The tape is broken.

I have to make little sticky notes about this stuff and get it out of the way right up front, so: Sherri, send me your email address, so I can share it with Basset, who wants to know something about your transportation package.

Also, MichaelG? Send up a flare. We’re worried about you.

And now it is Friday, or nearly Friday. Another insane week on the national scene, in which the president unveiled a budget that would make him a literal granny-starver. Of course it won’t go through like that, but here’s what we are in for, for the next four years.

Forcing rictus-like smile here.

At least we’re not one of these people:

In interviews, nearly a dozen White House aides and federal agency staffers described a litany of suspicions: that rival factions in the administration are trying to embarrass them, that civil servants opposed to President Donald Trump are trying to undermine him, and even that a “deep state” of career military and intelligence officials is out to destroy them.

Aides are going to great lengths to protect themselves. They’re turning off work-issued smartphones and putting them in drawers when they arrive home from work out of fear that they could be used to eavesdrop. They’re staying mum in meetings out of concern that their comments could be leaked to the press by foes.

Many are using encrypted apps that automatically delete messages once they’ve been read, or are leaving their personal cellphones at home in case their bosses initiate phone checks of the sort that press secretary Sean Spicer deployed last month to try to identify leakers on his team.

Imagine working like this, day after day. Would it be worth it, because you were in the Oval? Or would it be the sort of soul-sucking hellishness that makes you lie in bed at night and stare at the ceiling with laser-beam eyes?

And here, of course, is another terrible story about our world today, heroin division:

West Virginia officials estimate 150,000 residents — 8 percent of its population — needed substance abuse treatment in 2016. Just a fifth received help from treatment providers belonging to the state’s top behavioral health association. And only 156 detox beds were available across the entire state.

“There are not enough resources available,” said Kim Miller, director of corporate development at the Prestera Center, West Virginia’s largest behavioral health service provider. “There’s a workforce shortage. If we could pay people better, we could have a more robust workforce — more docs, more psychiatrists, more counselors — and more treatment.”

Went big for Trump, who wants to cut drug treatment from health insurance.

I don’t want to leave you with bummer stuff, but it’s almost the weekend, and hey! Happy St. Patrick’s Day. The Irish are a wonderful race. Enjoy it.

Posted at 9:34 pm in Current events |
 

66 responses to “The tape is broken.”

  1. Sherri said on March 17, 2017 at 2:35 am

    I was down at the ACLU offices today, having lunch and listening to the teletownhall that the national office was giving about the first 60 days of the administration. The short version: it’s good that trump can’t shut up, because the lawsuits write themselves. There are briefs written based on some of the leaked EOs, ready to file if they come to pass. The ACLU alone has a dozen suits on the Muslim ban, so if nothing else, they’re being sand in the gears forcing the administration to fight rather than work on other stuff.

    ACLU membership has tripled nationally since the election, from about 400k to 1.2M. Our state chapter has also tripled, from 25k to 75k.

    676 chars

  2. Sherri said on March 17, 2017 at 3:09 am

    A group of seniors from assisted living take a field trip: http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/marijuana/better-than-bingo-seniors-take-field-trip-to-seattle-pot-store/

    174 chars

  3. ROGirl said on March 17, 2017 at 5:38 am

    Whether you voted for Trumpy or work for him, you signed up for what has come to pass.

    86 chars

  4. Suzanne said on March 17, 2017 at 7:27 am

    I grew up on a steady diet of how horrible the liberal ACLU was and in adulthood, the criticism continued among my friends & family. My how things change. I sent them some money last month. I will probably send them more.

    225 chars

  5. adrianne said on March 17, 2017 at 7:39 am

    Will the insane proposed cuts to programs like Meals on Wheels be the tipping point for Trump? Hell, I don’t know, I thought the same of countless moments before. But this is truly nuts.

    186 chars

  6. coozledad said on March 17, 2017 at 8:20 am

    He’s an in-your-face nose picker- a subway masturbator, a frotteur, and he’s educationally retarded. Republicans voted for him because he’s their moral template, and they love the smell of a moneyed man’s ass. Better still, a fraudulent moneyed man. On some reptilian brain level, they know how despised they are, but it just gets them off more.
    https://twitter.com/DavidCornDC/status/842705338025623552

    404 chars

  7. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on March 17, 2017 at 8:34 am

    Right now, suicide is racing heroin OD deaths in this border Appalachian county, but I tend to see many heroin ODs as suicide by alternate means, so it may be a difference without a distinction.

