Strange to think my daughter will lose her rights and her affordable health care by the end of next year. And neighbors who watched her for years walking down our street, headed to school or the park, will celebrate. Hell, we could lose our health care, or see it whittled away to nothing, replaced by a “market-based” plan that will cost more than the pre-ACA plans did, and won’t cover anything anyway.
Rolling back fluoridation. The ignorance is breathtaking, isn’t it? To believe RFKJr’s lies about that, you’d have to believe the EVIL fertilizer industry had an EVIL problem, i.e., where to dispose of its EVIL waste, and some Snidely Whiplash in the C-suite said, “I know! Let’s add it to the nation’s drinking water!” and a plan was hatched to bamboozle the nation’s dentists, and it was successful, and all the EVILLLLL fertilizer guys cackled and rubbed their evil hands together in glee, and backed their dump trucks full of POISON to the nation’s reservoirs and poured it in, probably charging ratepayers for shipping and handling.
Because EVIL.
Well, I know what evil looks like, Pilot Joe. Sometimes it comes dressed in ignorance, but evil is as evil does, and a whole, whole lot of evil will be going on in the coming years. Because peanut butter is more expensive than it was a few years ago, and a suspiciously tall lady with a prominent Adam’s apple peed in the next stall at the coffeehouse, and oh my what could have happened.
I don’t have much to say today, except fuck it all.
Sherri said on November 6, 2024 at 3:06 pm
RFKJr thinks I should be in a work camp instead of taking antidepressants.
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Jason T. said on November 6, 2024 at 3:08 pm
Jeff Bezos is happy. I take solace in the knowledge that Jeff Bezos is happy … speaking of someone who looks like Dr. Evil.
I cancelled my Washington Post subscription last week, and cancelled Amazon Prime and my Amazon store card today. I know it won’t affect Baldy at all, but there’s no reason to give him even a penny of my money if I don’t have to.
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brian stouder said on November 6, 2024 at 3:20 pm
Nancy – well said. Truly. If this was a movie, I’d say ‘that would never happen’…….but here we are. Serious question (on a long list of questions) – what comes next? Retribution? Geo-political and/or financial chicanery? Judicial chicanery? Or – what I’m afraid of – All of the Above?
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Icarus said on November 6, 2024 at 3:27 pm
Hey MAGA: If Pence had the authority in 2021 to reject Biden Electors and make Trump president, shouldn’t Kamala Harris have the authority to reject Trump Electors and make herself president?
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brian stouder said on November 6, 2024 at 3:41 pm
Forgot to mention – loved your closing line! Being a Formula-One fan, it immediately reminded me of the governing body of F1, the FIA.
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Colleen said on November 6, 2024 at 3:50 pm
I was listening to Progress on Sirius this morning, and the host said something that resonated with me. Trump is a mirror. He is mirroring American society. A society that is racist, misogynist,xenophobic.His horribleness is a feature, not a bug. When Puerto Rico was called garbage, his fans weren’t horrified–they were cheering. The uglier he is, the more they like it. The cruelty and the hate ARE the point.
And I don’t buy “not all Trump voters…” Him being a convicted felon, adjudicated rapist, racist, sexist,cheating grifter isn’t a deal breaker. It’s allll ok with them.
But Kamala has a weird laugh, so…
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Sherri said on November 6, 2024 at 4:37 pm
What’s depressing to me is just how much hate there is in this country. I said it eight years ago, and I still believe it, Trump is popular because he hates all the right people, and he gives his supporters permission to express their hate and not feel bad about it. He tells them they are the Real Americans, not the racist, misogynistic, xenophobic bigots that they are, and it’s those other people who are the problem.
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Deborah said on November 6, 2024 at 4:38 pm
I walked 9 miles this morning, and I’m up to 11.3 now. I could walk more but I feel like I’m in the self destruct mode. I’m defying every car stopped at a pedestrian striped walkway to run me over, me, the 74 year old lady with white hair, go ahead try it. It’s time for me to quit for the day. I have to get up extremely early tomorrow morning to fly to St. Louis again for more meetings and spending the night there, then Friday I’m riding in a car for 3 hours to more meetings, then Friday afternoon I take the train back to Chicago from Springfield, IL. I’m glad I have that all to distract me from my disgust with the American electorate. I realize there are millions of good people in this country but right now I’m having a hard time thinking of where they are and how we can work together for some kind of common good.
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Joe Kobiela said on November 6, 2024 at 5:20 pm
Pretty simple, the working class got tired of being pissed on by the condescending elites and being told it was raining.
Pilot Joe
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Sherri said on November 6, 2024 at 5:26 pm
Joe, I will not be lectured on what the working class thinks by someone who flies private jets for a living.
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brian stouder said on November 6, 2024 at 5:36 pm
I’d say Sherri just grounded Pilot Joe!
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Heather said on November 6, 2024 at 5:46 pm
Damn Sherri!
I never understand this whole thing about liberal elites when people like Peter Thiel, Leonard Leo, and the Koch brothers have been steadily setting themselves up for years to amass more and more power and money at the expense of working people.
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David C said on November 6, 2024 at 5:53 pm
The working class has a right to be pissed off. They are getting shit on. But it’s the people they just elected who are shitting on them. Most of the spending from the CHIPS and Science Act is happening in red districts. Most of the spending from the infrastructure bill is going to red districts. The monopolization of agriculture that’s wreaking havoc on rural America is being done by Republicans. The working class has been screwed over by Republican union busting and outsourcing. They’re really going to get screwed over if Trump imposes 20% across the board tariffs like he says he’s going to. We all will. No matter what he says, the exporting country doesn’t pay them, consumers do. Like they say “Be careful what you wish for”.
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Joe Kobiela said on November 6, 2024 at 6:33 pm
Sherri
The reason I fly is because I put in 31yrs in a hot stinking factory from. 11pm till 7am, I paid for my ratings myself. I didn’t take loans and if I would have I would have paid them back myself. I worked a heck of a lot of overtime to help pay for our house and to help my kids college so F.O.
Pilot Joe
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Sherri said on November 6, 2024 at 7:08 pm
Fuck off, yourself. I worked my way through college so I wouldn’t have to have working class jobs like my parents. I didn’t take loans, either, and went to a state school where it was cheap.
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Suzanne said on November 6, 2024 at 7:21 pm
Many of my relatives did the same, Joe, but they made good wages and had a pension which are both rare now unless you work at GM. Today, many of those factory jobs pay maybe $30,000 per year, not enough for a family to live on, even with OT. $30,000 is roughly what the average pay was in the Gary area steel mills when we lived near there in the early 1980s when a new house cost maybe $50,000 to $60,000. The best paying factory in the Indiana small town we used to live near pays about $20.00 an hour. We paid over $200,000 for a 35 year old house in 2023.
What you did was laudable but much less possible now.
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Joe Kobiela said on November 6, 2024 at 7:22 pm
Yea Sherri wouldn’t want to have to hang around those working class folks, plumbers, welders, iron workers, truck drivers, fire fighters, so much less intelligent than you and of course lower class. You know your the smartest person in the room right? You just can’t figure out why us working class folks don’t think your the smartest person in the room.
Pilot Joe
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Julie Robinson said on November 6, 2024 at 7:36 pm
Well Joe, you’re certainly not it. And you probably won’t understand that.
Our poll workers were all fantastic, but one conversation left me scratching my head. I casually commented about what a shame they sent us so many ballots; it was enough in case no one had voted early. No problem, she said, they were recycled. Still, I said, there was cost and energy in making the paper and printing the ballots. Oh no, she said, just as long as they are recycled everything is good.
