Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

You cannot shame the shameless.

“But what about the lurkers?”

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

I wonder if trump will be tried as an adult.

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

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

“That’s what the insurrection act is for!”

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Motown is Joe-Town!

…and a burning sense of injustice to juice the soul.

Another missed opportunity for Jamie Dimon to just shut the fuck up.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

Dead end MAGA boomers crying about Talyor Swift being a Dem is my kind of music. Turn it up.

Donald Jessica Trump found guilty as fuck – May 30, 2024!

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

You are here: Home / Politics / domestic terrorists / Saturday Evening Open Thread: Enrique Tarrio, Another ‘Freedumb Martyr’

Saturday Evening Open Thread: Enrique Tarrio, Another ‘Freedumb Martyr’

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Saturday Evening Open Thread: Enrique Tarrio, Another 'Freedumb' Martyr

(Clay Bennett via GoComics.com)

 

Story in the NYTimes, “Seeking Link to Trump, Prosecutors Questioned Proud Boys Leader”:

Last October, a few months before he went to trial on sedition charges linked to the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the Proud Boys, got an invitation: The federal prosecutors in charge of his case asked him and his lawyers to sit down for a meeting.

During that meeting, Mr. Tarrio recounted on Friday in a phone interview from jail, the prosecutors told him that they believed he had communicated in the run-up to the riot with President Donald J. Trump through at least three intermediaries.

The prosecutors, Mr. Tarrio said, offered him leniency if he could corroborate their theory.

Mr. Tarrio said he told them they were wrong. And the discussion with prosecutors — which took place in Miami, Mr. Tarrio’s hometown — apparently went nowhere. Mr. Tarrio was later convicted of seditious conspiracy in federal court in Washington and was sentenced on Tuesday to 22 years in prison.

But his account of his interaction with the Justice Department suggests that prosecutors took extraordinary steps in seeking out evidence of ties between Mr. Trump and the Proud Boys, the far-right group that was instrumental to the violence that erupted at the Capitol. To have approached Mr. Tarrio soon before his trial in search of information that could implicate the former president shows the government’s interest in connections between Mr. Trump and the extremists at the center of the riot…

Of course, there is now a Great Flapping on right-wing media, insisting that Tarrio is ‘being punished for refusing to lie about President Trump.’ I personally doubt TFG masterminded the insurrection — even if he had that much focus, he would never have been able to bring himself to conspire with grubby, low-level People Like That — but it’s pretty clear he was more than happy to be the beneficiary of other GOP criminals’ earnest efforts. And since Tarrio, as the Brits would put it, has form as an informant, I assume his jailhouse interview (with, AFAICT, Gateway Pundit, aka The Dumbest Man on the Internet) is intended to cover his own hide while simultaneously signalling to his coconspirators not yet under carceral supervision.

Saturday Evening Open Thread: Enrique Tarrio, Another 'Freedumb' Martyr 1

(Nick Anderson via GoComics.com)

Reader Interactions

146Comments

  2. 2.

    Alison Rose

    “Yes, Your Honor, I did indeed hire a hitman, buy a gun for him, lend him a car, give him directions and a photo, and told him 217 lies about my marriage, but I was in a whole different state when he killed my wife, so how on Earth can this possibly be my fault?”

  9. 9.

    bbleh

    Oh wah wah wah.  They’ll drop him like a used cigarette in, what, a week?  Maybe two?

    @Cameron: they ALL are.  Why else did Pezzola do his silly “Trump won!” thing outside the courthouse?  They better remember though, it ain’t what you did for Trump THEN; it’s what you can do for him NOW.

  12. 12.

    Hoppie

    Chuckle of the day:  prior to 1999, one of the predecessor newspapers (of the top cartoon by Clay Bennett) was the Chattanooga News-Free Press.  You cannot make this stuff up.

  13. 13.

    Scout211

    @SFAW: Ha!  Guiliani’s got his own new legal theory. It’s brilliant and I’m sure he will get his case in Georgia dismissed because of it.  I think he may have learned of this top secret brilliant strategy from Top Chef.

    Link

    The former Trump attorney on Friday asked Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee to quash the indictment, or at least to set a hearing on the matter. Giuliani argued in the filing that there were “deficiencies” in the indictment that render it invalid, and that prosecutors are violating his rights against “double jeopardy” by how they structured the racketeering conspiracy allegations.

    The indictment is “a conspiratorial bouillabaisse consisting of purported criminal acts, daily activities, and constitutionally protected speech,” the filing argues.

