Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

I’m just a talker, trying to find a channel!

The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

I really should read my own blog.

Everybody saw this coming.

Live so that if you miss a day of work people aren’t hoping you’re dead.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Can we lighten up on the doomsday scenarios?

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

“And when the Committee says to “report your income,” that could mean anything!

Accountability, motherfuckers.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

The jury literally has a bell they can ring to force Trump to show up on command. Greatest thing ever!

President Biden is doing good where he can, and getting it done.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

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

Consistently wrong since 2002

“Loving your country does not mean lying about it’s history.”

You are here: Home / Immigration / DACA Fix in the Works?

DACA Fix in the Works?

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I hear Trump is snuffling publicly about the opioid crisis today. “Something-something let’s execute drug dealers like my state visit invitee Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, who also hates Obama, and let’s put a pharma exec in charge of the new war on drugs because MAGA.” Or some such shit. In other news, there might be a DACA fix in the works:

It’ll likely come to naught, but perhaps it’s a promising sign that a) the White House is making proposals even though Trump has been meeping about the Democrats not crawling to him for a deal for a month or so, and b) if the above is an accurate description of the proposed deal, it doesn’t include any renewed attacks on LEGAL immigration.

We’ll see what happens. Open thread!

PS: The stock market is tanking for some reason, but not as badly as it tanked that last time.

Reader Interactions

96Comments

  2. 2.

    trollhattan

    deal to fund the border wall w/ $25b over three years with a 2.5 year DACA patch.

    Talk about a sucker’s bet. “You give me your car, house and daughter and I’ll lend you my lawnmower, but I get that back.”

    In other news dude, unhelpful.

    A local lawmaker in Washington, DC, has apologised for sharing a video based on a conspiracy theory that Jewish financiers control the weather.

    Councilman Trayon White Sr posted a video of snow flurries on Friday and warned of “climate manipulation”. He blamed the Rothschilds, a famous Jewish business dynasty, who are a target of anti-Semitic conspiracies.

    Mr White apologised for his comments on social media and said he “did not intend to be anti-Semitic”. “I really do apologise,” he said on Twitter. “I work very closely with the Jewish community and never want to offend anyone, especially with Anti-Semitic remarks.”

    The lawmaker said his Jewish friends were helping him realise the way his comments said in the Facebook video were rooted in anti-Semitic thought that dates back centuries.

    “I see I should not have said that after learning from my colleagues,” he said.

    Ya think?

  5. 5.

    Duane

    I saw Trump’s speech today. Worthless. Why he feels the need to show his ass to the world, each and every day, is absolutely beyond me.

  8. 8.

    Bruce K

    Spotted something on Teh Intarweebs about a major story dropping with regard to Cambridge Analytica, enough that in the UK, they’re already talking search warrants. Might be tangentially related to the stock market whoopsie-doodle.

  10. 10.

    TenguPhule

    but perhaps it’s a promising sign that a) the White House is making proposals even though Trump has been meeping about the Democrats not crawling to him for a deal for a month or so, and b) if the above is an accurate description of the proposed deal, it doesn’t include any renewed attacks on LEGAL immigration.

    And perhaps there’s a unicorn waiting for me at home with a Swedish bikini team covered in maple syrup on top of it.

  12. 12.

    Betty Cracker

    @Major Major Major Major: Agreed, the White House is a pit of viperous liars, so there’s no reason to believe anything they say. But still, if this account of the proposal is true, it looks like they’re marking down their offer like a bankrupt Kmart. World’s greatest negotiators!

  13. 13.

    J R in WV

    The Stock Market is tanking because our president is a crazed, rabid, thoughtless monster. Which is also why Facebook is tanking, they helped enable his election, for cash down!

    ETA: Also, a 30 month DACA fix is not even a patch job on a terrible flaw. So glad it doesn’t look like any Dems fell for that right out of the box!

  17. 17.

