Hanlon’s Razor states that you should “Never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity.” Maybe then I’m drastically overthinking why rural Kentucky voted Matt Bevin as governor.
The 66 percent of Owsley County that gets health coverage through Medicaid now must reconcile itself with the 70 percent that voted for Republican Governor-elect Matt Bevin, who pledged to cut the state’s Medicaid program and close the state-run Kynect health insurance exchange.
Lisa Botner, 36, belongs to both camps. A Kynector — a state agent representing Kynect in the field — recently helped Botner sign up for a Wellcare Medicaid card for herself and her 7-year-old son. Without that, Botner said, she couldn’t afford the regular doctor’s visits and blood tests needed to keep her hyperthyroidism in check.
“If anything changed with our insurance to make it more expensive for us, that would be a big problem,” Botner, a community college student, said Friday at the Owsley County Public Library, where she works. “Just with the blood tests, you’re talking maybe $1,000 a year without insurance.”
Yet two weeks earlier, despite his much-discussed plans to repeal Kynect and toughen eligibility requirements for Medicaid, she voted for Bevin.
“I’m just a die-hard Republican,” she said.
Bu there’s more to it than that.
The trend seemed to hold across the state. At Transylvania University, political scientist Andrea Malji said she has crunched state data and found a “99 percent confidence level” between the counties’ Medicaid enrollment levels and their gubernatorial choices. The larger the Medicaid numbers, the more likely they were to back Bevin, she said. The lower the Medicaid numbers, the more likely they were to favor the Democratic nominee, Attorney General Jack Conway.
So Bevin — who said during the campaign that “the fact that we have one out of four people in this state on Medicaid is unsustainable” — racked up votes in rural, mostly poor counties where far more of the local population than that holds a Medicaid card. This was true even in traditional Democratic Party strongholds, such as Pike and Breathitt counties.
Malji, who is from Pulaski County, where Bevin captured 72 percent of the vote, said she heard people back home denounce “Obamacare” while thousands rushed to sign up with Kynect. They didn’t seem to realize that Kynect, Kentucky’s response to the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, is the same thing as Obamacare, she said.
“There’s either voter disconnect here, where the people weren’t thinking about or weren’t aware of Bevin’s stance on health care, or these counties just have higher levels of social conservatives who thought it was more important to vote on social issues,” Malji said.
I don’t buy the former because of the correlation. Bevin made it very, very clear what his stance was and made it clear for six months. He went to town halls in these counties and straight up told them that he would get rid of Kynect and Medicaid expansion. His ads made it clear that he thought Kynect was going to bankrupt the state. What I do buy is that maybe they decided that they could stick it to the party of the ni-CLANG! president, and that Bevin wouldn’t take my Medicaid, just take it from those people.
“I do not intend to re-enroll people at the same level going forward,” Bevin told reporters several days after his election. “There is not going to be a continuation of enrolling people at 138 percent of the poverty level. That is not going to happen.”
BGinCHI
So, when the emergency room visits and other wasteful ways of keeping people alive who have no insurance start to spike, who is paying for that?
Also, how much more expensive is it, in the long run, to axe preventative care in favor of, uh, fuck all?
This is what a libertarian paradise looks like. Enjoy your “freedom-from,” assholes.
MomSense
I feel your pain, Zandar.
Another Holocene Human
These people think that they deserve Medicaid, but the teevee box told them Medicaid is out of money, so they need to kick those undeserving folks off of Medicaid so they can keep their Medicaid.
It’s completely wrong in every way, but you can see the logic to it.
Frankensteinbeck
It’s a good rule, but it doesn’t mean malice is never the motivator. In this case, stupidity is not sufficient to explain the situation. There sure as Hell is a whole lot of malice in Kentucky. I am so glad I got out of there.
rp
Are these the Nazis, Walter?
No, Donny, these people are fucking idiots. Unfortunately, there’s a lot to to be afraid of.
C.V. Danes
Most of my children and grandchildren live in Kentucky. My heart goes out to them.
Zandar
@Another Holocene Human: And it worked, too. A prisoner’s dilemma where everyone loses.
Gimlet
One story I heard a while ago was that so-and-so’s impoverished (white) parents needed medical care but that all the money for state-sponsored medical care was going to the wrong people that didn’t really deserve it.
Not one thought about the responsible politicians.
Frankensteinbeck
Actually… on the topic of malice in Kentucky, you know what weirded me out when I got here in Los Angeles? As a general rule people leave gaps between their car and the car in front of them in case someone merges. In Kentucky, someone merging in front of you was the ultimate insult, and one of the ways that showed was a focus on driving closely enough behind the car in front of you to prevent any possibility of merging. I have since been informed that leaving a gap is the norm, and Kentucky is weird here.
EDIT – Ugh. I am having flashbacks to all the near crashes when I started to merge and the person in the next lane sped up to try to cut me off, but I couldn’t see them. That hasn’t happened here in LA.
JCJ
Zandar, all you need to understand is this comment many years ago from Davis X. Machina right here on this blog
That says it all
ETA: It is even in the Lexicon
West of the Cascades
The scorpion and the frog … rural conservative whites will vote against their interests because it’s their nature, and doubly when the vote will make sure “those people” also suffer. It must be a miserable mindset to have when you can put up with suffering so long as you “benefit” because other people suffer, too.
Emerald
True story: My Mom exemplified the notion of gleefully cutting off her own nose to spite Those People. We had a sweet little dwarf lemon tree in the front of our house. It made wonderful, full-sized, excellent lemons. We had only to step out the door and pluck a lemon off our little tree whenever we wanted one. It was pretty and smelled nice.
One day Mom thought that a few lemons had unaccountably disappeared from the tree. Mom decided that nasty neighbors must be stealing her lemons. She had Dad dig up the tree.
I came home to the sadness that our sweet little lemon tree was gone forever. Mom was quite smug about it. She was completely incapable of grasping that she had hurt herself and her family because of probably imaginary Those People. She had defeated Them! She had WON!
She was impervious to any argument to the contrary. Simply incapable of seeing it.
There you have the conservative mind. I read somewhere recently (probably here on BJ) that liberals need to believe that everyone is equal, and conservatives have a need to feel superior to at least some others. My mom in a nutshell.
jl
@Frankensteinbeck: LA? Louisiana or Los Angeles?
