With respect, I am very well of the Nazi version. I say Nazi version because you might have missed the Japanese internment camps of the same era in this country, though they were treated marginally better (ask George Takei how all that worked out for his family). While my comment was meant sarcastically, if one takes all of Trump’s pronouncements on immigration literally, ghettoizing people is not that far a stretch. And it was Mike Pence that proposed increased police patrols in Muslim neighborhoods several months ago. I’m willing to let things play out and see how this all evolves, but I’m not holding my breath.
Been a lot of internment/concentration camps in human history. The Native As have enjoyed more than a few such stays, courtesy of the Spaniards and Americans. And yes, Japanese-Americans, too. The Nazis just hogged all the press. Something about the cool uniforms.
There was an internment camp located in what is now Casa Solana in Santa Fe during the war. Its now a subdivision where we own a mortgage. Nice monument on the hill overlooking the former camp.
I’m thinking hard about retiring and collecting Social Insecurity while we still have some. Tough call. In my line of work, once you step away from the trough some other oinker grabs your spot, and if you decide later that, shit, you’re still hungry, well, back of the line, Porky.
Don’t do it, Patrick! Under the current rules the increase in benefit payments for every year you hang on is the best ‘return’ on your money (or your life) little folks like us can get. It’s of the order of a 7-8% increase for each year beyond “mandatory” age – ~67, in your case. You can look it up.
Herb, while I agree with you for the most part, remember that Trump wants to, essentially, privatize SS and make us all responsible for our own investments with “block grants”. The rationale is that this gives the user more flexibility. The reality is, of course, that it puts all too many people at risk of losing everything due to bad investment strategies, etc. In discussing all of this with my wife (I’m 68, she’s 67, and both still working, so we’re obviously taking advantage of the benefits increase over time), she said that surely we would be grandfathered in, meaning that things wouldn’t change. I said that given the current makeup of the Congress and the impact of the Tea Party and Trump affiliates, we can’t make that assumption. So, hold your fire and keep your powder dry.
Our accountant advises me to hold my fire, but I have a nervous trigger finger. I keep seeing a white Eddie Murphy offering me some ice cream, then pulling it back and yelling, “Psych!”
I retired at 55. I have a pension, and it would have increased by 2% a year if I had kept working. I do not qualify for social security. We lived on retirement pay for 2 years before I actually retired. We don’t live large, but we live well and have enough. You will know when it is time to retire. Health insurance is a big factor to consider. You can always make more money; you can not make more time.
Yeah, I though there must be a four letter word missing from the caption.
Big question now is whether the Donald tries to implement some of his campaign promises, what happens when, inevitably, he doesn’t deliver and who he tries to pin the blame on.
I note that support for Trump came overwhelmingly from older, white males. Err, that’s us. Ok, I didn’t get a say in your election but it was the same demographic here for the vote to leave the European Union. There’s a lot going on in this world that I don’t understand…
Louis C.K.’s short series “Horace and Pete” had a scene in which a character at the bar explained that Trump supporters weren’t nearly as interested in fixing institutions as in burning them down. That sounds about right.
As to Trump and his promises, I expect that Pence will be tasked with delivering on those while the Master focuses on vengeance. Bad losers are often equally bad winners.
Mencken put it this way: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” He (or maybe Barnum) said: “Nobody ever went broke overestimating the gullibility of the American people.”
That was Mencken. The actual quote is: “No one in this world, so far as I know … has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.”
Shuckens, Bill, I don’t own nothin’ save a bunch of bicycles and Apple gizmos. I do have a couple houses the bank lets me keep as long as I maintain the properties and make the payments.
52 here, and I pretty much hate everybody one day older than me, present company excepted
Hate to go rude, hyperbolic, and elitist all at the same time, but the folks who design rocket ships voted one way, and the guys who make holes in the dirt voted another. Shouldn’t be any surprise in how this turns out
Ah, Garrison Keillor. I like him much better when he’s not doing what he calls “singing.”
This is a good line:
“His supporters voted for change, and boy, are they going to get it.”
Let’s see how they like it two years into the New World Order when their jeans are still puddled around their ankles, and they still have that fabled itching, burning sensation, but Obummer is not around to take the rap. Like a dog who caught the car, they have no idea what to do with it.
Has any departing president ever run out of the White House before? Nixon doesn’t count. If I were Obama, I’d jog through that door and just keep on going. “See ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya. Send my mail to Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau.”
