Yesterday all there was to read on the internet were opinions about Will Smith and Chris Rock, whether or not one or both of them should have done what they did, et cetera to the blah-blah. It made me want to poke my eyes out, but instead I just closed the laptop. Went downstairs to make lunch. Alan was putting flies he’d tied into one of the nine million plastic boxes he keeps them in.
“You know what this reminds me of?” I said. “When newspapers had tons of money, and a million columnists, and every single one would write about the same thing, when something like this happened.”
“Such as?”
I told him: The Sports guys would turn it into a crack about some hot-headed coach – “Coach K looked like he was about to go Will Smith on his star player’s ass,” only he wouldn’t say ass because THIS IS A FAMILY NEWSPAPER, so he’d say “butt” and still have to fight for it.
In Features, where the prevailing voices were women, there’d be something about The Pain of Alopecia, or What Sort of Example is Will Smith Setting For His Children. If one of the columnists were black, there might be something bemoaning the legacy of violence between black men.
For Metro, those folks would write about going to a Boys & Girls Club, maybe, to take the temperature of the youth on the issue of the day. Would contain some comic relief: Some kid asking “who’s Willy Smith?,” etc.
The A section, Nation/World, would probably not have anything, unless they have some old-fart windbag who usually writes about Washington. His/Her point would be: What’s The World Coming To When We Spend So Much Time Talking About This Silliness While There’s A War Going On?
And then, on Thursday, the Entertainment pages drop, and those people would have to find a fresh take on a topic that was old on Tuesday morning, but I’m confident they would have come up with something.
I’m so glad not to be in that grind anymore.
As for Chris Rock and his joke, I think this piece, about Joan Rivers, best captures my feelings.
Twitter got better as the day went on:
It's actually not funny at all? Will Smith could have killed him with that slap. What if his hand had been full of bees and Chris Rock was allergic to bees and one of the bees stung Chris and nobody had an epipen. Not so funny now is it
— ⛄️ (@nomchompsky) March 28, 2022
Moving on, then.
Sometimes I feel like I’m living in an immersive remake of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.” This woman worked for CBS News in recent memory:
It wasn’t long ago that Lara Logan was a correspondent for CBS News, which is a little hard to believe considering the types of conspiracy theories she’s been pushing since she left the network. The latest came during an appearance on the right-wing podcast “And We Know,” during which Logan suggested that the theory of evolution is the result of a wealthy Jewish family paying Charles Darwin to devise an explanation for what gave rise to humanity.
“Does anyone know who employed Darwin, where Darwinism comes from?” Logan, now with Fox News’ streaming service Fox Nation, asked. “Look it up: The Rothschilds. It goes back to 10 Downing Street. The same people who employed Darwin, and his theory of evolution and so on and so on. I’m not saying that none of that is true. I’m just saying Darwin was hired by someone to come up with a theory — based on evidence, OK, fine.”
Meanwhile, Actual News is happening elsewhere in our decaying democracy. No, it’s not Trump’s alleged hole in one. It’s this:
Internal White House records from the day of the attack on the U.S. Capitol that were turned over to the House select committee show a gap in President Donald Trump’s phone logs of seven hours and 37 minutes, including the period when the building was being violently assaulted, according to documents obtained by CBS News’ chief election & campaign correspondent Robert Costa and The Washington Post’s associate editor Bob Woodward.
Have a nice day. I’m on to real work.
ROGirl said on March 29, 2022 at 11:49 am
Holy shit. I thought I’d heard all the Jewish conspiracies, but that’s a new one. One thing they have in common, though, is the Rothschilds. They bankrolled wars and revolutions, and they backed JP Morgan, who was behind the creation of the Federal Reserve. And space lasers, too!