At that point I made my all-purpose hmmm sound and backed away. When I mentioned it to our daughter, she told me that woman was our Republican. There must be at least one of each party among the workers.
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Sherri said on November 6, 2024 at 7:36 pm
No, it wasn’t because I didn’t want to hang out with working class people, it was because most working class jobs are shitty jobs, especially if you’re a woman in the South, where there aren’t many unions. I went to college because I hung out with real working class people and saw what their lives were like.
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Little Bird said on November 6, 2024 at 7:46 pm
Pilot Joe, do you know how to read a room? You act like you’ve been oppressed. You’ve known nothing but privilege. You’re healthy, you’re not neurodivergent, you’re not a woman. You’re a fucking pilot! You’ll always benefit from the wealthy. The rest of us are not so lucky.
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Dorothy said on November 6, 2024 at 7:49 pm
Julie they gave us too many (paper) ballots, too. We had 63 voters come to our table. Why did they give us 500 ballots?! We put the unused ones into the Unvoted green zippered bag and when we closed it, the plastic security tag cracked.
Why does that idiot keep coming back here to get his ass handed to him over and over again? The fact that he feels it necessary to post “Pilot Joe” after the sentences he types has always mystified me. His full given name is already atop the comment box. I should not be tempting an engagement with him as I know this will cull some sort of strangled response from him. But I made up my mind about him years ago because he just doesn’t come across as a fair minded, balanced person. Exactly like the puss filled bag of sh** he worships.
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Jim G said on November 6, 2024 at 7:57 pm
I’m an election worker in Maryland, and our voting place had 1,250 fill-in-the-bubble ballots, plus I’m not sure how many marking-machine ballots. We have just over 2,000 registered voters, which says something about what the Board of Elections expected the turnout (or the number of people who wanted to fill in bubbles) to be.
But they weren’t wrong: We ended up with just shy of 600 voters for the day.
That’s when I suspected we were screwed. It reminded me of 2016, when turnout (in Pennsylvania, where I lived at the time) was also surprisingly light.
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Joe Kobiela said on November 6, 2024 at 8:07 pm
Well bless your heart Dorothy.
Just remember every night when you go to bed and every day when you get up for the next 4yrs, who the president is.
Sleep well
Pilot Joe
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Sherri said on November 6, 2024 at 8:10 pm
As well, the aviator demonstrates precisely the point I made earlier, about men that can’t handle it when I puncture the illusion that they’re smarter than me.
The aviator made a choice way back when to work in that hot stinking factory, rather than go to college. I’m going to assume we both came from working class families, where our parents were not college graduates. I made the choice to go to college. That doesn’t make me magically elite and the aviator the working class whisperer.
Let’s also note that a number of those working class jobs that the aviator thinks I sneer at weren’t even really options for a young woman in 1980 when I graduated high school. Women weren’t exactly welcomed as firefighters and welders and truck drivers and iron workers.
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Suzanne said on November 6, 2024 at 9:18 pm
This sums it up.
https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2024/11/trump-voters-got-what-they-wanted/680564/
“No candidate can reason about facts and policies with voters who have no real interest in such things. They like the promises of social revenge that flow from Trump, the tough-guy rhetoric, the simplistic “I will fix it” solutions. And he’s interesting to them, because he supports and encourages their conspiracist beliefs.”
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Joe Kobiela said on November 6, 2024 at 9:33 pm
Sherri,
My dad didn’t go to college, he started sweeping floors in a factory and worked his way up to assistant plant manager, before a heart attack killed him at 54, Mom was a stay at home.
Pilot Joe
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PW said on November 6, 2024 at 10:15 pm
It amazes me how many people voted in a tribal manner—-they simply selected the box on the ballot that indicated “straight party lines”….which means they checked just one box at the ballots….and it auto-populated a vote for that particular party.
Is this really voting? Or is it a indication of the success of cable media…of social media…of media as a whole?
Media markets focuses on & develops tribal views. And, this is how MANY people vote. Especially the under-educated. Especially the rural. It’s not about abortion, or immigration, or inflation. It’s about going to the booth and saying what team you are on. You are either all in for one or the other—no dickering over policy details.
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Mark P said on November 7, 2024 at 12:33 am
Joe, we need to see your W2 forms from that factory job.
Oh, sorry, for just a moment I thought you were a brown woman. Never mind.
But seriously, I honestly want to know why you voted for Trump. I know you saw and heard the same things I did during his first run, and during his presidency, and you saw and heard the same things I did during the transition. You saw and heard the same things I did during this campaign. I want to know what you saw. I want to know what Trump did in his first administration that you like, and what you think he will do this time. I want to know whether you believe what he said he will do, and what you think he will actually do. What I saw and heard convinced me that he is unfit to hold any public office or office of trust. What did you see that convinced you he is fit and will do a good job for you?
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Joe Kobiela said on November 7, 2024 at 5:42 am
Mark,
The economy I was better off under Trump.
The border.
Never heard a plan from Kamala.
The media continues to blow everything Trump says way out of proportion.
All the lies about Uncle Joes mental capacity, you could see it but kept saying it was fake until the debate, if you lied about that what else did you lie about.
He won the majority
He won the electoral college
Case closed
Better luck in 4 yrs
Time to fly
Pilot Joe
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Colleen said on November 7, 2024 at 6:09 am
But Joe, all of those suppositions are empirically wrong. Job growth has been strong under Biden. Border crossings were down. Kamala stated her plans and they were outlined on her web site.
I guess the old saying is right…perception is reality…..
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Jeff Gill said on November 7, 2024 at 7:36 am
The college town where I live is widely reputed to be a blue island in a red ocean, and that’s true enough, but every four years I pull the precinct level detail to make a recurring point about who we are, and who our neighbors are.
Licking County, Ohio is 96 precincts; Granville is a village in a township of the same name, three in each for a cluster mostly the same as the school district of six precincts.
In 2016, Hillary won the Granville six, while Trump won the other 90 . . . but in our enclave she tallied 53%, to his 39%, with 8% scattered among third party candidates (remember Gary Johnson?). Countywide Trump was at 61% to Clinton’s 36%.
Biden carried Granville in 2020 with 57% to Trump’s 40%; the county saw Trump’s win edge up to 63%, with Biden’s total at 35%, but that was made up of 5,000 more votes than Clinton got, even if it was a percentage point lower of the total due to larger turnout.
And then this past Tuesday. Again, Harris won Granville, no doubt: 57% of our six precincts, to Trump’s 41%. Turnout was slightly lower as to total number of votes both in our six and countywide. Adding in the other 90, the county went Trump 64% with Harris at 34.5%.
Part of the difference: the rural townships in four or five cases went 80% for Trump. The city to our east, Newark, was about 62% for him, small towns around the county tended to run 70-75%. But even within our enclave, you see a range. Granville Village C is the precinct that includes the Denison campus and a chunk of homes mostly faculty and campus adjacent: it went 80% for Harris.
But Township C is the most rural part of the six precincts in our district, lots of people privatizing their utopias on four acre lots and such, and it actually broke the mold, with Trump carrying the precinct at 51%, with Harris trailing at 47%. That same area went 49% Trump in 2020, Biden at 49.5% in 2020; in 2016 it was 50% Trump, 43.5% Clinton. That same year Township A was 58% Trump, 40% Clinton, but the Democratic challenger has carried it 6% & 3% in 2020 & 2024, which looks to me like the results of new builds & housing turnover in our educationally popular district.
