Texas hospitals are having a hard time hiring nurses because the market is tight.
“In some cases, no matter what you’re willing to offer, it’s difficult to get the individuals with the right critical training and experience,” said Dr. Bryan Alsip, chief medical officer at University Health in San Antonio, which is experiencing a 10% shortage of staff. “The surge we’re seeing isn’t particularly regional. So those crucial resources are in demand in many states, not just ours, and they’re all facing the same challenges that we are simultaneously.”
The result is an overheated nursing labor market in Texas that some argue is paying nurses what they’re worth for the first time in their careers — but that, at the same time, threatens to shut out hospitals that can’t afford to compete for nurses.
I wonder who will staff the tents that are being built next to hospitals in Texas. For the sake of accident victims, cancer patients, heart-attack sufferers and the vaccinated who have breakthrough cases, I hope it’s well-paid traveling nurses and locum tenens doctors from states where our hospitals aren’t overflowing.
Anyway, enough happy talk. Steve M. has an interesting post today where he wonders about what Abbott and DeathSantis voters are thinking about their governors. (Recent polling on DeSantis, for example, is mixed.)
So I’m wondering whether Republican voters actually like the societal breakdown they’re experiencing under DeSantis and Abbott. Are they invigorated by it the way they seem to have been invigorated by the failed pandemic response of Donald Trump last year? (Recall that they responded to Trump’s COVID failures by giving him the second-highest vote total of any presidential candidate in history.)
His conclusion is that they might like it, as long as they’re not in the ICU. I have a bit of a different take. Whether or not they like it, their expectations have been met. Pre-COVID, Fox News and the associated media have convinced the most comfortable set of white people in the long history of comfortable white folks that they actually live in a hellscape that can barely be tolerated. As long as they can blame COVID on some non-white entity (China, migrants, you name it), overFoxed Texans and Floridians are just living in the world that Fox told them they live in. For them, Abbott and DeSatan are just white guys like them pushing their fingers into the dike, holding back the tide of the black, brown and gay hordes that will put an end to their comfortable lives.
Honestly, trying to understand these folks is tedious and perhaps pointless. All I really know is that the people who like DeathSantis and Abbott have votes that count, and everyone else in those states has to stand in line 5 hours without water to vote, so both of those assholes and the rest of their party will probably stay in power quite a bit longer. Abbott’s biggest disappointment today is probably that #DeathSantis has a hashtag from the libs, and he doesn’t.
anon
“In some cases, no matter what you’re willing to offer, it’s difficult to get the individuals with the right critical training and experience,”
what a silly statement, I guarantee if they offer $10million a year, they will fill every position.
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@anon: “In some cases, no matter what you’re willing to offer [as long as administrators still get raises and bonuses and hospital owners make big fat profits], it’s difficult to get the individuals with the right critical training and experience,”
The part in the brackets is what they’re thinking but not saying.
Cermet
@anon: You really don’t understand exactly what capitalism means by that statement: the lowest wage compared to need never setting a precedent of exceeding the highest normal pay. That is the real meaning.
Frank Wilhoit
The next step is compelled labor. Think about it: every prison inmate has the same medical credentials as Rand Paul.
germy
@Frank Wilhoit:
https://www.kalw.org/2021-07-30/given-the-choice-between-prison-life-and-fighting-wildfires-these-women-chose-fire
Given The Choice Between Prison Life And Fighting Wildfires, These Women Chose Fire
Kay
It used to bother me when Democrats said this because I tend towards “make the sale!” – I can’t help it- but lately I’ve been thinking that it’s kind of freeing, in the sense that we won’t “craft” anything for them.
What if we just did our thing? Some of them will like it, some will hate it, but if it’s GOOD we can be fairly confident about it, right?
Democratic politics will never include cutting out rural areas or red states or killing people w/covid so it will actually, in real life be a net positive for them and that’s enough.
ET the Librarian
When it comes to health many people just take it for granted and/or cross their fingers and say not me. Add in COVID denial and dogged asshole-ism they will stick to the path they are on. Until they or a family members has a stroke, heart attach, car accident, broken bone, seizures, aneurism, and any one of a number of things that land people in an emergency room and find themselves up a creek.
Dupe1970
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: I have found that if you pay people more you can increase the span of control of managers, supervisors, administrators, because you have competent motivated people working for you.
Hospitals might try that as an option.
