I am a patriot, which is why I intend to drag conservatives into the 21st century whether they like it or not https://t.co/Xm90feLQ0s
— chatham harrison is tending his garden (@chathamharrison) February 20, 2023
Many, many people have pointed out that this idea was field-tested in the 1860s, and failed miserably. Others have made clear that ‘I want to keep everything the same in my current nice life, but I don’t want to do all the dreary onerous stuff required for that’ isn’t much of a plan. But MTG seems to be voicing (pitching) a somewhat more specific complaint: Not only are people allowed live their lives in ways she doesn’t approve, but she can’t block those people from visibility any longer!…
… Greene, who has been touting the idea since 2021 when she wanted to halt “brainwashed” Californians from moving to states like Florida, is gaining new attention for the concept, now that she has become a close ally of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and a member of the House Homeland Security Committee…
“Everyone I talk to says this. From the sick and disgusting woke culture issues shoved down our throats to the Democrat’s traitorous America Last policies, we are done.”
“The last thing I ever want to see in America is a civil war,” she told Sean Hannity. “No one wants that — at least everyone I know would never want that — but it’s going that direction, and we have to do something about it.”
On conservative commentator Charlie Kirk’s show on Tuesday, Greene laid out another part of her proposal: allowing red states to block Democrats from voting if they came from a blue state.
“Red states can choose in how they allow people to vote in their states,” Greene said. “What I think would be something that some red states could propose is: well, okay, if Democrat voters choose to flee these blue states where they cannot tolerate the living conditions, they don’t want their children taught these horrible things, and they really change their mind on the types of policies that they support, well once they move to a red state, guess what, maybe you don’t get to vote for five years.”….
Yes, but also the dynamic is like Jews, or "witches," in that hillbillies are afraid the queers will steal &/or corrupt their children. The actual Enemy in question is always secondary to that abiding anxiety https://t.co/XSHP0Jc0zW
— chatham harrison is tending his garden (@chathamharrison) February 22, 2023
The fear / resentment of The City luring innocent young rural folk into its clutches is probably as old as the concept of cities. But in America, there was a definite uptick in such ressentiment during the prelude to the Civil War — elitist / immigrant / weakly ‘Northerners’ forcing their depraved habits on fine Southern keepers of the Jeffersonian tradition. There was a another wave of ‘These wily city folk must be resisted at all costs’ public media sentiment during the First Gilded Age, when postwar economic and technological changes made it both easier and more common for ambitious young rural inhabitants to move away from ‘home’ and remake themselves.
MTG sounds a lot like the small-town civic leaders Mark Twain and Finley Peter Dunne mocked… and she’s got additional sources of frustration. It’s not only practically impossible to home-school the offspring sufficiently strictly that they won’t eventually discover TikTok and Black / LGBTQ+ Twitter, but the Ones Who Get Away no longer disappear into a cloud of rumor and gossip; the Bad Girl, the Sissy Boy, the troublemakers are all over social media, utterly failing to understand the good Christianist values of shame and secrecy. And even inside the suburban boundaries, Those People are forcing their oppressive ‘tolerance’ and ‘inclusivity‘ on those — like MTG — who consider themselves entitled to set the standards of decent behavior. One hastily-uttered slur, one thoughtless assessment of a newcomer’s social status, and suddenly you’re the one being judged!
If you really want to understand the roots of rage in the red states, think about how much time people in those states spending think about cities and blue states. Now considcer how little time anyone in those places spends thinking about what goes on in, say, rural Alabama. /1 https://t.co/NmJUmxxccy
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) February 20, 2023
Conservative curmudgeon who grew up in a working-class urban environment:
In part, as I explain in my last book, it’s because people now have an *awareness* of how other people live, and the dominant culture in America is rapidly becoming a coastal entertainment/ politics /etc culture. This isn’t about money, it’s about *resentment* /2
People on what is now called “the right” are obsessed with how people live in other places, and they are *furious* that no one cares how *they* live and basically would ignore them if they’d just leave other people alone (and respect their rights as Americans). /3
And so Blue culture reporters go and trek to the East Jesus Pancake House to let people vent about lib’ruls and all that crap, when what America needs are buses taking people for walking tours of Boston and Chicago and yes, even San Francisco. (At least know what you hate). /4
We now live remarkably similar lives, rich and working class, North and South, Heartland and Coasts. But this is not about living or money, it’s about *attention and respect*, and Red Staters are insanely angry that winning everything in 2016 produced none. In fact… /5
The past seven or eight years have produced the *opposite*, a kind of confirmation among many Americans that, as my pal @SECupp once said, the Forgotten Man was forgotten *for a reason*
lt wasn’t supposed to be like this. Libs were supposed to be owned and contrite. /6
It’s not about “tradition” or any of that hooey; most of these people couldn’t explain any of that stuff for five seconds. It’s about the sense that the dominant culture (and sure, there is one) just doesn’t like or care about them very much./7
And, yeah, also:
Every single state that voted for Donald Trump in 2020 receives more federal dollars than it contributes. Every. Single. Goddam. One. Fund. Their. State. Budgets. With. Money. Paid. By. Blue. State. Taxpayers. https://t.co/zPQVVrPk61
— Jeff Timmer (@jefftimmer) February 23, 2023
War for Ukraine Day 365: A Grim Anniversary and Milestone
Amir Khalid
Czechia and Slovakia managed an amicable divorce in 1994. I don’t think that’s what Marjorie Taylor Greene wants. I suspect she wants the other kind of divorce, the kind with screaming fights and broken crockery and custody battles.
Jackie
Re Democrats moving to Red states not allowed to vote for five yrs… that works both ways, right?
MTG, as the spokesperson for MAGA republicans, will be the best spokesperson to make *normal* republicans and Independents vote Blue!
topclimber
Love it or leave it, Marge.
SpaceUnit
@Amir Khalid:
Or basically a re-try with the American Civil War.
Kent
MTG is so profoundly stupid that she doesn’t seem to realize that she lives in a blue state that voted for Biden in 2020 and has elected to excellent Democratic Senators over the past 2 years.
Maybe she can move her ass to Mississippi or something to avoid falling on the wrong side of the red/blue line and rid Georgia of her toxic presence.
sdhays
I always thought Texass was an exception.
Anne Laurie
IIRC, Texas owes a lot of its state funding to the large US military bases there. Uncle Sam is lavish with his rent payments, and the troops pay local taxes as well as spending their money off-base.
Cameron
@Kent: If she moves due south, she’ll be in Florida. She’ll feel a lot more at home.
TheOtherHank
Remember how Jane Fonda got a mean nickname after her visit to North Vietnam? I’m in favor tagging MTG with a version of that: Fascist Traitor Bitch. It’s mean, but then so is she.
Amir Khalid
@SpaceUnit:
Or maybe she wants to do like Malaysia did in 1965, and have the red states expel the blue states from the USA.
waspuppet
“Everyone I talk to says this. From the sick and disgusting woke culture issues shoved down our throats to the Democrat’s traitorous America Last policies, we are done.”
Conservatives have been dining out for 50 years on Pauline Kael supposedly saying “No one I know voted for Nixon.” Marge is now saying THE. EXACT. SAME. THING. (Except she really said it while Kael didn’t.)
We need to remind them about this for at least a half century.
Another Scott
@Amir Khalid: It’s not a serious proposal, of course.
She and her ilk live to rile up our lizard brains. It’s this cycle’s Flag Burning and English Only and Defense of Marriage and all the rest.
It’s team signaling, and team exciting.
Unfortunately, for too many people, team membership matters more than anything else – even if their team leadership has been hijacked by a bunch of dangerous kooks…
Wikipedia says:
She’s got a history with this stuff. The topic she’s ranting about doesn’t matter – it’s the response of the audience that matters.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
BC in Illinois
One nation, indivisible?
Or does MTGreene have her own pledge of allegiance?
I thought the Repubs were big on the Pledge.
zhena gogolia
Why does the cartoon at the top make Greene look like middle-aged Candice Bergen instead of her own ugly self?