No words to describe my feelings as a woman and as a human. I know so many wonderful and thoughtful Hispanic people that will now live in fear that they will be targeted. I feel like younger people did not take any of this seriously which is ironic as they are the ones with the most to lose. DT thinks climate change is a complete hoax; he will make sure alternative energy markets will take a big hit.
I thought it would be close, but close the other way, and that Clinton would have no so-called “mandate” to govern. More of the same GOP obstructionism for the next four years, and her probably a one-term president.
Told you I will never be smart. I got some rethinkification to do.
My wife was right…as usual.
11/9/2016 feels a lot like 9/11/2001 to me. Have we just seen an incident that will later result in a disaster equal to the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq – or worse? As someone said, “Welcome to the Age of Endarkenment”.
Just as on 9/11, I need to get out for a bike ride – while I still can.
We sent a democratic outsider to fix DC in 2008. He got a little done in two years, the electorate got pissed again and gave congress a slight republican majority in 2010. Next six years we got nothing. So in 2016 we sent another outsider to fix DC. The problem is Congress who once again had a 90% plus incumbent re-election rate. Oligarchs win, we lose, again. I just hope Trump will do as he promised and get us out of that middle East quagmire. Hope in one hand and shit in the other……..
One thing is for sure. I will never again vote for the lesser of two evils.
Oh yes, Drumpf will get us out of the Middle East quagmire – isn’t he the one who said he’d “Bomb the S–T out of them!”? That’ll be after he puts Hillary in jail, sues all the women who accused him of groping and replaces Obamacare with something great. That oughta take a day or two based on his warped idea of his own competence. This moron couldn’t even keep a NJ casino solvent! How do you F–K up a scheme where idiots give you money to watch dials spin around and all you have to do is give a tiny percentage back to a small number of them? The only thing he’ll get done is to Make America Hated Again, worldwide. He’s already most of the way there and he’s not even in office yet. Bravo Drumpf! People are (truly) stupid as my wife always says.
Trump can’t fix what is broken. Will take a generation of pain and suffering. Or worse. So what happens when all the folks who drank the kool aid find out they were duped?
My fear is we will round up the usual scapegoats: Jews and gypsies, er, I mean Muslims and illegals. Dang.
Just heard that the turnout was the same as 2004, about 53 percent. Don’t know if that is 53% of eligible or registered voters. And Clinton got 200,000 more votes than Trump Electoral college, huh? Every vote counts, kinda sorta. Great democracy, sometimes. Low turnout was my fear, but with all the talk of lines and early voting being really big, I assumed the turnout was high. Silly me. These two picks we had seemed designed to drive people away from the polls. Guess it worked. People simply don’g give a shit. As Patrick said earlier, 53% peed in the pool, and now all of us are swimming in it.
I think after the kids (and many sore adults) didn’t get Bernie, they were so mad they either voted Trump or didn’t vote at all. Sad because that generation likely has more to lose…Trump hates alternative energies and thinks climate change is a hoax.
Interestingly enough, the markets are not tanking. The financial guys do not believe he’s going to do anything he said he would do, at least anytime soon.
We haven’t checked our financials yet, Sharon. I’m afraid clicking the “Your Account” link might take me to some dark page that starts off with “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.”
One of our post-docs, a brilliant young woman, was reduced to tears today. Figures Roe v Wade will be first to go. This all reminds me of the 1968 “Silent Majority” Nixon backlash against all the progressive Donk stuff of the sixties.
With all three hairy, thumbless hands on the Levers of Power, the GOP should be right efficient in finishing its job of dismantling the Republic, for sure. I choose to laugh rather than cry, but it’s not a choice that works for everyone. Shit, some days it doesn’t even work for me.
Mr. Pierce quotes the very much missed HST (at least by me), and one of my favorite bits from the man:
This may be the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it — that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable. The tragedy of all this is that George McGovern, for all his mistakes… understands what a fantastic monument to all the best instincts of the human race this country might have been, if we could have kept it out of the hands of greedy little hustlers like Richard Nixon. McGovern made some stupid mistakes, but in context they seem almost frivolous compared to the things Richard Nixon does every day of his life, on purpose… Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President?
Yeah, that’s one of my faves, too. From my first election. Christ, talk about your ass-whuppings. That was a tough intro into the fun-filled world of politics.