    194 chars

  8. basset said on March 17, 2017 at 8:45 am

    I would hate to be the Trump advance person who handled arrangements for his speech here this week. Lots of admirers there, street outside covered up with em, but too few security checkpoints going into the hall, admission started too late, and even though the speech was delayed half an hour there were still plenty of empty seats when he went on.

    349 chars

  9. basset said on March 17, 2017 at 8:47 am

    Also… homemade corned beef has been in the brine since Monday, great expectations for tonight.

    96 chars

  10. brian stouder said on March 17, 2017 at 9:08 am

    I would hate to be the Trump advance person who handled arrangements for his speech here this week.

    Agreed! And think of the folks in charge of security.

    Everything else aside – this is the American president, and we don’t need ‘awful awful’ – followed by all that ‘deep state/conspiracy/Hillary-did-it! stuff, for the rest of our lives

    349 chars

  11. coozledad said on March 17, 2017 at 9:10 am

    Like the SS and Gestapo absorbing most of Germany’s “pre-Nazi” police forces intact, Trump comes to power with a ready-made army of amoral skinhead dumbshits:

    http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/canadian-nurses-working-in-us-rejected-1.4026554

    Already starting to pounce on the “desirables” as well as the blacks and the browns. They’ll be arresting their political enemies soon enough.

    394 chars

  12. Connie said on March 17, 2017 at 9:12 am

    IU lost, Butler won. A fine night of basketball.

    I fell for an April Fool’s joke a couple of years ago, in which Steve Alford being spotted in the Indy airport late one night led to rumors of Krean’s firing.

    Congratulations Brian. Do the other five attend board meetings as frequently as you do?

    302 chars

  13. john (not mccain) said on March 17, 2017 at 9:30 am

    Happy to be one of the people who helped triple the ACLU’s membership. I also started giving monthly to a local organization that provides food, shelter and clothing to the homeless. Donald and the rest of the Trumpscum are truly an inspiration. May we soon be celebrating their complete loss of power.

    305 chars

  14. Judybusy said on March 17, 2017 at 9:32 am

    Russia is violating the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, and a brief snippet of Pod Save America has me pretty freaked out. Representative Seth Moulton of Massachusetts talked about his grave concern for a nuclear confrontation between us and Russia. I know Obama also warned Trump that a nuclear confrontation was his biggest national security threat, alhtough N. Korea was more of a concern at the time. But, yeah, taking food out of people’s mouths is a far greater priority.

    557 chars

  15. Julie Robinson said on March 17, 2017 at 9:33 am

    You better believe Alford is very much in the running. AD Fred Glass says having IU ties is a double-check plus. Of course, this is the same man who turned down the chance for the Hoosiers to play at home for the NIT, because it’s spring break and he thought it would reflect poorly on IU to show Assembly Hall with empty seats. No, losing in the first round of the NIT doesn’t reflect poorly at all.

    My hubby has been reduced to cheering for Purdue in the big dance just to support the Big 10. This from a man who bleeds cream and crimson.

    544 chars

  16. coozledad said on March 17, 2017 at 9:38 am

    Trump is trying to stir up a war with his twin in Asia. Tillerson has no idea what he’s doing, and Trump has expressed a desire to use nuclear weapons.
    https://twitter.com/nytimesworld/status/842708115812503552

    But Republicans are your friends!