280 chars
Minnie Fleming said on March 29, 2022 at 12:09 pm
Were I to have a tombstone, which I will not, I would pre-order this inscription. It’s from the last panel of today’s Wiley Miller “Non Sequitur” cartoon:
“I was really hoping to outlive this stupid era . . . ”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/comics/strips/?name=nonsequitur
294 chars
alex said on March 29, 2022 at 1:06 pm
I’d heard a couple of years ago that Lara Logan had gone goofy but it didn’t sink in until she was on Fox recently comparing Dr. Anthony Fauci to Dr. Josef Mengele. Now that’s a bridge too far even for Fox, or at least it used to be. And now she’s talking Rothschild derp. Maybe she needs to be telling it to a shrink.
###
Someone asked this morning who’s on Team Smith and who’s on Team Rock. Count me as Team Rock. The Oscars have always been emceed by comedians who roast members of the audience and most people know to expect it and take it sportingly.
I think Kathy Griffin should never have backed down when the right-wing outrage machine went livid on her for figuratively decapitating Donald Trump. I wished she had come out swinging like Joan Rivers would have done.
779 chars
Scout said on March 29, 2022 at 1:28 pm
This was the best take I’ve read about ‘the incident’ to date.
https://kareem.substack.com/p/will-smith-did-a-bad-bad-thing
125 chars
Sherri said on March 29, 2022 at 2:21 pm
I could have happily gone without knowing anything about the incident between Will Smith and Chris Rock. I was watching a very close and enjoyable women’s basketball game at the time. Unfortunately, even on my carefully curated women’s basketball Twitter feed, the slap blew up.
I’m Team Neither. There may be contexts in which making a joke about a black woman’s hair is okay, but a very white space like the Oscar’s ain’t it. Don’t punch down.
And people piously say violence isn’t the answer, just like they laud the non-violence of the civil rights movement. The civil rights movement was very violent, it’s just that the violence was perpetrated on the protestors, often by the state.
714 chars
Deborah said on March 29, 2022 at 3:05 pm
Count me on team neither too, no reason except I just don’t care. I hadn’t watched the Oscars because I’m tired of it, maybe I’ll rally around it again sometime in the future, who knows.
186 chars
Scout said on March 29, 2022 at 3:23 pm
I’m also on Team Neither, but thought Jabbar’s observations were well stated.
I’m definitely on Team Nail Him on this one, though. https://twitter.com/CBSNews/status/1508762244158525442
189 chars
Deborah said on March 29, 2022 at 3:38 pm
Has anyone here gotten a second booster? Are they even out yet? I Googled where to get it in Chicago and it’s confusing as to which booster they’re referring when they say boosters are available somewhere.
205 chars
Bitter Scribe said on March 29, 2022 at 3:56 pm
If anyone was going to get slapped at the Oscars, I’d a thousand times prefer that it had been that punk Seth MacFarlane, by one of the dozen or more actresses he insulted by name with that crass, juvenile “We Saw Your Boobs” number.
Regarding Lara Logan: She was sexually assaulted in Cairo while she was covering the Arab Spring for CBS. I’ve sometimes wondered if that did some sort of lasting damage to her psyche.
421 chars
FDChief said on March 29, 2022 at 5:38 pm
I can still vaguely remember when Republicans could be shamed and shut up by their “leaders” criminality. Ah, thim were th’days, as Mr. Dooley would have said. Now that it’s brutally obvious to anyone with the functioning hindbrain of a lemur that Tubby, who has been working some kind of grift his entire adult life, was being his busy little criminal sonofabitch self in January just as he’d been since, well, ever…and Republicans response is “YESSSSSS!!!! Moar criming!”
Well, actually, they just ignore all his criming, since when rich white people do it, it’s not, y’know, like actual “crime”, not like when THOSE people do it.
Turns out that trying to run a huge modern industrialized nation based on the assumptions of a bunch of 18th Century plutocrats that everyone would just play nice is…not such a clever notion.
Nope. We can limp along until the Republicans get their hands on all the levers of power again. Then it’s Game Over – back to the Gilded Age for you, peons!
1001 chars
Jeff Borden said on March 29, 2022 at 6:14 pm
I wish the Ginni Thomas-Clarence Thomas crazy train got one-tenth the coverage of The Slap. It was Page One news in both Chicago papers today and made the bottom of the NYT.