    OzarkHillbilly

    $25b over three years with a 2.5 year DACA patch. Ds pushes backed asking for pathway to citizenship for all 1.8 million Dreamers who are eligible under DACA

    I could see that deal at the very least being a basis for more talks tho I’d like to spread the funding over a longer period of time, and work out more on legal immigration.

  18. 18.

    CaseyL

    Cambridge Analytica on video saying they use bribes and sex workers to entrap politicians; Cambridge Analytica used FB to harvest user data; FB value plunging and taking stock market with it.

    Fun day, eh?

  19. 19.

    germy

    Stephen Hawking submitted a final paper days before his death that could lead to the discovery of parallel universes.

    Hawking, who died last week at 76, was listed as a co-author on the paper, which lays the framework for how researchers could someday test the “multiverse” theory, or the existence of an infinite number of universes in addition to our own, The Sunday Times reported.

    I’d like a one-way ticket, if possible.

  20. 20.

    TenguPhule

    @germy:

    I’d like a one-way ticket, if possible.

    There’s no guarantee that the other universe isn’t even worse.

  21. 21.

    kindness

    Does it matter? Even if this Administration agrees to the Democrat’s Dreamer position, they’ll ignore that and go nutz before anything is signed. I for one am tired of this ‘winning’.

  24. 24.

    Gin & Tonic

    @rikyrah: I’m just answering Betty’s question. But to the extent it affects people’s 401(k) accounts or the portfolio of their pension plan, then yes, it’s not good news.

  25. 25.

    Mike in NC

    @Duane: That is just what apes do. Otherwise, he’ll go on TV and proudly exclaim “I made a big poop! Yooooge beautiful poop!”

  27. 27.

    Barbara

    So I learned today that the opioid epidemic was caused by sanctuary cities. I’m so tired of this.

  28. 28.

    Elizabelle

    I’m glad to see Facebook tanking, very honestly. Needs to be taken down a lot of pegs.

    Also, this was a good blogpost. Washington Monthly, Martin Longman. The 1 Percent’s Contempt for Democracy
    Donald Trump isn’t the only plutocrat subverting our democracy.

    When Donald Trump remarked that Chinese president Xi Jinping’s bid to consolidate power and become “president for life” was a move that he should perhaps emulate … a notable feature of the incident went unanalyzed—the audience Trump was addressing when he made the comment. The event was a fundraiser (at Mar-a-Lago, of course) with tickets starting at $2700, so we can assume the attendees were a different species of “deplorables” than the ones wearing MAGA hats at campaign rallies.

    If you listen to the recording of Trump’s comment about Xi that was obtained by CNN, you can hear that it was followed by fairly prolonged applause and appreciative laughter. In the wake of all that the president has said and done in the last year to express his contempt for the Constitution and democratic norms, the remark suggested that he wasn’t really kidding. You would think that might have caused at least some agitation in the crowd.

    But no. These are the rich, who, as F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “are different from you and me.” In their presence, incumbents and aspirants to high office seem to change their personalities. It is the habit of politicians, whatever their public man-of-the-people posturing, to sound distinctly different when speaking to wealthy donors in ostensibly private surroundings.

    George W. Bush addressed the rich as “my base,” while Mitt Romney confided to his fundraiser attendees that 47 percent of the American people were essentially parasites. Even Barack Obama in 2012 informed a group of wealthy donors, including Microsoft moguls Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, that “you now have the potential of two hundred people deciding who ends up being elected president every single time.” Whether that was a simple acknowledgment of fact in the age of Citizens United or oblique flattery to his crowd is unclear, but it was certainly not the way elected officials talk to the general public.

    I did not know that Obama said this. He is not necessarily wrong, nor was he endorsing the idea. It’s a profoundly depressing observation. That said, I think Obama was right. As he was about clinging to guns and religion.

    Look at how Hillary Clinton’s trip to India, and the fact that she opened her mouth and spoke while there, was covered. The media we have is part of what is destroying us. Even the nonFox stuff — the WaPost was heaping scorn just a day or two ago.

