If there’s a God, Henry Kissinger is being tortured in Hell by being beaten for eternity with the severed limbs of all the Cambodian civilians he bombed to pieces. But maybe there isn’t a God, and if there is, we can’t know Their ways. All I know is, the world is a better place with him gone. It feels like it’s been a long time since we had the satisfaction of watching a genuinely evil bastard check out. So what does the may-or-may-not-be-God do next?
Kill Shane MacGowan. St. Patrick’s Day won’t be the same without him.
The other day I saw something — an op-ed, a tweet, can’t remember — that said every world event didn’t need to be reacted to by official bodies. The Detroit City Council has no dog in the Israel-Palestine war, but passed a resolution “supporting” a ceasefire, as well as hostage release. Which leads me to this:
First reaction: Oh, of course it would be the goddamn Yankees. Second reaction: Who the hell cares that George Steinbrenner and Henry Kissinger were friends? Final reaction: Not wanting to be one of those shut-up-and-sing people, I beg off of this dispute. But I think about what that op-ed/tweet/whatever that started this said: Not everything has to be reacted to, especially when it’s a baseball team reacting to the death of a war criminal.
What other assholes are in the news today? Elon Musk, telling Disney’s CEO to go fuck himself — in that language — if he won’t advertise on Musk’s moth-eaten social platform. Man, I hope Linda Yaccarino has an excellent exit package for when she finally gets fed up trying to put lipstick on this pig. Actually, no I don’t. She went into this deal with the devil with her eyes wide open. Well, shit happens, especially entirely predictable shit.
Sorry to be such a grouch today. I have a new library book I’d like to get to, and the day outside looks suitable for a walk, both things I’d rather be doing. So best zip this up and hope for better things.
Dave said on November 30, 2023 at 12:32 pm
We’ve witnessed this week the funeral of a genuinely great person and the respect shown to her by everyone for her lifetime of accomplishments, the biggest perhaps being the Carter Center and Habitat for Humanity.
Now we’ve got the death of someone who has much blood on his hands and yet we’ll see the many statements of praise and sympathy from people in power and I’ve already seen how his advice was sought by several administrations. Ugh.
Mark, I feel for you, I have two family members who’ve suffered, my mother and a first cousin who still lingers on knowing no one. I can only guess at how this is making you feel and it sounds like you are almost all on your own. I don’t know anything about UTI’s and how they might figure into it but if there’s anything that might make things a little easier (tough challenge), it’s worth learning more about.
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FDChief said on November 30, 2023 at 12:48 pm
I left this on the last post but it’s worth repeating, so…
“It’s worth taking a moment in the pissing-on-Kissinger’s-grave-celebration to also recall how worthless and incompetent the dirtbag was at his chosen role as America’s Metternich.
His cunning plans in SE Asia resulted in nothing more than countless death. South Vietnam lost, Cambodia destroyed, Laos devastated, the whole region hostile for a generation.
His little foray into South Asia – in aid of the Pakistani atrocities in what is now Bangladesh – was an utter failure; the Karachi government was well whipped in the resulting independence war.
His coups in Chile and Paraguay did nothing but hoist dictators who ruined their countries, stoked merciless social hatred, did nothing to stop “global Communism”, and ended with at least one Kissinger protege (Pinochet) in the dock.
The man wasn’t just amoral scum; he was incompetent amoral scum. But you won’t get that from the tongue-bath he’s gonna get from all the usual D.C. players. He’s gonna be a “great statesman” even though his body count would make Ribbentrop green with envy and his string of losses make the pre-2000 Chicago Cubs look like the NY Yankees…”
And, of course, here are the Yankees to drive home the point. If you wrote that it’d be dismissed as an improbable fiction.
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ROGirl said on November 30, 2023 at 1:20 pm
The mother of a woman at work has been in the hospital and she (the mother) had a uti.
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Peter said on November 30, 2023 at 1:52 pm
I’m a little surprised about Heinz Kissinger – I’m of the belief that something that evil never really dies.
If you subscribe to the theory that celebrity deaths happen in threes, here’s hoping for Dick Cheney and Trump to fill out that bracket.