Citizen Alan
@Frank Wilhoit:
You snark, but I’m quite certain at this point that at least a plurality of Republican voters would support reinstituting slavery. Mike Huckabee (always on the cutting edge of assholery) LITERALLY floated the idea of slave labor for prisoners.
WhatsMyNym
Understatement of the year. Who would want to spend more time in Covid wards when they could be in a normal hospital doing normal nursing things, probably for higher salaries than you would find in TX?
Yes, we are hiring in WA.
Ksmiami
Heaven knows (we are) all miserable now…
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@Kay: The way I look at it is that we have finite resources to win elections and trying to convince these folks is not a good way to spend that money. They’re mostly unreachable, no matter what motivates them.
UncleEbeneezer
These people are simple to understand. They want to be able to be victims (of crime, immigration, political correctness, expanded LGBTQ rights, taking-their-guns etc.) without actually being harmed. So that way they feel justified in watching everything burn.
Citizen Alan
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix:
TX Republicans are unreachable, but I still think the state can flip if we can motivate minority voters and get them to the polls despite voter suppression.
Ksmiami
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: exactly not to mention they actively are trying to erase our votes and our voters. I say focus on expanding and catering to the Democrats and left leaners because we are the majority
Roger Moore
I think an important part of this is the Republican approach of treating every form of mitigation as a matter of personal responsibility rather than public policy. It makes it easy to blame the people who got sick for failing to wear a mask and get vaccinated rather than blame the public officials who didn’t impose mask and vaccination mandates. The net effect is that even Republicans who get sick or have relatives get sick will see it as their own fault rather than blaming DeSantis. Meanwhile, he’ll get credit for keeping the economy open, unlike those liberal governors who shut things down. It’s privatizing the profits and socializing the losses but on a political level.
Ksmiami
@Kay: see Obamacare for the fat lot it helped us with these cretins. We now have a Supreme Court that is hostile to the majority of Americans- great. I’d rather just defeat these people
Poe Larity
Just go thru this reddit thread, lot of nurses venting. Travel nurses turning down $5k+ a week.
https://old.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/oyt4dj/texas_hospitals_hit_by_frightening_staffing/
Robert Sneddon
@WhatsMyNym:
An old friend of mine moved to Nashville, TN back around the 1990s. She was a qualified nurse and got a job offer to work as a contract medic at about 50 bucks an hour. The city centre ER would even supply her with body armour for the weekend night shifts they wanted her to work. She said no.
Earl
From the article:
Eh, this will be just fine. Hospitals are going to have to pay a market wage. And Texas voters are getting the health system they voted for.
Sure Lurkalot
@Roger Moore: I’m not sure they will think it’s their fault if they or their relatives get sick and/or die. They will blame a nurse for infecting them or an immigrant for spreading to them.
Ruckus
You are better than them?
Maybe you shouldn’t?
Why?
Because you aren’t a completely selfish git?
Four possible answers to your question. I’m sure there are more.
The best may be that you are actually looking at the problem and would like a solution, which we actually have, if they were smarter than the dirt that will be their resting place, because their solution is less than reasonable, stupid, ignorant and costs lives, including likely their own. At least the virus often causes them to wise/wake the hell up when it infects them. Think about that, the virus without a brain is smarter than they are….
The Moar You Know
@Poe Larity: They should. $240k/year for a job that can kill you. Our beat cops and firefighters make that much. That’s a fucking ripoff for nurses compared to what they’re making in CA right now – market out here for a good traveling nurse is about $400k/year.
Jeffro
@UncleEbeneezer: I understand them in this context: their prime directive is that no one tells White people what to do, period. If someone does try to do that, a) it’s a crime and b) (as you’ve noted) the White person or persons in question are the victim/s. As victims – White victims – they are entitled to lash out in any way they see fit, with impunity, regardless of the cost (even to themselves).
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
Isn’t that the entire premise of rethuglican politics?
burnspbesq
The ironic thing is that Abbott’s attempt to secure his right flank for next year’s primary is mostly going to kill the very voters to whom he is pandering.
schrodingers_cat
@Ruckus: And the scientific reason for giving a damn is that the unvaccinated provide the virus with a population to grow and mutate.
And they are keeping the rest of us from leading a normal life due to their intransigence. It is time to bring on vaccination mandates.
