I am having a moment of ass-chapping here, in that my ass is feeling rather chapped. Why? Because Princess Ivanka is moving into the West Wing, and I’m cocking my head and holding my hand to my ear to hear the screams of protest from conservatives, and whaddaya know? Nothing. None of the people who howled when Hillary Clinton was occasionally stopping into the Oval for a reason other than to ask the POTUS’ opinion on upholstery swatches are saying a word today.
Many of these same people were all over the media at the time, similarly up in arms at the idea that a mother who wasn’t an actual welfare recipient might want to work for a living. “Cut out those manicures and pantyhose, and you won’t need a second job,” they’d say. “Kids love macaroni and cheese.” Admittedly, the 2008 crash crushed the idea that any person who puts a career on hold isn’t risking a terrible financial setback down the road, or that a one-income family can just float along forever as though they haven’t gotten rid of their safety net, and that more or less crushed the mommy wars, but I’m still pissed. If there’s one person who should feel completely secure in delegating a career to an underling and going home to raise one’s three small children, it ought to be the rich daughter of a rich man, whose husband is also rich and whose fashion empire is basically just Chinese crap and not exactly haute couture.
And now one is going to the White House, but hey, freedom. And it’s 25 years later. We’ve evolved.
I shouldn’t hold a grudge, but I do.
And I can’t even with these people anymore.
David Ignatius on a reality we can only hope to see:
The House Intelligence Committee hearing Monday marked the end of the opening installment of “The President,” the must-watch reality/horror show that has transfixed the nation and the world. Now the plot gets more serious, perhaps darker, with some new characters likely to emerge in key national-security roles.
President Trump should be less of a stage hog going forward, and his Twitter storms less intense. He is often described as a narcissist, but he’s not suicidal. He knows he has been rebuffed in a public hearing that he can’t ridicule as “fake news.” With his approval rating below 40 percent, he needs to broaden his base. Trump wants to disrupt, but he also wants to succeed.
John Hinckley is out of prison, but don’t read anything into the juxtaposition. I just thought it was interesting. Hardly any mental patients get serious inpatient care anymore.
Happy Wednesday, then.
Sherri said on March 21, 2017 at 11:21 pm
I was annoyed reading one of the two profiles of the Mercers, I can’t remember which one now, that said that Rebekah Mercer, the daughter who’s the big-time conservative political activist, is home schooling her 4 children. I’m sorry, but I call bullshit. There’s no way she’s going around doing what you need to do to become the driving force behind Bannon and Conway, and having time to homeschool 4 kids. I’m sure her kids are being educated at home, but by a well educated tutor, and I doubt they’re using the Bob Jones homeschool curriculum.
I wish reporters wouldn’t just pass along stuff like this that doesn’t pass the smell test. Nobody would ever say that a male political operative was home schooling his kids, but a conservative woman has to establish that even when it’s not true.
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Dave said on March 22, 2017 at 12:26 am
Excuse me for replying to yesterday’s conversation but Alex, the Faye I knew is not the Faye you knew. As for Carroll, I know a Carroll, spelled like that and I believe there was a oldtime baseball player with that name, who may have pitched for the Reds some forty years ago or so. No, a little Googling tells me I’m thinking of Clay Carroll
Shorty doesn’t own Shorty’s anymore? We enjoyed eating there several times when she had it. We don’t live in Fort Wayne anymore, we deserted it for Florida a year-and-a-half ago.
It’s disgusting to me that these people aren’t screaming about the indignities that this moron is bringing to Washington and the disrespect he shows for the position he holds. He can’t be presidential, he can only be the scum rich boy he’s always been. I just don’t understand how anyone voted for him.
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Sherri said on March 22, 2017 at 12:56 am
Contrary to the belief of the attorney general, legalization of marijuana does not seem to be resulting in increased use by adolescents.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/03/21/a-big-thing-marijuana-opponents-warned-you-about-is-definitely-not-happening/
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Sherri said on March 22, 2017 at 1:33 am
James Fallows on the electronics ban, and why it’s impossible to trust anything coming from the WH: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/03/trumps-credibility-crisis-arrives/520347/
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Sherri said on March 22, 2017 at 1:38 am
Projection. It’s uncanny.
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/politics/former-colorado-gop-chairman-steven-curtis-charged-with-voter-fraud
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beb said on March 22, 2017 at 2:29 am
talcum powder is go for that ass-chapping. But it does leave a mess in the floor.
