Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

“Let’s not pretend [Trump] wants to engage in high-minded discourse.”

…and a burning sense of injustice to juice the soul.

Second rate reporter says what?

If West Virginia and San Francisco had a love child.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

“They not like us!” (that’s for sure!)

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

Nikki Haley, who can’t acknowledge ‘slavery’, is a pathetic shill.

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

Quote tweet friends, screenshot enemies.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

Found liable for massive fraud, is required to post a massive bond, gets a break, then files a *fraudulent* bond!

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

In after Baud. Damn.

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Quite True, Actually

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President Obama for several years has been trying to spend a good bit of money in West Virginia to help out all the people whose lives have been impacted by the decline in coal jobs. Things like this:

The plan, called POWER Plus and is part of the President’s proposed Fiscal Year 2016 Budget, provides more than $55 million in funding for job training, job creation, economic diversification, and other economic efforts in communities that have experienced layoffs due to the declining coal industry. According to the White House, that funding is “unprecedented” and will go toward improving the economic security of coal miners and their families, who have “helped keep the lights on in this nation for generations.”

Those investments include $20 million in funding for coal miners or coal plant workers who have lost their jobs in recent years. The money will go toward job transitioning services and programs for those who have lost their jobs in the coal industry. Another $25 million will go toward the Appalachian Regional Commission, which works to improve economic opportunities in Appalachia.

“Our point here is that while policymakers can disagree about the reasons why the coal industry is struggling, all Americans should be able to agree that these workers and communities, who are in some of the most economically distressed parts of the country, deserve help from the federal government,” Jason Walsh, a senior White House policy adviser told the Charleston Gazette.

I’ll give you one guess what has been standing in the way of this. Just one. At any rate, Obama finally got some money trickling in to the state, and this is how Joe Manchin and Shelly Moore-Capito responded:

West Virginia got some welcome news last week. A round of President Obama’s POWER initiative grants will pour $16 million into infrastructure and entrepreneurship projects to help West Virginians get back to work.

It is money well spent and well-deserved. Just because the world is moving away from fossil fuels doesn’t mean communities whose livelihoods and economies were built around the coal industry should bear all the painful economic change and job loss on their own.

President Obama believes that, and enough members of Congress agreed. So plenty of elected officials were celebrating the much-needed money coming to these counties. Sens. Joe Manchin and Shelley Capito put out their own joint announcement.

And in this good news, they could not help but take a shot at the Obama administration: “Years of onerous regulations that have targeted our state have put many West Virginians out of work and hurt local communities,” Republican Sen. Capito said in their news release.

“West Virginia has been devastated by this administration’s harmful regulations and we must continue to fight to keep our coal jobs and to make sure every out-of-work coal miner has access to meaningful job opportunities,” Democrat Sen. Manchin said in the release.

They still aren’t done humping the energy industry, and the delusional gomers down state still think coal si the future, so they are shitting all over the hand that feeds them. Fortunately, the Gazette-Mail is sick of the bullshit:

Perhaps if West Virginia leaders like Capito and Manchin had talked straight with their constituents on this issue for the last 10 years, fewer Southern West Virginians would have been in denial about the situation for all this time.

The coal jobs are going to disappear, whether people choose to protect their air and water or not. Why shouldn’t West Virginians have something left of their Almost Heaven when coal is done?

Sometimes, we wonder why President Obama bothers with places like West Virginia, which seem to give him nothing but grief, even when he is looking after the people’s needs and best interests. It’s because he is the bigger person.

You could pretty much say the last paragraph about every god damned state run by wingnuts these past eight years.

Reader Interactions

139Comments

  1. 1.

    Gemina13

    Another reason why Joe “My Daughter’s An Adrenalin Dealer” Manchin is a piss-poor substitute for an actual Democrat. It sucks that WV can’t do better.

  2. 2.

    Big Ole Hound

    …and yet WV is the most red state of them all. The population needs the most help and keeps sending reps to DC who vote against them.

