Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

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

Not all heroes wear capes.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

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

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

Republicans in disarray!

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

You are here: Home / Past Elections / Election 2016 / Downward Spiral (Open Thread)

Downward Spiral (Open Thread)

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Until my luck ran out almost two years ago, I’d never been party to an abusive relationship with a narcissist, at least not on a long-term basis. I had a sociopath boss with narcissistic qualities once, and I solved that problem by quitting the job. But I can’t quit America.

Now, thanks to Vladimir Putin, anti-democracy Republican lawmakers and 62.98 million assholes, we’re all getting a crash course in what it’s like to have a malignant narcissist in our fucking grill every day. Everything about it is intolerable, but surprisingly, I find Trump’s neediness among his most personally irritating and repugnant traits.

The bottomless pit of need that is Trump has been on full public display since the 1980s, of course, but it’s worsened in the last week (month? year? century?) since excerpts of Woodward’s book began dribbling out in The Post and the anonymous op-ed appeared in The Times.

It’s no mystery why Marmalade Mugabe’s panicky handlers keep him tucked away at self-branded private clubs or shuttle him off to hinterland hate rallies so he can soak up the adulation of his brain-dead MAGA hordes. It’s the only way to keep him from completely losing his fucking mind in ways that might endanger the production of tax cuts for the rich and wingnut judges.

But President Obama’s speech late last week seems to have driven Trump around a fresh bend of lunacy. He has always told boastful lies and amplified sycophants, but there’s a noticeable increase in volume and decrease in quality just in the last 72 hours or so. For example, this is a real thing the president of the United States retweeted yesterday — some random, servile schmuck’s badly ‘shopped idolatry:

Remember when pundits used to count the number of times President Obama said “I” or “me” in a speech and present the total as evidence that Obama is self-absorbed? I mean, they’d offer this word count bullshit as if it were a brilliant piece of analysis.

Trump has tweeted a dozen or so boastful lies and retweeted or quoted worshipful material from sycophants like the above in the last 48 hours, but you probably won’t hear about it from Ron Fucking Fournier or anyone else. We’re used to this shit now, and it’s getting worse.

Not only has Trump been sucking his own dick at hate rallies and on social media platforms all weekend and well into Monday’s “executive time,” he’s enlisted hapless flunkies to attempt to bolster his lies in laughable ways at more traditional venues. Behold:

Yep, in the first White House press briefing in nearly three weeks — a time period during which we were informed that an unelected cabal of sanctimonious wingnuts is actually running the country! — the Trump administration trotted out “Dow 36,000” guy Kevin Hassett to demonstrate that yes, Trump is better than Obama at the economics — by showing this startling “break in the trend” of job growth in a specific sector after Trump was elected.

Can’t see it? Maybe fetch your magnifying glass. That’s all they got. Oh, and at the briefing, Hassett was obligated to walk back Trump’s stupid lie from earlier today about the GDP being higher than the unemployment rate for the first time in 100 years — turns out Trump was only off by an order of magnitude or so.

But even riding the economic recovery that began under President Obama, Trump is still sinking in the polls. A CNN poll released today shows a drop to a 36% approval rating, down six points from last month. And this with no new wars, economic chaos or hurricane relief failures — just the endless, embarrassing fail parade that is the Trump presidency.

That’s going to drive him even more bugfuck insane, and even Rasmussen oversampling Republicans won’t provide a strong enough balm for that level of butt-hurt. So brace yourselves, fellow citizens. The compulsive public masturbation is about to get a lot worse. And you know what? I’m not sure I can fucking take it anymore. Seriously, this black hole of need that tries to suck up everyone’s attention all the fucking time is intolerable.

Thanks for listening. Just had to get that off my chest. Because it’s all about ME. Open thread!

Reader Interactions

104Comments

  6. 6.

    Corner Stone

    Personally, I could accept this whole thing a lot better if ESPN was not using their High School media setup to broadcast this JETS v LIONS game.
    This is awful.

  11. 11.

    Jeffro

    It’s not just you, Betty.

    I feel like I wake up every day fumbling around for the nearest baseball bat and then I keep reaching for it multiple times a day

    We’ll get ‘em.