Odie Hugh Manatee
Good evening all and here’s a story for the folks here to chew on tonight…
As I said last night, I’m going to drop some local stuff here to get feedback from any jackals who wish to bite on this. Last month our son received a very nice letter of recommendation from the ASM (Assistant Store Manager) of his former employer, Fred Meyer of Brookings, Oregon. It states:
It is signed by the Assistant Store Manager and includes their contact information. It was an unsolicited offer which we accepted and it was very kind of the ASM to write this for our son. They did not have to do this and when they were told that Fred Meyer does not do recommendations, they said “Well I do.”
This letter has been sitting on my desk for the last month and every time I look at it I burn with an unhealthy rage. Why? Because he received this recommendation from the assistant to the person who fired him three weeks earlier: Brookings Fred Meyer Store Manager Henry Johnson.
Does that recommendation sound like someone you would fire? Our son’s attendance was exemplary; one late and one sickness in two and a half years. He worked like a machine and took great pride in his work and job. He has many friends he has made there and they all think he was screwed over by Henry Johnson, the Store Manager. I am going to be repeating that name again and again because I am hoping that what I am saying eventually filters down to that asshole.
I’ll be back with the next installment in a few…
SpaceUnit
@Amir Khalid:
I’m afraid that I’m not familiar with that piece of world history.
Amir Khalid
@Another Scott:
Everything MTG says is unserious, and that’s why she deserves to be mocked.
Cameron
@waspuppet: So now Empty Gee says it’s ‘woke culture issues’ that are being shoved down wingnut throats? For people with a perpetual mouthful, they sure make a lot of noise.
Citizen Alan
If we ever follow the She-Beast’s idiotic suggestion, I think that instead of doing it Red states vs. Blue states, we should separate county by county. I bet the majority of the 5-6 million people who live in Atlanta (roughly half of Georgia’s total population) would love to be shed of the dead weight of GA-14 and all the garbage humans who dwell there.
Albatrossity
The urban/rural divide is probably more influential in our politics than most folks understand. Recall that the textbook at issue in the Scopes Trial (ostensibly about teaching evolution) was titled “Civic Biology”, and was really about a revolt against urban approaches to pedagogy than about religion or evolution. There’s a good book about all this, and here’s my Amazon review of it.
Amir Khalid
@SpaceUnit:
On 8th August 1965, three years to the day before Gillian Anderson was born, the Federation of Malaysia expelled the state of Singapore.
Cameron
@BC in Illinois: Half a nation, truly risible.
P Thomas
Secede. I dare you. Warner Robins AFB? Gone. Kings Bay Sub base? Bye. FAA air traffic control facilities? See ya! Find your own controllers for The ATL. And, passports for everyone!
Cameron
@P Thomas: Forget about the CDC, too.
bbleh
@Another Scott: this exactly. It’s not a serious idea, it’s just wrapping for buzzword-laden attention-getting. “This is SO outrageous look at ME!” (Really, you oughta charge at least a nickel at this point…)
If anyone ever doubted these people have the emotional maturity of middle-schoolers, this sort of thing ought to put that to rest.
SpaceUnit
@Amir Khalid:
Not sure I grasp the Gillian Anderson reference.
But in any event it strikes me that Singapore has done pretty well for itself (at least in economic terms). How has the country of Malaysia fared since then?
japa21
It all comes down to this. The right really is not confident in its ability to make its value stick with the younger generation. They don’t, in effect, have faith in their faith. They are afraid that any little exposure to something different will cause the next generation to leave them behind.
It used to be “How you gonna keep them down on the farm after they’ve seen Paree?” Now it’s “how you gonna keep them under control after they’ve see a drag show?”
Omnes Omnibus
It is as stupid coming from her as it is coming from people on our side.
Jackie
@Citizen Alan: Nope. I live in a Dark Red county that used to be reliably Blue. I’m fighting to win “my” county back and refuse to give up and move.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Continuing from post #15…
Does that recommendation sound like someone you would fire? Our son’s attendance was exemplary; one late and one sickness in two and a half years. He worked like a machine and took great pride in his work and job. He has many friends he has made there and they all think he was screwed over by Henry Johnson, the Store Manager. I am going to be repeating that name again and again because I am hoping that what I am saying eventually filters down to that asshole.
Our son was fired because while he was working in the parking lot one day he saw and joined in the pursuit of a shoplifter who was being pursued by an Asset Protection employee. With the AP employee (and now our son) on his tail, the shoplifter abandoned his loaded cart in the store parking lot. Our son grabbed it, yelled to the AP employee “I’ve got it!” and the AP employee yelled back “Good, thanks!” as he chased the shoplifter to the bounds of the property (who got away, as usual). Our son returned the cart to his boss at the front of the store and went back to work.
brendancalling
Putting aside for a minute that Empty Gee sounds like a child playing with dolls—”Ok, this time let’s pretend that the Superman doll is immune to kryptonite, and also I have an invisible force field around me”—her “thinking” is just ludicrous. “Well, okay, if Democrat voters choose to flee these blue states where they cannot tolerate the living conditions“? LOL, what Democrat in their right mind is going to move somewhere where abortion is illegal, LGBTQ+ people are attacked, where your kids can’t get a decent education, and racism runs rampant? Even if we accept that a lot of Democrats can be pretty racist (hey, I live in Philly, it’s not a secret), even a pretty racist Democrat does NOT want to be associated with outright, loud-n-proud, wear-it-on-your sleeve racists.
“they really change their mind on the types of policies that they support…” Double LOL. GTFOH,
Mr. FlintstoneMargie. You’re drunk again.sab
@Jackie: There has already been a S Ct case about waiting periods for newly resident voters. Her side lost it about 45 tears ago.
Kent
@Citizen Alan: That is the thing.
We don’t really have a red state vs blue state divide in this country. We have an urban/rural divide. In nearly every state including the bluest blue like OR and CA and the redest red like Nebraska you have blue cities surrounded by red rural areas.
What really determines how red or blue a state is is the rural vs urban percentage of the population. The main reason why Oregon is so much more blue than Idaho is because Portland is 3x larger than Boise. Likewise Georgia vs Alabama. Or Minnesota vs Wisconsin
The only real exceptions are states like Florida which is very urban but also very old, or Vermont which is very rural but still liberal.
mrmoshpotato
How about she fixes things for her constituents in Georgia? Oh right, she doesn’t give a shit about them either!
cckids
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Oh god, I work for FM, and I can see where this is going. Their shoplifting policy is INSANITY, and they have fired so, so many exemplary employees for the horrifying violation of trying to stop a shoplifter, or “insulting” an obvious shoplifter by following them. Just infuriating.
I’m sorry for your son, and hope he finds better employment.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@cckids:
While you see where this is going it gets a whole lot worse than what you are thinking. Stay tuned for the ‘fun’…
Kent
@Odie Hugh Manatee: My 16 year old daughter worked at a Fred Meyer here in Vancouver WA last summer. She said basically no one at the store is ever going to lift a finger to stop shoplifters, either at the self-checkout line, or walking out the store. Not their problem. I don’t remember her saying it was corporate policy though.
The architecture of Fred Meyer is weird in terms of stopping shoplifting. Because they have the central entrance doors that don’t pass any checkout lines or anything. Must be too expensive to completely redesign their stores.
Anyway the manager sounds like a dick. And you won’t ever get Fred Meyer or the manager to provide any explanation because they are actually taught not to say anything for legal reasons.
mrmoshpotato
I’m good with exiling her to Russia or North Korea. (Not really.)
japa21
@Odie Hugh Manatee: First of all, he should never have been fired. If there is a policy against employees getting involved in such situations, a warning would have been appropriate.
Secondly, since the ASM wrote the recommendation without being asked, my feeling is he also realized the firing was unfair but couldn’t do anything about it. This is his way of making some form of amends.
Amir Khalid
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Henry Johnson sounds like a real piece of work. Your son appears to have a case for wrongful dismissal against him, unless that’s not a thing where you are.
Gin & Tonic
@SpaceUnit: Amir is what you’d call a devoted fan of The X-Files.
brendancalling
A real concern is that as global warming renders the south uninhabitable, that people like Empty Gee and her supporters will start heading north. They absolutely will try to take over our politics and try to remake our free and liberal states into Tennessee and Alabama.
Remember, everything from the hard right is a case of projection. This is a real thing that will happen, and we need to prepare for that. It will be ugly when they show up.
