Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Giving in to doom is how authoritarians win.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Disagreements are healthy; personal attacks are not.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

“In the future, this lab will be a museum. do not touch it.”

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

All hail the time of the bunny!

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

Hey hey, RFK, how many kids did you kill today?

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Excellent Links / Monday Morning Open Thread: (Fighting for) Respect

Monday Morning Open Thread: (Fighting for) Respect

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(Full clip here; explanation here.)
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Apart from dishing the Grammys, what’s on the agenda as we start another week?

***********

Meanwhile… “Oh mah garsh, Jethro, it’s a trend!” Will Bunch, in the Philadelphia Inquirer:

There are no sooty coal mines underneath the steep, foliage-shrouded streets of Mount Airy, no Formica-wrapped diner where men in flannel shirts and steel-toed boots load up on painfully bitter coffee and heaping platters of cholesterol while dissecting last night’s Hannity, no driveways where an unemployed factory worker parks his Chevy truck next to a “Make America Great Again” yard sign.

No, life on these blocks centers around a joint on Carpenter Lane called Weavers Way, the venerable corner food co-op that launched in the twilight of the hippie era in 1972, where today senior citizens and young social workers wander down from rambling old-stone houses with their reusable canvas bags to load up on bulk spices, home-baked muffins, or maybe a treat like pumpkin gingersnap ice cream…

Welcome to the throbbing heart of Anti-Trump Country, a land where — if you believe in polls — the majority of Americans reside, and yet a place that the mainstream media seem determined to ignore.

I decided to come to the Northwest Philadelphia neighborhoods of Mount Airy and Germantown after reading the 26th, or maybe it was the 206th, “Report from Trump Country,” where some wire-rimmed reporter from New York or D.C. parachutes into small-town Ohio or Kansas to hang out in a bacon-drenched breakfast spot to discover that the locals who watched six hours of Fox News Channel the night before still love it when Trump blasts the liberal “fake news” on Twitter, no matter how many promises the president breaks on bringing their jobs back or replacing Obamacare with “something really terrific.”…

.

Tragic coda, via commentor Gin & Tonic, “Mired in squalor, but still voting for Putin”:

… In Soviet times, “monotowns” dedicated to a single industry were part of a proud industrial heritage. Today some are still home to about 14m Russians, or 10% of the population, but many others have been bulldozed and burnt. One of the ghost towns in the far north, Khalmer-Yu, has been used for military target practice. Putin, who relishes any opportunity to show off his manly prowess, went up in a bomber to launch missiles at an abandoned block of flats.

A few brave souls linger in Roza, a former coal-mining town named after Rosa Luxemburg, the German revolutionary. It is perched on the edge of a crater two miles wide. The air is filled with sulphurous smoke from burning subterranean coal seams that have caused land on the edge of the settlement to subside.

More than 4,000 have departed in search of better lives. Most of those who remain are jobless. “People are upset, angry and disappointed,” said Liubov Artiomova, 49, at the counter of the All You Need dress shop. “I rarely get any customers. All we do is exist.”…

Kurdyavtseva, a mineworker’s widow, suffers from severe asthma and her grandson needs to see a dentist — two of his front teeth are black. “There’s no dentist round here,” she said. “And we can’t afford to go anywhere else. All of my pension goes on getting us something to eat.”

She could barely afford to feed the child and her two sons. In spite of the hardship, she will vote for Putin on March 18. “Who else? He gave us a good life in the past. Others have let him down.”

If you’re old, like me, you can probably remember back when it was a point of American pride that even our most isolated, ill-educated hayseeds had an independence unimaginable to the dumb kulaks mooing adulation for whichever Strong Soviet Daddy was standing at the front of today’s parade review…

Reader Interactions

139Comments

  6. 6.

    JCJ

    @rikyrah:
    Good morning? It is 6 pm here (Bangkok). My 91 year old mother in law is in the hospital so this trip is mostly accompanying my wife on visits. At least my MIL is out of three ICU.

  9. 9.

    different-church-lady

    That’s amazing — Will Bunch managed to make his anit-Trump country essay sound just as stupid as the pro-Trump country articles.

  13. 13.

    mai naem mobile

    @JWR: do these idiots realize crap like this should be ignored. It just makes it bigger and make you look like a bigger fool. Also,it was funny. If Hilz had won Dolt45 could have done something similar as satire and it could have been funny.