    248 chars

  17. basset said on March 17, 2017 at 9:40 am

    posting more than usual this morning since my express bus into the city from our suburban park & ride didn’t show up and I’ve been on the locals for close to two hours… anyway, Obama’s in Hawaii and reasonable people would say it does look suspicious:
    http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/03/16/right_wing_journalists_ask_the_big_questions_what_is_hawaii_native_barack.html

    387 chars

  18. coozledad said on March 17, 2017 at 9:54 am

    A quick one, for all the Ryan fanbois:
    https://youtu.be/LT3Px11xN-0?t=3

    72 chars

  19. FDChief said on March 17, 2017 at 10:03 am

    The current GOP reminds me of the descriptions of the post-1815 Bourbons; “learned nothing, forgot nothing”, that thing? Comes from being the political version of a cult, I suspect. Who but a complete asshole or a teatard Republican could imagine that throwing hungry old people off a meal plan could make them look like anything but utterly callous assholes? It’d be amusing if the assholes didn’t have such unrestrained power…

    I guess the amazing part of this is how many Americans seem to have such enthusiasm for being – and being characterized as – utter assholes…

    579 chars

  20. Dave said on March 17, 2017 at 10:28 am

    I get up this morning and read about Tillerson and nuclear confrontation and wonder what psycho alternative world these people live in. Tillerson knows about oil but he’s got to be lacking in a lot of other areas. The other day, there was a clip of Andrea Mitchell attempting to ask questions at a news briefing Tillerson held and he ignored them all. The comment was that he has not yet answered a single question from any reporter. It might lead one to believe that he doesn’t because he has no idea what he’s talking about but, hmm, just speculation on my part.

    MichaelG, I’m sure we’ve all been wondering about you. Connie, how do I say that was such a thing that you’ve done but it must have eliminated a lot of struggling and pain, so may it all work out for the best. Basset, my son is back in your area after a couple of years of diversion in Miami, he’s living in Antioch, where I’m sitting right now. He had enough of Miami forever and was able to get a position with the company that he worked for here before. So, it can be said that Nashville is far more attractive than Miami.

    1101 chars

  21. coozledad said on March 17, 2017 at 10:30 am

    Enda Kenny to Trump;

    Long before this mango shitgoblin tried to suffocate immigrants, children and the aged, there was an empire that dealt with us the same way your Paul Ryans, your Steve Kings and your Bannons did. They enforced starvation upon an entire country they regarded as niggers, and they did it in the language of Christian compassion.

    That mantle has passed from 1840’s Britain to the sub-men in control of a now benighted United States, suffused with shart sniffers, cunts and sleeve-jobbers wrapped like a runny cheese in the flag.

    Well I say to you, as Brendan Behan would undoubtedly have said, Die sniffing your puke, you boiled scrotum of a reeking subset of men, and rot that short step to pure shite afore they can box your stinking arse!

    https://twitter.com/malonebarry/status/842712911076343809

    837 chars

  22. brian stouder said on March 17, 2017 at 10:38 am

    btw – thanks, Connie! I haven’t missed more than a few meetings, over the past 7 or 8 years – but on the other hand, the board does a lot of other things (community related) – which is to say that I know just enough to know how much I don’t know!

    246 chars

  23. Connie said on March 17, 2017 at 11:13 am

    So Steve Alford, whose program do you want to be part of? Be part of a long history? Wooden’s or Bobby Knight’s?

    My favorite Wooden story: the IHSAA paid for part of the construction of Hinkle Fieldhouse at Butler U to make it big enough for the State basketball champions to be held there. In the very first state HS championship game held there (1928 ?) Wooden was the Captain of the losing team.

    403 chars

  24. Connie said on March 17, 2017 at 11:21 am

    Thanks to every one for your kind comments about my amputation. From the initial doctor’s suggestion to the surgery took three months of discussions involving what ended up being a total of four doctors. It is nice to be healthy.

    And one of those doctors is always on the regional lists of best infectious diseases specialists. Which is how I ended up with a picc line administering heavy antibiotics to myself at home for two different thirty day sessions.

    460 chars

  25. beb said on March 17, 2017 at 12:38 pm

    Bassett: do you make home corned beef because of a lack of butcher shops carrying them or do you like how you prepare it better? Detroit’s Eastern Market has several good butcher shops where you can get a fine corned beef. My wife does it up in a slow cooker, doing the cabbage, carrots and potatoes on the stove. It’s so delicious. We don’t have it as often as we should.