Roger Moore
@Sure Lurkalot:
Look at the people who are making their deathbed conversions to vaccination. They’re cursing themselves for not getting vaccinated, not the liars who convinced them.
Nicole
I think you’re on to something about FOX News, et al, selling them on the hellscape. During the protests over George Floyd’s murder, my aunt and uncle, right-wingers in south Central PA, called me, full of concern about, “How things are for you?” I had absolutely no idea what they were talking about, because, well, things were fine. Same as always. I have no idea what FOX News is telling them NYC (or any other city) is like on any given day, but I suspect it bears little relation to the real thing. And viewers gobble up that fear like an audience watching a scary movie. Except fans of scary movies understand it’s all make believe.
burnspbesq
There is nothing in the Supreme Court’s opinion in Jacobson v. Massachusetts that can fairly be read as treating normal FDA approval as a prerequisite for imposing mandatory vaccination.
Just do it. Do it now.
scav
Ah, it’s TX — see also the price of electricity when their power grid collapses. Now, they’re just actively doing it to themselves realtime and not letting nature and longer-term institutional lack of maintenance do the heavy FREEDUM! lifting.
Earl
@The Moar You Know: In other words, free market brain geniuses have discovered traveling nurses and doctors are a national market, and they don’t give a shit that Texas nurses make $75k so $150k is big money. They can hop right up to CA and make way more. And not deal with anywhere near as many covid morons.
The rest of the article is just whining… but but but we really need them! Cool. Pay market rates.
sdhays
@Roger Moore: It’s always other people who are the “sheeple”.
Ruckus
@burnspbesq:
And people say he isn’t stupid….
@schrodingers_cat:
I understand, I’m saying they refuse to do exactly that, for some reason that has no basis in logic or reality. They don’t like reality, most of which says that they are stupid gits, and what doesn’t says they are selfish gits. Or both.
MattF
I do wonder about the near-unanimity among, e.g., Senate Republicans. Their reasons, whatever those reasons may be, must look overwhelming.
MomSense
Once we “understand” them then what? I stopped caring for why a long time ago. I’m more interested in mitigating their destructive behavior.
Ruckus
@scav:
They are doing it to themselves with the power grid as well. Raises the question, Is introspection verboten in Texas culture?
schrodingers_cat
@Ruckus: @MomSense: They have received enough coddling and understanding. We need mandatory vaccinations. Now.
brendancalling
Several of my friends and family work in healthcare. My son’s mom is a nurse in Montreal. My friend Jess works in Nashville, Lynea in Morgantown, Chris in Michigan, and Fred in Maine.
They have been wrung dry, they’re traumatized both by the sheer carnage (Sam’s mom told me that for about a month they lost a person every day in her ward, where they treat renal failure) and by what they see as a betrayal by their neighbors (and sometimes families). I know Chris wants to get out of the field, but that’s what he’s trained to do and he needs the money.
I’m not surprised Texas is having hiring troubles. Who the fuck wants to deal with that misheguh shit? Who wants to volunteer to watch a child die because the poor kid’s parents are Froot Loops that won’t exercise even a modicum of precautions?
My dad and step-mom (vaccinated) visited the NC in-laws last week, who are not vaccinated. They have young kids—it is a tragedy waiting to happen.
Ruckus
@MattF:
One on one they look like the idiots/assholes they are being. I’d bet the “thinking” is that as a group they look smarter. That bar is still pretty damn low, as in ants can’t crawl under.
ellie
Nice Smiths reference!
KithKanan
#Abbottoir is just sitting there waiting for someone to use it, but probably not freedom-y enough.
scav
@Ruckus: Indeed, but somehow the real-time aspect of it struck me. It’s like they’re forbidding the repair of electrical infrastructure during the storm and not just neglecting it prior to the event. People driving out into the ice and cheering as pylons are pushed over. Texas Messes with Itself!
Ken
As far as the traveling nurses and doctors go, it appears the title could be “Why Should I Give Valuable Time to People Who Don’t Care If They Live or Die?”
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Today, my office is a ghost town. It is so oppressively quiet – occupancy is down on my floor by 15%, and everybody is waiting for the other shoe to drop.
You can feel it in your bones.