I read a story from 1898 where one character was a man named Jennifer. When was Jennifer ever a man;s name?
We’re reaching the point where the old joke about ‘when do you know Trump is lying? When his lips move!’ is become abundently true.
It’s time for all of us to go to bed…
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Jerry said on March 22, 2017 at 3:38 am
Of course Shirley was strictly a male name until Charlotte Bronte published “Shirley”. The book starts, as I recall with the heroine explaining that it was an old family name and when she came along instead of a son, she got the name.
There used to be a very popular professional wrestler in the UK called Shirley Crabtree.
I have a feeling that Carol is a popular male name in Central Europe. King Carol of Romania springs to mind. And Carol Reed was a well known British film director.
I don’t care for my name much, Jeremy, but better that than Shirley or Carol.
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Linda said on March 22, 2017 at 7:01 am
To find the popularity of a name over the last hundred years or more, and trace its popularity by gender, try the baby name voyager: http://www.babynamewizard.com/voyager#prefix=&sw=both&exact=false
It’s fascinating. By the way, I read somewhere that Jennifer was not even a widely known name till about 100 years ago when George Bernard Shaw made it the name of one of his characters. It is a Cornish version of the name Guinevere.
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alex said on March 22, 2017 at 7:16 am
Dave, I don’t know how I didn’t realize you were gone year ’round. I thought maybe you were snowbirds.
I’d say James Fallows is spot-on, but even before Trump was elected I didn’t trust a damn thing he said about anything and knew he wasn’t going to suddenly grow a conscience and good faith where none had been before. I don’t know how big of a crisis has to happen before Congress removes him, but I hope it happens sooner rather than later. A lot of people say that Pence would be worse because he’s such a full-on loony ideologue, and his defense of Trump pretty much torpedoes his own credibility as well, but at least he has a history of exercising some judgment before flapping his lips and being answerable for it when he says something objectively stupid.
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ROGirl said on March 22, 2017 at 7:19 am
Declarations by pundits that trumpy really has to change this time are tiresome. He’ll weasel out of it somehow and go on to the next fresh outrage.
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coozledad said on March 22, 2017 at 7:39 am
Don’t expect anything from the Neo Confederate state but buddyfucking, nepotism, whoring, and periodic flashes of epic violence paired with endless goddamned whining about ‘it ain’t fair how they treat old white shit-trousers, that gubbermint.”
Here’s some of those lovely, lovely Person county people I’ve unjustly maligned, and what they do when Republicans are in complete control. Meet Wallace Bradsher, the Clown Hog of Gobshite Sodom:
https://rurritable.wordpress.com/2017/02/26/notes-toward-a-baptist-sex-opera-il-leone-di-cibo-the-food-lion/
Someone must have handed Creamsicle Von Vomit a lickable pitcher book about Lincoln.
“Most people don’t know that Lincoln was a Republican! Someone needs to get on that!
How bout you, Gorka? Can you work that in with the deportations?”
That’s the thing about no-reading motherfuckers, and the no-reading motherfuckers who elect them. They bring that viscid stink of dumbshit to everything they touch.
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coozledad said on March 22, 2017 at 7:51 am
Fuck NPR in its Republican fellating face.
https://twitter.com/nprpolitics/status/844328824804380672
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Suzanne said on March 22, 2017 at 7:53 am
Alex, I don’t know if Pence exercises judgement as much as is a coward and when dissenting voices scream loud enough, he backs off. He also speaks more purdy than the Pres and seems to, at the very least, have a minimal grasp of reality. I don’t think he’s in bed with Putin, either, so there is that. He’s in bed with “mother”.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on March 22, 2017 at 7:53 am
Zoloft and Risperdal make sense if Hinckley is diagnosed for severe depression & non-specific psychosis, but there’s no mention of any kind of counseling regimen. Socialization and cognitive behavioral therapy would make sense for the narcissism and inability to reality-test effectively, but if he’s not doing some face-to-face work, the meds are just muting the surges of psychotic initiative. Of course, we see lots of kids coming through the court on that pairing, and most of them disengage from counseling or groups, and just medicate. I guess the meds alone help, but usually it’s just a matter of time before they act out sufficiently to trigger a law enforcement call of some sort, usually by family.
