Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. keep building.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

Republicans in disarray!

The “burn-it-down” people are good with that until they become part of the kindling.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” was supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

If you voted for Trump, you don’t get to speak about ethics, morals, or rule of law.

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

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

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

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

The current Supreme Court is a dangerous, rogue court.

We still have time to mess this up!

Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.

When they say they are pro-life, they do not mean yours.

If you don’t believe freedom is for everybody, then the thing you love isn’t freedom, it is privilege.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

Every decision we make has lots of baggage with it, known or unknown.

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

After dobbs, women are no longer free.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

You are here: Home / Immigration / Repub Venality Open Thread: Furriners Bad, the Never-Ending Fairytale

Repub Venality Open Thread: Furriners Bad, the Never-Ending Fairytale

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I remember my Anthro 101 professor, fifty years ago, telling us that one of the universal human constants was the conviction that Those people on the other side of the river eat taboo foods and have sex with prohibited kinfolk. The modern GOP, of course, considers this a valuable plank in their ‘Old ways are the BEST — real Murican — ways‘ platform…

Gym Jordan’s legislative lynch mob investigative committee:

I hate to quote David Frum, but the man *does* understand Republican pathology… “Trump Promises a ‘Bloody Story’”:

Donald Trump says something crazy or vicious almost every time he speaks. It’s his nature, but it’s also a political strategy. The flow of half-demented, half-depraved talk energizes those who enjoy it—and exhausts those who are horrified by it…

At a campaign rally in Wisconsin yesterday, Trump talked about his plans for “mass deportation” of border-crossers. “In Colorado, they’re so brazen, they’re taking over sections of the state,” he claimed, presumably alluding to reports of gang activity in an apartment building in a Denver suburb. “And you know, getting them out will be a bloody story. They should never have been allowed to come into our country. Nobody checked them.”…

Trump’s “bloody story” talk is not a guide to what a hypothetical future Trump administration would do. A future Trump administration will be a chaos of constitutional and foreign-policy crises, incapable of any kind of considered or consistent domestic policy. Bloody story is instead a revelation about how Trump feels—and a troubling reminder of the sources of his appeal. Real-world enforcement implies real costs. Labor would become more scarce. Immigrant-dependent services would become more expensive. The roofing industry, for example, now relies heavily on the most recent immigrants, so housing would cost more. Trump never accepts trade-offs. He deals in lies and delusions, such as financing child care through supposedly free money from magic tariffs that somehow protect U.S. industry without costing U.S. consumers anything.

Above all, Trump traffics in yearnings for punishment of people he regards as outsiders and inferiors. They will suffer, they will shed blood, they will pay—and somehow their pain and their loss will elevate and empower him and those who support him. It’s never true, but for a moment it feels good. What more vivid form of power is there than the power to inflict pain?

Reader Interactions

182Comments

  4. 4.

    CaseyL

    These GOP slime fests are disgusting, repulsive, and the RW mudfuckers spreading them would be well served by a week or so in the public stocks being pelted with rotten eggs…. but who is being moved by those stories?

    My guess is the only people who believe them are Trump voters anyway.

    People we will never be able to reach, so why bother?

  5. 5.

    satby

    Trump has a special hate on for Haitians and the humanitarian parole program many came to the US under. He tried to eliminate it in his last time in office.

  6. 6.

    David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch

    Don’t The Simpsons live in Springfield. Maybe its their nuclear power plant causing the disappearing ducks.

  7. 7.

    zhena gogolia

    This is all horrible, but that “Please vote for Trump” meme is making me laugh, I have to admit.

  8. 8.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Xenophobia is one of the hallmark MAGAt tropes. They thrive on it, and they’ll tell whatever lies they see fit to promulgate it.

  9. 9.

    Lacuna Synecdoche

    I’m looking at that photoshopped (or AI?) picture of Trump holding a kitten and duck and, frankly, that duck looks nonplussed and the kitten looks terrified. I mean, look at that kitten’s eyes.

  10. 10.

    Gin & Tonic

    If this doesn’t ultimately trace back to russia, as most such tightly coordinated disinfo does, I’ll eat my hat.

    I said hat.

  15. 15.

    Shalimar

    Someone randomly shipped the town 20,000 Haitians?  Have they tried calling Texas Governor Abbott?  That really sounds more like his M.O. than Biden.

  16. 16.

    satby

    Chef José Andrés @chefjoseandres

    59m

    Haitians are good people. Hard working people. ⁦

    @JDVance @realDonaldTrump and @elonmusk@X

    ⁩ platform have not right to spread false claims, to lie …they don’t love immigrants and they don’t love USA, a country of immigrants..

  17. 17.