Or the tl;dr — in our blue island from 2016 to 2024, 53%, 57%, & 57% for the D candidates, but even so, Trump got 39%, 40%, & 41%. That’s in the middle (literally) of a county that tallied 61%, 63%, & 64% Trumpwards over that same time. Our rural/urban divide, with the maximal precincts by the college or in true farm country, each being 80%s (no precinct showed a winning total higher than 82%, and just one of those), reflects the national pattern fairly well.
As does the question of governance and community work to be done moving forward.
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Dave said on November 7, 2024 at 7:52 am
Twelve years ago, Deborah said, “Two names I never want to hear again”. Deborah, you got it half right but turned out to be the wrong one.
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Dexter Friend said on November 7, 2024 at 8:49 am
Diversity is a divider. I had hopes of post-secondary school university classes, but no money, no help available from family at all, so I was going to work that first summer and save the $900 I was going to need to start at Indiana University in 1967, September. Nope, got sick, hospitalized with throat infections, had surgery, could not work until late July and didn’t have the dough, as we called it then. And so, a delay…turned 18, same day went to work in a local small factory, then in the spring was invited to try out for a baseball team in Winston-Salem, with exposure to many pro scouts and a possible contract signing. Did that bus tour for 2 summers, working factory jobs in the winter, and I did get 2 invitations from Montreal and Philadelphia for spring tryouts (not a big deal, really), but then , yeah, Vietnam beckoned, no choice but to sit out the war in some goddam jail cell as a political prisoner being called a coward or commie; I went instead.
I always marveled at folks, men and women alike, who went to school on the GI Bill back then. Our late Michael G did that. But the $225/ monthly was only a supplement; we still needed to work or have outside money help. And, I took on a 3/4 class load as I needed to work in an office shipping room and was on my way, after baseball and army time were in my rearview mirror at age 22. Knocked down by illness again, lost my job, lost the credits I had almost attained, broke, hungry, bootstraps emergency, got a job when my strength returned, and got a better job similar to what Joe did, for 30+ years. I always had that hole in my soul as my high school principal kept after me to find way to college, and goddammitt, I tried, but in the end failed, and after later psychotherapy for 5 years (!) realized all that guilt and disappointment was the main factor in my adult alcoholism, which is under control, now, 32 years. Life ain’t always a fucking bowl of cherries.
This is now Trump world. It’s apparent Zelenskyy must cede 20% of Ukraine, the part inhabited by Russian culture and some alliance to Moscow already, to Putin, in exchange to an end to the war…no guarantee whatsoever that Putin returns for the other 80% as soon as the American inauguration.
Netanyahu, emboldened by the coming Trump money dump into Israel’s war machine, is very, almost assuredly, going after Iran with extreme military aggression. He proclaimed this at the US Congress recently, to thunderous applause by the MAGA sycophants in the audience.
Americans voted in the monster, this crazed , stupid moron, Trump, and all these horrible future happenings rest on MAGA shoulders and this corrupt Trump gang of felons and narcissists. We are in the jackpot, indeed.
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basset said on November 7, 2024 at 8:58 am
Some white tape and a Sharpie were all it took to convert our Harris-Walz “We Are Not Going Back” yard sign to “We Are Not Giving Up”… maybe a note will be slipped into the mailbox asking us to join the Resistance.
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Jeff Borden said on November 7, 2024 at 9:45 am
It’s likely the bleating sheep who voted for a rapist with 34 felony convictions and six bankruptcies under his belt will take it in the ear. Hard. Oh, the billionaires will do just fine. They always do. But these poor saps are going to watch the economy implode and the massive federal deficit soar. All those people they hate are the backbone of the construction industry, agriculture,service and hospitality industries. Your parents’ long-term care facilities will be more expensive but less responsive. Your groceries are going to be much more expensive, especially the fruits and veggies from other nations. Housing costs will continue to rise as construction crews are decimated. And those tariffs? The ones that are going to replace all other taxes –the one all ‘Muricans will pay– are going to fuck over his cultists in ways they can’t even imagine.
I’m so grateful my father and all my uncles, who sacrificed the best years of their lives to destroy Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, are long dead. They would be crushed to see how the succeeding generations have devolved.
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Dave said on November 7, 2024 at 9:50 am
The media doesn’t have to blow the things he says way out of proportion, the things he says are so ugly, glaringly awful, and outlandish, that there’s no blowing it out of proportion and talk about mental decline, do you even listen?
If the insurrection didn’t bother you and the constant crying about the 2020 election that he lost, let alone the ugly, profane speeches, guess you’re ok with him standing in front of a crowd fellating a mike. I’m still angry with him for making fun of a disabled man, that irritates me no end. That’s your man, Joe, I’ve long been convinced that you post only to stir up the crowd because you’re in the minority of thought here.
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Icarus said on November 7, 2024 at 10:06 am
my in-laws down here cancel my wife and my vote 2-1. When I told the FIL some of things Trump is planning to do, he said he had no idea. That’s because Fox presents him in the best possible light.
If Trump killed Eric and Jr, Fox would report it as “President Trump disciplined his kids today”.
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susan said on November 7, 2024 at 10:38 am
Dave @34…
That’s why you just don’t respond to the troll. Let it pass by, unremarked.
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Mark P said on November 7, 2024 at 11:01 am
Joe — That’s nonsense, and I think you know it. I’m disappointed but not surprised that you can’t articulate a rational argument for voting for Trump. You either can’t or won’t tell us the actual reason, if you know it yourself.
There are four major groups supporting Trump. One is the self-styled fundamentalist Christians who want to turn the US into an Iranian-style theocracy where they can force everyone to follow their interpretation of religious behavior, and who think Trump will help them do it, or at least not stand in their way. The second is billionaires who think they can control Trump to get tax and other policy changes that will enable them to amass even more money, and to hell with the rest of us. The third is ignorant fools who believe everything they are told, no matter how outrageous. The fourth is evil people who see Trump as a kindred soul who embodies everything they wish they could be.
So, Joe, which are you?
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Jerrie in MidMd said on November 7, 2024 at 11:08 am
I worked as a check-in judge at my precinct in Maryland again this year. We have about 4300 registered voters and hoped to have 1500 in-person voters Tuesday but made it to only 1470 or so. The early voting numbers in this county were down 10% from 2020, unlike the counties around us.
We had many more first-time voters, predominantly young men, than any of us had ever seen, and I wonder if any of you election workers noticed the same. We cheered every one but I was surprised that so few young women were among them.
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jim said on November 7, 2024 at 12:01 pm
I think Joe is correct about things clearly being bad for middle and low income families, but places blame in the wrong place. R’s, along with Joe Manchin killed a really important life net of financial support. That, along with the Fed increases and the inevitable rising of prices for groceries after the pandemic made day to day life harder.
The ironic and sad reality is that nothing the new admin is planning will make it better. If Elon actually does implement “cost cutting” measures it will get worse.
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Dorothy said on November 7, 2024 at 12:10 pm
Well it’s easier for his followers to just ignore facts and only listen to what he blathers on about. They claim the economy is so bad and they’re all suffering these last four years of Biden/Harris but choose to live in denial that job growth and infrastructure, among other things, are so much better since Biden took over. They sit and drool in front of Fox news and nod their heads and smile because they’re hearing what they want to hear instead of researching facts and truths.
I can’t help nudging the troll from time to time. It’s nice to think of how mad it makes him and stews about it before he takes an hour to think of a comeback.