Sometimes I wonder if we’re really aware of how much trouble we’re in as a democracy, a nation, a people. It’s becoming harder for me to see a happy ending in all this.
345 chars
Julie Robinson said on March 29, 2022 at 7:51 pm
To briefly change the subject, Alex, I’ve been thinking about your dad and wondering how he’s holding up. You too, of course.
We got a new scam letter today, at least it was a new one on me. Some very nice people want to give us a large sum of money. No interest, no repayments. I actually had to read the entire thing to figure out their angle.
They aren’t lending you money, they are co-investing in your home. Of course, that means when you sell your house they will expect 17.5% of the value back. If you home gains a lot of ground, they’ve just hit jackpot without a lick of work on their part. What a deal–for them.
If it turns out your house loses money or you trash the place, they can take a higher percentage of your house. What a deal–for them.
Oh, in the fine print it says you have to pay a few lil’ fees. Just an appraisal fee, a transaction fee, and 3% of their co-investment. After they’ve appraised your house they also take 2.5% off the base level. Their fees would add up to 7% of the amount they want to give us. What a deal–for them.
The value they estimate our house at is at least 150K too low, maybe much more considering the market here. Again, what a deal–for them.
I think I’d have a better chance at coming out ahead at a casino, where everyone knows the house always wins.
1325 chars
tajalli said on March 29, 2022 at 7:53 pm
Maybe I’m just really bored, cynical or disgusted, but this slap business smacks of Kardashian level PR – any publicity is good if it keeps your picture in everyone’s face. Meh.
Meanwhile, there’s a real miserable war ongoing and a flagrant fascist racist criminal who will probably slip out of any charges, I mean, just for perspective.
338 chars
beb said on March 29, 2022 at 10:28 pm
If anyone deserves to be bitch-slapped it’s Seth McFarlane. He has a great singing voice but that’s about it. He’s treatment of female characters on Family Guy and American Dad is terrible.
My wife was telling me there was a story about a woman standing outside a store and every time someone would come out wearing a mask she would be “Baaa” or maybe it was “Sheple.” I forget which but the idea that this is someone a person considers a good ue of their time suggests that institutionalization is needed. Lara Logan’s idea’s about Darwin is right up with Jewish Space Lasers. It’s getting to where half the country is batshit crazy. I mean litter boxes in schools for students who identify as cats? Madness.
712 chars
Dexter Friend said on March 30, 2022 at 1:44 am
What if Rock had made a cuck-joke about Mrs. Smith’s admitted multiple dalliances outside of marriage? I know some men are not objectionable to being the cuckold, something I just can’t internalize. I’m old school that way; it’s a couple’s own business of course, swinging, cuckolding, but I hate even reading about celebrities’ fucking around. Also, I was never fan of Will Smith. Now Willie Smith of the 1969 Chicago Cubs, yeah, he was cool.
448 chars
alex said on March 30, 2022 at 7:30 am
Julie, I responded to your query in the last thread right before the new post launched. In sum, life hasn’t exactly been a bowl of cherries but we’re getting by.
Dad and I had quite the animated discussion yesterday about Ginni Thomas. Being lonely and bored, he reads the newspaper much more thoroughly these days and he no longer harbors the illusion that the Supreme Court somehow remains above the political fray. Ginni, alas, reminds us both of the late wife of one of Dad’s best friends. One of my dad’s biggest regrets is that he and his best friend didn’t get to spend much time together after his friend married this wannabe socialite right-wing twit who was always full of conspiracy theories and fanatical rhetoric and was simply insufferable. His friend is still living but moved to the east coast to be near a daughter. His friend is still sharp as a tack and a great wit. And, we like to imagine, happily widowed.
931 chars
David C said on March 30, 2022 at 8:01 am
Deborah @ 8. I looked into scheduling a booster at Walgreen’s. It says they they’ll start scheduling for it on Friday. It also says walk-ins are welcome so I think that means you can walk in and get it now. I might try after work today.