    Harrison Wesley

    There are lots of Haitians around where I live.  Many of them live in the developments immediately around me, and I hear a lot of Creole spoken when I’m on the bus.  Strangely enough, all the ponds and creeks and other waterways here are overflowing with ducks, geese, and a gazillion other varieties of birds.  Maybe it’s part of Haitian cuisine that only domesticated animals are devoured.  I guess I’ll have to begin corralling them on the street: “Yo, y’all Haitian, right?  Where’s my dog?”  Another way to make friends.

  18. 18.

    MobiusKlein

    Next thing you know, the GOP will go after the Chinese, since they feature duck in many dishes.

    Also don’t forget that goose is a traditional English dish for the holidays.

  21. 21.

    NotMax

    @satby

    In the 1950s, into the 60s, the scuttlebutt was about Chinese restaurants serving cats rounded up from the neighborhood.

  25. 25.

    scav

    oooooOOOOoooooo!  They’ve discovered the meme power setting on the campaign machine.  Cute Kitties!  Will they be heroically saving them from childless cat ladies next?

  26. 26.

    Chet Murthy

    These slurs against various immigrant groups are right out of the “sadopopulism” playbook ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOjJtEkKMX4 ) and the rapid-fire nature of them makes me wonder if the bad guys are getting desperate.  If they had confidence, they wouldn’t be throwing out such blatant falsehoods so …. rapid-fire, they’d throw out something and work it to make it stick (I would think).  But instead they’re throwing one out, and when it doesn’t stick, throwing the next one out.  Of course, they have nothing positive to offer but that goes almost without saying, since that is the nature of oligarchic and personalist regimes: they specialize in loyalty, and with loyalty comes incompetence.  So all they can offer is new targets for hatred.  But it’s done so …. clumsily.

    I want to believe that this means they can see they’re losing, but …. I’m not an optimistic guy by nature.

  28. 28.

    Lacuna Synecdoche

    @satby:

    I’m so old I remember the rumors and slander was about Chinese immigrants stealing dogs to eat them.

    In the 1980s.

    I’m pretty sure that particular slur goes all the way back to the 19th century – maybe even earlier.

     

  29. 29.

    Chet Murthy

    @Steve LaBonne: @CaseyL: And also because, unanswered, they’ll continue to push the line, and uninformed barely-aware “Ariana Grande” [h/t Paul Campos @ LGM] voters will believe the calumny, since nobody is refuting it.  And then they’ll vote on it.

  31. 31.

    Chet Murthy

    @Gin & Tonic: Ok for us kids in the back of the class who didn’t do our languages homework today, what’s going on there?  I see a pretty girl wearing her kitty-cat as a hat, and singing along.  But that’s it.

  36. 36.

    hitchhiker

    My sister’s kid married a guy from the DR, and I went along to visit her in 2019, the winter before the pandemic. Telling you this because of a comment/tweet upthread that says Dominicans aren’t racist because they’re black, too.

    LOL.

    The DR guy who is now in my extended family is one of the most racist people I’ve ever met. Like, openly, and happily. He explained to me how cool it was that when my niece had her DNA tested, it showed that she had no African blood at all, and how if they had kids, their skin would be even lighter than his — and he was very proud to have brown and not black skin.

    He pointed to Haitian day-laborers crammed into the back of a pickup truck — all very black — and got into a whole discussion about how they were only allowed to be in the DR for x amount of time, and then they had to go back. He shrugged, saying this, to indicate that it sucked to be them, oh well. Obviously they weren’t worth keeping around. Much too black.

    Did I mention he worked for the government? Drove a fancy car, paid for our dinner with his gov’t credit card, used it again later to buy groceries and gas, told us everybody does it. Yay, corruption.

    I knew ahead of time that he was a trump fan, and would have gladly taken him apart if my sister hadn’t begged me to hold back. She suspects that he bullies her kid, but doesn’t know how exactly that manifests.

  37. 37.

    banditqueen

    Weird isn’t going to do it for this vile, dangerous, racist BS–their fanatical followers were waving “mass deportation now” signs at the republi-klan rally so they’re primed & ready to conjure up any easy, shameless lie about neighbors they don’t like: ‘gangs in apartments in Colorado’, ‘pets being eaten’ (RFKJr who, K Noem who), ‘who’s maybe getting an abortion’… VDVance can scarcely talk about his wife and children without contempt. Walz should tell VD Vance that vance is a disgrace to the uniform he wore–I just wish Walz could rip VD’s insignia off while doing so.

    This story, with the standing threat of massive deportation and accompanying violent threats–are shouting to us about  something that can only end in horror and the media cannot be allowed to ‘sane’ wash any aspect of what is happening with the trump crime party.

    à bas le republican party

  38. 38.

    Chet Murthy

    @banditqueen:Factio Republicanem delenda est ?

    I don’t know Latin, but ISTR (((CassandraLeo))) over at LG&M coining something like this.  Inspiration hers, errors mine.

  39. 39.