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basset said on March 22, 2017 at 8:16 am
Maybe I missed it in the name thread yesterday, but I didn’t see anyone mention Carroll Shelby:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carroll_Shelby
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basset said on March 22, 2017 at 8:18 am
and Beverly Briley was mayor of Nashville in the 60s and 70s:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beverly_Briley
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coozledad said on March 22, 2017 at 8:51 am
All of them, Pence and Ryan included, are neck deep in treasonous shit:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/03/22/paul-manaforts-plan-greatly-benefit-putin-government/99483224/
They need to be hanged before they can arrange to hand our allies to Russia, not to mention the remaining wealth they haven’t managed to scavenge.
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Danny said on March 22, 2017 at 9:45 am
Rome has a supermodel mayor.
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/5-facts-know-about-virginia-raggi-romes-first-mayor
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coozledad said on March 22, 2017 at 10:10 am
Remember, it’s about all of the Republicans. There isn’t a one of them that wouldn’t sell their daughter for a whore.
https://qz.com/260064/a-recent-history-of-russias-efforts-to-buy-influence-in-us-politics/
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basset said on March 22, 2017 at 10:12 am
and the Italians have had a pornstar legislator too:
http://m.dailykos.com/story/2015/2/12/1328892/-Cicciolina-The-Porn-Star-in-Parliament
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john (not mccain) said on March 22, 2017 at 10:15 am
My mother was named after Evelyn Waugh. Had a good male friend around age 10 named Marion, which reminds me that was the real name of he-man John Wayne. My first job in commercial radio put me into the clutches of an evil, non-Korean man named Kim. Having grown up in the South with that name is probably why he was evil.
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LAMary said on March 22, 2017 at 10:20 am
John Wayne’s real name was Marion Morrison so there is that. We had a lot of Polish neighbors and there were several men named Karol, like the Polish pope and here in LA I’ve run into a few Jose Marias.
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brian stouder said on March 22, 2017 at 10:28 am
It seems that women can get away with male(ish) names more easily than men can get away with female names; Bobbi/Sam/Billy/Frankey….
but the rule seems to be that the names must be suitable for little boys.
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ROGirl said on March 22, 2017 at 10:35 am
I knew a guy named Vern, real name LaVerne
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Kim said on March 22, 2017 at 10:36 am
Jeff TMMO @14 – Hinckley does have quite a lot of face time with a local psychiatrist and group, which was mentioned (briefly) in the story. I cannot imagine the expense, psychological and financial, of being his kin. The weird thing about the gated community where he lives with his mom is it’s part of a resort where national politicians have regularly held their confabs, which would make playing keepaway from the president inherently difficult.
Cooz @11 – Il Leone di Cibo, oh my God. I laughed, then I read the N&R story. What shitheads.
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Charlotte said on March 22, 2017 at 10:39 am
As someone who was raised by two narcissists — one with real mental health issues and one who was just garden-variety — Trump ISN’T GOING TO CHANGE. And he’s never going to tell “the truth” as we know it, because for him the truth is whatever the hell he thinks it is in the moment that he’s speaking. The only constant is his own need for self-aggrandizement and his concurrent sense of grievance. And he’s also never going to resign — he’s going to have to be impeached or removed via the 25th amendment and the GOP is too busy raiding the coffers to get that done anytime soon.
And meanwhile, Putin’s throwing dissidents off four story roofs …
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Deborah said on March 22, 2017 at 10:42 am
The talk about ambiguous names reminds me of androgynous Pat. When I was still working I used to have regular phone conversations with a vendor named Kim, and for the life of me I could never figure out Kim’s gender and I avoided using he or she or him or her when I had to ask to speak to Kim. It was a mystery that I never solved before I retired.
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BItter Scribe said on March 22, 2017 at 10:45 am
I still can’t get over how the people who howled and screamed about “the cost to taxpayers” every time the Obamas poked their noses out of the White House have no problem with Melania remaining in New York, at God knows what expense for security, not to mention Trump flying off to Florida or holding campaign rallies every other weekend.
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Jolene said on March 22, 2017 at 11:03 am
Can’t forget Carroll O’Connor, AKA Archie Bunker and other famous characters.
That it’s less problematic for women to have typically male names than vice versa is just another manifestation of the lower status of females. Same with jobs. Though now common, it was an achievement, back in the day, for women to become doctors, but a degradation for a man to become a nurse. Beliefs such as this are a, perhaps small, of why it is difficult to get men who lose jobs in mining and manufacturing to retrain for jobs in the service sector, where there are more opportunities.
