I found myself nodding off at 9 p.m. last night, so alas. However, part of me wanted to see the Trumpian margin of victory in Nevada. And it’s impressive — he got 46 percent. If this guy isn’t Mr. Inevitable at this point, I don’t know who is. Like Neil Steinberg, who pointed out the candidate’s astonishing (and underreported) use of the Gen. Pershing/pig’s blood libel, I am no longer even darkly amused. But this is our country, isn’t it?
So just in case you’re a GOP voter, and you’re looking at the second option on the menu, here’s a rather brutal profile of the guy running that show:
“Jeff Roe does not know the difference between fact and fiction,” said Joe Brazil, a county councilman in Missouri who unsuccessfully sued Mr. Roe for defamation after a 2006 blog post days before Mr. Brazil’s primary in a State Senate race.
The item focused on a sad event from Mr. Brazil’s youth, when, at 17, he killed a classmate in a dump-truck accident. Mr. Roe’s post suggested Mr. Brazil had consumed “quite a few beers.” But Mr. Brazil had not been drinking, the police said, and was not charged.
After watching coverage of the Iowa caucuses from his home in Augusta, Mo., Mr. Brazil said, he tried to reach the Carson campaign, hoping to offer a history lesson. “How could they be surprised?” he asked.
Don’t miss this detail, either:
Mr. Roe, who declined to be interviewed, was quick to establish a distinctive culture at Mr. Cruz’s headquarters in Houston. Top aides were required to move there. (Mr. Roe brought along his wife, Missy, the 2010 winner of the Mrs. Missouri United States pageant; their baby, Remington, named in part for the gun maker; and Mrs. Roe’s parents.)
I imagine Missy will be found soon, clutching the wheel of her car alongside a racing freeway, muttering to herself. Or maybe not. Maybe he chose the perfect better half. In which case Houston is totally her kind of town.
How bad it is: This guy is the “decent” one in the race. Was.
Jeb Lund is one of my favorite columnists working today, and I think he nails it here.
OK, time to put nose to grindstone. Freezing rain is pouring from the sky, and I’m out of bread, too. Wednesday! WOO.
Icarus said on February 24, 2016 at 9:06 am
We are bucking up for the first (and in all likelihood last) big storm in Chicagoland. From past experience it will either be a big hype that turns out to be nothing or something that catches *everyone* by surprise even though the news and social media have been droning on about it for days.
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brian stouder said on February 24, 2016 at 9:09 am
That Jeb Lund article strikes me as “on it” – 100%
This bit, in particular, says much
Doing so fails them all the time. Look at the Tea Party, which the Beltway (at various points) tried desperately to explain as populist resentment of Business As Usual, or a new libertarian moment. Only recently has the media madding crowd come around to some kind of consensus about it just being racist as hell.
Honestly, and not to just be a wise-acre, that is how the 1920’s-era Ku Klux Klan was main-streamed in Indiana; anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic, racist –
very Trumpian
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Deborah said on February 24, 2016 at 10:29 am
Icarus, this is my first day back in Chicago, great to come back with the possibility of a major winter storm. The lake is churning, the wind is howling, yep I’m back.
I’m typing this on my new iPad, it’s a gift from my husband’s uncle (the playground donor) my husband got one too. It came with a keypad which I haven’t taken the time to figure out yet. I gave my old iPad to Little Bird, which I hardly used anymore because it was so slow. This new iPad is a lot bigger than the old one, will take some getting used to holding it.
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MichaelG said on February 24, 2016 at 11:30 am
Glad to see you’re home safe, Deborah. Stay warm.
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Sherri said on February 24, 2016 at 12:01 pm
The only surprising thing about Jeff Roe is that he didn’t learn ratfucking as a College Republican, the usual breeding ground for his type.
Jeb Bush the nice guy in the campaign is the same as John Kasich the sane guy in the campaign: only if you don’t look at what they’ve done. Maybe it’s time to take the ‘boys’ off the bus and stop covering campaigns by embedding reporters, and spend that time with reporters looking at how the candidate has performed in the past.
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St Bitch said on February 24, 2016 at 12:06 pm
The video of Bernie getting arrested for protesting University of Chicago housing segregation in 1963 should give him a sweet bump in NC
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Icarus said on February 24, 2016 at 12:25 pm
Deborah like most things Chicago, the south side of the city and burbs will get the worst of it.