  17. 17.

    debbie

    What did it for me was that interview last week with the Daily Caller, where Trump said he had “hundreds of photos of Mueller and Comey hugging and kissing each other.” Goddammit, I want someone to demand that Trump produce them.

  18. 18.

    zhena gogolia

    The night of the election, I said to my husband, “I don’t want to live to see what he’s going to do. I just don’t want to live through it. I can’t.” And I had no idea how bad it would be . . . .

  20. 20.

    TenguPhule

    I am still feeling blue about reading that Trump died of a massive heart attack on Friday night and then waking up to find it was all a dream.

  21. 21.

    Mart

    Yesterday saw Kudlow being felated by some FoxBot. Kudlow said he had met with Laffer recently and after nearly 40 years of failure; the curve on the napkin is working this time. Yes, the tax cuts are bringing in the money this time. Except for the reality they are not. Does Kudlow really believe the Laffer bullshit they sold the rubes, or has the $100,000/month cocaine habit burned a whole straight through the brain?

  22. 22.

    Elizabelle

    Kay raised some great points in the morning thread. No surprise, the Ohio GOP candidates are lying like rugs. What do you do, when your opponent’s whole strategy is to lie? Do you try to correct the lies? Kay seemed to think maybe not.

    I guess Woodward’s book is going to get flooded out, at some point, by Hurricane Florence.

    And Hurricane Ken Starr has a book coming out tomorrow too. Trying to capitalize on the Mueller investigation (a real one), when he was a panty sniffing witchfinder. A Conqueror Worm, to be sure.

  24. 24.

    TenguPhule

    Also, lost in all of the other hurricane coverage on the east coast, back in Hawaii, Olivia looks like its gonna smack into us straight on by Weds or Thurs.

    This is probably going to suck.

  25. 25.

    TenguPhule

    @Mart:

    Does Kudlow really believe the Laffer bullshit they sold the rubes, or has the $100,000/month cocaine habit burned a whole straight through the brain?

    Why is this an either/or scenario?

  26. 26.

    Roger Moore

    @Mart:

    Does Kudlow really believe the Laffer bullshit they sold the rubes, or has the $100,000/month cocaine habit burned a whole straight through the brain?

    Neither one. He just thinks they can sell it to the rubes at least one more time if they keep it up.

  27. 27.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    The tape Omarosa produced today really drove home to me how crazy he is. It makes clear he believes his own BS about HRC being the one who collaborated with Russians. Obviously that’s crazy. Arguing against it is a waste of time. And yet, he believes it.

    I blogged about the hardest part of writing a novel. Spoiler: it’s the beginning. Also, Amazon shows my paperback as available for purchase but at the lunatic price of $21. I wouldn’t pay that, and I wrote it. I contacted my editor who says the correct price if $12.99. I wonder how long that will take to show.

    Also, in an effort to get on BJ today, I cleared my cache, supposedly keeping all my passwords, and every site I use went back to my Iowa email address and has forgotten my password, which of course, it wants to send to that address which no longer works. I hate the internet.

  30. 30.

    Elizabelle

    Betty: I guess we just have to realize this will play out, and I would guess we are at least at the beginning of the end.

    Biggest spirits raiser: we can outvote them. Do something positive; personally assist with registering voters or canvassing for a candidate, or phone banking or writing postcards. Being around other active people who are committed to defeating Republicans and Trump is energizing.

    We can win. We can beat back fascism. We have to.

  31. 31.

    TenguPhule

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    Also, Amazon shows my paperback as available for purchase but at the lunatic price of $21. I wouldn’t pay that, and I wrote it.

    This should go in your next book.

  32. 32.

    tobie

    I’ve been feeling so exhausted with the Trumptastrophe of late that a pet thread would feel like balm for the soul. I think we got a Lily update fairly recently. How’s Badger doing in dog school?

  33. 33.

    J R in WV

    The only improvement if Mikey Dence bacame president would be that the beginning of WW III would be more deliberate, to start the Rapture, instead of because of a brain dead command or tweet from Head Trumpetter. Like sending the families of troops in Korea out of the theater of operations.

    I heard Mueller’s team was with a Grand Jury all day Friday, that may have been interesting. Sealed Indictments, maybe? Hoping.

