IT'S TIME TO TALK BUBBLES With The Wine Yogi and Kevin Webber from Carboy Winery here in Colorado. Kevin is bringing in their new bubbly COsecco, which you can buy in many places, while The Wine Yogi has done another outstanding blog post on a controversial subject: boxed wine. Find it here. She's also leading her last classes of the year at The Wine Gallery in the Springs, and you can register for them here. They ALWAYS fill up so don't sleep on that.
THE GREAT AMERICAN BEER FESTIVAL IS NEXT WEEKEND And we're giving away tickets today! Find out more about the Festival here.
IT'S AN ASK ME ANYTHING SORT OF DAY Because there has been a lot of stuff on the blog that we haven't gotten to so today is the day to bring it up if you want.
JOE BIDEN SURVEYED STORM DAMAGE YESTERDAY In a whirlwind trip that stopped in several hard hit destinations. He was asked about it when he got back to the White House but apparently forgot how he spent the day. Watch this.
THE MAYOR'S OFFICE IS DECLARING A SMALL VICTORY About their All In Mile High program to house warehouse homeless people and get them off the streets. They are on track to get 2,000 people into some sort of shelter and the Mayor's office says only a small percentage of these folks are ending up back on the streets and that most people who have exited the shelter have gone on to more permanent housing. It HAS made a big difference in downtown Denver in terms of not seeing a bunch of tents around so I must give him credit for that. It remains to be seen how long the city can keep this up but on the metric of moving bodies inside the Mayor has delivered.
GEN X, I HAVE BAD NEWS FOR US If you've been pretending we aren't freshman old people you may want to skip this. Eminem is going to be a grandpa. And not in a scandalous "his teenage child got knocked up" way. Nope, his daughter Hailee is married and now pregnant and he's gonna be a grandpa. We are so old.
DOCKWORKERS HAVE PUSHED BACK THEIR STRIKE And a big part of me believes they realized that this could hurt that chances of Vice President Harris getting elected, but also that everyone in America would hate and despise them if they gummed up the works before Christmas and right after a massive storm that is going to require massive infrastructure repairs. They have gotten a promise of a much bigger pay raise if they push the strike to January 15th and they accepted. Now you can take back all that damn toilet paper you just bought at Costco.
THE FLU VACCINE MAY BE PRETTY WORTHLESS THIS YEAR And if you are older or have other health issues still get it, but it's only about 35% effective so far in South America where flu season is already underway. Read it here.
MELANIA HATES HER HUSBAND MAYBE Because just before election day she's released her memoir where she comes out pretty forcefully as pro choice. She doubled down by releasing this video:
I was actually impressed with what Donald Trump said about her writing about this contentious issue in her memoir:
Donald Trump said Thursday that he had talked to his wife about the book and told her to “go with your heart.”
“We spoke about it. And I said, you have to write what you believe. I’m not going to tell you what to do. You have to write what you believe,” he told Fox News, adding, “There are some people that are very, very far right on the issue, meaning without exceptions, and then there are other people that view it a little bit differently than that.”
Does this actually HELP Trump though? He's already disappointed the pro-life base by saying he would not sign a federal abortion ban, but could this swing voters for whom this is a big issue even though they would otherwise side with Republicans? And yes, those people are likely suburban women he struggles with. It remains to be seen.
I'M SO SAD GARTH BROOKS HAS BEEN ACCUSED OF RAPE By the longtime hairdresser of his wife Trisha Yearwood who became Garth's hairdresser 2019. She says that he raped her on a trip to a party where he only booked one hotel room even after she demanded separate accommodations. Brooks denies the accusations entirely and says this is a long shakedown and I hope he's right. He's always seemed like one of the good ones.
