While the functionally useless political press was breathlessly repeating the pet-eating lie, and chin-scratching thoughtfully about whether it would alter the horserace, it took independent journalism site to track down the origin of that blood libel to a couple of Karens on Facebook in Springfield, Ohio: (via LGM)
NewsGuard identified and tracked down the two people central to the claim: Erika Lee, the Springfield resident who wrote the original Facebook post, and Kimberly Newton, the neighbor who had provided her with a third-hand account of the rumor, making Lee’s social media post a fourth-hand account: the alleged acquaintance/cat owner; Newton’s friend; Newton; and Lee, who posted it on Facebook.
In exclusive interviews, NewsGuard spoke both with Lee, a 35-year-old hardware store worker who has lived in Springfield for four years, and Newton, her neighbor and a 12-year resident of Springfield. The interviews reveal just how flimsy and unsubstantiated the rumor was from the beginning — based entirely on third hand hearsay. Yet it quickly gained traction and, remarkably, found its way to Trump’s lips on a national stage.
“I’m not sure I’m the most credible source because I don’t actually know the person who lost the cat,” Newton said about the rumor she had passed on to her neighbor, Lee, the Facebook poster. Newton explained to NewsGuard that the cat owner was “an acquaintance of a friend” and that she heard about the supposed incident from that friend, who, in turn, learned about it from “a source that she had.” Newton added: “I don’t have any proof.”
That adds up to three people with no firsthand knowledge of the allegedly victimized cat: Newton’s “friend,” Newton, and then her neighbor Lee. Or perhaps it’s four people if we count the “source” that Newton says her “friend” relied on.
Lee says she’s a “Democrat who voted for Trump”, because of course she is, and also shared this:
“I think it was two years ago now, I went to the [Bureau of Motor Vehicles] to renew my license or my tags. I can’t remember, but I was sitting in the BMV, and the only way I know to describe it is I felt like … I was transported, because all around me it was people talking a different language. … I felt like I was the minority,” she said.
There we have it. Anyway, why does Lee even have a job in a hardware store in Springfield? Because of Haitians. The town was in the post-industrial death spiral until immigrants showed up to do jobs that locals wouldn’t or couldn’t do:
When Haitian immigrants began trickling into Springfield to work in local produce packaging and machining factories in 2017, some thought the new residents could help the city regain its former vigor as a once-thriving manufacturing hub. Once home to major agricultural machinery companies in the mid-20th century, Springfield has lost a quarter of its population since the 1960s.
[…] Haitians and immigrants from Central American countries have been in high demand at Springfield’s Dole Fresh Vegetables – where they’ve been hired to clean and package produce – and at automotive machining plants whose owners were desperate for workers due to a labor shortage in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The vast majority of Haitians are legal immigrants because they’ve received a temporary, renewable 18-month permit to live in the US.
There are legitimate issues in a town of 60,000 when it tries to absorb 15,000 immigrants — schools and healthcare are stretched, and housing is scarce. Medicaid rolls, for example, have swelled, probably because the jobs the Haitians are taking don’t pay a living wage. But is it better to have a dying town full of desperation and sadness, or a growing town that’s struggling to incorporate hard-working immigrants trying to make a better life for themselves?
I really hope this issue comes up at the Vance/Walz debate, because the racism that Trump and JD are tapping ignores the fact that immigration has revitalized small towns across the midwest. Look at any town that has a plant with jobs no white person wants (like meat packing), and you’ll find immigrant communities. Here’s a great example in the tiny town of Worthington, MN, in Tim Walz’ district. And just look at this (via Jeff T.)
I don’t know how you do dozens of Cletus safaris and miss the biggest story of the last few decades in the small-town midwest: immigrants are saving those areas because they’re a great workforce that wants to share in American prosperity. I guess the intrepid DC reporters missed that fact because the immigrants are just quietly doing their jobs, while the Karens are making up stories on Facebook.