(I left out Rosalynn Carter because she was too nice a person to be lumped in with that crowd).
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Cheez Whiz said on November 30, 2023 at 2:48 pm
Dave touched on the amorality and incompetence of Kissinger in his chosen profession. I have always been totally confused by the fawning respect the man inspired in The Club that we are not members of. He must have had an awesome command of diplomatic bullshit to con so many people for so long. 2nd coming of Metternich my ass. That or the Dr. Srangelove accent.
The best explanation for Linda Yaccarino is she expects the banks to put her in charge after Musk defaults on the loans coming due.
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Julie Robinson said on November 30, 2023 at 2:50 pm
Raise your hand if you were a little surprised Kissinger was still with the world. Remember when he was the darling of society?
Like Nancy, I’m a little grouchy, with three library books waiting, but life had other plans. Stayed up too late putting together a book of wedding photos last night so I could get the discount. Come to find the Costco discount is better, and has free shipping. Still, it feels good to have the thing done. I’m not a graphics designer nor have I made many photo books so it was an uphill battle.
Apparently the anti-Disney Florida governor and pro-Disney California governor are debating tonight on Fox. Will not be watching.
Oh, almost forgot–the time I almost died in the hospital was my first ever UTI. I had no symptoms save upset stomach and thought I had some bad food.
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Jeff Borden said on November 30, 2023 at 3:25 pm
The death of Kissinger really tempts me to open my single malt bottle set aside for Dick Cheney’s death. But I’m going to be strong.
A Canadian company run by an unctuous dick named Conrad Black owned the Chicago Sun-Times. Black was an ultra-conservative who staffed his board with others of his ilk including Henry the K. I attended a couple of board meetings of Hollinger International and can attest that Kissinger’s voice was a rumbling bass even when he whispered. It was truly just a vanity board…and an easy gig for all the wingnuts who sat on it.
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Deborah said on November 30, 2023 at 3:59 pm
I used to think Kissinger and Cheney had to be the worst of the worst but this current crowd of Republicans seem to be beating them as evil doers. Maybe not as many body counts…yet.
Mark, I wish I had some advice for you of where to get help coping. Does your wife have siblings?
Uncle J’s foundation is working on a place that will be a resource for both patients and caregivers,etc. It isn’t off the ground yet but may be in the next year. It is something that certainly seems needed that’s for sure.
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Sherri said on November 30, 2023 at 4:53 pm
Seen on Bluesky, re Kissinger:
fyi in case you are wondering “may his memory be a blessing” is the standard jewish response to death but there’s another, special one just for evil bastards, “may his name be erased”
https://bsky.app/profile/swordsjew.bsky.social/post/3kfexejd73i27
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Dorothy said on November 30, 2023 at 6:24 pm
I had a UTI in early October, saw my doc about it and got a 5 day course of antibiotics. Three days after the antibiotics were gone it reared its ugly head again, and I had to go to the ER on October 17 at 5 AM. It was really bad that day – it wasn’t that way at ALL in early October. I’m glad I was seen so quickly and got good meds. It’s been years since I had one and do not look forward to having anymore in my lifetime. We had to pay a portion of the charges at the hospital, and yesterday I asked to see a copy of the entire bill so I knew how much the ER visit cost. $1670 and my share was $250. Whew. The nurse and doctor were wonderful (both were women but that’s not really important – just thought I’d mention it) and I peed in a cup. The doc said I would not be charged for the medications because ever since Covid they had some cabinet that was kept regularly stocked for commonly prescribed meds. That was nice but $1670 for a one hour visit and the test? Whew again.
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Deborah said on November 30, 2023 at 8:17 pm
There are over the counter meds you can get to find out if you have a UTI. I’ve heard they aren’t that reliable but maybe it’s a place to start. You pee on a provided stick then wait a couple of minutes to see what color some patches on the stick turn compared to a color chart that comes in the box. My Dr told me that there are often false positives that result from urine tests that make Drs prescribe un-needed medicine which isn’t good. So more involved testing is often added.