THESE DIDDY ACCUSATIONS ARE REALLY UNBELIEVABLE Because it seems that EVERY celebrity in the world was at his famous White Party events where now it is alleged that women were trafficked and videos were made of sexual encounters with celebrities to use as leverage against them. The stories are really horrifying, like this one about a woman who says Diddy "pimped" her out to people at multiple parties. Over 100 people are now planning to file suit. The dam has broken and the only thing that remains to be seen is which Hollywood celebrities get caught in the web. My guess is B-list celebs without enough juice to tamp down the stories. complete list of the accusations is here, and it's really, really bad. And all those stars knew SOMETHING was up and did nothing. An attorney representing the plaintiffs said a hotline he set up for victims got 12,000 phone calls in 24 hours. Surely some of those are just people hoping to cash in, but if a FRACTION of them are victims Sean Diddy Combs is the most prolific serial rapist in the world. And NO ONE STOPPED HIM.
JD VANCE'S "LOOK" AT THE CAMERA WAS A COINCIDENCE The Look Seen Round the World from the Vice presidential debate was simply JD Vance glancing at the timer at exactly the right moment. He talks about it here.
FIT YOUNG PEOPLE ARE HAVING HEART ATTACKS And no one really knows why, though the most obvious thing to look at would be Covid infections and vaccinations. We don't know yet how the virus affects our organs and hearts yet, and we sure don't know how the vaccine effects the heart long term, though we know it gave some young men myocarditis or pericarditis. It's still rare for young people to have heart attacks, but the increase has been statistically significant. Some of it probably has to do with obesity and bad habits, but fit people are having them too. Pay attention to this and make sure you know the signs of a heart attack for your gender, they are different!
THE SAHARA IS TURNING GREEN! After a summer of rain from a cyclone cycle the Sahara is greening up, which isn't the first time this has happened. See the pics here. The Earth is wild and it's simply ego that makes us think we can somehow control what Mother Nature does next.
THE IDF ANNOUNCES THE DEATH OF HAMAS'S #2 GUY And Hamas has been denying his death to maintain morale but the IDF shot that down by announcing they confirmed the death of scumbag Rawhi Mushtaha, the de facto prime minister of the Gaza Strip. From The Times of Israel:
The IDF described Mushtaha as Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s “right-hand man and one of his closest associates.” He was a long-time cellmate of Sinwar’s in Israeli prison, was freed with Sinwar in the 2011 Shalit deal, and was one of the five key architects of the October 7 Hamas invasion and slaughter in southern Israel.
According to the military and Shin Bet, Mushtaha was targeted in a strike in the Gaza Strip three months ago, along with Hamas officials Sameh al-Siraj, who held the security portfolio in Hamas’s political bureau, and Sami Odeh, the head of Hamas’s “general security mechanism.”
Good riddance to bad rubbish as they say.
GET YOUR CASA BONITA RESERVATIONS MONDAY Well TRY to get Casa Bonita reservations anyway. If you're a part of the Founder's Club you will get preferential treatment and there is a whole process to go through which you can find here.
POLITICO COVERS WALZ'S LIES WITH KID GLOVES Get ready to roll your eyes SO HARD when you read this claptrap from Politico.com where they are running cover for the many lies of Tim Walz. It's absurd.
ABOUT THOSE BLUE ZONES If you've not heard about the so-called "Blue Zones" that were made popular by a book of the same name that supposed to show that people who lived in areas where they ate a primarily vegetarian diet lived longer, healthier lives. Well it was all a lie.
THE DUMBEST THING ON MSNBC THIS WEEK
THERE WILL BE A LOTTERY FOR HAMILTON And the winners will get $10 tickets! Find out how to enter here.
COSTCO UPS IT'S DOOMSDAY PREP GAME And one thing I know as a dedicated Costco shopper is if things don't sell they don't stay at Costco very long. Now we know that gold bars and food prep kits are selling really, really well.
THIS IS WHAT I WAS TALKING ABOUT YESTERDAY WHEN IT COMES TO WORSHIPPING PEOPLE Texas is home to some of the biggest mega churches in the states and in the past few years many of them have had scandal plagued leadership. Read it here. But this is why you don't "worship" people, whether church leaders or politicians or teachers or anybody. We are all one bad choice from fallen grace.
WHY ISN'T HE THE NOMINEE? I'm not sure if this had anything to do with the ILA cancellation of the strike but it could have.