  14. 14.

    Immanentize

    @JWR: Haley doesn’t want politics in the Grammys. What did she think of the opening with Kendrick Lamar, Bono and The Edge? That was pretty plain political.

  16. 16.

    Elizabelle

    Good morning, folks.

    I just don’t want to talk about Trump or anything Trump-related. But good to hear HRC had some fun at his expense last night.

    When I talk to Germans, I apologize for Trump, and say I had nothing to do with that. They laugh.

  17. 17.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    What is it with old white people and bad nostalgia? I’m in a citywide Facebook group “Good Old Days” where people put up photos of city scenes and street corners from the past. I’m always interested in stuff like that.

    My irritation sets in when purveyors of lamentable food, drink and entertainment are remembered fondly as “that was the best”, just because something was available to the posters in the heyday of their youth. A lot of it was shit, as I remember, and the things they remember most fondly were whiter than white. This seems to be a part of the national fondness for 50s imagery, too.

    My greatest ire is reserved for when the posters laud an amusement park, theaters and dance halls that I know were officially segregated and off limits to people of color, all while the commenters remark on how much better things were then.

  21. 21.

    WereBear

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: What is it with old white people and bad nostalgia?

    It is a function of brains, especially those which are not in the best of shape, to see the past as a happy-rosy time when they were young and hopeful and all their organs were working properly.

    Such memories have been “carved in” by decades-long activation, while recent events are more lightly incised and still have the sharp edges which time tends to mute.

    So everyone’s adolescence has the Best Music, the Finest Times, the Greatest Friends, and the Most Inspiring Challenges.

  26. 26.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @WereBear:

    Mom and Dad (and their friends) have it bad. So did my maternal grandmother.

    That tendency skipped me, and I’m not sure why. I recognize that the restaurants in my youth sucked for the most part, the most generally available music was pedestrian (the interesting stuff was swamped out by continued play of Beatles and other boomer bullshit), and while the sex was good, fashion and cars generally sucked.

  27. 27.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    The way she defends him, it’s like Nikki Haley Nimrata Randhawa is having an affair with Drumpf

  33. 33.

    Woodrowfan

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I do fondly remember some old restaurants and such that no longer are around. And yeah, I remember their food as being pretty good. I also get annoyed by the “things were better then” folk. Some things were better, some were worse, some were pretty much the same as now.

  53. 53.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Elizabelle:

    The Page Six article apparently thought it was important to mention Hillary Clinton’s age, although not that of any of the other Fire and Fury “auditioners.”

  54. 54.

    MJS

    @rikyrah: I don’t think it’s either of them, because I don’t think President Fat Ass “I’ll have another Quarter Pounder and I can’t walk 4 blocks” is able to any longer. There’s a reason all of the more recent allegations against Trump have been sexual assault, and not sexual relations. Maybe Hicks and/or Haley are required to roll up a magazine and smack his fat ass every now and then, but there isn’t shit happening beyond that.

  56. 56.

    Betty Cracker

    @Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): Fox & Friends’ Twitter feed indicates they covered it, so the rage-tweet rebuttal may be forthcoming. On the other hand, I’m not sure when the Shitgibbon got back from his trip abroad. Possibly he’s passed out in the Lincoln bedroom with just a white terry cloth bathrobe with a short hem and karate sleeves shielding the priceless portraits on the walls from his disgusting gelatinous mass, making revolting snuffling noises as he sleeps off the jet lag and drools on the linens. If that’s the case, we’ll have to wait until he TiVOs today’s F&F (aka, President’s Daily Briefing for Dummies).

  60. 60.

    TS

    @Baud: Hillary Clinton has been faithful to her husband & worked for the American people for most of her life. Running out of political issues she is now being attacked for the sins of every man who was ever abusive to a woman anywhere anytime.
    Meanwhile the orange horror has been unfaithful to each of his 3 wives, from his own words has abused women, has worked non-stop for trump inc. has done ZERO for anyone in the US except self – and perhaps daughter – and is lauded by the media as the greatest ever.

    This has really brought out the reality of that GOP divine right to rule. They don’t care about anything anyone except self. They are encouraged by the US media at every turn.
    I am waiting with bated breath to hear about the best ever SOTU address since Reagan.

  62. 62.