    Hoppie

    I was born in Springfield, which is hardly a “small town”, and grew up in a real small town ten miles south.  Springfield never really completely recovered after Crowell-Collier Publishing closed their plant in the 1950’s.  I would think the immigrants will help reinvigorate the city.

  41. 41.

    Jay

    @Shalimar:

    The normal path, is somebody moves somewhere, finds a job and affordable living, sends some money back home. Say’s it’s a “good place”, or maybe just not “horrible” place to live. Then somebody else comes, and then another, and then another, and soon there is a community, and being a community, there is community support for new arrivals.

  42. 42.

    Jackie

    Hopefully every Haitian/American in Florida votes for Harris. And Haitian/Americans elsewhere, of course!

  43. 43.

    SpaceUnit

    I’m finding hope and joy in their desperation.

     

    And also the projection – MAGA world realizing that they’re the goose that’s about to get cooked.

  46. 46.

    banditqueen

    @Chet Murthy: I think @Villago Delenda Est: has the plan–the repubs and the village are too close together at this point–a new opposition party and reconfigured media can form and build after the current monsters are left in the dust bin of bad history.

  47. 47.

    Jay

    You see, they arn’t killing ducks like real “Merkins”.

    “Merkins” spend $4K on a 12 gauge autoloader shot gun, pay a gunsmith $300 to use ferns, leaves, grass blades and cheap spray paint to “camo” it, spend $2500 on “camo” patterned  neoprene waders, boots, jacket, t-shirt, underwear, socks and one fluro orange truckers cap. They spend $5k to rent a hunting lease, in reeds in the water, out in the country, $2K for a “camo’d” duck blind and $500 on camo’s stilt chairs and tables to be able to sit comfortably in the wet duck blind. They then spend $2500-$40,000 on a pedigree’d, trained retriever with a blood line going back to the Roman Empire.

    The “wrong sort of people”, go down to the City Park with a bag of stale bread, sit on a park bench and keep the framing hammer close.

  48. 48.

    NotMax

    @SiubhanDuinne

    Mrs. Mooney has a pie shop
    Does a business but I’ve noticed something weird—
    Lately, all her neighbors’ cats have disappeared
    Have to hand it to her—
    What I calls
    Enterprise
    Popping pussies into pies
    Wouldn’t do in my shop—
    Just the thought of it’s enough to make you sick
    And I’m telling you them pussy cats is quick!
    .

  49. 49.

    Mart

    I was working in the DR and had a first class fancy dinner with very wealthy expat Cubans whoDr families fled the commies to DR. They spent most of the evening shitting on Haiti and loving on the Felon. Only good thing to happen was I accidentally knocked my stupidly tall red wine glass all over the top dogs suit.

  50. 50.

    gwangung

    These are weirdos who’re TRYING to be the Big Bad, and doing a sucky job of it. They’re trying to own the libs by getting people mad and hot ‘n bothered.

    Mock the hell out of these boobs using stale, overused cliches.

  51. 51.

    Jay

    @Mart:

    In Haiti, the slaves won, but lost. They were forced to pay reparations to France, got regularly invaded and screwed over.

    In the DR, the slave owners won.

  52. 52.

    John Revolta

    I don’t know but I’ve been told that all the Latinos in New York- Puerto Ricans especially, but also Central Americans and Mexicans- hate the Dominicans because they think they’re better than all the rest of them and are extremely condescending to them.

  53. 53.

    Chet Murthy

    None so blind as those who refuse to see: https://www.rawstory.com/donald-trump-polls-2669154041/

    “‘Crazy’: Shouting erupts on CNN as Dem says Trump ‘protects and projects’ white supremacy”
    Democratic strategist Keith Boykin jumped in and shared what he said “really bothers him” about these discussions.

    “I never really talk about this because it’s not politically correct to say it, but he’s in a dead heat because of white people,” said Boykin, to which Urban shook his head in disagreement. “The majority of white people support Donald Trump.”

    [….]

    After a brief back-and-forth debate between Boykin and [CNN anchor Abby] Phillip, who noted Trump has improved his support with Black voters since 2016, Urban noted that Stelter also disagreed with Boykin.

  55. 55.

    Ishiyama

    The refrain from an old campfire song:

    Oh, Mister Johnny Verbeck, how could you be so mean?
    We told you you’d be sorry for inventing that machine.
    Now all the neighbors’ cats and dogs will nevermore be seen
    For they’ve all been ground to sausages
    By Johnny Verbeck’s machine.

  56. 56.

    Roberto el oso

    @Chris: And the thing about Vance and the couch is that, were hard evidence to be produced, no one would really be that surprised.

  57. 57.

    West of the Rockies

    That final Christian Prepperr bit reveals everything one needs to know about whatever a Christian prepper is:  racist, stupid, arrogant, and ugly.

  58. 58.