Cameron
@Kent: College towns, too. I think they tend to be more liberal (well, the college people, anyway). Obviously, there are exceptions – it wouldn’t surprise me if the townfolk surrounding Hillsdale and Liberty were more liberal than the campus inhabitants.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Kent:
It sounds like the policy at her store is the same as here in Brookings. Stay tuned as I will be going into exactly what constitutes loss prevention at Fred Meyer.
It’s a joke.
bbleh
@Odie Hugh Manatee: @cckids: well, speaking as someone who has been hired many times in many different fields, and who has done a lot of hiring now that I’m an Old, I would have to say, in the politest possible way, FK FRED MEYER. Someone with talent and initiative and energy and yes, moral grounding, will have no problem being hired by people who recognize it, and they are exactly the people one wants to work for.
Hiring is as hard as being hired. The time and energy ultimately wasted is appalling. A high-quality candidate is a gift. Go forth and conquer!
SpaceUnit
@Gin & Tonic:
Thanks.
I’ll make a note of it.
Kent
The South is already uninhabitable 4-5 months out of the year. I lived in Texas for 13 years. It can’t be done without air conditioning. But with air conditioning even places like Dubai are inhabitable. You just move from air conditioned house to air conditioned car to air conditioned office or store.
So they won’t be going anywhere. Except maybe for Arizonans if they run out of water. And even then probably not. They will just astroturf their golf courses and keep going.
West of the Rockies
@zhena gogolia:
Close-set, beady eyes, horse teeth, small cranial dome capacity… looks like MTG to me.
Mike in Pasadena
Bye, reds. Don’t let the door slam on your way out.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@japa21:
This is exactly what we think but there’s a lot more to this story…
Continuing from post #30:
The next working day our son was suspended, sent home for three working days and told he would find out his disposition afterward. He went to work three days later and was sent home again as Store Director Henry Johnson was on vacation. While Store Director Henry Johnson was glad to come in and suspend him while on vacation, he couldn’t be bothered to come in and tell him he was fired until it was convenient for him (his vacation was over).
One week after being suspended our son was fired and told the reason he was being fired was that he broke the rules in chasing the shoplifter. We think that Henry accused our son of wresting the cart from the shoplifter because our son told us that he was “fired for stealing”.
At first I was confused because nothing our son said on his way home after being fired made sense. In talking to Henry Johnson my wife was told that there was no camera footage of our son wresting the cart from the shoplifter, which confused her. According to Henry Johnson, the Asset Protection employee had moved the camera so it was not pointing at where the alleged incident happened. Henry Johnson did not clearly state to my wife that he was accusing our son of doing just that but did say that our son chased the shoplifter to stop him, which is a rule violation. When I told her that our son said that he was fired for stealing we figured out that Henry probably told corporate HR that our son fought the shoplifter for control of the cart. This all might sound off a bit so a couple more details are necessary.
Kent
That is because college towns are full of urbanites. Even in college towns you have the separation between the college and townies (see Breaking Away). All those students and professors who are most certainly NOT from that small town overbalance the local goobers.
Amir Khalid
@SpaceUnit:
Gillian was born on 8th August, 1968.
I tend to think of Singapore as being to Malaysia as Monaco is to France.
randy khan
@waspuppet:
Here’s what she actually said, which as you’ll see was an explanation of why she didn’t understand why Nixon won:
“I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don’t know. They’re outside my ken. But sometimes when I’m in a theater I can feel them.’”
But the version where she seems to be saying “How could Nixon have won? I don’t know anybody who voted for him” is much more useful for Republicans. (Not to mention that it’s now 54 years old.)
Anne Laurie
My knowledge of the Malaysian / Singapore split is quite superficial, but from what I’ve gathered, the city-to-become-state of Singapore had conveniently collected the visible majority of the ‘Those People’ group in question (Chinese immigrant & Chinese-ethnicity Malaysian residents). Trying to do the same thing in modern America would involve carving away, at the very least, the entire Boston-to-Washington-DC corridor. And while it might be possible to assign ‘Jews’ and even ‘queers’ as visibly other-than-Dixie, a big chunk of MTG’s fellow Georgian residents are Black, and they would not be easy to expel, for many reasons.
Even were MTG’s comrades allowed to live their fantasied ‘national divorce’, the immediate results would be, IMO, more like Idi Amin’s expulsion of Asians from Uganda: A short-term human tragedy, an economic disaster for Dixietopia, and a decision overruled when another political party replaced the expulsionists.
Kent
@Odie Hugh Manatee: What really sucks about your story is that the two alternatives to Fred Meyer around here are worse. Wal-Mart (for all the obvious reasons), and Safeway, which is owned by an egregious private equity firm. My other daughter worked for Safeway two years ago. She had stories. When the two compare notes Fred Meyer comes out ahead as an employer.
I guess Costco is the only decent grocery alternative but you can’t buy everything there.
Kent
@Anne Laurie: I thought Singapore was a separately administered British outpost like Hong Kong that the British governed separately from Malaya. But then I don’t really know the history I guess.
Omnes Omnibus
@Anne Laurie: Indian Partition, if you want an idea of how horrific such a thing would be. It’s not going to happen though.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Kent:
We are all owned by Conglomo…
bbleh
@Mike in Pasadena: yeah no. It’s an empty threat and she knows it as well as anyone. It’s just juvenile posturing. And to point out the abject stupidity of the Confederate attitude — okay, so you’ll become Mexico, only with a lot of people who don’t understand what it means to work — serves only to feed their craving for attention and enrage them, which of course they also crave.
She’s a bad clown. She needs to be laughed AT, not with.
SpaceUnit
@Amir Khalid:
Both of those tiny nations see their wealth as their security.
Time will tell.
Omnes Omnibus
@bbleh:
Just a little nitpick, ACAB (All Clowns Are Bad).
Mike in Pasadena
“If you really want to understand the roots of rage in the red states, think about how much time people in those states spending think about cities and blue states. Now considcer how little time anyone in those places spends thinking about what goes on in, say, rural Alabama.” Tom Nichols
Interesting that those in the cities live rent free in the heads of red staters. I must confess, I have never thought about life in rural areas and what those people are doing. I have no reason to think about rural people’s lives, except when I remember my few years owning a century old, two story, farm house in Washington state. And I only think about those years because I’m considering a novel, and taking notes, based on life in a winter wheat economy, the nearby town, the school, and the five businesses there. After I finish the one I’m working on currently, of course.
Tony G
“Everyone I talk to says this.” That’s a self-selected group of people. I imagine that most normal human beings avoid that psychopathic fruitcake like the plague. So “everyone I talk to” is pretty much limited to people with her crazy world view.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Continued from post #50:
One detail is that my wife is the Apparel Department Manager at Fred Meyer, Brookings, and another detail is that our son is autistic. He tends to simplify things when he communicates and when he was taught long ago that taking something from someone else is stealing he views taking anything away from anyone is a bad thing to do, thus ‘stealing’. We think that’s why he thought he was fired from Fred Meyer (for ‘stealing’ the cart from the shoplifter). Our son is very upset because he says that he only took possession of the cart after the perp let it go to escape, as all the other employees do when a shoplifter abandons something.
Why did he take chase when it’s against the rules to do so? Let me take a moment to explain how autism and Fred Meyer’s loss prevention program collided with the Asset Protection Department in my next installment.
Gvg
@Jackie: it’s not democrats who move to red states usually. It’s people who think they are Republican or libertarian leaning, who don’t want to pay taxes. So they move and find out it’s not paradise and now they find out they are deprived of normal rights…cut off their noses to spite their own faces.
What she really wants to do is stop red state kids from leaving, but she can’t say that.
Or she can’t say their property values are so low that they look like bargains to nearby blue state wage people.
Tony G
@bbleh: Yes, juvenile posturing is all that the American right-wing has at this point. For the most part they don’t even bother proposing policies and legislation — it’s just a contest to see who can get the most attention with the most outlandish statements. Trump proved in 2016 that juvenile posturing can win elections.