    Speaking of food and my wife. Recently she had some teeth pulled in preparation for dentures. She’s been miserable since her mouth hurts too much to eat. She’s existed on yogurt and rice. Latest night (Thursday) because basketball had taken over so many channels we ended up watching “Carnival Eats” on the cooking channel. They had things like deep-fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches (with chocolate dipping sauce. And my wife was “I want to go there right now!” Another concoction was was a grilled cheese sandwich with deep-fried mozzarella sticks — four kids of cheeses, piled on another grilled cheese sandwich with four different kinds of cheese. This was the favorite creation of a dietician (!!). That was a sandwich to die for and to die from.

    The Canadian nurses working in the US is a Detroit story. I can not understand why after all these years border guards are being such assholes about this. I’ve heard about a bus load of canadian day-trippers being turned back from a visit to a casino. I think that happened out west. There’s there’s the case of Mohammed Ali, Jr. being detained for several hours returning from a trip overseas. He was asked to speak to a Congressional committee about his experience. And afterwards while taking a domestic flight out of DC that very day was detained again. Apparently because, though American born, he is a Muslim.

    I’ve often wondered just what it is that makes up the conservative mind. The name suggests they believe in tradition, and traditions implies they believe in honesty and personal honor. But does one square that with one of Trump’s first executive orders rolling back the fiduciary responsibility EO of President Obama. You would think that a rule saying money managers must act in their clients best interests would be a good law since it enforces the honor and honesty portion of conservatives. And if history has taught us one thing, it’s that where money isinvolved people tend to be less honorable than they should.

    Another early rescission was the Pure Streams Act (I’m not sure of the exact wordage). This restricted where mining companies could dump their wastes so as to not pollute streams where people draw their drinking water. Again you would think that conservatives would want to preserve the purity of their precious bodily fluids and so support such a ruling. But no.

    A lot of people hate liberals because Rush Limbaugh has said so. Liberals want to take your money. Yes, so they can buy you nice things, like nice roads, drinking water that won’t kill you and air so clean you can see for miles. Conservatives seem to only want to move money into the hands of plutocrats. If they were trying to personally enrich themselves I could understand that but they seem to want to move all money into the hands of strangers who already have more money then they could possibly spend in a lifetime.

    I just can’t understand that.

    3315 chars

  26. brian stouder said on March 17, 2017 at 1:29 pm

    The most interesting thing I’ve read today:

    http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/17/opinions/merkel-the-charmer-qvortrup-opinion/index.html

    an excerpt:

    Merkel tends to be sweet, personable and charming when she meets with other leaders. While researching my book about her — “Angela Merkel: Europe’s Most Influential Leader” — I heard stories of how she had won over both David Cameron and Barack Obama by teaching them how to swear in German. She also, apparently, does a pretty accurate impression of the former Pope Benedict, which Putin was said to find particularly amusing.

    Didja know she has a degree in quantum physics? (I didn’t!)

    650 chars

  27. basset said on March 17, 2017 at 2:37 pm

    Beb, it’s our first attempt at homemade corned beef, just wanted to try it. I’m also working on canning pickled beef tongue, all the recipes I’ve seen require refrigeration.

    174 chars

  28. BItter Scribe said on March 17, 2017 at 3:35 pm

    Sherri @#1: Trump and his minions said and keep saying they want to ban Muslims, then go to court and try to argue that they’re not trying to ban Muslims. They’re like every movie villain who ever talked too much and sealed his doom.

    Julie @#15: Help me out. I’m trying to think of which Big 10 team’s colors are cream and crimson, and I can’t.

    424 chars

  29. Jakash said on March 17, 2017 at 3:50 pm

    If you’re not joking there, BS — context, my man, context! ; )

    http://iuhoosiers.com/sports/2015/4/1/GEN_2014010160.aspx

    “We will fight for
    the Cream & Crimson,
    For the glory of Old IU”

    202 chars

  30. Julie Robinson said on March 17, 2017 at 3:57 pm

    Sorry, Bitter, for assuming everyone would know that cream and crimson are the colors of Indiana University. Hubsters and I are both alums.

    139 chars

  31. Sherri said on March 17, 2017 at 4:05 pm

    I don’t think Trump like Angela Merkel very much. Bush gave her a shoulder rub, but trump looked like he’d like to hit her. Or go back to his room and cry. Or both.

    164 chars

  32. MichaelG said on March 17, 2017 at 4:12 pm

    Thank you for your concern. I’m still here. It was a rather rough week but I’m feeling a bit better now. We’ll see how it goes.