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alex said on November 30, 2023 at 10:04 pm
Glad I don’t have a UTI or anything else at the moment. One month into retirement and I discover that I am totally uninsured. I’ve made two premium payments to my employer for COBRA and they still don’t have it set up. A couple of weeks ago I paid $300 out of pocket for a one-month supply of insulin. Today I went in for another med and was told I have no insurance and that it would be nine hundred fucking plus.
So I ask my employer what’s going on and get some bullshit about “we’ll e-mail them again and get back to you.” So then I went onto my insurance carrier’s online portal and had a live chat with a customer service rep and she gave me the phone number that my employer is supposed to call. So I e-mailed that to my employer and I’m waiting to see what happens.
Can you believe this shit? I left that place because it was dysfunctional, but I had no idea it was that dysfunctional.
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brian stouder said on November 30, 2023 at 10:54 pm
Alex, it sounds like the HR puke is willfully dysfunctional, and/or criminally negligent
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Gretchen said on December 1, 2023 at 1:36 am
Urologist Ashley Winter over at Twitter is always saying that vaginal estrogen should be tried for utis in postmenopausal women. Seems to be often effective
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Alan Stamm said on December 1, 2023 at 7:34 am
Fitting HK sendoff at Rolling Stone, which doesn’t play softball. Its headline: “Henry Kissinger, War Criminal Beloved by America’s Ruling Class, Finally Dies”
An overline said “Good Riddance” before it was changed to “Zero Accountability.”
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4dbirds said on December 1, 2023 at 9:42 am
Just got over a UTI with antibiotics. I also find taking Azo helps with the pain and spasms associated with UTIs. My closest brush with death was also associated with a UTI/Kidney infection that led to sepsis. Weeks in the hospital and IV antibiotics via pic line after discharge. Needless to say, I nip that shit in the bud now. Also, fuck Kissinger. Don’t believe in hell but hopefully they make one just for him.
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Mark P said on December 1, 2023 at 11:47 am
I contacted my wife’s urologist Wednesday and she’s having my wife come in for lab work today. She’s still very confused. It’s strange to find myself hoping she has a UTI.
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Dave said on December 1, 2023 at 11:50 am
Santos expelled. I didn’t think they’d really do it.
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4dbirds said on December 1, 2023 at 11:55 am
Dave, I didn’t think they would do it either.
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Julie Robinson said on December 1, 2023 at 1:03 pm
Alex, I would threaten to sic the TV stations on the company, or maybe the newspaper. It’s so, so wrong. I hope you still have some of the $900 med so you aren’t going without. I will say, no one at my husband’s office understood how to do any of this either and we had to push to make it all happen.
4dbirds, I had sepsis too. They admitted me thinking I was in kidney failure because I didn’t have UTI symptoms. I take cranberry extract 2X daily and it’s helped.
Dorothy, yikes! All of these issues prove once again how screwed up our medical/insurance system is in this country.
Sandra Day O’Connor, who changed history for the worse with her vote in the 2000 election, has died at 93.
Florida’s scandal du jour regards the state Republican head and his wife, a Moms for Liberty bigwig, and the rape investigation he is accused in. https://wapo.st/49YXjqF (unlocked WaPo article). But the scuttlebutt is that they were part of a longterm throuple with the accuser. Family values, people, family values!
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4dbirds said on December 1, 2023 at 1:35 pm
Julie, Sepsis is the worst. My pain could only be controlled with morphine, I hallucinated, I didn’t have the strength to get out of bed, and used a female exterior catheter to relieve myself. The Pic line itched and I was never sure I was infusing the right amount of antibiotics into it. I think I still have PTSD over it.
Alex, are you out of insulin? Please get my email address from Nancy if you are.
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alex said on December 1, 2023 at 1:52 pm
Julie, I’ve got enough of that $900+ med to last a while. With insurance it only costs me $25. I’ll have to figure out how to get reimbursed for the $300 insulin pen though. Couldn’t have waited on that purchase.