236 chars
Mark P said on March 30, 2022 at 9:04 am
Jeff, I think I have mentioned before reading a historian who said that the people who live through major upheavals and drastic changes in society are not aware of it as it happens. They think, “This, too, shall pass,” when, in fact, it won’t.
I saw a physician on some news program saying that you can get any one of the three vaccines as your second booster if you are six months out from your first booster, and you’re over 50.
441 chars
Icarus said on March 30, 2022 at 9:29 am
Julie Robinson @12: I would love to see the wording of that letter just to see how they sell it. The thing is, you know there are people falling for it. Heck, a reverse mortgage is slightly less unethical.
According to Facebook Memories, I got my first vaccine (Pfizer) a year ago today.
291 chars
Mark P said on March 30, 2022 at 10:01 am
AMPAS is a mutual admiration club for privileged, spoiled brats. Every year they put on a show where they give out participation awards and jerk each other off. This year little Willie threw a tantrum and started a slap fight with another boy. There were no adults in the room, so the rest of the kids just acted like nothing happened. Willie got his participation award. He cried and said it was the other boy’s fault and he was just being a hero like in his movies. Later his mom made him apologize to the other boy, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t mean it.
563 chars
Deborah said on March 30, 2022 at 12:01 pm
We got our new dishwasher delivered and installed today. One of the installers said our old one was over 40 years old. It’s amazing that it still worked up to about 2 weeks ago. But the place was unoccupied for 25 of those years, the only time any one would have used it then was for one week each year when the owner’s sister would visit Chicago. I’m surprised the seals didn’t dry out from disuse. It was extremely loud. Now I can’t wait to replace the stove and fridge. We have to replace things piecemeal because if we do a major renovation of the kitchen we have to pay to have the fuse box moved to a new code compliant location, and we’ve been told that will cost $25,000 alone.
685 chars
basset said on March 30, 2022 at 12:21 pm
Just back from a short trip to northern Michigan. Saw some tv ads for the “quality guru” guy who’s running for governor. He doesn’t look human.
153 chars
Jeff Borden said on March 30, 2022 at 3:14 pm
Did you see tRump asked his pal Putin to stop the carnage in Ukraine and withdraw?
Actually, he’s asking Vladimir to dig up dirt on Hunter Biden. Some things never change.
174 chars
LAMary said on March 30, 2022 at 3:30 pm
Will Smith, the Dodgers catcher, is a good guy. He wouldn’t have smacked anyone.
80 chars
nancy said on March 30, 2022 at 5:41 pm
Basset, the Quality Guru doesn’t look human because he’s had a LOT of plastic surgery.
90 chars
susan said on March 30, 2022 at 5:56 pm
I had to duckduck to whom Basset was referring and figured it had to be Perry Johnson, because he was the freakiest-looking Rethug candidate running for Michigan gubnor. Wonder what he was trying correct with plastic surgery that made him end up like this? Gads.
417 chars
susan said on March 30, 2022 at 5:58 pm
Here’s the full crop of Rethug freaks.
185 chars
Deborah said on March 30, 2022 at 6:13 pm
Holy cow that rethug totally doesn’t look human, good call basset. Yikes. Thanks for the link Susan.
102 chars
Mark P said on March 30, 2022 at 7:00 pm
Definitely an alien. I wonder why he thought he could pass for human.
69 chars
Heather said on March 30, 2022 at 8:32 pm
Dexter, Will Smith and Jada Pinkett have an open marriage, so any dalliances are presumably OK with him.
104 chars
Sherri said on March 30, 2022 at 9:28 pm
Wanna bet this has something to do with the red state reaction to Covid?
https://twitter.com/mattdpearce/status/1509256380489744385
134 chars
Dexter Friend said on March 31, 2022 at 1:32 am
I called the local county health department who were so great with shots 1 and 2. Getting a booster was a bit of a wait after it was all cleared. So when I called on Wednesday they brushed me off, said they have heard nothing, and to call back in a couple weeks or just go to pharmacy.
Pins and needles, waiting to see what Chris Rock said at his sold-out Boston show Wednesday night.