  4. 4.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    It’s the media in general that has created such delusion about the reality facing white people generally, and white men in particular. They’ve been overwhelmed by reality that they see and feel, but isn’t represented accurately at all on any of the broadcast media that they’re exposed to, the worst of which is Fox. They don’t understand that it’s actually impossible for them to take their country back, and get the jobs back that they used to be able to rely on. Too many opportunistic cowardly pols and grifting blowhards in the conservative media bubble keep them angry about it, and it’s killing them with addiction, alcohol, divorce, depression, violence, guns. They live in a dynamic country, and they’re static on their couch nursing their grudges at the world, at Obama for representing their decline, and like Trump’s message of hate and fear. They’ve been pawns. No excuse for politicians to pander to this delusional thinking.

  5. 5.

    Roger Moore

    Sometimes, we wonder why President Obama bothers with places like West Virginia, which seem to give him nothing but grief, even when he is looking after the people’s needs and best interests. It’s because he is the bigger person.

    I’ve said something similar before. The difference between contemporary liberals and conservatives is that liberals support policies that help everyone, friend and enemy alike, because it’s the right thing to do, while conservatives will support policies that hurt everyone, even themselves, if that’s the only way to get at their enemies.

  7. 7.

    Turgidson

    It’s because he is the bigger person.

    They can expect a metric fuckton of hate emails to pour in responding to this. I would hate to be the unfortunate soul who gets to sift through them.

  12. 12.

    James E Powell

    @Gemina13:

    I’m confident that Democrats could do better in WVa, but it’s a long term project. Democrats don’t seem to do many long term projects.

  13. 13.

    jl

    No no no, Cole you have been deluded. Gazette-Mail is a weak commie rag that Nobama has PC’d into weak losers.

    If coal goes, it is basically The End. Disaster.

    I mean look at California and Nevada. Gold and silver are gone, and what do we have left? San Francisco is a foggy windswept wasteland of rocks and sand. Reno and Los Vegas have returned to desolate desert crossroads. You people have to cling to coal, or all is lost.

    And, hell, geniuses like Trump and Dick Cheney told us very clearly that coal is the future. Who you gonna believe, anyway?

    Edit: and Northern California can’t even cut down coast Redwood trees anymore. No one is left in NW California. It is a bunch of regressed semi-human illiterate savages eating roots and bark and each other. Fricken no-man’s land up there. Bombed out poverty hell hole of fail. Everyone knows that.

  14. 14.

    Ian

    I think one of the biggest problems the dems face with out of work coal miners is that the media these folks listen too equate environmentalism with anti-coal workers. The national Dems take pro-environmental positions (as they should, as it is right and what the Dem base wants) which get spun as ‘they don’t care about us or our families’. That is why articles like this one are so important. When we break through to people being marginalized by their own elites we can and will win them back.

  15. 15.

    Hal

    I have a former coworker and current facebook friend who is a devout evangelical who is completely opposed to the idea of climate change. Coal as an exhaustable resource is irrelevant to him because he’s literally expecting the rapture, so none of this will matter. That there are so many people like him represented in so many local, state and federal government positions does not make hopeful for the future of humanity.

  18. 18.

    geg6

    I hate that fucker Manchin and his disgusting daughter with the heat of a thousand suns. Can’t imagine how I’d feel if that fucker represented me. Thankfully, he’s my neighbors’ problem. What a creep.

  19. 19.

    JPL

    @geg6: At reelection time, he’ll be a republican. Let’s see how much money he’ll bring back for retraining. hahahahha

  21. 21.

    p.a.

    Well that was fun: ordered call forwarding from Vz (my employer of 28+ years) 2 months ago. They generously gave me Vz voicemail also; just neglected to tell me. I always screen my calls through my ans machine, so I just thought telemarketers were shutting down after 3 rings. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA Everyone I know will call my cell at least as a second choice. 54 messages, 2 from docs that I actually missed: no cell or email duplication.