Amir Khalid
@Anne Laurie:
The state of Penang has a Chinese majority too, and we never considered expelling them. The real problem was that PM Tunku Abdul Rahman and Singapore Chief Minister Lee Kuan Yew had very different ideas about what the nation should be. The Tunku believed in affirmative action for the Malay ethnic majority, much of which was economically backward; Lee Kuan Yew believed in a pure meritocracy. Also, they hated each other’s guts.
J R in WV
@Amir Khalid:
There’s the rub! They hated each other’s guts!
Can’t have a nation where one boss hates the other boss!
Ruckus
@zhena gogolia:
To save your eyesight.
And the contents of your stomach.
VOR
@Cameron: The students and faculty might be more liberal, but that doesn’t mean the townspeople are. My two sons both attended a small liberal arts college in a rural area in the Midwest. The college is the largest employer in the county. The students come from all over the country with 20% coming from outside the US. Student demographics are quite different than the local residents.
The county voted 55% for Trump in 2020, despite the student vote. The county population of nearly 19000 people is 91% white.
People like MTG look at a map and see vast areas covered in red. They don’t understand population density. This county has 19000 people while LA County has 10 million. The two counties are not equivalent. Wyoming has under 600k people while California has 39M. Not equivalent except in the Senate. And I bet MTG doesn’t understand that Republicans lost the popular vote for President in the last 4 elections. A Republican has won the popular vote only once in the last 8 elections.
Amir Khalid
@Kent:
In 1963 the Federation of Malaysia was formed out of Malaya, Sabah, Sarawak, and Singapore. Before that, the British had indeed been ruling the latter three separately from Malaya, which became independent in 1957. Sabah and Sarawak remain in Malaysia to this day, albeit with somewhat more autonomy than Peninsular states.
Kent
I don’t think it is that at all.
I have a TON of family living in rural PA, IN, MI, and OR. I just spend part of last summer visiting rural relatives in PA and paid a lot of attention to things they said. I also see their Facebook feeds.
I think it is more that rural life keeps getting tougher and tougher due to forces outside their control. Big ag consolidation makes farming more difficult. Corporations close outlets and factories in small towns. In this particular farm they lost their New Holland farm equipment manufacturing factory and also the nice IGA grocery and are now down to a Dollar General. And environmental regulations keep increasing for things like manure management.
Whether fair or not, ALL of those things are viewed as urban encroachments because they are decisions being made in the big cities far away. The fact that your local IGA closed has noting to do with blue politics in the city. But it was some corporate city types who made that decision. And they resent it because it all happens completely outside their control.
And in a sense they are right. Rural America was once very local, all the businesses were local, and the small towns were thriving, or at least prosperous. All that has changed with corporate consolidation of every sector of the economy. Big forces completely outside their control that yes, do come from the cities to the extent that big corporations are headquartered in the cities and such decisions are made by MBA and finance twits from Ivy League universities who have never gotten their loafers dirty.
Plus, in a lot of ways they work harder and make less money than everyone they know who has migrated to the cities (yours truly included). Which also leads to resentment.
brendancalling
@Kent: I lived in Nashville, Tennessee for 4 years. You are absolutely right about the summer heat, but (at this point) it’s still tolerable. It won’t be soon.
They’ll eventually show up here. Mark my words. I know that many are, in fact, good people, but they won’t be sending their best. The South has lots of problems, and they’ll be bringing those problems, to paraphrase a certain someone.
Philly already has problems, last thing we need is a bunch of Florida-mans.
bbleh
@Tony G: Trump proved in 2016 that juvenile posturing can win elections. That AND because they vote reliably for the plutocratic agenda. If it were just Confederate nonsense, they’d have regional appeal but not national. But they pair their nonsense with fealty to moneyed interests who care nothing for the destruction they wreak as long as it yields short-term returns.
It ain’t just the stupidity; it’s the stupidity plus myopia in those who know better.
Ruckus
@bbleh:
What do you have against middle schoolers?
My take on the person/people we are talking about is that middle school is several levels over their heads.
Kent
I think you are safe. Geriatric Floridians are never moving back to Philly. At best they will retreat from the coasts and wind up in the mountains of North Carolina. If they even get that far. More likely it will just be far enough north to get out of the flood and hurricane zones so like Southern Georgia peach country.
mrmoshpotato
@Amir Khalid:
Enjoy throwing in that X-Files trivia? :)
bbleh
@Kent: an argument for real economic-class-based political action! The plutocrats are screwing us! Down with them!
But alas, in the end they prefer racist distinctions to economic ones. “I’m not gonna sign on to no gummint programs that help those damn [insert appropriate racial slur].”
See also the comment of Davis X. Machina regarding boxes and sparrows and curtain-rods.
Cameron
@Kent: That’s the big reason I’d like to persuade a friend of mine to run us both up to Gulfport – no big box stores, all local businesses, and it claims to be friendly to everybody (hopefully DeSantis hasn’t heard of it yet).
bbleh
@Ruckus: Oh nothing in general! Because, you see, most middle-schoolers grow up. Alas for Madge and her followers, they … didn’t.
Kent
Yes, racism is never far from the surface, which also expresses itself in anti-immigrant sentiment. But mostly rural folk just don’t like change. There was that article a month or two ago in the NYT or WP about the young blue collar Democrat in rural Georgia. The quote that stood out was from the convenience store clerk who said “folks around here don’t like change. They get very upset if I even move the beef jerky” Yep.
The small town in PA where my cousins live basically opposes every kind of economic development because it would bring change and perhaps the “wrong element”. So yeah, that is why they are now down to a Dollar General as their only grocery and have to drive 30 min over the mountain to get to the nearest Wal-Mart.
Amir Khalid
@mrmoshpotato:
Yes, very much, thank you.
Kent
Gulfport MS? I’ve blazed through it a dozen times or so when we lived in TX and would shoot over to Destin Florida for the occasional beach vacation. But never actually got off I-10 to look around anywhere in MS.
Or is there some other Gulfport that I’m unaware of?
Odie Hugh Manatee
Continued from post #64:
The Asset Protection department is comprised of the department manager and one employee. That’s it. With two employees that work overlapping hours and the store being open 112 hours a week during the fall/winter/spring and 119 hours a week during the summer, it’s clear that the store has no Asset Protection department coverage during all hours of operation. Add in sick days and vacations and there is even less coverage. Many shoplifters know this which has lead to an endless stream of people trying their luck at free stuff and a quick, easy getaway.
Since coverage is lacking the two Asset Protection people frequently enlist other employees in following shoplifters in the store and out the door with the instruction to not directly stop the shoplifter as only Asset Protection can do that. If there are no AP personnel working then there is nobody authorized to stop a shoplifter in the store. Fred Meyer policy is for employees to help prevent shoplifting by providing excellent customer service.
The company explains that by providing excellent customer service, the employees are in the face of the shoplifters all of the time which is supposed to deter shoplifting. With enough employees this just might work but for a perpetually understaffed work force, no way. Our son saw one of his fellow workers assisting the Asset Protection employee earlier in the day and being thanked for their help. When they later saw the shoplifter fleeing the store with the goods in the cart they thought it was their chance to help out and, in their own words “Be a hero.”
Shoplifters fleeing the store and abandoning the goods happens all of the time and our son thought this was his chance to help return the goods when the shoplifter dropped them (as usual). Not all shoplifters drop the goods since they are aware of the rules of the ‘game’ at the store, some keep them and flee knowing that nobody can stop them. Technically and employee can follow a shoplifter out of the store and keep offering them excellent customer service right up to the edge of the lot.
Cameron
@Kent: Gulfport, Florida (https://visitgulfportflorida.com). It’s near St. Petersburg. I suspect every state with a Gulf of Mexico shoreline has a Gulfport.
bbleh
@Kent: I would say it isn’t just change they don’t like; it’s difference.
Those people have different food, different music, different language, different behavior. That’s scary.
In one way it’s the same thing: we never had to pay attention to those people — they weren’t here, or we successfully suppressed them (!) — and now things have changed. But I think the root of it is fear of the Other.
kalakal
@Cameron: Ah, the Gulfport in Pinellas County
Cameron
@kalakal: Yes, indeed. I haven’t been there, but it looks and sounds wonderful. Since I don’t drive, I’m trying to persuade a friend of mine to make the trip – she’ll drive, I’ll spring for meals (and souvenirs if she’s so inclined).