Open Thread (and Quilt Raffle At Last!) And the Winner is… Memory Pallas!
Steve LaBonne
My maternal grandparents were born in Ireland. My ex-wife, the mother of my daughter, is an immigrant from India. Though perhaps not with quite as much reason as some who comment here, I take this shit VERY PERSONALLY.
David 🐝KHive🐝 Koch
U.K. GDP at a pathetic 1% after Brexit
scav
Fourth hand information put out by fifth rate people.
MagdaInBlack
They are not missing these stories, they are ignoring them because they don’t fit the narrative they’re selling.
Anonymous At Work
Cletus Safaris look at the customers in a diner, not the line cooks or busboys. They also ignore the people already at work at factories. So it’s elderly white men yearning for the good old days, housewives stopping in for coffee and company, and the jobless who wouldn’t want the jobs the immigrants took BUT who claim “Dey tok yer jobs!”
SatanicPanic
Is it too much to ask that these two assholes are haunted by this for the next few years? Because I hope they are.
Doc Sardonic
SATSQ…Because Cletus and Karen are white people and if they give one scintilla of credit to the immigrants, it is not going to generate clicks, only rumored destruction perpetrated by “Others” and aggrieved white people do that.
mrmoshpotato
@MagdaInBlack:
They want “Horserace! Horserace!” when one side is really “Horseshit! Horseshit!”
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
I think we all know how this happens. MSM reporters are not paid to cover stories. They are paid to generate propaganda, in favor of the owners who hold title to their newspapers and TV channels.
They do no more reporting on the wrong kind of stories than did reporters from Moscow covering the heroic start up of steel production at Magnitogorsk in Stalinist Russia. Writing about immigrants revitalizing small towns would be like writing about kulaks revitalizing agricultural production. The only difference is that failing to toe the line in today’s American press won’t get you killed or sent to the Gulag. It might ruin your career however, or at least fail to advance it, and that’s enough of an incentive to keep most of them in line.
scav
Hell, some Haitians have lived in that town longer than Princess Erika Lee, trrroubbbled by the sound of multiple languages.
Lobo
Here is the link LGM are using to reference their post: https://www.newsguardrealitycheck.com/p/origins-haitians-eating-pets-claim. It has the original post.
Baud
The people who are complaining about saving small towns don’t mean the economic health of the town. They mean saving the small town they nostalgically remember. That town had no Haitians in it.
cmorenc
Latest Trump anti-immigrant ad has turned to focus instead on the murder of a teenage boy somewhere whose killer was allegedly an illegal immigrant. No details given in the ad beyond the raw allegation (might have mentioned which state it happened in). It’s baffling why Trump and Vance would have focused in the Hatian n’cats story when there are other real incidents of heinous immigrant crime they could have instead focused on – with the distortion being the unsupported implicit claim that other than simply being here, immigrants are disproportionately inclined to commit violent acts compared to white guys shooting up schools with ar15s.
MagdaInBlack
@Baud: You nailed it.
@mistermix.bsky.social
@Lobo: Thanks! I knew I read it somewhere but couldn’t find it in my news reader.
prostratedragon
From The Daily Yonder (“Keep It Rural”) in 2022:
In addition to surveying some recent cases, they point out that many of these towns only thrived in the past because of earlier waves of immigrants.
waspuppet
Trump and Vance have been told they’re lying about Haitian immigrants eating people’s pets. The people who started the lie now say they were lying. And Trump and Vance are still saying it. And 52 percent of Trump voters in a poll this week believe it.
Anyone who still doesn’t think this is how the Nazis got started, tell me how you think the Nazis got started.
Baud
Also, too
Economic anxiety!
Baud
@waspuppet:
Someone should divide Trump supporters into two equally sized baskets.
Jackie
Off topic, but WTF??? And, why should Americans give a rat’s ass?
West of the Cascades
@Baud: All Trump supporters are deplorable, but some are more deplorable than other?