    136 chars

  33. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on March 17, 2017 at 4:13 pm

    Julie, check your husband’s vital signs. When a Hurryin’ Hoosier starts to root for us Boilermakers, there may be underlying chronic issues that are provoking the crisis. That’s serious stuff.

    #BoilerUp!

    206 chars

  34. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on March 17, 2017 at 4:13 pm

    Huzzah for MichaelG! Grace and peace your way, sir.

    51 chars

  35. Sherri said on March 17, 2017 at 4:14 pm

    the question must be asked: is Paul Ryan a sociopath, or merely a soulless bastard?

    https://thinkprogress.org/paul-ryan-says-he-fantasized-about-cutting-health-care-for-the-poor-at-his-college-keggers-7aa0accc928b#.dptgxoo7i

    228 chars

  36. Sherri said on March 17, 2017 at 4:16 pm

    Glad to have you still among us, MichaelG.

    42 chars

  37. brian stouder said on March 17, 2017 at 4:37 pm

    What Sherri said!

    (Regarding our intemperate Speaker, and our longtime community member, MichaelG)

    108 chars

  38. Suzanne said on March 17, 2017 at 4:39 pm

    I saw a clip of tRump and Angela M after their meeting. I swear it looked like two people in the midst of an awkward blind date. He absolutely would not look at her. She kind of leaned toward him as if to show the world that HE is pity side of the blind date; the one no one really wants to go out with, but you do so as a favor to another friend.

    Everyday, I think, how much worse can it get? And then everyday, I am unpleasantly surprised.

    444 chars

  39. Heather said on March 17, 2017 at 4:51 pm

    That is the look of a man who is horribly uncomfortable with and intimidated by women–unless he wants to f**k them, of course. I’ve dealt with a boss like that and he was much the same–wouldn’t even look at me. It was bizarre. I eventually got him taken down. If only we could do the same to Trumpf.

    301 chars

  40. BItter Scribe said on March 17, 2017 at 4:55 pm

    Jakash and Julie–Thanks. I’d always assumed the Hoosiers’ colors were just red and white.

    90 chars

  41. coozledad said on March 17, 2017 at 5:03 pm

    https://twitter.com/pennyb/status/842807159582838785

    52 chars

  42. Suzanne said on March 17, 2017 at 5:25 pm

    “I’d always assumed the Hoosiers’ colors were just red and white.”
    Bitter, no,no,no,no,no. Oh no. That is apostasy to Hoosier fans. Fightin’ words.

    152 chars

  43. David C. said on March 17, 2017 at 5:36 pm

    beb @ 25. I’ve always thought the US border guards were assholes. This is as an American returning to my own country. The Canadian border guards are exactly as you expect anyone in Canada to be. I’ve never had one that wasn’t pleasant, polite, and welcoming.

    258 chars

  44. FDChief said on March 17, 2017 at 6:29 pm

    Just because…

    My maternal grandfather was “Scots-Irish”, which is to say that his family was part of the English work in bashing the Irish Catholics for the wearin’ o’ the green. On St. Patrick’s Day he would regale his family with this:

    “Here’s to Good King William the Fourth!
    Who saved us from popes and popery,
    Knaves and knavery,
    Rogues and roguery,
    From brass buttons and wooden shoes.
    And may he whosoever denies this toast
    Be crammed, slammed, and jammed
    Into the Great Gun of Athlone.
    The Gun fired into the Pope’s belly,
    The Pope into the Devil’s belly,
    The Devil into Hell and the key in an Orangeman’s pocket.
    And here’s a fart for the Bishop of Cork.”

    A hard lot, those Orangemen.

    716 chars

  45. Connie said on March 17, 2017 at 9:08 pm

    And thus the reason the Dutch wear orange on St Patricks Day, good old William IV of the house of Orange.

    105 chars

  46. Sherri said on March 17, 2017 at 9:13 pm

    The New Yorker profile on Robert Mercer, the money behind Bannon: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/27/the-reclusive-hedge-fund-tycoon-behind-the-trump-presidency

    171 chars

  47. Andrea said on March 17, 2017 at 9:31 pm

    Michael G, good to hear from you. Bottoms up today. Hope you get a nice slug of whiskey or Guinness, your pick.