389 chars
Jeff Gill said on March 31, 2022 at 7:35 am
Chris Rock has some processing to do, or so this am’s reporting is going. I just had my usual reaction hearing about tickets for the show going at $1000 a pop, just as I do around the Super Bowl and $5000 tickets, or walking along a marina looking at million dollar boats, most of whom were surely not won at a Palm Beach poker game on a busted flush . . . who are these people, and how did they make that much money?
417 chars
Julie Robinson said on March 31, 2022 at 10:40 am
Earlier in the Oscars broadcast Amy Schumer made a joke about the Smiths’ open marriage that kind of went over my head. I don’t follow celebrities much so I hadn’t known. So maybe Will Smith was already feeling picked upon, not that I excuse him one bit. Learning now that he had been asked to leave and refused, and even partied afterwards just compounds his poor judgment.
I haven’t been able to find anywhere around here yet that is scheduling second boosters online. Within a day or two we’ll need groceries from Publix so I just figured we’d stop and ask.
Is Governor of Michigan such a prime plum that so many want it? 13 in the primary seems ridiculous.
667 chars
susan said on March 31, 2022 at 10:55 am
I got my 2nd booster yesterday at Safeway, so the grocery store pharmacies are giving them now. At least in Warshington state.
126 chars
Jeff Borden said on March 31, 2022 at 12:12 pm
A Battle of the Media Titans is shaping up as Fox has gone on the warpath against a “woke” Disney over the company’s criticisms of Gov. Ron DeathSantis’ “Don’t Say Gay” bill.
Perhaps you’d think a multi-national entertainment conglomerate that generates an annual economic impact of more than $75 billion in Central Florida wouldn’t be targeted by Florida Republicans or the White Power Prime Time Hours on Fox, but you’d just be showing yourself to be another demonic liberal who hates ‘Murica. Folks, Disney is actively advancing a gay agenda and they must be stopped!
573 chars
Julie Robinson said on March 31, 2022 at 12:42 pm
Disney spreads the money around to cover all its bases. DeathSantis has received over 100K in the last three years. He’ll have more credibility on this issue when he returns the money, as other pols have done.
209 chars
Joe Kobiela said on March 31, 2022 at 12:54 pm
Jeff,
Could you show me in the Florida bill where the words, don’t say gay appear? I thought it was a bill saying you can’t teach sexual orientation both gay and straight to Kindergarten thru 3rd graders.
Seems to me that should be discussed by the parents, not a teacher at that age.
Pilot Joe
305 chars
alex said on March 31, 2022 at 1:00 pm
Funny coincidence, Jeff B…
On this date in 2015, we were all musing about the business backlash in Indiana after then-Gov. Pence signed an anti-gay religious freedom law.
Pence withered under the national media scrutiny and quickly walked it back, revising the law to explicitly forbid anti-gay discrimination, which quickly earned him the enmity of his base and it looked like he didn’t stand a chance in hell of winning reelection. Becoming Trump’s veep was the perfect exit strategy.
If he’d been governor today, he probably would have stood fast and told businesses to impose their socialist agendas somewhere else.
631 chars
Jeff Borden said on March 31, 2022 at 1:41 pm
Joe,
A more accurate name would be “Don’t Say Anything.” It is clearly aimed at the LBGTQ community, but the wording of the bill forbids teachers in k-3 from discussing anything to do with gender including cisgender. The bill is astonishingly sloppy and vague in its writing, but then, it really isn’t intended to do much more than give rightwing dildoes like DeathSantis more culture war red meat to throw to their followers. He plans to take this crap all the way to the White House, dog forbid.
Teaching is hard enough. It is a profession undervalued by many and outright scorned by those who have gorged on the codswallop that instructors are secret agents out to liberalize their students. It’s bullshit, but the rubes eat it up.