Can you tell I’m feistier today than I was yesterday?
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David C said on November 7, 2024 at 1:02 pm
What I heard at work this morning was “When Trump was President, mortgage rates were only 3% and now they’re 6%”. They say this as if that was a huge accomplishment, but it was because the economy crashed during the pandemic. It had a side effect of helping along housing price inflation. People buy a payment rather than a price. But historically, home interest rates have always hovered around 5-6%. That means the economy right now is pretty much historically normal. If Trump orders the Fed to lower interest rates it’s only going to cause more housing price inflation. His tariffs will cause inflation. Most of his economic policies, such as they are, are inflationary. His people expect prices will drop to where they were four years ago. That’s not going to happen and if it did could cause a deflationary spiral which is worse than modest inflation. Trump isn’t going to be able to, or doesn’t want to do what people expect him to do. They’ll notice this and turn on him. It won’t be pretty.
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alex said on November 7, 2024 at 1:02 pm
Consumers will feel “inflation” quite keenly when the immigrant labor force has been deported and companies will face not only a worker shortage but will be forced to pay much higher wages to get any help at all. Glad I got my new roof last year instead of putting it off.
Like abortion, immigration is a bogus “problem” that the GOP never really intended to solve. It gave the party a perennial issue to exploit against Democrats. It also gave big business a limitless supply of cheap labor. I can’t help but wonder if we won’t see some pushback from those in the donor class whose businesses stand to suffer.
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Colleen said on November 7, 2024 at 1:45 pm
Rhetorical question.
How come discussion of undocumented workers never involves punishment of the business owners who break the law by hiring them?
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Jason T. said on November 7, 2024 at 2:03 pm
This is about the point of Thanksgiving dinner where my mom and dad would be out in the yard screaming at each other and my grandma would be in the kitchen crying while my uncle laughed at his own racist jokes and my cousins cringed.
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alex said on November 7, 2024 at 2:11 pm
I was just remembering “Nannygate,” when Bill Clinton withdrew two consecutive AG appointees who were outed by the GOP for the unpardonable sin of having hired undocumented domestic help. And Trump is likely to appoint far worse criminals to his cabinet and will do so defiantly even if he’s called out on it. How far we’ve fallen.
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Joe Kobiela said on November 7, 2024 at 2:14 pm
Spin it how ever you want, we won you lost, more people voted for my guy than yours, doesn’t get much simpler than that.
Sleep well
Pilot Joe
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Little Bird said on November 7, 2024 at 2:19 pm
It’s one thing to be proud of your candidate winning, it’s entirely despicable to smug about it. Especially when that candidate is rapist, thief, and convicted felon.
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Jeff Borden said on November 7, 2024 at 2:30 pm
Spike that ball, flyboy. Karma is real and she’s a bitch.
I’ll sleep just fine. I’m a healthy white straight male whose done very well with this capitalism thing. Those who won’t sleep so well are friends with gay children. Friends with preexisting conditions. Friends with daughters.
Enjoy basking in the orange reflection of your idol. Fuck everybody but you. Yep. You’re a MAGAt, all right.
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David C said on November 7, 2024 at 2:39 pm
Alex@44. Yeah, remember way back when Obama, on immigration, said to the Republicans and St. John McCain OK, we’ll do it your way and threw his support to their bill. St. John then voted against his own immigration bill. For Republicans, immigration isn’t a problem to be solved but an issue to run on. Ooga booga, scary brown people. Boston and New York City are up to their armpits in Europeans who are overstaying their visas and working and they don’t say jack shit.
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alex said on November 7, 2024 at 2:51 pm
A pyrrhic victory, Joe. Not that I expect you to know what that is, so I’ll explain. You all just fucked yourselves over along with the people you wanted to fuck over. You won’t be gloating for long.
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Heather said on November 7, 2024 at 2:52 pm
Hitler was pretty popular too at one time.
I’m already seeing reports of companies planning layoffs and eliminating bonuses due to predicted higher costs as a result of tariffs.
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ROGirl said on November 7, 2024 at 2:54 pm
FWIW, a guy in the machine shop who is Black and voted for Kamala told me that some of the other guys in the shop who are also Black didn’t vote. Turnout probably played a role, if fewer people actually voted.
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David C said on November 7, 2024 at 3:19 pm
From seeing the vote totals for all candidates, this seems like an oh fuck it, who cares election. I think people are just so sick of it all. The PACs all spend billions of dollars not building anyone up but trashing anyone and everyone. I’m pretty sick of black and white pictures of candidates looking like they just finished with a particularly difficult shit. Did you know candidate X is a… For people to tap out and not vote seems to be what they’re aiming for and by god they got it this time around.
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Sherri said on November 7, 2024 at 3:25 pm
And the aviator shows who is he is, someone who doesn’t care about anybody else. Me, I actually want the aviator to be successful. I just also want other people, like black people, immigrants, gay people, women, trans people, to have those same freedoms and opportunities. The aviator probably thinks they do, if they just work hard like he did, but maybe he should try posting on the Internet as Pilot Joanna and see what the world is like.
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Heather said on November 7, 2024 at 3:38 pm
What’s that? Companies are already planning price hikes to offset tariff costs? Congrats, MAGA, you played yourselves. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/10/30/companies-tariffs-trump-prices/
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Jeff Borden said on November 7, 2024 at 3:55 pm
C’mon, folks. There are tens of thousands of white ‘Muricans dreaming of picking those tomatoes, who hunger for the opportunity to labor in a poultry processing plant, who lust to install new roofs when it’s 105 degrees. These people have been cheated out of these great opportunities by all those swarthy immigrants. When they’re gone, ‘Muricans will be lined up for these exciting job opportunities.
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Julie Robinson said on November 7, 2024 at 4:08 pm
Colleen is perhaps thinking about the state we both live in, Florida, which set strict reporting requirements for those employing undocumented workers. And then exempted the farming industry, the major employer of those who are here without the proper papers.
jim@41, you mention the inevitable price increases of groceries after the pandemic. Where I lived, they went up week two of the pandemic and steadily rose all through those years.
Just had my mammogram and tomorrow I have an MRI of my ankle. Kind of a brutal two days in a brutal week.
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Scout said on November 7, 2024 at 6:01 pm
Hello everyone, remember me? I’ve been a bit under the radar lately having had emergency gallbladder surgery two weeks ago. It happened the same week we made an offer on a house and it was accepted. We move in two weeks and that is keeping me busy (packing but not lifting) and my mind off the ass fucking we all got as a result of Russian disinfo, the billionaires and the media (I know, redundant). The results were so instant and so completely divergent of what we all saw and experienced the past few months, it is obvious the fix has been in for quite some time, probably right after the 2020 election. No wonder the demented old fuck could stand there at every rally, shitting his Depends, spewing unintelligible nonsense, rapturizing about AP peen, fellating a microphone, calling people garbage, and on and on. You can literally do all that (and shoot someone on 5th Avenue) when you know voters aren’t what gets you the win. Change my mind.
As for the aviator, he can go fuck himself. I don’t say this to him directly because I will not engage him. Never feed trolls, it goes straight to their thighs.
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john (not mccain) said on November 7, 2024 at 6:28 pm
If the republicans achieve their wettest dream of eliminating SS and Medicare, the only things keeping me alive, I’m going to find a pile of human filth just like Pervert Joe and set fire to it.
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Sherri said on November 7, 2024 at 6:32 pm
Hope your recovery and the move goes well, Scout.
