review reports that 44,672 Republicans participated in the 2012 caucus. (Two things are interesting here: in 2012 we had a lot fewer Republicans in the state than we do now, and Mitt Romney - the Republican candidate that year - was about as much fun as a balloon with a hole in it.) The Idaho Secretary of State reports 118,958 Republicans participated in the 2020 GOP presidential primary, when Trump was running for reelection.

Dr. David Adler, who is a reliable political analyst, believes the problem is that since Trump's ascension to the general election is a foregone conclusion there wasn't a huge amount of interest in going to the caucuses.

I have a different theory.

Problem 1 is how the GOP ran its caucus. Only in-person same-day voting was allowed, and only among people who were registered with the party on or before December 31, 2023. If you were a rabid conservative who decided in February you'd change your registration from Unaffiliated to Republican so you could vote to support Trump, you couldn't vote in this caucus. In-person voting excludes two massive sources of GOP support in Idaho: military members stationed outside the State of Idaho, and religious missionaries. You also couldn't vote if you were unable to make it to the polls for any other reason. (By comparison, the Idaho Democratic Caucus, which happens in May, will accept votes from absentee voters, unaffiliated voters and pissed-off Republicans.)

Problem 2 is that no one actually likes caucuses. Even Republicans who gleefully caucused, when asked, admitted they'd rather have had a primary.

The biggest problem is who they're running. Idaho is the second-most-Mormon place on the face of the earth. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints didn't like Trump when he was just bragging about being able to grab women's private parts, they especially didn't like it when Trump started stacking indictments like a good Idahoan stacks cordwood, and they weren't real pleased about being told their only real option in this election was to vote to support that hideous man. So...they stayed home and watched college basketball on TV instead. I live in the most conservative county in America and the massive outpouring of support for Trump - like, long parades of pickup trucks flying Trump flags - has ended, and did quite a while ago. The guy who used to sell Trump flags out of a van down by the Candlelight Christian Fellowship megachurch on US 95 is now selling Jesus and pro-Second Amendment flags. They still hate Biden; the number of "Let's Go Brandon #FJB" and "Liberalism is a Mental Disease" bumper stickers you see here is astounding. However, just because they don't like Democrats doesn't mean they like Trump.

I know Trump is going to win Idaho in November if he isn't washing dishes in a prison kitchen by then. But I suspect the turnout is going to be incredibly low, and that's a problem for the GOP: if you don't go to the polls because you can't stand the thought of casting a vote for Donald Trump, you won't be voting in downticket races.

March 3, 2024

Caitlyn Clark breaks Pete Maravich's 54-year-old scoring record

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaaw/bigten/2024/03/03/iowa-vs-ohio-state-score-live-updates-highlights-caitlin-clark/72811124007/

The late “Pistol” Pete Maravich, who got that nickname because his father threatened to shoot him with a .45-caliber pistol if he drank or got into trouble in high school or college, was an NBA legend. During his time at Louisiana State University from 1967 to 1970, he managed to shovel in 3667 points in his three years on the varsity team. The “but-but-but” crowd correctly point out this number would be a hell of a lot higher in today’s game: the 741 points he scored on the freshman team aren’t in this total, there was no shot clock when he played so the teams he played against would run a lot of game-delaying plays to slow him down and Maravich was a long-range shooter who made a lot of shots from three-point range before there was a three-point line. Those are mere quibbles; the fact of the matter is Maravich scored so many points his record, in today’s game where they have all these things, stood for 54 years.

On March 3, 2024, Iowa Hawkeye Caitlyn Clark walked onto the court needing 18 points to put Pistol Pete’s record to bed. In the first half she made 19. She ended the game with 35 points - one shy of twice as many as she needed. Like Maravich, she’s a long-range shooter - her signature shot is a “logo 3” which is a shot made from inside the tip-off circle at half court. Unlike baseball postseason points are added to your scoring total in NCAA basketball, so since the Hawkeyes still have the Big 10 tournament and March Madness to look forward to…she isn’t done. After the NCAA tournament she is; she’s going to the WNBA next season.

It took 54 years and a bunch of rule changes designed to increase scoring for anyone to break Maravich’s record. Hers may stand for all time.

February 26, 2024

Is "little bastard" an appropriate name for a cat?

At the North Idaho Home for Wayward Cats, the residents name themselves after their personalities have revealed themselves to me.

The first resident is a Siamese who proved himself to be spoiled rotten. His name is Rotten. His name brings joy to all those who hear it.

The second resident is a Tuxedo who sticks to me like glue. Her name is Daddy's Girl.

Cat Three is a very large mostly-white female - looks like about 18 pounds of cat. She isn't a Maine Coon because the markings are all wrong - this cat has a blob of black on her head that'd qualify her to be on the old "cats that look like Hitler" website, tabby ears, tabby tail, pure white everything else. One day Rotten was in the bathroom with me and Cat Three decided to sprawl herself out in the middle of the doorway...and every time Rotten tried to leave the room she took one of those massive paws and whacked him right on the head so he couldn't get out. I finally had to pick Rotten up and lift him over this little menace to get him out of the room. After about the tenth whack I screamed out, "you little bastard, let him out!"

February 26, 2024

Upcoming Trump Postage Stamps revealed

CENTRALIA, PENNSYLVANIA (Spurious News Network) -- Presidents receive many honors in their lives and even after they pass on. One honor is to be depicted on a postage stamp after their deaths.

Even Donald Trump will be so honored.

"Centralia is in Pennsylvania coal country," said Julia Whitfield, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing artist who created a sheet of 25 stamps to honor the former president. "The coal seam it sits on has been on fire since 1962. I couldn't think of a more appropriate place to unveil stamps honoring a president whose administration was the biggest dumpster fire in history."

Interestingly, none of the stamps actually depict Mr. Trump. "I thought about making a stamp with him on it," said Ms. Whitfield. "The orange ink we'd have to print it with is the problem. Orange intaglio ink is hard to control, so we'd wind up with more of a blob than a picture of him. I decided to instead depict things that represent him."

Most of the stamps display pictures of prisons. "I've got the Colorado Supermax, the Georgia State Prison, Sing Sing in New York, the Fulton County Lockup, Leavenworth...just every prison he could have gone to. People who love prison dramas will love these."

There's also a picture of a Big Mac, one that's a pattern of dollar signs, and a still from a movie about them blowing up one of his Atlantic City casinos. "I even put a steak on one of them. I had to stay until two in the morning one night to complete that one and it's the fifteenth steak I tried to paint, because the other people in the office ate the first fourteen. I'm still pretty happy with it."

The stamps have a face value of one cent. When we told her that one-cent stamps are useless, she let out a loud laugh. "That's okay. So was he."