    111 chars

  48. Jill said on March 17, 2017 at 9:39 pm

    So good to see you here, MichaelG.

    34 chars

  49. Suzanne said on March 17, 2017 at 10:13 pm

    Glad you checked in MichaelG!

    29 chars

  50. Kim said on March 17, 2017 at 11:40 pm

    MichaelG in the house, yo! So many other things going on and anxiety about this crazy world with bananas leaders, but it is good to know you are with us and giving it what you’ve got.

    183 chars

  51. Icarus said on March 18, 2017 at 8:05 am

    Sherri I haven’t read that piece yet but the headline screams satire

    68 chars

  52. coozledad said on March 18, 2017 at 10:16 am

    What Republicans regard as “manhood” is the same toxic stew of petulance, self-pity and bovine greed that once drove Angela Merkel’s nation to kill off millions of people so white trash could sort through their belongings. She knows precisely what she’s looking at when she gazes upon that sickly yellow fuckstick.
    https://twitter.com/joanwalsh/status/842992305451798528

    It was like a Goodwill store, but the donors had been killed by phenol injections to the heart, or gassed with insecticide, or shot with their children. But them shoes was cheap!

    If you can detect any moral distance between that evil and the contemporary sadboy grabby ass American right, you got yourself a fucked up Occam’s razor.

    710 chars

  53. basset said on March 18, 2017 at 10:29 am

    Beb, the corned beef turned out really well, still working on the pickled tongue but I think the next test batch will get us there. White vinegar and a touch of canners’ pink salt seem to make the difference.

    209 chars

  54. beb said on March 18, 2017 at 12:19 pm

    Bassett, I’m glad to hear that the corned beef came out well. Yesterday I came across a packaged corned beef and cabbage meal at a grocery store. Thought to give it a try and way very disappointed. My wife’s corned beef is so much better. I have had beef tongue. I really couldn’t get over the texture of the meat. It was like eating a sponge. Beef heart, though, was not too bad.

    It’s good to hear from MichaelG. I hope this next week goes better for him.

    A couple items I found in the news this morning. One is that an arrest was made in an attack on Kurt Eichenwald. Dec. 15th while at home Eichenwald opened a gif that turned out to be a strobe light which triggered an epileptic attack, which took him weeks to recover from. Thearticle mentioned that he’s received 40 further strobe bomb tweeters. Haters gotta hate but one of them is facing 10 years in prison for it.

    882 chars

  55. Mark P. said on March 18, 2017 at 1:08 pm

    When Trump mentioned that he and Merkel had something in common (both phone-tapped), Merkel looked like she was thinking, “No, I have nothing in common with this ignorant turd.” I think she’d probably prefer to be phone-tapped by Obama than shake Trump’s hand.

    260 chars

  56. LAMary said on March 18, 2017 at 3:26 pm

    So glad to hear from you, Michael G. All the best from SoCal being sent your way.

    81 chars

  57. susan said on March 18, 2017 at 6:14 pm

    How unsurprising. Richard Spencer sucks…at the gummint teat.

    198 chars

  58. Joe K said on March 18, 2017 at 6:55 pm

    Rock and roll just died,
    Rest in peace Chuck.
    Pilot Joe

    57 chars

  59. Deborah said on March 18, 2017 at 7:38 pm

    LB went to grade school in St. Louis with one of Chuck Berry’s kids. Berry used to perform often at a place in St. Louis, Blueberry Hill, that we went to from time to time, good burgers there.

    Back from Abiquiu, my last week in NM for a while. We spent our time landscaping and getting rid of construction debris. It’s amazing how much damage construction can do to a fragile environment. I shoveled a lot of dirt and chucked a bunch of rocks, my back really hurts in two places now. Once I get back to Chicago (winter) tomorrow, I can veg out and recover.

    Connie, what a trouper you are, more power to you.

    Michael G, hang in there, we’re pulling for you.