Another keeper, from “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”:
“It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era — the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle Sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run … but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant…
“There was madness in any direction, at any hour. You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning…
“And that, I think, was the handle — that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting — on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave…
“So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high water mark — that place where the wave finally broke, and rolled back.”
Ran into a contractor friend at the grocery store tonight. Says he’s worried that he’ll have to hang all the sheetrock in Virginia himself, since there will be no one left to help him.
That’s been the crazy thing about immigration reform.
I knew at least 100 builders and contractors back in my Hotlanta days, every one of them a republican, every one of them outwardly concerned with immigration. And every one of them hired undocumented folks and paid them under the table.
Serious about cutting down on illegal immigration? Pay a dozen fresh CS grads in pizza and weed for two week’s work, writing some backend query shit that will flag employers who are producing X amount of work with X/10 people on payroll. Seriously easy shit. In fact, don’t pay them. Make it a hackathon coding challenge. Then stomp on the employers, jobs will dry up, folks won’t flock across the border … and your new home will cost 30% more, golf course tee fees will double, etc.
Immigration has always been a wink, nod, cough, pay no attention to that hand in your front pocket. The Dems love it cuz they assume it’s more votes, but the GOP equally loves it cuz it’s good for business and bonus, a dagger to unions.
Yep. Almost to a man, the contractors I know say they get more bang for the buck from our brown brethren and sistren.
One of the deepest disconnects in our society involves the demand for cheap shit available immediately pitted against a distaste for illegal immigrants (who “take jobs” from the natives who don’t want them) and the “right” to good, high-paying jobs at locally owned bidnesses.
Huh? Say what? You’ve come to the wrong window, Bubba. Try down the hall.
Hurben, you are a good man. But, we shit in our own bed. Guess we have to sleep in it for 4 years. I don’t think he can do the job and will quit before the term is over. Kinda like Palin.
My final (I promise) thoughts on the election – On November 7 I was saying to my wife something about the angry, old, under-educated white folks vote. My thought was if we could just dodge the Drumpf bullet in 2016, the US might be home free as these folks are becoming extinct, replaced by younger voters of color with a bright future ahead of them. But I expected these AOUEWF’s (like the mastodons trapped in the tar pits) to make a hell of a lot of noise as they left the scene. This was their last hurrah and I can’t help feeling their sentiment was mostly “We got f__ked. We’re mad about it. Nobody listens to us. Now we’re going to f__k with you, even if it brings the entire USA crashing down. We’re not going to be around much longer anyway, so f__k you!”
Sadly, these folks are every bit as selfish and myopic as the guy they elected. Gawd help us all.
900,000 white guys gave their lives during a little thing called the Civil War so that other people could not be in slavery.(The Ku Klux Klan were all Democrats by the way) The words on the Declaration of Independence still make sense.
The Bill of Rights is still active. The court system is still working and those younger folks you’re talking about were rioting in the streets as opposed to voting.
The way the system was set up originally in 1787 was in response to the French Revolution, so the system was set up with quite a few checks and balances. It was designed that way so a mob couldn’t take over control. It was designed to be very slow and methodical with a lot of inertia built in.
So take a deep breath and we’ll see what happens later. Granted I only have a bachelors degree in history and sociology so what do I know?
Not to argue with you (too much), I would hardly call the protests rioting. Let’s not get carried away with hyperbole in the heat of the moment – I think there’s already been way too much of that on both sides.
As for the history you mention, the storming of the Bastille (generally regarded, I believe as the actual start of the French Revolution) took place on July 14, 1789. Washington had already been sworn in as president several months before, in March and the Constitution ratified the previous year, so I’m not sure how much influence the French Revolution had on the framing of the Constitution. Or did I miss or misread something?
Won’t Drumpf’s party control both the House and Senate and appoint a Supreme Court judge or three? It’s hard for me (without any BS degrees) to see much checking and balancing in store, but I do think we all should give the guy a chance rather than be like the Rethuglicans who stated their first goal with Obama was to make sure he was a one-term president. Unless Drumpf’s entire cadre is totally insane I doubt Hillary will be going to jail. Obamacare can’t be ditched and replaced with something great nor any real walls get built. But I do think the reality of the entire job is going to overwhelm this guy pretty darn fast, leaving far too much in the hands of wackos like Giuliani, Gingrich, Carson, etc.
matlinp: Looks like you got me on date on the storming of the Bastille. Its been quite a wile since I cracked a history book. But it makes the men who thought up this experiment look pretty good.