Frankensteinbeck
@jl:
Los Angeles. I have time, I’ll go correct it. There, done.
piratedan
I wonder what part of “fuck you” that these people didn’t understand? Maybe it’s a matter of language in just how inclusive the word YOU is….. instead, all we have left is FUCK, which we know is doing double duty here as a verb and an exclamation….
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
Ironic in that she may get her wish…
The Other Chuck
So much for the old theory that most of the poor uneducated folk just don’t get out and vote. Still, if we had mandatory voting, maybe the stupidity would be confined to Kentucky.
Seriously, fuck them. Build a fucking wall around the south.
JaneE
Bevin’s Law has been in effect ever since the federal government started enforcing civil rights laws. That was when the federal government became the enemy. So long as the GOP exists, racism and violence will be an integral part of the political process in this country.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Like making up shit to be mad about and afraid of?
Patrick
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant):
Elections have consequences. It’s just odd that she claims to be a die-hard Republican, yet she at the same time has no problem signing up for Medicaid. Medicaid, which is the VERY thing die-hard Republicans are against.
srv
You people will never understand. Righteous committment to faith, updated daily.
Ella in NM
These people ARE ignorant, no matter what their IQ might state. They are physically wired and socially reinforced to prefer simple, black and white answers for the complex situations in life which engender fear. The hper-reaction by their cyngulate gyrus to novel or conflicting stimuli has been documented by neurology and psychology. FEAR governs their life, so they look to an all knowing, all “good” authority to keep them safe.
So you’d think that this fear would cause them to consider their own well being in a situation like losing their health care, right? Wrong. For they have faith that it will all work out, even if it doesn’t look like it possibly could work out. How, you may ask? God will take care of that. After all, in their conservative, fundamentalist “Christian” church, the Bible is an infallible literal account with no alternative interpretation or historical context. The earth was created in 6 days, 6000 years ago, as it is today. God will strike you down or even make you kill one of your own if you question him.
Fear, a requirement for simple black and white answers, and limited alternative knowledge leads these types of Republicans to equate their party with religion.
“God is a Republican” for these people.
Being Republican is what you do when you’re a “Bible Believing Christian”. You don’t ask no questions, you just do what you’re told, keep believing, and the magic will happen.
Geoduck
@JaneE: Well, maybe in some parts of the country. In the South the federal government’s been the enemy since 1865.
WereBear
@Emerald: How sad. How illustrative.
I wonder if this is about their attitude towards Christmas, for instance? “It’s my holiday or nobody’s holiday!”
Betty Cracker
Fixed.
Patrick
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Aren’t there any white criminals in Kentucky? Or are they so outright racist that they are only concerned about black criminals?
dedc79
@Emerald: And here I thought that stories didn’t get any sadder than The Giving Tree.
beltane
Even in Vermont, a state with very, very few of “those people”, it is invariably the poorest, least educated, cradle-to-grave welfare recipients who vote Republican. These are people who live in filthy, trash strewn, half-collapsed trailers who spend every dollar they make on beer and firearms. They don’t like nice things. They don’t want nice things, they don’t want their children to have nice things, and by God they don’t want anybody else having nice things either. The Republican party speaks to these people and their disdain for the idea of a better future.
Germy
@beltane: This is why we can’t have nice things.
Zandar
@Betty Cracker: That’s a fight for another day.
The Other Chuck
@Patrick:
C’mon, give these people a little credit for inclusiveness. They’re scared shitless of mexicans and middle easterners too.
Poopyman
@Geoduck:
Let’s not kid ourselves. I would have put 1776, but of course there was no Federal govt.
beltane
@Germy: It’s true. We don’t just differ on how to get to make our country a better place, we differ on the desirability of the country being a better place. People who like living in squalor and despair are going to vote Republican no matter how good the Democrats messaging gets.
Maybe the day will come when the Democrats win the divide and conquer thing by running on a coded anti-redneck message.
Brachiator
Fvck the racist white people of Kentucky. They should just roll over into a ditch and die. Sadly, they insist on being hoist on their own petards. And they have convinced themselves that Obama is a malign thread to them (no need for any reference to Southern Strategy BS). It’s not just about wanting to hurt “those people, too,” it is about stupidly clinging to the idea that a black man could not possibly want to do well by them. There was a recent comment posted here about a man who would rather see his daughter die than have her life saved by a black nurse.
The racist white people of Kentucky are determined to cling to the same suicidal belief. A recent article about Kentucky in the Guardian noted the following:
This, despite some staggering poverty and drug dependence, and despite political leaders diverting money and resources to special interests for decades.
ETA: Guardian story, “America’s poorest white town: abandoned by coal, swallowed by drugs” easy to find with a search
Another Holocene Human
@beltane: In the 1990s, Vermont invested heavily in public education as a way to counter endemic poverty. Did that pay off?
Last time I was in VT I ran across some be-tattooed white supremacists on the public bus. Trust me, that social class doesn’t wear their prejudice on their skin like that in the South. Too many chances to get your ass kicked. Plenty of committed white supremacists among the (petit sized) middle class and above here, though. It’s like, we have plenty of working class people who are somewhere on the hateful scale (“I love my grandchild and he loves Poppy, but his sperm donor better not come around my house again with my daughter not present is all I’m saying”) but for a really dedicated white supremacist, CC Johnson style, you need to find you a child of the Southern elite. They get black belts in hate.
hells littlest angel
“I’m just a die-hard Republican.”
It ain’t gonna be as hard as she thinks.
Bobby Thomson
It’s a dessert topping and a floor wax.
Paul in KY
@Frankensteinbeck: Weeelllll, obviously out there in LA, one of those cars you allow to git in front of you might be a big producer or a reality star. Here, well what if they only allow X number of cars on the Sherman Minton & you let that lucky ducky in the Tercel ahead of you & you’re shit out of luck then.
Whatdya say to that, Latte Coaster?!
Linnaeus
Paraphrasing Ta-Nehisi Coates here, it’s not against their self-interest because racism is their self-interest.
Thoughtful David
@Frankensteinbeck:
I think that was the main point: stupidity isn’t adequate to explain it. Therefore, one *can* attribute it to malice, that is, as a way to stick it to the ni!clang President.
Another Holocene Human
@Brachiator: “Anglo-Saxons”. The layers of delusion here would be delicious if it weren’t all so sad.