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MarkH said on March 22, 2017 at 11:05 am
basset – I remembered Shelby, of course, during yesterday’s name discussion, but figured only you and I would appreciate it.
Meantime, as a Hemmings fan did you see this today?
http://www.beardedmugmedia.com/blog/2017/3/20/in-memoriam-hemmings-sports-exotic-car-magazine-20052017
This was my favorite Hemmings publication, the only one I subscribed to. I do occasionally buy Hemmings Motor News at the newsstand and check in online every day, as I assume you do as well.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on March 22, 2017 at 11:56 am
Kim, you’re right, it’s mentioned, and I should have correlated that with his brother’s comment at the end of the piece about the expense. So if he’s getting plenty of facetime, that just pushes this farther into the territory of “we just don’t know what to do.” Narcissistic personality disorders are often said (in my hearing, at least) to be the hardest to treat, and often are the highest functioning, so other social conflicts don’t tend to arise forcing treatment until they erupt in major, dramatic ways.
And do I think Donald Trump has more than a touch of this axis and that disorder in his makeup? Oh yeah. One of the multiple reasons I had to oppose him, primary and general election. You have to be a touch narcissistic to do politics in the big way, is my observation, but he’s deep, deep into it.
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BItter Scribe said on March 22, 2017 at 12:17 pm
Something that the profile of John Hinckley touched on, but didn’t go into very deeply, was that his parents, his late father especially, were hyper-conservative and barely even believed in the concept of mental illness until the assassination attempt. Then they became big crusaders for equitable treatment of the mentally ill. So typical of conservatives. They think compassion is weakness until they need it.
Another think I’ve always resented about Hinckley’s case, which the article also touches on, is that outrage over his verdict led to a backlash against mentally ill people who commit crimes.
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susan said on March 22, 2017 at 12:25 pm
cooz @12 – Here’s the twit who wrote that bit of twaddle. Her analysis is as trenchant as the Repigs’ whiffle ball questions to him.
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coozledad said on March 22, 2017 at 12:37 pm
So she’s got a BA in English. Shouldn’t she have a masters in political economy, or a law degree? I guess with NPR, it’s all about perceptions, the main perception being you will be as compliant as possible when speaking to or about Republican daddies.
Fuck ’em. I hope the Republicans strip every bit of funding from them so the rest of their staff can fuck on off to Fox News. I’m tired of hearing “liberals” concern troll with that right-centrist chickenshit.
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Heather said on March 22, 2017 at 12:46 pm
Wasn’t Tracy traditionally a boys’ name too? A quick Google search says it means “warlike.” Well, there you go.
Italy’s politics have long aligned with Italians’ love of spectacle, but after the Berlusconi era I think even they are yearning for some sobriety.
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Joe K said on March 22, 2017 at 1:06 pm
Met Mr Shellby at the ACD festival one time, he seemed genuinely pleased when I told him how much I enjoyed his work on the Cobra and mustang.
Pilot Joe
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Peter said on March 22, 2017 at 1:08 pm
I had a couple of male clients named Kim – they were a little older than I, and got that name because their dads were Korean War vets, and Kim in Korean means chief.
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alex said on March 22, 2017 at 1:19 pm
I had a gym teacher named Kim. God, did he ever have a masculinity problem. Oh, and he didn’t let you call it gym class. “Physical education, you dumb-ass. I didn’t go to college for four years for you to call it ‘gym.'” He also had a creepy way of sneaking up from behind and pantsing us randomly to make sure we were wearing our jockstraps, which was another one of his control issues.
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Kirk said on March 22, 2017 at 1:22 pm
The late Shirley Povich, longtime baseball writer for the Washington Post and daddy of star of idiotic TV show Maury.
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basset said on March 22, 2017 at 1:25 pm
MarkH, that’s a shame but it doesn’t surprise me. I take Vintage Truck and Hemmings Classic Car, look at the Hemmings site sometime but bringatrailer.com and barnfinds.com more often.
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4dbirds said on March 22, 2017 at 2:17 pm
I have a male shirt-tail relative with the name of Ashley.
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coozledad said on March 22, 2017 at 4:11 pm
Filthy with Russian money. Hang Nunes’ rotten traitor ass, too.
https://twitter.com/RVAwonk/status/838621519181836288
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Sherri said on March 22, 2017 at 4:18 pm
There were many things I expected to happen with the Republicans and trump. I expected them to roll right over and get in line, and I expect them to stay there. I expected them to try to gut the safety net, because that’s been they’re raison d’etre for some time now. I expected them to give money to rich people, not care about deficits, say the complete opposite of many things they said mere months ago without blinking an eye.
