Yesterday I said I was getting back to eating vegetables, and I guess I did, but the number of carbs I managed to cram into my piehole Monday was truly horrifying. Fucking leftovers. Fucking delicious, delicious leftover tortilla chips that happen to be the best in the city, and maybe the world. And also, there was pie. So we’ll hope for a better Tuesday, because I am feeling like the Michelin man.
Meanwhile, there is some bloggage you might want to peruse.
The other at the gym I heard two men, the same two I heard a couple months ago, telling one another that Hillary Clinton had Vince Foster killed, cheering for Donald Trump and his comments about anchor babies. So, yet another think piece about Trump vis-a-vis the contemporary GOP, but not a terrible one.
Eight overdoses in a little more than an hour in one county in Pennsylvania:
The toll wasn’t from a supply of heroin that had been poisoned on its journey from South America to southwestern Pennsylvania. Nor was there an isolated party where careless junkies miscalculated the amount of heroin they could handle. Last week was simply an extreme example of what communities in parts of the country are enduring as the heroin epidemic rages on. …The national drug-death total, larger than that from auto accidents, is disproportionately concentrated in the Rust Belt, the Great Lakes region and the Northeast.
Yep.
And I’m taking my fat self off to bed now. Protein on Tuesday, lots of water and leafy greens, and not much else, I think.
Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on August 25, 2015 at 6:45 am
It’s the “lack of hope” pain more than even the very real physical pain at times that’s driving this hunger for analgesics of all sorts. Obesity is one form of it, heroin, meth, and synthetics are another — but drinking a case of Bud Light and driving over promising young men a block from my house is still the bulk of it right up the middle of the desire to lose oneself, stop feeling, and get numb. Add in affordability that beats Bud Light or a bottle of Jack, and you’ve got what I’m looking at on the pavement now as I drive to the courthouse.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on August 25, 2015 at 6:49 am
Re: Trump, the fact that people just love that he doesn’t care what people think is firing lots of the enthusiasm even among people who can be gotten to admit that there’s no there there. And their justification for knowing that, but liking him anyway, comes down to decades of reinforcement that “they’re all just gonna do what they’re gonna do anyhow, no matter what they say, so what does it matter what they say?” A retort I have precious little response for.
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coozledad said on August 25, 2015 at 7:27 am
Ol’ Sleepy Eye makes some ass noises with his mouth, continues on campaign of never going to be president:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/08/24/scott-walker-obama-should-show-some-backbone-by-canceling-chinese-state-visit/
Also “Carolina Pregnancy Center?” it’s past time for the Jesus freaks to take their whorin’ back to the holler.
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coozledad said on August 25, 2015 at 7:41 am
Whorin’ AND a’ thievin’? Ya don’t say.
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/08/michigan-tea-partiers-caught-in-affair-plot-also-misused-taxpayer-money/
I just hope there’s video of their Sermon on the Mount, complete with a little amuse bush of speaking in tongues. The taxpayers deserve a little somethin’ somethin’ back.
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beb said on August 25, 2015 at 8:20 am
You know Courser and Gamrat are toast because they were caught stealing. Nothing upsets a politician like stealing the money they were planning to steal.
Jeff and 1 and 2 pretty much sums up how I feel about Nancy’s two bloggage posts today.
Talkingpointsmemo is running the headline “Christie, Cruz Hammer Cancer-Stricken Jimmy Carter.” But from what I’ve read of the article Christie and Cruz are just looking for a “failed” Democratic Presidency to compare Obama’s to. Only the pickings are kind of slim. Clinton was hardly a falure, LBJ, aside from Viet Nam was no failure, nor was Kennedy, Truman or FDR. The only Dem who hasn’t fared well in history is Carter. So they’re picking on his administration, though not actually he himself. I’m used to GOP throwing out lying headlines. I’m disappointed seeing Dems do that.