    THEN 1 hour 15 mins with India to rectify. Of the 7 stages of grief I spent 75% on anger, 20% on bargaining, 5% on WATB (that’s a stage, correct?).
    “I just want it shut down. Can’t you do that!!??”

    If that’s how they treat a former employee, how do they treat you folks who don’t matter ??!!???

  22. 22.

    Kenneth Kohl

    Wow, that is some concluding paragraph by the newspaper. Now, if only national media had as much hair on their asses re the Presidential “race”. Well done, Gazette-Mail, well done.

  24. 24.

    Mike J

    @jl: You forget Seattle. Once a proud logging town (the phrase “skid row” comes from the street they used to slide timber down into Elliot Bay), now we’re forced to try to cobble together a living from aircraft and software and rock bands.

  26. 26.

    the Conster, la Citoyenne

    @jl:

    When Nantucket stopped whaling, the island was lost to the mists of time and the ravages of the ocean. I hear the local indigenous population has resorted to scavenging from the more fortunate.

  27. 27.

    Patricia Kayden

    How exactly is Manchin even a Democrat? He should go and join the dang Republicans and call it a day. He’s worse than Webb.

  28. 28.

    raven

    @Omnes Omnibus: It’s been a few years since LSU opened in Blacksburg on Labor Day weekend. We went up and I told all the Hokie fans that they didn’t know what they were in for in terms of nutcase fans. There are all these lots on campus that are reserved for games but no one expected thousands of Tiger fans to show up Friday for a Monday game. They took over the lots with giant RV’s and insane gumbo parties. The Hokies won but it was the first time since Vietnam that they called out the riot police. It should be fun just to see the parties since the Badgers are not slouches in that arena.

  29. 29.

    Patricia Kayden

    @efgoldman: How do you know that Manchin will vote in favor of Clinton’s nominees for anything? He’s voted with Republicans many times.

  30. 30.

    piratedan

    @James E Powell: when you constantly have to clean up after the toddlers (The GOP) every fucking day, putting thought into the rainy day college fund sometimes takes a backseat. Especially when our media plays the unconcerned husband pointing out where “you missed a spot”.

  31. 31.

    raven

    Fuck Musburger, godamn Vol obviously targeted a App State punt returner and got his ass thrown out like he should have,

  32. 32.

    Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)

    @Gemina13:

    It does suck. I keep holding out hope that sooner or later, more people in states like West Virginia can wake up, here. Until then, though, I’ll take Manchin. He’s better than another Capito, if for no other reason than for that one vote at the beginning of the Congress choosing the majority leader.

    But, hell. Thee’s hope. I live one state over. 15 or 20 years ago, we were electing people like Jim Gilmore and George Allen statewide. We aren’t doing that any longer, thank God. 20 years ago, North Carolina sent Jesse Helms back to the Senate for the 5th time. This year, they’re likely to go Democratic. There’s hope. It’s slow going; it’s always too slow, but I think we’re at least heading the right way.

  33. 33.

    msdc

    @Turgidson:

    I would hate to be the unfortunate soul who gets to sift through them.

    I would love to. I would run the absolute worst of the worst, the shit scraping the bottom of the Trump barrel, under the headline “This Is What We Fucking Mean.”

  36. 36.

    MomSense

    @p.a.:

    I just got a bunch of voicemails from over a week ago. WTF?? One was from a police officer and was time sensitive.

  37. 37.

    Mnemosyne

    I don’t remember who it was, but I remember a commenter here whose mother (?) absolutely refused to get health insurance after Obamacare was passed because she had been taught that it was shameful for a white person to accept charity from a black person. She literally preferred to die than to put herself in a position of “accepting charity” from Obama.

    That’s the kind of insanity we’re dealing with: people who prefer death to losing an iota of social status inside their own minds.

  40. 40.

    debbie

    He bothers because he’s a better person than they are.

