#Milwaukee fuel

[onlyhappyvibes]

Rust prevention

[tomorrowusa]

Texas is still suffering from power outages triggered by Hurricane Beryl which dissipated a week ago.

More than a week after Hurricane Beryl swept through Texas and left millions without power, nearly 60,000 people in the state still do not have electricity. The issue is more than an inconvenience, as many in the state have faced a deadly days-long heat wave that claimed its latest victim on Tuesday. Local news reported that a woman was found dead in her apartment after spending the last eight days in her home without electricity and air conditioning. The heat index in Houston had climbed to 110F (43F) the day her body was discovered. With the power issue lingering and more than a dozen deaths now linked to the heat, frustrations in Houston have started to boil over - particularly as the forecasts for the coming days warn of high temperatures. Armed residents living without electricity have reportedly harrassed and threatened workers from CenterPoint Energy, the local energy provider, who have been sent out to restore power. Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued a statement saying that CentrePoint Energy "has lost the faith and trust of Texans". He issued a July 31 deadline for the company to respond to questions about what went wrong and what can be done to mitigate hurricane damage to the electric grid.

Climate-denying Republican Gov. Greg Abbott followed that Texas GOP tradition of leaving the state whenever climate causes a disaster leading to misery and death for residents. We remember Sen. Ted Cruz heading to Cancún when a winter storm caused the state's separate power grid to collapse.

Gov. Abbott went to Milwaukee to attend the GOP convention to brag about himself sending busloads of migrants to Chicago.

Gov. Abbott says Texas will continue busing migrants to Chicago during RNC speech

Those migrants are being sent north with taxpayer money in air conditioned buses while Abbott's Texas constituents are dropping dead from the heat.

Abbott himself was enjoying the moderate climate of the Upper Midwest where the high temperature in Milwaukee on Thursday is expected to be a refreshing 75° F/24° C. No place in southeastern Wisconsin will even make it to 80° today.

Abbott and other MAGA Republicans will be celebrating the climate policies of the Orange Dear Leader whose election would guarantee even more climate disasters for the Lone Star State.

Trump asks Big Oil for $1B in campaign cash

^^^ just sayin'

[razorsadness]

Me, at Fuel Cafe // Milwaukee, WI // July 2001

(photo taken by Ali F.)

[workshopaddictyoutube]

New Milwaukee M12 Fuel Stubby Impacts Are Shipping! #milwaukeetools

[ms-demeanor]

I've been reading so much about rabies and cats and there are so few cat owners who keep their cats up to date on rabies vaccinations and buds please keep your kitty's jabs up-to-date and please please please keep your cats inside and please treat any cat with an unknown vaccination history as a wild animal and don't try to touch it or pet it or catch it.

The most recent survivor of the Milwaukee protocol is an 8 year old girl who contacted rabies through scratches from feral cats that lived in a colony at her school.

Don't touch strange cats even if they're friendly, and teach your kids not to touch strange cats either. (For that matter teach your kids not to touch strange dogs either, but decades of stray eradication and mandatory vaccines means that the US is one of the few places in the world where cats are more likely to be rabid than dogs)

Also did you know that there's one case of transplant-acquired rabies recorded in the US? The recipient got a kidney from a donor who died in an accident and nobody was aware the donor had rabies. The recipient died of rabies, which is a bit of an extreme flavor of graft failure if you ask me. Terrifying!

Anyway. If you, too, want to have nightmares about rabies you can search my website (www.ms-demeanor.com) for "keep your fucking cat indoors" and scroll to the section on rabies and read some nightmare fuel (like the case report on the family that moved across 3 states with their 13 barn cats, unaware that one was incubating rabies).

Did you know that in 1994, 665 people in New Hampshire had to be given post exposure prophylaxis for rabies because of one infected kitten that had contact with a racoon before being brought to a pet store?

The only way animals are tested for rabies is to examine their brain tissue. The animal is killed in order to do this. If your pet is exposed to rabies they stand a much, much, much better chance of being quarantined instead of being euthanized for testing if you have kept their vaccinations current.

Please keep your pets' vaccinations up to date, and please keep your cat indoors. There's a risk of exposure even for indoor cats, so make sure they've got their shots.

[thegreatsurvey]

The Official Black Forest Bosch Fuel Injection Pump Shop sign.