    Ghost of Joe Liebling’s Dog

    @NotMax:

    And at least as far back as WWII, there was a song about a Dutch man named Johnny Vorbeck, who invented a sausage-making machine, and depleted the neighborhood of cats and dogs before becoming ensausaged (word? now it is) himself.

     

    ETA : Ishiyama got there first …

  63. 63.

    TS

    I’m of an age with the weird old orange guy and no way do his hands look like they do in that  picture.

  64. 64.

    columbusqueen

    @Jay: Which happened up in Akron; immigrants from Nepal came & got jobs with a soap company, sent word back home, & now there’s a good-sized Nepali community who mostly work at the soap factory.

  67. 67.

    TS

    Not to mention the idiot with the spanish language school. My IQ dropped by 10 points reading the MAGA answers to that video.

    Until trump I would not have believed some people could be so dumb as to believe this s…t

  69. 69.

    Urza

    I was just going to look at Penzy’s for some spices to reward them and its throwing server errors.  Likely someone DDoS’d or hacked them and that’s directly the fault of a particular person who should be sued for it.  At a minimum its lost business while its happening.  Can’t even see if there’s a local store to go to in Washington.

  70. 70.

    4D*hiker

    @Jay:

    “keep the framing hammer close”……..hahaha.

    Using the simplest tool required for a job has an unappreciated elegance which can’t be bought.

    Recovering from covid and your comment was the first good laugh I’ve had in a week. Thanks. Hahaha

  71. 71.

    Ukai

    If animals can talk to humans, they’d say to Republicans, “Leave us out of your sick activities and stories and go see a therapist, you fucking weirdos.”

  72. 72.

    Mai Naem mobile

    @Urza: i figure the Harris people are going after the Jamaican American community in Florida which apparently is good sized which would make up for any Hatians voting for TFG. Apparently there’s a decent sized Jamaican American population in Texas, PA and NC as well. Maybe the NY Jamaican American population could make a difference in some US House races.

  74. 74.

    JoyceH

    It was just recently that I noticed the xenophobia in the word “outlandish” – when you call something outlandish, you’re saying “one of those weird wrong things that the outlanders do.”

  76. 76.

    Mai Naem mobile

    So apparently Usha Vance has done next to no campaign events for TFG and her hubby. One of the first ones they send her out to with Vance is to a Butcher shop in PA. Usha Vance is a vegetarian. Almost feels like the TFG people aren’t happy with her husband and punishing her. Just seems so tone deaf.

  78. 78.

    Princess

    @Mai Naem mobile: That tracks. Trump loves humiliating men by humiliating their wives. He hurts Usha and Vance doesn’t defend her and is thus weakened. Just like Ted Cruz and his wife.

  81. 81.

    piratedan

     

    @mrmoshpotato: don’t.  She knows who she married.  Who she clerked for is a good indication that her motivations (no matter who she married) are tempered by class and money and power.

  83. 83.

    NotMax

    FYI.

    Trump social-media stock ‘DJT’ extends skid ahead of presidential debate
    Stock is suffering its 17th drop in the past 20 trading days

    Friday’s drop put Trump Media & Technology Group Corp.’s stock in line for a 17th loss in the past 20 trading days, just days ahead of next week’s presidential debate.

    Another key date this month for the stock is Sept. 25, which is the end of its ban on sales of Trump Media & Technology’s stock by company insiders.

    Trump Media & Technology, which operates the Truth Social platform, has lost nearly $3 billion in value for its largest shareholder, Donald Trump, since the stock’s 31% rally on July 15, the first trading day after Trump survived an assassination attempt two days earlier.

    The stock closed that day at $40.58 a share.

    At last check on Friday, the stock was down 2.2% at $17.01, its lowest point since Trump Media & Technology completed its merger with the blank-check company Digital World Acquisition Corp. in March to go public. Source

    Closed up a smidgen from that low on Monday. Still hovering at a loss of aprroximately 75% of the value at its highest point.

    Also, another loss for Dolt 45 in court.

    A federal judge in Delaware has ruled in favor of a firm seeking assurance that it will be able to sell its minority stake in the parent company of former president Donald Trump’s Truth Social platform.

    The judge on Friday granted summary judgment to Florida-based United Atlantic Ventures LLC in a lawsuit filed against Minnesota-based Odyssey Transfer and Trust Co., a business that handles securities transfers among registered shareholders.

    UAV is owned by Andrew Litinsky and Wesley Moss, former contestants on Trump’s TV show, “The Apprentice” who also helped facilitate a merger that took Trump Media public in March.
    [snip]
    Attorneys for Trump Media assured a state judge in Delaware earlier this year that UAV was entitled to an 8.6% stake and would suffer no merger-related dilution. They now contend, however, that UAV is not entitled to its shares because of pre-merger mismanagement by Litinsky and Moss. Source

  84. 84.

    Gretchen

    That Spanish-speaking preschool story is my favorite. If nobody at the school speaks English, how did they tell them they needed to hire a translator? Or did these English-speaking teachers just not plan to teach the 3 year olds any English, for reasons?