    Also, the industry deliberately chose to guarantee its own demise when it refused to modernize in the 1980s.

  41. 41.

    mkro

    Why even bother with editorializing about the future of the coal industry?

    With the yearly loss of life in places like WV because of under-regulated coal mine operators, there should be wide support for coal regulations in WV.

    How do Senators like Manchin explain their disdain for regulations when people actually die in their state due to the lack of regulation?

  44. 44.

    amk

    Sometimes, we wonder why President Obama bothers with places like West Virginia amurka, which seem to give him nothing but grief, even when he is looking after the people’s needs and best interests.

    Truth.

  46. 46.

    Thoughtful David

    @efgoldman:
    Can’t be cricket. If it were, the score would be something like “Here in the third day of play, the score is App State with three centuries and one over and the Vols have two not-out” and NO ONE COULD FUCKING TELL WHO IS AHEAD.

  47. 47.

    sigaba

    @debbie: Is it just me or is there this pattern in large American commercial enterprises– auto manufacturing, oil, finance– where the industries make a nice little featherbed for themselves with the regulators, and then something in the Real World completely disrupts their business model, and everyone instantly leaps to the conclusion that the “problem” that needs solving is that the featherbed isn’t soft enough and the regulators need to cater to the entrenched businesses more.

  49. 49.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Mike J:

    If you had sat out in the sun for three days drinking Pimms you would understand.

    So it’s not being played in England, then?

  54. 54.

    Pete Downunder

    I live in a land where cricket is played. As an American sportswriter once said “it’s a combination of golf and waiting for a bus”.

  55. 55.

    Geoduck

    I broke down and read the comments on the editorial, and was somewhat surprised to see that they ran about 50/50 pro and con. Some folks are capable of learning..

  63. 63.

    catclub

    @James E Powell:

    Democrats don’t seem to do many long term projects.

    UNless you consider the project that started in 1964 with the Civil Rights Act and in 2008 Obama was elected.

    Also the project that started in 1948 with Truman and healthcare reform and in 2009 finally got somewhere.

    Also the project that started with Truman integrating the military and in 2012 has gays serving openly in the military.

  64. 64.

    catclub

    @mkro:

    How do Senators like Manchin explain their disdain for regulations when people actually die in their state due to the lack of regulation?

    Money. SATSQ

  65. 65.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Mike J: I don’t know about that. When the kid was stationed in the UK and came back to visit, she had a ghostly white complexion.

  66. 66.

    JR in WV

    @geg6:

    There are lots of people right here in W Va who hate Joe Manchin AND his lying, stealing daughter. She got an MBA from WVU while Joe was governor, without completing much if any course requirements.

    Joe Manchin is not bright, and may really believe that coal is all WV has to live by, and that Obama’s pro-environment policy really is intended to harm WV workers. But I worked with mining engineers who told me before I retired in 2008 that there wasn’t profitable coal to be mined for much more than another 15 years.

  68. 68.

    Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)

    @srv:

    (CNN)Apparently sexism isn’t just a social problem — if you’re in the path of a hurricane, gender bias might actually kill you.

    A study suggests people prepare differently for hurricanes depending on whether the storm has a male or female name.

    “Feminine-named hurricanes (vs. masculine-named hurricanes) cause significantly more deaths, apparently because they lead to a lower perceived risk and consequently less preparedness,” a team of researchers wrote in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

    The next time a hurricane heads for Mar-a-Lago, someone needs to inform Trump that Hurricane Nymphadora is headed his way.

  69. 69.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Mnemosyne:

    Wait, they actually score cricket?

    Classic and obligatory:

    You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that’s in the side that’s in goes out, and when he’s out he comes in and the next man goes in until he’s out. When they are all out, the side that’s out comes in and the side that’s been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out.

    When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in. There are two men called umpires who stay out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out. When both sides have been in and all the men have been out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game.

  70. 70.