    Think about Kay’s comments about the dangers of nepotism, and the lack of an actual meritocracy.

    You see it most predominantly in big media companies. And here I am speaking about the poisonous Sulzbergers, of the NY Times, with their Clinton Derangement response. Not to mention NBC and other networks.

    So, yeah. I hope Facebook tanks. And that Trump’s eventual fall takes down big media too.

  29. 29.

    mai naem mobile

    I don’t trust Orange Asshole one bit. I don’t trust his Deputy Nazi Kelly either when it comes to immigration. If I was the Dems I would ask for the world because he doesn’t negotiate with integrity.

  31. 31.

    geg6

    So Dolt has hired DiGenova for his legal team. Why not get the biggest legal hack to grace FOX News?

  33. 33.

    CaseyL

    It would be interesting to find out how active Cambridge Analytica was at the GOP National Convention. All the GOPers in one place, at a convention where hookers and blow are notoriously available, and Bannon/Trump operatives probably setting up any number of honey traps.

  35. 35.

    TenguPhule

    @Major Major Major Major:

    Forty-Three Percent of Public Thinks That Launching Neverending War That Created ISIS Was a Good Idea.

    Not prosecuting Bush/Cheney for kicking it off probably contributed to that belief.

    After all, if it was wrong, why were they not punished for it?

    Only judicious use of sticks can convince Republicans present and future that certain behavior is wrong and will not be tolerated.

  36. 36.

    Barbara

    @Mike J: Credit where credit is due:

    “Our Revolution and Senator Sanders operate independently,” [Jeff] Weaver told NBC in a statement. “That being said, this is no time to be protesting Hillary Clinton or any Democrat.”

  37. 37.

    Elizabelle

    @Major Major Major Major: I dunno. Maggie Haberman or Andrea Fucking Greenspan would have gone with “it was just flattery.”

    Longman acknowledges it could have been a cautionary remark.

    I thought the whole blogpost was a good one.

  39. 39.

    Brachiator

    NBC News confirms the WH reached out to Dems ystdy offering immigration deal to fund the border wall w/ $25b over three years with a 2.5 year DACA patch. Ds pushes backed asking for pathway to citizenship for all 1.8 million Dreamers who are eligible under DACA

    You can’t trust these people. Here is the outlines of the GOP comprehensive immigration proposal.

    Key House Republicans with the support of the White House have introduced the Securing America’s Future Act (H.R. 4760) as their solution to the immigration impasse in Congress. But the bill would have far-reaching negative effects on economic and labor force growth in the United States, instituting the most severe restriction on legal immigrants since the 1920s.

    H.R. 4760 would reduce the number of legal immigrants by more than 420,000, or 38 percent, in 2019. This is far larger than the 260,000, or 25 percent, cut advertised by the bill’s authors. In fact, the bill has far more in common with a Trump-endorsed bill in the Senate—the RAISE Act (S. 1720)—that would reduce the entry of legal immigrants by more than 470,000, or 43 percent, in 2019. Each would further reduce legal immigration over time.

    Both bills would end the diversity green card lottery and ban the entry of all legal immigrants sponsored by U.S. family members, except for spouses and minor children of U.S. citizens. The RAISE Act would also reduce the age at which U.S. citizens can sponsor minor children from 21 to 18, while the House bill would, in effect, roughly halve the number of asylees. The House bill modestly increases the employment-based quota. Shockingly, both bills immediately cancel applications for millions of people who have waited years to become legal immigrants.

    In addition, the newly passed tax return law strips a number of tax credits away from undocumented workers who use ITINs for dependents when they file tax returns. This will not only burden them with massive tax debts, it will also force many of them into the underground economy, making it harder for them to ever be able to try to become citizens.

    Trying to help the Dreamers is a worthy goal, but it is still a small part of a larger immigration law problem. And Trump is dumb, but cunning. He has continually dangled the bait of a DACA fix in order to get his wall. And some dumb ass Democrats are eagerly snapping at the bait and ignoring the larger trap.

  40. 40.