(One irony is that historians in Britain are hotly debating just how Anglo-Saxon were the Anglo-Saxons because several lines of evidence are suggesting that by the end of the A-S period many if not most English were genetically “wealsc”–you know, “Welsh”–that is, “Britons”–aka “Celts”–fmr d/b/a “mud people”. Good news, the KKK now admits Celtic mud people.)
Cacti
I have zero sympathy for those who choose to slit their own throat.
Lots of sympathy for the vulnerable who will be harmed by the stupidity of the above group.
Paul in KY
@Emerald: There’s probably a song in there somewhere. Sorry about the tree.
Villago Delenda Est
Lisa Botner deserves to die a painful death. Too bad about her kid, though.
Paul in KY
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant): Ha! Good one, Ben! Damn, if I knew her, I’d be using that one on her.
Another Holocene Human
@Paul in KY: Maybe they just don’t want to harsh their buzz out in Laidbackistan. I used to drive in Metro DC and while nobody ever tried to speed up to stop a lane change (suicidal at 270/695/95 speeds) you cannot maintain a safe, DOT following distance during rush hour. Those gov’t employees and contractors WILL drop into the car shaped space. I laughed; it was easier than crying.
Villago Delenda Est
@Linnaeus: They have problems with self-interest priorities, for sure.
Paul in KY
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Reruh!!!!
Another Holocene Human
Why do Americans think it’s their God-given right not to know things? For that matter, if you’re young and starting a family and your town’s industry is doomed, don’t you, ya know, move? Like your ancestors that brought you here? Unless you’re a Native American (in which case your family was probably forcibly relocated at some point) or Black (ditto), somebody in your family tree definitely made a choice to relocate. So relocate.
I’m not talking about slow economic slumps. I mean this is a one horse town and the horse is breathing its last.
Zandar
@Brachiator:
Ironically, that’s now statistically much more likely in places like Owsley County.
cckids
@Frankensteinbeck: Can I just say, that as a driver living in Vegas (where So.Cal drivers are regularly cursed), having someone say that there are WORSE drivers than those in LA is just horrifying.
Of course, when I lived in Nebraska, we all cursed the Texas drivers. (they cannot drive in the snow. Or rain) It’s always someone, right?
Germy
@beltane:
Well said.
It’s so frustrating. There’s so much potential. I remember when I lived in a traditional small town that was slowly decaying. I’d take morning walks and everywhere I’d see the moldering remnants of the early-20th century progressive area. Beautiful parks with bandstands, monuments, town square, the beaux art architecture… and it was all rotting. No one cared for it. Litter all over the ground.
Poopyman
@Zandar: Shovel-ready projects!
Botsplainer
OT, but I really hope that librul RINO sellout Paul Ryan enjoys the fuck out of his grand new title.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3361493/posts
Thoughtful Today
!
A ‘die hard Republican’ … who works at the Socialist Library and attends the Socialist Supplemented Community College … who apparently also _literally_ works at the Socialist State Agency providing the Life Saving Affordable Insurance … is willing to gamble her and her families lives for Idiotic Principles that would burn everything she relies on to the ground.
/facepalm
…
Mike J
@cckids: Seattle drivers panic in the rain. So it’s only about 9 months of the year.
lawguy
What happened to the idea that the election had been stolen based on the fact that down ticket republicans lost to down ticket democrats?
Germy
I prefer drivers who panic in bad weather and SLOW DOWN.
I’ll take them any day over the clueless idiots who speed on ice and snow in the SUVs.
The nightly local news is full of their stories in the winter months. These fearless drivers invariably lose control and cause multiple collisions.
Linnaeus
@Another Holocene Human:
It’s not always that easy to move, for a lot of reasons. It can work for individuals and families (I did it myself), but I’m not convinced it’s a large-scale solution at present.
Linnaeus
@Mike J:
Which is weird. You’d think they’d be used to it.
BGinCHI
Well, now you will be an easy-die Republican if you get sick.
Botsplainer
@Linnaeus:
Back in 2012, I was talking to my mother and laying out my strongest reason for not supporting Romney-Ryan – the notion of Ryan’s stated goal to end traditional Medicare for those of us under 55 (I’m in my early 50s now). She said that while that might be campaign rhetoric, she was sure that such things wouldn’t happen to me, and that it would be there for me. On the ACA, I pointed out on multiple occasions that the only way our youngest daughter will be able to pursue her dream of being a working archaeologist is in the notion that there is no more pre-existing condition exclusion (daughter had an abnormal biopsy on a mole we had removed when she was 15, and would not be insurable outside of a group). Mom’s response was something along the lines of negroes and poors taking her tax money and that sometimes, dreams just had to be foregone.
mai naem mobile
Lisa Botner is going to find out there’s a whole new meaning to ‘die hard Republican.’ Stoopid bee yotch.
pharniel
I prefer the corollary to Clark’s law “Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice”
ThresherK
@Emerald: I hope your mom doesn’t come down with scurvy, because she’s your mom.
On the other hand, a good scurvy scare might be called for.
kc
Could someone consider deep-sixing tthe “most recent posts” thing? It takes up half the screen. It’s unnecessary.
Sorry to disrupt this thread, but, well.
Paul in KY
@Another Holocene Human: The ones left are the scairdy cats (IMO). My Dad left in 43 & always talks about how glad he was that he got the hell out of there (there being Pike County).
Mike J
@Germy:
If you are panicked, you should get off the road and wait for it to blow over. If you are panicked, you should not be driving.
Botsplainer
@lawguy:
It’s a ghost – there was no stolen election. Jack Conway was simply a shitty candidate running a lazy, lackluster campaign.
BGinCHI
@Another Holocene Human: Link?
kindness
As someone who doesn’t live in Kentucky….sorry but you bought it, it’s your’s now.
I’m not lifting a finger to help them. I’m sorry to all the good folk there regarding my feeling but they need to help themselves now. Maybe the good folk should move. I did when I was 20.
Germy
@Mike J: Well I agree. But since they’re on the road, I prefer the panicky folks to the fearless fosdicks.
kc
Regarding the topic of the post: These people are effing morons, and deserve what they get. I hope Ms. Botner does have to come out of pocket another $1,000.00 per year.
The rest of us deserve better. Too bad we’re never gonna get it.
Another Holocene Human
@Germy: Agreed 100%.
Now it’s fabulous 60s architecture. In going places, ripped down. Elsewhere, probably falling down.