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Jolene said on February 24, 2016 at 12:55 pm
Bernie needs more than a bump in South Carolina. The Real Clear Politics average of polls has him at a 24-point disadvantage, and Politico is reporting that his schedule indicates that he has surrendered the state to Clinton. Everything I have been reading indicates that Clinton will be the nominee.
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alex said on February 24, 2016 at 1:21 pm
We’re on the southern edge of the storm and the roads are already very icy. I went out this morning to stock up on food and supplies.
I’ve been home all week getting ready for the next phase of the home renovation project. Yesterday tore out all of the carpeting and hauled it to the dump. Last night started having horrible respiratory problems no doubt because of the dirt and padding residue left behind by the carpet, and probably some mold in it as well. So today I’m scrubbing the floor with a trisodium phosphate solution and rinsing it with vinegar water. Lot of floor to cover.
I’ll be so glad when it’s all over. Right now taking a break in our one finished room, which has become my new favorite. It was a gloomy room we never really used; I’m sure now we’ll be living in it most of the time, even after the reno is done.
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beb said on February 24, 2016 at 1:26 pm
I don’t know why people are so concerned about who;ll be the Republican nominee because I don’t think a one of them planned for vote for the Republican nominee in the first place. So let them put up Trump or Rubio or Kasich. The thing to remember is that they’re all horrible people who are going to do horrible things to this country.
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St Bitch said on February 24, 2016 at 1:37 pm
As long as the odds are in Hillary’s favor, I can’t help but root for Bernie to hold up and keep things lively.
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brian stouder said on February 24, 2016 at 1:58 pm
Alex – I don’t envy you; my family and I learned just how truly stressful an ‘upside down’ household is, last summer
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Jolene said on February 24, 2016 at 1:58 pm
Liveliness is appealing, and, of course, Sanders should stay in the race as long as he thinks it’s the right thing to do. But it’s not free of cost. First, there’s the obvious cost of spending time to raise money and using that money to defeat Sanders rather than defeating Republicans.
More important, elevtions create division among Democrats, and, unlike the 2008 Clinton vs. Obama faceoff, this election doesn’t seem to be stirring up interest among voters. Compared to 2008, turnout is down in the four elections that have taken place so far.
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Deborah said on February 24, 2016 at 2:08 pm
This morning all I did was walk across the street to get my first look at the new place we’re closing on tomorrow. It was hard to walk upright because of the wind coming off the lake and there was a slick coating of ice on everything.
The new place is going to be cool but right now it’s so disconcerting because every inch of it is covered in mirrors, it feels like a carnival ride. For some reason the guy even covered one of the window bays in mirrors??? We are leaving the bathroom as is even though it’s got mirrors on all 4 walls (the shower door is mirrored on the outside) not because we want the mirrors but to save a little money on reno. I can’t even imagine what it will be like to use the space as it’s meant to be used. I will see every flaw on my body from all angles. Yikes. The floors in the unit are fantastic, all travertine marble throughout. The kitchen is small but nice, we’re not doing any reno in there either. It’s all pretty exciting but Lordy there is a lot to do the next couple of months.
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Scout said on February 24, 2016 at 2:17 pm
Unfortunately Democrats only seem to get wound up after 8+ years of Republican Presidential ratfckery. Only when we’re stuck in dumb wars and the economy is in flames do progressives get roused to get to the polls. The past 7 years of “liberal media” hysteria about how the Kenyan Muslim destroyer has ruined the country has energized those susceptible voters, while the people who understand that things are actually on track will be complacent and stay home. It’s like 2000 all over again and I’m worried. I’m worried it will be close enough to steal again. Americans. They dumb.
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Sherri said on February 24, 2016 at 2:28 pm
I don’t know how much more of this campaign I can take without Cooz.
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FDChief said on February 24, 2016 at 2:34 pm
Ceterum censeo GOP esse delendam.
The GOP serves no real useful purpose at this point. And in its existing form it is destroying the political conventions that make U.S. governance possible. We’re rapidly approaching 1859, and for much the same reasons, only instead of slavery the hothouse ideology “threatened” by change is some sort of hellbrew of racism, greed, and flopsweat panic fear of imaginary jihadi invasion. And stupidity – if you’re voting for Republicans because you’re mad at the wealthy vulture capitalists shipping your job overseas you’re in the same position as a pig voting for Jimmy Dean.