    WereBear

    @TS: has done ZERO for anyone in the US except self – and perhaps daughter

    He told Ivana, the first wife, that he wanted six children “because that makes it more likely one of them will be just like me.”

  63. 63.

    Kay

    This is really shocking. Florida’s voucher for kids with disabilities. The application to become a “school” is 3 pages and there is literally no oversight- none at all:

    It’s like a perverse science experiment, using disabled school kids as lab rats and funded by nine figures in taxpayer cash: Dole out millions to anybody calling himself an educator. Don’t regulate curriculum or even visit campuses to see where the money is going.
    For optimal results, do this in Florida, America’s fraud capital.
    Now watch all the different ways the flimflam men scramble for the cash.
    Once a niche scholarship fund, the McKay program has boomed exponentially in the 12 years since it was introduced under Gov. Jeb Bush, with $148.6 million handed out in the past 12 months, a 38 percent increase from just more than five years ago.
    But there’s virtually no oversight. According to one former DOE investigator, who claimed his office was stymied by trickle-down gubernatorial politics, the agency failed to uncover “even a significant fraction” of the McKay crime that was occurring.
    Administrators who have received funding include criminals convicted of cocaine dealing, kidnapping, witness tampering, and burglary.
    Even in investigations where fraud, including forgery and stealing student information to bolster enrollment, is proven, arrests are rare. The thieves are usually allowed to simply repay the stolen loot in installments — or at least promise to — and continue to accept McKay payments.

    They’ve already had a fire marshal shut down one of the schools, and he’s just the one who came forward and did his job. There is going to be a tragedy. It’s almost guaranteed.

  64. 64.

    Ydobon

    @Elizabelle: Actually I would make the Germans apologize for Trump: “When Germany sends its people, they’re not sending their best. … They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re pimps. …”

  67. 67.

    Gin & Tonic

    Holy crap, I’m famous. But a little concerned that I’m not “valued commenter” or “esteemed commenter” or one of the other honorifics that others seem to get.

  68. 68.

    Cheryl Rofer

    I’m guessing that the Twitter silence (and relative discipline before that) is a combination of jet lag, low energy, and lockdown by his keepers in preparation for the SOTU and in protection against doing even more obstruction of justice. He read his speech at Davos, and the plan will be for him to read the SOTU speech. Whether he can remain relatively calm through tomorrow night is anyone’s guess.

  71. 71.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: As I’m sure you know, this racket blossomed during the Jeb Bush administration and has been nurtured under every governor since (all Republicans). Marco Rubio was just tweeting nonsense about vouchers this weekend, no doubt with the express thanks of his patron Betsy DeVos.

  75. 75.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: While Ms Cracker certainly paints a vivid technicolor surroundsound picture, I prefer to utter the barest of minimums and let people’s imaginations do the rest. I find that most people are far sicker than I, willing and able to imagine things that I am constitutionally incapable of remembering.

  80. 80.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    I was glad they asked Bush about the program in the piece. His spokesperson says he “supports better regulation”- a true CYA statement.

    When they try to sell these in Ohio they say that just 2-3% of Ohio schools are private, so it will be a small experiment. I never considered that the money would create huge growth in fake schools. It makes sense, but private schools make up such a small portion of the whole I bet people don’t consider growth CREATED by the public funding. I bought the “2%, small experiment” argument myself.

    I also think it’s sad, because I bet just about all those parents think those schools are regulated by the state for at least safety, and they’re not. They can’t make that assumption anymore. They’ll have to do a fire inspection themselves.

  81. 81.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Cheryl Rofer: I wish there was a way to troll him, like have Hillary be somebody’s guest and put her face up on a giant screen in front of him just as he starts to read.

    But alas, short of hacking into his teleprompter (isn’t it amazing how we no longer hear it’s a problem for presidents to use those?) I guess that line of attack is closed.

  83. 83.

    Scotian

    @TS:

    Hillary Clinton has been faithful to her husband & worked for the American people for most of her life. Running out of political issues she is now being attacked for the sins of every man who was ever abusive to a woman anywhere anytime.
    Meanwhile the orange horror has been unfaithful to each of his 3 wives, from his own words has abused women, has worked non-stop for trump inc. has done ZERO for anyone in the US except self – and perhaps daughter – and is lauded by the media as the greatest ever.