  15. 15.

    SiubhanDuinne

    We were talking in one of the morning threads about Mike Lindell TOTALLY LOSING HIS SHIT during a deposition because someone used the term “lumpy pillow.” It was funny enough when it was just the transcript; when you see the actual video, it is 😘 perfection.

    Mike Lindell, he seems nice.

  18. 18.

    Righteous Hazard

    After watching Brian Klaas’ video on Powerful Psychopaths last night, I was struck by an observation he made from research into how strongman authoritarian leaders choose underlings and henchmen: the “babyfaced” phenomenon.

    I was surprised by Tarrio’s face in the trial photos. Without the tough guy affectations he adopted: goatee, sunglasses, and cigarette, he looks extremely weak-chinned and babyfaced. Exactly the kind of henchman the Strongmen are drawn to.

  22. 22.

    sab

    @Cameron: No, it’s from the English law that our law developed from. Norman invaders eventually became English jurists, who wrote in Law French, which wasn’t much like actual French.

    /// Not really, but Law French was an actual thing. I was just trying to explain the bouillabaise, which I cannot even spell correctly.

  23. 23.

    MomSense

    FAFO MFers!

    At a block party fundraiser hosted by the local brewery and bakery.  Food trucks, live music, lots of people, kids playing and dogs.  Life doesn’t suck – except for the proud boys. HA!

  26. 26.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @zhena gogolia:

    I’ve seen a lot of JLC’s impressions, and love him, but have not seen and cannot find any clip of him doing Lindell. If you have a link, I’d be much obliged.

  28. 28.

    Cameron

    And for his next fundraising trinket, you’ll be able to buy the Trumpy Lumpy Pillow (for a bargain price of $99.99)

  32. 32.

    sab

    @Righteous Hazard: Yikes. Manipulation all around there, and nobody in the whole structure is comfortable in their own skin in  contrast to happy, cheerful, confident Joe Biden and Barack Obama.

  34. 34.

    Lyrebird

    @schrodingers_cat: No but that trailer you shared for the Resistance documentary was amazing!  IIRC you or someone you quoted doesn’t think the resistance can win (yet).

    Prayers for less fascism instead of more, everywhere.

  36. 36.

    Tony Jay

    Conspiratorial Bouillabaisse sounds like a particularly dashing leader of the Slave Revolt on Haiti.

  39. 39.

    Jay

    The son of a prominent conservative activist has been convicted of charges that he stormed the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, bashed in a window, chased a police officer, invaded the Senate floor and helped a mob disrupt the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential election victory.

    Leo Brent Bozell IV, 44, of Palmyra, Pennsylvania, was found guilty on Friday of 10 charges, including five felony offenses, after a trial decided by a federal judge, according to the federal justice department.

    Bozell’s father is Brent Bozell III, who founded the Media Research Center, Parents Television Council and other conservative media organizations.The son of a prominent conservative activist has been convicted of charges that he stormed the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, bashed in a window, chased a police officer, invaded the Senate floor and helped a mob disrupt the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential election victory.

    Leo Brent Bozell IV, 44, of Palmyra, Pennsylvania, was found guilty on Friday of 10 charges, including five felony offenses, after a trial decided by a federal judge, according to the federal justice department.

    Enrique Tarrio in Orlando, Florida, in February 2021.
    Former Proud Boys leader sentenced to 22 years over US Capitol attack
    Read more
    Bozell’s father is Brent Bozell III, who founded the Media Research Center, Parents Television Council and other conservative media organizations.

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/sep/09/january-6-capitol-attack-son-conservative-activist-convicted

  40. 40.

    sab

    @Scout211: That works for me.

    My long ago ex-husband was good friends with a high level DEA guy (that in itself was weird) who had worked with Rudi and absolutely despised him. This was before he was famous as America’s mayor. Just a deceitful backstabbing skunk who undermined everyone he worked with.

  43. 43.

    Suzanne

    Ehhhhh. Today has been stressful. SuzMom had her hip replacement surgery yesterday, and according to the surgeon, all went great. I went to see her yesterday and she was loopy from the pain meds, and she was tired and didn’t want to eat anything. So this morning, I called to check in, and she was super-pissed and confused and was screaming about how they wouldn’t feed her anything, and she wanted me to take her home against medical advice. She apparently screamed at one nurse and made her cry. The hospitalist called me and asked me if she was more confused that usual. I got there by lunchtime and she was less confused, was more alert, and she was being nicer. The physical therapists helped her walk for the first time. I am tired.