Doug R
@Frankensteinbeck: I find generally in LA two turn signal blinks is proper etiquette. Three is too slow and one is rude.
kc
@kindness:
“If you don’t like it, move.” That’s mighty Republican of you. Lot of people can’t afford to move for any number of reasons.
PurpleGirl
Perhaps we should call it Bevin’s Law: white people will vote overwhelmingly against their own self-interest if it means it hurts those people too.
One change — delete the “too”. They don’t think changes will hurt themselves — they just want to hurt those people.
Brachiator
@Another Holocene Human:
The Victorians arbitrarily decided that the English were “Anglo Saxon” and created a mythology to “prove” descent. Ironically, even some good British scientists got caught up in the BS and some still do. I recently read a pop history article that quoted some British scientist who talked about Viking genocide of English people in a northern region. His unconscious bias was both sad and funny. He only looked at the records that showed the murder of English men, even acknowledging that the Vikings mated with the local women. So, to this guy, genocide meant only the severing or interruption of the male line. Worse, some of the records indicated that some male and female children were allowed to live, again contradicting a simplistic view of genocide. But the scientist could not get out of the way of his own cultural biases.
But hell, not only is there a strong Welsh and Celtic remnant, but some of these people fled to Brittany, and returned after the Norman invasion. You can even see traces of this linguistically in variations of the Arthur myth introduced by Geoffrey of Monmouth.
OK, that was a hell of a detour. BTW, the white people of Kentucky have a fair amount of African and Native American ancestry and have always been a bit “muddy,” but again, as with false English Genealogy, mythology is more important than anything else.
kc
@kc:
Also, on every other website in the entire world, blue text denotes a link. Here? Blue text is just randomly sprinkled throughout posts.
Linnaeus
@Botsplainer:
Sad, but not surprising. Too many people think that Republican policies only hurt those who “deserve” to be hurt.
Another Holocene Human
@BGinCHI: A place to start would be Francis Pryor. He’s a little out there, thinks the Anglo-Saxon invasion of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles never happened at all. Most historians have a more nuanced stance on that.
There’s a somewhat rambling 4-part documentary called “The Not So Dark Ages” which covers the Anglo-Saxons and a hell of a lot more.
Germy
@Another Holocene Human: Speaking of destroyed beauty, check out the doomed Penn Station
“We will probably be judged not by the monuments we build but by those we have destroyed.”
Another Holocene Human
@Botsplainer: Nasty. Some shades of my grandmother redux (the German one), who voted for Reagan because he was gonna stop the “waste, fraud, and abuse” which totally didn’t mean her benefits until it did.
Linnaeus
@kindness:
I can’t sign on to this. The good folk need help, and some of them love their homes as much as anyone who lives elsewhere.
Another Holocene Human
@Brachiator: Nope, you hit that sweet softball. I almost added a (far less interesting) addendum to my own post about how this crap started with the Victorians who didn’t want to be genetically related to any Celts … like the Irish.
beltane
@Another Holocene Human: Poverty rates in Vermont are very low, especially for a rural state. There are still pockets of Appalachia here and there, but even these have been somewhat tempered by the ubiquity of hippies. The people who display Confederate flags and other emblems of stoopid are invariably disreputable types, the underclass so to speak. People will tell them they are assholes to their faces which is probably why not many of them will let their freak flag fly openly. Still, if these people constituted the majority here, we’d be just like West Virginia.
Germy
@beltane: Did you read the story about the Vermont guy who left KKK literature in some BLM activist’s mailbox?
I read about it on an online vermont newspaper, and the reader comments were all “she probably put it there herself!” and “BLM is worse than the klan” etc
Patricia Kayden
“white people will vote overwhelmingly against their own self-interest if it means it hurts those people too.”
But isn’t Kentucky a mostly White state (as in over 90% White)? It’s not like there are scores of Blacks to hurt in that particular state. The voters are just silly. Why would you vote for someone who is explicit about doing something which hurts your pocketbook and health? They deserve whatever Bevin does to them.
Great article on Wonkette about the refugee vetting process.
http://wonkette.com/596079/paris-attacks-making-brave-americans-soil-themselves-quelle-surprise
Gindy51
@Frankensteinbeck: It’s known as NASCAR driving.
Germy
@Another Holocene Human:
I’m curious. What was her reaction after her benefits were affected? Did she blame Reagan or did she stay loyal?
Brachiator
A few more tidbits from the Guardian UK story on Kentucky, a state that voted 61% to 38 percent for Romney over Obama. And also keep in mind the mythology that only black folk are on welfare, but white folk are kept down by Obama.
lawguy
@Botsplainer: So another candidate of the democratic establishment? The Iron Law of Institutions? Or the Martha Coakley Memorial Candidate? Or all three?
Another Holocene Human
@Brachiator: The other thing about it–how the Victorians have gotten us so confused about history–you’d think it’d be obvious who Breton people are, as it’s in the frigging name. And Welsh is a name given by their enemies. The “Welsh”, the “foreigners”, ARE the Britons. Welsh (cummri or however it’s anglicized) and langue bretonne are extremely closely related. And they are different from Irish despite being lumped in the same language group. Things that make you go hmmmmm.
Another Holocene Human
@lawguy: Conway definitely sounds like a Coakley.
Gindy51
@Botsplainer: That’s when mom gets disowned…
Botsplainer
@Linnaeus:
I have a fear that my uber-progressive city is about to undergo an onslaught by state legislators eager to flex muscle against us uppity urban types and put us in our place while siphoning our economic vitality and an even greater percentage of our infrastructure dollars than we’ve coughed up before.
Up until now, Louisville only gets back 50 cents on every dollar it sends to state government from all sources. The smaller cities (Lexington, the Cincinnati suburbs and exurbs in Northern Kentucky) send in high percentages as well, but not as much as Louisville.
The money sent to state government heavily subsidizes those bootstrappiest of bootstrapping heroes east of I-75 – roads cut up by coal haulers, bridges, the excessive number of county governments with local electoral fiefdoms, local office salaries, state benefits, unemployment, law enforcement, water, sewage, workers’ compensation.
That percentage can get even worse as rural legislators move to gut our home rule, special taxing and redevelopment districts and the like.
Botsplainer
@lawguy:
One and three. He ran the same campaign for governor that he did against Rand Paul – he relied on his looks and his office, and forgot that everybody who worked for him who wasn’t a “yes” man despised him for the fact that he was serially incapable of making an actual decision, and that he was simply racking up bullet points on a CV. He was invisible all Spring and Summer, and when October rolled around, throws out an ad on education.
