Displaying 31 To 60 Of 960 Comments I may not be profound like so many of you but I have a pretty practical head on my shoulders. I still remember going out to my first customers house to deliver a table and the Ikea one was wobbly when you walked by it. Two years old and look fifty. Mine are new and look 150! But that’s intended 🙂 » Posted By jdmn17 On February 22, 2011 @ 4:14 pm Not sure exactly how they intend to do it but WI legislature supposedly is passing a bill requiring lawmakers to pick up paychecks in person, no more direct deposit for you! Wonder if they’ll try to arrest them if they come for their checks and refuse to enter the legislative chamber? It’s getting interesting. Let’s hear it for WI, OH, rumblings about IN and MI too? » Posted By jdmn17 On February 22, 2011 @ 4:08 pm BDM Have you read ADONAI’s KY post lately? I am a Belcher from KY/VA (mom’s side). Based on what my mom told me, you and I might be fairly closely related. How’s that for you? » Posted By jdmn17 On February 22, 2011 @ 4:02 pm I still have my barn coat too! Are they out of style now? Oh shit, no wonder everyone looks at me so strange. » Posted By jdmn17 On February 22, 2011 @ 3:59 pm I stopped buying from them when they stopped selling stuff made in USA. I went through their catalog before Christmas and was stunned that very little in there was US made. I know my boots came from Dexter or Bass. Both were made in Maine. Shame really. Now I get mine from Red Wing boots. Still made in Red Wing, for now. » Posted By jdmn17 On February 22, 2011 @ 3:58 pm And around MN. Yard and house sales are booming. I have a Cuisinart I got at an estate sale, in the box and unused for ten bucks two years ago. You don’t HAVE to shop at WM etc if you can stand not having the newest design and coming with some mileage on it – the blade on mine was so sharp still I cut myself three times on it. » Posted By jdmn17 On February 22, 2011 @ 3:52 pm BDM The co-op near me is the only grocery store my son will go to with me. The big stores he sits in the car (he does eat the food of course). You pay more but I love the flavor of the foods from there. Shoes? I buy for quality and don’t care about cost. They USMC broke my feet years ago and I do need the best. And I am still wearing a pair of boots I bought at LL Bean (Maine made) in 1972. Many soles and one upper body repair, otherwise tried and true. » Posted By jdmn17 On February 22, 2011 @ 3:48 pm Snoskier There are so many things to say. I make tables from reclaimed lumber, my price points are more than the cheap and even “Chic” stores and less than the high end furniture stores. When you talk about cheap goods I can attest that about one in six tables I build are replacing the junk pieces they bought, took home and “snapped” together. The things look good for a year then gradually become rickety and fail. So a customer pays $299 for the first table then two years later come to me and spend $800. So they seem to accept the money is throw away on the first table. Or something. Maybe they just don’t know. For food, your business, I tend to buy for quality not price. For one thing I’m vegetarian and make much of my food from scratch. I have found out the hard way that when you have a recipe and it calls for something like butter, you can use cheap oleo but it does make a difference in outcome. Same with fresh herbs versus dried. The list goes on but in general I tend to buy things for quality, esp US made goods, rather than go cheap or go for a “logo”. The latter you pay more for and still get the cheap manufacture. IMHO of course. » Posted By jdmn17 On February 22, 2011 @ 3:45 pm Cher Far too many people still vote the way their minister tells them to. Wedge issues and their exploitation are going to be the downfall of this country » Posted By jdmn17 On February 22, 2011 @ 3:22 pm If Katie Couric could take what should have been a fluff interview and destroy her with innocent marshmallows think of what some of the lions of journalism might have done? I’m thinking I would like to have seen, lets see, Gore Vidal, hell even William Buckley, and Ed Bradley, I might have enjoyed the last one the most given her hatred of all things non-white » Posted By jdmn17 On February 21, 2011 @ 5:05 pm The flies in in a dark corner of your window sill you think died over the winter and suddenly come back to life the first warm sunny day » Posted By jdmn17 On February 20, 2011 @ 6:42 pm Invite For Collaboration Part 2: I think my contribution is going to be along the lines of a perspective from the average Joe; active but not a super user, tons