    This has really brought out the reality of that GOP divine right to rule. They don’t care about anything anyone except self. They are encouraged by the US media at every turn.
    I am waiting with bated breath to hear about the best ever SOTU address since Reagan.

    Worth repeating in full. For that matter, this seems like I heard about it before back in that campaign cycle, or maybe the last one in the primary between Wilber and her, but I distinctly recall hearing this story some time back, as in years level back, so the FTFNYT just showed yet again their true nature, especially where all things Clinton, especially HRC are concerned. Got to love how she is judged by 2018 standards for acts of a decade ago whereas Trump seems to get judged to the standard of “Trump is Trump” a la the 1950s standard. Turning on the CNN to hear about how this is such a scandal, and isn’t HRC a private citizen? Why is she STILL being treated like she holds office or is running for one, whereas the one in the actual WH gets treated with such deference all because he has a R next to his name?

    It is shit like this that is destroying American credibility around the free world, I guarantee it. Something the FTFNYT as well as far too many Americans in general forget is that HRC ius widely respected in the rest of the free world, and watching the raping of her politically over and over and over again before, during, and after the 2016 campaign, well trust me, that has an ugly resonance indeed to it that travels well beyond your borders.

    That BTW was not aimed at anyone here, just a little frustration rant to start my Monday morning with…sigh.

  86. 86.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I was born in 57 but my memories really start in the 60s. When of course nostalgia tells me everybody got along and all the music was great and there was no crime or drugs. (Kidding of course. Yet even the 60s are not immune to the nostalgia treatment in fact).

    So 50s nostalgia, Grease and Happy Days were part of my youth. Took me a while to realize that On the Waterfront and West Side Story took place in the same world as Happy Days. There’s an exchange in West Side Story something like this: “You kids make this world lousy.” “We found it this way, Doc.”

    I’ll never know what the 50s really were like. But obviously they weren’t universally idyllic, even if you were white.

  87. 87.

    japa21

    She could barely afford to feed the child and her two sons. In spite of the hardship, she will vote for Putin on March 18. “Who else? He gave us a good life in the past. Others have let him down.”

    “Putin cannot fail. Putin can only be failed.”

  89. 89.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @magurakurin: At $600 it is wildly overpriced. One can currently buy flame throwers in the hair products aisle at the local supermarket for as low as $1.99.

  92. 92.

    CarolDuhart2

    @Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): Both female and POC here. I do have some nostalgia in me (I like old music and buildings, and won’t refuse a well-made vintage outfit), but I think that things definitely improved after 1965. I remember late 50’s early 60’s food-except for Italian and Chinese, it was mostly bland (soul food excepted). Once immigrants came into town, food got tastier due to the growing variety and growing competition. We started getting music beyond top 40 from time to time. Clothes were freaky, but at least they were more comfortable-garter belts and girdles and needletoed shoes went away. And you didn’t have to dress up for everything any more.

    And that’s what freaks out those people in the good old days group. The openness. The variety, the fact that “those people” (loosely defined) can not only speak, but talk back, and be heard and even taken seriously. That they have to adjust to the world, rather than the world conforming to their tastes.

  96. 96.

    Scotian

    @Chyron HR:

    I’m not RON HOWARD, so was speaking solely for myself on that one, anyone else can take it as they wish. I am just so fucking tired of this sickness where one of the most respectable international political figures of my lifetime is concerned.

  97. 97.

    Jeffro

    In tripping over one another to get inside the Frosty Freeze in rural Kentucky, journalists have bizarrely turned the nearly two-thirds of Americans who are alternately embarrassed and terrorized by the actions of Trump and his minions into a kind of a new silent majority.

    APPLAUSE

  98. 98.

    Barbara

    The article in the Philly newspaper is a good one. I think you can make a proper analogy to investing — the smart money gets in early, and the stupid money is usually getting in just as the smart money is getting out. Gradations between less smart and stupid get in and out somewhere in between. The point is, there is an entire class of investors who seem to be looking constantly in the rear view mirror. So it is with journalists. Aside from the fact that overlooking the rust belt really wasn’t the story. The story was and is misogyny, and to the extent that the mainstream media (as we are finding out) is full of misogynists, they will continue to miss that story, because they are blinded by their own self-delusion. I think it’s okay that they miss the story. Not being under a media microscope will give nascent movements room to breathe.