    Hang in there Betty, at least Hurricane Florence isn’t aimed right at you. My cousin in Wilmington NC was scheduled for an MRI on Thursday, now bumped a week to Thursday next, assuming there’s still a hospital functioning there then. Couldn’t get a response to where they will evacuate to, I recommended Atlanta, though there is family in the Triangle area of NC, where it could flood badly.

    Wish them luck!!

  35. 35.

    Elizabelle

    @TenguPhule: Isn’t there some saying about wrestling with a pig? In addition to the one you always throw at us, about being condemned to relive history?

    Argue with the GOP all that you like, after the midterms and after Kavanaugh’s nomination goes down in flames. Right now, it is a sheer distraction and don’t use the energy. It’s futile. They would probably welcome the distraction. Eyes on the prize(s).

  37. 37.

    TenguPhule

    @J R in WV:

    Like sending the families of troops in Korea out of the theater of operations.

    Worse then that. Publicly announcing ahead of time that it would be done and thereby letting the entire world know that the balloon was going up before the balloon actually goes up.

    Trump has surpassed every possible level of military stupidity ever made by an officer and created whole new fields of study for it.

  38. 38.

    Mart

    @TenguPhule: Since the deficit is cratering after tax cuts, and he and Dobbs and all the best people are claiming good times are here again, then it is an either or. Either they are purposefully lying – i.e. know the Laffer curve is a crock, and as Mr. Moore says they keep selling the con, or they are flesh eating zombies. Them’s the choices.

  39. 39.

    Roger Moore

    @Elizabelle:

    What do you do, when your opponent’s whole strategy is to lie? Do you try to correct the lies?

    I think you can’t try to correct the lies one at a time. You’ll just drown in them. I think you have to call them out on some specific lies, but it’s vital to use those lies as a starting point for calling them out as generally untrustworthy. If you can convince people they can’t trust a politician to tell the truth, it’s easy to convince them they can’t be trusted to keep their campaign promises.

  40. 40.

    TenguPhule

    @Elizabelle:

    Isn’t there some saying about wrestling with a pig? In addition to the one you always throw at us, about being condemned to relive history?

    One of the lessons of history is that once your side gets bullied into silence, the other side views it as a license to escalate.

  42. 42.

    TenguPhule

    @Mart:

    Either they are purposefully lying – i.e. know the Laffer curve is a crock, and as Mr. Moore says they keep selling the con, or they are flesh eating zombies. Them’s the choices.

    They are flesh eating zombies that really believe that this time Pi is exactly 3.14

  43. 43.

    TenguPhule

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Back in Laurel, Roxanne Dunn, a first-grade teacher and New Orleans native who moved to the city four years ago, said she had not heard about the op-ed. It didn’t surprise her, though. Everyone is out to get Trump, after all.

    She said she voted for Trump because the children she teaches at Waynesboro Riverview school – about 30 miles from Laurel – are “some of the poorest children in the country” and that “we need to take care of our children before we take care of illegal children”.

    Asked what she makes of accusations that Trump voters are motivated by racism, she replied: “Obama to me caused a lot of racism in his identity as president. Donald Trump took that on.

    “I teach in a totally black, federally funded school. Everything is given to them. Breakfast, lunch – there are no parents. Get ready when the grandmother dies, because when the grandmother dies, you think it’s bad now, it’s going to be worse.”

    In her school, she said, “we have no thinkers” or “dreamers”.

    “Nobody’s sitting in my classroom going: ‘Hmm, I wonder if I had a rocket ship, what would I do or invent?’ They don’t do this. They’re worried about what they’re gonna eat, where they’re gonna sleep, who’s gonna pick them up.”

    Dunn cited no ways in which Trump’s presidency has alleviated those issues. Nevertheless, she said she felt “very good” about his presidency because “the economy is growing”.

    Does she, I asked, believe, like Trump, that the press is the enemy of the people?

    “To a certain degree,” she said, “yes.”

  45. 45.

    Mnemosyne

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    It makes clear he believes his own BS about HRC being the one who collaborated with Russians. Obviously that’s crazy. Arguing against it is a waste of time. And yet, he believes it.

    This is one of the weirdest things to deal with when it comes to narcissists — when they’re lying to you, in that moment they genuinely believe the lie, which is why they can lie so convincingly.