I don’t think I would involve media, but if that twit doesn’t get off his ass I may call an attorney who’s a friend and see what she suggests. In fact I have her number right in front of me and I think I’ll just go ahead and do it.
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alex said on December 1, 2023 at 2:00 pm
Thanks 4dbirds. I’m good for the moment. Or at least until the middle of this month, anyway. Just left a voice mail with my attorney friend and I’ll see what she says.
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Deborah said on December 1, 2023 at 2:35 pm
You folks are scaring me about UTIs. I get them more often than normal, nothing that bad though. I’ve had kidney stones though, not fun.
So Roselynn, then Henry now Sandra Day O’Conner. She was OK as the first woman SCOTUS Justice I always thought. Somewhat conservative but not a winger.
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Julie Robinson said on December 1, 2023 at 3:02 pm
4dbirds, I never had any pain, but I did think I was hallucinating when the nurses told me Princess Diana was in an accident and then died. I clearly remember a temp of 106°, them packing me in ice, pushing fluids so fast the IV kept clogging. My doctor warned it could take six weeks to recover my strength, and the first two I did nothing but lay in bed. Okay, I could get up for the bathroom, but I didn’t even have the energy to read.
Orlando has had a couple of weeks of cold and gray weather, so today I’m rejoicing in the sun and 82°. When I see the snowstorms elsewhere, I just shudder.
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Sherri said on December 1, 2023 at 3:04 pm
Sandra Day O’Conner may not have been a winger, but much like Anthony Kennedy, she’d rather been replaced by the nuttiest winger than be replaced by a Democrat. Her husband’s health was failing, she wanted to retire, so she was happy to have the chance to out her thumb on the scale in Bush v Gore to avoid having a Democrat name her replacement. Instead, Bush named Alito.
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Jeff said on December 1, 2023 at 4:44 pm
This is technically about HMOs, but Alex, I think it covers your situation as well.
https://youtu.be/2jZVZc5qEBw?si=CGSXRaJjJ4i39y4z
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FDChief said on December 1, 2023 at 5:06 pm
On Santos, I’m gonna bet that the committee report was so damning that even the KKKook Kaukus’ hand was forced.
Michelle Goldberg has a terrific piece in the NYT (paywalled, sorry…) that details how perfectly Georgie-boy fits with the MAGAgrift, and how one big reason they were eager to 86 his ass is how strongly his criming resembles their Orange Fuhrer’s. Sitting with them he’d be a constant reminder of what a scabrous little shit Donnie Two-Scoops is, too. Hence his defenestration.
Hopefully he gets actual prison time; it’d be nice to see “justice” actually hammer a well-dressed white-collar crook for a change…
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Heather said on December 1, 2023 at 6:01 pm
First and worst UTI I ever had was when I was a teenager. I couldn’t get out of bed and was throwing up for a week, but the adults in my life didn’t do anything (my brother and I had moved in with a guardian after my mother died). Finally, my boyfriend came over with a thermometer, saw my temperature, and insisted on taking me to the doctor. I’ve been prone to them since but know the signs so I can act pretty quickly by taking cranberry pills and drinking a lot of water. They’ve leveled off in recent years–I fear all these stories mean I will face a resurgence at some point.
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Dexter Friend said on December 2, 2023 at 2:21 am
For days on end Chrome said this site does not exist after BitDefender said corrupt URLs on this site are extremely dangerous and eventually denied me access, so I dusted off Firefox to get on here.
Kissinger was sound of mind, recalling every meeting with Le Duc To before Paris, every session with Nixon, as he related so much on a Viet Nam panel on a recent Memorial Day. He disputed any criticism about Nixon’s merciless bombing, even the 4 bombings of Bach Mai Children’s Hospital in Hanoi.
His entire personage, reminiscent of Doctor Strangelove, was creepy. An international playboy? Oh yeah…women of fashion and power fell for him like love-struck teens.