  99. 99.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Barbara:

    The story was and is misogyny.

    Yes. Exhibit 1: The ongoing trumped-up scandal-mongering as regards one HRC, private citizen.

  103. 103.

    Honus

    @Woodrowfan: maybe they look cool(debatable) but they were awful compared to modern cars. Just get in one and try to drive it today. No brakes, awful handling, no A/C, and no safety features or engineering. Abysmal fuel economy, poor reliability and no durability by comparison with today’s cars. It was unusual to see 100,000 miles on a fifties or sixties car. Today’s cars routinely remain in service with twice that mileage.

    I get the feeling most nostalgia is that way. For instance 50s diners look cool, but the food was pretty bad by today’s standards.

  104. 104.

    Lapassionara

    @Barbara: Misogyny a big, but not the only, part. I was trying to explain that to some friends who think HRC was uniquely “unlikeable.” They could not hear me, so I just told them to watch what happens to Kamala Harris or Kirsten Gillibrand if they get close to the nomination.

  106. 106.

    cmoren

    @WereBear:

    So everyone’s adolescence has the Best Music,

    Well dang, we did have the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who, and so on.

  107. 107.

    ? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?

    “Who else? He gave us a good life in the past. Others have let him down.”

    Putin cannot fail, he can only be failed. Does this sound familiar?

  110. 110.

    TerryC

    @WereBear: so, Trump wanted six children so that one would be like him. Has anyone told him about cloning? If we can do squirrel monkeys I bet we could do Dolt 45.

  112. 112.

    KickBoxBanana

    The great thing about Hillary is that she is very good at raising wingnut blood pressure and appears to enjoy doing it as much as possible.

    Judging by comments around the innertubez, that grammy clip appears to have worked it’s magic.

    “She’s a criminal who should be in jail blah blah”. They still feel threatened by her. It’s a beautiful thing.

  113. 113.

    The Moar You Know

    The Cletus Safari will always be with us. One more reason not to hate Trump, but those who installed him in the White House.

    (hint: that would be the US media)

  115. 115.

    glory b

    @WereBear: Memories, like the corners of my mind.
    Misty water-colored memories
    of the way we were.

    Can it be that it was all so simple then?
    Or has time rewritten every line?
    If we had the chance to do it all again,
    would we? could we?

    It’s ear worm time.

  116. 116.

    The Moar You Know

    Remember folks: the best progressive is a joyless progressive.

    @different-church-lady: Late eighties. I went to UC Santa Cruz and my girlfriend at the time was at Berkeley. I’m kind of surprised that motto wasn’t engraved above the entrance to each school. They certainly did their damnedest to live it. Joyless and fucking zero sense of humor.

  117. 117.

    glory b

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: A funny early episode of Black-ish has Dre taking his family to a restaurant where you paid based on how much you weighed. He gets all nostalgic about what a great time he had there, and how the food was sooo good.

    His children retch and are happy to go out to the car as punishment, electronics in hand

  118. 118.

    Barbara

    @schrodingers_cat: The xenophobes have been voting mostly for Republicans for a long while now. Trump has emboldened them not in the voting booth, but in their daily interactions with the rest of us, natives and immigrants alike. However, on balance, I think the real story is the people who didn’t show up to vote for Clinton, or who voted for Obama but switched to Trump. I have friends who canvassed in Pennsylvania who were told outright that they would not vote for Clinton — either because she was a woman, or Bill Clinton’s wife. In Pennsylvania, in 2016 every male Democratic candidate won their election for statewide office. Only the female candidates lost. That outcome cannot be attributed purely to xenophobia.

  120. 120.

    Barbara

    @Lapassionara: Gillibrand will become so and so’s daughter (her father was big politician in New York) while Harris will be seen as unlikable as the daughter of immigrants. The point is, it is easy not to see women as people and very easy to see them as extensions of the males in their life. Never mind that George W. Bush was somebody’s son or Donald Trump inherited a fortune, etc. It’s infuriating.

  121. 121.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Barbara: There were plenty of pro immigration Rs among the elected Rs. And immigration was one issue that didn’t split equally on party lines. See the senate Rs that voted for the comprehensive immigration bill in the aughts and the early teens.

    ETA: I agree with you that misogyny was a potent issue that worked against HRC but I don’t think that was the only issue.