    And then 10 minutes later they can believe the exact opposite with an equal amount of belief. It just does not compute for normal people that someone can switch like that, but narcs can.

  47. 47.

    B.B.A.

    Stephanopoulos tells Papadopoulos he wasn’t scrupulous with the populace about his opulence but Papadopoulos cops to operants with a monopoly on scurrilous pomposity and on and on it goes for us in a monotonous pop-political ouroboros. https://t.co/uzBgBs0poK— Nat Cassidy (@natcassidy) September 9, 2018

  48. 48.

    TenguPhule

    An off-duty Dallas police officer told authorities she believed she had discovered a burglar inside her unlit apartment Thursday. That’s why she fired her service weapon at Botham Shem Jean, according to an affidavit released by police on Monday after prosecutors formally charged Amber Guyger with manslaughter.

    According to the new documents, Guyger, 30, told Texas Ranger David Armstrong that her door was ajar when she arrived at her downtown Dallas apartment. She saw a “large silhouette” inside, drew her handgun and gave “verbal commands that were ignored” by Jean, 26. Guyger pulled the trigger, hitting Jean in the torso. He died of the injury hours later.

    Guyger told investigators that she called 911, first turning on the lights while on the call. “Upon being asked where she was located by emergency dispatchers, Guyger returned to the front door to observe the address and discovered she was at the wrong apartment,” the affidavit said.

    Apparently this was the best alibi that the Dallas Police could come up with after three days of collabaration.

  49. 49.

    hueyplong

    @TenguPhule: @TenguPhule: So if we can hang on for about 4 months, they’ll have interviewed every fucking Trump voter still alive, right?

    Thirty years from now they’ll be interviewing lone surviving Trump supporters like Japanese soldiers on remote islands decades after WWII ended.

  51. 51.

    MisterForkbeard

    But I can’t quit America.

    I feel like Betty must have said this in a grave, determined voice while starting intently into the video camera.

  52. 52.

    JPL

    @TenguPhule: Netflix has a series called Seven Seconds, and when I saw her explanation that’s the first thing I thought of. The door was open, and it was a dark.

  53. 53.

    TenguPhule

    @hueyplong:

    So if we can hang on for about 4 months, they’ll have interviewed every fucking Trump voter still alive, right?

    I’m sure all the dead people who voted for Trump have already recorded audio tapes for future generations.

  61. 61.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Yeah. That struck me as well – the crazy thing is that Trump is so obsessed with this incredibly (and obviously) false conspiracy theory that he takes the time to parrot it to literally everyone he can regardless of the actual substance of the conversation.

    I’m not sure if that means he actually believes it, or is just so desperate to believe it that he talks about it all the time. Either way… he’s not mentally healthy. Dude needs to forcibly retired by his cabinet yesterday.

  63. 63.

    Mnemosyne

    @rikyrah:

    There are a LOT of people speculating that they knew each other and had some kind of falling-out, because her story makes ZERO sense.

  64. 64.

    Gravenstone

    So what ‘America First’ is saying is that Trump is a biblical plague, for which we should be thankful? I can agree with the plague aspect.

  66. 66.

    TenguPhule

    @Mnemosyne:

    So the neighbors who heard her pounding on his door and shouting, “Police! Open up!” shouldn’t believe their lying ears?

    After a jury found a cop innocent of murder after he was caught on video shooting the victim in the back as the victim was running away, nothing surprises me anymore about the Blue Line of Violence.

  68. 68.

    Mnemosyne

    It took me a little while to figure out that this annoying woman talking on her cell phone at King Taco is switching between English and Japanese throughout the conversation.

  71. 71.

    FlyingToaster

    I think the dregs of Gordon are coming down on us; and I do mean dregs, it’s not hard rain at all. It looks like it mostly dropped southwest of here aways (ahem).

    In my actual semi-good news, it was not a head gasket that went on the minivan, but the radiator. I was told it was a “explosive failure”, which explains the clouds of steam and the purple spray inside the hood (antifreeze). So the repair is well within my budget and I can hold out another year, which is what it looks like before the Sienna hybrid will be available. And yes, I have driven hybrids (every vacation that I can find one to rent), and I love the last couple of Priuses. Since the mileage on my current van is worse than the previous (a 1970 VW microbus, notably lacking AC, radio, and most importantly for me now as a parent, airbags), I really want to get rid of the “must fill up every 5 days in the summer” requirement.