24x24"

Acrylic on metal sign.

[batboyblog]

The United States is experiencing scorching new levels of heat fueled by climate change this summer, with dozens of people dying in the West, millions sweating under heat advisories and nearly three-quarters of Americans saying the government must prioritize global warming.

But as the Republican Party opens its national convention in Milwaukee with a prime-time focus on energy on Monday night, the party has no plan to address climate change.

While many Republicans no longer deny the overwhelming scientific consensus that the planet is warming, party leaders do not see it as a problem that needs to be addressed.

“I don’t know that there is a Republican approach to climate change as an organizing issue,” said Thomas J. Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, a conservative research group focused on energy. “I don’t think President Trump sees reducing greenhouse gases, using the government to do so, as an imperative.”

When former President Donald J. Trump mentions climate change at all, it is mockingly.

“Can you imagine, this guy says global warming is the greatest threat to our country?” Mr. Trump said, referring to President Biden as he addressed a rally in Chesapeake, Va., last month, the hottest June in recorded history across the globe. “Global warming is fine. In fact, I heard it was going to be very warm today. It’s fine.”

He went on to dismiss the scientific evidence that melting ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland are causing seas to rise, threatening coastal communities around the world. He said it would result in “more waterfront property, if you’re lucky enough to own.” And he lapsed into familiar rants against windmills and electric vehicles.

At the televised debate with Mr. Biden in June, Mr. Trump was asked if he would take any action as president to slow the climate crisis. “I want absolutely immaculate clean water and I want absolutely clean air, and we had it,” Mr. Trump responded, without answering the question.

Mr. Trump’s spokeswoman, Karoline Leavitt, later declined to clarify the former president’s position or discuss any actions he would take regarding climate change, saying only that he wants “energy dominance.”

The United States last year pumped more crude oil than any country in history and is now the world’s biggest exporter of natural gas.

A clear majority of Americans, 65 percent, wants the country to focus on increasing solar, wind and other renewable energy and not fossil fuels, according to a May survey by the Pew Research Center. But just 38 percent of Republicans surveyed said renewable energy should be prioritized, while 61 percent said the country should focus on developing more oil, gas and coal.

“Their No. 1 agenda is to continue producing fossil fuels,” said Andrew Dessler, a professor of atmospheric sciences and the director of the Texas Center for Climate Studies at Texas A&M University. “Once you understand their main goal is to entrench fossil fuels regardless of anything else, everything makes sense.”

The party platform, issued last week, makes no mention of climate change. Instead, it encourages more production of oil, gas and coal, the burning of which is dangerously driving up global temperatures. “We will DRILL, BABY, DRILL,” it says, referring to oil as “liquid gold.”

By contrast, Mr. Biden has taken the most aggressive action of any president to cut emissions from coal, oil and gas and encourage a transition to wind, solar and other carbon-free energy. He has directed every federal agency from the Agriculture Department to the Pentagon to consider how climate change is affecting their core missions.

If Mr. Biden has taken an all-of-government approach to fighting climate change, Mr. Trump and his allies would adopt the opposite: scrubbing “climate” from all federal functions and promoting fossil fuels.

Mr. Trump and his allies want to end federal subsidies for electric vehicles, battery development and the wind and solar industries, preferring instead to open up the Alaskan wilderness to oil drilling, encourage more offshore drilling and expand gas export terminals.

Project 2025, a lengthy manual filled with specific proposals for a next Republican administration, calls for erasing any mention of climate change across the government. While Mr. Trump has recently sought to distance himself from Project 2025, he has praised its architects at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research organization, and much of the plan was written by people who were top advisers during his first term and could serve in prominent roles if he wins in November.

When pressed to discuss climate change, some Republicans say the country should produce more natural gas and sell it to other countries as a cleaner replacement for coal.

While natural gas produces less carbon dioxide than coal when burned, it remains one of the sources of the greenhouse gases that are driving climate change. Scientists say that countries must stop burning coal, oil and gas to keep global warming to relatively safe levels. Last year, at the United Nations climate summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, the United States and nearly 200 countries agreed to transition away from fossil fuels.

But if elected, Mr. Trump has indicated he would pull back from the global fight against climate change, as he did when he announced in 2017 that the United States would be the first and only country to withdraw from the Paris Agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions. (The United States subsequently rejoined under Mr. Biden.)