It was bizarre. He ran like a guy who didn’t care. All he had to do was come out and say something along the lines of “employment is at 5% and the uninsured rate is hella reduced. I’m going to continue this and not rock the boat”. He wouldn’t even do that much.
Thoughtful Today
It would be one thing if right-wing policies only applied to the right-wingers that voted for those policies … but they don’t.
If even the slimmest plurality of right-wingers take over, their preferred policies hit everyone. In cases like this, right-wing policies have a death toll.
Or as my preferred Presidential Candidate often says: Republicans are getting away with murder.
beltane
@Germy: Yeah, it was big news here. Most of those reader comments were written by the same assemblage of dipshits who defended the gunning down of a social worker back in September because “state jack-booted thugs”, etc.
SteveKnNKY
if you really want to get on the government freebie train just ask an Appalachian. white, rural, poorly educated, no-/low-skill worker, generations of family in insulated and self-segregated communities. the most deserving of gov’t benefits because someday…
after this election i am at my wits end. i am a firm believer you only learn lessons the hard way.
i think we, Kentuckians, had it easy with Beshear’s leadership. people can knock and nit-pick but he was the bulkhead against the nonsense kasich pulled in ohio or walker in wisconsin. if you are a public employee, retiree or an employee of these quasi-gov’t agencies like a water or sewer district and voted for bevin you can kiss your state pension adios. i don’t think the conservative state house dems can hold off defections.
bevin is going to go looking for waste, fraud and abuse like that idiot ernie fletcher and find nothing. he will still cut taxes and shift burden to the backs of the working poor, working class and middle class.
cckids
@Mike J: That’s funny, I’ve heard they can’t handle direct sunlight; it blinds them.
Though that is an old line.
Another Holocene Human
@Germy: It was my mother who had the conversation with her. I got the impression that Granny voted Reagan again in ’84. The bottom line was that she didn’t learn. My earliest political memory is my parents watching the Reagan/Mondale debate with this air of grim determination*. My father was and is a liberal Democrat (Irish Catholic, no less), while my mother considered herself a Republican but registered Independent. But even she could see Reagan was bad for her and her family.
*-I was for Mondale on account of Geraldine Ferraro, because she was the first woman to run for VP on a major party ticket or whatever, I was four, she was the first! and four years olds think the world should be fair. Also she was vivacious whereas Mondale put me to sleep and I couldn’t understand anything he said. Sadly, I found out much later than GF was a bit of a wanker.
Mike J
@Germy:
If she was like the people I know, she blamed it on the democrat congress.
Botsplainer
@SteveKnNKY:
Wait till he hands state tourism money to the Ark Park.
You know that the place got build on local municipal bonds?
Emerald
@ThresherK: Oh the lemon tree murder happened in the 1960s. Mom passed away over 20 years ago.
And she NEVER changed her attitude. She was truly unreachable, as I’m sure most of those Kentuckians are.
Patricia Kayden
@Another Holocene Human: GF was a bit of a racist too.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/hey_wait_a_minute/2008/03/playing_the_racist_card.html
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Linnaeus:
It’s an interesting definition of self-interest, though. As I’ve said here a few times, supporting an end to racism is in my family’s long-term self-interest, because I have a niece and nephew who are mixed race. The self-interest of being a racist literally only helps me personally and not the rest of my family. Why am I supposed to support white people I don’t even know over my family?
And, as someone pointed out above, it’s not that uncommon for these people to have grandkids or nieces/nephews who will be harmed by racist policies, but they’re unable to think long term even when it comes to their own families.
catclub
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant): I thought t that, too.
Anoniminous
@Botsplainer:
This, alas, is what is happening all over the US. It happened here in NM in the last election. The state parties are either moribund or run by crooks and in neither case can they win a contested election.
Brachiator
Ok, I have a comment that got moderated twice. Maybe this will get through. I mainly wanted to note the sad white poverty in one region of Kentucky noted in the Guardian article.
And yet, somehow this is Obama’s fault or contributory evidence that he hates white people in the state.
Linnaeus
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
It may not be your interest, but I don’t think Coates was speaking about a situation like yours. Rather, he was making a more general observation (that others like Thomas Frank have made) that people view their interests through a number of different lenses. They’re not always making straight up cost-benefit analyses, or at least, they’re analyzing those costs and benefits in a different framework that considers other factors besides economic benefit.
Starfish
@kc: I agree. Using blue text for bold text is odd.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Totally done giving a shit about these people. I hope they and their kids all die from lack of medical care.
It’s not like we didn’t try.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Brachiator:
That dovetails with the report that was released a week or two ago about life expectancy for lower-class white people taking a nosedive because of poor health, drug/alcohol addiction, and outright suicide.
Brachiator
@Another Holocene Human:
And of course, neither the Irish nor the ancient Britons may be as homogeneous as some conventional wisdom suggests.
OTOH, the mythic tradition of England acknowledges the mongrel nature of the Brits. Arthur is a Briton who fights against the Saxons. Later, Robin Hood is in some tales an exiled Norman lord who fights for the Anglo Saxon English in the name of Richard Lionheart (who spoke onlyNorman French and did his best to stay away from his English throne). And in the mythic history, the absolute best you could do as a ruler was to be named Bretwalda, “sovereign of all the Britons” (even though the term is most mentioned in the Anglo Saxon Chronicle).
Elizabelle
@Emerald: Oh Gawd. What a story. What did your dad think about it? Did he ever say?
Do you have a little lemon tree now, in your life?
WereBear
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Unfortunately, any attempts by lower-class white people to better themselves gets undercut by family disapproval, peer-based sneering, and outright sabotage.
“You think you’re better than us?” is all too often readily answered by “I’d like to be, but you won’t let me.”
Elizabelle
Uhh. These “die-hard” Republicans.
Crabs? Meet barrel. Awful stuff.
beltane
@WereBear: It’s true and sickening. So many of these people would rather their daughters get knocked up or their sons go to jail than go to college. Despite all the blathering about pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps, they actually hate anyone who does this. Centuries of putting rural white America on a pedestal has created a cohort of ugly, angry people, who feel entitled to unending praise and admiration.
Germy
Vitter Campaign Goes All In on Refugee Hysteria
They’re nothing if not opportunists, these candidates.
jayboat
@Starfish:
Maybe not that blue, anyway.