I think that the funding of our revolutionary war was the the last straw that bankrupted the French economy I don’t think we ever paid them back.
Mike, I was a math major and have gotten more than my fair share of calculations wrong, so don’t sweat it. This shouldn’t be a game of gotcha (unlike the political arena, evidently).
Maybe we paid them back (eventually) with our sense of democracy, not to mention the tons of American culture they’ve received from us over the past 60 years or so. OK, so maybe that last is more of a debit than a credit.
Mad Blog Media 
Kinda sums it up, eh?
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. But you know how “they” are.
We’ve just experienced a severe case of electoral dysfunction. Guess I’ll now be working until they drag me off to the concentration camp.
Consontration camps were crated by the German National Socialist Party .Look it up .https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_Party
Concentration camps were actually a British invention – during the Boer War.
With respect, I am very well of the Nazi version. I say Nazi version because you might have missed the Japanese internment camps of the same era in this country, though they were treated marginally better (ask George Takei how all that worked out for his family). While my comment was meant sarcastically, if one takes all of Trump’s pronouncements on immigration literally, ghettoizing people is not that far a stretch. And it was Mike Pence that proposed increased police patrols in Muslim neighborhoods several months ago. I’m willing to let things play out and see how this all evolves, but I’m not holding my breath.
Been a lot of internment/concentration camps in human history. The Native As have enjoyed more than a few such stays, courtesy of the Spaniards and Americans. And yes, Japanese-Americans, too. The Nazis just hogged all the press. Something about the cool uniforms.
There was an internment camp located in what is now Casa Solana in Santa Fe during the war. Its now a subdivision where we own a mortgage. Nice monument on the hill overlooking the former camp.
Sometimes I hate that I saw this coming.
http://labikes.blogspot.com/2015/12/that-trump-ugly-path-that-better-not-be.html
I’m thinking hard about retiring and collecting Social Insecurity while we still have some. Tough call. In my line of work, once you step away from the trough some other oinker grabs your spot, and if you decide later that, shit, you’re still hungry, well, back of the line, Porky.
Don’t do it, Patrick! Under the current rules the increase in benefit payments for every year you hang on is the best ‘return’ on your money (or your life) little folks like us can get. It’s of the order of a 7-8% increase for each year beyond “mandatory” age – ~67, in your case. You can look it up.
Herb, while I agree with you for the most part, remember that Trump wants to, essentially, privatize SS and make us all responsible for our own investments with “block grants”. The rationale is that this gives the user more flexibility. The reality is, of course, that it puts all too many people at risk of losing everything due to bad investment strategies, etc. In discussing all of this with my wife (I’m 68, she’s 67, and both still working, so we’re obviously taking advantage of the benefits increase over time), she said that surely we would be grandfathered in, meaning that things wouldn’t change. I said that given the current makeup of the Congress and the impact of the Tea Party and Trump affiliates, we can’t make that assumption. So, hold your fire and keep your powder dry.
Our accountant advises me to hold my fire, but I have a nervous trigger finger. I keep seeing a white Eddie Murphy offering me some ice cream, then pulling it back and yelling, “Psych!”
I retired at 55. I have a pension, and it would have increased by 2% a year if I had kept working. I do not qualify for social security. We lived on retirement pay for 2 years before I actually retired. We don’t live large, but we live well and have enough. You will know when it is time to retire. Health insurance is a big factor to consider. You can always make more money; you can not make more time.
Yeah, I though there must be a four letter word missing from the caption.
Big question now is whether the Donald tries to implement some of his campaign promises, what happens when, inevitably, he doesn’t deliver and who he tries to pin the blame on.
I note that support for Trump came overwhelmingly from older, white males. Err, that’s us. Ok, I didn’t get a say in your election but it was the same demographic here for the vote to leave the European Union. There’s a lot going on in this world that I don’t understand…
As the results looked increasingly ominous, I commented to Meena that was the USA version of BrExit. Now what?
Louis C.K.’s short series “Horace and Pete” had a scene in which a character at the bar explained that Trump supporters weren’t nearly as interested in fixing institutions as in burning them down. That sounds about right.
As to Trump and his promises, I expect that Pence will be tasked with delivering on those while the Master focuses on vengeance. Bad losers are often equally bad winners.
Mencken put it this way: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” He (or maybe Barnum) said: “Nobody ever went broke overestimating the gullibility of the American people.”