What I didn’t expect was such a complete flip on and caving to Russia.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/03/george-soros-russia-republicans-214938
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coozledad said on March 22, 2017 at 4:44 pm
Sherri: you can always tell when the rubes have been conditioned with a radioactive dose of Russian propaganda. They’ll get around to mentioning Soros sooner or later. They’re like Alex in A Clockwork Orange but without Alex’s redeeming features.
Western nations are nearly all individualist, secular, and capitalist now. it is difficult to depict Jews as threats because the ideologies once tied to them have triumphed and become generally shared, or in the case of communism, collapsed. That does not mean that antisemitism has disappeared, only that it has become, for the moment, largely powerless in the Western world. Other parts of the globe are another matter however. Wherever individualism, religious or ethnic pluralism and enterprise remain ideologically suspect or are perceived as alien, Jews and all other minorities remain endangered, and the wretched lies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion continue to be circulated and believed, as they are currently in Russia and many predominantly Muslim lands and among non-Jewish immigrants from these lands to other places.
Just as in nineteenth century Central and Eastern Europe, the security of Jews, like that of most minorities, is least where the liberal values of toleration, coexistence, and openness to change are weak. To prevent other holocausts, it is not enough to combat antisemitism, one has to fight foer these broader values, and not only at home. This is one of the insights of the much maligned europenan Union, which has insisted on increased protection of minority rights, especially for rom and gay people, as preconditions for admitting countries into its ranks. In an increasingly globalized world, the obligation to combat and reduce parochialism and intolerance is an increasingly global matter.
Peter Hayes, Why? Explaining The Holocaust.
This book was published prior to the election. The US now joins Russia on the list of pogrom prone countries.
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Danny said on March 22, 2017 at 4:52 pm
They’re like Alex in A Clockwork Orange but without Alex’s redeeming features.
That was funny.
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Deborah said on March 22, 2017 at 5:13 pm
This whole bots business is really disturbing. Rachel talked about it in depth last night and almost everything I read lately mentions the use of bots by the right internationally and particularly Putin’s gang. It’s amazing how the internet became the perfect vehicle for propaganda, and the human brain is so ripe for it.
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Sherri said on March 22, 2017 at 6:00 pm
Here’s a long, slightly technical read about political disinformation: https://medium.com/hci-design-at-uw/information-wars-a-window-into-the-alternative-media-ecosystem-a1347f32fd8f#.ccby8ma5m
The author is a professor over at UW, and a former basketball player/computer science major at Stanford, which is how I first became aware of her. I had the chance to talk to her briefly at the Pac-12 women’s basketball tournament, and she was so delighted to find that someone wanted to talk about her research rather than her former basketball career that she didn’t just politely brush me off. She gave me a heads up about this article and the accompanying paper coming out, and we talked about the discoveries about political disinformation she had encountered studying the BP oil spill. This has been going on for a while.
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Sherri said on March 22, 2017 at 6:37 pm
A reminder that it’s no surprise that Republicans like Paul Ryan would like to gut Medicaid, because Republicans refused to take the Medicaid expansion in states they controlled, with utterly predictable results: http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2017/mar/coverage-access-medical-debt-aca-california-florida-new-york-texas#/
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David C. said on March 22, 2017 at 6:51 pm
There’s Vivian Stanshall of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band.
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Sherri said on March 22, 2017 at 7:31 pm
In addition to kicking people off of insurance, now Republicans want to make sure the insurance people do have is worthless,
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/white-house-health-care-bill-tweaks-236385
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Sherri said on March 22, 2017 at 11:37 pm
I swear, any Dem Senator who makes a deal on Gorsuch is a fool and should be primaried, I don’t care how red a state they’re in. It’s a mug’s game.
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/gorsuch-democrats-supreme-court-236384
Oh, and Sen. Manchin, the Founding Fathers in their wisdom did not design the Senate with the filibuster. Have one of your staff look up the previous question rule.
Of course, I’ve never been quite as impressed with the Founding Fathers’ wisdom as others have been, since they decided to keep slavery and didn’t think I deserved a vote, but they don’t get the blame/credit for the filibuster.
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Deborah said on March 23, 2017 at 8:29 am
Wouldn’t that be another Lucy and the football situation? I wouldn’t trust the Republicans to do anything they pledged to do in the future. I say block Gorsuch to the end. The arguement that they shouldn’t even be considering a Supreme now when Trump is being investigated by the FBI is a good one.