  44. 44.

    TriassicSands

    @sab:

    Agreed. There are probably more than a few Republicans today who are grateful when they can’t do anything to help Trump and the MAGAts. They don’t have to make excuses for not acting, but without saying so they will likely be very glad when Trump is gone.

  45. 45.

    MagdaInBlack

    @Alison Rose: I’ve watched enough Mike Pillow that this does not surprise me. I don’t know whether his lunacy is due to his past or his current drug use. Either way, he “ain’t right in the head.”

  48. 48.

    Another Scott

    @zhena gogolia:

    Ronald Klain
    @RonaldKlain
    7h

    He’s the only person in politics — D or R — who has beaten Trump. He produced a historic result in 2022. He will win again in 2024.

    Well, when you put it like that…

    ;-)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  50. 50.

    tobie

    @Suzanne: The biochemistry of the elderly is really different. It took my father so long to bounce back from anesthesia and painkillers after surgery. I hope your mother shakes the aftereffects off by tomorrow.

  54. 54.

    WaterGirl

    OT, but I just saw this.

    So if you’re up for making some calls for Wisconsin, it might help some of the Republican lawmakers think long and hard before they cross the line to hamstring a rightfully elected judge because she’s likely to rule in ways they won’t like.  Like ending the gerrymander that keeps the Rs in control.

  55. 55.

    Righteous Hazard

    @sab: I mentioned Brian Klaas video earlier about the “babyfaced” thing with Tarrio, but it really is an excellent long form video for those of us who haven’t read his book on the subject. It really helps explains why a “deceitful, backstabbing, skunk” like Rudy seeks and acquires power:

    watch

  57. 57.

    WaterGirl

    @Suzanne: I know it’s hard to be sympathetic when she is so often difficult, but it sounds to me like she may have been scared and in pain.  In those situations, the response is never, as we might say, a good look.

    It’s so hard, I feel for you all.

  59. 59.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Alison Rose:

    Honest legitimate answer, who the fuck knows? It’s as good an explanation as any, I guess, but I’m going with Mr. Occam and his razor: Lindell is just an idiot and an asshole.

  61. 61.

    Suzanne

    @WaterGirl: I got to the hospital around lunchtime and she hadn’t ordered her food, so I did it for her. I was reading the choices to her, and I noted that they could make her a sandwich. Although I apparently pronounced it “sanwich”, and she started yelling at me for not enunciating the D. Holy shit balls. Then she tried to order a beer.

    Like, the minute there are any sort of mind-altering chemicals around, she gets fucken mean. I can tell her to STFU but the nurses can’t.

  62. 62.

    Salty Sam .

    @Suzanne: she was super-pissed and confused and was screaming about how they wouldn’t feed her anything, and she wanted me to take her home against medical advice. She apparently screamed at one nurse and made her cry.

    Oof!  Not fun.  Blame it on the anasthesia.

    My mom had a heart valve replacement ten years ago.  When she finally”woke up” in Recovery, she was out of her mind.  All the years of genteel behaviors that covered up an elderly, racist, white woman were gone.  The poor Hispanic and AA nurses and aides that had to deal with her all got an earful.  It was embarrassing and painful to deal with.

    ETA:  it really is the anasthesia.  A doctor explained it to me…

  63. 63.

    Shalimar

    Loomis is on a banning spree in the Music Notes post on LGM if you want to get the site out of your system for good.  Started when he said Jimmy Buffett and all his fans suck, and people disagree for some reason.

  65. 65.

    sab

    @Suzanne: As I am sure you know, hospitals are hard for patients because they frequently are loopy on painkillers, or coming down  or up from anasthetics, and they don’t understand the routine, and anyway they are just confused, and the nurses who work there every day have no idea how confused by the unfamiliar routine patients are.

    My first hospital admission was an emergency when I was in my late fifties. Seriously infected cat bite. Admitted late at night. Surgery. Husband crawled home after the surgery and went to bed. Came in late the next morning and I was frantic and furious. I hadn’t eaten for twenty-four hours and no one had any intention of feeding me because I hadn’t ordered breakfast. I hadn’t ordered breakfast because my husband had taken my purse (and my glasses)  home that night. I couldn’t see.

    I still am surprised that this wasn’t a daily occurence to these nurses, and am still angry, and wary of even the best intentioned hospital people. They will miss the most obvious things ever because they don’t listen to their (often but not always drug confused) patients.