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Jeff Borden said on August 25, 2015 at 9:00 am
The only word that describes the GOP these days is anger. . .pure, unadulterated anger. There is no talk about creating new jobs. . .no talk about what they would replace the ACA with if elected. . .no talk about any greater vision for the nation ala NASA or the interstate highway system. Just a lot of anger, whether directed at the poor, immigrants, women or, of course, the world beyond our borders, where all this simplistic talk will surely turn to more conflict and war.
Republicans always worry me. The party of today actually scares me. One of these mopes has perhaps a 50-50 shot at being elected president, particularly if Hillary Clinton is the nominee, bringing their simplified view to an increasingly complex and interconnected world.
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brian stouder said on August 25, 2015 at 9:06 am
President Carter has always gotten lots of derision from the R’s, and – truly – it has always struck me as irrational pap, even when I was an NR-subscribing R myself.
Carter himself always (as recently as the past month) joked that he was one helicopter short of re-election (referencing the failed rescue mission in Iran) – and what makes it funny is that it is true.
George Herbert Walker Bush was a zero of a president, in my opinion – putting us into one military adventure after the next – including Somalia (AFTER he had lost the election to Clinton, but before WJC was inaugurated)…
And Saint Ronald Reagan really and truly should have been impeached. The question I’d ask Rafael Cruz and/or The Donald or Huckabee or Jeb! is: would you favor impeachment proceedings against President Obama, if he admitted to selling American weapons to Iran, and then using the cash to finance terrorism and a secret, non-Congressionally approved war in Central America?
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adrianne said on August 25, 2015 at 9:37 am
That story on the heroin epidemic in Washington County, Pa., is really haunting, especially the detail of the young mom unconscious in a Walgreen’s bathroom, her 2-year-old son strapped to his stroller. The urge to numb oneself against the horrors of living can seem overwhelming.
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nancy said on August 25, 2015 at 10:06 am
I’m amazed by the cognitive dissonance of people who say they love Trump because he says what he thinks and doesn’t give a fig what others think, etc. How many of them would tolerate that behavior from, say, their children? Or their spouse? (“Yes, your ass does look fat in those jeans.”) Or any other member of the public they have to interact with on a regular basis? I’ve long said that “I’m not politically correct” really means something along the spectrum of “I’m an asshole” to “I’m a racist and bigot.” So they think Trump “tells it like it is,” when he’s only telling them what they want to hear, i.e., we can build a wall on the Mexican border and hand them the bill, that we can “get tough” with China and bend them to our will, etc.
They say they want honesty from politicians, when in truth, when a politician dares to tell the truth, when s/he says, “Our infrastructure is a nightmare, and unless we want more freeway bridge collapses we’re going to have to sink some serious coin into it, and no, we can’t do it by ‘cutting waste,’ we’ll have to raise taxes,” they howl like toddlers. Which is what they are. Big babies.
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Suzanne said on August 25, 2015 at 10:37 am
I can’t help but wonder how all the people that want godliness in their elected leaders but think Carter was one of the worst presidents we’ve had in the 20th century do not see the dissonance there. Carter was, and still is, a godly man who lives out his faith and made no bones that he consulted God on a daily basis when in office. And by many in the Christian Right, he was an abject failure as president. So it should seem obvious to them that the two don’t necessarily go hand in hand. And yet, that’s what they look for in a candidate.
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brian stouder said on August 25, 2015 at 10:51 am
Which is what they are. Big babies.
Precisely. ‘I want what I want, and I want it NOW!!’
No context, no complications, no fine-print.
I’ve been plowing through the Nelson Rockefeller biography* by Richard Norton Smith, and other than his ‘yooge’ fortune, Rocky couldn’t be more different from The Donald.
Indeed, Rocky worked in three presidential administrations, and governed a state, before he ran for the Big Enchilada (excuse the Illegal Immigrant lingo) – so he had an idea what the job was, that he coveted.
The Donald doesn’t have any idea, nor do the folks that are thrilled by him.
*the dust jacket proudly proclaims that the book was a “Pulitzer Prize Finalist” – which encapsulates that the book is compelling enough, but….