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coozledad said on March 23, 2017 at 8:31 am
any Dem Senator who makes a deal on Gorsuch is a fool
Anyone who makes a deal with Republicans now is a traitor, who should be nailed in a barrel and sunk off the coast.
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coozledad said on March 23, 2017 at 8:51 am
https://twitter.com/JoyAnnReid/status/844764522262872064
Like George Carlin said, when they get through sucking all the money out of medicare and medicaid, they’ll come for your social security. They’re filth, and their little army of yobbos loves being boned up the ass.
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brian stouder said on March 23, 2017 at 9:08 am
Joy Reid is a treasure, as is Katy Tur
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ROGirl said on March 23, 2017 at 9:12 am
That’s what Bernie was saying on Matthews show last night. The kochs want to roll back the last 80 years of legislation for social services, it has to be done in increments, not all at once.
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coozledad said on March 23, 2017 at 9:39 am
We need to dispense entirely with the idea of “conservatism.” For one, it’s an eighteenth century English construct, irrelevant to the interests competing in American politics from the Revolution on- that is, economic and social liberalism versus ownership and exploitation of human beings.
“Conservatism” is just a merkin for the undead politics of exclusion and war on the poor. A better name for them would be Revanchists or Amerofascists.
https://twitter.com/jilliancyork/status/844267718039801856/photo/1
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basset said on March 23, 2017 at 11:48 am
Vyvyan from “The Young Ones” comes to mind for several reasons.
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Sherri said on March 23, 2017 at 3:35 pm
A particularly pernicious Republican pathway.
Remove essential benefits requirements, so that insurers can offer cheaper policies that don’t cover mental health services. Insurers will do som, and even employer based insurance plans will have that as an option. In poor rural areas, mental health care, including addiction services, will become unaffordable, and providers will become even less available than now.
Someone will pick up a gun and shoot a bunch of people. Those same freedom-loving Republicans responsible for ensuring a lack of mental health care services, will decry that a lack of mental health care services, not easy availability of guns is to blame. They will fight any gun regulation, and do nothing about mental health care. Hopes and prayers,will be offered for victims, maybe, unless the Alex Jones wing has become predominant, in which case the whole thing was a staged event.
Tell me I’m wrong.
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Suzanne said on March 23, 2017 at 3:56 pm
I wish I could tell you that, Sherri, but I think you are on to something. It’ll be interesting to what would happen to “conservative” voters at that point.
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Hattie said on March 23, 2017 at 4:06 pm
What galls me about all these Republicans is how incompetent they are and how they just goof around and laugh off the suffering of others.
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coozledad said on March 23, 2017 at 4:44 pm
What kind of overripe whiteboy dipshit do you have to be to see this as anything other than pathetic?
https://twitter.com/barry/status/845004074584096769
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Deborah said on March 23, 2017 at 5:00 pm
Woo hoo! The asshole republicans can’t get it up. No vote today.
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Sherri said on March 23, 2017 at 6:01 pm
From my Senator’s twitter feed:
https://twitter.com/PattyMurray/status/845001919034732544
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Sherri said on March 23, 2017 at 7:02 pm
There’s been a huge increase in the number of mumps cases in Washington this winter, with the latest spread among the frats and sororities at UW: http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/mumps-outbreak-spreads-to-uw-greek-system/
Even vaccinated people are vulnerable, because the vaccine is only 88% effective. Given that and how contagious mumps is, the vaccination rate only has to drop below 96% for the benefits of herd immunity to start to fade.
Why couldn’t Andrew Wakefield found some other spurious correlation between something and the presentation of autism symptoms, like Baby Einstein tapes?
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coozledad said on March 23, 2017 at 8:26 pm
It’s not “Kremlingate,” dammit. It’s Der Flynndenberg!.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/kremlingate-creeps-closer-to-trump-w473460
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David C. said on March 23, 2017 at 8:41 pm
My Congressman Glenn Grothman, who is Louie Gohmert with better hair, said this: “who wants to be the butt head that keeps Obamacare.” They’re so articulate.
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coozledad said on March 23, 2017 at 8:51 pm
Republicans have other things to worry about. Their sex daddy Putin will fucking shoot them if they step out of line:
https://www.balloon-juice.com/2017/03/23/an-assassination-in-ukraine-the-unmasking-of-the-maskirovka-has-removed-the-need-for-subtlety/
Our crop of gutter cowards would blow Putin on TV, and swallow without a hiccup.