That was Mencken. The actual quote is: “No one in this world, so far as I know … has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.”
I wonder how bad the camps they’re going to stick us in will be …
I wouldn’t expect much in the way of spin classes. But the upper-body workout of building that wall should be intense, yo.
I’m 78 I didn’t vote for the orange,don’t blame all of us older folks.
Sixty-two here. Can’t blame us honky geezers for everything, though the temptation is there.
67 and despairing. But hey, P’OG, as white male landowners we should still get to vote when America is made great again. For a while, anyway.
Shuckens, Bill, I don’t own nothin’ save a bunch of bicycles and Apple gizmos. I do have a couple houses the bank lets me keep as long as I maintain the properties and make the payments.
Garrison Keillor writes that Trump voters will not like what happens next.
52 here, and I pretty much hate everybody one day older than me, present company excepted
Hate to go rude, hyperbolic, and elitist all at the same time, but the folks who design rocket ships voted one way, and the guys who make holes in the dirt voted another. Shouldn’t be any surprise in how this turns out
Ah, Garrison Keillor. I like him much better when he’s not doing what he calls “singing.”
This is a good line:
“His supporters voted for change, and boy, are they going to get it.”
Let’s see how they like it two years into the New World Order when their jeans are still puddled around their ankles, and they still have that fabled itching, burning sensation, but Obummer is not around to take the rap. Like a dog who caught the car, they have no idea what to do with it.
Has any departing president ever run out of the White House before? Nixon doesn’t count. If I were Obama, I’d jog through that door and just keep on going. “See ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya. Send my mail to Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau.”
No words to describe my feelings as a woman and as a human. I know so many wonderful and thoughtful Hispanic people that will now live in fear that they will be targeted. I feel like younger people did not take any of this seriously which is ironic as they are the ones with the most to lose. DT thinks climate change is a complete hoax; he will make sure alternative energy markets will take a big hit.
I thought it would be close, but close the other way, and that Clinton would have no so-called “mandate” to govern. More of the same GOP obstructionism for the next four years, and her probably a one-term president.
Told you I will never be smart. I got some rethinkification to do.
Dipshit Ryan used the word “mandate” three times this morning. Lost popular vote but thinks it’s a mandate.
What’s the Bush/Ivens line?
Born on third base and thinks he hit a double.
Ah, Molly Ivins. I miss her more with each passing day.
Obama 2012 65.9M votes
Trump 2016 59.2M votes
(Clinton 2016 59.4M votes)
My wife was right…as usual.
11/9/2016 feels a lot like 9/11/2001 to me. Have we just seen an incident that will later result in a disaster equal to the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq – or worse? As someone said, “Welcome to the Age of Endarkenment”.
Just as on 9/11, I need to get out for a bike ride – while I still can.
Can you ask your wife to stop being right all the time? It’s not necessarily a virtue, y’know. Sheesh.
Larry, I gave a shoutout to your wife in the previous post. I second PO’G’s emotion, as well. Once Trump became the nominee I figured he would win.
11/9 is also the anniversary of Kristallnacht.
Happy days are here again. Or not.
We sent a democratic outsider to fix DC in 2008. He got a little done in two years, the electorate got pissed again and gave congress a slight republican majority in 2010. Next six years we got nothing. So in 2016 we sent another outsider to fix DC. The problem is Congress who once again had a 90% plus incumbent re-election rate. Oligarchs win, we lose, again. I just hope Trump will do as he promised and get us out of that middle East quagmire. Hope in one hand and shit in the other……..
One thing is for sure. I will never again vote for the lesser of two evils.
We need better candidates and a better electorate. What are the odds? Nate Silver? Nate Cohn? Anyone?
You know what Larry’s wife says. Odds are slim. Is it too early to start drinking? I know, ride first then drink. Bisbee, he we come.
I rode today, but was shadowed the whole way. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?
Oh yes, Drumpf will get us out of the Middle East quagmire – isn’t he the one who said he’d “Bomb the S–T out of them!”? That’ll be after he puts Hillary in jail, sues all the women who accused him of groping and replaces Obamacare with something great. That oughta take a day or two based on his warped idea of his own competence. This moron couldn’t even keep a NJ casino solvent! How do you F–K up a scheme where idiots give you money to watch dials spin around and all you have to do is give a tiny percentage back to a small number of them? The only thing he’ll get done is to Make America Hated Again, worldwide. He’s already most of the way there and he’s not even in office yet. Bravo Drumpf! People are (truly) stupid as my wife always says.