And it’s possible he would go even further. Mr. Trump’s former aides said that if he wins in November, he would remove the country altogether from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the international body that works on climate policy and created the 2015 Paris deal.

When it comes to international relations, Project 2025 calls for an end to spending federal funds to help the world’s poorest countries transition to wind, solar and other renewable energy.

The blueprint also calls for erasing climate change as a national security concern, despite research showing rising sea levels, extreme weather and other consequences of global temperature rise are destabilizing areas of the world, affecting migration and threatening American military installations.

Federal research into climate change would slow or disappear under Project 2025, which recommends dismantling the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which conducts some of the world’s leading climate research and is also responsible for weather forecasting and tracking the path of hurricanes and other storms.

NOAA, according to the authors of Project 2025, is “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity.” At the agency’s research operation, which include a network of research laboratories, an undersea research center, and several joint research institutes with universities, “the preponderance of its climate-change research should be disbanded,” the blueprint said.

Project 2025 also calls for the president to issue an executive order to “reshape” the program that convenes 13 federal agencies every four years to produce the National Climate Assessment, the country’s most authoritative analysis of climate knowledge. The report is required by Congress and details the impacts and risks of climate change to a wide range of sectors, including agriculture, health care and transportation. It is used by the public, researchers and officials around the country to inform decisions about strategies and spending.

Project 2025 also calls for the elimination of offices at the Department of Energy dedicated to developing wind, solar and other renewable energy.

Waleed Abdalati, a former NASA chief scientist who is now at the University of Colorado Boulder, said downgrading climate science would be a disservice to the nation. “That’s a loss of four years in pursuit of creative solutions,” he said.

As president, Mr. Trump tried to replace top officials with political appointees who denied the existence of climate change and put pressure on federal scientists to water down their conclusions. Scientists refused to change their findings and attempts by the Trump administration to bury climate research were also not successful.

“Thank God they didn’t know how to run a government,” Thomas Armstrong, who led the National Climate Assessment program under the Obama administration, said at the end of Mr. Trump’s presidency, adding, “It could have been a lot worse.”

Next time, they would know how to run the government, Mr. Trump’s former officials said. “The difference between the last time and this time is, Donald Trump was president for four years,” Mr. Pyle said. “He will be more prepared.”

[balltons]

cw brief mentions of pregnancy

you were always known for being smart.

it’s how you ranked no.1 in nearly every subject, entering one of the top universities in the entire country. your intellect was your most prized characteristic.

however, that knowledge only helped you in situations regarding academics, not this.

you stare at the pregnancy test, wide-eyed. someone on the bathroom door bangs on it, urging you to hurry up. though you remain seated, focused on the two little lines that will be your undoing.

when you tell your boyfriend, he decides to break up with you. when you ask your friends, they dismiss you, saying “you’re a smart girl, you’ll figure out.” and when you call your parents..

you block out the interaction from your memory.

with no financial or emotional support, you are forced to scour the internet for a solution. an abortion is too expensive, and you can’t raise this thing when you’re about to enter your junior year of college.

all hope seems lost, till you find the shadiest ad on craigslist;

Looking for Baby to adopt. Surrogate or already pregnant. Will provide care for entire pregnancy.

it seems like a scam, even more so as you open it and skim through the benefits (a roof over your head, food and water, nearly $25k to start). everything about this seems too good to be true. after all, can you really trust something you saw on craigslist?

still, your eyes find a phone number and email address at the bottom of the ad, belonging to some guy named johnny mactavish. the foreign name throws you off even more, surely a name like that isn’t located in the united states of fuck all. though, it seems like you have no other solutions.

hesitantly, you hover your mouse over the ‘reply’ button, your finger clicking it before you can back out.

——

johnny knew it was futile to post an ad looking for a surrogate on craigslist, but he didn’t see any other options (or rather, he ignores them). simon and him have been retired for some time now, settling in milwaukee. the woods offering some sort of privacy, a silence that comforts them rather than makes them shake in their sleep.

it seemed natural that having children would be the next step after living here for so long. johnny thanks tommy for finding a pretty bird and producing some nephews, for it would’ve been harder to convince simon otherwise. the riley’s don’t seem like family men, yet simon is carving a little plane to send back to manchester, congratulating tommy on finally having his baby girl.

it makes johnny warm, but he can’t help but feel jealous. sure, simon is everything to him, his whole world, but it’s hard to produce when all you got is a prick and shitter.

johnny’s about to take down the ad, ready to talk to simon about doing things a different way, when he suddenly gets a reply.

