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I forget my manners. His rates were $300 per hour. And $500 for 2 hours. I spent +100$ for bareback. His name is Pedro  

I think the partticular dumpling you refer to is known as Xiao Long Bao. China has all manner of dumplings but this one is basically from the Shanghai region and includes within the thin wrapper some minced pork and soup. Getting them into your mouth without breaking the wrapper is the art, for then you can bite on the dumpling and lovely soup oozes into you mouth!

You are such a good lovable dumb pup, @Barknaway.  Today you get three treats!  Lucky pup!     So a caveat first.  If I wanted to design the next Democratic President in a lab, I would design Andy Beshear.  The last three times an unknown (meaning not a former Veep) Democrat won POTUS were:  1)  a White Southerner from a small state;  2)  a White Southerner from a smaller state,  3) a Black man with the middle name "Hussein". So Alan Lichtman is mostly right when he says Democrats usually screw up when we nominate whoever the conventional wisdom says will win:  Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden.   Although, as the last name on that list suggests, sometimes the conventional wisdom candidate does win.  The fact that Lichtman himself incorrectly predicted Kamala Harris would win in 2024 also suggests nothing is really predictable. Other than being Obama's Veep, Joe Biden's biggest asset in 2020 was that he wanted to be President Not Chaos.  Gavin Newsom is doing exactly the same thing. This is Alinsky's "the action is in the reaction," at the level of Presidential and global politics.  All Newsom has to do right now is react to whatever Trump does.  Trump pisses off the world?  Newsom goes and meets with European leaders and sets up green trade deals with the UK.  How do we know it is working? Trump derides Newsom and calls his UK deal 'inappropriate' Trump says the ‘U.K.’s got enough trouble without getting involved with Newscum’ Trump called Newsom a 'loser.' Newsom's advisers see that as a win. This works in part because right now Gavin Newsom has a 60 % approval rating in California, and Donald Trump has a 42 % approval rating in the US.  The formula is simple:  the popular Guv on California reacts to whatever the unpopular piece of shit racist dumb fuck possibly senile cruel raping POTUS of the US says.  The formula works.  Wash, rinse, put gel in gray hair, repeat. This will be interesting.  Andy Beshear has a great case to make.  At 65 % approval he is the most popular Democratic Guv in America today.  More popular than Newsom.  And Beshear runs a red state.  But while he tries to explain what works in Kentucky, Newsom is running around the world fighting Trump on gerrymandering, and global alliances, and trade, and immigration, and everything.  Does Beshear even have a chance.  We'll see?  (And is he running for POTUS, or Veep?) Speaking of Veep, does Kamala Harris have a chance?  One new poll shows her beating Newsom 38 to 13.  Another shows Newsom ahead by 5 points. Actions speak louder than polls.  While Newsom is grabbing the stage, Harris is on a book tour.  The last time Democrats tried a second time, Stevenson lost again.  History does not smile on Democrats who fight the good fight, and lose.  Newsom definitely has seized the lane of leaders who want to fight fire with fire, as he says.  Now.  And hard. There is a long list of great reasons Newsom should NOT be the Democratic nominee.  But here is one good reason he should be: REAL MEDIAN HOUSEHOLD INCOME IN CALIFORNIA   Gavin Newsom was Lieutenant Guv from 2011 to 2019 and Guv since 2019.  Shitty record, huh? One of the best arguments against California, and liberalism, is that this is the place where prosperity and progress go to die.  And smart middle class people flee to Texas.  It's not entirely untrue.  One of my younger Trump-supporting tenants in her 20's who lived with her Mom left to Texas to seek a better life.  A few years later she came back. California is the third best state for low-income people who want to be able to afford health care insurance to live in.  Why?  Because state income taxes soak the rich, which there are many of in California, and use it to subsidize overpriced health insurance.  It may be overpriced.  But with subsides working class people can at least have it.  So Gavin Newsom will tax the rich to death?  Right now he is ranting about how the Crazy Left insists on putting a 5 % one time wealth tax on the 2026 ballot.  It will probably lose, in part because Newsom opposes it.  Why do we want rich people to flee?  Let them stay and make money and create jobs and pay income taxes at progressive rates.  Polls say fewer than 50 % of Californians agree, and that is before the billionaires pay lots of money to kill the initiative.   Most Americans favor taxing the rich more.  Newsom will run in 2028 as the moderate saying the rich need to pay their fair share.  But we don't want pitchforks and class warfare. Farmers in Iowa who are losing their health care subsidies and workers thanks to Trump and Vance might be willing to hear that message in 2028, I think.  If it is some Governor from California who says, "I made this happen in my state," California might not sound so horrible.  Beshear, of course, can say the same.  So can Harris. I think the most powerful thing Newsom said in that interview above is that 27 % of the people who live in California were born in a foreign country.  That is staggering.  Why are they choosing to live in a shithole like California?  I'm guessing Newsom will be able to explain that the answer is that this is the America that most Americans actually want America to be.  You play by the rules.  You make money.  If you get rich you pay it forward. I spent a year volunteering as a team leader training other volunteers to go door to door to win same sex marriage at the ballot box in California.  This was right after 2008, when Obama won but same sex marriage lost on the California ballot, narrowly.  We did not know at the time SCOTUS and Anthony Kennedy would rule our way.  So we planned for a Round 2 ballot fight in California that was never needed. One day I went door to door in an affluent East Bay community that had these beautiful mostly newly built mini-mansions.  I swear to God not one person I spoke to was born in America.  At least it felt that way.  There was a Black Guy who was a doctor from Africa.  There were Mexican business owners born in Mexico.  And in particular there were tons of affluent Asian Americans.  And while they may not have supported same sex marriage, they all understood what it means to be an outsider.  That is actually why we targeted those neighborhoods.  Lots of open-minded voters of all races who just want to get rich and get along. I was never more proud to be an American.  This is the America people come to America for.  Trump represents a vision of America that is anchored in the past.  If you want 1980's New York City racism, he is your guy.  Apes, anyone? If Beshear or Shapiro or Buttigieg or Moore or Whitmer or Harris can persuade Democrats that they are the future, good for them.  I'd happily vote for any of them. But as Newsom noted in that interview, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan would disagree with the idea that Californians can not be elected President.  Like them, Newsom might be in the right place at the right time.  (It took both Nixon and Reagan a few tries, of course.)  Newsom can argue that he not only can build a better and more unified and prosperous future.  He can argue he learned how to build it already in California, and made it work. Of course, the man has his flaws.  He fought like hell for same sex marriage as Mayor of San Francisco.  But I can forgive him for that.  😉  

To be accurate you'll have to demote me from ringleader to regular member.  I wouldn't refer to him as ringleader.  Just the organizer.  Some may also remember our "Fine Dining Society".  He organized that too.  His screen name was Maple. We started dwindling out the very day Micheal (Crabby) and Thomas left Corner Bar.  It just wasn't the same anymore and the new owners let the place rapidly go downhill until it failed and went out of business, which did not take very long  We also disliked the fact that the day they took over they fired every boy who worked there, some for years.  They had been promised they would not lose their jobs.  We did not appreciate that they had been flat out lied to.  We decided to meet elsewhere, but it just wasn't the same and we began losing interest. Eventually, less than a year later as I recall, it  just fizzled out. What became of our regulars?  None of us were spring chickens.  Some have passed on.  Some have returned to their home countries.  Some, like me, lost interest in the bars.  Some seem to have just vanished from the face of the earth. As far as I know, now I am the last one from the original group still left.   "What has always worried me about being one of the few is the way we keep on getting . . . fewer." -  Richard Burton (Flight Officer David Campbell), 'The Longest Day'

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