I agree, tho- get rid of the recent posts or at least reduce it and move into the right column.
The front page reads like damn puzzle.
As I have said before, there are fucking rules to publication design.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Linnaeus:
Right, but what I’m saying is that they seem to have a weirdly narrow definition of “self-interest” that includes strangers who share their ethnic identification but excludes actual family members who are related to them by blood.
And I’m wondering if (hoping) that’s a potential way to get through to people who are slightly less extreme than the lemon tree types.
Germy
@beltane: Little House on The Prairie, The Waltons.
I think putting them on a pedestal was a corrective after all the 1920s realistic novels where pappy sucked the blood off his knuckles while mud-spattered baby chewed on a two-day-old chicken bone in his highchair.
Germy
@jayboat: I have been reluctant to criticize; they get pretty pissed off.
I can see my little scroll button, my screen doesn’t go blank as often as it used to and so I’m a satisfied customer.
SteveKnNKY
@Botsplainer:
i don’t know if you watch KET on election night, i tried to hold out and couldn’t, but ken hamm was directly behind bevin’s left shoulder on the stage that night.
ALG and Conway sucked as candidates. bevin’s team assumed correctly the tea-servative would be out in numbers to protest vote for kim davis discrimination but general medicaid recipients would stay home.
NorthLeft12
Folks, you couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried. We have those same type of people up here in Canada, not as racist [I don’t think] but nearly as self destructive. They vote Conservative because that is what their families have always done for the last dozen decades or so. What other reason do they need?
WereBear
@Germy: Tobacco Road.
rikyrah
I have NFTG.
Don’t whine to me when you’re being this stupid.
schrodinger's cat
@kc: It has been suggested by me and many others umpteenth times, so far the suggestion has been completely ignored by the TPTB.
Linnaeus
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Ah, I see. Yes, it is narrow, and that’s yet another insidious effect of racism.
Emma
@Linnaeus: So how the hell do you help people who don’t want to be helped? This is a democracy and they have a right to vote however they want to. And live by the consequences. And if you think they’ll be grateful when you show up to help, you haven’t met them.
beltane
@Germy: The novelists had it right. The only difference now is the introduction of opiates and the foster care programs for their haphazardly begotten children.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Linnaeus:
Also, it originally came to mind because someone online was exhorting me about how I had some kind of responsibility to show solidarity with other white people, which I realized meant in my case that I was supposed to put the interests of total strangers over those of my family members based solely on ethnic identification. It was so weird and foreign to me.
Germy
@WereBear: LOL
trollhattan
Is it okay to continue in my belief “Justified” was a reality show–because that’s my go-to resource for ‘splainin’ how the joint works. That and the Creation Museum.
Fair Economist
@Frankensteinbeck: Actually my experience in LA is that people *will* try to stop you from merging in front of them. Often to merge I’ll move alongside the car in *front* of where I want to merge, whereupon the car behind will fall back, allowing me to brake and squeeze in. It works disturbingly often.
The thought the KY drivers are significantly nastier is pretty frightening.
Paul in KY
@Botsplainer: People who met him thought he gave off ‘airs’. Commented to me more than once by people who said they were going to support him, but weren’t particularly looking forward to it.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@WereBear:
My (step)mother has a serious push/pull when it comes to that. I think it has something to do with a certain amount of despair — sure, you can TRY to better yourself, but something random will always come along to push you down again, so there’s no point in trying too hard. So she wants to be encouraging, but she just doesn’t have the necessary life experience to make her think that things will actually work out. Self-fulfilling prophecies, and all that.
Gin & Tonic
@jayboat: The Other Chuck’s “More Better Balloon Juice” add-in really helps a lot.
Paul in KY
@Elizabelle: I’m guessing he had to live with her ;-)
jayboat
@Germy:
I understand what you’re sayin…
More difficult for me- as a lifelong graphic designer.
One of the rules I live by is that you simply cannot ‘talk’ a bad job into looking good- it’s right there on the page for everyone to see.
Maybe it runs more smoothly under the hood, but graphically speaking it feels like a step backwards.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Yep. Some news stories said it was a problem among white males, but the summary report did not separate out men or women.
And the story should be the beginning of a discussion of an increase in problems that affect all Americans. Instead, the worse reading is that things are getting worse for one group because of efforts to help (name your favorite scapegoat here).
Patricia Kayden
All of the Paris terrorists were European nationals — zero were Syrian refugees.
http://thinkprogress.org/world/2015/11/16/3722838/all-paris-attackers-identified-so-far-are-european-nationals-according-to-top-eu-official/
Germy
@jayboat: I agree. But I’ve seen it get ugly here (threats) when commenters spoke up.
The quality of the posts and the comments make up for the redesign.
Linnaeus
@Emma:
You start by supporting those who are trying to make a place better.
It’s a struggle. Always has been. Always will be.
Emerald
@Elizabelle: Dad just went along with her demands most of the time. When she really went too far he’d put his foot down and she’d sulk for three days.
But the lemon tree murder was worth it to him because he knew she’d make our life hell for weeks bitching about those thieving neighbors. Most likely it was some kid, if there even were lemons “missing” at all.
After years of apartment living I now have inherited a (different) house and have the space for a little container lemon tree, and hope to have one soon! I’ve wanted one ever since the murder, actually! Thanks for asking!
Enhanced Voting Techinques
So beyond an Idiotacry to a Nihiltocracy now? This sort of reminds me of the Onion’s News broadcast from the future were they were saying Wymoning voted to nuke themselves rather than allow gay marriage.
KithKanan
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Remember, a certain number of white people literally owned their non-white children/half-siblings/etc as slaves before the civil war.
Some people have some very messed up priorities.
BobS
@WereBear:White people accused of ‘acting white’ — strange fucking country we live in.
Paul in KY
@Emerald: Hope you get one soon :-)
WereBear
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): I can even understand it to a certain extent: it can be painful to hope.
On the other hand, I think it’s far more painful to live without it.
jayboat
@Germy:
Oh, that sounds real cool.
I love prima donna designers- they’re the best!
Not trying to start trouble, just voicing my opinion.
I like this place and would like for it to look as cool as its content.
It ain’t rocket surgery.
eta- ok, you’re right about the commentary. I will stfu.
proterozoic
@Emerald: Don’t blame your mom, blame lemon-stealing whores.
cain
@WereBear: I believe that happens even for a black folks as well. This mentality doesn’t just exist for white people.