    Gin & Tonic

    @TenguPhule: At this stage of the US, I worry that criminal prosecution of anyone on the right will turn Fox into Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines.

  42. 42.

    Elizabelle

    @Gin & Tonic: And we, a country with more guns than machetes.

    Thankfully, Mille Collines is off the air, but it helped to incite a genocide. Many of its executives and broadcasters eventually received prison sentences. I think death by machete would have been more suitable.

  43. 43.

    Patricia Kayden

    @TenguPhule: How many Democratic Senators voted against closing Guantanamo Bay? Why do you think that President Obama going after Bush operatives for the Iraq War would have gone well? It would have wasted energy and time instead of allowing the Obama regime to press forward with its agenda.

  44. 44.

    Barbara

    The Supreme Court on Monday turned down a request from Republican legislative leaders in Pennsylvania to block the implementation of a redrawn congressional map that creates more parity between the political parties in the state.

    The practical impact is the 2018 elections are likely to be held under a map much more favorable to Democrats, who scored an apparent victory last week in a special election in a strongly Republican state district. The 2011 map that has been used this decade has resulted in Republicans consistently winning 13 of the state’s 18 congressional seats.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-refuses-to-stop-new-congressional-maps-in-pennsylvania/2018/03/19/128d9656-215e-11e8-badd-7c9f29a55815_story.html?utm_term=.27b8d28a97ff

  46. 46.

    Mike in NC

    Russian intel spent years studying the habits of low information Idiot-Americans and penetrated social media at all levels. Nobody will do anything about that.

  50. 50.

    Belafon

    @Elizabelle:

    “you now have the potential of two hundred people deciding who ends up being elected president every single time.”

    Actually, we heard that from Obama quite often in public as well, that a few rich people were in control.

  51. 51.

    Boussinesque

    @Mike J: mighty big of them.

    All joking aside, at least some of that set are figuring out it’s better to save their ammunition for the real enemy, rather than circular firing squads.

  53. 53.

    lgerard

    Perhaps Rodrigo Duterte can tell trump about how adultery is considered a serious crime in the Philippines and carries a prison sentence of 7 years. At least that is a better deal then the biblical punishment many of this religious nut supporters.supposedly support.

  54. 54.

    TenguPhule

    @Patricia Kayden:

    How many Democratic Senators voted against closing Guantanamo Bay? Why do you think that President Obama going after Bush operatives for the Iraq War would have gone well? It would have wasted energy and time instead of allowing the Obama regime to press forward with its agenda.

    1. Far too many. And both tactically and morally a very big failure. I blame Harry Reid for that one.

    2. That will always be the big unanswered question. We didn’t even get discovery, just a whitewash years after the fact and nobody who ordered the crimes was ever held to account.

    It would have wasted energy and time instead of allowing the Obama regime to press forward with its agenda.

    I guarantee you that the one thing that could fracture the loose alliance we have now against Trump is “We must look forward, not back in order to advance the agenda” again. We need to spend the political capital on this. Or it is always going to keep getting worse.

  58. 58.

    Brachiator

    @Patricia Kayden:

    So what’s up with the attack on legal immigration? Immigrants are not a problem.

    Trump is a nativist and white supremacist. This agenda attracts all kinds of scum. There are people who believe that the US is over-crowded or that it cannot properly assimilate millions of immigrants and so may lose its essential white “Anglo Saxon” character. Also, immigrants suck up tax dollars and resources which otherwise would go to “real” Americans. And of course, nonwhite people just ain’t right, they just can’t become citizens like white peepuls if they are allowed in. And then there are people who just aren’t comfortable with the idea of more immigrants, even though their parents or grandparents were immigrants. Immigrants make ’em itchy. A thousand rationalizations.

    Oh, yeah. Too many immigrants who become citizens vote for Democrats. Can’t have that.

    To be fair to deplorables in this country, you hear amazingly similar arguments in the UK from BREXIT supporters. A YouTube example here … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFVhdtjkOyg

  59. 59.