    This Haitian story is really dangerous. Here in Kansas we have a lot of immigrants working in meat-packing, because, guess what, Americans don’t want to do that work. There were a lot of Somali workers living in Garden City,  and 3 militia types planned to bomb an apartment building that housed 120 Somalis. Fortunately they were caught before they carried out the plot and are facing life in prison.  To have the potential VP of the US deliberately trying to stir up that kind of hatred is horrifying.

  85. 85.

    Chet Murthy

    @Gretchen: i remember during the pandemic there were new stories about the meat packing plants.  And it was clear then that they employed larger numbers of immigrants, especially refugees.  Because those peopleDon’t have any choices and so they’re willing to take these jobs.  And back then it was about the horrible working conditions And how so many people were getting covid because of those conditions.

    It’s bad enough that these jobs don’t have decent working conditions, so only people with no other choices will take the work, but then these racists have to burn down their housing? That’s insane.

  86. 86.

    NotMax

    FYI. Dreadful.

    Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei has died days after being doused in petrol and set on fire by a former boyfriend.

    The 33-year-old Ugandan marathon runner, who competed in the recent Paris Olympics, had suffered extensive burns after Sunday’s attack. Source

  87. 87.

    Gretchen

    @Mai Naem mobile: TFG is known for getting a kick out of humiliating people who want something from him. Remember that photo of Romney at dinner with him trying to get chosen for Secretary of State?  My guess is that TFG regrets choosing Vance and is deliberately sending him places with no advance work so he looks like an idiot, like that donut shop.

  89. 89.

    barbequebob

    Late to this but,

    Apparently some 17th century English colonists compared the meat of wild deer fawns favourably to  that of spaniel puppies that they were familair with eating

    “Writing about deer, William Wood, chronicler of life in the
    Massachusetts Bay Colony from 1629 to 1633, observed: “their
    flesh is as good as Beefe”_(1634/1968, p. 21). John Josselyn, an
    early student of natural history, compared the taste of venison eaten
    in the New World with that of English deer meat and other meats:
    “their flesh is not dry like Deers flesh, but moist and luscious
    somewhat like Horse flesh (as they judge that have tasted of both)
    but very wholesome. The flesh of their Fawns is an incomparable
    dish, beyond the flesh of an Affes Foal so highly esteemed by the
    Romans, or that of Young Spaniel Puppies so much cried up in
    our days in France and England” (1672/1865, p. 19).”

     

    From  CONTINUITY AND CHANGE IN THE
    FOOD HABITS OF THE SEVENTEENTHCENTURY
    ENGLISH COLONISTS IN
    PLYMOUTH AND MASSACHUSETTS BAY
    JULIAN B. FISCHER1, LAURA H. McARTHUR1 and
    JAMES B. PETERSEN2*
    1Environmental Program and Department of Nutritional Sciences,
    University of Vermont, Burlington, VT 05405; 2Archaeology
    Research Center, University of Maine at Farmington, Farmington,
    ME 04938

    Published in Ecology of Food and Nutrition, Vol. 36, pp. 65-93 © 1997 OPA (Overseas Publishers Association)
    Reprints available directly from the publisher Amsterdam B.V. Published by The Netherlands
    Photocopying permitted by license only under license by Gordon and Breach Science Publishers
    Printed in Malaysia

  90. 90.

    Citizen Alan

    @Chris: The couch thing was a joke, but it had legs. The fact that couch fucker doesn’t consider women to be functionally human and believes they have no purpose in life except to pop out babies or to take care of the babies that younger women have popped out is absolutely true, but no one in the media cares about it. So yeah, I’m gonna keep calling him a couch fucker.

  95. 95.

    Tony Jay

     INFOTAINMENT INC 

     NARRATIVE MAINTENANCE DEPT -S4e

    Sample Note – Memethemes.

    Democrats scramble to blunt GOP surge on border defence/social cohesion issues.

    Collate online and letters page reports of domestic animal redistribution – frame as ‘Amidst the partisan fray, is there something strange happening to domestic pets?‘ Aliens? Pet-snatching rings? Open ended. Just asking questions.

    Redirect – Pet Pie jokes vs Couch jokes. Equally sophomoric and unimportant. Both sides.

  96. 96.

    Birdie

    It seems like most the Republicans posting about this are doing it as a “joke”, waiting for us to get offended so they can make some comment about couches.

    The sad thing is that this Republican joke is racist and boring (the “same old tired playbook” as MVP so accurately said). They haven’t gotten any new material since the 80s and it shows.

  97. 97.

    sab

    I love my state (Ohio) but my God some lots of us are are truly vile human beings. We voted for this guy when Tim Ryan was the alternative. That still just boggles my mind.

  99. 99.