Zandar
@SteveKnNKY:
This.
With Conway losing 80+ counties that Beshear won in 2011, you’d better believe at least some of the General Assembly from some of those counties will try to flip parties. It won’t take much, Dems only hold it 54-46 right now. KY’s descent to red state status has been assured since the 2008 Dem primary when Clinton won by double digits, well after Obama had all but locked it up.
Somebody’s going to want to take the offer on the table rather than getting beaten in November. Whether or not five will do it, we’ll see.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
This is where I often say, “Thank the deity for Marxist analysis.”
Whenever someone insisted that I must mindlessly declare obedience to some group or cause based on ethnic or other lines, I can only say (and I got this a lot when I went to college by people who insisted that I absolutely had to join this or that student association),
Thank you, Groucho
ThresherK (GPad)
@Emerald: Well, I’m speechless. Okay, not really, as I’ve had stubborn relatives also.
Good luck with your new tree. I haven’t heard of a citrus tree so symbolic since Waterworld.
WereBear
@cain: I was replying to a comment which was specifically about lower-class whites. Though I might add they have far less excuse since racism is not one of their burdens.
PurpleGirl
@jayboat: Yes, please do stfu about the redesign right now. And Germy — you too. I remember that thread you are referring to.. It was only once and the designer was badly goaded that evening when all he wanted was to comment like a regular reader.
The designers have been noting people’s ideas and concerns. Have them listed, too. We don’t have to keep going over it again and again. There are readers who are TIRED of hearing/reading it and just want to read and comment.
Gin & Tonic
@PurpleGirl: His threats that night were way over the line, “goaded” or not.
The Pale Scot
@Another Holocene Human: Like the Normans after them, the saxons had the power but didn’t wipe out the pre-existing population.
I can’t see Boudica’s people just fading away. England tried to extinguish Irish culture for 800 years and failed. They kept sending colonists over who would decide to adopt Irish ways. They had no success until they imported the Germanic lowland Scots. The remnants of that attempt are the last infestation of “Anglo-Saxons” in the north.
A protestant commenting on the 60’s civil rights marches in Ireland, “they’re calling for rights I don’t have”.
Well maybe that should be a clue for you, you fucking moron.
Concerning Jim Webb’s statements about the neglect of the Scot-Irish “Fat drunk and stupid is no way to go thru life.”
PurpleGirl
@Gin & Tonic: This is the only response I will make — I’m tired of it. Tired, Tired, TIRED. I don’t want to read any thing about the redesign. I’d like a thread to happen that doesn’t get side-tracked.
leeleeFL
@rp: @Frankensteinbeck: Florida, too. I drive in the left lane alot, because i can’t get left w/o endangering my life.
jayboat
@PurpleGirl:
I thought repetitive complaining was part of the internet tradition around here.
Don’t goad me into another complaint. 8-]]]
Greg
You also cannot underestimate how much of this vote is driven by their hatred for Louisville and Lexington. I spent 5 years living in the two cities. Louisville is one of those super blue cities surrounded by a sea of hostile red. My entire stay there we had a Democratic Jewish Mayor, passed LGBT protections, elected a very liberal guy to Congress and in general had a really good time in a beautiful city with a well-educated, cultured and not particularly religious population. Thus, they are the scapegoat for all of Eastern Kentucky’s problems, and worse, they are a living breathing example that the “wicked” do not in fact get punished, but in fact live a much better, much healthier, much longer life than what their country preachers told them the wicked deserved. For some reason it is not the rapacious coal companies, the corrupt local governments or the lying hypocritical clergy, or the disdain for education amongst them all that are the cause of their poverty and misery. It is, of course, Louisville and the Federal Government. Never mind that they literally owe 100% of their income, food and shelter to those two cities, they are convinced that they have to stick it to the “Libruls” who are, in their twisted minds, the cause of it all. So at the State level they send men to Frankfort who are guaranteed to hurt them, but as long as it hurts Louisville even a tiny bit, they are happy. You will, BTW find the same dynamic in Texas (where I lived after KY), and in many of the other Southern states.
leeleeFL
@JCJ: Sad but true. We really need that meteor.
Elizabelle
@Emerald: We wanna see pictures of your little lemon tree, when it is home and thriving. LOL too re your dad. He was a pragmatic soul.
Botsplainer
@Greg:
Here in the People’s Democratic Socialist Kenyan Shariah Republic of Louisville, we’re just too damn busy counting money, going to gay pagan weddings, marching for peace and eating high-falutin’ fancy meals at not-chains to do the really important things like go to church, shoot randomly in the air and rail about how them n*****s, sp*cs, ragheads and jews are ruining everything.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
So there are fewer of them? And the downside is?
Cermet
@cckids: In Maryland it is the Maryland drivers! While Mass drivers can be crazier they aren’t as stupid as us Marylander’s in driving – especially rain, snow, ice and even sunny days. I loved New York city however – not the insane congestion but those people are so nice and thoughtful; driven the country over and Maryland is just bad. OK, maybe Virginia drivers iare the worst but that is partly due to them having to deal with so many bad Maryland drivers … .
Theodore Wirth
It has regressed to the point where ignorance is rife in Murka no matter the location and it is downright scary. I am nearing retirement age and I will survive thanks to the money from my paychecks that I have *invested* in SS for the most part. However, chances are increasing that my children and their children will not be so fortunate.
RSA
@Cermet:
Despite highway signs that used to read (do they still?) “Maryland Welcomes You. Please Drive Gently.”
Patricia Kayden
All of my comments in this thread are in moderation. Can’t figure out why.
BGinCHI
@Another Holocene Human: This is really shaky. Actually I think “stupid” would be a better adjective.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@KithKanan:
That, too. My “Hamilton” obsession was leading me to do some Wikipedia reading about the descendants of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson and it’s pretty fascinating stuff. There are two separate Jefferson organizations for Jefferson descendants now because the people running the “official” one decided to be dicks to the Hemings descendants. Others within that organization were more open to the Hemings descendants and helped form the new org.
As with many American families, some of the Hemings descendants stayed and intermarried in the black community and others became white. They have members from both branches in their org.
One of the biggest Hemings/Jefferson branches ended up settling in Madison,WI as white. On the black side, one of the first black congressmen in California was a Hemings descendant.