  73. 73.

    TenguPhule

    @Mnemosyne: I’m particularly impressed she manages to claim that apartment was dark and she couldn’t id him until after she shot him. And then during the phone call she goes outside to get her own address and then realizes she’s at the wrong apartment.

    Hollywood is calling and it wants her to turn that script over to them for a rewrite.

  74. 74.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Citizen Alan: I have a friend who wrote a book on teaching poor black kids in Oakland, and about all the challenges those kids face and how they STILL managed to surprise her in great ways. It’s good reading, and she’s the sort of person we *want* teaching our kids, not this racist asshat.

    Book here, if anyone’s interested: https://www.amazon.com/Literally-Unbelievable-Stories-Oakland-Classroom-ebook/dp/B01LVZ65NN/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1536627076&sr=8-1&keywords=bronwyn+harris

    Seriously though – she just spent a week or two trying to help the sister and grandmother of a student in chapter 10 visit that student in prison. As it turns out, the prison system gives you the wrong information, sometimes contradictory, hurls abuse at *visitors* and tries to arbitrarily keep you from visiting your loved ones. And my friend (Bronwyn) still believes in this kid and how he’s trying to turn his life around in prison.

    And then there’s this racist lady in New Orleans talking about how they’re just given everything. It makes me sick.

  75. 75.

    FlyingToaster

    @different-church-lady:

    Everyone complains about autocorrect. But nobody ever turns it off.

    {Waves}

    WarriorGirl complained that I turned autocorrect off on her laptop, and I was like, “Girl, I don’t let that stuff on any equipment I run”. “Why not? It’s easier.” “And 90% of the time it’s the wrong word. How many times did you have to retype [redacted] because you kept accepting the autocorrect and it was the wrong word?” “Oh.”

  76. 76.

    different-church-lady

    @MagdaInBlack:

    Just how drunk was she?

    OK, now that makes sense.

    I, myself, have gone to a hotel room exactly one floor below the real destination and awoken a very gracious-but-clearly-annoyed stranger, and I was stone cold sober.

  77. 77.

    TenguPhule

    @MagdaInBlack: Seeing as how they’re completely mum on her blood work, i suspect she had more then just booze the bloodstream.

    Probably methamphetamines to keep awake.

  78. 78.

    different-church-lady

    @FlyingToaster: People seem to have a hard time understand that you can still have the object flag a word without automatically correcting it.

    People are fucking stupid.

  79. 79.

    Roger Moore

    @rikyrah:

    She is either his stalker.
    Or, this is a murder for hire
    Nothing else makes sense.

    I could easily imagine this being the result of some stupid upstairs neighbor/downstairs neighbor dispute about noise. People get completely bent out of shape about that stuff, and I can easily imagine a racist asshole with a gun resorting to violence about it.

  81. 81.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Progressive groups are ratcheting up the pressure on Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, sending her offices coat hangers; organizing rallies, social media, telephone and email campaigns; and raising more than $900,000 for a future opponent if she votes to confirm controversial Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
    The criticism includes allegations circulating on Twitter that her staff is not recording constituents’ opinions, based on a tweet by a visitor to her Bangor office Friday that had been retweeted more than 27,000 times by Monday afternoon, including by celebrities such as Stephen King and George Takei.

  83. 83.

    Duane

    Trumpov’s cowardice is his most irritating trait to me. It’s so blatant and despicable and he’s the president. Without that protection he’d be in jail now. With all the controversy about his administration he’s never given a primetime speech to explain any of it. Doesn’t have the guts. Coward.

  84. 84.

    J R in WV

    @Mnemosyne:

    Regarding the cop shooter story:::

    How many people living in a metro area like Houston TEXAS will leave their apartment door open at the end of a night shift???

    Between ZERO somewhere and NONE at all.

    Also, talked to my cousins earlier in Wilmington NC, after some family chat I asked Scott about the storm, he talked about it might dive south because of a Bermuda High pressure. I said the maps I saw showed it about 20 miles north of Wilmington, he said, Yeah, that’s the map I saw.