> this isn’t a joke, right?

johnny raises a brow at this, swiveling back to the computer and typing up his response.

< wold nevr jok bout smth so sirius

and he presumed that would be the end of this little interaction, fueling johnny’s desire to take down the post.

that is, till he gets another response.

> well, is the position still open then?

he feels his heart stop, eyes widening as he reads the phrase over and over. a certain excitement wells in his chest, and he gets back on the keyboard before he can run out the room and tell simon the good news.

——

his last reply consists of a time, date, and address.

[mariacallous]

As delegates arrived at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee earlier this week to officially nominate former president Donald Trump as their 2024 candidate, a right-wing policy think tank held an all-day event nearby. The Heritage Foundation, a key sponsor of the convention and a group that has been influencing Republican presidential policy since the 1980s, gathered its supporters to tout Project 2025, a 900-plus-page policy blueprint that seeks to fundamentally restructure the federal government.

Dozens of conservative groups contributed to Project 2025, which recommends changes that would touch every aspect of American life and transform federal agencies—from the Department of Defense to the Department of Interior to the Federal Reserve. Although it has largely garnered attention for its proposed crackdowns on human rights and individual liberties, the blueprint would also undermine the country’s extensive network of environmental and climate policies and alter the future of American fossil fuel production, climate action, and environmental justice.

Under President Joe Biden’s direction, the majority of the federal government’s vast system of departments, agencies, and commissions have belatedly undertaken the arduous task of incorporating climate change into their operations and procedures. Two summers ago, Biden also signed the Inflation Reduction Act, the biggest climate spending law in US history, with the potential to help drive greenhouse gas emissions down 42 percent below 2005 levels.

Project 2025 seeks to undo much of that progress by slashing funding for government programs across the board, weakening federal oversight and policymaking capabilities, rolling back legislation passed during Biden’s first term, and eliminating career personnel. The policy changes it suggests—which include executive orders that Trump could implement single-handedly, regulatory changes by federal agencies, and legislation that would require congressional approval—would make it extremely difficult for the United States to fulfill the climate goals it has committed to under the 2015 Paris Agreement.

“It’s real bad,” said David Willett, senior vice president of communications for the environmental advocacy group the League of Conservation Voters. “This is a real plan, by people who have been in the government, for how to systematically take over, take away rights and freedoms, and dismantle the government in service of private industry.”

Trump has sought to distance himself from the blueprint. “Some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal,” he wrote in a social media post last week.

However, at least 140 people who worked in the Trump administration contributed to Project 2025, and policy experts and environmental advocates fear Project 2025 will play an influential role in shaping GOP policy if Trump is reelected in November. Some of the blueprint’s recommendations are echoed in the Republican National Convention’s official party platform, and Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts says he is “good friends” with Trump’s new running mate, Senator J. D. Vance of Ohio. Previous Heritage Foundation road maps have successfully dictated presidential agendas; 64 percent of the policy recommendations the foundation put out in 2016 had been implemented or considered under Trump one year into his term. The Heritage Foundation declined to provide a comment for this story.

Broadly speaking, Project 2025 proposals aim to scale down the federal government and empower states. The document calls for “unleashing all of America’s energy resources” by eliminating federal restrictions on fossil fuel drilling on public lands, curtailing federal investments in renewable energy technologies, and easing environmental permitting restrictions and procedures for new fossil fuel projects such as power plants. “What’s been designed here is a project that ensures a fossil fuel agenda, both in the literal and figurative sense,” said Craig Segall, the vice president of the climate-oriented political advocacy group Evergreen Action.

Within the Department of Energy, offices dedicated to clean energy research and implementation would be eliminated, and energy efficiency guidelines and requirements for household appliances would be scrapped. The environmental oversight capacities of the Department of the Interior and the Environmental Protection Agency would be curbed significantly or eliminated altogether, preventing these agencies from tracking methane emissions, managing environmental pollutants and chemicals, or conducting climate change research.