I work in Louisville with a positivity rate of 11, roughly the same as the county where I live. A county that abuts both has a 22% positivity rate.
https://kygeonet.maps.arcgis.com/apps/dashboards/543ac64bc40445918cf8bc34dc40e334
The GOP legislative supermajority stripped the governor of his emergency powers after he vetoed the idiot legislation, and has granted every drawling slackjawed goober in a robe the ability to hamstring state government from whichever hellhole they infest (previously, you had to bring those sorts of things in Franklin Circuit Court in Frankfort, where they’ve got decades of institutional knowledge about administrative procedure). He’s attempting to unwind a lot of it, but is facing a headwind and the Supreme Court hasn’t even committed to a briefing schedule yet.
We are so fucked.
Just Chuck
@burnspbesq: Not enough of them unfortunately.
Lyrebird
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix:
I like Joey O’Biden’s line about uniting the country, not specific politicians. He puts it better than that.
I also wanted to say thanks for your posts. I often disagree with your take, and I am also so grateful for your keeping me up to date. I’m only mentioning the disagreeing part bc Cole has been soul searching. I like it that there are different viewpoints here within the general No Anthrax For Lunch group.
Ruckus
@schrodingers_cat:
Just in case you think I’m arguing with you, I’m not in the least.
I think we needed mandatory vaccination a long time ago. I was around before the polio, measles, etc, etc, etc vaccines that are now not even needed, because most everyone wanted them. I grew up with people with polio, I have a woman living in my complex my age that had it. I’ve seen what diseases that we can mitigate cause, and this one is worse. I got vaccinated the moment when my age group was allowed and would have sooner if I could have. And I’ve been hospitalized from vaccines, not many can say that, least of all the numbers of assholes who refuse to be vaccinated for this, now. I’m all in because I’ve seen what massively spread diseases can do to people when it doesn’t kill them. It’s one of the things that made me work towards being a doctor. Now I didn’t do that but I gave it a shot because I’m one of those exceptions to medicines, I have a large number of those 1-4 percent reactions. An increase in a medication I take daily, which is still considered a small dose, makes my life far, far worse, rather than the smaller dose which helps. It helps in the smallest dose, not in the next smallest. I understand more than many that medications of any kind can help and yet even in “normal” doses can harm me massively. But I also understand a bit of chemistry and that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, while new types are brilliant. And yet I was laid up completely for 2 days from Pfizer. And yet I’d take a booster in a second if necessary, because I also know that this disease doesn’t give a fuck about my issues/problems. It wants to do it’s thing and kill me, I’m going to do my damnest not to let it.
hueyplong
Those GOPers love an unregulated market until they don’t (when, however temporarily, circumstances confer upon labor a bit of leverage).
Kay
There was a split that appeared during the pandemic where AA and Latino parents were more reluctant to send their kids back to school than white parents were- the whole (initial) narrative was set by white parents but eventually schools figured out that it mattered if your district was AA or Latino majority. AA and Latino parents were more worried about covid spread in schools.
So the Dallas superintendent is serving the actual school population in the district. Those parents want covid precautions.
Matt McIrvin
Bunch of Twitter conservatives are now arguing that public health officials destroyed their own credibility by being OK with the BLM demonstrations in summer 2020. (I see this because I know too many people who will willingly give Razib Khan the time of day.)
Basically, they’re going to claim they won’t believe anyone who doesn’t vocally agree with them about everything.
schrodingers_cat
The bipartisan infrastructure cleared the 50 vote threshold that it needs to proceed.
trollhattan
@Ruckus:
Yep. I had measles and “German measles” (rubella) as a kid and would not wish the experience on anybody.
Who gets measles today? Just Disneyland visitors, I guess. MMR vaccine FTW.
Ridding ourselves of disease is an overall good.
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: He is awful. Has been for a long time.
trollhattan
@Kay:
Somebody please introduce Abbott to a nice, curving stairwell.
OTOH the Lt Gov may be worse.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
I mean, fine, but what’s the plan? They’re going to discard public health officials and just wing it?
I love how they act as if there’s an alternative that’s equally valid and somehow more trustworthy. Their “second opinion” is the Facebook doctor? You throw your lot in. That’s how this works. At some point you have to accept that the experts are fallible but they’re all we have. There’s no alternate set.
Kay
@trollhattan:
The “ignore the lunatic” strategy is interesting. The Miami superintendent did the same thing yesterday.
“Make me”. Good for them.