Bupalos
This is all so mindbendingly stupid. MTG I understand being this stupid. People here taking the bait and following this dumb red v blue state garbage I do not.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Continuing from post #84:
A hint of the kind of guy Fred Meyer Brookings Store Director Henry Johnson is: The day our son was fired my wife was called to Henry Johnson’s office after the deed was done. She had no idea what Henry’s decision was going to be as he said nothing to her about what was happening. She passed our son in the hallway outside Henry’s office, discovered that he was fired, asked him if he was OK and told him to get his stuff and that I would be called to come and pick him up. As a note here, our son was suspended on 12/22 and fired on 12/29. This detail is important so you understand what happened next.
My wife entered Henry’s office, took a seat and ol’ Henry decided that a great opening line would be: “Before we get started, how was your Christmas?”
Dan B
@bbleh: Brookings is a small town located far from population centers so employment opportunities may be limited. IIt’son some of the most beautiful coastline and forests on the planet.
Austin Loomis
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
“One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused.”
Cameron
@Odie Hugh Manatee: You sure his name is Henry? Because he really sounds like a Dick.
Austin Loomis
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
As I’ve been saying a lot on Twitter (and in other places), Jesus H. Christ fucking a football.
thruppence
I doubt Empty G believes any of the things she’s saying. Like Tucker Carlson railing against Dominion, it is an empty performance to boost her media/political persona with her chosen audience. Doesn’t make her any less contemptible and dangerous, though.
MazeDancer
71% of America’s GDP comes from counties that voted for Biden.
Good luck with the 29%, Marge.
RaflW
MTG lives in a state that elected (and re-elected!) two Democratic senators. Is she proposing that her bonkers-ass district ‘divorce’ from the rest of Georgia?
What a horrible, snarling idiot. She is exactly the person pictured in those SOTU moments.
Redshift
@Mike in Pasadena:
There was a post exploring this on Kos years ago by a liberal urbanite who had grown up in a conservative rural small town. He pointed out that (as we all know), city people don’t think about rural people much at all except when they’re electing people who attack us. The few city dwellers who look down on rural folk (who they then project onto all of us) are almost entirely rural people who moved to cities.
thruppence
Her own kind of drag show, really. She’s in raging bigot drag. Who knows what she really thinks?
kalakal
@Cameron: Yes, there’s a nice little downtown. One of the problems with Pinellas is most of the ‘cities’ don’t have downtowns, they’re basically suburbs & strip malls. I don’t really know Gulfport, I’m in the north of the county, ages since I’ve been down there but I remember it actually having some interesting little shops & places to eat as opp0sed to chains & big box places
Jay
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Short story. Fired from the Orange.
Hired just before Covid as a Tool Rental Repair Technician, dodn’y get any real time to fix tools, just rent them. Hired because the other 5 cantidates never showed up and I could pronounce Carburater.
97 dead tools, no parts supply, no support, little time, got it down to 17 dead tools, (ongoing), various horror stories regarding Mgmt support, ( yeah, I was a pain in the ass to my DS, Ass Man and MGR, who were all “quiet quitting”), while earning a “Homer” a month. ( Customer service award or co-worker),
3 years in, fired for “swearing”. Didn’t get EI for “cause”, but got the paperwork from a nice staffer at EI. ESB suit against the Corp ongoing. Apparently I had 14 “write ups” for “standards”, while I had actually only received one. (late for shift, when it was clear on my notices, I could not make that shift. Transit starts at 6am. I could not be there at 6am, but they kept scheduling me for that, overriding the software).
13 of the “write ups” are from people, (DS’s, Ass Men, etc) who were not working at that store at the time and were forged.
Got at better job. Will get a better one, and I am old.
Other than chasing a shoplifter, ( with in margins), your son did well, should file, (depending on your State, a grievance), and move on. Moving on is the hard part. Emotionally, I did my best, every day, and got shafted because I made other peoples “jobs” “harder”, (requiring them to do their jobs). And the only disability I have is being old.
Help your son move on, he sounds like a person I and many other people would gladly employ.
SFAW
@SpaceUnit:
I’d be happy to grasp her “reference” — whichever part of her that’s a euphemism for — if she’d let me. Although Mrs. SFAW might put the kibosh on that idea.
mrmoshpotato
@Amir Khalid: Haha
Redshift
Since it hasn’t been specifically pointed out yet, this entire part of the screed is a Fox News fantasy. They tell each other that life in blue states is horrible, and the people who move to Texas or Florida are obviously doing it for political reasons, and that their made-up grievances about education and such are real, so obviously there are Democrats who believe them too.
In reality, no liberal moves to a red state for political reasons. They’re people who have to move for some unrelated reason, or they’re the multitude of people who aren’t very focused on politics. The only people who move to red states for political reasons are conservatives, who (surprise, surprise) do actually exist in blue states.
(No great revelations here, I know, but I couldn’t let the unimaginative right-wing fantasy pass without comment.)
SFAW
@RaflW:
More likely she’s proposing that blue states (or counties or cities) get booted from the USofA, so that ‘Murica can once again be a white, Christianist nation. Or, at the very least, that their right to vote be removed.
kalakal
@SFAW: If it does happen we’ll build that wall around them & make them pay for it //s
It’s a ridiculous idea, it’s terrifying to me that this performative jackass is a member of congress. She has nothing to offer except bile and resentment
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Cameron:
Well, he is a Johnson so I think you’re right.
@Austin Loomis:
I’ve got a lot more on ol’ Henry Johnson, stay tuned…lol!
Dan B
@Redshift: During the Black Lives Matter pprotests one bozo lit a bag on fire in front of a police station. My partner’s sister who lives in a small city near the Canadian border had heard from FOX that the city was in flames and was very concerned for us. We live five+ miles from where the protests were – 20 minutes drive. FOX is a lie machine, but you knew that.
JaneE
@BC in Illinois: It hasn’t been one nation, indivisible for over half a century. When the pledge was changed it was noted that the meaning – emphasizing the unity of the country – was also changed and the change would be an opening for divisiveness to creep in. That was strongly denied at the time, but it seems accurate in retrospect.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Jay:
Our son is moving on, we just decided to give Henry Johnson his due while doing so. We talked to him about what he did wrong and why things happened the way they did, but at the same time it’s hard to get mad at your kid when he sees this situation the way he did. Henry is really into the way customers see him, not so much the people he supervises. That’s why I am putting this out there.
After telling our tale about what happened to our son, I’m going to provide some context to Henry’s decision by showcasing some of Henry’s other decisions in a few other shoplifting matters that ought to raise more than a few eyebrows.
NotMax
@mrmoshpotato
X-Files is so last century. Nowadays could be Sex Education trivia.
;)
Leslie
@zhena gogolia: Wow, what have you got against Candace Bergen?
Jay
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
KPIM has an impact. People get judged on stats, stats might be utter garbage.
EG. frankentiller. Made from 3 different “dead” tillers, because we couldn’t get parts, they were written off, but over time, when I could actually work on stuff, all three were combined into a working tool.
Did KPIM reflect this, nope. Didn’t even collect that sort of data, (although it could, never been turned on by Corporate),
so people get “judged” on their jobs, by what they get “judged on”, by the metrics brought up. It sucks.
The reality is that as anybody with authority, you have to know where the “holes” are and if you really want a “good store”, use those “holes” to you advantage to retain good employees. That requires a level of detail that is missing in many places.
I will be moving on, (as a old), from my current job asap, as Corp had F’d up, in a bunch of ways, and there is no shortage of demand. More money, ($18 an hour), same benefits, same hours, less commute. LMAO, Corp sent an “edict” that sick employees should not come to work as it was effecting the “bottom line”. Burnaby site, one employee, Covid, out of “sick time”, came to work. 9 employees out with Covid, for up to 2 weeks, Would have been cheaper to pay the Covid 1 employee to stay home.
Jay
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Diss the A-hole and the “store” as much as you want. Won’t get any push back from me.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Tonight I explained the situation with our son and his losing his job. Tomorrow I’m going to talk about two other situations where employees directly confronted and improperly accused shoppers of shoplifting (they weren’t) and yet Henry Johnson didn’t fire them. Then we will add on his decision in keeping on an employee who had stapled a handwritten UPC for a garment on clearance to another garment that had its tags removed and was not on clearance and got caught.