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brian stouder said on November 7, 2024 at 7:58 pm
Marvelous – and scary! – to hear the news from Scout. I join Sherri wishing you all the best, going forward
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Mark P said on November 7, 2024 at 8:34 pm
Trump plans to gut virtually all regulatory agencies and replace competent career employees with loyalists. I wonder if that will include the FAA. They plan to privatize the Weather Service, too. I imagine flight weather forecasts will get more expensive, and, who knows, with no oversight, maybe less accurate. I can’t wait to hear what my old missile defense colleagues will say about working for Herschel Walker. I’m pretty sure they all voted for Trump.
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Jakash said on November 7, 2024 at 8:38 pm
Mark P @ 39.
PJ stated quite clearly in comment #9 “the actual reason” he voted for the orange felon / lifelong grifter / serial sexual abuser. “Pretty simple, the working class got tired of being pissed on by the condescending elites and being told it was raining.”
Just to be clear, he considers most of us commenting here to be among the despicable, “condescending elites,” which was made evident when he was a bit more succinct in explaining his vote in 2016. His reason then, IIRC, was “to piss people like you off.”
Such is the brand of patriotism exemplified by this staunch member of the law-and-order party that helped get us where we are today. As if *we’re* elite because we follow legitimate news sources and can identify a monomaniacal charlatan when we see one. But Elon? Peter Thiel? RFK, Jr.? The grifter himself, who loved to gold-plate anything visible and attach his own name to airlines, steaks, casinos, universities, etc. until they either went bankrupt or were found to be fraudulent? Salt-of-the-earth blue-collar types, no doubt.
Why “the working class” has ever thought that the Republican Party cares about them is a mystery for the ages. That party’s one consistent policy, aside from seeking to outlaw reproductive health care for women, is to give massive tax cuts to the *actual* wealthy elites, which end up being paid for by, uh, “the working class.” The wealth has never “trickled down,” but the rich are pissing on them, nonetheless.
Supposedly championing the working class by worshipping a hero whose greatest claim to fame before 2015 was repeatedly, gleefully telling people “You’re fired!” is really stranger than fiction.
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Joe Kobiela said on November 7, 2024 at 9:48 pm
Thanks for all the heartfelt loving comments today, your tears have quenched my thirst, and I will wear them proudly.
Pilot Joe
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Mark P said on November 7, 2024 at 10:35 pm
Jakash — The working class thing is the conventional wisdom. Joe parrots it because he saw it on TV (everywhere). I don’t believe it. I think it’s darker than that, and it involves hatred and fear of the other, undirected rage, a deep sense of inferiority, and a desperate need to be accepted by some group somewhere. It’s not a good look, so no one would ever say it out loud in public. Introspection is not their strong point.
And the rest of them are just stupid.
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alex said on November 7, 2024 at 11:24 pm
your tears have quenched my thirst, and I will wear them proudly
Piss yourself, old man?
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David C said on November 8, 2024 at 8:38 am
Joe, my dude, I’m not crying, I’m preparing. I know it’s going to be a shit show. I know it and I’ll be ready. It’ll surprise you and all the fools believed his bullshit who thought on January 21, eggs are going to be a dollar a dozen. That’s not going to happen. They’re going to fuck around with Social Security and Medicare. Remember Rostenkowski being chased down the street by old ladies when he tried to add nursing home care to Medicare and a tax to help pay for it? When those idiots think they can get away with making people’s retirements worse, it’ll make what Rosty went through seem like a walk in the park. What?, China won’t be paying the tariffs, we will? The disappointments in the orange one will come early and often. His honeymoon will last as long as a Britney Spears marriage.
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ROGirl said on November 8, 2024 at 8:42 am
And he’ll always be a fat braying piece of shit schnorrer from Queens.
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alex said on November 8, 2024 at 9:39 am
The postmortems that make the most sense to me focus on the fact that there is incumbent fever all over the world and it all has to do with inflation. Even though Biden gave us a soft landing and an economy that’s performing better than anywhere else, it’s meaningless to the person who can’t buy a house and whose rent got jacked. Home prices have doubled and so have mortgage rates, and there’s a shortage of homes on the market because people paying 3 percent are staying put. A record number of new jobs have been created under Biden’s watch and the stock market has hit record highs, but this is of no importance to the average working person who has gotten squeezed by the cost of living.
Economic dissatisfaction is what gave Trump the edge and I don’t know that there was any way the Dems could have communicated to the working class that objective economic indicators should matter to them rather than Trump’s empty promises.
I’m so far not doing all that well on my boycott of the news, but I took to heart a column by Eugene Robinson yesterday in which he implores us to not let Trump live rent-free inside of our heads (gift article). https://wapo.st/3Asz6fz
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Mssr. Coffee said on November 8, 2024 at 10:02 am
But … but … where’s the JOY?
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alex said on November 8, 2024 at 10:20 am
The joy? I suppose it comes from knowing that we get under some people’s skin enough that they’d bother to troll this site rather than join the fun.
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basset said on November 8, 2024 at 10:21 am
Well, there’s a little unrelated bit of it anyway. We got Willie the homeless cat sorted out… you may recall me mentioning that Mrs. B’s dad passed a few weeks ago and we were having trouble finding a home for his cat. Mrs. B’s brother, who had said for years he didn’t like cats and didn’t want one around, decided that he and his wife would keep Willie as a connection to the old man, so now she has a forever home.
And… deer season starts at dawn tomorrow, muzzleloader anyway, bow’s been on for awhile and rifle opens on the 23rd. We have a major oversupply of does in our part of the state so the limit is real large, three a day every day all season from now to January. We kill more than we can use and give the meat to food banks.
It was interesting, I thought, to learn that the food bank program grinds all the usable parts of the deer into burger rather than doing steaks, roasts, etc… it’s so lean that the end users didn’t know how to handle it whole and cooked it up dry, I think the burger probably has some kind of fat added.
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Heather said on November 8, 2024 at 10:30 am
Glad to hear you found a home for Willie, basset. I foster for a cat rescue and it’s really dire out there. Shelters are full and adoptions are slow. I think a lot of people are giving up or abandoning their pets due to the high cost of food and vet care. Anyway I hope your BIL becomes one of those guys who says he hates cats but then falls in love with one.
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Dave said on November 8, 2024 at 10:36 am
Heather, I had a great uncle who was that guy, my father and uncle both said he hated, hated, hated cats but in his senior years, a stray cat came around and he loved that cat. Old, softening of the brain, error of his ways, who knows.
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David C said on November 8, 2024 at 10:44 am
“But … but … where’s the JOY?”
Well we’re not going to sack the Capitol and smear our shit on the walls, so there’s that.
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Colleen said on November 8, 2024 at 10:45 am
What Mark P said.
And it’s a special kind of sicko who enjoys creating unpleasantness for others. I don’t wish ill on the MAGAts. I want them to have jobs,and healthcare, and good education for their kids.
And that’s a big difference between the two groups. Their attitude is getting all they can for themselves, and screw the rest. In fact, the screw the rest part gives them a little tingle…
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Jason T. said on November 8, 2024 at 11:39 am
Colleen @ 78:
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.” —Wilhoit’s Law
“The cruelty is the point.” —Adam Serwer
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Sherri said on November 8, 2024 at 12:17 pm
“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
― Lyndon B. Johnson
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Dexter Friend said on November 8, 2024 at 12:55 pm
Hungary’s Viktor Orbán: Trump’ To End US Support Of Ukraine
“The Americans are going to pull out of this war.”
https://apnews.com/article/orban-predicts-trump-end-us-support-ukraine-b9ccaa5241410550763a29eaf38b3d20?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=share
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Joe Kobiela said on November 8, 2024 at 1:05 pm
Alex got part of it right it was the economy, the problem was the democrats kept telling the people who were struggling to buy food that everything was fine, the economy is great you just don’t realize it.