    Peale

    @JR in WV: yep. The forging of that MBA, which she probably used a on her resume when she was making her case to be mylan’s ceo. Great board oversight that company has.

  77. 77.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Emma:

    There’s nothing more beautiful than a sunny afternoon in Skye. Of course, it lasts approximately 45 minutes.

    I have probably written here before of taking the ferry from Mallaig (on Scotland’s west coast) to Armadale, on the Isle of Skye. It had been raining remorselessly all afternoon and promised to be a wet and dreary boat ride; but, magically, the moment we pushed off, the leaden skies lifted exactly like a theatre curtain, the sun came out, and we sailed into a blazing beautiful sunset. It was my introduction to Skye, all those years ago, and I’ve never forgotten it.

  81. 81.

    redshirt

    @efgoldman: You’re right. There’s a second and final cut. How cruel it must be to be on the edge, have high hopes of making it, give it everything you got (you think), and then hear you’re cut on the last day. :(

  84. 84.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @efgoldman:

    Not this time (that was earlier today, a couple of threads down). This is just an old “Rules of Cricket” that hangs, by all accounts, in pretty much every barber shop in the UK. So I’ve been told.

    But it is straight out of the deadpan Flanders & Swann/Beyond the Fringe/Monty Python/Goon Show British tradition.

  87. 87.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Yes, I’ve been told the same. I don’t know enough about cricket to know whether or not it’s true, but wouldn’t it be pretty to think so?

  88. 88.

    schrodinger's cat

    @amk: Allow me to name drop. Last time I was in India, I had dinner with Kiran More at the CCI, no less. My cousin is a member. There was IPL match next day and a lot of younger players stopped by to say hi. I had no idea who they were. I haven’t followed much cricket in the last decade or so.
    Bapu Nadkarni is a family friend and Gavaskar is a distant relative and my mom’s brothers and cousins were fairly serious cricket players at the state and city level.

  91. 91.

    nellcote

    @jl:

    Edit: and Northern California can’t even cut down coast Redwood trees anymore. No one is left in NW California. It is a bunch of regressed semi-human illiterate savages eating roots and bark and each other. Fricken no-man’s land up there. Bombed out poverty hell hole of fail. Everyone knows that.

    you are correct. stay away, stay away!

  92. 92.

    Emma

    @SiubhanDuinne: Skye is my favorite place on Earth, I think. BTW, I took the ferry from Mallaig as a non-landing trip to the small islands in September! The guys couldn’t get over the fact that I didn’t get seasick even when the water started sweeping the decks. It was fascinating to see them send out small boats filled with winter supplies for the islanders.

  95. 95.

    Suzanne

    I am just very quickly running out of fucks for people who stay in these dying areas in dying industries when they have had plenty of warnings that shit is about to get real. The Feds should give them money, but to retrain and to relocate to a city where they will actually be able to get a job. Pigsknuckle County is never going to be able to support these people.

  97. 97.

    SFAW

    @Turgidson:

    They can expect a metric fuckton of hate emails to pour in responding to this. I would hate to be the unfortunate soul who gets to sift through them.

    Nits:
    A) If it’s metric, shouldn’t it be “fucktonne”?
    2) One would hope that the “unfortunate soul” would use the “D key” (as we used to say at DEC) liberally.

  98. 98.

    JR in WV

    @Peale:

    I would love to see a cricket game with folks who knew a lot about the game to educate me about it. I know this has nothing to do with your comment above, but that’s OK by me. I was going to rant about the Manchin family, and decided that was a bad thing.

    I’m sure the Manchins do things that they calculate will be best for everyone, by which I mean everyone named Manchin.

    But Cricket seems to be difficult to do well, and complex enough to hold one’s interest. A shame it isn’t taking off like futbol is, what is sometimes called soccer.

    My cousin played soccer back in the late 60s because his Mom feared that football was dangerous, and he dislocated his shoulder in a match. Something you sometimes don’t ever really get over. Just shows sometimes you never know, right!?