After that I have more of Henry’s Greatest Hits to share just for some shits and giggles.
Amir Khalid
@NotMax:
Not entirely: Seasons 8 to 11 were all made in the 21st century. Also too, Mulder and Scully are the GOAT of screen couples, and their appeal is timeless.
Steve in the ATL
@P Thomas: they can totally have the Falcons and Hawks, but we need to save the Braves. Maybe move them back to Milwaukee or Boston.
NotMax
@Leslie
Father of a since deceased friend was the advertising exec chiefly responsible for getting Edgar Bergen on radio, bucking the prevailing “A ventriloquist on radio? That’s crazy talk.” tides.
The family homestead was in rural Pennsylvania, first farmed by them (Germanic settlers) in early colonial times . Once in a while the friend would drag out reels of homes movies, shot in color and dating as far back as the 1930s. Many reels with sound, including those shot during the middle 1950s featuring big outdoor picnic parties with Mr. Bergen present along with young Candace, who eagerly recites poetry for the camera.
Steve in the ATL
@Amir Khalid: obviously Joanie and Chachi didn’t make it to Malaysia!
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Jay:
What/who is KPIM? I understand the rest, I just need that to understand it all. I’ve been through some crap places too, and it’s best to see the writing on the wall, find something better and GTFO of that mess.
NotMax
@Steve in the ATL
Nor Wally Cleaver and Eddie Haskell, or so it would seem.
// :)
Amir Khalid
@Steve in the ATL:
Actually, they did. But as a couple, Joanie and Chachi are simply not in Mulder and Scully’s league.
Steve in the ATL
@Amir Khalid: you cannot possibly think my post was serious.
@NotMax: ha!
Amir Khalid
@Steve in the ATL:
Of course I didn’t. No one who rates Joanie and Chachi above Mulder and Scully is serious. (Said the obsessive X-Files fan.)
SFAW
@Amir Khalid:
Forget about Mulder and Scully — no one who rates Joanie and Chachi above Beavis and Butthead is serious.
Odie Hugh Manatee
We have lived here in Brookings, OR for almost 31 years now, escaping Spokane, WA and its horrendous winters for the warm, wet climate of the south Oregon coast. The problem is that for the first time since we moved here everything is covered in snow! Our Scottish Fold kitty acted like it was another day while his nephew was pouncing all around in it. Our senior kitty who hates rain was afraid of it at first, but eventually came out when he saw me out in it. Turns out that he likes it.
Our local palm trees probably don’t, though.
Odie Hugh Manatee
I do want to mention that my wife has worked at the Fred Meyer here in Brookings before Day One, hiring on in 1994 after having helped to set up the new stores fixtures and stock it. She’s a lifer there and has spent more than 1/2 of her life there. Our daughter also works there, as did our son. My wife did not expect any favors regarding our son’s discipline, she’s not that kind of person. She was hands off but the HR manager did tell her not to worry about it other than him being suspended for three days. After our son’s firing and my wife being slapped in the face with “Before we start, how was your Christmas?” by Henry, she thought that if this was happening that someone on the management team would have at least given her a heads up so we could counsel our autistic son on what was happening.
Nope.
I think we can see that HR was wrong not worrying. My wife thought that she was part of a management team before this happened but now she knows she’s not. She has been suspicious about a lack of professional respect because of inappropriate things that Henry Johnson has said to her at work regarding her weight and looks, along with other actions of his. I will not be detailing this stuff for the obvious reasons, but it is still there for us to deal with. I’ve known for years that Henry has little respect for anyone but himself.
I’m going to show that here over the next few days.
Odie Hugh Manatee
One last tidbit is that the store signed a union contract the day after our son was fired. He’s still getting benefit information, medical cards and such from the union.
Citizen Alan
@Cameron: Just last weekend, there was a well attended drag show in Oxford, Mississippi! I’m amazed that no Bible-humpers have come out against it yet.
Citizen Alan
@Redshift: That’s fair. I can’t wait to move to a big city in a blue state where I will aggressively look down on rural Mississippians for the rest of my days. :)
Citizen Alan
@Amir Khalid: I’m 53 and the only thing I clearly remember about Joanie Loves Chachi was that Erin Moran apparently put her foot down and said “I’m not doing this show unless I can style my hair the way I like it instead of in a ponytail.” Because everything else was vintage 1950s, but Erin was always styled like she was going directly from the set to Studio 54.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Citizen Alan:
I loved Happy Days but Joni loves Chachi sucked dead goats.
ColoradoGuy
On my last visit to Europe, in 2004, I was struck by how prosperous the Swiss and German countrysides were. Charming little grocery stores that were in the family for generations, slick pharmaceutical plants carefully placed a few kilometers from the town, prosperous farms, etc. etc.
In stark contrast to the ruined rural areas that fill much of the USA, with the exception of rapidly filling exurbs (which I see here in Colorado). The devastation is caused by rampant monopoly capitalism … Walmart, Amazon, and other corporations strip-mining the local economy and destroying local businesses. The farmers are right up against it: a handful of monopoly buyers for what they grow and sell, and fixed capital costs that keep rising. Naturally, young people flee the economic and cultural desert these towns become, while the olds cling to their dying towns, unwilling to move to the sterile exurbs that encroach on the farms.
Of course, Europe looks that way because of extensive social planning to preserve local culture, particularly artisan food products, which get specialty labeling backed by the force of law. From an American perspective, that’s the big bogeyman, Socialism!1!! So the GOP has tricked the rurals into accelerating their own destruction. They tell them fracking will solve their financial problems, planning for climate change is a Socialist plot to impoverish the whole world, and guns, guns, and more guns will solve any other problems.
NotMax
@Odie Hugh Manatee
Always felt for the actor cast as the older Cunningham brother. But hey, that’s show biz.
“We shall not speak of him again.”
opiejeanne
@Dan B: My cousin who lives in an unattractive little town in Wyoming (Wyoming is gorgeous, Evansville not so much) and is married to RW asshole nutjob said pretty much the same thing. Asked if my daughters were ok, since both of them live in Seattle and Seattle had been burned to the ground. I assured her that Seattle had not in fact been burned down.
opiejeanne
@opiejeanne: Ack. Evanston, WY.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@NotMax:
Ahh, Chuck. Poor guy, we hardly knew him.
ColoradoGuy
@opiejeanne: Reminds of two out-of-state “friends” who fervently assured me that all guns had been banned in Colorado. After I told them I live a quarter-mile from a gun range and those folks are gleefully popping and banging away every day, I asked where they heard their source of news … with glowing eyes and a certain sense of expectancy that they’d finally got one over this liberal, they told me “The Blaze” … the Glenn Beck website.
I’m afraid I laughed in their face, I couldn’t help myself. I told them this is the real Wild West, and there are lots and lots of hunters here, and it’s been that way for a long time.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@opiejeanne:
Driving though areas of north central Wyoming are like driving through a gas tank but with even more fumes. At first I thought our vehicle sprung a leak.
I could not imagine living in that Hydrocarbon Hell.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Think about that Texas bounty hunter abortion law that started this current mess. It’s basically designed to let grandma Karen and grandpa Cletus off in the panhandle stalk their granddaughter living off in the big city.
WereBear
I like what Beau of the Fifth Column said, which is that once red states remove themselves from the blue state spigot, they are “developing countries now.”
Van Buren
I’m surprised that MTG saying Trump shouldn’t be allowed to vote isn’t getting more attention in RW circles.
Nukular Biskits
@Kent:
This native Mississippian feels he’s already surrounded with enough MTGs as to not need another one, thank you very much.
Baud
Frankly, I wouldn’t mind a new blue state Supreme Court.
Can we make this our national anthem?
Shalimar
@opiejeanne: Evanston is more like a last stop before you get to the mountains of Utah than part of the rest of Wyoming.
Suzanne
@opiejeanne:
I heard the same thing about Pittsburgh. I was literally sitting in my office when I read that, so I looked outside, down at the street, and said, “Uhhhhh everything’s fine”.
WereBear
I would’ve bet life savings (had I had any at the time) that I would never ever live in a small town rural area again.