I have written here before how I have been studying the USA invasion of Viet Nam for at least 62 years, when my astute grandmother warned me of shenanigans in Viet Nam, years post Dien Bien Phu but 4 years before the huge US Marine invasion in 1965. Human life meant nothing to Nixon and Kissinger, and later to Bush43 and Cheney for that matter. At least we got a mea culpa from McNamara. So now Kissinger is dead after 100 years. It’s a strange and beautiful world, as the wag said…I accidentally discovered a doc on a streamer about how the Czechs murdered German speaking people post WW2. I mean a lot of mass graves, executions…we never learned that in school. Any German officer was hanged by the short rope method, a short drop to stop blood flow to the head, then a rag to the face to stop the breathing. Damn.
And yes, Rosalynn Carter came to Bryan about 28 years ago to pound nails in a Habitat for Humanity project 6 lots east of me on my street. A saint.
And check out “Bookie” on Max. Sebastian Maniscalco…funny as hell!
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FDChief said on December 2, 2023 at 8:20 am
Re: Kissinger and how “sound” his mind was, Gary Bass’ “The Blood Telegram” does a terrific job of pointing out how utterly miserable Hankie-boy was at his supposed job of pushing US geopolitical policy, in this case in South Asia, because of his own prejudice and his craven bootlicking to Tricky Dick Nixon’s mental kinks.
This precious pair looked at the India-Pakistan rivalry and decided they’d put their country’s weight behind the Pakis despite the total mismatch there. They greenlighted the Khan government’s campaign of atrocities in then-East Pakistan, and then were banjaxed when, as you’d expect, the Indians mopped the floor with the Pakistanis in the 1971 war.
All that misery and death? For NOTHING. To put the two little bastards’ nation in a worse geopolitical position than it’d started.
That’s what gets me. That somehow Kissinger has gone down to the grave retaining a rep for diplomatic/geopolitical brilliance. The “he was a vicious bastard but…” that puts him up there with Metternich or Talleyrand.
Bullshit. The sonofabitch was as incompetent as he was vicious. I wish I could believe he’s being tormented in Hell.
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Suzanne said on December 2, 2023 at 9:40 am
Our daughter had a UTI when she was 4 or 5. Not pain urinating or anything like that but threw up. There was a stomach bug going around at the time so I didn’t worry too much until we hit several days in and she was still throwing up & very lethargic. Took her to the doctor and he diagnosed a UTI pretty quickly. An antibiotic shot and she was a different kid within 24 hours. The doc mentioned that UTI symptoms don’t always involve pain in that area.
Daughter is now in her 30s and fortunately, that was her only UTI ever.
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alex said on December 2, 2023 at 9:59 am
Good news on the insurance front. The carrier contacted me and instructed me how to enroll for COBRA online and pay for it online too, so I did it. Now my employer owes me a refund.
It’s nearly $700 a month, so I started looking at ACA plans. I have until December 15 to enroll in one of those if I choose. Even their low-deductible plans look more affordable than COBRA. However, they base the price on your income and I’m not sure exactly what counts as income when you’re a retiree living on Social Security and distributions from a 401k and an IRA. (I’m thinking about rolling the 401 into the IRA as the latter has been performing better lately.)
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susan said on December 2, 2023 at 11:46 am
Alex, I assume the ACA—if it operates as does Medicare/Social Security— will use your previous year’s income as a basis for what you pay/get paid.
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Julie Robinson said on December 2, 2023 at 12:56 pm
Throwing up was my only symptom the time I had to be hospitalized, and since I’d eaten some questionable cream cheese I had assumed that was the cause.
Alex, to know how much ACA will cost you need to get a sign-in and then start plugging in numbers. Susan is correct that it uses the prior year’s income, and since you retired late in the year, you may not get much of a break on premiums. Can’t remember what income it counts, but we decided to live off our savings and a small pension until social security kicked in, so our premiums were tiny.
Then of course you have to see if you can keep the doctors you like, and how much your prescriptions will cost.
One other thing, I don’t remember if you and hubby ever got legally married, because that complicates the issue. When D was working they covered his group health premiums, but not mine. They skyrocketed to $1500/month so I thought I’d go ACA for my coverage. Turns out that if one person has group coverage, the other is not eligible for ACA, even when you are paying 100% of the premium. It’s a nasty little loophole that I’m sure health insurance executives paid many millions in campaign donations for.