    665 chars

  60. Suzanne said on March 18, 2017 at 7:56 pm

    I heard Spencer interviewed this afternoon on some NPR program. Yeah, he didn’t see any problem with his cotton farm getting government subsidies because he doesn’t have anything to do with the day to day operations. (As I recall, Marlin Stutzman, former Indiana Rep who wanted to wean everybody off the government test, didn’t have an issue with his farm batting subsidies, either.) He also said that, yes, he knew benefitted from white privilege and he wanted his kids to benefit from it, too. I don’t think I’d ever heard him speak before. Gotta say, he set off my gay-dar. What a creep.

    590 chars

  61. Sherri said on March 18, 2017 at 9:43 pm

    Spencer is the egregious example of white people socialism, the idea that government largesse for middle class white people is necessary and proper and anything else is waste, fraud and abuse. Government giveaways for white middle class people are usually constructed as tax breaks, which enables us to tell ourselves that they aren’t government giveaways, we’re just keeping our own money. But money being fungible, and the cost of government not being reduced by tax break, a tax break is the same thing as a handout.

    So, it doesn’t even occur to people with employer health insurance that their health care has been subsidized by the government for years, along with their mortgage payment, retirement savings, childcare, college, and other taxes. None of this is limited to white people, obviously, but white people have benefited the most from it, and are the least aware of how they benefit.

    901 chars

  62. Sherri said on March 19, 2017 at 6:10 pm

    There’s yet another article about trump voters afraid they’re going to lose their health insurance in the NYTimes, this one from Ohio. No link, because you know what it says. What I really want to know is, is there a 55 year old white male trump voter east of the Mississippi who hasn’t been interviewed yet?

    308 chars

  63. coozledad said on March 19, 2017 at 8:30 pm

    is there a 55 year old white male trump voter east of the Mississippi who hasn’t been interviewed yet?

    We’re only beginning to plumb the white pride default of the press. The press is overtly white, it dislikes paying taxes, and it dislikes having its children share schools with blacks.

    If you even cursorily examine the American press and its deference to the right, you’ll find all that Hitler asslicking of the 1930’s they want you to forget. Our press has to align itself with what Americans believe, and Americans believe money follows morality.

    We are even bigger shitheads than the Germans at the advent of Hitler, and capable of vastly greater evils, simply because our educational system doesn’t promote emotional literacy.

    It’s easy to understand why. if Americans were genuinely inquisitive, whole sectors of our bullshit economy would collapse. The funnel from varsity football to car sales would necrose. Pomaded fundie ass slappers wouldn’t be able to sell securities.

    They won’t let America be intelligent because our entire economic paradigm is based on harelipped thumb-in-the ass goobers.

    1135 chars

  64. coozledad said on March 19, 2017 at 9:25 pm

    Imagine if Obama had ever hit 37% approval. Do you think the Joe Kobielas and jeffttmos and Mark H’s could have avoided direct assertions that African Americans were unfit to govern? Well I can tell you that the forementioned believed that only lazy takers elevated Obama to the presidency, because I remember things I read. It’s part of a discipline I was trained in that I find myself using more and more as our country descends into black shirted Fascist anarchy from the fucking top down.

    I’ll add this. Once humans have participated in an enormity, they will outdo themselves the next fucking time. And Trump has appointed Nazis. This is not an accident or mistake as far as Republicans are concerned. It was always the plan.

    733 chars

  65. alex said on March 19, 2017 at 9:27 pm

    Pomaded fundie ass slappers wouldn’t be able to sell securities.

    Wine just came out my nose.

    We have one of those right here with his own TV show hawking annuities when he’s not writing Agenda 21 Bilderberger shit for the local newspaper. And he even managed to score the only Indiana interview with Donald Trump when Trump was stumping last year.

    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5207280/fullcredits?ref_=tt_ov_st_sm

    431 chars

  66. coozledad said on March 19, 2017 at 9:58 pm

    i just got through Peter Hayes’ book on the holocaust, “Why?” and it’s a brilliant deconstruction of how the west views itself in light of the destruction of a people.
    The epilogue is the fucking kicker. It was written before a bunch of banana slugs notarized their fundamental allegiance to pillage and cousinfuckery.

    But among the things he says to watch out for turn out to be everything the Republican party has embraced. And he earmarks our treatment of Syrian refugees:

    https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/peter-hayes/why-explaining/

    553 chars