Ruckus
@MomSense:
I’m more interested in them self destructing, as long as they don’t take others with them. Maybe, and it’s a freaking huge maybe, some of those left might actually learn something. Not holding my breath for that for sure, but they might, there is a 1 or 2 percent chance. OK that may be too high a possibility.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: I think these particular guys are the kind of right-intellectual smartypants whose plan is to get vaccinated, but claim that so many other right-wingers not getting vaccinated is actually liberals’ fault.
CaseyL
(Deleted – the 69-30 vote was to proceed with the vote on the infrastructure bill, not on the bill itself)
scav
Even their Good Lord only helps those that help themselves.
worn
@Nicole: Yeah, tell me about it. Living in Portland through the George Floyd protests and their residuals I have received sporadic phone calls from a number of different family members (all Fox watchers I am sure) breathlessly inquiring “Are you ok?” and variants thereof. Each of them to a person were unwaveringly certain that the city was in fact burning down around me, despite protestations from me that this wasn’t the case. And my rejoinder that the all the tremendous increase in garbage/litter being generated by our unhoused population is a much greater diminution to of quality of life here than the protesters down at the Justice Center wasn’t exactly acknowledged.
“Yes, but what about all the rioting?”
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
I’m not responsible for getting conservatives vaccinated. I’ll happily help pay for it but I am not in fact their mom. Honestly? I often ponder what this stupid political stunt is costing Medicaid. A LOT. Hundreds of millions. I’d rather spend it on childrens dental care.
HeleninEire
Cuomo is live. He is sooooo not gonna resign.
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
Yep. I had one of the nice side effects of that, encephalitis – swelling of the brain. Not getting a big head, just having the insides swelling inside a rather rigid container. It ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. I got treated for 5 yrs for that, have often wondered if migraines is a side effect, or just for the memories.
Nicole
@HeleninEire: I was just about to comment that’s he on live and people should go check it out. This is crazy. Shut up, Governor. Also, resign, plz.
zhena gogolia
@HeleninEire:
Sounds like great material for JL Cauvin.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
I had one reckless coviteer in my family to persuade and I succeeded. Mission accomplished. NOW he’s glad he’s vaccinated with the return of the variant. You’re welcome.
They have their own moms.
Ruckus
@HeleninEire:
So, not smarter than a box of sharp rocks. Smooth pebbles it is then.
CaseyL
I think I was right the first time: the 69-30 vote was to pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill. I don’t know what they’re voting on now, except that it’s a straight party-line vote. Something to do with the budget, I think.
Nicole
Holy shit; I’m listening and I think he might be about to resign.
SandyZ
@UncleEbeneezer:
Just got back from vacation. Every time a voice at the airport, bus or train blares “the federal government requires you to wear a mask”, it reinforces that the government is the bad guy forcing you to do something uncomfortable. This drumbeat of bad federal government is why red states resist mask mandates. Keeps the rural whites hating the federal government.
zhena gogolia
@HeleninEire:
“Party is not as important as misogyny” — hilarious!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlmZJQ_KQic
HeleninEire
@Nicole: Me too!
Nicole
Hello, Madame Governor Hochul.
germy
Cuomo is resigning. He says he is stepping aside.
He wants a seamless transition
Resignation effective in fourteen days.
Good.
zhena gogolia
@germy:
Well, he finally did the right thing.
Elizabelle
Sigh of relief. Resignation is the best way to go.
smith
@Ruckus: I’ve told this story here before, but I’ll mention it again: my sister had measles when she was 4, and it progressed to encephalitis. She had been developing normally until then, but after she recovered she was never able to speak clearly again. She was cognitively normal, brilliant, in fact, but her speech impediment ruined her life.
Nicole
@HeleninEire: Did NOT expect that when I started listening.
zhena gogolia
Once again, Democrats face consequences. Republicans, never.
Elizabelle
@zhena gogolia: And Democrats are better for it, WE ARE HOPING, in the long run.
The Republicans GQP are off the rails. Take away the rightwing media sphere, and that would be more evident.
HeleninEire
@Nicole: Yeah. It looked like he was just gonna spew out dumbass excuses.
waratah
Passing changes to mail in votes will make voting for seniors difficult.@burnspbesq:
germy
My wife wants to know if the media is going to attack everything the new NY governor does, the way they attacked everything Spitzer’s replacement did.
Nicole
@zhena gogolia: Because Republicans don’t see anything wrong with only straight white men being in charge forever and ever. We have to behave better than they do because we want better than they do.
