(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Another Driveway Moment* [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-12-25 Wednesday evening I had to dash out to Costco before it closed to pick up a very large size of something that I needed. The radio in my car is set to Oregon Public Broadcasting which is an affiliate of NPR (America’s ‘National Public Radio’.) I was in the store at the top of the hour and didn’t get back to my car until 8:15 PM and This American Life was already underway. Within a few seconds I knew I was facing a dilemma — was I going to have my driveway moment in Costco’s driveway while they were closing— or should I dash for home and share my attention to driving, in the pouring rain, at night during a winter storm, and have my driveway moment in my own driveway. Since I missed the first 15 minutes of the program I knew I’d be catching up on This American Life’s website. So I only paid ½ attention to the program. The more I listened, the more I realized this episode was a keeper. But I was having a hard time catching everything because of the Pickup Trucks (with Truck Nuts, natch!) speeding past my little red electric car while blaring their horns. I’m used to that, but this time I kinda deserved it — I was doing 30mph in a 55 mph zone — because of the weather and NPR. I don’t think they knew about NPR — or they’d probably have run me into the ditch. When I got home I listened to the last half safely parked in my driveway. Later that evening I went to the program’s website to get the link to download the Episode and found out it would become available Sunday (yesterday) at 6PM (Saskatoon Time.) Evidently the program has an agreement to exclusively publish on NPR for the first week of release. This episode (#820) was about how Michigan’s Republican Party was taken over by the MAGA Crazies in the 2022 mid-terms, who are now running it into the ground . They are eating each other alive, and have reached their only logical conclusion that they have been infiltrated by the Deep State which is causing them to hate each other. Bless their hearts! Michigan is officially considered a Swing State with 15 electoral votes, although for the last few years they have voted mostly for Democrats . . . except for Inmate #P01135809 in 2018 who won Michigan by 0.2 percent. Last year they elected 7 Democrats and 6 Republicans to Congress. All their U.S. Senators have been Democrats for the last 40 years except for 1 Republican who slithered in for one term in 1994. This American Life has been around for 27 years. This was their 820th. story. Each week's show has a theme, explored in several "acts". Each act is produced by a combination of staff and freelance contributors. It is story telling at its best. This is about the best in-depth reporting you can find on the radio. Now, Kristina Karamo was elected in February, and the party did not pull together behind their new chair. There was a ton of infighting still going on after the first few months. And the first major test of her leadership, her ability to get things done, came this fall-- the Mackinac Island conference. It's a big, symbolic, fabled event in Michigan politics. Politicians, lobbyists, presidential candidates all make their way up to Northern Michigan and get on a ferry to this island where no cars are allowed-- horse-drawn carriages instead. So the whole place does smell like horse shit, which makes it a perfect setting for a group of politicos. They hobnob. They gossip. They make deals. They raise money. And the test for Kristina was with all the old-school Republicans she and her followers have ejected from the party, could she raise enough money to even hold the conference? Would it even happen? Towards the end of their conference they had broken into various factions each accusing the other of stealing money. At the end Karamo was trying to calm everyone down by breathlessly exclaiming that the party was not bankrupt . . . they were just having a hard time coming up with the $110,000 speaker's fee-- for Jim Caviezel.# I guess since Kristina chased Betsy DeVos out of the party — she no longer returns her calls. You can download a mp3 or stream this Episode ( or more than 700 others ) to play on your computer, Or, you can download the podcast, Or you can read the transcript (very well done — it even identifies the bumper music between acts) Or, for the premier experience listen to the audio while reading the transcript — so you don’t miss a syllable. * driveway moment (plural driveway moments) A brief compulsion to finish listening to something on the radio before leaving one's car. quotations ▼ I had another driveway moment today, this time listening to David Sedaris. # It is temptation to believe Kristina may have confused Caviezzel with a biblical figure. 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