740 chars
Scout said on March 31, 2022 at 1:52 pm
“I kinda love that it’s called Don’t Say Gay because you have to say “gay” to say it.” –Jimmy Kimmel
101 chars
Sherri said on March 31, 2022 at 2:12 pm
What’s a teacher supposed to do in a kindergarten classroom where little Johnny’s parents are both women? Tell little Karen that Johnny’s parents aren’t really his parents, just really good friends?
206 chars
Joe Kobiela said on March 31, 2022 at 2:55 pm
Guess we will have to disagree, Still believe it’s up to the parents not someone else to pick the correct time to explain why some kid has two mommies, and am I correct they can’t teach about straight life style as well as gay? It also doesn’t seem to be a unpopular passage, latest poll showing some 61 percent in favor of the bill, including over 55% democrats in favor. This is after reading the whole bill, not just bits and pieces.
Pilot Joe
453 chars
Sherri said on March 31, 2022 at 3:17 pm
The so-called straight lifestyle is what is presumed, and doesn’t have to be taught. The whole point is that right wing fundamentalists don’t want their kids to see that gay people are normal, just like anybody else. If their kids see that, then they might start wondering what other lies their parents are telling them, like about black people, poor people, people who don’t go to church, and pretty soon, the whole house of cards collapses.
If you don’t think kids in K-3 aren’t aware of other kids’ families, you haven’t spent much time around kids that age. The point of this bill is to make sure that certain parents get to keep demonizing gay people.
Don’t worry, Pilot Joe, you’re a straight white man, it will take them a while to get to you for not being religious or being too Catholic.
822 chars
Joe Kobiela said on March 31, 2022 at 3:58 pm
Sherri,
I am sure k-3 are aware I am just saying it should be up to the parents not the state to explain it to them.
Not being religious or being too Catholic? Let’s see not sure I can be both, born and raised Catholic, then attended the Methodist church, left there do to the fact they won’t allow gay ministers among other things. Now I guess I speak to my creator when I’m running or sometimes flying. Could you maybe identify who “Them”is that’s coming to get me I would like to be prepared.
Pilot Joe
521 chars
Sherri said on March 31, 2022 at 4:21 pm
Thanks, you just demonstrated what I said; you’ve not spent any time around kids that age any time recently. In the real world, where we have a teacher, not the abstract state, what’s the teacher supposed to do when little Karen tells little Johnny that his parents are going to hell because he drew a picture of his family? Is the teacher supposed to tear up little Johnny’s picture because it’s teaching the kids that some kids have two mommies? Is the teacher supposed to tell the kids they can’t draw any pictures of their families, or write anything about their families, or talk about their families, because that might be explaining things that should be explained by parents? It makes no sense, because it’s not meant to make sense, it’s meant to demonize a group of people.
796 chars
Dexter Friend said on March 31, 2022 at 4:37 pm
I am dropping this in: my niece and her wife are the best damn parents ever, with twin 11 year old girls, ribbon-winning swimmers, and the 4 of them are having a blast on spring break right now… vacation. The girls did inquire about their father, but it was addressed by the women and it all worked out. They are a great family unit and I love them all.
JeffG: I never used to let the huge prices scare me away. In 1976 Hoosier fans were told to stay away from Philadelphia for the Final Four, tickets allegedly being scalped for thousands…I flew out there for the game and bought a ticket from a kid for $14. Other Final Fours, same deal, same with many baseball games. Once I stood all night outside Riverfront Stadium for World Series tickets, only to have the ticket window slammed down with just one person ahead of me.
833 chars
Jeff Borden said on March 31, 2022 at 4:44 pm
Joe is correct that polling in Florida finds most people in favor of the bill and likely for the reasons he enumerate, i.e., parents wanting to decide for themselves when and how to broach heavy subjects like sexuality with their kids. For my mom and dad –bless their hearts– that time never came and I was taught the facts of life as a freshman at an all boys’ Catholic high school.
Nonetheless, this is an example of a “one size fits all” approach that undoubtedly will cause unnecessary harm to kids and teachers at some point. I’ve not taught primary or secondary classes, but I’m inclined to agree with Sherri that they are not as naive or as helpless as this bill would suggest. Some kids are tougher, stronger and more aware of the world around them than the adults in their house.