Ruckus
@HeleninEire:
8 minutes, 12 comments from “He’s not going to resign.” to he resigned.
That might be a the shortest it’s taken a massive ego like his to see the light.
Matt McIrvin
@germy: Remember the rumors that Cuomo was going to be the exciting dark horse in the 2020 presidential race?
germy
@Matt McIrvin:
Yes, and the rumors always made me uneasy.
Ken
@Nicole: That was pretty much a given whatever Cuomo said today, wasn’t it? Just a question of how long and how expensive it will be. EDIT: And he chose the quick way, good.
Matt McIrvin
@schrodingers_cat: Drives me nuts–Khan seems to drive a certain type of mostly sensible Democratic-leaning centrist dude to consider him worth reaching across the aisle to, and I got tired of his crap a long time ago. Also, he has a history of associating with these flat-out Nazi types.
Starfish
@brendancalling: Who wants to be spit on by COVID patients who do not believe in COVID when you have to tell them they have COVID?
Nicole
@Ken: I thought he would hold out until the impeachment process actually started, but I guess the idea of even the prospect was humiliating enough.
zhena gogolia
@Matt McIrvin: I never wanted that.
WhatsMyNym
@Matt McIrvin:
Is that another name for a moderate republican?
cmorenc
A frequent response I’ve gotten from less rabid Trump supporters is that they think Trump is a horrible, disgusting human being, but they like his policies. They wilfully resist to seeing the connection between the essential nature of those two things.
Ksmiami
@Ruckus: people in my hell state would rather be dead right than admit being a fool
Ruckus
@scav:
Texas Messes with Itself!
Who else could do that much damage to themselves and cheer at the same time?
They are the greatest, just ask them….
We actually aren’t being very nice. I drove through Texas a few times, once with a group and we stopped at the eat half a cow in one hour and get it free steak house. Seemed a bit stupid even to have the concept, let alone the actual building. Two of the group tried it. And failed. Takes a hardy soul to eat more at a one hour sitting than one should eat in a week.
Starfish
@Kay: One of the black journalists who has K-12 education as her beat has been saying this for months and months. If you do not want to see Latino, Asian, or Black kids in your school, please continue with your anti-mask nonsense.
Those kids experienced less racism while they were learning at home. Whatever stresses they had in the remote learning environment, the stress of racist bullying was gone. Now you are offering them a school environment where they can get racist bullying AND deadly diseases, no thanks.
Ruckus
@cmorenc:
What they like is that it gives them an excuse to hate the people they hate. It doesn’t have to have any bit of logic to it, it’s hate for hate’s sake.
Starfish
I cannot be so flippant about watching people die. This weekend, someone I know was diagnosed with COVID. There are zero ICU beds left in her state. She probably was not wearing a mask at work. Her kids will have to stay home from school and quarantine because they have been exposed to her.
Roger Moore
@Nicole:
I think there are two big points here. One of them is that the news, even the really good news, does a terrible job of portraying the scale of these events. When there are protests like the George Floyd protests, they talk about the protests taking place in city X, as though they’re affecting all parts of city X equally, when in reality they’re only affecting a few blocks. That gives people the impression that the protests are a huge disruption to the whole city, when really most people get the same news-only view that outsiders do.
The other thing is that the Fox News demographic really, really wants news about cities as hellscapes. They see the problems in their own area and want validation that their decision to stay where they are was correct. Hearing about how terrible, dangerous, and unpleasant cities are provides that validation, so Fox is dedicated to providing it.
MattF
@Matt McIrvin: TFG bought the notion (coming, reportedly, from Dick Morris) that Biden/Harris would drop out and be replaced by Cuomo/(Michelle!) Obama. ‘Alternate reality’ here is a euphemism for ‘completely nuts’.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Nicole: Those daily briefings Cuomo was doing; it was clear Cuomo was in heaven that he was the hero of the hour. Sounds like it got threw to him that if he continues fighting it, not only will he lose, everyone going to just remember him as the twat who walked around with his dick outside of his pants.
Ken
After such an incident, the temptation to order an emergency colonoscopy must be overwhelming.
James E Powell
@Kay:
That was definitely the case here in Los Angeles. We open on Monday, we shall see how many show up.
Nicole
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I think you may be right.