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brian stouder said on August 25, 2015 at 10:53 am
sorry about the italics-without-end
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brian stouder said on August 25, 2015 at 11:10 am
BREAKING NEWS: The Donald just referred to Megan Kelly as a “bimbo”.
huh.
I think Nancy is overdue to suggest (and possibly rightly) that The Donald is really engaged in Performance Art. This has got to be the inside-joke of the 21st century, right?
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Bob (not Greene) said on August 25, 2015 at 11:26 am
Brian, I’d go along with the “performance art” theory if the 20th century wasn’t littered with characters who acted and sounded just like Trump and whose countries’ disaffected populations were so blinded by their own bigotries and failures that they unleashed monsters onto the world stage. Trump isn’t running for president; he’s running for dictator. And you’d be surprised how quickly the yokels would get in line for their brown shirts. I used to think I was overreacting, but I all can go on is what I’m seeing and the language I’m hearing. And it sounds awfully familiar.
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coozledad said on August 25, 2015 at 11:41 am
The Republican party, the Kochs and AFP built the Trump base out of the prolapsed asshole of America to stop the economic stimulus and derail the Affordable Care Act. The same Republicans whining about their dumb racists now where jerking off over them in 2010 and 2014. They were “real America’ and “The heartland” instead of shite ape products of Reagan’s dismantling of the educational system and fair labor standards.
I love watching these cretins bark at each other. I love watching Jeb Bush’s pissy id when he decompensates, publicly, on a daily basis now. The phrase “Violent Femme” comes to mind. I love watching the Republicans trying to out-Hitler each other.
Spoon up a big stankful of that greasy Waffle HouseBlut und Boden shit: You’re going to be eating a lot of it.
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/08/supporters-tell-horrified-gop-pollster-why-they-trust-trump-to-make-america-great-again-its-on-his-hat/
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brian stouder said on August 25, 2015 at 11:50 am
Cooze – could not agree more.
His whole ‘Final Solution’ for illegal immigration ought to be chilling to everyone, and sounds very like mid-1930’s Hitler.
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coozledad said on August 25, 2015 at 12:25 pm
This is the filth that needs to be herded up and deported:
http://juanitajean.com/dumber-than-bean-dip/
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Deborah said on August 25, 2015 at 12:54 pm
I’m killing time again while I wait for the train to the Albuquerque airport (actually it’s a train ride and then a bus) with Little Bird. We’re both going to the Midwest, she’s going to St. Louis and I’m going back to Chicago of course. The playground project is wrapping up, here’s a link to the latest on the Facebook page https://m.facebook.com/brubakerplayground/albums/1617839331837057/. I’m really happy with the way my little cars turned out.
Here’s something weird that has happened to me about 5 times in the last month: I keep getting people who I don’t know at all confirming my friend request. I have no idea what I did? Has this happened to any of you?
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Charlotte said on August 25, 2015 at 1:10 pm
Oh lordy — my mother just LOVES Trump. My mother who is one of those 75 year old white people angry about her loss of privilege. If the world was as it should be, she’d still have money (without, of course, having had to work for it) and black people would still be happy to be the housekeepers and chauffeurs of her youth and not the President, which she’s appalled by, (and well, everything about me would be different). Considering she lives on SS and a tiny inheritance Trump is just about the worst candidate for her imaginable, but she likes that he’s shouty and she still thinks she’s *really* a rich person so she’ll always side with the 1% and ugh. The whole thing makes me want to throw up.
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Brandon said on August 25, 2015 at 1:33 pm
This is the sleaziest campaign in years. Hawaii will vote for the Democratic nominee, allowing for those disenchanted with the Big Two to vote for a third-party candidate.
#luckyilivehawaii
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Scout said on August 25, 2015 at 2:13 pm
“His gleeful, attention-hogging boorishness—and the large crowds that have cheered it—cements a popular image of the party as standing for reactionary anger rather than constructive policies.”
