Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

People are complicated. Love is not.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

All your base are belong to Tunch.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Americans barely caring about Afghanistan is so last month.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Infrastructure week. at last.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

“More of this”, i said to the dog.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

Usually wrong but never in doubt

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

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

You are here: Home / Past Elections / Election 2018 / Tough as Texas

Reader Interactions

69Comments

  9. 9.

    Mike in NC

    Back in 2005 I spent three terrible weeks at Fort Hood in central Texas for a fake Operation Iraqi Freedom exercise where the temperatures were insane. Could barely venture outside during daylight hours it was so damn hot.

  10. 10.

    TomatoQueen

    The disclaimer at the end disappoints. I was so hoping it was something from Kinky Friedman.

  11. 11.

    smike

    @guachi:
    What better way to treat these “developmentally” challenged assholes? We have obviously treated them as equals for way too long.

  15. 15.

    Mary G

    Sonny Carl Davies, or ‘Sonny’ as we call him—is actually a Texas treasure starring in Bernie (hence coffee shop), Thelma & Louise, Fast Times at Ridgemont High and many more.Never shy, he speaks his mind. And we love him for it. #BetoForTexas— Anne Bolynn #BOYCOTTNRA? (@RedAnneBolynn) October 9, 2018

  19. 19.

    khead

    So, Mrs. Khead is still in the hospital. The recovery from her surgery has taken a bit longer than expected. We were watching the Kavanaugh bullshit tonight when a nurse comes in to give meds. The nurse looks up at the TV and asks us if “that woman (Ford) had been arrested yet”. Good thing the nurse wasn’t checking MY blood pressure.

  22. 22.

    Aleta

    Pieter Hanson @Thatwasmymom
    That was my Mom. Sometimes the people we love do things that hurt us without realizing it. Let’s turn this around. I respect and #BelieveWomen . I never have and never will support #HimToo . I’m a proud Navy vet, Cat Dad and Ally. Also, Twitter, your meme game is on point.

    (The actual guy.)

  24. 24.

    Mary G

    Attention Betty and Adam! This isn’t suspicious at all, no.

    We've now heard from several people that Florida's online voter registration site is NOT letting people register to vote. FL registration deadline is TOMORROW to vote in the Midterms. @mrmidi recorded the error here. This is voter suppression. The state must EXTEND the deadline. pic.twitter.com/IHKeml0QPh— Samuel Sinyangwe (@samswey) October 9, 2018

  25. 25.

    SFAW

    I’m appalled at that ad.

    It is SO UNCIVIL! [Not shrill, however. Only the wimmens are shrill. And Kthrugman.]

    Harumph! Strong letter to follow!

  27. 27.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mary G: I just checked the site. I’s up and let me check my registration. Since I’ve already got my absentee ballot, I wasn’t too worried. I’m not going to try to register as I’m already registered. So I don’t know what the issue is.

    Given that Hurricane Michael will start impacting the state tomorrow, I wouldn’t be surprised if they extend the registration deadline. Regardless, issues like this are why the Florida Democratic Party is supposed to have a competent chairperson and a high powered attorney.

  29. 29.

    Doug R

    @guachi:

    Also, the ad works well on the radio.

    Brilliant! Buy enough time on TV so that everybody sees it once-then SATURATE radio with it, with the occasional TV buy to reinforce.

  30. 30.

    Mnemosyne

    @Aleta:

    That poor bastard. The worst part is that he has brothers who are already planning the many ways they’re going to taunt him about this for the rest of their lives. ?

  34. 34.

    Adam L Silverman

    Oh joy!

  36. 36.

    cthulhu

    @Cacti:

    Heidi Cruz is voting Beto.

    It’s certainly none of my business but I have wondered about their marriage ever since that incident with the trooper finding her upset on the side of the freeway. Given a lot of people say Ted is a challenge to be friends with, I would think being married to him would tend to suck your soul away.

  43. 43.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Adam L Silverman: Wow. that video is deceptive. You watch it and don’t realize it’s so far away (after a while). You see the big burst, so much light, and then things go calmer, and THEN you hear the big boom, and you realize: “wow, the camera is -quite- a distance from the ammo dump and STILL so much light!”

    I immediately wondered how (and even if) firefighters deal with these things. And then thought about fire-fighting such a fire on a ship, where it’s fight it and die, or don’t fight it, and die. Ugh.

  48. 48.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mnemosyne: I’ve never met the right woman. I’ve dated a lot of the wrong ones.

    Actually, that’s not quite true. I did meet the right one once. The timing was terrible and we split up about four months later and then I moved away. She got back in touch with me a couple of years later when I was living about 90 minutes to 2 hours away just as I started dating another one of the wrong ones.

  55. 55.

    Jay

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Yup.

    The Moustache of Understanding’s Taxi Driver hasn’t ‘spained to him yet that Kashoggi’s in itty bitty pieces, buried out in the desert past Terringua.

  57. 57.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Jay: Every year I was at USAWC I wound up supervising the colonel who was going through a terrible family breakup because of repeated deployments. I ended my last relationship up there when I was asked if I’d deploy for a few months and said yes if USAWC would clear me/deconflict my time – they did – just at the time that the woman I was dating decided to tell me she wanted to accelerate things. At that point I realized I can’t do the work I do and date, be in a relationship, be married. It is not fair to the other person in the relationship that I may well be gone for 3 to 6 to 12 to 24 months at a time and that there’s a real chance I may not come back whole or alive.

  59. 59.

    Jay

    @Adam L Silverman:

    My first marriage, I spent 6 of the first 8 months in Bosnia. Worth every moment until year 10.