And already I see Tish James is being blamed on Twitter for her “ambitions” (to be governor, I guess?). Proving that no matter how much of a creep a male politician is, there’s always a woman one can find to blame for him facing the consequences of his own actions.
scav
@Ruckus: Then again, not every cell in the body actively participates, let alone agrees to or encourages, the individual putting the gun to the head and firing. We still say the individual committed suicide. Texas =/= All Texans.
Body’s still dead.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Oh yes, that can’t be overlooked, my father was constantly bailing out our relatives back east from that rotton town we come from and he kept on trying to get the them to move like the smart ones did. It was always some dumb excuse like “too many freeways” or “what’s with all the Mexicans at church?”.
Roger Moore
@zhena gogolia:
One point I’ll make is that this is really only bad for the individual, not for the party. Cuomo will suffer, but he’ll be replaced by another Democrat who won’t have the remainder of her term consumed by the scandal. That’s the outcome we want.
Ken
“They’re tithing and volunteering for our ministries. Without them, we’d have to close the doors.”
Ruckus
@smith:
I was almost twice her age so that may have helped me, or the doctor my mom took me to for 5 yrs may have actually had a clue, or both, but I believe I was very lucky and didn’t have any deficits from this that I know of. Sorry about your sister. The stories from that time frame were often as brutal about loses that couldn’t be fixed or people that died. Two of my friends moms had polio in their lungs and had iron lungs in their front room. I don’t know the outcomes but I’d bet it wasn’t the best. Two girls I know had it in their legs, one only in her left leg, the other in both.
Bluegirlfromwyo
@Starfish: I don’t think it’s flippancy. I think it’s exhaustion. Those of us who have tried to do the right things, even when we didn’t like them, are tired of these people and their excuses holding us back. I know I am.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
So the self proclaimed Super Alphas ++ who are howling with the Big Dogs feel someone is being too pushy. Well, maybe these Dude Bros are the ones who need the pink frilly dresses so the rest of us know they are delicate and will break easily.
Ruckus
@scav:
Agreed.
But some days it’s just too easy.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Ken: Even better, this is a Catholic Church, in California…. lol
“Oh, their families have been going to this church since before our family migrated from the old country, go look at the donor names on the windows”
Mick mcdick
Governor deathsantis and governor abattoir?
Ruckus
@Bluegirlfromwyo:
There are limits to everything. At some point it’s just not worth the effort, they seem to want to just kill themselves. And at some point it’s just easier to let them find out the hard way that pain isn’t as much fun as they make it out to be.
Matt McIrvin
@Starfish: I saw Patrick Ruffini falling back on the old “if you’re vaccinated, you’re protected and what someone else does is none of your business” position. Decades of intensive training in looking out for number one has rotted these people’s minds to the point that they simply can’t conceive of anyone having a responsibility to other people (unless it’s to them as the consumers of society, I guess).
Matt McIrvin
@Ken: That’s probably just doing them another potentially lifesaving favor.
Roger Moore
@Matt McIrvin: It’s not just that they’re ignoring the possibility of caring about other people. They’re also ignoring the limits of what our society can do. The problem of hospitals being so full they have to turn sick people away is real. I’m looking out for myself by wanting hospitals to have space if I have a medical emergency. It’s completely secondary that I’m doing this in a way that also protects other people.
ETA: You can say this about a lot of the political positions I take. I want to live in a society that protects the weak and powerless because there’s no guarantee I will always be strong and powerful.
Starfish
@Matt McIrvin: There was some other dodo doing that on Twitter too. These folks can’t imagine basic responsibilities associated with living in a society.
https://twitter.com/NoahCRothman/status/1424767882567770114?s=19
catclub
Since open thread: WSJ says:
I say good. He was appointed by Trump because trump wanted someone not appointed by Obama. turnabout and all.
J R in WV
@Citizen Alan:
One failure of Reconstruction following the Civil War was in the Amendment outlawing slavery, where it says in essence, except for legally adjudicated prisoners may be compelled to work at slave labor. You could even rent them from the prison system to work on your cotton plantations.
I have a friend who used to do farm chores and helper with small construction projects on our place. He was a good worker, honest, sly sense of humor. Got popped for holding some weed, sentenced to pick up trash beside the highway — 90 days IIRC.