Pilot Joe
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Sherri said on November 8, 2024 at 1:46 pm
I’ll start a fund to feed the aviator to address his economic anxiety.
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Sherri said on November 8, 2024 at 1:56 pm
I know I shouldn’t feed the troll. But he comes on here like he’s in touch with the working class (the white working class), but what the hell does he do to help the working class? There are people here he spits on that have dedicated years to helping their communities, contributing their time, talent, and treasure to helping everyone live their best lives.
He tells us we sneer at people like him, but I don’t know, I don’t encounter many private jet pilots in my life and work.
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ROGirl said on November 8, 2024 at 2:44 pm
Whatever or whoever Joe and the coffee dipshit are performing for, I truly don’t give a shit. It’s stupid and I don’t have any interest in wasting my brain space on it. Get a life, read a book, watch a movie or something.
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Suzanne said on November 8, 2024 at 3:43 pm
The fact is that a great many voters don’t pay attention and don’t see any connection between how they vote and what happens. My sister-in-law’s husband (lives in Indiana) told my husband that he wrote in Kirsten Sinema for President (ha ha real funny) and when my husband mentioned that Trump is a Putin puppet like Orbán, this SIL’s husband replied that he’d never heard of Orbán. One of my son’s good friends told him that Project 2025 was never going be implemented so he shouldn’t worry about it.
One of my friends sent me a link to a Joe Rogan podcast to listen to. Later, she texted me that she was shocked when she finished it because he talked about being all in for Trump and she had no idea he was a Trump guy. Seriously??
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Sherri said on November 8, 2024 at 3:48 pm
Project 2025 is already being implemented in states like Alabama and Florida.
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alex said on November 8, 2024 at 4:10 pm
Those of us who are news and political junkies seem to forget that most people are blissfully unaware of all of this shit and prefer to remain so. And I couldn’t tell you who any of the people are in People magazine and those who train all of their attention on celebrity culture think I’m the one who’s woefully uninformed.
But enough about politics. Today I got an estimate on pest-proofing my house and I’m going forward with it. Orkin comes in once a quarter to treat for carpenter ants and this time the rep asked if I’d like an inspection and I said yes because I have been hearing scritchy-scratchy noises in my ceiling and that means mice will probably be feasting in my pantry. So an inspector came out today and found breaches in my siding and also found trails in the new insulation in my attic indicative of mice. So they’re going to stuff steel wool up my siding around the entire perimeter of the house and seal it in and then lay a three-inch layer of mouse-repellent insulation on top of the existing insulation which was brand new only a year ago. I didn’t know that they made such a thing or I would have called Orkin to install my new insulation in the first place.
Today my dad celebrates his 97th birthday and my brother and I will be taking him out for dinner.
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Sherri said on November 8, 2024 at 4:26 pm
The working class, in my experience, tends to get defined however someone needs it in order to make a point, especially when claiming the Democrats have abandoned the working class. Firstly, the “white male” is usually assumed and unstated. Secondly, poor people generally vote for Democrats.
I don’t think the Democrats have done a particularly good job of helping unions rebuild, or of getting behind efforts to raise the minimum wage, or any of a host of things they could have done at the national level. Part of it has been people like Joe Manchin standing in the way, and part of it has been people hiding behind Joe Manchin. But Republicans haven’t done shit for anybody but rich people.
I’ve expressed my frustration with Democratic leadership here many times, but the argument that they abandoned the working class always seems to me to ignore everything else that happened. The white working class male abandoned the Democratic Party once the Democratic Party embraced civil rights, and I’ve seen nothing since then that indicates that anything would win them back other than abandoning civil rights. Yes, I’d love to see Dems embrace a higher minimum wage, and fight for it, but would that bring the white working class males back to Democrats? Or would they just believe that it would destroy jobs, because that’s what Fox News would tell them?
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Jakash said on November 8, 2024 at 5:07 pm
I’m no Economics expert, but it seems to me that the biggest reason that people are “struggling to buy food” is that Republicans long ago decided that corporate profits were more important to them than folks having jobs and that shareholders were more important to them than workers.
You know, “corporations are people,” according the the Republicans on the Supreme Court in “Citizens United.”
And thus, we’ve gone all in on globalization and the out-sourcing of jobs that have decimated many cities. Unsurprisingly, this has worked out very well for rich Republicans who are doing better than ever and very poorly for lots of middle class workers.
But the rich Republicans (in-between their flights on private jets and perhaps during them, I suppose) spend fortunes buying airtime, supporting candidates and running things like Fox News to convince regular folks that it’s the Democrats who are the problem. And that it’s more important that a trans person be kept from the “wrong” bathroom than it is to support Ukraine in its battle for freedom against the orange felon’s buddy Putin.
As has been noted over and over, the folks worried about the cost of their groceries are not going to benefit in that regard if PJ’s favorite criminal actually deports as many people as he says he’s going to. Not that it will change their minds if it comes to pass.
“the democrats kept telling the people who were struggling to buy food that everything was fine, the economy is great you just don’t realize it.” I’d love to see a news clip from an alternate universe in which Trump had been president this year to hear the glowing terms with which he’d have described the current economy. Yes, there are definite problems, as I referred to above. But Biden has done a very good job navigating a tough situation. “The Economist” magazine, no liberal rag, produced a Special Report in October titled “The envy of the world,” led off by a piece stating “The American economy has left other rich countries in the dust.”
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alex said on November 8, 2024 at 5:19 pm
I came across a headline today that struck me as both earnest and snarky:
“The best thing Trump can do for Biden’s economy is take credit for it”
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jim said on November 8, 2024 at 5:25 pm
alex wrote: I came across a headline today that struck me as both earnest and snarky:
“The best thing Trump can do for Biden’s economy is take credit for it”
That was Rampell in WaPo. She also said don’t do anything you’ve said you’ll do re the economy or policy-just go play golf.
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Dwight said on November 8, 2024 at 6:21 pm
Jakash wrote: “I’m no Economics expert…”
Clearly. Otherwise you’d acknowledge we’ve been warning you for decades that jacking up the minimum wage and sending gubment checks for doing nothing would have PRECISELY this effect on the consumer prices. Macroeconomics 101, Day 1, Chapter 1.
All in all, freakin’ glorious.
Keep doin’ God’s work, Pilot Joe.
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Deborah said on November 8, 2024 at 6:42 pm
Did any of you listen to The Daily podcast this morning on NYT? Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman were interviewed about the last few hours of election night at MaL and more. Scary stuff when it comes to National Security. I can’t seem to get a gift link, I’m on a train from Springfield IL to Chicago right now maybe that’s why?
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Mark P said on November 8, 2024 at 8:31 pm
National security! Holy shit! I didn’t even think about that. I’m sure there have been urgent, informal discussions among top national security officials trying to figure out how to keep Trump from sending Putin mash notes written on the back of Top Secret documents. If they take national security seriously, they have to assume that anything they tell Trump will be compromised. There is no way anyone who did what he did with all the classified documents he had would ever, ever, ever be given a security clearance. Hell, anyone else would be sitting in jail awaiting trial. I don’t see how they are going to be able to let him have access to anything seriously sensitive. And I’m pretty sure there will be no more sharing of secrets among us and our allies. Five Eyes will become Four Eyes, if it hasn’t already. I’m also pretty sure Trump will put a loyalist into the top positions, so the work of preventing him from selling us out will fall to lower level officials. This is going to be a real shit show.