    So I said maybe heading for Atlanta would be best. He was noncommital, although she has a son in the Research Triangle area, which looks likely for major rainfall flooding. Didn’t sound committed to evacuating to me. Tempted to call their emergency center and squeal on them, get them rousted out tomorrow morning.

    Hard to know what to do from 400 miles away. Delightful folks, rockribbed Republicans… I just don’t talk politics, stick to family news, then say love you and hang up.

  85. 85.

    TenguPhule

    Lee Merritt, a lawyer for Mr. Jean’s family, has questioned how the officer could have mistaken Mr. Jean’s apartment for her own, noting that Mr. Jean’s had a distinctive red doormat outside, and asked why the authorities did not immediately arrest her.

    Questions about how the case was being handled only intensified on Sunday, when Officer Guyger was allowed to turn herself in to the authorities in Kaufman County, a mostly rural county southeast of Dallas, and be booked at a jail farther away.

    “We don’t want it lost on anyone that, had this been a regular citizen, she would have never left the crime scene,” Mr. Merritt said.

    A few more details via the FTFNYT.

    I’m increasingly leaning to a drug/alcohol combination in her bloodstream. if she’d planned this, she’d have come up with a better alibi.

  86. 86.

    Aleta

    @MagdaInBlack:

    (LATimes) At a briefing shortly before the officer’s arrest late Sunday, the Jean family’s attorneys said they had provided prosecutors with new evidence — a witness and video footage — that they declined to share publicly.
    …
    Jean’s neighbors, some of whom witnessed the shooting’s aftermath, also had questions Monday.
    Alyssa Kinsey, 29, said she was sitting in her apartment next to Jean’s residence when she heard a gunshot, then “a commotion” in the hall. She said she ran to her door to listen and heard a female voice calling 911. When she looked through her door’s peephole, she saw a woman on the phone who “sounded upset.” Police responded within minutes, she said.

    Kinsey said she couldn’t understand how the officer managed to pass numerous apartments between the elevator and Jean’s unit, many distinctly decorated, without realizing she was on the wrong floor. Tenants use key fobs to enter halls and doors that flash red if they try the wrong unit, she said.

    Police Chief U. Renee Hall said during the weekend that the Texas Rangers asked police not to charge Guyger until they investigated further.

    Did the T Rs step in on their own volition, or were they invited, or required? Why manslaughter not murder?

    …

  87. 87.

    Mart

    I have a problem and peeked at the Nazi Carlson on Fox with national security expert from the National Examiner Byron York. And after sounding semi reasonable, York states that the 20 missing pages that Trump will likely declassify are purported to show that Page’s warrant from the FISA court was issued solely due to the dossier. And a republican report from congress and one from the senate both seemed to confirm this. So the Nazi asks if this means it is indeed a fact, and York says why yes of course we can now conclude that them is the facts.

  88. 88.

    Aleta

    Speaking of heavy narcotics

    (Financial Times) Billionaire Sackler family owns second opioid drugmaker
    Purdue owners set up Rhodes Pharma after criminal charges in 2007

    The billionaire Sackler family, which has been blamed for fuelling the US opioid addiction epidemic, owns a second drugmaker that churns out millions of addictive painkiller pills every year, the Financial Times can reveal. The Sacklers are best known as the owners of Purdue Pharma, the privately held drugmaker that makes the now infamous opioid painkiller OxyContin, which has been described as heroin in a pill.

    However, an FT analysis of company registration documents has established that the family also owns Rhodes Pharma, a little-known Rhode Island-based drugmaker that is among the largest producers of off-patent generic opioids in the US. The Sacklers have made billions of dollars from the sale of opiate painkillers. In 2016, Forbes calculated their combined wealth at $13bn, almost all of it derived from their drugmaking interests, and said the fortune was shared among 20 family members.

    Purdue Pharma has always insisted that its drug OxyContin cannot be considered a prime culprit in the crisis because it accounts for only 1.7 per cent of overall opioid prescriptions in the US. However, Rhodes and Purdue combined accounted for 14.4m opioid prescriptions in 2016, according to figures seen by the FT, giving them a total share of 6 per cent of the US opioid market.

  90. 90.