    Mandalay

    @TenguPhule:

    Not prosecuting Bush/Cheney for kicking it off probably contributed to that belief. After all, if it was wrong, why were they not punished for it? Only judicious use of sticks can convince Republicans present and future that certain behavior is wrong and will not be tolerated.

    You answered your own question. Prosecuting Bush/Cheney would not have been a judicious use of sticks; it would have been disastrous and would have consumed Obama’s Administration. It just wasn’t worth the cost.

    And while I thought prosecuting them was a great idea back in 2008, I’m increasingly coming around to the view that much of the damage Bush/Cheney caused was due to massive incompetence and recklessness as much as evil conduct. Cheney in particular had this aura of invincibility, because he never smiled and always spoke down to people like they were a piece of shit. But he’s right up there with con artists like William Bennett, Newt Gingrich and Paul Ryan, presenting himself as a very-serious-person who actually wasn’t very bright at all.

  60. 60.

    Uncle Ebeneezer

    Anyone else watching Netflix documentary “Wild Wild Country?”

    From a review that I will only excerpt because most of them have lots of spoilers:

    To describe Wild Wild Country as jaw-dropping is to understate the number of times my mouth gaped while watching the series, a six-part Netflix documentary about a religious community in Oregon in the 1980s. It’s ostensibly the story of how a group led by the dynamic Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh purchased 64,000 acres of land in central Oregon in a bid to build its own utopian city. But, as the series immediately reveals, the narrative becomes darker and stranger than you might ever imagine. It’s a tale that mines the weirdness of the counterculture in the ’70s and ’80s, the age-old conflict between rural Americans and free love–preaching cityfolk, and the emotional vacuum that compels people to interpret a bearded mystic as something akin to a god.

    Check it out. It is a really StrangerThanFiction example of history.

  61. 61.

    TenguPhule

    @Mandalay:

    It just wasn’t worth the cost.

    This was also said about Nixon and Reagan.

    I recognize the grounds for the argument, I just don’t agree with it.

  63. 63.

    Cermet

    @germy: Do realize that if he is correct, then besides being an infinite number of other universes, there is only a 1 in 10 to the 500 power that one has the same laws as ours : in other words, you die in all the rest. To get a feel for that big of a number, if our universe is infinite (or in other words flat, which it appears to be), our section of this universe is 65 billion light years across (about.) Then somewhere, within 10 to the 123 or 124 power light years radius spherical volume of our section is a identical 65 billion light year in size section of that universe – and that section is identical down to every elementary particle level to our’s – and as such, in that sub-section of that other part of the universe someone exactly like me is typing this exact same answer (while that number also big but beyond belief smaller than that 10 to the 500 power number I mentioned.)

  66. 66.

    Kay

    Dan Diamond
    ‏Verified account
    @ddiamond
    39m39 minutes ago
    More
    Mentioned by Trump in today’s opioid speech:

    · The border wall
    · Sanctuary cities
    · MS-13
    · Internet commercials
    · “A lot of voters in this room”
    · The death penalty (x6)

    The thing about this addiction crisis is it’s really hard. Even smart, hardworking people with good intentions haven’t made a dent in it. They all admit this. It’s part of the reason it’s so heartbreaking- because an enormous amount of effort has gone into tackling it.

    So the Trump Team will fail. Guaranteed. You won’t get a better result with worse people.

    However. There’s so much attention around it at the state and local level it may not matter, because they are really trying and what’s been kind of heartening to watch is how it really is focused on the addicts. They want them to get better. They don’t, yet, get better, almost none of them recover, but they’ll keep hitting it until they find something that works. I don’t think there is a person in this county who doesn’t know someone who has died as a result of it. It’s personal.

  67. 67.

    TenguPhule

    Unveiling a long-awaited plan to combat the national scourge of opioid drug addiction, Donald Trump called today for stiffer penalties for drug traffickers, including embracing a tactic employed by some of the global strongmen he admires: the death penalty.