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susan said on November 8, 2024 at 8:35 pm
I blame our predicament on fucking Merrick Garland, a worthless milquetoast. And Joe Biden for keeping him on, while Milquetoast dragged out prosecuting Dump for so long, now all that is — POOF — gone. And everyone will be pardoned.
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Deborah said on November 8, 2024 at 8:48 pm
Mark P, there won’t be anyone in charge of national security that will keep things from Trump. They’re talking about doing away with security clearances, particularly if carried out by the FBI, they want their own buffoons deciding who gets clearance. That’s one of the things mentioned in The Daily podcast. Just imagine what that’ll be like. They will do whatever they want, with no reasonable person in charge. Terrifying.
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Sherri said on November 8, 2024 at 9:00 pm
Elected officials, especially the president, are presumed to have security clearance, given to them by the American people. Yes, this will certainly damage Five Eyes.
Elon Musk already has a security clearance that anybody else wouldn’t be able to retain. His open drug use, for one thing, should be a problem, not to mention his “gray area” (read “illegal”) immigration status when he was doing his startup on a student visa, or his chatty little phone calls with Putin.
But hey, security only matters when you’re a Democrat with an email server.
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Mark P said on November 8, 2024 at 9:25 pm
I made the point that Trump will almost certainly put toadies into top positions at the security agencies. However, there will still be career officials who, hopefully, can restrict what even their bosses can see. The down-and-dirty spy work has to be gathered, refined and analyzed before it makes sense and can be presented to upper-level officials, and, one hopes, that process can provide some cover. If not, the work won’t get done, because sources will dry up and no other country will help. Things like the arrest of the Iranians who intended to assassinate Trump won’t happen, because we won’t know about it. Terrorist attacks won’t be stopped because we won’t know about the plans.
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Kristen said on November 9, 2024 at 5:22 am
Of all the horrors that surely await us, this to me is the most horrifying (excerpts from an article in today’s NYT). Doom the planet to own the libs and further enrich the fossil fuel industry. The short-sightedness and greed are breathtaking.
“Mr. Trump also intends to install an “energy czar” in the White House to coordinate policies across agencies in an effort to cut regulations and make it easier to ramp up production of oil, gas and coal.
Some people on the transition team are discussing moving the E.P.A. headquarters and its 7,000 workers out of Washington, D.C., according to multiple people involved in the discussions who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to talk about the transition.”
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David C said on November 9, 2024 at 6:58 am
This is a good first cut at things. One of his last points is the Trump is a fuck-up and will fuck-up in way that will hurt people who weren’t expecting to be hurt. It’s going to be bad, but we’ll get through it.
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2024/11/initial-election-thoughts
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Deborah said on November 9, 2024 at 8:19 am
Heather Cox Richardson came out with this today (about yesterday) https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/november-8-2024. “What’s an authoritarian” lol.
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Little Bird said on November 9, 2024 at 8:48 am
Minimum wage needs to keep pace with inflation. It doesn’t, but it should. For one simple reason. Businesses need live employees to do the work. Employees need to eat (and to relax) to live.
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Mark P said on November 9, 2024 at 10:01 am
The federal minimum wage rose from $6.55 to $7.25 in 2009. That certainly broke the bank. I guess that’s where the MAGAts get confirmation for the decades of warnings.
The only god I’m familiar with said this: “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.” I guess the MAGAts are doing some other god’s work. He probably has horns.
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Suzanne said on November 9, 2024 at 10:31 am
Democracy cannot be sustained when the people voting are fools. My husband had a conversation a few days ago with his sister’s husband about Hungary’s Orbán being a Putin puppet and that a Hungarian immigrant that we know expressed his belief that Orbán’s takeover of the Hungarian government was Putin’s practice run for the USA. The response of his double masters degree holding brother-in-law was, “Who is Viktor Orbán?” And then proceeded to tell my husband that he voted for neither presidential candidate but wrote in Kirsten Sinema as a joke.
We are doomed.
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Dexter Friend said on November 9, 2024 at 11:15 am
Yesterday in my van I listened to the podcast featuring bassist Kate Derringer. It was said her band Shadow Show has lasted longer than The Beatles. It was a fast-moving podcast and I listened straight through.
Kara Swisher, on a CNN panel, stopped me in my tracks as I was frying an egg and sausage a while ago…she said Dems should have thrown the process into a sort of mini-convention when Joe bowed out, hinting, IMO, that why would they cast the VP of an unpopular chief to run against the MAGA zealot who was blowing away the polling of men voters who, now obviously , are so goddam misogynistic they would never vote for a woman, the pinhead bastards. And I took an avalanche of hate when I suggested the same process, and if Kamala would emerge, so be it. I made my stance that Josh Shapiro would be a better choice, as I believed Pennsylvania would go blue then . Pennsylvania did not. I was shocked when Swisher said the same thing. So the dissection will continue until the inauguration, then be confined to history files, as we must move on…move on then, not before. We have to explore what crashed the airplane so it hopefully will not happen in 2028.
Now with confirmation that Iranian agents are bent on killing Trump, what will happen, really? Two botched attempts failed, but this last deal was with Iranian expert killers. I keep thinking of the assassination of Anwar Sadat. “On 6 October 1981, Sadat was assassinated during the annual victory parade held in Cairo to celebrate Egypt’s crossing of the Suez Canal. Islambouli emptied his assault rifle into Sadat’s body while in the front of the grandstand, mortally wounding the President.” GOOGLE general searching employed….
We don’t want an assassination. We want peace in Gaza, not a genocidal combination of Netanyahu and Trump wiping out every living soul in Gaza.
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Mssr. Coffee said on November 9, 2024 at 11:20 am
I’m sensing a continuing lack of Joy. Also a disturbing lack of faith in Our Democracy. Cheer up, folks! Take four or five more vaxx boosters and call me in the morning. It’ll be all right, really.
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Deborah said on November 9, 2024 at 11:22 am
Rebecca Solnit: These guys don’t clean up after themselves
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/07/us-progressive-election-trump-maga
edit: what do these trolls get out of this?
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Mark P said on November 9, 2024 at 11:56 am
The trolls believe they are doing their god’s work.
As for what’s going to happen, all I can say is, “We’ll see.” It all depends on whether Trump was telling the truth about what he plans to do. If so, we should start seeing the effects fairly soon. I predict Trump and his MAGAts will blame Biden.
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Jason T. said on November 9, 2024 at 12:12 pm
Deborah @ 108: I say again, “The cruelty is the point.”
America is in the hands of junior high school bullies. The grown-ups have shown themselves unable or unwilling to help. We need to prepare accordingly.
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Jakash said on November 9, 2024 at 1:31 pm
Well, I can’t say I didn’t set myself up for Dwight’s reply with the disclaimer beginning my comment.
I thought that PJ attributed the results of this election to the dissatisfaction of the working class. Seems to me that paying them more would be a step in the right direction.
Regardless, the federal minimum wage, as noted by Little Bird and Mark P, at $7.25 for 15 years, certainly didn’t supercharge inflation.
Yes, the U.S. did give more stimulus checks to its population than other countries. Odd, then, given the certitude of the “Macroeconomics 101” aficionado, how our inflation rate is now lower than it is in most other developed countries.