But I do and I love it because it’s in the Adirondack Park and it’s still New York. I’m also in a college town.
NOTHING stops right wingers from voting to actually improve their states.
Gvg
@Odie Hugh Manatee: I am sorry for your family.
A lot of what enables this guy to be such an asshole seems to be the Fred Myers’s policy on shoplifting which sounds really weird to me. Most chains I know are actually pretty draconian especially grocery chains. We do not have any Fred Myers’s around here. If they did not have such an unusual policy, it doesn’t seem like the manager would be able to be so arbitrary.
But you show he is also not applying it consistently. Chances are you could get him fired too. Only you would be using a policy you think is wrong against him…
interesting about the union entering now. I wonder if they can help in the long run for the other employees like your wife. I also wonder why the manager really decided to fire your son. He seems to be seeing a different reality than other people around him, HR misreading the situation, his offensive statement to your wife, putting off the decision till his vacation was over etc.
Matt McIrvin
If the only people in Red America were these bigoted white right-wingers, I’d be happy to let them go.
But they’re not.
lowtechcyclist
@Kent:
I lived in Bristol VA for five years in the mid-1990s while I worked on the TN side of town. At some point, the city proposed putting in a bike path on some publicly-owned land adjacent to a stream running through town. A pleasant and harmless amenity, right?
At the public meeting, almost all the locals vehemently opposed it, thought it would be a magnet for youth gangs and drug use. I was there and spoke in favor of it, but I was practically the only one. So no bike path.
Glad I was able to get the hell out of there.
Matt McIrvin
@Redshift: One of the biggest reasons people move out of coastal blue states is just that they’re seeking more affordable housing. This is a real problem, and blue-state governments and voters share some of the blame. But skyrocketing real-estate value isn’t exactly a sign that your state has become an unlivable dystopia.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Nobody wants to live in blue states anymore. It’s too crowded.
trucmat
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
What’s your name Odie? What is your son’s name? Because it’s really a bad look to be verbally trashing a retail manager as an anonymous person on the internet. I’d like to check the facts of your character assassination but you hide behind a nym and dox a real person. I tell you truly you do not have my sympathy and I’m sure there’s more to the story about why your son got fired.
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: Nope, lots of us live in those states.
Ramalama
@brendancalling: Vermont had some biblical flooding a few years ago. My friend who has a horse farm there talked about using a boat in the mountains to help neighbor kids get to school. My own village north if Montreal (also a mountain town) experienced the worst storm ever this past May. It was stronger than any hurricane I’d experienced as a Masshole. My house is still in need of great repair that didn’t get done before winter. All this to say that the north isn’t exempt from climate change. Just FYI.
catclub
@brendancalling:
and they have a perfect right to try… if they have the votes.
Cameron
@Baud: Or this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZPxyzJ7I2c
Cameron
@Citizen Alan: You should try Pennsylvania – even the small cities are great (well, some of them, anyway) and if you’re in either Philly or Pittsburgh…they speak for themselves.
Princess
@trucmat: Dude. Almost every single post on Balloon Juice mentions the real name of a person and most are written by people using nyms. That’s not what doxxing is. Is “Anne Laurie” doxxing MTG in this post? No. Neither is Odie.
catclub
@Cameron:
that is my memory of Apalachicola. from almost 30 years ago, now.
jefft452
Reuben, Reuben, I’ve been thinking
Said his wifey dear
Now that all is peaceful and calm
The boys will soon be back on the farm
Mister Reuben started winking and slowly rubbed his chin
He pulled his chair up close to mother
And he asked her with a grin
Chorus (sung twice after each verse):
How ya gonna keep ’em down on the farm
After they’ve seen Paree’
How ya gonna keep ’em away from Broadway
Jazzin around and paintin’ the town
How ya gonna keep ’em away from harm, that’s a mystery
They’ll never want to see a rake or plow
And who the deuce can parleyvous a cow?
How ya gonna keep ’em down on the farm
After they’ve seen Paree’
Rueben, Rueben, you’re mistaken
Said his wifey dear
Once a farmer, always a jay
And farmers always stick to the hay
Mother Reuben, I’m not fakin
Tho you may think it strange
But wine and women play the mischief
With a boy who’s loose with change
Chorus (sung twice after each verse):
How ya gonna keep ’em down on the farm
After they’ve seen Paree’
How ya gonna keep ’em away from Broadway
Jazzin around and paintin’ the town
How ya gonna keep ’em away from harm, that’s a mystery
Imagine Reuben when he meets his Pa
He’ll pinch his cheek and holler “OO-LA-LA!
How ya gonna keep ’em down on the farm
After they’ve seen Paree’?
Matt McIrvin
@brendancalling: It looks like they’re about to successfully ban chemical abortion nationwide by judicial action, using an obviously bad-faith argument about the process by which mifepristone got FDA approval. It likely won’t take permanently but you never know.
Expect more of this sort of thing–right-wing federal judges using some kind of loophole to rule as kings over blue America. They tried to kill the ACA that way so many times–it survived by the skin of its teeth, might not next time.
tobie
@Kent: Farming has become so mechanized that very few people in rural American work in farming. I only know my perch in a red, rural county in Maryland but I feel pretty confident in saying that in this one region half of the population works servicing the other half. They are plumbers, electricians, mechanics, contractors, large truck drivers, etc. They have a small biz with one or two employees. They count their homes as a business address to avoid taxes. They take cash payments to avoid taxes. They work less than anyone I know in a research job. They are seething with resentment for reasons I don’t understand. And they vote for the party that is in favor of consolidating and privatizing everything.
Shalimar
@catclub: Apalachicola used to be fairly rare for a small town in that chain restaurants were banned by their zoning. Not sure if that has changed in the 21st century. It has been a long time since I have been there.
Chief Oshkosh
@mrmoshpotato:
SEE? There IS common ground if we just look for it: The rest of us don’t give a shit about the people who voted for her, either.
Bupalos
@Redshift: I don’t honestly think any significan’t number of conservatives switches states based on politics either. The whole thing is made up on both sides, and fixated on by folks who are increasingly dwelling in a state of unreality. States are simply not that meaningful this way, and every one has many places within it that run absolutely opposite to their national reputation.
Ryan
I mean, we had Roseanne, what more do these people want?
moonbat
@Amir Khalid: Preach!
Chief Oshkosh
@Kent:
I’m sure that it’s true that some rural folks work harder, but that’s not been my experience in OK, TX, CA, FL, or GA. I’m struggling right now to think of any WHITE rural dwellers I’ve known (family or acquaintances) that work anywhere near as hard as most of the people I’ve known in cities. However, I can think of plenty who will TELL you that they work harder
ETA: That’s not to say that many rural people I’ve known don’t work hard – they just don’t work any harder than the vast majority of people I’ve known in cities.
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: It is still stunning to me how the right has totally embraced lying to get what they want. Total, complete lying. “We just want the states to decide about abortion” is probably one of the biggest whoppers they’ve ever told, and one that was almost immediately contradicted by their actions and words.
Chief Oshkosh
@Redshift:
And those left behind say “Thank gods and good riddance!” Which is what my F-i-L said when his Sacramento neighbors finally moved to Texas.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Baud: That’s quite terrible
Matt McIrvin
@Chief Oshkosh: I used to follow Sarah Taber on Twitter, who pointed out that a lot of the rhetoric is deliberately confusing farmers (the owners of the farms) with farm workers–the hired help, often undocumented immigrants.
Denali5
I am still hanging on in upstate New York, and the fact is that people here move to Florida for the low taxes and weather. They might move back to Asheville if they find they cannot deal with the culture and the hurricanes. They visit their family up north in the summer months. If the Fox New ever stops lying, it will be a blessing.
Soprano2
I understand it – they’re seething with resentment because they aren’t controlling things anymore, and they hate it. They and the way they are isn’t the norm anymore, even though the press tries hard to make it seem like it still is, and they know it and are angry and terrified about it.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: We left it up to the states. Their states decided that our states can’t have abortion.
Soprano2
@Chief Oshkosh: These people mostly think people who work in offices don’t do any actual “work”. They think you sit and key stuff into a computer all day, and they think anyone can do that.