Shit is unraveling fast now.
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Deborah said on March 23, 2017 at 10:51 pm
I had the mumps when I was in the 5th grade. I remember being sick as a dog. I didn’t want to eat and I was already very thin. My Dr told my parents to let me eat what ever I wanted just to get calories in me. I requested Hersey bars and whipped cream and I couldn’t even get more than a bite down. I was so weak after that I had to sit down after I walked a few steps.
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Deborah said on March 24, 2017 at 8:46 am
So now Trimp (after his ridiculous performance in the truck, he’s a Trimp to me) has given the GOP congress an ultimatum. What a complete jerk. He has absolutely no idea what he’s doing. Let’s see if it works, shall we.
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alex said on March 24, 2017 at 9:05 am
On the bright side, it looks like Obamacare will stay in place now that the kookoo caucus has turned up its nose at Ryan’s shit sandwich piled high with extra shit.
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coozledad said on March 24, 2017 at 10:07 am
Anyone out here got a recipe for pickled tongue up Putin’s ass? Devin Nunes tole me Russian hooker piss and tears of white trash sorrow is what gits her done.
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susan said on March 24, 2017 at 10:11 am
The Toddler-in-Chief. I wonder if he made vroooom vrooooom noises while he “steered” the big rig in his pea-brain.
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coozledad said on March 24, 2017 at 10:19 am
My French is weak, but I think this says “Putin Smells Like French Whore.”
https://twitter.com/CarolineFourest
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coozledad said on March 24, 2017 at 10:23 am
sorry, right here’s the furrin:
https://twitter.com/CarolineFourest/status/845252121951948800
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coozledad said on March 24, 2017 at 12:03 pm
All of the Republicans are traitors. Every one of the asslickers, from the ones who have all the money, to the little shits who can only dream of putting a boot in someone’s face someday.
https://twitter.com/RVAwonk/status/845253001929539584
The whole lot of that misbegotten trash sinks or swims with Putin’s man in DC.
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ROGirl said on March 24, 2017 at 1:41 pm
Looks like the French call Putin poutine, since his name sounds like the Quebecois dish of fries, cheese curds and gravy.
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Deborah said on March 24, 2017 at 2:53 pm
It’s 79 degrees in Chicago right now, 2 days ago it barely got above freezing. And I have a sore throat.
Saw the movie “A sense of an Ending” yesterday afternoon. It was good, not great. Charlotte Rampling has a minor role in it, I love her. I read the book by Julien Barnes a couple of months ago, the movie does a pretty good job of sticking with it. I think it’s a movie/book for old people, but it has a surprise ending. This weekend we’re going to see the French film “Personal Shopper” directed by Olivier Assayas and starring Kristin Stewart. She turns out to be a pretty darn good actress. She was in the Clouds of Sils Maria which I know I’ve said here before that I’ve seen over and over again. We like the director Assayas, check out some of his other movies if you’re interested in French films.
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Deborah said on March 24, 2017 at 2:55 pm
That’s Julian Barnes. I have a good friend named Julien, who’s French, so I always think that’s how it’s spelled. Barnes is British.
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Heather said on March 24, 2017 at 3:34 pm
Hmm, I would have thought the French would use “Putain,” or whore, but probably that’s too insulting to prostitutes.
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Sherri said on March 24, 2017 at 4:11 pm
The Republicans had to pull the trumpryancare bill, rather than watch it go down in flames. The Freedom Caucus doesn’t want any part of government health care, so they weren’t happy, and the saner Republicans realized that taking health insurance away from constituents and handing them magic beans in return was probably going to bite them in the ass in 2018.
Of course, the fundamental problem for the Republicans is, there is no solution for them that works. Obamacare is the most conservative, market friendly healthcare system that actually provides coverage; its flaws are that it is too conservative and market friendly. You can’t pull away any of the pieces of Obamacare without the whole structure collapsing, and I expect that the administration will do all,it can to undermine Obamacare in hopes that that happens.
Getting rid of government supported health care insurance, as the ideologues want to do, means snatching health care away from a bunch of people who have suddenly discovered what it means to have it, including a significant chunk of their base. Will they be able to continue to blame it on the scary brown people cutting in line after this spectacular failure? Ah, what am I saying, probably so.
The fight isn’t over.
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