I’d find some links to support my points, but I just have a hunch they wouldn’t make any difference. Imagine that!
“Keep doin’ God’s work, Pilot Joe.” I’ve read the whole Bible and nowhere did it indicate that pissing off the liberals, which is about all PJ attempts to do here when he’s not telling us about a glorious day at the Mouse House, was the work of the Lord. In fact, it’s about as far from “Do unto others as you would have done unto you” as one can get.
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Sherri said on November 9, 2024 at 2:08 pm
Kara Swisher doesn’t know any more about elections and how to win them than anybody here. She’s a tech journalist who used to be friendly with Elon Musk until he attacked her.
Any postmortem of the election right now is merely reflects what that person already believed, not any reflection of how people actually voted, whether it’s that Dems should have a mini-primary, should throw trans people under the bus, should cater to the white working class men, or crack down on the border. It also ignore that regardless of what Dems do, what people believe Dems do will be distorted by the right wing noise machine.
Republicans spent $215 million dollars on anti-trans ads during this election, or $70-$140 for every trans person in the country, depending on which source you read for the number of trans people. No matter how much the Dems crack down on the border, no matter how many people they deport, the Republicans will paint them as allowing hordes of scary brown people into our country. We have decades of data on how Democrats produce better economies than Republicans, smaller deficits, higher jobs numbers, lower employment, even though they have to clean up messes left by their Republican predecessors, but that doesn’t matter, because Republicans are better for one group of people: billionaires.
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Julie Robinson said on November 9, 2024 at 2:18 pm
Our paper had a lengthy story on Susie Wiles, soon to be Chief of Staff for the orange cheeto, with some very interesting factoids. She’s from here in Florida, and was influential in getting Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis elected. When DeSantis didn’t reward her as she saw fit, she helped T in his campaign to destroy DeSantis’ bid for the Presidency. Hmmm.
She’s also Pat Summerall’s daughter, who I hadn’t known was alcoholic. She was the one who got him into treatment at the Betty Ford Center. The comment from a family friend is that she’s very good at dealing with cranky old men.
Aside from that, she’s 67 and at barely a year older, I can’t think why she’d want that much bother in her life.
And aside from all of that, last night our daughter’s dog needed an emergency vet visit and I thought we’d lose the second family animal in a week (son’s cat crossed the rainbow bridge on Sunday). If the vet is correct it was an infection causing vertigo and can be cleared up with antibiotics. Door #2 is a brain tumor, so we sincerely hope to keep that one closed.
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David C said on November 9, 2024 at 4:05 pm
Maybe we need to have “Put Christ Back in Christianity” bumper stickers. I’ve had a bug up my ass about “Put Christ Back in Christmas” bumper stickers since a guy with one on his truck nearly ran me down and then gave me the finger (as Jesus would have) when I yelled at him. It would be my little revenge.
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alex said on November 9, 2024 at 7:20 pm
I got a laugh out of a Facebook post by one of my Chicago friends, a funeral director.
She was meeting with a widower and she asked if there were any philosophical or spiritual things that she would need to know about the deceased in order to plan the service.
The widower answered that although he and his wife believed in God, they wanted “no involvement with his grounds crew.”
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brian stouder said on November 9, 2024 at 7:30 pm
Well, David & Alex got me laughin’!
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Jeff Borden said on November 10, 2024 at 5:09 pm
Watching the Chicago Bears gave me a laugh, but then, they almost always do.
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del said on November 11, 2024 at 12:08 am
I am saddened by the election results, but also saddened by the attacks directed toward Pilot Joe, a loyal follower of this blog.
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Jeff Gill said on November 11, 2024 at 7:17 am
Two sides of same coin:
“Far above the Ephel Dúath in the West the night-sky was still dim and pale. There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
~ “The Return of the King,” J.R.R. Tolkien
& https://xkcd.com/847/
Anyhow, I spent Thursday & Friday doing field archaeology, which felt appropriate. Best of luck to Basset on his pre-dawn activities! Stay safe.
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Deborah said on November 11, 2024 at 7:38 am
del,
I’d say that overall this commentary is a progressive group, with varying degrees of progressiveness. We read newspapers, some are journalists here. We’re interested in facts and lies disturb us. When someone who comments here who is not like minded comes with a snarky comment the day after the election that many of had high hopes for the future of our country as a Democracy. When someone comes here and knowing that about the group and makes a snide comment about how clear the sky and clean the air the morning after Trump got re-elected, I’d don’t know about you, but I’d call that mean spirited.
Some of us are women, some of us have daughters. Nancy herself has a young daughter of the age directly affected by Dobbs. We see the fires, the floods and the hurricanes and weird weather. We care about Ukrainians. We are deeply offended by men saying “your body, my choice”. We know that Trump has sexually assaulted and harassed, we know he was a close friend of Jeffery Epstein and partied with him for years. We listened to the lies, tens of thousands of them, especially the big one. We watched Jan 6, live on TV, we watched and heard police getting beaten with flags and injured, some gravely. All of that is traumatic to experience even in an indirect way and we are quite worried about our future, the future of our planet, the future of grandchildren.
Yes the cost of eggs and gas skyrocketed after the pandemic, we don’t like that either. But I for one and lots of experts don’t think tariffs are going to do anything but make it worse.
I would never have dreamed of going to a site where I knew a lot of conservatives congregated and made a snarky comment the day after Biden’s win was announced. That would be bad form and just plain mean.
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del said on November 11, 2024 at 9:22 am
Deborah,
Thank you for that explanation. I had not been keeping up fully on the blog and its comments in the election run up, so I’m not too sure what Pilot Joe had been up to. The election was disturbing, no doubt. Most disturbing, however, is the realization of what my family friends and neighbors value. Many are misled through distortions and lies.
Hannah Arendt theorized that the people who are most susceptible to lies are those who are lonely and seek meaning from false ideas.
My uncle, Thomas Birney Doyle, taught at the City College of San Francisco for decades and thought of these things deeply. He wrote a poem that recognized, I think, Arendt’s point:
Judgments: slavery was wrong, we killed
the Indians, the American West was stolen
from Mexico, so many wars are unjustified —
these judgments are so easily said, at no
cost to the speaker or the audience. Being
confident we would never do the same robs us
of the lesson that they and we are one,
turns the classroom into a playschool.
How teach that we, teachers and students,
are so liable to self-deception, teach
how loneliness and outrage can warp
a human ’til he doesn’t recognize himself.
I understand the outrage, but Pilot Joe is not evil, nobody is, to me.
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Dexter Friend said on November 11, 2024 at 10:08 am
Morning Joe’s show guests bemoaned the lack of Black voter turnout in Wayne County, Michigan, and apathy of women , generally nation-wide, for the Harris blowout.
I didn’t search the numbers, but I kept posting it was going to take a massive charge like never seen before by women , to the polls , voting for Kamala, to depose the rapist forever.
Later I heard there was a rather massive number of women who voted for the felon. So collectively, we got what we deserve.
My sister-in-law has dual Swedish-USA citizenship; she cares for my brother with dementia at home as she is a retired nurse and can do it. But when he passes, she is back to her native Stockholm. If I had connections and dual citizenship somewhere, I would be gone instantly. I don’t. I live on a teeny-tiny pension and SS benefits and a small VA disability allowance. Like almost all Americans, I…we…are stuck with 4 years of upcoming terror and discontent. Who was it that said, “What hath God wrought.” ?
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