    Second marriage, spent 3 weeks out of every month away for 4 years.

    We are now in year 28.

    Worth every moment.

  60. 60.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Jay: That may be, and it may be worth every moment for you and your spouse, but it is not something I can inflict on someone else.

  62. 62.

    Mel

    @khead: This is when you report the nurse to hospital administration, and refuse to let her back in the room. Had to do that when a night nurse was four hours late with an iv antibiotic that had to be administered every 6 hours, and then told me that it didn’t matter if she forgot to give vital medications because no patient would ever get well unless they, “…prayed and begged Jesus to forgive [them] for being sinners.”. Yeah. Significant other was a lawyer at the time, and went straight to the admin office and lit them up.

    It turned out that she had been a nurse in a long-term care facility, dealing mostly with patients with severe cognitive or physical impairments, prior to starting at the hospital a week earlier. Who knows how many people who couldn’t speak up for themselves she might have been harassing, intimidating, or denying prescribed care to?

    Patients in hospitals and facilities are at the mercy of the caregivers. Most caregivers, esp. nurses, are very compassionate, and understand that the imbalance of power and the natural fear that comes from patients being ill / hospitalized makes it all the more important to keep personal judgments and politics out of patient interactions. Those few that do abuse the siruation need to be called on it, just as we would call an educator or a mental health professional out on that kind of grossly inappropriate, unprofessional behavior.

  63. 63.

    tokyokie

    @Mel: IV antibiotics are the ones that are used only when more conventional oral meds do not kill the bacteria causing the infection. They tend to have greater side effects and are much, much more expensive. And they have to be administered according to a strict schedule in order to maintain a constant titer of the medication in the bloodstream before they’re excreted. If the titer level falls below an effective range, the antibiotic doesn’t work, and the infection grows worse. Most facilities allow the med to be given within an hour of the scheduled time, and with, say, a medication that’s administered once a week, being off by a couple of hours is not especially critical. But IV antibiotics? They have to be administered on time, every time. I’m hard-pressed to imagine what the night nurse might have been doing that took precedence over ensuring that an IV antibiotic was infused at the correct time, much less how she could have missed it by four hours.

  66. 66.

    tobie

    @khead: So sorry to hear about Mrs. khead. I hope she has a speedy recovery and returns home soon. If she’s in the hospital I’m thinking of in our Trump-lovin’ county, god damn. Someone in the hospital administration needs to tell the staff not to talk politics.

  67. 67.

    Mel

    @tokyokie: I am well aware of how antibiotics function, and the importance of timely and consistent administration, especially after dealing for nearly two decadeswith a serious autoimmune condition and with multiple immunosuppressive medications and their ensuing side effects. Hence, our dismay that I was allowed to just sleep, and not given the prescribed dose of antibiotic at the time clearly indicated on my chart.

    We fell asleep, exhausted from the events of the secondary infection which led to my being hospitalized to treat the infection. We assumed that the nursing staffer on duty would behave in a professional manner, and that we would not have to go searching for her when we awoke and realized that a scheduled dose had been completely missed. It was a rural hospital (no excuse) and shortstaffed (also no excuse).

    The nurse in question was suspended pending a hospital investigation, and a second nurse was called up from another unit to immediately administer the medication. In the ensuing 24 hours, we spoke with the hospital administratior, the Human Resources director, and also independently filed a complaint with the nursing board.

    We were informed by the hospital that the nurse in question had been hired after working in a long-term care facility. She was an lpn with no hospital experience. Whether her failure to do rounds and keep to medication schedules was related to laziness, religious objections to standard medical protocols, dislike of a patient who refused to state a religious preference, sociopathy, poor training, or a combination of the above, I cannot say.

    I was personally offended and made extremely alarmed by the fact that a person not professionally or legally qualified to do so was arbitrarily withholding deciding to withhold a prescribed, lifesaving medication, and attempting to justify the behavior by claiming that some sort of religious groveling can cure disease.

    Whatever the reason, she and any other healthcare worker who uses their innate position of power over patients to push a political, religious, or personal agenda needs to be reported and removed from direct patient care.

    The hospital at which the breach of care I encountered occurred agreed, and took immediate action, although I often wonder if a patient who was seriously ill and alone, without a loved one with a law degree present to advocate for them, would have been able to get that kind of immediate, thorough, transparent response.

  68. 68.

    J R in WV

    My wife spent 3 weeks in ICU on a vent with septic shock/pneumonia and serious lung infection requiring surgery. Then nearly 2 months recovering enough to be sent home. In all that time there was one nurse who was insufferable, she was the only one who wore a traditional white uniform with cap and all in the ICU to care for patients. Wouldn’t allow me to be with my wife, unlike 100% of the other nurses, who were ex-military men.

    I am certain the white uniform was deliberate in an attempt to avoid caring for patients in messy situations. At the end of her shift she left without notifying me (waiting in the ICU waiting room) that she was done with the difficult procedures that required her to keep me from my wife’s side, where I otherwise spent 18 hours a day. Don’t know her, wouldn’t recognize her, hope she finds another career more suitable for her skills, like repo of nice cars not being paid for.

  69. 69.

    Mel

    @J R in WV: Wow. I am so sorry that you guys had to deal with that, especially in the midst of such a truly frightening illness.

    I’m sure that your wife has told you a million times, but I just want to say it one more time: thank you for being there for her.

    When you are that ill, and that frightened, knowing that you have someone who loves you, even if they are temporarily on the other side of the door, can mean the difference between losing hope and fighting on. It means the world.

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