Nuke it from space. Seriously. That’s the only way to be sure.
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Heather said on February 24, 2016 at 2:54 pm
Deborah, the guest bathroom at my high school boyfriend’s house was mirrored all the way around. I always wondered why. Who wants to look at themselves during that activity from all angles?
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Dexter said on February 24, 2016 at 3:07 pm
Any of yas ever hear this guy Eric Deters of the Northern Kentucky Tea Party speak? He’s a simple, loud mouthpiece for Trump who frequently is a guest on various WLW-AM Cincinnati radio shows. He has been named the chairman of his people and is now shooting off his loud voice in frenzied denunciations of “Barak HUSSEIN Obama”, HRC, Harry Reid, John Kerry, and a bunch of repuggs like Romney and McCain. Today he was shouting in the same tone and volume as those old Hitler rants you can see on History Channel nightly. Normally I would not listen to this crap but I had my hands busy frying sausage patties and could not get to the radio dial quickly enough.
Sleet, accumulating softly on sidewalk, street, and cars, but easily pushed off with little effort. Windy, just generally typical February. I’ll be on my to The Bahamas soon anyway as soon as I cash in my giant Powerball winner . All I have to do is wait for the numbers to match mine tonight…pins and needles. Ha.
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Connie said on February 24, 2016 at 3:15 pm
Deborah my experience with travertine is that it takes a lot of maintenance to keep looking good. Including regular buffing.
Just called a snow early closing.
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Deborah said on February 24, 2016 at 3:17 pm
Sherri, me too. About all you can do now is go to rurritable.wordpress.com, Coozledad’s blog. Here is part of a response he gave to a commenter who asked what he thought about the Republican situation:
“Per the Republicans, I always figured the money people would do whatever it took to silence their base and restore their pet monarchy, But it looks like it’s out of their hands. I don’t really know any Republicans i would regret seeing doing thirty years hard labor in the Everglades.”
I hope Coozledad will grace us with his presence again sometime soon.
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brian stouder said on February 24, 2016 at 3:23 pm
Guys like Cooz always get all the ladies!
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Deborah said on February 24, 2016 at 3:26 pm
Connie, I won’t mind keeping up with the floors. For some reason I’m a fiend about floors, I think I learned it from my mom. When I was growing up we had parquet floors and we joked that if we came in the house bleeding profusely our mom would clean up the floor before she attended to our wounds. I sweep like a maniac when I’m in Santa Fe where we have tile floors and I’m constantly wiping up the tiniest spots off the floors there. I really don’t like keeping up with carpeting though, it always just seems dusty and dirty to me no matter how recently I vacuumed. This travertine in the new place is more natural not highly polished, hard to explain. I can sweep and mop to my hearts content. And also the unit has radiant heating under the floor, so it’s warm if you walk on it barefoot or in just socks.
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susan said on February 24, 2016 at 3:35 pm
Sherri @16 – This might help you some.
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Mark P said on February 24, 2016 at 3:43 pm
I know it’s not politically correct to say this, but Trump’s campaign persona reminds me more and more of two figures in the not-so-distant past who used political dissatisfaction to take office, and then do their best to destroy the world.
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Dexter said on February 24, 2016 at 4:05 pm
Craig Crawford’s TrailMix blog’s lede:
”
A Clinton appointed federal judge has unleashed their ultimate nemesis, Judicial Watch, to conduct unlimited discovery on Hillary’s email mess. “How on earth can the court conclude there is not at minimum a reasonable suspicion of bad faith,” he said.”
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Suzanne said on February 24, 2016 at 4:32 pm
I still think it would be very interesting for Obama to nominate Trump to the Supreme Court. What would the GOP leaders do? Try to accept him to the SCOTUS to keep him from being POTUS? But they couldn’t without looking even more foolish than they do now as they’ve stated nobody gets a look and they mean NOBODY until after the election. If they refuse to even meet him as SCOTUS nominee, he continues his joyful scorched earth presidential campaign which, if successful, could send the GOP into the dustbin of history.
Oh, how I wish I was an author. This would make a fabulous story.
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Icarus said on February 24, 2016 at 5:00 pm
“It’s like 2000 all over again and I’m worried. I’m worried it will be close enough to steal again. Americans. They dumb.”
my fear too.