  122. 122.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Barbara: Douglas Rutnik was a lobbyist for a while, but never held elective office and was never a household name in NY politics (outside of his own household.)

  124. 124.

    Barbara

    @schrodingers_cat: I am not saying it was the only issue, but there were more than enough people who were willing to vote for a black man whose father was not an American who were not willing to vote for Clinton to change the outcome. Which is a way of saying that in my view, misogyny was not the only issue but it was probably outcome determinative all by itself.

  127. 127.

    Mnemosyne

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:

    I once heard someone un-ironically refer to the 1970s as “a more innocent time.”

    That’s when I realized that the reason people nostalgically think of the era of their childhood as “a more innocent time” is because they were too young to be aware of all of the shit going on that their parents sheltered them from.

  129. 129.

    J R in WV

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    So, Bill, great shot, the lighting is interesting. Is that the moon in upper right sky? and the long streaks of light in the foreground, cars or a train too?

    On a tripod, or just braced or resting on a solid surface? I’ve done that for long exposures when I didn’t have a big tripod along with. you can press the camera against a tree or pole, or set it on a low wall and use the timer to release the shutter in how ever many seconds.

  131. 131.

    Origuy

    From the Russia article: “Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin] cannot possibly be expected to know everything that’s going on everywhere in the country. We need real control over the bureaucrats so they stop stealing funds.”

    If only the Tsar knew our troubles, he would take care of those cruel boyars.

  132. 132.

    J R in WV

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:

    In my memory, the ’50s were poor, people laid off, mines closing, strong hard working men knocking at the door, asking if they could work on the place to earn some groceries for their kids. Very scary. Plus the Cold War!

    The ’60s…more Cold War getting hotter. Cuban Missile Crisis, with a Naval blockade of Cuba and the two nuclear superpowers threatening each other with a first strike wave of nuclear armed bombers. Plus the Vietnam war taking kids out of High School to fight a war no one wanted to fight.

    The ’70s – More war. I got drafted but joined the USN before they could grab me and was lucky enough to get a great duty post on a ship called building 16. But the small island (Key West) had nuclear armed missile bases with revetments to conceal them from the tourists and local civilians. I’m sure the Russians and Cubans knew exactly where they were. So tense if you allowed yourself to think about it. Saw my first UFOs! Was on submarines, handled torpedoes, etc. Big careful fun. Learned to SCUBA dive, self taught with a USN Diver’s Handbook. More big careful fun. Then when the Vietnam war ended more horror.

    The ’80s were good. I went back to the University (Marshall U, that is, some spelled it Mars Hall) and got a degree that led to good jobs and a career. The ’90s were good, we built a new house on the old farm. But my mom died of Pall Mall caused COPD. Still, good years.

    The 2000s, not so good world wide. Ass Hat Bush started out OK, but then decided to light up;the Middle East, which worked out just fine for him, except for millions of people hating him for destroying their families and killing hundreds of thousands of civilians. Plus massive corruption, C-130s loaded with pallets of shrink-wrapped hundred dollar bills, with no accounting of where those bundles of money went. But I retired, so very good!

    The Obama years, pretty good once the President got the economy running. We know how that ended, though. Welcome President Trump! Not really !! Really, not really!

  136. 136.

    Citizen Alan

    @The Moar You Know:

    I have said repeatedly and loudly that I hate Trump voters much worse than I hate shitgibbon himself. If you come home from work and find out that your roommate has purchased a baboon that has smashed all the furniture and took a dump in your bed, you don’t get angry at the dumb animal. You get angry at the roommate who should have fucking known better.

  137. 137.

    Citizen Alan

    @Mnemosyne:

    Very true. When I think of the 70s, I don’t think of Nixon and Watergate and the tail end of Vietnam and the beginning of Reagan. I think of the SuperFriends, Scooby-Doo, Thundarr The Barbarian, and disco, which at the time I thought was utterly hilarious as I watch my older sister trying to teach herself how to do the hustle and the bump.

  139. 139.

    Marcia

    @WereBear:

    So everyone’s adolescence has the Best Music, the Finest Times, the Greatest Friends, and the Most Inspiring Challenges.

    And everyone’s version of the sacred More Innocent Time is usually the decade that ended when they were about 7 or 8 years old. I’ve even heard the 1970s referred to that way; and that decade was about as innocent as Ned’s Nudie Bar.

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