Fake Irishman
@Baud:
FWIW, I think that’s “BMV” (Bureau of Motor Vehicles” in Ohio, not BMW.
japa21
@Baud: And discard both baskets in the middle of the Pacific.
Baud
@Fake Irishman:
My comment still stands.
mrmoshpotato
@Baud: Wikipedia Springfield, Ohio:
Shit, if she moved to Springfield, IL, she’d die of a heart attack.
Wikipedia:
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
You know who desperately needs a large influx of hard working immigrants to perform difficult jobs to a high standard of quality, in an area where the laziness & incompetence of the existing workforce is creating shoddy product, which consumers are turning their backs on and shrinking the market for:
The New York Times
mrmoshpotato
@Baud: Deplorable and More Deplorable?
Fake Irishman
@Baud:
oh, the general comment is totally correct…
Starfish
@Baud: The town had other oppressed groups. They were just scrupulously ignoring the existence of the people who were doing the work that they considered beneath them.
prostratedragon
From 2019 via NPR, the story of Cactus, TX.
Fake Irishman
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
their political coverage team and op-ed section for sure. There’s still plenty of other Times reporters who labor in relative obscurity doing solid work. But dear God the low standards they have for their columnists and politics reporters are breathtaking.
mrmoshpotato
@Jackie: Oh how stupid!
Harrison Wesley
So the proper thing for me to do, as a white Old, is to strike up conversations with my Haitian neighbors like “Hey, that’s a great looking pup! Y’all having him for dinner?” No.
scav
And aren’t we just waiting for the shrieks of How Mean! the Internet is being to these poor poor Karens and How can they be subjected to this sort of Politically-Inspired Public Abuse, blah blah blah, after voicing their legitimate concerns and that’s even without any two days of schools and govt offices including that sainted BMV being shut down because of bomb threats.
MagdaInBlack
@Jackie: Wait..he put that in his book?? Yeah, profoundly stupid. jfc
prostratedragon
A quick overview of the UK story.
kindness
The Karens knew they were spreading hate and did it anyway. I cut them no slack on the whole thing. Now Republicans in general who run with this stuff….they are the new American Confederacy Party. (Not so) shockingly, a bunch of these new Confederates think they can Second Amendment their way to ruling this land when they lose elections. With all due respect to the haters, it’ll end up same way the last civil war did, with most of them dead, and far too many of our own as well.
TheOtherHank
My Father-in-law’s father fought in the White Army during the Russian civil war, got out just in time to avoid being shot, bummed around Europe for a while and finally ended up in Ohio. He was, I might add, an immigrant without the proper paperwork.
So you could say that my FiL is the son of a refugee. He’s also rabidly anti-immigrant. My favorite was during the ISIS-driven refugee exodus from Syria when he would get all worked up about how they were all “men of fighting age”. And were really supposed to believe they were fleeing from ISIS and not just infiltrating the west to do the terrorism. In the interest of family harmony I managed to resist saying “Oh, you mean like your dad?”
VFX Lurker
@Jackie: I just told this tidbit to my Canadian husband, who is not amused.
What makes this extra weird is that Justin Trudeau has a famous father, Pierre Trudeau, a former Prime Minister.
MagdaInBlack
@VFX Lurker: Justin’s mother Margaret Trudeau, was a bit of a controversial figure in her day. The rumor comes from that era. Google her. She’s pretty interesting.
Weftage
@VFX Lurker: But don’t you see?? PIERRE TRUDEAU AND FIDEL CASTRO ARE THE SAME PERSON!!1!
Falling Diphthong
Someone noted that the people who are in a diner midmorning on a weekday are maaaaaaaaaybe not representative of the working people of an area. Like you could go to other restaurants at other times, like an early breakfast at a taco truck, and find a completely different group of people.
Jackie
@MagdaInBlack: I don’t know if he can, but it would be great if Justin Trudeau could sue him for slander, defamation, or something. It’s not like TCFG can deny it’s in his book!