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alex said on December 2, 2023 at 1:05 pm
I plugged in my adjusted gross income from last year and found a Gold plan with a low deductible that’s just over $400 a month. Of course the formulary says all of my most important meds need prior authorization and I can just seeing them trying to fuck me there.
But that’s $300 less than COBRA and I think I can swing it financially. And my partner and I haven’t legally tied the knot yet. Even if we had, though, his group plan doesn’t pay for spouses. We looked into getting me a special exemption and they would charge us $1,100 a month so we figured COBRA was a better way to go. But I spoke with a rep from the insurance carrier regarding income (and yes they’d use my income from last year) but my takeaway was that as long as I was filing taxes singly and not jointly I’m entitled to coverage.
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Heather said on December 2, 2023 at 2:53 pm
Alex, $400 a month with a low deductible is a good deal on the marketplace! I end up paying a lot more because I want to stay at Northwestern, where all of my doctors are and I’m enrolled in an early detection program for ovarian cancer. I could go elsewhere but the peace of mind that I’m doing everything I can to avoid it is worth it to me. As my PMP said, “Academic medicine is expensive.” Sigh. I love freelancing but the health insurance definitely makes it so much harder than it has to be.
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Deborah said on December 3, 2023 at 8:24 pm
I had another experience today where I’m wondering if I’m the asshole again. After returning from Chicago to Santa Fe the jeep had been in the garage for 2 1/2 months with no one driving it and everytime I come back I have to put air in the tires. So I went to the gas station that has air available and I had to wait for a guy in a truck ahead of me to finish and then I’m starting in on my first tire and a young woman pulls in behind me and asks if I’m planning to do all of my tires and that she only needed air in one of her back tires and would I let her go first. So I was astounded that she would ask that but I agreed and handed her the hose so she takes it back to her tire and it won’t exactly reach, so she asks me if I would get back in my car and pull up so she can move her car up to be able to reach the hose to her back tire. I just kind of looked at her incredulously and then she decided that there probably was enough room for her to just pull her car up closer to mine and then the hose would reach. So she did that and it reached and she put the hose back on the machine and backed up and left. It put me in a horribly bad mood, the pavement around me was was wet from the melting snow and the roof overhead was dripping and as I furiously finished filling the tires, I had to ask LB for help, she was waiting in the car, because the button kept having to be pushed to restart the air coming through the hose. Anyway am I the asshole for thinking that the woman was acting unbelievably entitled and I should not have quietly felt put out and seethed about it afterward?
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David C said on December 4, 2023 at 5:50 am
On our first 20-something degree day, they were doing land office business at the air pump. We all lined up and waited our turn. That’s how things are supposed to work so you have reason to be irked.
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Jeff Gill said on December 4, 2023 at 9:16 am
I hope you can find quiet satisfaction in having done a kind thing, even if it was odd of her to ask it of you.
My challenge here in caregiving is finding the right place to put my heart in knowing I’m doing the right thing, even as the lifelong abusive manipulative narcissist can’t help trying to maneuver me to do what I’m already going to do. Somedays I can laugh off his feeble attempts to play me as I’m taking care of him, and other days — caffeine level? blood sugar? Mercury in retrograde? — the indignation rises up to where I want to shout back at him, which is pointless because his selective deafness will force me to repeat my chiding of him to where I end up laughing at my own foolishness.
It’s a journey, that’s for sure. Along the way, trying to be at peace with myself, mostly.
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Icarus said on December 4, 2023 at 12:25 pm
Alex @ 36: This won’t apply to you unless you re-enter the workforce or do some consulting, but one issue we ran into with the ACA is that if you get a high-paying job later in the year they expect you to pay back your subsidies from the earlier part of the year.
i.e. You are unemployed from Jan through June. Then you finally land a good paying job, so you don’t need ACA, so pay us back. Not factoring in the rent, food, and other bills you had for 8 months.
I might not be explaining it correctly because my wife dealt with this, but one fault of government is that they base things on last years data without regard to today’s need.