    They spend most of their lives in hospitals. They need to remember many of us have never been admitted before, and have rarely even visited more than a day or two.

  66. 66.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Totally O/T, but what is it about some men that every time there’s an earthquake somewhere they feel obliged to condescendingly explain to me that “the Richter Scale is logarithmic” and that “very few people know that.” Pompous patronising pontificators.

  68. 68.

    Suzanne

    @Salty Sam .: All this went down about 24 hours after she came out of anesthesia, but she is still hopped up on painkillers and she didn’t realize that she had to order her food in advance, so she was hangry.

  69. 69.

    frosty

    Since it’s an Open Thread and I’ve just gotten back to all the posts today after a day of semi-successful birding, I wanted to say something about Merlin. The Photo ID is OK, but the Sound ID is spectacular. Here’s an interesting fact. They started programming it for matching sounds and didn’t get a lot of success. Then someone suggested matching the frequency chart (the black squiggly lines you see when you play the birdsong). They converted all their sound files to charts, tried the match, and it worked!​

  70. 70.

    Suzanne

    @sab: Oh, I know exactly what you mean. I get so frustrated, because the healthcare might be good, but the communications just are uniformly terrible. Like, patients have no idea what to expect. People just randomly come into your room and do stuff to you. She wants to go home, and she doesn’t know when that is. I spoke to the doctor, and I was like, “Look, I need someone to tell her what, when, and why something is happening. Say, ‘you can go home once you can walk 15 steps’ or whatever.” I get that the nurses don’t make these decisions, and that things change minute to minute, but it’s so frustrating. And it reads as incompetence or dishonesty.

  71. 71.

    sab

    @Suzanne: Been there and I was furious myself. Still mad twenty years later. I was in the hospital why didn’t you care that I hadn’t been fed. I hadn’t turned down food. No one even asked if I was hungry.

    You should cut her some slack. Typical hospital fuckup but she wasn’t wrong. She needed food and hadn’t been fed. That was their job, feed her or explain why it was not yet advisable.

  73. 73.

    HumboldtBlue

    Conspiratorial Bouillabaisse sounds like something I just got in my first ever Penzey’s delivery.​ 

    Also, you motherfuckers fill up a comments section quick!

  75. 75.

    Suzanne

    @sab: I did explain it to her, and when I got there, I ordered her lunch and pre-ordered dinner. I have also offered over and over to bring her whatever she wants to eat.

  76. 76.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Lyrebird: I think it definitely can win. The INDIA alliance defeated BJP in a byelection (special election in our language) this Friday. The BJP lost a seat that it had held by fairly big margin in the Hindi heartland. In state they have won in the last 2 cycles.

    Both the director and the producer of the documentary are my friends, I will tell them what you said.

  80. 80.

    sab

    @Suzanne: My husband was good when he finally got there. I had been up since dawn when the doctors and residents trouped through, but he didn’t get there until about ten because he was there waiting on the surgery results until 3 or 4 am.

    Twenty years later I am still angry. Not at him. But at the morning nurses. You wake me up and don’t bother to see if I am fed?  That seems basic care to me  whatever parameters the hospital wants to come up with.

  81. 81.

    sab

    @Suzanne: You didn’t do anything wrong, but I still think the hospital did. They may be all following the same practice but it is wrong. First morning after patients need a nurse to inquire what they need.

  84. 84.

    Dan B

    @SiubhanDuinne:  The quake in Morroco was 6.8.  We had a 6.9 about 40 miles SW of Seattle with damage to some brick buildings in the 8ndustrial flats where there is fill and to chimneys but no fatalities.  But there is a few thousand feet of glacial till which acts like a cushion.  The Atlas Mountains are probably very rigid ground.

  88. 88.

    Spanky

    @Suzanne: Having charge of a parent who is on mind- altering meds sucks big time. My mother railed at my father about the place she was in. Didn’t like the atmosphere or the staff.

    She was home in her own bed.

  89. 89.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

     Giuliani was held liable last month by a federal judge in a defamation lawsuit brought by two Georgia election workers who say they were falsely accused of fraud.

    To generate cash, he’s hawked autographed 9/11 shirts

    From a noun, a verb and 9/11 to a shirt, a signature, and 9/11.

    Only the best people.

  92. 92.