Hildebrand
My daughter graduated from Wittenberg University in Springfield in May. Her, purely anecdotal, report is that the folks of Springfield are pretty damned thrilled the Haitians started moving in – because every ‘born in Springfield’ white kid has been looking for the exits for quite some time. It was absolutely dying – being bled out by Columbus and Dayton and their suburbs, because there was at least something to do in those places, and little hope about staying in Springfield.
Why? Because the larger industries of Springfield weren’t exactly generous in their pay rates – and that attitude definitely filtered out into the rest of the workplaces (even Wittenberg has not been particularly just in their wages). The influx of Haitians, and others, willing to take on those jobs very likely saved the city. Of course, this influx of new folks brought the benefits that immigrant populations always bring, a younger population that pays taxes, more diverse school populations, a whole bunch of new restaurants, an infusion of excitement and possibility.
Not unlike the southern border nonsense, the reason that stories like this catch on is that republican politicians, who have no actual lived experience in these kinds of communities, exploit people’s fears about ‘those’ people – because they know that the people they are scaring don’t have any lived experience in these kinds of situations either.
BC in Illinois
When I was in North Carolina, I met a few Haitian immigrants who came to Charlotte by way of the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services. Didn’t really know them, but they seemed like admirable young men, trying to get a better life. (They later re-located farther north, where there was a larger Haitian community.)
And thinking of people like these young men and the factory workers that the business owners of Springfield talk about, reminds me of my Grandpa W_____ at the beginning of the 20th Century: coming to Akron, Ohio; speaking only German; living in the German-speaking community; going to a German-speaking church; working in the tire plants of Akron.
And also serving in the US Army during WW I (speaking mostly German) !!!
Fast-forward 125 years, and the W_____s were the parents of a WW II WAC; with 3 or 4 WW II Veterans as Sons in Law; other veterans, teachers, accountants, policemen, accountants, pastors, etc. in the next generations.
+ + +
These people who have an image of “America” that is all white are SO TEDIOUS.
. . . as if the Black and Brown people are just “photobombing” their way into the American picture. . . .
They know that’s not true. They know that their made-up history is not true.
Can’t they just find a rock somewhere to sit on and – what? – be white?
+ + +
Maybe they’ll never grow up to see the wonders around them. But the rest of us can. And I think my grandkids can. In the meantime, our country has a lot of growing up to do. One election at a time.
eclare
@Baud:
A lot of immigrants took care of my parents as they aged. I loved to hear the accents.
KrackenJack
@Baud:
I’d prefer upper half and lower half.
Frankensteinbeck
@Baud:
This is a brilliant insight and covers so much of the conservative movement. ‘Nostalgia’ being what we think we remember about a time when we perceived a much smaller world through a much simpler lens.
Ruckus
@Steve LaBonne:
Most all of us are decedents of immigrants, unless we are purebred decedents of American Indians. It may be a few generations back but most of us are. I am. My mother’s father was an immigrant from Sicily. His wife, my grandmother, was Italian. I’d bet that my other grandparents were decedents of more northern Europe, possibly England, just given the name. But this is a nation of massive immigration, over a lot of decades but still a nation of immigrates.
Ghost of Joe Liebling’s Dog
@MagdaInBlack: Turnip has hated Justin Trudeau for years and years for some reason or other.
Ruviana
Sitting in the BMV and being “transported” by hearing different languages would have thrilled me!
Suzanne
@Anonymous At Work:
There’s a chunk of people — I don’t have a great sense exactly how big — who are just unemployable. Don’t show up regularly, don’t take direction well, often are drinking too much. Then they get pissed when immigrants, women, PoC, etc…. do better at life. Cry more about it.
3Sice
Chain migrants out of the Appalachian coal fields fueled the Steel Belt labor market from WW2 till Reagan.