Marmot
With respect, you’ve adopted a right-wing belief. People move places because of work or family. That’s part of why that idea is so dumb
evodevo
@Soprano2: Same with delivering the mail…people have NO idea. The few we got in our office that thought it would be a piece of cake got quickly disabused of that notion, and usually quit after a couple months…and they only worked in good weather, not backroads in the snow lol
Paul in KY
@Odie Hugh Manatee: If the letter helps him land a better job, I say use it.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@trucmat:
We’re not hiding a fucking thing. I identified my wife as the apparel department manager where this happened. If ol’ Henry trips across this he knows who the fuck to talk to.
So go fuck yourself.
Paul in KY
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Had he received any training or counseling that he was not to do that (chase after a shoplifter)?
Marmot
@Marmot: Oops! As Matt says @151, real estate prices too.
J R in WV
@trucmat:
I’m with Odie. Fuck you asshole! Welcome to the pie safe !!!
Paul in KY
@Cameron: Gulfport, MS? See it is not. Gulfport, MS is sister city to Biloxi. Biloxi has Keesler AFB. If you had to exist in MS, Biloxi/Gulfport would probably be among your best locations, IMO.
J R in WV
And how stupid is Margie T Greene?
Or is she just plain ole evil, not stupid at all?
Hard to tell for sure from here. Probably both !!
Fake Irishman
@Marmot:
Yep. My wife got a good job offer in Texas, then I I found a position and here we are. That’s true for many of our friends and folks like us. —- and the politics of the state are changing because of it. The GOP has a hammerlock on statewide power, but the elections have been getting much closer over the last 10 years, almost all the big urban counties are comfortably blue (and Tarrant where Fort Worth is 50-50) while the burgeoning suburban counties are getting pink and purple.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Paul in KY:
All employees get told that during their orientation. The problem is that Asset Protection regularly enlists employees to help them follow shoppers. Another problem is that Fred Meyer offers a 10% reward, up to $100, for stopping a shoplifter. Add an autistic son who knows the rules and situation and parses it down to “I can chase and take possession of the goods as long as I don’t have any contact with the shoplifter.”, and you have the mess that this has become.
BTW, our son can’t run because of his autism. Maybe a fast shuffle but nothing that will catch anyone running. He told us he wasn’t after the shoplifter, just “the stuff”. Once it was dropped our son viewed it as fair game under the rules, as he understood them.
Bill Arnold
@BC in Illinois:
This might be the strongest argument when arguing with such people. They have said “indivisible” for decades, many since childhood, hand over heart. Were they lying?
Paul in KY
@Jay: They lost a fine employee.
Paul in KY
@trucmat: Is that you, Henry?
Paul in KY
@catclub: I’ve vacayed on St. George’s Island and what I saw of Apalachicola was nice. I could live there (assuming I could get a good paying job).
Paul in KY
@Odie Hugh Manatee: He certainly got fucked over, it appears. He is a fine young man & he will certainly get a better job than Fred Meyers!
Steeplejack
@Cameron:
I love the Animals! I haven’t heard that one in decades.
Capri
Once read a very good article although I forget title and author that makes the point that all of the US is a shade of purple. The main take away is that everyone shops at Best Buy. Folks may express different political opinions, but the vast majority of Americans live very similar lives. Working in the accounting office of the John Deere distributor in a rural county isn’t all that different from working in the accounting office of a suburban car dealership which isn’t much different from working for the accounting office of Kracken cyberbank from home (which my extremely liberal daughter does in extremely conservative southern Ohio).
Bill Maher of all people made the point well when the odious Mike Huckabee went on his show to promote the national bestseller: God, Guns, Grits, and Gravy: and the Dad-Gummed Gummint That Wants to Take Them Away. Huckabee was blathering on about fly-over country vs coasts etc et. Maher said that he tours the entire country and plays towns in the South and Midwest. His jokes get the same laughs everywhere.
Just my long way of saying that yeah, anyone who talks about dividing the country along red and blue lines is full of shit.
Mimi haha
@mrmoshpotato: Im fine with sending her to North Korea. She won’t last an hour.
Mimi haha
@trucmat: Wow you’re stupid.
Another Scott
@Capri: This is kinda where I am.
The X vs Y in America meant something when it took months to cross the continent. Canals, Railroads, the Telegraph, Radio, TV, the Internet, Social Media, etc., etc., have all made the country smaller and more uniform.
I’m not sure I buy the premise that rural folks are always thinking about the horrible people in cities, ether. I know a couple in Reston, VA who were shocked that my J would go into DC by herself to hear live music at the old 930 Club. As if she was taking her life in her hands to do that! That couple is fairly well off, living in rich suburbs, and they worked in DC.
When I was a kid in grade school I spent a few years in an old town of 50,000 in agricultural Ohio. There were jokes that it was the same as every other small town in the midwest – high school kids drove around the courthouse on the town square on Friday evenings. ;-) They were busy living.
I don’t think rural folks obsess about city folks. Sure, they grumble, but everyone grumbles. They mostly just get on with their lives, trying to figure out ways for tomorrow to be better than today (or at least not worse). Yeah, they don’t like change, but humans in general don’t like change. Change is hard. Change is scary. People like security and predictability, especially if things are going relatively Ok.
Trouble is, of course, change is coming whether we like it or not. The smart thing to do is guide the change, rather than letting those with money and power decide how things will go (which, coincidentally, will always benefit them if they have any say about it)…
Cheers,
Scott.
tybee
@Baud:
make it so.
Almost Retired
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Plaintiff side employment lawyer here – 30 plus years representing employees in Los Angeles and (earlier) San Francisco. I’m not licensed in Oregon. But, there is a line of cases from the Ninth Circuit (which covers Oregon) stating that an employee cannot be disciplined for alleged misconduct that is attributable to the disability. In other words, if his autism complicated his ability to follow their dumbass shoplifting policy, in most cases, he cannot be disciplined but must be accommodated. Kind of a confusing area of law. If you want to talk to someone actually licensed in Oregon, as opposed to an anonymous guy in the blog comments, e-mail watergirl and I can refer you. Good luck. Fuckers.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Almost Retired:
Thanks for the offer, that is very kind. At this time we’re not interested in getting litigious but that may change. My wife has requested access to the report Henry Johnson filed that led to our son’s firing, along with the Asset Protection report and to view the video that they do have of the incident. She requested that about a month ago from Henry’s assistant. She asked the assistant (ASM) for the access because she found out that she could request the info while Henry was on vacation. She is going to ask the ASM today to see if the ASM has acted on the request since Henry’s return and if not, grab Henry’s ear and request it again.
I’ll be back later with some of Henry’s Greatest Hits…
Thanks again!
RW Force
@Gvg: Policy as a response to litigation risk:
Employees Confronting Shoplifters Can Result in Significant OSHA Citations
Last month, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) announced a $330,000 penalty assessed against Family Dollar following the death of an employee involved in a shoplifting incident. OSHA claims that the employee experienced shortness of breath following an attempt to keep the shoplifter from leaving the store. The employee later died at a local hospital…
…Many retailers and hospitality industry employers have strict policies that prohibit employees from engaging in physical confrontations with shoplifters or other types of criminal conduct. These policies primarily protect the employees and avoid liability claims associated with such confrontations. This citation may be a signal from OSHA that failure to discourage employees from confronting suspected criminals may also result in significant workplace safety penalties.
https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/employees-confronting-shoplifters-can-8935213/
RW Force
@Gvg: Policy as a response to litigation risk:
Employees Confronting Shoplifters Can Result in Significant OSHA Citations
Last month, the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) announced a $330,000 penalty assessed against Family Dollar following the death of an employee involved in a shoplifting incident. OSHA claims that the employee experienced shortness of breath following an attempt to keep the shoplifter from leaving the store. The employee later died at a local hospital…
…Many retailers and hospitality industry employers have strict policies that prohibit employees from engaging in physical confrontations with shoplifters or other types of criminal conduct. These policies primarily protect the employees and avoid liability claims associated with such confrontations. This citation may be a signal from OSHA that failure to discourage employees from confronting suspected criminals may also result in significant workplace safety penalties.
https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/employees-confronting-shoplifters-can-8935213/