    LAO

    @Suzanne: You have all my sympathy, it’s very stressful dealing with a difficult parent, even when their distress is understandable. You are not alone. My mother is an absolute nightmare when hospitalized or during treatment. I thought her recent chemotherapy treatments were going to kill me.

    Good luck.

  93. 93.

    LAO

    Stupid O/T question (speaking of my mother) does anyone have a guess on what’s wrong when the water in a house runs in the basement, but weakens on the main floor and doesn’t work at all on the 2d floor?
    Clearly, I don’t understand plumbing.

  95. 95.

    LAO

    @Baud: I made that joke and shockingly, it just made my mother angrier. I’m still trying to figure out why she called me not my very handy brother.

    ETA: although she did leave a message with her plumber before she called me.

  97. 97.

    Steeplejack

    @sab:

    It is amazing the things that fall between the cracks. Quite a while back I was in the hospital for five days after having my jaw badly broken in a mugging, and on the (infrequent) occasions when they brought me anything to eat it wasn’t anything I could eat, because my goddamn jaws were wired shut! I would call a nurse and they would sort of apologetically take it away, but not offer to get anything else or to make a note for next time. I would ask for ice cream or broth or something I could actually eat, and they would get this pained look like asking food service for anything “special” would be like second-guessing a Michelin-starred chef. I know I was a bit out of it at times (concussion), but it was surreal.

  98. 98.

    prostratedragon

    @Righteous Hazard:  Looks like Klass agrees with my formulation (apologies to W.E.B. DuBois): The problem of the 21st century is the problem of the asshole. There have always been such, but these days there seem to be more having money and reach than ever before.

  99. 99.

    J. Arthur Crank (fka Jerzy Russian)

    @LAO:   Sounds like low water pressure.  It should be easy enough for a plumber to measure the pressure coming into the house.

  100. 100.

    Suzanne

    @WaterGirl: She’s normally very personable and wouldn’t typically ever talk to me or anyone else that way, but I have definitely seen her get pissed before. She’s confused and that’s making her be unreasonable. I was going to go to a yoga class before heading to the hospital, because I haven’t been in almost a week and I am carrying my stress. But Mr. Suzanne heard all this go down this morning and was like, “You better get down there ASAP”.

    I know she wants to come home, but I don’t want her here until she’s going to be safe.

  101. 101.

    Jackie

    @sab: My son was supposed to be a home birthed baby, but he had other plans – such as in mid labor deciding to turn transverse. My water broke on the 5th and hard contractions started late afternoon the 6th. That’s when he flipped from head first to transverse and basically got stuck. We ended up in the hospital and I had an emergency C early on the 7th. No food since the evening of the 5th. I was pretty much out of it the day my stubborn son was finally delivered following the surgery. On the 8th I was STARVING! No food allowed except liquids. A staff member accidentally brought me a tray of REAL FOOD; realized she had forgotten utensils and went to get them. I knew this wasn’t my food and I didn’t care! I did the Pudd’n Boots thing: scarfing down that plate of food using my fingers as fast as I could! By the time she got back apologizing that she had to take the food away, that plate was licked clean! 45 yrs ago and I’ll never forget it!

  102. 102.

    Suzanne

    @LAO: Thank you. My mom can be really fucken obstinate. I wish she could just let the process do its thing. Like, there’s nothing to rush home for. I know she misses her dog, but we are taking care of her. She can FaceTime with the Spawns. I am coming to visit daily and I bring coffee. I know it’s boring, but like, hot damn, chill.

  103. 103.

    Another Scott

    @J. Arthur Crank (fka Jerzy Russian): +1

    Could also be buildup of calcium-based deposits in the pipes (more friction in the pipes, more pressure loss the greater distance the water has to flow – assuming the water enters the house in the basement).

    It could also be similar buildup in the faucets and/or valves.  I’m remembering that my in-laws place had problems with it taking forever for the washing machine to fill.  Turned out there was a bunch of buildup at the valve where the water hose attached.  Replacing the water hoses fixed the problem.

    I hope it’s an easy fix, LAO!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  107. 107.

    lowtechcyclist

    @LAO: ​
     

    does anyone have a guess on what’s wrong when the water in a house runs in the basement, but weakens on the main floor and doesn’t work at all on the 2d floor?

    Really low water pressure?

    I’d check with a neighbor or two to see if anyone else, particularly anyone else at the same elevation or higher, is having the same problem.

  108. 108.