    Anne Laurie

    @JoyceH: It was just recently that I noticed the xenophobia in the word “outlandish” – when you call something outlandish, you’re saying “one of those weird wrong things that the outlanders do.”

    Also, ‘barbarous / barbaric’ is literally ‘what the filthy, non-Greek-speaking non-citizens do’.

    “They don’t even have real *language*, they just go bar-bar-bar at each other!”

  101. 101.

    TBone

    @Gin & Tonic: 😆

    It is so old, unimaginative, and stupid that I’ve been thinking this whole time reading this “Does this sort of thing still work on the Russian people?” Pooty really jumps the shark every chance he gets, one stupid stunt after another.

    He is not a smart man if this is the best he can do.  Foisting Donvict upon us again was really lame.

  103. 103.

    Suzanne

    Rod Dreher fell for the Haitians-eating-pets story and posted the whiniest, most self-indulgent nonsense about it. He wonders why we hate him and people like him. It’s because you’re a racist dumbass, Rod.

  104. 104.

    Rusty

    @Mai Naem mobile: Don’t feel sorry for her, she is as right wing as JD.  Yale undergrad and Yale law school, clerked for Kavanaugh and for Roberts on the Supreme Court.   At Yale, she and JD started a discussion group on the decline of white society.   Two terrible people together.

  105. 105.

    Baud

    @Rusty:

    At Yale, she and JD started a discussion group on the decline of white society.

     
    Then she married one of the causes of tbat decline.

  106. 106.

    Baud

    FWIW, the couch story isn’t directed at some innocent third party and doesn’t trigger the lizard brain of racists.

  109. 109.

    MagdaInBlack

    @TBone: “Old, unimaginative and stupid” sure seems to work on a certain bunch of white folk in this country.

    Good Morning  🌻

  110. 110.

    TBone

    @MagdaInBlack: good morning my dear!  I read a brain imaging study done back in the 2010s that said conservatives make more use of their amygdalae than liberals (we use more grey matter).

    I just saw an anti-Kamala ad on TV and now my rock band name is:

    The Dangerous Liberals!

    ETA I don’t know/care if the study was wrong or has been updated, so please nobody @ me – I’m all out of fucks to give about my opinions and examples being worthless. C’est la vie!

  111. 111.

    MagdaInBlack

    @TBone: Well, Baud did remind me yesterday that (some) white people are easy to scare, so that makes sense

    Eta: personally, my give-a-fuks are out of stock, but my fuk you’s are in full supply.

  115. 115.

    Matt McIrvin

    It’s worth saying at this point, all the Dominicans I’ve heard an opinion from hate Trump and Trump was hating on them last time around–I remember when he was campaigning around here and he talked about Lawrence, Mass. like it was a doorway to hell with demons crawling out.

    But I guess there are always some people who’ll fall for someone who shit-talks about people they hate, even if that guy is a stone certainty to turn on them next.

  118. 118.

    AM in NC

    The PBS News Hour did a story on this last night and the reporter interviewed a local factory owner who basically said, the Haitian immigrants are hard workers who show up on time every day and get the job done, and that wasn’t what we got with the native born workers before.

    And then they interviewed a guy who was leading the opposition to the immigrants coming to town where he complained about the new arrivals being bussed in and sucking up all the social services that rightfully belong to the whites, er, locals.  He assured us that he wasn’t racist, though.

  119. 119.

    TBone

    Hubby, watching Morning Joe hosts discuss the latest “salvo”:

    “I can’t believe America is this fucking stupid.”

    *shakes his head sadly

  122. 122.

    Baud

    Anywho, agree with Gin & Tonic. Sounds like Putin et al. are trying to manipulate the focus of tonight’s debate, with media assistance.  I’m sure Harris will handle it well.

  124. 124.

    satby

    Thomas Zimmer “Liz Cheney and the Problem of the Anti-Trump Republicans”

    There is the struggle to protect democratic self-government against a rightwing authoritarian assault led by Trump – and in that struggle, all (small-d) democrats now find themselves on the same side with the Cheneys. But there is also the fundamental conflict over *what kind* of democracy America should be – over how much democracy and for whom. And in that struggle, the fault lines are different, as most prominent anti-Trump Republicans have always pursued a vision of continued wealthy white elite domination that is incompatible with the egalitarian idea of multiracial pluralism.

  125. 125.

    Princess

    Ever since RFK joined the Republicans they’ve all been fantasizing about eating dog. It’s all projection with those weirdos, all of it.

  128. 128.

    The Thin Black Duke

    @TBone: All I want from these cretins is their vote. When Kamala wins the presidency, I have no problem slamming the door in Liz Cheney’s face afterwards.

  129. 129.

    TBone

    @raven: oh dear, I’m hoping for a positive outcome!  I really enjoy your company here.  If you are comfortable sharing details, please do.