The McDonald is fast food politics for the lazy and the ignorant who just want to throw down some cheap shitty fare, then sit around burping and scratching their balls. I have NO PATIENCE for anyone who thinks there is anything whatsoever OK about this punch-me-face moron. He and his idiot followers are not nice people. The world is watching, and it is not impressed.
Want me to tell you how I really feel? Haha
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Dexter said on August 25, 2015 at 2:25 pm
Brian…Trump has been blasting all his foes like a machine gun today…check out his blasts against Jeb Bush. He called George Pataki “Paw-Tacky” among his lashings today.
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Kirk said on August 25, 2015 at 2:34 pm
I wonder what kind of drugs Trump is on.
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alex said on August 25, 2015 at 2:39 pm
Roger Ailes finally grew a pair and told the Donald to STFU after he went on an unprovoked Twitter harangue at Megyn Kelly again, this time calling her a bimbo and telling her she looks like Nancy Grace after her respite from being on-air.
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Dexter said on August 25, 2015 at 3:06 pm
yeah alex…I heard he razzed Kelly for taking a long vacation.
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LAMary said on August 25, 2015 at 4:41 pm
I’ve been in a few somewhat heated discussions about Trump telling it like it is, speaking his mind or whatever. I try to convince people there is nothing tricky about shooting your mouth off. Nothing impressive about being a rude loudmouth. I don’t get it. Do they really think we need a president who is an asshole?
And another thing. I wonder how many undocumented employees Trump has in his hotels or working at his golf courses. The hospitality business would scream bloody murder if you shipped out everyone who was undocumented. They would have to raise their prices to make up for having to pay a fair wage.
I keep telling people that when I lived in NY thirty years ago everyone knew Trump was horrible. He’s only gotten worse. Why would you take him seriously?
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Connie said on August 25, 2015 at 4:54 pm
We have found ourselves in the midst of the Detroit Institute of Art’s Inside Out exhibition in Wolverine Lake. We are discovering fine art around every corner. All fitting with this season’s water theme.
On the dam is a steamboat by Vincent Van Gogh, while Sophie, Princess of Palestine graces the fitness trail. I have only seen the back of Winter Landscape in Moonlight, as I was in the car and it faces the front of the Dairy Twist where the lines form. Exactly one half mile on foot from our house.
My husband first discovered Coastal Scene of a Man Of War on one of his late night runs. It can only be fully seen from the boardwalk at the east end of Wolverine Lake, the far end of which is his 5k turn around point. He came home telling me about the painting of an old sailing ship.
So I have three more to find in the neighborhood.
He walked in Milford today and found two more that are part of the Huron River Water Trail. The first one he saw was mounted under a bridge so as to best be seen by canoeists on the Huron River. Watson and the Shark by John Singleton Copley really caught his attention. http://www.dia.org/calendar/event.aspx?id=4456
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Deborah said on August 25, 2015 at 5:30 pm
Connie, that is really cool.
Little Bird and I are at the airport finally. The train and then bus is great if you can make the timing work. My flight leaves in about an hour and a half and Little Bird’s in about two hours, so not horrible. I wish they had more trains running during the day though. The shuttle van cost $28 each, one way, and the train/bus only costs me as a senior $4, $9 normal fare.
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susan said on August 25, 2015 at 5:30 pm
Speaking of political/social dissonance, here is a photograph of a victim of the Okanogan fires in central Washington state, shaking hands with, and thanking, the fire fighters who saved his house from combusting. “The shirt [he is wearing] says ‘Lower Taxes + Less Government = More Freedom.’ You can buy one here on the site of the FreedomWorks Tea Party organization.” And I suppose he votes, too. What an ignoramous, maroon.
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coozledad said on August 25, 2015 at 6:17 pm
Remember the fawning treatment tongue-tied ignorant sociopath George W. Bush got from the DC press corps? Just give it a little while. They’ll be throating Donald Trump’s balls before you can say Mark Halperin.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on August 25, 2015 at 10:35 pm
This excellent radio piece bridges a number of NN.C constituencies: http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2015/08/25/detroit-underground-railroad
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