In addition to these major overhauls, Project 2025 advocates for getting rid of smaller and lesser-known federal programs and statutes that safeguard public health and environmental justice. It recommends eliminating the Endangerment Finding—the legal mechanism that requires the EPA to curb emissions and air pollutants from vehicles and power plants, among other industries, under the Clean Air Act. It also recommends axing government efforts to assess the social cost of carbon, or the damage each additional ton of carbon emitted causes. And it seeks to prevent agencies from assessing the “co-benefits,” or the knock-on positive health impacts, of their policies, such as better air quality.

“When you think about who is going to be hit the hardest by pollution—whether it’s conventional air, water, and soil pollution or climate change—it is very often low-income communities and communities of color,” said Rachel Cleetus, policy director of the climate and energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit science advocacy organization. “The undercutting of these kinds of protections is going to have a disproportionate impact on these very same communities.”

Other proposals would wreak havoc on the nation’s ability to prepare for and respond to climate disasters. Project 2025 suggests eliminating the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service housed therein and replacing those organizations with private companies. The blueprint appears to leave the National Hurricane Center intact, saying the data it collects should be “presented neutrally, without adjustments intended to support any one side in the climate debate.” But the National Hurricane Center pulls much of its data from the National Weather Service, as do most other private weather service companies, and eliminating public weather data could devastate Americans’ access to accurate weather forecasts. “It’s preposterous,” said Rob Moore, a policy analyst for the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Action Fund. “There’s no problem that’s getting addressed with this solution, this is a solution in search of some problem.”

The document also advocates moving the Federal Emergency Management Administration, which marshals federal disaster response, out from under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security, where it has been housed for more than 20 years, and into the Department of the Interior or the Department of Transportation. “All of the agencies within the Department of Interior are federal land management agencies that own lots of land and manage those resources on behalf of the federal government,” Moore said. “Why would you put FEMA there? I can’t even fathom why that is a starting point.”

The blueprint recommends eliminating the National Flood Insurance Program and moving flood insurance to private insurers. That notion skates right over the fact that the federal program was initially established because private insurers found that it was economically unfeasible to insure the nation’s flood-prone homes—long before climate change began wreaking havoc on the insurance market.

Despite the alarming implications of most of Project 2025’s climate-related proposals, it also recommends a small number of policies that climate experts said are worth considering. Its authors call for shifting the costs of natural disasters from the federal government to states. That’s not a bad conversation to have, Moore pointed out. “I think there’s people within FEMA who feel the same way,” he said. The federal government currently shoulders at least 75 percent of the costs of national disaster recovery, paving the way for development and rebuilding in risky areas. “You are disincentivizing states and local governments from making wise decisions about where and how to build because they know the federal government is going to pick up the tab for whatever mistake they make,” Moore said.

Quillan Robinson, a senior adviser with ConservAmerica who has worked with Republicans in Washington, DC, on crafting emissions policies, was heartened by the authors’ call for an end to what they termed “unfair bias against the nuclear industry.” Nuclear energy is a reliable source of carbon-free energy, but it has been plagued by security and public health concerns, as well as staunch opposition from some environmental activists. “We know it’s a crucial technology for decarbonization,” Robinson said, noting that there’s growing bipartisan interest in the energy source among lawmakers in Congress.

An analysis conducted by the United Kingdom–based Carbon Brief found that a Trump presidency would lead to 400 billion metric tons of additional emissions in the US by 2030—the emissions output of the European Union and Japan combined.

Above all else, Segall, from Evergreen Action, is worried about the effect Project 2025 would have on the personnel who make up the federal government. Much of the way the administrative state works is safeguarded in the minds of career staff who pass their knowledge on to the next cadre of federal workers. When this institutional knowledge is curbed, as it was by budget cuts and hostile management during Trump’s first term, the government loses crucial information that helps it run. The personnel “scatter,” he said, disrupts bottom-line operations and grinds the government to a halt.

Although Project 2025’s proposals are radical, Segall said that its effect on public servants would echo a pattern that has been playing out for decades. “This is a common theme in Republican administrations dating back to presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan,” he said. “What you do is you break the government, make it very hard for the government to function, and then you loudly announce that the government can’t do anything.”