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alex said on December 4, 2023 at 1:20 pm
I’ll worry when they take this year’s income into account. In addition to my salary I also took a healthy distribution from an IRA to cover home improvements. At this point I’m not contemplating getting another job but i know well enough to never say never.
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Dave said on December 4, 2023 at 1:37 pm
Deborah, she should have waited her turn, it doesn’t take that long to put air in four tires and it makes me wonder if she’s always thinking of herself first, trying to get ahead without the patience and the work required. Or else, she was merely in a hurry but I can’t think that she would have been waiting that long. You were more than kind.
Jeff, excuse me but what you’ve been doing is more than many, many son-in-laws would do and I imagine that the toll it has taken on you is immense. I thought you had written that Mrs. Gill has been continuously surprised at her father and the current way he’s been, I didn’t realize that he’d always been a manipulative sort of fellow. Nonetheless, it takes a superhuman effort, almost, one would think your deep faith has helped you do this.
We attended an extended family member’s funeral on Saturday in Portsmouth, deep in Southern Ohio and I couldn’t believe how shabby Portsmouth is now. It is Ohio Appalachia and I knew that there isn’t a whole lot there but my goodness, street after street of ill-kept homes, a empty downtown, and the only attractive buildings I saw in town were the ones at Shawnee State University. Had my parents not left in 1948, I could have grown up there and I am so glad they left for Columbus.
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Jeff Borden said on December 4, 2023 at 1:57 pm
I’m beginning to think some QOPers are hypocrites. Yesirree, hypocrites.
Down in the hellish climes of Floriduh, the very religious chair of the Floriduh QOP, has been accused of rape. Awful, yes. The wife of the accused rapist is none other than the co-founder of Mom’s for Liberty, the religious zealots seeking to ban books they don’t like…especially if they have “the sex” in them. But wait…there’s more. The woman accusing the man of rape has been in a threesome with the Jeebus people, but was especially drawn to Liberty Mom. When she balked at just doing the dude, he allegedly raped her.
But, sure, they did get “Tango Makes Three” so maybe it balances out.
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David C said on December 4, 2023 at 3:26 pm
Moms for labia?
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brian stouder said on December 4, 2023 at 3:42 pm
Dave C for thread-win!
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Jeff Borden said on December 4, 2023 at 5:24 pm
Excellent, David, Excellent.
So far the QOP chair is refusing to resign, but it’s likely the demands to do so will increase. And Moms for Liberty is now viewed as a bunch of losers after its endorsed candidates were largely wiped out.
Lovely people. Really fucking lovely.
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Sherri said on December 4, 2023 at 5:36 pm
I realized long ago that I would not be willing to do what you’re doing, Jeff, for my parents, even though culturally it was expected of me as a good Southern daughter. My mother was an angry, abusive parent, and my father was emotionally absent. I left as soon as I could, and through lots of therapy, learned to set boundaries. I did choose to remain in relationship with them, but I set the terms, and I will no longer be abused.
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Jeff Gill said on December 4, 2023 at 6:31 pm
Dave, sadly you’ll read about how Portsmouth was hollowed out in Sam Quinones’s excellent if painful book “Dreamland.” It’s about the roots & spread of the opioid epidemic, but the title refers to a community pool in Portsmouth that, like so much else there, is no more.
My sister with our mother living in her home now has the harder job. It is an irony that for both my wife & myself it was the gaslighter parent who survived. My father-in-law as debilitated as he is was just this morning trying to play the only game he knows with me; my sister had mom at a doctor today where we had strategized how to get some reality communicated from the MD to her, but reality she doesn’t like is impossible to get across (like never driving again). And our brother who comes in each day she’s forgotten entirely: he’s a stranger to her. I salute his good humor about that development.
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Dave said on December 4, 2023 at 9:54 pm
I read that book, Jeff, in fact, I bought that book when I picked it up and opened it to a random page and read something about the Lucasville Bottoms. My mother grew up in Lucasville and I knew exactly where they were talking about.