Germy
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Reminds me of this
schrodinger's cat
No new thread in ages, have the frontpagers abandoned the jackals and hyenas?
Germy
@schrodinger’s cat: They’re in the conference room.
The door is closed. Not sure what’s going on.
Patricia Kayden
Our Republican Governor here in MD has come out against settling Syrian refugees here. Sigh.
Germy
@Patricia Kayden: I’ve asked this before here: How will it affect 2016 voting? You know the GOP is rubbing its hands together ever since the attacks.
Cermet
@Mike J: In Maryland, when the weather gets bad, they speed up – less time driving in the shitty weather – stupid – I should know …, I resemble that stupidity
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Germy:
Three out of the four surviving children he had with Hemings became white, but it’s still funny.
(The whole “one drop rule” is a very recent invention — like in the 1880s. Before then, it was common for people with one black grandparent to cross over to the white community and be accepted as white from then on in a lot of places. Both of the Jefferson/Hemings daughters married white men without a scandal.)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@trollhattan: Mags Bennet would’ve supported Kynect, if only because he would’ve figured out like two years ago how to get the gummint in Frankfort to pay for her weed. And fucking thank her for taking their money.
OT: reposting my own post from above, because I’m so fucking gobsmacked by this
Germy
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Very true about the one drop rule.
A result of southern resentment over the victorious northern aggressors?
burnspbesq
And now she can die, sooner and harder than she should, because she apparently didn’t believe Bevin when he told her exactly what he was going to do if elected.
Gex
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: As far as I can tell, when the GOP has the White House most every policy initiative we have domestic and international is about spreading Judeo Christian values. What exactly would an additional group cover?
Germy
@burnspbesq:
There are two types of GOP candidates: those who say exactly what they’re going to do, and those who use euphemisms. (“fix” medicare, etc.)
burnspbesq
@Botsplainer:
Y’all aren’t true Kentuckians. Y’all are such traitors, you’re probably rooting for Duke tonight.
Cermet
@burnspbesq: That, at least, will improve us as a species … . I vote Kentuckian’s for the Darwin award.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Germy:
That, and probably because you could no longer tell who was one of Those People based on whether their mother was a slave or not. The hierarchy must be maintained, goddamnit!
(Also, Hamilton? The only major Founding Father who never owned slaves. It’s a little unclear whether his wife brought slaves to their household when they married, but the available census reports don’t show any, so historians think that any she brought were manumitted.)
SteveKnNKY
@Botsplainer:
you are correct. there is a lot of hate for the louisville-jefferson county / lexington-fayette county governments. the taxing districts were always the hang-up as more money was kept at home vs. sent to frankfort for re-distribution by the very powerful, very rural senate and house members who were rarely un-elected, banked seniority rising to chairmanships and directing the money away from the Louisville – Lexington – NKy triangle.
bevin will try to start on kynect/medicaid expansion to be bogged down by the federal approval process.
it will be the budget process and the pension deficit that will be his stake in the ground. the ky pension system is insolvent or unsustainable (the usual non-sense), taxes are too high and cuts are in order, home-rules need to be overturned or written in frankfort’s favor for money to be returned to the state coffers. higher education will be decimated and public teachers, like kasich did in ohio will be vilified, so vouchers and charters can be approved. if any police or firefighter thinks they are safe they are dead wrong. as many as he can get out of the pension system will be gone with the P & F getting hit hard with income thershold cuts and a lot of self funding.
Shakti
If their stupidity actually meant that some of the money the ACA and my stupid state bled out of me for insurance and education I’d applaud it. (Spoiler alert: It doesn’t. LOL) I just do a cynical Kanye shrug that someone is this stupid is not only still alive but has a job and manages to go to community college and has a child.
#stupiditybreedstrue #dunningkruger #honorarydarwinward
sparrow
@Patrick: I think this is the same mindset behind former abortion protestors who come in to get abortions. It’s different for them, they’re special, you see.
Ruckus
Just got home and have to say
She’s not a die hard republican.
Take away her health care and she becomes a die easy republican.
J R in WV
Back in the first half of the 20th century most parts of WV were pretty well integrated racially. Mrs J’s great-uncle was super of schools in a southern WV county, and half of the board of ed were black folks. This has changed just as the UMWA ( united mine workers ) lost membership in the coal mines. The union has a clause in their constitution that banned segregation, since the 1880s or 90s.
In some of the southern counties the middle class and professionals were mostly black, and the poor and shiftless near-criminal class was mostly white.
Last winter we went to a friend’s for New Years Eve. He was born to a pair of people who are smart, but unfocused. Needing medication for metal issues, to be polite. He frequently put dinner on the table with a .22 rifle, shooting a rabbit or a few squirrels, when he was 11 or 12.
Now he has built a construction company, specializing in water line and sewer line construction. Bidding for contracts, using heavy machinery, hiring local guys to work hard and make good money.
I’m sitting there minding my own business, when one of the local guys says to the other “…but I just hate ni*clang*ers. Just hate them!” I bet when he was growing up there were ZERO black folks in the county. There aren’t many now, and they seem to be treated OK mostly, and are part of a mixed race family, mostly.
I shouldn’t have been so shocked, not the first time I’ve heard that kind of talk, but he was so vehement about it. Why would someone say that in front of people he had never met before? Just dumber than rocks, I suppose. And he’s making pretty good money working with quarter-million dollar machinery.
But if Billy’s construction company ever hits a string of failed bids, or the contract proposals stop being funded, that guy is back to living in a rickety trailer, making meth for a living. Where he grew up, probably.
So sad to see blind hate just out in the open like that. I was appalled. And in most of the country, if he made remarks like that around employees, he would be fired right off if anyone complained about ti to a boss. So moving, with that mindset, isn’t really an option, is it…
I’m really hoping my pension holds up with Republicans in charge. Right now the funding is there for current retirees, and my social security is only about half my pension. So losing the pension would be a real FU to our budget. And mining and the coal severance tax are going away together.
Well, too much rambling on…
Paul in KY
@Greg: Jack Conway (IMO) did a bad job at getting out the vote in Louisville. Had a fine, accomplished black lady as his running mate & they couldn’t get the big West End surge that they needed.
Paul in KY
@Botsplainer: I knew there was a reason I love Louisville! Can’t wait for next year’s Forecastle!
Paul in KY
@burnspbesq: We did look pretty good, didn’t we?