MagdaInBlack
@Ghost of Joe Liebling’s Dog: 🤭😊😊 Yup.
lowtechcyclist
@waspuppet:
Economic anxiety, duh! ;-)
The Audacity of Krope
Because they only want to talk to Cletuses…Cleti who are too racist to recognize a good development for their community when they see it.
ewrunning
And the MAGATS are sitting around in diners spewing the latest crap they heard on talk radio and Faux News.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
Handbaskets, given the trip they’re on.
Phylllis
We’ve seen an uptick of enrollment of both multi-language learner students as well as several identified migrant families in the small, rural district where I retired* from. I’ve heard two high-up admins comment about ‘don’t tell me the country doesn’t have an immigration problem’. So first of all, tell me you’re a Trump voter without telling me you’re a Trump voter, and second of all, weren’t you just bemoaning our declining enrollment and wondering how to reverse it? Make up your fucking mind.
*Still helping out a few days a month to make me leave my house every once in a while.
scav
Pipsqueak downstate town my dad hailed from worked themselves up to objecting to (and harassing) the Amish that moved in (the ones now running the only grocery store within miles. No matter. They also ran out of town one of dad’s classmates who had moved back and arranged for a federal grant to put in sewers — nah, couldn’t have that sort of nonsense – – – only to pay for those same sewers not seven years later all by their lonesome so they wouldn’t lose their post office. Oddly enough, only non-bar owning non-Amish business owner in the place is a Democrat.
Sister Golden Bear
@cmorenc: They focused on it because it’s a blood libel that’s been used repeatedly over the decades against immigrants—in particular non-white immigrants—to depict them as “not human.”
lowtechcyclist
@Ruckus:
Speak for yourself, pal! But tell me, what’s the afterlife like? I’m relieved to know that you can still get an Internet connection from there!
(couldn’t resist that typo)
cmorenc
My grandmother, a native of Germany, came to the US as a 13 yo girl c.1909 as what amounted to an indentured servant for the dairy farmer who paid for her passage – accompanied on the trip only by her 16yo sister, neither of whim spoke a word of English before arriving at Ellis Island. When I visited Ellis Island in 2000 and stood on the balcony above the large room where arrivals were processed, I could vividly see in my mind’s eye my 13yo frightened grandmother standing at the processing table about 20 feet below and in front of me 90 years earlier. How difficult were her family’s circumstances back in Passau, Germany to send their young teenage daughters off to a new unfamiliar life across an ocean?
MagdaInBlack
@Phylllis: It costs money, they have to work harder, and those families aren’t white
( my FIL taught Ag Business and Mechanics for 30 years at the rural hs I attended. His best friend was the superintendent. We know how these people think 😉 )
Gretchen
@Doc Sardonic: Cletus and Karen have plenty of time to air their grievances to reporters while the immigrants are too busy working to stop and chat.
Scott
Nearby Dayton, a much bigger and declining industrial city, has been encouraging immigrants through it Welcome Dayton program. Why? Because they want to thrive as a city.
https://www.daytonohio.gov/998/Welcome-Dayton
trollhattan
A BBC look at Swifties for Harris.
The closing grafs.
Phylllis
@MagdaInBlack: True. How dare you expect us to serve everyone who shows up with a free, appropriate, public education. You know, like the law says.
mrmoshpotato
@scav: Was everyone on septic tanks?
Sister Golden Bear
@Frankensteinbeck:
Also worth noting, often this is nostalgia for the world of their childhood—and of course that world was simpler and happier, because they were children.
dmsilev
@cmorenc: My grandmother came over from Poland slightly later (just after WWI), also very young (14). As my mom described it, things in Poland were bad enough that grandma regarded the Great Depression as not that bad by comparison.
Steve LaBonne
@Ruckus: Yet somehow our very old and very noxious tradition of nativism has flourished among all those descendants of immigrants. Like Trump and Vance themselves, this causes me to despair of our species.
Bupalos
@lowtechcyclist: The interesting reversal here is that economic anxiety really is how the Nazi’s got started.