    “Toughness is the thing that they most fear,” Trump said.

    What could possibly go wrong?

  68. 68.

    TenguPhule

    Trump formalized what he had long mused about publicly and privately: that if a person in the U.S. can get the death penalty or life in prison for shooting one person, a similar punishment should be given to a drug dealer who potentially kills thousands.

    Spamming millions of people’s emails? Death!

    Robbing worker’s pensions? Death!

    Ponzi scheme or swindling old folks of their money? Death!

    Republican denying black people voting rights? Death!

    Wheee! //

  70. 70.

    Kay

    I think the “just say no” people are sincere when they say that. Trump is a 1980’s person so in a way he’s parroting what he heard in his Glory Days, but he probably believes it.

    The thing is it’s an irrelevant thing to say. It’s not responsive. To people dealing with it you may as well say “fuck off” or “good luck!” or some other obnoxious blow-off, because it’s just not responsive. They never get that.

  73. 73.

    TenguPhule

    @Kay:

    So the Trump Team will fail. Guaranteed.

    Technically they could succeed in zero addicts if everybody is dead.

  74. 74.

    Ruckus

    @Duane:
    Well if the world is going to see him it’s going to see ass. Can’t be helped, he’s all ass, all the time. Why do you think he ran, so he could polish up his CV? Even he knows there isn’t enough polish in the world to fix that turd.

  76. 76.

    Brachiator

    @schrodingers_cat:

    This deal sounds worse than the one offered in February.

    Trump and his people keep coming back to their key agenda: keep nonwhite people out and let in a few ultra-desirable ultra white people.

  77. 77.

    Kay

    @TenguPhule:

    It’s been a real learning experience for me, and I felt I understood it from the meth crisis, but I really didn’t. It’s just not the kind of problem that responds to bluster and strutting around. It’s not about “acting tough”. It’s not about “acting”, period. It’s reached a kind of sorrow stage, where all the blowhards with opinions have disappeared and what you’re left with are just people who are really desperately trying to save other people and mostly failing. For one thing, everyone around it is mourning, because so many of them die, so they’re always recovering from another death.

  80. 80.

    Kay

    @Elizabelle:

    I can be incredibly dense, so we have this drug court counselor who had to tell me they’re difficult to reach and have a blank affect (not just the addicts, but everyone around the addicts) because they’re mourning. Of course they are. It’s just much more profound than “execute people”. Punishment doesn’t really reach it.

  81. 81.

    TenguPhule

    @Kay:

    It’s reached a kind of sorrow stage, where all the blowhards with opinions have disappeared and what you’re left with are just people who are really desperately trying to save other people and mostly failing. For one thing, everyone around it is mourning, because so many of them die, so they’re always recovering from another death.

    Its the like opium dens of Hong Kong back in the day. Many of those addicts are dead, they’re just going through the motions until they physically expire. Its horrible and there’s no answers because there’s never any fucking money to really address the root causes of what gets so many people into addiction in the first place.

    Our nation has long pass the insane part of repeating the same thing hoping for different results this time.

  82. 82.

    Roger Moore

    @Chris T.:

    The optimist thinks that we live in the best of all possible worlds.

    The pessimist is sure of it.

    The realist is more worried about how to deal with this world than how it compares to other possible ones.

  83. 83.

    Another Scott

    @Kay:

    The thing about this addiction crisis is it’s really hard. Even smart, hardworking people with good intentions haven’t made a dent in it.

    In some ways, yes. In other ways, no. We know how to fix the problem (or at least dramatically reduce the harm), but it takes a systemic approach that costs money. And too few people in power are willing to argue that spending money on things like that is necessary.

    tl;dr – it’s not that the solution is unknown, it’s that too many barriers to implementation exist.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  85. 85.

    Ruckus

    @Kay:
    I personally know a meth addict who was helped. He’s clean, works and has as far as I can tell made all his child support payments. He’s an asshole as well but he did get clean. Now it was court ordered treatment, but he did work hard at it and succeed and the court was able to close the issue. So it is not impossible that it can work.