Trump can’t fix what is broken. Will take a generation of pain and suffering. Or worse. So what happens when all the folks who drank the kool aid find out they were duped?
My fear is we will round up the usual scapegoats: Jews and gypsies, er, I mean Muslims and illegals. Dang.
Just heard that the turnout was the same as 2004, about 53 percent. Don’t know if that is 53% of eligible or registered voters. And Clinton got 200,000 more votes than Trump Electoral college, huh? Every vote counts, kinda sorta. Great democracy, sometimes. Low turnout was my fear, but with all the talk of lines and early voting being really big, I assumed the turnout was high. Silly me. These two picks we had seemed designed to drive people away from the polls. Guess it worked. People simply don’g give a shit. As Patrick said earlier, 53% peed in the pool, and now all of us are swimming in it.
Charlie Pierce brings it, along with one of my favorite Hunter S. Thompson passages.
I think after the kids (and many sore adults) didn’t get Bernie, they were so mad they either voted Trump or didn’t vote at all. Sad because that generation likely has more to lose…Trump hates alternative energies and thinks climate change is a hoax.
Interestingly enough, the markets are not tanking. The financial guys do not believe he’s going to do anything he said he would do, at least anytime soon.
We haven’t checked our financials yet, Sharon. I’m afraid clicking the “Your Account” link might take me to some dark page that starts off with “Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.”
One of our post-docs, a brilliant young woman, was reduced to tears today. Figures Roe v Wade will be first to go. This all reminds me of the 1968 “Silent Majority” Nixon backlash against all the progressive Donk stuff of the sixties.
Then, like now the Donks were weakened. Assassinations, war, LBJ bailout, etc
With all three hairy, thumbless hands on the Levers of Power, the GOP should be right efficient in finishing its job of dismantling the Republic, for sure. I choose to laugh rather than cry, but it’s not a choice that works for everyone. Shit, some days it doesn’t even work for me.
Mr. Pierce quotes the very much missed HST (at least by me), and one of my favorite bits from the man:
This may be the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it — that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable. The tragedy of all this is that George McGovern, for all his mistakes… understands what a fantastic monument to all the best instincts of the human race this country might have been, if we could have kept it out of the hands of greedy little hustlers like Richard Nixon. McGovern made some stupid mistakes, but in context they seem almost frivolous compared to the things Richard Nixon does every day of his life, on purpose… Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President?
Yeah, that’s one of my faves, too. From my first election. Christ, talk about your ass-whuppings. That was a tough intro into the fun-filled world of politics.
Another keeper, from “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”:
“It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era — the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle Sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run … but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant…
“There was madness in any direction, at any hour. You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning…
“And that, I think, was the handle — that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting — on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave…
“So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high water mark — that place where the wave finally broke, and rolled back.”
Poignant.
http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/president-trump-irish-writers-have-their-say-1.2861813?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
Didja see my man Roddy “The Commitments” Doyle down there in the list? Well done indeed.
Ran into a contractor friend at the grocery store tonight. Says he’s worried that he’ll have to hang all the sheetrock in Virginia himself, since there will be no one left to help him.
That’s been the crazy thing about immigration reform.
I knew at least 100 builders and contractors back in my Hotlanta days, every one of them a republican, every one of them outwardly concerned with immigration. And every one of them hired undocumented folks and paid them under the table.
Serious about cutting down on illegal immigration? Pay a dozen fresh CS grads in pizza and weed for two week’s work, writing some backend query shit that will flag employers who are producing X amount of work with X/10 people on payroll. Seriously easy shit. In fact, don’t pay them. Make it a hackathon coding challenge. Then stomp on the employers, jobs will dry up, folks won’t flock across the border … and your new home will cost 30% more, golf course tee fees will double, etc.
Immigration has always been a wink, nod, cough, pay no attention to that hand in your front pocket. The Dems love it cuz they assume it’s more votes, but the GOP equally loves it cuz it’s good for business and bonus, a dagger to unions.
Yep. Almost to a man, the contractors I know say they get more bang for the buck from our brown brethren and sistren.
One of the deepest disconnects in our society involves the demand for cheap shit available immediately pitted against a distaste for illegal immigrants (who “take jobs” from the natives who don’t want them) and the “right” to good, high-paying jobs at locally owned bidnesses.