Our version is more jumping straight to cultural anxiety through very mild economic stagnation. But that’s also the reason we aren’t going to have anything like the same intensity of experience, even if the Trumpists do win. Lots of Germans post-WWI were literally in rational fear of starvation conditions and had lived through them. They were quite generally of the mindset “get rid of the Jews and seize a bunch of land or starve to death.”
Almost no Americans have that experience or physical fear. While our way of thinking of politics as a morality play makes us think of “economic anxiety” as an excuse they are using, to make them less morally culpable, the reality is that existential poverty is what tends to makes politics truly destabilized and bloodthirsty. The closest debasing national experience I can think of is the opioid epidemic, and while that is a primary driver of working class right wing backlash, “Immigrants bringing drugs” is just not in the same ballpark as “Jews starving us to death.”
MagdaInBlack
@Phylllis: One of my friends who still lives out there told me they are having the same kind of growth in the school district as you describe. And of course, the same complaints.
scav
@mrmoshpotato: Best I can remember, yes.
JPL
How much will rump pay Melania to appear with him. He has to dispel the rumors about his latest fling. My husband loves me and only democrats would spread thse nasty rumors.
piratedan
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: gonna steal that and post it on Bluesky
ewrunning
@Sister Golden Bear: Unfortunately, they still are children, albeit in adult bodies. They believe in MAGA fairy tales and foreign boogie men under their beds
eclare
A really good movie about immigration is Brooklyn.
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/brooklyn
Ruckus
@lowtechcyclist:
Thank you for being observant…..
I have had spelling issues for my entire life. Well at least since I actually learned to write. Such as it is. My brain (now a mumble/mumble number of decades old has always had a spelling problem) Math I’m good at. In college I tutored higher maths because many people seem to have the same problem in maths as I have in spelling – they fuck it up on a regular basis. Since the advent of computers I make FEWER mistakes, but I’ve never gotten close to zero mistakes. Maybe on my last day, is that soon enough for you? It isn’t for me…..
In any event, I actually do mean it – THANK YOU.
tam1MI
That’s because the Cletus’s they were “interviewing” only existed in their addled little brains, or were generously provided to them by their buddies in the Republican party.
MagdaInBlack
@Sister Golden Bear: Somewhere I read or was told that for some people their intellectual growth stops when their formal education ends. So high school brain forever, I guess? And for some that’s generous.
JoyceH
@JPL: Saw on Twitter that Loomer has been banned from the plane. We’ll see if that’s true or lasts. Depends on whether the campaign has any control at all over the candidate, because Loomer is clearly The Girlfriend. I’d consider her to be on a glide path to be Number Four – and that’s actually dangerous. One through Three were harmless gold-diggers, but Loomer is a proto-Ginny Thomas.
Anyway
@Ruviana: some Americans are triggered by hearing other languages— I don’t get it. I love playing guess-the-language and trying to distinguish between Romanian and Bulgarian…
dnfree
@BC in Illinois: My mother’s family was from West Virginia. My aunt used to say that in West Virginia, the three Rs were Reading, wRIting, and the Road to Akron.
mrmoshpotato
@JoyceH:
Did she try to handcuff herself to the wheels?
Steve LaBonne
@mrmoshpotato: “Captain, prepare for immediate takeoff.”
Baud
@JoyceH:
Imagine the media firestorm if Harris’s girlfriend-advisor were banned from her plane.
Dan B
@Sister Golden Bear: As a young gayling, figured it out at age 14 and was terrified of discovery, childhood was something to shove down the memory hole. Small-town Ohio was full of monsters who could be awakened by a small slip up. It would be interesting to know how many of the young people fleeing rural areas and small towns are leaving for more reasons than lack of economic opportunity.
BR
Tim Walz is live in Wisconsin — Gwen Walz opened:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bu-OhKPRQkY
Steve LaBonne
@Dan B: Pueblo chico, infierno grande.