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Marita Vlachou at HuffPost:

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) on Friday said she has not seen a “bulletproof” case to support the notion that Joe Biden should drop out of the 2024 presidential race, warning that many of those calling on him to end his reelection bid are not interested in having Vice President Kamala Harris replace him on the ticket. The 81-year-old president’s poor performance at a CNN debate in late June fueled concerns about his age and fitness to serve, with a growing number of Democrats now calling on him to step aside and support an alternative candidate. Speaking on Instagram after the conclusion of Donald Trump’s speech accepting the GOP presidential nomination in Milwaukee, Ocasio-Cortez said she is not convinced that Biden should leave the race.

“I have not seen the the fully laid-out, bulletproof data case,” she said. Ocasio-Cortez noted that there is so far no consensus on an alternative to Biden, adding that many people who have called for his exit are not looking to Harris to take over. “A huge amount of the donor class, and a huge amount of these elites, and a huge amount of these folks in these rooms that I see that are pushing for President Biden to not be the nominee also are not interested in seeing the vice president being the nominee,” she said. The New York Democrat added that several legal issues could arise if Biden steps down. She said it is imperative for people to consider the stakes of the upcoming election, with ballot deadlines looming and potential GOP legal challenges that could end up before the U.S. Supreme Court, which has a conservative majority.

“I have not seen a scenario, an alternative scenario, that I feel does not set us up for enormous peril,” she said.

[...] “I don’t know about you, but my community does not have the option to lose. My community does not have the luxury of accepting loss in July of an election year. Like, my people are the first ones deported. They’re the first ones put in Rikers [Island’s jail complex in New York]. They’re the first ones whose families are killed by war.”

In an Instagram live post late Thursday/early Friday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D) delivered a warning to those who want Joe Biden to drop out.

A sizable amount of the “elites” who want Biden out also don’t want Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee, and mentioned that replacing Biden (especially if the nominee is other than Harris) could come with legal risk.

AOC's post on Instagram:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@aoc)

See Also:

NewsNation: Here’s how replacing Biden would actually work

[razorsadness]

Kosmomancy. The universe sent us a myriad of good signs, and that was the first catchphrase of the tour (when you spend that much time cooped up in a car with someone, you're bound ta develop catchphrases & inside jokes) - It's a good sign!

We had a day off before we had to head to St. Louis, so I showed her some favorite spots of my dear drunken city, we slipped in the mud and let the cool autumn drizzle coat our arm hair, walked to Fuel Cafe. It still trips me out that Fuel's gone non-smoking, has remodeled and cleaned up its act. I will always long for the Fuel of the late '90s/early '00s, when it smelled like shit & a permanent nicotine haze hung at the ceiling, and it was fulla strange old men with matted hair who drummed on the tabletops & young punkrock boys with comic book tattoos who made fun of my anarchy tattoo but lauded my amazing ability to scam free copies of my zine. But Fuel still has good strong coffee, still sells copies of Cometbus, so there we went. Two coffees to go, and I thought the Traveler Lid on my coffee cup said Traveler Kid, and - It's a good sign!

I drove us downtown for diner food and a glimpse at the Bronze Fonz, which is tacky and not even in a fun kitsch way, I mean, blue bronze? C'mon. And where's the bronze Laverne & Shirley? I did joke that me n' Emch should reenact the opening credits of that show...Give us any chance, we'll take it, give us any rule, we'll break it, we're gonna make our dreams come true.

We jammed in the basement of my apartment building for a couple hours; rain trickled down the small windows high up above us. Emchy got friendly with Lydia, my accordion, for we were sharing her on this tour. Ain't she lucky? I said. She gets to be squeezed by two lovely ladies. We worked out a couple duets to play, though we ended up only performing one of 'em in front of people; Emchy with the accordion and me with guitar & ankle bells. We strummed and squeezed in the basement, and even when we fucked up it was great, the two of us playing our hearts out under the bare buzzing bulbs amid the musty basement smells, with crumbling leaf corpses sticking to our pants and cobwebs brushing our foreheads.

Then south again, back to Bayview, to meet some friends at the Hi-Fi, and then I took her to Burnheart's. We meant to leave early, but there was so much whiskey to be had and so much soul-talk to be poured out, not to mention the horrible pickup lines. (You gals wanna talk about the Packers? -No. -How about Large Hadron Colliders?) We were there 'til barclose.