    I too have had an abnormal brain scan some years back (neurodegenerative Lyme) but I don’t give it much weight/thought because there are bigger concerns in my life and whoopee! we’re all gonna die.  (Explains a lot, huh? 😉)

    Your attitude is half the battle, keep yer chin up!

  135. 135.

    raven

    @TBone: I don’t really know. I’ve had mobility issues since I retired five years ago but haven’t gotten any kind of solid diagnosis. I went to my neuro looking at the possibility of “parkisonism” for and agent orange claim. They said I didn’t have either parkinson’s or parkisonism but thought a cervical mri was in order. The google isn’t telling me much except MS is a possibility . I’m doing fine otherwise.

  137. 137.

    Ken

    @TBone: It would be inappropriate to speculate that he’s hiding a third nipple, or the Devil’s Mark. More likely he just has man-boobs, like about 60% of American males.

  138. 138.

    Betty Cracker

    I’ve heard immigration scaremongering all my life but never the rumor that Haitians eat pets. That accusation was leveled at Asians instead.

    The most awkward anti-immigrant period I personally witnessed was in the aftermath of the Mariel Boatlift. I was a kid when it happened, but l remember the rumors passed around at school about the new arrivals all being insane criminals.

    It was especially weird because the migrants had fled Cuba, and we already had a well established and widely accepted (even by crackers) Cuban exile community. Some of them were the worst offenders in the scaremongering.

  140. 140.

    TBone

    @raven: that’s a real boondoggle, there are so many differential diagnoses to rule out.  One thing I’ve learned over these many years of visiting specialists is to listen to your own intuitive reasoning – it’s your body and no one knows it like you do.  Can you remember exactly how/when/where it started?  Any fevers, or falls, or other exposures or anything else abnormal  that happened?  It is so hard to separate out the sequence of events  looking back. But if it appeared out of the blue, insist that!

    I know Agent Orange killed my stepdad, but I could never prove it.  How does one go about doing that?  There has to be a success story out there somewhere.  Are you any good at medical jargon so you could read records online?

  142. 142.

    TBone

    @Ken: the xitter responses are 🔥😆

    I like yours too!

    Mark of the Devil! 🤘

    He is so fucked running around here in PA in circles 😎 spinning wheels

  144. 144.

    satby

    @Baud: Superficially, yes. But, since clearly no one read the piece (and Zimmer is a German academic who studies fascism) the full post was about a world-wide struggle against authoritarianism, and how the US election is playing out against that.

    Sorry to bore people.

  145. 145.

    Ken

    @NotMax: That’s sounding a lot like Jarndyce and Jarndyce from Dickens’ Bleak House, and I find myself rooting for the attorneys.

    (J and J was a fictional probate case where the inheritors squabbled over the money for so long, it was all eaten up by legal costs.)

  146. 146.

    TBone

    @satby: sorry!  I don’t like it when that happens to me (no one reads the piece, just the headline) and that IS a major concern that deserves focus!  Sometimes you have to lead horses to water by giving a short description and/or quoting from the article to pique interest, something that WG frequently reminded me because I’d forget so often.  My apologies!

    You did give a quote, but I didn’t see anything that pointed to the worldwide struggle.  I read today that German Chancellor is being a flip flopping dick to Ukraine and that was concerning.

  147. 147.

    Ken

    @MagdaInBlack: There are fitted undershirts which shape and sculpt the chest area so it looks like the man has well-developed pecs instead of flab. Man-bras, in other words.

  151. 151.

    MagdaInBlack

    @Ken: He did not choose one of those tho.

    Most likely it has to do with avoiding sun-burn

    ( there, I gave the weirdo/freak an out)

  153. 153.

    TBone

    @Raven: now you’re getting somewhere – nerve damage will should show up if that’s the cause.  If they still come up empty, start looking elsewhere.  Didn’t anyone follow up after stroke?  Jeez…

  154. 154.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Betty Cracker: The Tehran hostage crisis, the first Gulf War and the whole post-9/11 period were incredibly tough times to have any kind of Middle Eastern or Central Asian ethnicity. I recall seeing historical polls about attitudes toward immigration that just showed xenophobia spiking to an incredible degree after 9/11.

    And one of the first things that happened when COVID hit was a wave of hate toward East Asians. (To the point that one of the knocks on liberals was that they cared more about not being racist than about protecting people from disease–which was kind of at odds with the right-wing noise machine also deciding COVID was no big deal.)

  156. 156.

    Anne Laurie

    @TBone: Why is JV Pantzed all alone in the hotel swimming pool with his shirt on?

    Serious answer (sorry):  He’s outside in the summer in San Diego.  Forget skin cancer, that’s a third-degree-sunburn-in-15-minutes situation!

    Because Vance can afford it, that might actually be one of the new hi-tech sunproof Swim without fear! shirts sporting-good stores sell these days.  (I always relied on a coating of sunscreen *under* my cotton t-shirt… )

  157. 157.

    gene108

    If Trump wins the deportations will happen, no matter how many people say it’s logistically impossible.