  87. 87.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    I know…I sorta feel bad for shrugging the shoulders, but WE KNOW what the response was during the crack epidemic.

    LOCK THEM UP
    LOCK THEM UP

    Didn’t matter how many families were destroyed.
    They didn’t phucking care, but NOW, we’re supposed to view addiction as a ‘ health crisis’?
    Phuck outta here.
    I don’t wish it on my worst enemy…but, stop asking folks like me, who look like me, to REALLY care, when you couldn’t be bothered to extend that empathy or humanity to me and mine.

    Be glad that I don’t actually take glee in your pain. That’s as much as I can muster.

  88. 88.

    TenguPhule

    @Ruckus:

    So it is not impossible that it can work.

    Just really really hard. You have better odds starting up a small business to profitability then you do of kicking the meth/opiate addiction once it gets ahold of you.

  89. 89.

    Elizabelle

    @Another Scott: We aren’t even treating our beloved military members fully. They wait a long time for services related to PTSD.

    Addicts from nowhere’s ville? Nowhere, no how, man.

  90. 90.

    Elizabelle

    Nothing on the FTF NY Vichy Times’ website; no headlline about opioids.

    However, the LA Times has Trump’s number: their top headline this hour:

    Trump talks up combating opioids, yet his funding shortfall and Medicaid cuts blunt his plans

    Would you see a headline like that at the Trump-entranced Vichy Times?

  91. 91.

    Fair Economist

    @TenguPhule:

    There’s no guarantee that the other universe isn’t even worse.

    Current thought is that the vast majority of them are much worse (if they exist).

  92. 92.

    Jay

    @TenguPhule:

    Despite underfunding and resistance we are having some sucess north of the border, with safe injection sites and free testing of drugs for fentanol.

    Unfortunately, a lot of the recent victims are “recreational” drug users, getting tainted or pure fentanol instead of coke, mdma, heroin.

    Others are “functioning” addicts in the same boat.

    And of course, the private addiction treatment centers are too expensive for most, and the public addiction centers have a 2 year waiting list.

    There is also a shortage of GP’s, and a lack of comprehensive Chronic Pain Management programs.

  93. 93.

    Fair Economist

    @Kay:

    I think the “just say no” people are sincere when they say that.

    The thing is it’s an irrelevant thing to say.

    They are “sincere” in that they are not aware of their (generally racial) biases.

    It’s irrelevant to anybody already addicted and for most people in the opioid crisis they’d have had to say no to their doctor. I haven’t heard any of the moral scolds address that.

  94. 94.

    Ruckus

    @Kay:
    The just say no people are simpletons. Bumper sticker people, they think in very simple terms and answers, probably because that’s a far as they can go. They are most often wrong because the world and humans aren’t as simple as they try to make it sound.
    You have to ask why are people addicted to these drugs in the first place? Is their life that bad, that dreary, that painful? And the answer is often, yes, yes it is. They usually lack effective healthcare, they usually lack a reasonable job, they usually lack a reasonable life. And they see around them people who can afford things they can’t comprehend. A house that might cost more than their gross lifetime earnings – sometimes far more, nice cars, good schools for their kids, and those are the obvious things they see. How about decent food? And they don’t know why they don’t at least have a chance at those things. Being human they might just blame all the wrong things/people and they get that from a lot of the same places they see those things I listed, TV.

  95. 95.

    TenguPhule

    @Jay: A chance for rehabilitation costs money. Money we never seem to have because of fucking tax cuts. And Tax cuts are more important to the parasites then the addicts.

  96. 96.

    Amir Khalid

    @Kay:

    Trump is a 1980’s person so in a way he’s parroting what he heard in his Glory Days

    I never thought I’d see you, of all people, making a Springsteen reference.

    @Ruckus:
    Wasn’t Just Say No the slogan for Nancy Reagan’s personal campaign against drugs? Back in the day, as an innocent twenty-something, I thought it simplistic and naive.

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