[excerpt from a longer piece, written in 2008]

[workshopaddictyoutube]

The Fastest 6-½" Circular Saw On The Market? Milwaukee M18 FUEL 6-1/2" ...

[eretzyisrael]

by Dion J. Pierre

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s (UWM) chancellor has apologized to the Jewish community for reaching an agreement with an anti-Zionist group which ended a “Gaza encampment” in exchange for the school’s issuing a statement calling for a ceasefire in Israel’s war against Hamas and considering an academic boycott of Israel.

“It is clear to me that UWM should not have weighed in on deeply complex geopolitical and historical issues,” UWM chancellor Mark Mone said on Tuesday. “And for that, I apologize. I acknowledge that it is an increasingly difficult time for many Jewish students at UWM and across America.”

He added, “Let me be clear: UWM resolutely condemns antisemitism, just as we do Islamophobia and all other forms of hatred. Our campus must be a place that welcomes all students and the full expression their history, culture, identity, and ethnicity. But words alone cannot create the culture of inclusion we desire, which is why we must transform our words into commitment and action. This work will take time, as all hard work does, and it will also take the openness of our entire community.”

Mone did not say whether he intends to honor the deal he brokered with Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a group that has been linked to terrorist organizations and is a source of a substantial number of antisemitic incidents on college campuses. In addition to agreeing to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, on May 12, he issued a statement describing Israel’s war to destroy the Hamas terrorist group in Gaza as “genocide,” citing figures reported by Hamas-controlled authorities which have been lambasted by experts as unreliable. The deal also stipulates UWM’s reviewing “its study abroad policies” and pressuring a local environmental organization to cut ties with two Israeli companies, which Mone has already done.

“University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Chancellor Mark Mone capitulated to protesters who violated UWM codes of conduct and state law, vandalized university property, and used harassment and intimidation to fuel antisemitism on campus,” the Milwaukee Jewish Federation, Hillel Milwaukee, and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) said about the deal in a joint statement. “The agreement is amongst the most offensive and dangerous of any university agreement reached with encampment protesters over the last two weeks.”

Mone is not the only university leader accused of injuring Jewish university life to appease anti-Zionist protesters.

[falloutboydescribed]

Boys shoot for big time (Pioneer Press, August 21, 2003)

Written by Matthew Pais, staff intern

[Image description: A newspaper clipping of this article as it appeared in Alternative Press #303's "The Oral History of 'Take This to Your Grave'". It is captioned "Full page write up in the Pioneer Press." End ID]

For the young members of Fall Out Boy, homecoming no longer means football games, dancing and formalwear. Instead, it means a day-long stop in their hometown and the rare opportunity to sleep in their own beds. 

Which is exactly what three out of the four band members were doing one recent afternoon. The Boys had arrived on the North Shore at 5 a.m. that morning after playing a show in Lincoln, Nebraska. At 1 p.m., singer Patrick Strump, 20, guitarist Joe Trohman, 18, and drummer Andy Hurley, 23, were still sound asleep. 

Bassist Pete Wentz, 24, has learned to survive on no sleep. 

With tattoos running down his arms and a logo-free blue cap twisted on his head to a 30-degree angle from his forehead, Wentz may not be the prototypical alumnus of Winnetka's North Shore Country Day School. But he just might be the busiest. 

Fall Out Boy performed approximately 200 shows in the past year, traveling across the country in a run-down van to play their energetic brand of emotive pop-punk. 

On the road 

"We have to drive with the heat on when it gets hot," Wentz said, during a conversation at an outdoor table of a Wilmette sandwich shop. "You've never had it worse than driving with the heat on in 120-degree weather through the desert." 

Touring has its downside. "The first four days, it's really good and fresh," Wentz said. "Then homesickness sets in." 

According to Wentz, the band is rarely short on subjects worth arguing about, from the cost of a tour bus to the prospect of the music industry ever seeing another Beatles or Elvis. He said that the disputes never last long. "Five minutes later, we're laughing about it," he said. "These guys are like brothers to me, so our arguments are like family arguments." 

Wentz, a Wilmette resident, is not the only member of the band with a North Shore connection. Stumph, a native of Glenview, graduated from Glenbrook South, and Trohman lives in Winnetka and is a New Trier alum. Hurley is from Milwaukee. 