The “guard” for this modern chain gang was pretty traditional. He would throw down trash so he could make someone pick it up. My buddy now works for a chain of convenience shops as maintenance, repairing their shit when it breaks down, has a big truck full of tools, a good job. Glad for him. His stories of his brief time on the chain gang are from 30 years ago, or more.
louc
@Roger Moore:
The thing that drives me crazy about that mindset: My company was set to hold an event in Florida in November. We just decided to move it up north because of surging coronavirus. I’d like to think lots of hotel managers with business-driven conferences are experiencing this and wondering what the hell is wrong with DeSantis?
catclub
@hueyplong:
.
yeah, the response on inflation should be: ” The GOP hates that you are finally getting higher wages. That is what they mean when they object to inflation.”
Matt McIrvin
@Roger Moore:
Most of the people pushing the “personal responsibility” line don’t then even encourage people to exercise that responsibility by behaving sensibly. If anything, they’re doing the opposite–and when disaster ensues their line is “look what the liberals made us do”.
sab
All this Cuomo talk. He’s just one governor among fifty.
I want to know more about who all is running for mayor of Cleveland.
catclub
also medicare.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
“Personal responsibility” in their minds mean “correct birth choices”. These are people who believe they are the winners of social Darwinism
Kent
Former Texan here.
This might be a dying thread. But I would just point out that Texas hospitals would be about $20 Billion a year richer and would have a LOT LOT more money to pay nurses if the sociopathic monsters that run the state legislature and executive branch had expanded Medicaid under the ACA. They pissed away enormous sums of money because…OBAMACARE! and now don’t have the money to hire nurses.
I would say fuck them if it weren’t for the suffering that has resulted.
When we lived in TX I knew a shitload of white GOP doctors who were colleagues of my wife who never could draw a connection between their billing and profitability issues and the fact that they keep voting for the GOP.
JoyceH
@Kent:
I hope not, because I want to go back to the discussion of word usage. Over and over lately, I’m hearing people, quite educated people commenting on television, say that they ‘got a pit in my stomach’. Dang, for decades and decades before now, the ‘pit of the stomach’ was a PLACE. Yes, it was a place where you manifested feelings, ‘I got a cold feeling in the pit of my stomach’, or whatever, but just having a pit in your stomach sounds so weird!
Bluegirlfromwyo
@Matt McIrvin: Personal responsibility in wingnut world means it’s your responsibility to avoid the havoc I’m entitled to reap because reasons.
geg6
@catclub:
Fuck the WSJ. No one is guaranteed successive terms as Chairman. And it’s never a bad thing to have a new way or new style of looking at things at the top of an organization. One of the worst things that has ever happened to this country that is rarely discussed was Alan Greenspan holding the Chairman’s chair for so many years. Besides the fact that he sucked donkey balls, he was as rigid an idealogue as you could possibly find. I hate that guy. And his stupid wife, too.
frosty
@JoyceH: We need an open thread with no particular interesting content where the poster lays on every one of these teeth-grinding sticks-in-the-craw usages imaginable. Just to see all the jackals howling in the comments!
JoyceH
@frosty:
Don’t EVEN get me started on inferred versus implied!
StringOnAStick
@Frank Wilhoit: Compelled labor? President Wilson allowed it during the Spanish Flu epidemic, grabbing people (mostly women) off the street and forcing them to be nurses; many ran away.
I learned that reading The Great Influenza years ago and it shocked me.
JustRuss
@JoyceH: I was literally eating a peach while I read that, and was like “Jesus people, slow down a little!”
Betty
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: The idea that there are hospital owners in the US is a problem. I remember when the hospitals in pur area were community-based non-profits. No more.
Roger Moore
@JoyceH:
Having a pit in your stomach is what happens when you eat cherries carelessly.
John
Eric Cartman is the spirit animal of Trumpist conservatives. When confronted with the consequences of their stupidity, they invariably double down or say “Screw you guys, I’m going home”. The best we can hope for is the latter.
Matt McIrvin
@Bluegirlfromwyo: I keep thinking of this old Matt Groening “Life in Hell” cartoon, I think it was something like “the 16 types of dads” and one of them was “Republican Dad” who is announcing “When I bite the apple, the worm better look out for itself!”
Ksmiami
@catclub: exactly- just hoping Delta reduces their numbers. I love exponential math…
Ksmiami
@cmorenc: again it’s not about Trump- it’s about the Immoral character of his supporters
Miss Bianca
@Kay: How *did* you manage to persuade your “reckless coviteer” to get vaccinated, anyway?