    Trump and the people he’ll hire aren’t detail oriented people. They will round up millions of people they think are foreign and stick them somewhere. Could just be an open barbed wire enclosed encampment open to the elements, but they will do it.

    Plus, the people worried about obeying court orders, from the last Trump administration, will not be hired. There will be no restraints.

  158. 158.

    Raven

    @TBone: Oh yeah, lots of follow-up! It was a lacunar stroke that impacted my vision otherwise I might have never known I had it. The mobility stuff started a year later and I’ve been following up ever since.

  159. 159.

    TBone

    @Anne Laurie: I had to take high dose doxycycline for a long while – there was no amount of sunscreen or clothing that could protect me from the sizzle.  I can relate!  But I was under the impression that weirdo was being left to his own devices here in Pennsylvania because swing state so important. He’s in Cali?

  161. 161.

    TBone

    @Raven: good!!! I’m glad your journey is being overseen by competent medical people, that’s crucial.  I feel a lot better for you now.  Not great, but better!

    Your condition has been given a name (LACS) so I’m looking at it:

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK563216/

    Preliminarily (could you have had more than one and not know it):

    However, accumulating multiple small lacunar infarcts can lead to significant physical and cognitive disabilities. Despite not having the devastating effects of large vessel strokes, lacunar strokes are not benign

  162. 162.

    gene108

    @Matt McIrvin:

    And one of the first things that happened when COVID hit was a wave of hate toward East Asians.

    That was 100% on Donald Trump and Republicans for hyping conspiracy theories about a lab leak, and calling it the “China flu”. Fuckers got people hurt and killed.

  164. 164.

    Matt McIrvin

    @gene108: What depressed me about that was the near-total disjunction between the scientific community and the security/intelligence community: the former kept saying that while the lab leak COULD have happened, there was zero evidence for it and plenty of evidence for other mechanisms, while the latter were almost unanimously convinced it was a lab leak. And since it was credentialed experts vs. experts the story could never die.

    The lab leak was one of those “motte and bailey” stories too: the respectable version was that it was some kind of accident associated with disease research, but what gave the story legs was wacky bullshit about Chinese bioweapons tailored to kill white people and leave Asians standing, etc.

  167. 167.

    Kay

    @AM in NC:

    Haitians are really hard workers, in my experience. Local employers here actually send a bus to bring them in from Toledo every day. My local clients have worked with them and have nothing but good things to say about them. Unfortunately there’s a housing crisis in Toledo- like everywhere else- so many of them are living in “residence motels” with their children.

  168. 168.

    Kay

    Maybe people who actually live in Ohio could educate JD Vance and Elon Musk about how we have really low unemployment and a booming economy so we’re relying on Haitian workers even out in the rural counties.

    This is a 75% Trump county. My clients. Who are working with Haitians every day and say they’re hard workers and no problem. So WTF can they be thinking listening to this? They have personal experience that contradicts what Trump and Vance and Musk say. It’s just unbelievable what a cult the Right is.

  172. 172.

    Gin & Tonic

    In the very, very early days of the AIDS epidemic in NYC, I remember clearly that media and possibly public-health authorities were identifying three at-risk groups, all “H” – homosexuals, heroin users and Haitians. To this day I don’t know why the Haitians.

  174. 174.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: Haiti did have the earliest large HIV/AIDS outbreak outside of Africa, so it would have been a reasonable risk factor to consider at the time.

  175. 175.

    Kayla Rudbek

    @Anne Laurie: that’s what UPF 50 rash guards are for. But nowadays I can’t find any with a proper high neck. I don’t want a t-shirt style, I want a mock turtleneck so that I don’t look like a literal redneck after being on the water. Cycling jerseys generally have enough of a back collar (at least the ones I have) that my poor sunscreen application can handle the sun.

  177. 177.

    Greebe

    @Chet Murthy: @24

    i just wanted to thank you for linking to Timothy Snyder’s YouTube channel. What a great resource! Much to think about i throughout his TS Speaks series. I’m looking forward to listening to all of them.

  178. 178.

    Mark L.

    Humans, we move stuff around with us. Civil War vets brought their pet fox squirrels (pets until they dropped them into the stew pot!) with them to Westwood VA Center (in the news now) in 1904. They have migrated as far as Santa Barbara in the 100 plus years they have been here. Some of us humans eat animals. Even cute ones. I have the last edition of Joy Of Cooking that shows how to butcher a squirrel. I have never eaten a squirrel. I have eaten many ducks.

  182. 182.

    Liminal Owl

    I see Ishiyama got there first.

    (The version I learned was different, within the Folk Process norms. It bothered me fir months. And why did my kindergarten teacher put that one, and Songs of Safety, and I don’t remember what else, on the class record player? During NAP TIME?!)

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