3Sice
If immigration was the path to prosperity, America would be the most prosperous country in the world. – J.D. Vance
Sister Golden Bear
@mrmoshpotato: Knowing Loomer, she’d handcuff herself to the door—on the outside.
(A couple years ago she handcuffed herself to a door at Twitter’s NYC headquarters to protect being banned. Notice I said a door. The entrance was a double door, so employees just ignored her and used the other door.)
Sure Lurkalot
@Phylllis: I’ll add a third…the ranting about how immigrants don’t assimilate, speak English or learn “our” culture, but they don’t want them going to “their” schools or making friends in “their” town. They scream about immigrants being “other” while insisting they are and stay “other”.
zhena gogolia
@BR: Oh, God, it’s like candy for me. I can’t stop watching him.
Lyrebird
@Ruviana: When I went to grad school in a nearly-rural area that I was not from, on every visit to my folks, I used to volunteer to run errands to the grocery store and what-not just to hear what I was used to: at least three languages represented in the conversations around me, decent choice of vegetables, good stuff. I guess I have something in common with the complainer, I like what’s familiar to me. OTOH, I did NOT go about endangering the rural whites who made me feel other.
ETA: And thank you MisterMix!!! Just… THANK YOU.
3Sice
@Baud:
Oh you, and your tawdry tales.
Their hearts will go on….
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
I keep emailing the campaign that they should sell a Tim Walz calendar for people like you.
Suzanne
So for a fun update to this story….. Christopher Rufo (may he rot in a Chili’s) posted a video — and then JD Vance retweeted it — purportedly showing African residents of Dayton, OH, supposedly grilling a cat. Except it was a chicken.
mrmoshpotato
@Sister Golden Bear: I remember that Twitter stupidity.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: It’s not that kind of thang!
Sister Golden Bear
@Dan B: Yeah, I’ve memory holed the vast majority of my childhood myself, for a variety of reasons, including being trans (even if at the time I just knew I was “different” without knowing why).
There’s a reason why I never came home for summer vacation during college, and never attended any of my high school reunions.
And that was from growing up in suburban Orange County, CA. I can only imagine how worse it was in a small town.
mrmoshpotato
@Suzanne:
What you got against Chili’s?
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
It’s OK. I won’t tell gogol.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: “gogol” knows all about it
scav
@Suzanne: Chickens, cats, Haitians, Africans, all basically indistinguishable. Maybe ‘Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.’ is harder than we thought for them.
Suzanne
@mrmoshpotato:
Holding a grudge for a massive case of exploding-from-both-ends food poisoning in 1997.
Phylllis
@Sure Lurkalot: “They should have to learn English before they come here.” Said by the previous superintendent
Also, this discussion reminds me of the folks who were displaced by Katrina. I recall several stories of non-white New Orleans residents who ended up in small towns in other states who went on to become downright beloved because they brought the Cajun/Creole cuisine with them and opened restaurants.
mrmoshpotato
@Suzanne: Oh! You got good reason!
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
I don’t judge.
Chet Murthy
There are moments when the penny really drops, and this is one of them. All these Cletus safaris, in all those diners, and the reporters only interviewed the -customers-, and never the -workers-. If they’d interviewed the workers, they’d have met immigrants, b/c (esp. undocumented) immigrants from the backbone of restaurant workers all over the country. But no ….. can’t have that. And you can’t explain that by the choice of the location of the safari: you can only explain that b/c they -chose- not to interview the people right under their noses. It was a choice.
mrmoshpotato
@Baud: Move over firefighters’ calendars!
frosty
@Suzanne: Opens up the sluices at both ends!