Early ambition 

Wentz learned to play the guitar when he was 7, and picked up a bass guitar at 14. "I kinda always wanted to be in a band," he said. "It's like the best job in the world." 

"I had no idea he was as talented as he obviously is, but it doesn't surprise me that he would be inclined to express himself in that way," says North Shore Country Day School teacher Kevin Randolph, who had Pete (or "Peter," as he calls him), in his 11th grade U.S. history class. 

"Some kids are just there for the grades, Peter was there because he had questions he wanted answers to." And even as a teen, Wentz was no follower. 

"He didn't take his cue from what was popular in terms of what to wear or what to listen to," said Randolph. "He clearly did not look like a kid out of Abercrombie and Fitch, but we are a school that values diversity." 

Falling in

Fall Out Boy started when Wentz and Trohman, already good friends, began writing songs just for fun. After meeting Strump, the three musicians soon added Hurley, an old friend of Wentz, to complete the band. 

The band soon moved onto the fast track. "When it took off, we dropped everything," said Wentz, who left DePaul University in his junior year to concentrate on music. 

He found leaving school an easy decision. "Nobody really looks back on their life and thinks they should have taken less chances." he said. 

In the past year, Fall Out Boy has released its debut album, "Take This to Your Grave," on Fueled by Ramen records, and has appeared at the South by Southwest exhibition in Texas, a prestigious showcase where record companies watch up and coming talent in concert. Wentz said the white-collar crowd did not really get a taste of what Fall Out Boy is all about. "Our performance was way more low-key and didn't really represent who we are." 

When watching the video for Fall Out Boy's "Dead on Arrival," it's hard not to think of the footage from the Beatles final concert or the video for U2's "Where the Streets Have No Name." Though the music may be faster and fiercer, the rebellion is undeniable: the police shut down Fall Out Boy's concert after only four songs, Wentz said. "It was just one of the most insane experiences of my life," he explained. 

The video was filmed at Arlington Heights' Knights of Columbus, where the band had previously played a show for a packed crowd of fans who sang along to all of the songs. Wentz said that experience proved that Fall Out Boy was on its way to something special. "We were like, 'Whoa, this is bigger than us,' " Wentz said. 

He adds that though he gets nervous before performances, ""As soon as I step on the stage, I know exactly what I'm doing," he said. "Afterwards, sometimes I throw up." 

Wentz's modesty reveals itself in his reaction to fame. "Why would anybody want my autograph?" he wonders. 

Dark side 

He may be young, but Wentz's lyrics, which comprise 90% of the songs on "Take This to Your Grave," reflect bitterness toward love. Consider "Chicago is So Two Years Ago," on which he writes, "You want apologies girl, you might hold your breath until your breathing stops/The only things you'll get is this curse on your lips: I hope they taste of me forever/With every breath I wish your body will be broken again." 

Writing has always been a way for Wentz to deal with his emotions. "Lots of times I'd rather sit at home with a pen on a Friday night than go out," Wentz said. He said that he often writes with acid in the pen, as evidenced by "The Pros and Cons of Breathing," in which he writes, "My pen is the barrel of the gun/remind me which side you should be on/I wish I was as invisible as you make me feel." 

You would never know it from his quick smile and easy manner, but sadness seems to be Wentz's best inspiration. On the band's Web site, he describes his favorite pastimes as "Misery, horrible thoughts and writing." 

Music as therapy 

Wentz said that he is not alone in his use of music as therapy. "Everyone medicates themselves with music," he said. "It's really important for music to be involved in everyone's life." 

The bassist adds that everything he writes is drawn from real-life feelings. "We write honest lyrics and honest music," he said. "I feel like these are issues that everyone can relate to." 

The band's commitment to honesty is reflected in Wentz's musical likes and dislikes. He lists The Police, The Cure, Elvis Costello, Green Day, and a slew of New York hard-core punk bands as influences but says he has little respect for the pop-punk posers on MTV. "These TRL guys who act like they have their hearts on their sleeve really just have their egos on their sleeve," he said.

Wentz is grateful for what the band has accomplished thus far. "I think we're the luckiest band around," he said. "I hope I can look back on it and remember it as a really important part of my growing up."