    Suzanne

    I will also note that, right before the surgery, I reminded her, “BE NICE TO ALL OF THE PEOPLE WHO ARE HELPING YOU!”. I emphasized that it is just better for everyone if she could just be nice. If you’re pissed, write a shitty Yelp review or something after the fact, but that it was not helpful to be impolite or rude. She was like, “Oh, yeah, totally, for sure!”.

    As rikyrah says….. uh huh, uh huh. That direction didn’t even make it 24 hours.

  109. 109.

    Soprano2

    @Suzanne: Communications with my husband’s doctor’s office isn’t any better. You don’t get the same person when you call that you talked to last time, so you have to keep explaining what you need. I spent 4 days last week trying to get them to help me with the form we got from the state about my husband’s driver’s license being revoked. I finally called the neuropsych doctor in desperation, because she’s the one who reported him. She said she could see that on Wednesday they applied for occupational medicine to schedule a driving test for him. I said “Why couldn’t the nurse in that office tell me that?” So, so frustrating.

  110. 110.

    TriassicSands

    @sab:  @Suzanne

    There is an amazing amount of dysfunction and incompetence in hospitals today — something seen throughout our entire health care system. Some of it is due to bad doctors, some to pandemic-related staff shortages that still plague this country, but the most serious problem, in my opinion, is the health care system itself.

    What insane person would ever come up with private insurance, Medicare (inadequate without supplementary insurance), Medicaid (inadequate because of poor reimbursement and the difficulty for many patients in finding care), and the VA (actual socialism). And the first three of those vary in important ways in different states. Medicare Advantage is just a wedge to move to privatizing the system.

    Insurance is often the great barrier between timely, competent care and the patient. There are many rules in place that have nothing whatever to do with patient care, but prioritize things like billing, scheduling, etc. It is well-known that medical debt is the single biggest cause of personal bankruptcy in the US, even for patients with insurance. Medicare-for-All is a nice slogan, but if traditional Medicare were the model for universal care it would perpetuate, not solve, medical debt problems. Obviously, it would have to be a significantly more comprehensive system than what is in place today.

    The one part of the system that is working quite well (in general) is nursing. However, nurses can only do so much.

    It doesn’t surprise me at all if patients get angry when they are in the hospital. Sadly, it is often the nurses who bear the brunt of that anger

    I don’t know your mother.

  111. 111.

    Subsole

    @Righteous Hazard:

    I am convinced the reason Gavin McInnes grew out his facial hair is to hide the fact he has an earthworm where most humans keep their neck.

    Same deal with Andrew Tate. Man wears a beard because he looks like a renegade soft-boiled egg without it.

  113. 113.

    Suzanne

    @Soprano2: I will say that I have a fair amount of experience with hospitals, as a patient, a family member/support person, and in the course of my job…. and I have been mostly pleased by the quality of communications between offices. And everyone is polite and give an overall impression of competence. But she is an anxious person, she’s got some aphasia and ongoing memory issues from encephalitis some years ago, and she’s in a confusing situation that is constantly changing. So I understand her feelings. I just wish she could relax. The American healthcare system is just frustrating and clonky, and there’s no way around it.

  114. 114.

    sab

    @WaterGirl: I tend not to be an angry person, but the morning after my surgery when I hadn’t eaten for twenty-four hours and the nurses didn’t seem to care I was extremely angry. Took it out on my husband not the nurses, but I still blame them and the hospital. I am not sure that without him coming in they might never have fed me until my vital signs collapsed. Just because I didn’t order my own meal.

    I am super wary and suspicious and challenging in any hospital setting now. I know I can’t trust them. It is up to me to protect my loved one, because they are just following protocols.

  117. 117.

    Soprano2

    @sab: My friend Sandy told me her husband’s hip surgery was a nightmare. He had Alzheimer’s, in the mid stages. Two days after the surgery my friend got Covid, so she couldn’t be with him. Every day they told her he was ok, and was eating ok. After nine days she was able to see him. She said he had lost 20 lbs, that she found broken dishes in his bed, probably from when he got frustrated because no one was helping him. They had moved him three times; by the time she saw him, he was at the end of the hall a long ways from the nurses station. They thought he just wouldn’t use his call button, but he couldn’t remember to use it! She believes that hospital stay accelerated his death by a lot. She said she hopes my husband never has to be in the hospital, because it’s really hard on people with memory problems.

  120. 120.