All of which leads me to repeat my initial point that this is all horseshit designed to piss off people and fire them up for DeathSantis’ reelection campaign and inevitable presidential run, which makes the law even more ugly and pernicious than it already is.
1057 chars
Little Bird said on March 31, 2022 at 5:37 pm
The thing is, I’m not sure this is a topic that we can just agree to disagree about. This is about erasing people from the community. Or a rather blatant attempt to do so. By not being able to discuss the fact that Johnny has two dads, Johnny is left out and will much more be likely to be bullied because of it.
317 chars
Colleen said on March 31, 2022 at 5:57 pm
What Little Bird said. It’s along the lines of “It’s ok if they’re gay, just don’t flaunt it.” What’s flaunting? A picture of the family on the desk? A kiss goodbye at the airport? Holding hands at the mall? A hand on the knee at a concert? All completely “normal and innocuous” behaviors when exhibited by straight couples. So for school kids, does this mean no talking about dad and pop? No drawings of the family? Can the gay parents chaperone field trips or otherwise participate in their kids’ education? It it totally about making like gays don’t exist, to go along with some sick right wing narrative.
608 chars
Jeff Borden said on March 31, 2022 at 6:18 pm
Look, it’s pretty obvious that after 40 years of declaring war on government –thanks St. Ronald of Reagan, you dick– that Republicans no longer understand how to legislate or govern. Or, even worse, they just don’t want to. What they and rightwing media are truly great at is demagoguery — getting people pissed off to the point where they don’t use their heads and act on their passions. Twenty-three years ago, George W. Bush campaigned as a “compassionate conservative.” Hah. The idea of anyone in the QOP ever uttering that phrase today is nil. DeathSantis is tRump 2.0. How he fares going forward will be a referendum on just how terrible our country can get.
667 chars
Sherri said on March 31, 2022 at 7:35 pm
Everyone remembers Westboro Baptist Church and their brand of hatred. But while WBC was noisy, it really was fringe, and never very big, fewer than 100 members, mostly connected to the Phelps family.
The modern day versions of WBC are much bigger; Greg Locke and Global Vision in Mt. Juliet, TN have 1000 members, with a reach of millions beyond that online.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/03/31/tennessee-pastor-extremist-politics/
451 chars
LAMary said on March 31, 2022 at 9:25 pm
I’m thinking that the Florida bill is another version of forbidding CRT. It’s not taught anyway. Do kindergarten teachers “teach” gayness or do they teach kids it’s ok to be who you are or that parents are parents no matter what the gender configuration is. Families are families. People love each other. Normalizing reality shouldn’t be illegal unless it’s normalizing hate which the GOP seems to be focused on.
412 chars
Dexter Friend said on April 1, 2022 at 2:52 am
40 million Americans have insulin-dependent diabetes. A bill capping costs for insulin at $35/month was unanimously given a yes vote by all House Democrats. And nearly all Republicans, Scalise, McCarthy, that bunch, said “to hell with diabetics!”, and voted it down. It ain’t over yet, much wrangling with the issue to follow, but think about this when you vote this fall. Whose side are you on? Big Pharma or …yourselves? If you don’t have Type One diabetes, you know someone who does, probably you know a dozen. All our money after bills went to insulin for Carla Lee, for years. That part is over, but my heart bleeds for people shelling out all their dough and going into credit card hell.
703 chars
alex said on April 1, 2022 at 7:44 am
Dex, it’s unconscionable. I know from firsthand experience that diabetes meds are expensive even if you have a good employer-provided health plan. I pay thousands out of pocket despite being insured and I’m certain that people who don’t have good insurance or any insurance at all are probably foregoing treatment and dying prematurely and unnecessarily. It’s not an exaggeration when advocates for health care reform state that people are forced to choose between eating and paying rent or taking their medications. Talk about American exceptionalism. We’re the only place in the world where the public is separated from medical care by bloated bureaucracies committing highway robbery in exchange for access.
710 chars