of fans, someone who someone goes looking for. I was there from Oct 2008 until Black Monday and I saw and felt the changes more subtlety than the high fan posters, many of whom argued with mods or sent emails to the site. That was never my style. I simmered like a good stew and when several factors had me at the abyss it took very little to send me over the edge and find this place – with great help from some dedicated posters who left clear directions until they were banned and others who left more cryptic trails to follow. I want to talk about how things changed from my limited view, a guy who hung on every story running up to 2008 to the gradual deterioration toward a conservative, extremely so in the lead up to the 2010 election and the seemingly total abandonment of what I thought was a progressive purpose until the announcement I don’t want to make it a bitch session, rather I want to find a way to ignore my emotions and analyze it from my head instead of my gut. » Posted By jdmn17 On February 20, 2011 @ 3:09 pm Wisconsin, what does it really mean? BDM Think we are witnessing the start of the uncloaked move to plutocracy and the response of the people to say NFW? » Posted By jdmn17 On February 22, 2011 @ 1:40 pm Wow, censorship in America. Fox News can spread anarchy and lies to their population but when free men and women attempt to access a website they get cut off. Is that the rumble of tanks I hear coming? Will the ME spill over here? » Posted By jdmn17 On February 22, 2011 @ 1:34 pm Boomer Looks like things are coming apart at the seams eh? » Posted By jdmn17 On February 22, 2011 @ 1:32 pm In MN the term right to work has come to mean the right for a company to hire and fire without cause. » Posted By jdmn17 On February 22, 2011 @ 8:45 am David There was actually a book written about the whole farce. These dudes came into Red Wing, a small community south of St Paul MN. They had two large companies, Red Wing Shoes and Red Wing pottery. They went after Red Wing pottery, a family owned business. The owners opened their books and let everyone take a look. The union guys said it was a lie and the workers threw away their jobs and walked out. They simply closed their doors and opened a retail shop. They had hundreds of thousands of pottery of various kinds and simply started selling them off. The Red Wing crocks that are collectible shot up in price and they became a sort of cutesy gift as mugs and such. Needless to say the commemorative pieces were made elsewhere but still had the distinctive Red Wing logo. Once the plant closed it nearly killed the town. It took years before it recovered and that mostly because real estate was cheap and it became a deep suburb of the Twin Cities. It soured me on the abuses of some unions, yet I understand the need for unions in certain instances. How can one be so schizophrenic about unions? » Posted By jdmn17 On February 22, 2011 @ 8:43 am That’s because it’s sort of morphed into a monster not unlike other terms that seem to mean one thing but now mean another Unions are not blameless. There are cases here in MN where the pendulum swung too far. Example. Red Wing pottery in Red Wing MN. Local family owned potter. Union bosses came in from out of town to organize. The story is very complex but the owners were forced to close the pottery, the union organizers left town back to where they came from. The whole city was negatively impacted for years. » Posted By jdmn17 On February 22, 2011 @ 7:02 am I will leave the answer to far greater minds than me How many governors got elected using Koch money this last time around? Is this an attempt by Koch to take over a large number of states, sort of a coup from the bottom up? I really an starting to wonder about this. » Posted By jdmn17 On February 21, 2011 @ 1:58 pm BDM Do you get the sense that WI and some other states where things are shaping up the same way might be the tipping points we need here to snap people out of their lethargy? It will take someone with some stones in the MSM to throw caution to the wind and start releasing the news we all know they have. Will anyone have the courage? I do know that if even ONE credible news source places it out there the rest are lemmings enough to follow quickly. Think back to Watergate. WaPo and NYT got started, the one by one the others followed, each developing their own take on it until the steaming pile was exposed. That’s what we need now. Someone with some guts out there. » Posted By jdmn17 On February 21, 2011 @ 1:23 pm Great kids make being a great parent easy 🙂 » Posted By jdmn17 On February 20, 