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Jeff Borden said on February 24, 2016 at 5:12 pm
Any reasonable person should be deeply concerned about Trump. It’s hard to picture exactly what would happen if man were to win election, which is not at all out of the question. Just operationally, how would someone who has never held an elective office before get up to speed in the Oval Office? How would a man who speaks off the cuff and traffics in rumor and innuendo be expected to read the gazillions of briefing documents and other data necessary to make decisions in the rational world? We know nothing about any of his advisers, if he has them, and no inkling of who he would turn to in his administration.
Fielding Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee scares the shit out of me. She is such a polarizing figure and carries so much baggage, but Bernie Sanders would get thumped like a pinata for his “socialist” views. Those who keep pointing to how he fares against GOP candidates in matchups ignore the Republicans have yet to turn their guns and money on him yet. They would turn him into George McGovern or Michael Dukakis.
With the election of Barack Obama, I finally felt like I had voted FOR a candidate I liked and admired rather than holding my nose for the lesser of two evils. I’ll vote for whoever wins the Democratic nomination because the GOP has descended into total madness, but I feel no enthusiasm at all for Ms. Clinton and very little for Sanders.
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annie said on February 24, 2016 at 5:18 pm
now I’m thoroughly depressed.
I was wondering about the racial make up of NN readers. Are we all white?
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brian stouder said on February 24, 2016 at 5:34 pm
annie, I’m a white guy, indeed. The one operational definition of that is that I get the ‘white guy privilege’ of never having feared the police, (for one example), in my lifetime.
Plus, thirty years ago I got my job via ‘white-guy affirmative action’ (a friend’s bother-in-law knew of an opening, and I got the tip, and got hired).
I’d like to think I know just enough to know how much I don’t know (nor ever will) – which is at least a half-a-notch better than nothing at all, eh?
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brian stouder said on February 24, 2016 at 5:40 pm
I was going to say – really, the definition of “white” or “black” is arbitrary, and becomes quite slippery if, for example, you’re a racist legislator and want to pass a law banning all black people from moving into Indiana (for example).
What if my mom and dad call themselves “white” – but mom had a black parent? If we accept those terms, then – I’m 1/4 “black”, yes?
When they were passing laws like that, they’d often go for the arbitrary definition of “1/8” black makes you “black” (so if you have great grandparent who was arbitrarily considered “black”, you are, too)
But of course, all this is poppycock and non-sense, right up until…it gets used against you, to disenfrachise or otherwise take advantage of you
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Sherri said on February 24, 2016 at 5:55 pm
Trump is a scary guy, and I could be very wrong, but I’m not so sure he’d be nearly as dangerous in the White House as Rubio. He’d be an embarrassment, for sure, and he’d be incompetent, but I don’t think he’d be able to get enough done to be really dangerous. Rubio, on the other hand, strikes me as ripe to be the puppet for the next Cheney. Not ready for prime time, but the best suit the Republican establishment can put forward to counter Trump (since they, like everybody who has spent more than 10 minutes with him, hates Cruz.) The problem for them is, I don’t think they can get Cruz to drop out, and as long as Cruz hangs around, he likely bleeds just enough from Rubio to make it impossible for Trump to lose.
I agree with Jeff, I think the Republicans would make Sanders look like Dukakis. Sanders isn’t going to win the nomination, though, unless you live in the right wing bubble and think that Clinton is going to be indicted any day now for (some reason, I still can’t understand precisely what).
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Deborah said on February 24, 2016 at 6:18 pm
Annie, I threw that same question out a few years back, or something like it. I didn’t get a response.
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Sherri said on February 24, 2016 at 6:52 pm
I’m white. I’m guessing we all are; if somebody isn’t, I’d be delighted to hear from them!
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Julie Robinson said on February 24, 2016 at 8:15 pm
Well…after a lifetime of of assumed Irish/Welsh/German heritage, I learned of a black great-great-grandmother just a couple of weeks ago. I think this makes me 1/16, assuming of course that she was actually all black, though it’s been suggested there was also indigenous Canadian heritage. I’ll know more when I get my DNA test results.
That said, my upbringing was of course completely white and to claim anything other than white privilege would be a sham.
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Sherri said on February 24, 2016 at 9:21 pm
Have I mentioned lately how much I love Dahlia Lithwick? I think her idea here is perfect: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2016/02/senate_democrats_should_hold_shadow_hearings_for_obama_s_supreme_court_nominee.html
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Brandon said on February 24, 2016 at 9:22 pm
Hawaiian.