    Nicole

    Excellent post, Betty.

    That said, I think the pit of despair the current administration has driven me into will last forever because they’re all going to get away with it. There is so blatantly one set of rules for Democrats and one for Republicans and the Republicans will ride that until long after I’ve shuffled off this mortal coil. It’s been so since Nixon; it’ll be so for the foreseeable future. And we’re complicit in it. I had a lot of arguments with liberal friends a few months back over how “rude” Democrats were being and how “we shouldn’t stoop to their level.” Even we buy into the GOP’s two sets of rules.

  91. 91.

    Gretchen

    @Aleta: apparently the police kept running into judges who wanted it charged as murder so they called the Texas Rangers to get a new judge in a different area.

  93. 93.

    J R in WV

    @MagdaInBlack:

    apparently the police kept running into judges who wanted it charged as murder so they called the Texas Rangers to get a new judge in a different area.

    Wow, that’s depressing. Wonder if some of those judges have the balls to talk about that sequence of events. I did hear that the local police asked the Tejas Rangers to investigate, which in many cases would be a sign of integrity (hahahaha!!!!), but in this case, I wonder!

    Perhaps the Tejas Rangers aren’t what they used to be? Shock!!!

    It is Texas, after all, the only state to have seceded twice to enforce slavery, once from Mexico, next from America…. Dead Black professional and church worship leader, no big deal~!!~

  95. 95.

    jc

    I don’t know if I’d primarily describe Trump as needy, I think he loves to delude himself that he’s catnip to the ladies and a stud to the envy of all the real men. And it drives him crazy that Obama bests him in these qualities. Trump seems loathsomely pathetic — nothing more repulsive that ignorance and arrogance combined.

  96. 96.

    MoxieM

    Some of us had the misfortune of being married to one. Often, that happens when –also–you had a narcissistic parent. It also tees you up as especially tender narcissist-snack food for bosses, board members, academic advisors, doctoral committee members and the like. Thankfully, I guess, there is more than one kind of narcissist, and essentially a scale of narcissistic personality disorder from mild to Donald Trump. I had a Covert Narc, who was not so seriously afflicted. Still a living hell, and caused my PTSD. Estimates are that between 7-10% of the population has some kind of Cluster B personality disorder (the larger class of disorders, of which narcissism is one. Sociopathy for example is another Cluster B.) blah blah blabbity blah more stuff on disagreements over heritability vs upbringing, damage to neural function etc.

  97. 97.

    J R in WV

    @MoxieM:

    Yeah, my M-I-L big time, and wife’s older and younger sisters, all messed up in their heads. Best thing that every happened was when he sisters ghosted her, told us not to email, not to phone, praise Freud!!! Swore I was gonna steal all wife’s tiny inheritance! Whut?

    Saw younger sister at aunt’s memorial service, stayed away from her! Never said hi. Blessing!!

  98. 98.

    MoxieM

    @J R in WV: Best way to do it–arm’s length!! When Wasband moved to opposite coast, my cortisol + adrenaline levels dropped quite a bit.

    ETA, my wonderful former therapist told me when Trump was elected, she & a number of colleagues saw a big spike in new clients, and former ones wanting to come back, they were super-destabilized by the Narc in chief.

  99. 99.

    JWL

    Is enjoying watching a person whose guts you hate suffer in the midst of a nervous breakdown? Because I’m enjoying watching Trump dissolve.

    That said, Trump remains is in his right (albeit birdbrain) mind. He is in no way a fit candidate to cop any “diminished capacity” horseshit-type deal with a court of law escape justice, and avoid incarceration for his high crimes. That would constitute a betrayal of cointry equal to the Trump’s own. The man is president and a goddamned traitor to our cointry, and he must be dealt with accordingly and in merciless fashion…… peace & love from northern California.

  101. 101.

    MoCA Ace

    @TenguPhule:

    Seeing as how they’re completely mum on her blood work, i suspect she had more then just booze the bloodstream.

    Ha! It took what… three days to even question her? If a blood sample was even taken it was probably four or five days after the murder (allegedly). Give them some credit. The thin blue line knows how to cover up a crime.

  104. 104.

    waspuppet

    This presidency is exactly like my first marriage. I’ve been feeling that way since about August 2015.

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