    SFAW

    @SiubhanDuinne: ​
     

    Totally O/T, but what is it about some men that every time there’s an earthquake somewhere they feel obliged to condescendingly explain to me that “the Richter Scale is logarithmic” and that “very few people know that.” Pompous patronising pontificators.

    If it makes you feel any better, I definitely wouldn’t mansplain to you about it, because who TF can remember that shit? If I even knew it in the first place …

  122. 122.

    sab

    @Soprano2: HIPA.  Nurses can’t tell you anything. Privacy, so that is a very good thing, but day to day it sucks. They should at least be allowed to tell you they can’t tell you anything, but that would also be information.

  124. 124.

    Soprano2

    @sab: No, because the neuropsych doctor could tell me. I don’t think HIPAA covers “They are going to schedule a driving test,” especially when they did it because of me calling them!

  125. 125.

    LAO

    To all those of you who responded to my comment about my mother’s water issue, turns out it is low pressure due to a water main break a street over from my mom.

    Thank you for your advice.

  126. 126.

    sab

    @Soprano2: My older sister, a successful academic in a difficult field, is extremely annoyingly persistent in all aspects of her life. She goes through very  successful motions of being polite but only until that interferes with her objective.

    Dad’s first time in the hospital I was furious. “You are pissing off all the nurses who care for him.” ” I don’t care. I want them to know he has an angry, litigious daughter who cares about him and is watching.”

    Fi

  129. 129.

    tokyokie

    @Hoppie:

    Chuckle of the day:  prior to 1999, one of the predecessor newspapers (of the top cartoon by Clay Bennett) was the Chattanooga News-Free Press.  You cannot make this stuff up.

    I used to work for the other Chattanooga paper, so I know all about the News-Free Press. It used to run so many pictures of white people handing checks to somebody that I was surprised I never was photographed buying groceries. Anytime three random elderly white women got together, the News-Free Press would send out a photographer. One day, it ran the same, 40-inch UPI legislative session preview twice on the same page. Another time, it ran the same one-column story about holiday garbage pickup changes three or four times in the same edition. And because the owner-publisher thought anybody who’d taken a college class (other than his family members), even alums of the notoriously leftist University of Tennessee-Knoxville, were hopelessly brainwashed commie symps, he’d only hire high school grads. When the old man died and his grandson inherited the paper, the grandson in short order cashed out and sold the operation. It was an astonishingly bad, but appropriately named, newspaper.

  130. 130.

    Elie said

    @Suzanne:

    Elderly patients have hard times with sedation and anesthesia as well as immobility.  I’m sorry her nurse was apparently unprepared for this kind of complication of treatment.  I’m hoping she got the assessment she needs to appropriately treat her and “bring her back”.  By the way this can happen to younger patients in ICUs as well. Just remember this delirium IS treatable

  131. 131.

    tokyokie

    @Suzanne: What @tobie say @ #50 is true, but a sudden change in mentation with an elderly patient can also be an early symptom of a UTI, so you might ask the hospitalist to test her urine for bacteria.

  132. 132.

    Elie said

    It’s called “delirium” and is a not unexpected complication for elderly having major surgery or treatment in the hospital.  Most nursing and medical staff should know how to identify and treat it. It is treatable but the earlier it’s assessed the better. There is a lot of literature on it in nursing and medicine so don’t take my word for it

  133. 133.

    Ruckus

    @TriassicSands:

    I get better healthcare through the VA than I have in the public medical system for the last 50+ yrs. Before that, when insurance or someone decided that every one had to see a specialist for every thing. Yes I see specialists at the VA. But to see them you have to get a referral from your assigned primary doc. But also once you do see them as long as they don’t close the reason you are seeing them everything works good. Some of all of this is keeping a smile on your mug and being massively patient. And it is still far better than when I last had heath insurance from my job. And the VP of finance at that job had tried to purchase health care like we had up until 2000 and no company would sell it to us for any amount of money. Actual public healthcare is much in need of a reboot but public healthcare insurance is completely fucked up.

  134. 134.

    Quiltingfool

    Some awful hospital experiences!  I am sorry you all didn’t have the care I got when I had my knee replaced!  I don’t remember filling out a menu, they just brought me food – it wasn’t super great, but I was pretty hungry so I ate it all and was thrilled to get butterscotch pudding, lol!

    My big gripe was my hospital gown.  They did not have a gown that fit a big ol’ gal like me, so the poor aides had to see my fat white hiney every time they helped me to the restroom.  I figured they had probably seen plenty of pasty asses, so one more won’t scar them for life.