2011 @ 8:23 pm 2nd Fire away, we fought like hell and they are working hard to keep it going. This year, now if you aren’t from MN you won’t understand this at all, they had a varsity hockey team for the first time in years. Hard to imagine a MN team not out on the western prairie not having a hockey team. At the same time I am despondent over the continuing collapse of the school performance results for all MN schools. How can we seem to be so committed as a society to making the children ignorant and stupid? They aren’t any less intelligent, they just aren’t as smart or learned » Posted By jdmn17 On February 20, 2011 @ 5:39 pm Talk to the Canadians. Letting the beer truck drivers go out on strike and subjecting the Yanks to the local brew was a real get back. I still think they harbour resentments about us for some silly teasing we’ve done of them over the years » Posted By jdmn17 On February 20, 2011 @ 5:27 pm jkk Bubble room 🙂 and Ding Darling » Posted By jdmn17 On February 20, 2011 @ 5:24 pm Remarkably enough, I know this will boggle your mind :-), the more parents got involved the more we enjoyed our kids. We send them off five days a week for nine months and they have more time with teachers and coaches than us. Showing up they got to see us and we got to know their friends. We got to cheer their sports, watch their plays and other activities. When we chaperoned dances I went to the other side of the gym so they could just be there without me looking over their shoulder. And you knew you were doing something right when they’d come over with their friends to make sure you were doing all right. And truth be told? It was better being there than it was sitting at home wondering what they were doing. » Posted By jdmn17 On February 20, 2011 @ 5:19 pm The high school my kids attended had once been a wonderful school in one of the more prosperous areas of St Paul. It had fallen on hard times with diminishing performance by the kids. When my oldest was in first grade we began discussions with the PTA for the parents to take a more active role in making the school a place kids wanted to go again. These parents challenged others to start taking part IN school, to be there, a presence to help reduce the chaos in the halls and the seemingly give a shit attitude by many teachers. Slowly the school began to changes. Teachers who couldn’t cut it transferred or left teaching. Expectations were set with the senior management and by the time my daughter reached fifth grade things had shifted enough we tossed out the brochures for some really great private schools in the neighborhood and with held breath sent the oldest off. Both kids graduated with great educations. We stayed involved at a much higher level than many other parents. The point isn’t chest beating but that parents can take their childrens education seriously and see results. I think far too many parents simply send the kid off to school so they don’t have to deal with them. » Posted By jdmn17 On February 20, 2011 @ 4:12 pm I agree. I was an allied health professional and while there was great disparity in physician comp, nurses and allied health were pretty close. I assume the same for teaching » Posted By jdmn17 On February 20, 2011 @ 3:54 pm Point of reference. MN teachers pay 15% in health care premiums according to the local MSP news station today. For the most part WI unions do pay slightly less in other comparitives however they managed to omit the pay scales and if there was a difference. The shaping of opinion is very interesting. This station is more conservative than the other two networks. » Posted By jdmn17 On February 20, 2011 @ 3:52 pm KT I always sip, I’m a gentleman after all » Posted By jdmn17 On February 20, 2011 @ 3:39 pm Two things about Uncle Walt I will never forget 1. When Walter came back from Nam and went anti-war and LBJ was heard to say “if I’ve lost Cronkite I’ve lost the war” or words to that effect 2. One night on the news he looked out at the camera and announced that as of that day it would have been cheaper to have simply brought in bulldozers, flattened the country and paved it with asphalt. Needless to say the war continued on and Walter’s reporting became more and more against the war. Remember how he made a point of calling out expenditures and dead and wounded on virtually every show? I’m sure Nixon and LBJ had the FBI (so cool I can actually write that word now) digging like mad for some dirt on him to shut him up. » Posted By jdmn17 On February 20, 2011 @ 3:37 pmComments Posted By jdmn17
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