Is it time to watch the mud stick with TFG? Watch this space!

[Roussette]

www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4396017-Big-Bird-may-be-innocent-but-who-can-vouch-for-Elmo?page=40&reply=120171921

Previous thread!

This thread is now full, here is the link to the new thread www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4912378-trump-gets-gagged-mccarthy-gets-booted-whats-next-in-trumpworld? (added my MNHQ)

I am looking into it, and will try to start a thread somewhere obscure yet appropriate later today. I'm sick of Babyboomers being blamed on MN for absolutely everything, so I'm going to try to set some boundaries in the first post. I'll post a link to it on here when it's done.

In the meantime, keep a clean nose, watch the plain clothes...

Just to say threads don't get deleted from Chat after 30 days any longer

Guess the trick is not to appear in Active drawing in negative forces?

Here you go:
Born before 1959? Want to chat about your memories of the 1960s and 1970s? | Mumsnet
I tried to tag you, @AcrossthePond55 but because I had to go back and edit the tag, it didn't work as a tag. Ah well.

@TheSilveryPussycat

Thanks for starting that thread! I've done my little (but verbose) bit to get it started.

On the political front:

Matt Gaetz announced today that he's going to call for a vote to get McCarthy booted out as Speaker. And a 45 day CR has been signed, averting a shutdown.

Thank you!

I usually listen to Business Matters on the BBC World Service on weeknights, 1am to 2am. This charade over budgets and shutdowns has been played over before. And before that. And before that.

The potential consequences would be very unfair - many public employees would have had no choice but to work for no pay, although payment would turn up eventually, IIUC?

I went through many years of 'threats' of shutdown and IIRC three actual shutdowns, all of which lasted only a few days. We were eventually paid for missed days and one year we had the option to use paid leave whilst on 'furlough'. I used a couple of days and in the end not only were those leave hours restored to me, I was paid regular salary for those same days. So I was actually paid twice. And most of us learnt early that those who stayed home got paid just like the ones who worked 'free' during furlough. Although most people didn't really have a choice, if you were deemed 'essential services' you were required to show up, pay or no pay.

There was just something different about the furloughs I went through. They were because of an actual inability to reach a bi-partisan accord. Congress worked through them to reach a compromise, they didn't thumb their noses and go home. That's why they only lasted a few days. The shutdowns now are nothing but political gamesmanship and grandstanding on the backs of 1000s of hardworking federal employees, contractors, and members of the public who need govt services. Unlike 'in my day' the politicians don't give a shit about anyone or anything other than their own 'power' and to be able to point fingers (mostly falsely) at the other side and cry "It's their fault!!!".

I think that is the conclusion that many people have reached, @AcrossthePond55

It's not much better here in the UK. With an election coming up, the Tories are planning to punish unemployed people even more by reducing the pittance they already receive if they can't find (non-existent) work, and again demonising unemployed people as "shirkers." All to secure the votes of people who are lucky enough to have a job, by setting them against their fellow man (to coin a phrase).

But I don't think it will work. As far as I can tell, the whole country is sick of the lot of them.

I am going to bed soonish, so I'll just make one more post.
I know about "cootie catchers" - they are what we used to call Fortune Tellers, and each person would make an individual one with numbers on the first 2 layers of their choosing, and whatever fortunes they decided would be available as outcomes.
They are in fact a very well known origami form. I first learned to make one when I was 10. I found a discarded one, and nerdy me de-constructed it and then re-folded it. Still quite proud of myself for that
I daren't ask on the other thread for the definition of cootie. This is because I first heard the word in the lyric to Dynamo Hum Zappa is a genius, btw,

So chuffed at how our thread's going in History Club

@TheSilveryPussycat

'Cootie' is technically slang for lice, bedbugs, or other icky crawlies of the skin.

But another common usage for 'cootie' is sort of an imaginary 'germ' that you can 'catch' from other people that will make you an outcast. Kids will say that another kid 'has cooties' meaning they are 'weird' or 'socially undesirable'. Or a member of the opposite sex! As in 'All boys/girls have cooties'. So it's called a 'cootie catcher' because theoretically you could use the tips to 'catch cooties' off someone's skin. Whereupon you'd shake the catcher and stomp the cooties! We also used to give 'cootie shots' by making a fist, sticking your middle knuckle up and slugging someone hard on the upper arm with that knuckle. Hurt like hell, but made you immune to 'social' cooties.

God, the things kids think up!!

PS. Trump has cooties!!!

Oh naturally, only the most wonderful and stable cooties for the stable genius! His cooties have 'the biglyest words, too!' 🤮

Shows you the calibre of his legal team. Or they're expecting huge penalties and setting up grounds for an appeal. "But that judge didn't ask us if we wanted a jury!! Besides, that judge is a meanie. He hates us!"

In England we are too polite to refer to lice, nits, crabs, fleas, etc. Also, there is a huge head lice problem in the UK, and has been since my DC were small, 20-30 years ago. There are often MN threads about this problem. DD, aged 15, having been clear for ages, came home with lice caught in a mosh pit

The nearest insult I can think is "lousy" but it just means bad.

However, from Across the Pond the Other Way, we would probably agree that Trump has the lurgie. This means a) a mild infection of unknown origin, and (b) the equavalent of "cooties" in school playground use, usually only in primary schools ie up to age of 11. If someone has given you the lurgie, the only way to get rid of it is to give it to someone else, accompanied by a cry of "You've got the lurgie."

But mainly we call Trump an idiot and laugh at him. The laughs are tinged with horror that he might get in again...

So Zappa was, I conclude, alluding to crabs, ie pubic lice

Which is what I thought in the first place. But I couldn't work out why it didn't fit with the fact that on US tv shows, the word seemed to be used perfectly casually.

I'm editing this post. I've added this: He might not have meant crabs.
(Note to self: Must have early night tonight.)

TheSilveryPussycat
The nearest insult I can think is "lousy" but it just means bad.

It originally meant literally louse-ridden. Feeling lousy was that indeterminate malaise caused by being eaten up by the things; they make you unwell in the end. So "How do you feel?" "I feel lousy." would mean "I feel as if I have lice." The worrying thing is that so many people apparently knew how that felt, so that it became a way of saying you felt bad.

See also Josephine Tey's book The Franchise Affair, set just after the War, in which an elderly lady of the middle classes cheerfully discusses with her solicitor the best way to get rid of fleas from your person; his sister apparent advocates hitting them with the soap when they have floated off in the bath. I can't imagine that conversation happening fifty years later!

("The dreaded lurgie" turns up in the Goon Show at least once: Eccles gets it, I think.)

So it does! The dreaded lurgie! But don't get me talking about the Goon Show. Though perhaps it is quite relevant to a thread about Trump and American Politics...

The Fart has lousy lawyers if they failed to ask for a jury trial!

Truer words were never spoken! DH and I were astounded when we realized they could have. I thought it being a bench trial had something to do with the judge making that summary judgement, but apparently not!

Sorry, I was distracted by cooties.
They failed to ask for a jury trial!? At least it gives Trump an excuse not to pay them.
Oh, I forgot. He doesn't need an excuse. Idiot!

I read this on a live feed about the trial. Surely his defence lawyers can't be that inept? Can he not afford decent ones?!

The pic of him in court .... oh my, he looked pissed off!

@TheSilveryPussycat

"Sorry, I was distracted by cooties."

I don't know why, but that really made me laugh out loud. Great guffaws interspersed with "Cooties!". DH now thinks I have totally lost the plot.