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St Bitch said on February 24, 2016 at 10:35 pm
I’ve sniped at a friend, who’s a rabid Sandernista, about his dismissive tone toward my demographic (white women over the age of 55)…and have grumbled to myself every time he takes a swipe at Hillary on FB that he’s lost sight of the bigger picture.
However, after the Repubs broker the hell out of their convention, Hillary is gonna need to be in fighting trim for the general election, and Bernie is a worthy sparring partner to keep her on her toes.
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brian stouder said on February 24, 2016 at 10:43 pm
St B – agreed! Bernie has HRC in fighting-trim, and that’s a good thing.
Shout-out to Deborah & her husband: wanna acquire an affordable home in a nice city that’s not terribly far from Chicago?
Check this out:
http://www.journalgazette.net/news/local/Wright-home-keeps-historic-designation-11638718
the lead:
A Fort Wayne house designed by famed American architect Frank Lloyd Wright will remain a local historic district, the city’s Historic Preservation Commission unanimously decided Monday. During an at-times contentious public hearing at Citizens Square, the owner of the property, Richard J. Herber, threatened to sue the commission and left the hearing uttering obscenities. Herber’s home, the John D. Hayes House at 3901 N. Washington Road, is the only Wright-designed house in Allen County. Dating to the 1950s, the home is a basically unchanged example of Wright’s Usonian style, in which he hoped to bring his ideas about architecture to a wider audience.
Betcha it would cost lots less than digs in Chi-town!
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Deborah said on February 24, 2016 at 10:43 pm
I’d watch the Dahlia Lithwick proposal for shadow hearings, I wonder if the media would cover them?
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Charlotte said on February 24, 2016 at 11:05 pm
It’s heresy in some of the circles I run in, but I’d love to see a Clinton-Sanders ticket. He’d bring in the younger voters, she’d bring in all the Republicans who aren’t crazy people and who can’t vote for Trump, and Sanders would continue to hold her feet to the liberal fire. And as Biden has demonstrated, VP doesn’t have to be an empty office.
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alex said on February 24, 2016 at 11:47 pm
Julie, we have a similar story as regards my maternal grandfather’s lineage. His dad was a big swarthy guy who married a woman in Adams County in the 1890s and they had several children. She then divorced him for unknown reasons, put her children into an orphanage and moved home with her parents. He went to work as a ditch digger in Fort Wayne and cohabited with a black woman whom he never legally married, and died relatively young. He maintained a relationship with my grandfather who went to barber school in his teens and spent his life working as a barber in the hotels in downtown Fort Wayne. My grandfather was by all appearances caucasian. I don’t know how my grandmother met him, but she eloped with him around 1920. Her family accepted her husband and gifted them a home to live in when they lost their home during the depression.
My mom did an Ancestry.com DNA test which didn’t show any sub-Saharan African, but did show Mediterranean Region or some such designation which encompassed Greece, Albania, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Egypt, which was a surprise. It also showed zero British which was a big shocker because of my maternal grandmother’s well-documented Yankee lineage. I don’t know if the Ancestry tests are all that reliable, but it’s conceivable that many of those who emigrated from England to America might not necessarily be English, even if they bore English surnames like Fitch, which was theirs. Her test also showed some generalized Western European which could include German, French, Dutch and Swiss, as well as some Scandinavian and some Irish. It also revealed a small percentage of Jewish. We knew that there were intermarriages with Dutch and Alsatian by our Fitch forebears.
I’m going to do the test one of these days and see what results I get. My dad’s Hungarian. I’m curious how it will compare with my mother’s test.
It’s kind of a running joke in my family that my grandmother must have fucked the mailman or the milkman because my mom was a somewhat Asian-looking child and people always remarked that she didn’t look like her siblings. Old photos bear this out. She thinks that I look like Genghis Khan. I do have somewhat of an Asian look but I’m not sure if this might be some throwback from my father’s Hungarian heritage. I’ve met Hungarians who look like Buddhas.
In any case, I consider myself white and have been raised to think of myself as such even though I live in a place where pure white is reserved for the doughy Germans and ruddy hilljacks and everyone else is some sort of trash in their eyes, even though we’re socially their betters. As a kid I got interrogated about being Mexican or of some other type because of my sallow/olive complexion and dark hair which is still not gray even in my mid-fifties.
Ask the locals and I’m probably a WINO. White in name only.
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