    I had a real sweet aide come in my room in the middle of the night to check on me (I was awake) and she asked if I heard the man down the hall having a screaming conniption fit.  I told her I hadn’t, and she told me the man called the cops on the nurses!  (he needed mental health care). Our hospital doesn’t have a psych ward, so they put folks having psych issues on the floor I was on!  Plus they had 4-5 patients who had knee or hip replacements that day.  My doctor was cranking out the replacements!

  135. 135.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Steeplejack: I got my knee replaced in early 2021 when COVID was killing people all over and I couldn’t get vaccinated yet. They gave me a surgical mask to wear in the ward, but it was the kind you have to tie in back, which is a two-handed operation. But most of the time I had limited mobility in one hand because that arm had an IV tube jammed into it, and some alarm in the damned thing would start beeping if you jostled it wrong so I wasn’t going to do that if I could avoid it. So I could take the mask off to eat but it was going to be nearly impossible to get it back on again without assistance. That meant that I just had to be unmasked most of the time. That bothered me a bit.

  138. 138.

    Ruckus

    @Suzanne:

    Sometimes it’s the anesthesia which doesn’t agree with the patient, sometimes it’s the length of time they are under, sometimes it’s both. And sometimes the person is just not all that agreeable with sedation. But the time and degree of sedation can have after effects, which usually clear up pretty fast, although it may not be a great time getting there.

  139. 139.

    hotshoe

    @Shalimar: ​ Oof, there was no reason for Erik Loomis to troll his own readers by stomping on Jimmy Buffet:

    “Jimmy Buffet sucked, his fans suck, the beach sucks, puns suck, playing the same songs every single night for 40 years sucks, there is literally nothing good about Jimmy Buffett.”

    Funny thing, almost every music post he does, I listen to every clip he provides. Not because I like the artists — I don’t usually end up finding a new artist to love — but because I love Erik’s well-written commentary.eg:

    Show Me the Body, Trouble the Water

    I have long stated I am not a metal guy, largely because of the vocal stylings of the genre, but this is about as good as I’ve heard in the genre for a long time. In part because these are both real songs and you can actually mostly understand the words. It is heavy for sure, but not universally so, which is a good stylistic makeup. I still can’t see listening to this again, but at least I learned a little bit more about what metal might occasionally appeal to me.B

    See, if Erik had felt a need to criticize Jimmy Buffett (which, I guess, he felt only because of news of Buffett’s recent death) then he could have written that paragraph about Buffett’s beach music, substituting only one or two words to make it relevant to the “tropical rock” instead of metal.

    He didn’t have to be mean. It was his choice to be ugly cynical and mean about Jimmy Buffett.

    So, after trolling his commenters, he decides to ban a few who don’t obey his (unwritten) command to agree with him or else.

    Oh well.​​​

  141. 141.

    Shalimar

    @hotshoe: I got banned for pointing out that anyone who didn’t like his “You’re only here because I allow it” attitude should quit the site.  I won’t bother asking to be reinstated, though I have been commenting there for 15 years.  Loomis has become such an asshole troll that it isn’t worth the aggravation to read the writers I do like.  They choose to let him ban people.

  142. 142.

    Shalimar

    I just read one of the dumbest stories I have seen in a long time.  Michigan State’s football coach is under investigation for sexually harassing a sexual assault prevention advocate who came to speak to his team.  He’s a married man, and claims the relationship with the advocate was just consensual cheating on his wife.  Even if he is telling the truth, he should be fired.  How stupid do you have to be to start an affair with someone whose job is educating people about unwanted affairs?

  143. 143.

    hotshoe

    @Shalimar: ​

    Sorry you’re losing your community history over there.
    Seems like Erik is weirdly over-reacting — I saw some other folks at LGM say “okay, he’s always been that way” or “well, it’s just his typical persona” — but to me it seems old-man-cranky to the excessive point where it makes him look sick.

  144. 144.

    Shalimar

    @hotshoe: He has always been that way, but he is also getting more aggressive about it.  Stating outright that he can insult large groups of people but they get banned for responding is a weird line in the sand for a writer to draw.  The goal is expanding readership, not alienating the existing readers.

  146. 146.

    Princess

    @LAO: glad it got figured out. My thought as I was reading this morning was that something had to be leaking somewhere and I hoped it wasn’t in the house!

    Re: hospitals, yes they are very difficult for people with dementia and can be the moment when things slip from manageable to needs full-time residential care. 

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