Huh? Say what? You’ve come to the wrong window, Bubba. Try down the hall.
Madre mia… on the up side, here in Colorado, we now have the right to take a medically assisted walk to the other side – may come in handy.
Taken as individual votes, it is what it is, but as a side by side, the optics ain’t great that we voted against ColoradoCare but for suicide.
Folks,
my spare rooms are available at special rates for friends of the Dog Patch.
I can also put camp beds in the woodshed if your portfolio has tanked…
Hurben, you are a good man. But, we shit in our own bed. Guess we have to sleep in it for 4 years. I don’t think he can do the job and will quit before the term is over. Kinda like Palin.
Other Pat is correct on both counts, Hurben. You’re a good man, and we shit the bed. Now we have to do the laundry.
Hey, any illegals out there wanna wash some sheets? No? ¿Oye, a dónde fueron todos?
My final (I promise) thoughts on the election – On November 7 I was saying to my wife something about the angry, old, under-educated white folks vote. My thought was if we could just dodge the Drumpf bullet in 2016, the US might be home free as these folks are becoming extinct, replaced by younger voters of color with a bright future ahead of them. But I expected these AOUEWF’s (like the mastodons trapped in the tar pits) to make a hell of a lot of noise as they left the scene. This was their last hurrah and I can’t help feeling their sentiment was mostly “We got f__ked. We’re mad about it. Nobody listens to us. Now we’re going to f__k with you, even if it brings the entire USA crashing down. We’re not going to be around much longer anyway, so f__k you!”
Sadly, these folks are every bit as selfish and myopic as the guy they elected. Gawd help us all.
900,000 white guys gave their lives during a little thing called the Civil War so that other people could not be in slavery.(The Ku Klux Klan were all Democrats by the way) The words on the Declaration of Independence still make sense.
The Bill of Rights is still active. The court system is still working and those younger folks you’re talking about were rioting in the streets as opposed to voting.
The way the system was set up originally in 1787 was in response to the French Revolution, so the system was set up with quite a few checks and balances. It was designed that way so a mob couldn’t take over control. It was designed to be very slow and methodical with a lot of inertia built in.
So take a deep breath and we’ll see what happens later. Granted I only have a bachelors degree in history and sociology so what do I know?
Not to argue with you (too much), I would hardly call the protests rioting. Let’s not get carried away with hyperbole in the heat of the moment – I think there’s already been way too much of that on both sides.
As for the history you mention, the storming of the Bastille (generally regarded, I believe as the actual start of the French Revolution) took place on July 14, 1789. Washington had already been sworn in as president several months before, in March and the Constitution ratified the previous year, so I’m not sure how much influence the French Revolution had on the framing of the Constitution. Or did I miss or misread something?
Won’t Drumpf’s party control both the House and Senate and appoint a Supreme Court judge or three? It’s hard for me (without any BS degrees) to see much checking and balancing in store, but I do think we all should give the guy a chance rather than be like the Rethuglicans who stated their first goal with Obama was to make sure he was a one-term president. Unless Drumpf’s entire cadre is totally insane I doubt Hillary will be going to jail. Obamacare can’t be ditched and replaced with something great nor any real walls get built. But I do think the reality of the entire job is going to overwhelm this guy pretty darn fast, leaving far too much in the hands of wackos like Giuliani, Gingrich, Carson, etc.
On the hopefully lighter side: Wow! One word and one pic begets 65 responses (and growing). Must be a journalistic life lesson in there somewhere.
Crap sells?
Low speed train wrecks sell.
Let me add to Pat’s note and see what I can come up with…
Low speed train wrecks sell,
Watch out what happens to Trump.
Karma always wins.
GOP – gropers, onanists, and prevaricators.
matlinp: Looks like you got me on date on the storming of the Bastille. Its been quite a wile since I cracked a history book. But it makes the men who thought up this experiment look pretty good.
I think that the funding of our revolutionary war was the the last straw that bankrupted the French economy I don’t think we ever paid them back.
Mike, I was a math major and have gotten more than my fair share of calculations wrong, so don’t sweat it. This shouldn’t be a game of gotcha (unlike the political arena, evidently).
Maybe we paid them back (eventually) with our sense of democracy, not to mention the tons of American culture they’ve received from us over the past 60 years or so. OK, so maybe that last is more of a debit than a credit.
You mean like Jerry Lewis?