  99. 99.

    SFAW

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    because the result can be a draw.

    How un-American

    ETA: And at least in cricket, a tie can be something like 2763 to 2763. Unlike soccer, where nil-nil is considered the apotheosis of something-or-other.
    ETA2: I am hopeful that the footballers will not be offended by the “nil-nil” comment. But not expectant thereof.

  108. 108.

    SFAW

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    So, is there some tally of my Packers comments which you’re trying to equal? If so, OK, just let me know when you reach it. I don’t think I went over 100, however. At least, not while sober.

    But I guess I should be grateful that the Pack gave us Farve, and the AFC Championship to which he led the team.

    ETA: And Michael Strahan should be sending Farve a shitload of money each year, for helping him get to 22.5 sacks in 2001

  109. 109.

    WestTexan70

    Cricket and baseball are the best.

    I became a cricket fan when my friend’s family got a satellite dish in the mid-70s. We spent a lot of time watching the great West Indies side run roughshod over the Brits and Aussies. Garry Sobers, Viv Richards, Curtly Ambrose and their compatriots were as exciting as any group of athletes anywhere.

    My friend and I may be the only native West Texan cricket fans in existence …

  110. 110.

    Vhh

    @catclub: also that project called TVA that brought the upper South out of the Third World. And that project called “science stuff” thst made the US the strongest economy in the world. All started under FDR, and strong enough to survive Reagan and the Bushes, though the science boat is leaking as R and D drop off because of GOP know nothings.

  126. 126.

    SFAW

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Do you speak French?

    Enough to know that “Favre” isn’t pronounced “Farve,” I guess.

    ETA: Or is “Le Havre” now pronounced “Le Harve,” and I missed it?

  128. 128.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @amk: Nor are rugby fans. Would you prefer “polite disagreement” or something else? You know what I was asking.

  131. 131.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @SFAW: Then we we are bumping heads unnecessarily. I will re-calibrate my responses to you. The Favre stuff stands; we’ve reclaimed him finally.

  132. 132.

    SFAW

    @Omnes Omnibus:
    Oh, I’m not really bent about the Jets stuff. (Well, I’m more bent about the Jets’ performance than I am about you busting my chops, especially since I josh you about being a Cheesehead.)

    Favre was a great QB, no question. But I was (and am) annoyed about Favre taking a dive so that Strahan could pass Gastineau. Passing Gastineau was not the issue — I was much more a Klecko guy than a Gastineau fan — but doing it that way was tacky. Yeah, I guess I’m holding a grudge about something extremely unimportant. Oh well.

    ETA: And being part Canuck, I used to try to pronounce his name “properly.” But if he wants to pronounce it the way he does, it’s not my place to argue.

  136. 136.

    leeleeFL

    @Gemina13: Sadly, this is so predictable I almost wrote it myself from thr outline at top. The older I get, the more I wonder if the Joe Manchins of our Country will ever be real human beings or if they must remain creatures of their fossil fuel overlords forever after. His daughter’s disgusting actions using life saving medication for kids as an obscene profit center makes me think thet will simply change the commodity. Screw the people!

  139. 139.

    SFAW

    @leeleeFL:

    His daughter’s disgusting actions using life saving medication for kids as an obscene profit center makes me think thet will simply change the commodity.

    Oh, come on!! Mylan is doing the right thing — they’re going to release a “generic” version, which will drop the price significantly, I thought I heard someone say it’ll be $300.

    Which is only a 200 percent increase vs a the price a few years ago. That is SO much better than the current 500 percent increase, so everybody should stop complaining. Why are you trying to drive Manchin’s daughter to the poorhouse?

    My son needs an EpiPen for certain food allergies, and they need to get replaced every year, I think. Awesome. I had no idea what was going on (re: price increase) until a few weeks ago. I’m glad we have good insurance, I can’t imagine how bad it would be for those who don’t.

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