Another sad Scioto County story was from a New York Times study of Minford, OH, a series the paper ran in 2019 and how it ravaged the senior class of 2000. My father grew up there, long before this, of course, but this is a place where my father’s branch of the family had deep, several generation roots, a place I’ve been to many times, and I still have some distant relation. It’s depressing to know that there are a lot of people there with no hope and most likely feel they have no way out.
I learned while reading about the drug crisis there that one person who lost his pharmacy license after making scads of money selling pills was someone I once knew, the brother of my uncle’s first wife. He escaped jail time but lost everything and left the area.
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Jeff said on December 4, 2023 at 10:18 pm
Whether Indiana, Ohio, or West Virginia, I hear all the political candidates talking about how THEY will help small rural communities. Honestly, in our current economy, I don’t see how that’s even remotely possible. Two out of three probably need to be leveled as it is, and for those one in three or one in four remaining, a careful distribution across the landscape would allow some marginal vitality depending on the agriculture and scattered small manufacturers, but the prognosis out there is bleak. Other than the shelving around the registers and beer cave in 24 hour gas station outposts, there’s not much retail left nor other services (small town doctors? Ha! small town lawyers? C’mon. even small town CPAs aren’t a thing anymore, let alone clergy). One Indiana gubernatorial candidate (think out loud the word guber…nator…ial…) keeps saying he’s against school consolidation. I could agree in the right frame of mind, but to what end? I think graduating classes of 1,000 are problematic, but not necessarily so — my wife graduated in a school she loved with 1,200 fellow graduates in 1977 — but what’s the alternative?
Of course, I’m kidding myself. The real agenda here is ethno-uniform religiously homogenous private academies, which are indeed smaller and more relational and much more focused on a cogent world view that keeps most of modernity at bay. They just haven’t figured out how to mitigate the fact that they also want their kids to be “successful,” which means they leave South Succotash for the big city, where they learn modernity is pretty much the blueprint for what’s happening now. And then what?
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FDChief said on December 5, 2023 at 8:50 am
The Green Devolution of industrial agriculture doomed the old farm towns, and the Digital Revolution doomed the old mill towns. They are where they are because of 19th Century economics; you needed a grain silo and feed store on the rail line every day’s wagon trip distance apart, and the mill needed to be close to the iron ore and coal pithead.
Now? No. There’s literally no reason for those places to exist. They’re as obsolete as the castle towns along the Danube and too much less scenic to cater to tourism.
Short of an extinction-level event (which we might be getting in the form of climate change, but…) I’m not sure how that changes. Maybe when the full-EV-changeover occurs? The shorter-range battery recharge distance might be a reason to bring back those little towns as plug-in stops? Hard to say.
What’s easy to say is that the re-emergence of White Pride in these podunk cesspits makes them not just useless but actively harmful to the human condition in the 21st Century. They’re the American equivalent of the famous London cholera well; the only way to keep people from getting sick with MAGAt Flu is to remove the pump handle. Or nuke them from space.
It’s the only way to be sure.
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alex said on December 5, 2023 at 11:41 am
Said “guber” has an editorial in today’s local paper in which he blames Biden for the hundreds of thousands of people crashing our southern border or encamped there and says they are sneaking in from all over the world and this goes unrebutted, just like the lies being served up by James Comer and amplified by Fox about the Biden Crime Syndicate.
The White House has a strategic plan for immigration but Congress won’t act on it because it’s so much easier to play politics with border problems than to fix them.
In other news, my COBRA coverage has hit yet another snag. I’m told by the insurance carrier that my former employer’s benefits administrator has yet to contact them to communicate my intentions to take COBRA coverage and they cannot do anything until he does. I’m getting seriously livid at that sumbitch, having e-mailed back and forth with him quite a bit about it.
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alex said on December 5, 2023 at 12:39 pm
So my employer’s benefits administrator tells me that he just received a secure e-mail asking for my qualifying event date and reason for COBRA and attached to the e-mail was his original submission containing both of those things.
It would be funny if it weren’t as serious as a heart attack. So they blame each other while I sit here uninsured.
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