Ruckus
@Steve LaBonne:
I’ve been lucky to travel around a very large bit of this world. From literally the northern tip of Norway to the southern tip of New Zealand and most of Europe while in the USN. I’ve traveled to 48 of the states in over a decade when I worked in professional sports as an official. I’ve visited many museums in many of those places/countries and have met people from most of these places, and actually talked to the vast majority of them. And yes that nativism is at the very least world wide. Especially since somewhere around the 60s when travel and communications became much easier and faster. Some are always looking for the “right” place for them to live/retire. Many of us in the “older” segment of humanity have seen changes in most every aspect of our lives because of the changes in, well most everything, every aspect of life other than breathing in and out. This is an early website and it’s been around for what 20 yrs? The company I worked for and later owned did work for Mattel over 60 yrs ago, and I worked on Barbie doll molds when I was about 14 and that process today is dramatically different than then. Your phone? I haven’t had a landline in 20 yrs. The area code I use was full up about 25 yrs ago. Life is still life, but think how different it is from 75 yrs ago. More of day to day life has changed in the last 75 or so years than in several hundred years prior.
Sure Lurkalot
@JPL:
How much will rump pay Melania to appear with him. He has to dispel the rumors about his latest fling. My husband loves me and only democrats would spread thse nasty rumors.
She’s making videos to sell her book, bitching because her privacy was invaded when MAL was searched and how law enforcement targeted Trump for assassination. “My husband” this and “my husband” that.
Since the door’s been opened, time for the media to ask her just where the fuck she’s been for the past 2 years or so, where was she when her dear husband was within an inch of his life, where on the campaign trail.
If anything, I hope the Loomer as love interest stories are true to put the lie to this grifter’s “my husband” BS to sell her shitty book.
Suzanne
@mrmoshpotato: Yeah! Dispatching Rufo’s mendacious ass to a Chili’s is me wishing him (very) ill!
cmorenc
@Sister Golden Bear: Tom Cruise actually performed the stunt of wiring himself to the outside of the door on a 737 as it took off, hanging in the 200 mph breeze. Maybe Loomer should study that scene if she were to pull a similar move on Trump’s plane.
hitchhiker
@Baud:
“I felt like I was the minority,” she said.
Okay. The next question should be, Why would that bother you? Can we talk about what you think that means?
We have this assumption that being in the minority is REALLY BAD. Minorities get screwed all the time. Minorities have it rough compared to regular people. Nobody wants to be in a minority if they can possibly help it.
The healthy American answer to this is legal protections, welcoming communities, and joy in diversity. The sick American answer is bomb threats and demonizing. The people in this town have to come to some kind of understanding with each other about who they are, and now it looks like they’re going to have figure out how to do that in public.
I have faith. If they’re lucky enough to have leadership, this might just be okay.
MagdaInBlack
@Suzanne: I just saw that on reddit, and thought ffs, that’s very obviously chicken.
Won’t matter, its out there now.
BR
I think the khive — whomever is prominent among the online folks — needs to put out the bat signal to flood the comments sections of youtube videos and tiktok videos like this one:
https://mstdn.social/@JamesWNeal/113137954867510457
opiejeanne
@eclare: Almost all of the people working on our bathroom remodel are immigrants, some with very limited English skills but we’ve figured out how to communicate with them. Sergei who did most of the tiling speaks Unkrainian, the guy who mudded the shower pan probably speaks Russian and almost no English, but he could communicate with Sergei. The countertops were installed by several guys from China, the dry wall guys are from Moldova, the electrician is from Brazil, It’s been interesting talking to them, although the guy from Brazil annoyed the shit out of me this week by yapping about some nutcase he follows on YouTube, Bret Weinstein and the terrible things that immigrants are doing to New York city and Chicago and LA, Veneauelan immigrants, and opining that Bobby jr might be the best candidate. I regret telling him that Bobby jr has withdrawn. He’s gone back to Brazil to visit family and I’m not sure he’s eligible to vote, which would be a blessing.
Some of the others have figured out that we like Harris and they are fans of hers. They do not like Trump.
BC in Illinois
@Sure Lurkalot:
@Phylllis:
Do these people know NOTHING of history?
I am a retired Lutheran minister. I have served or attended a half-dozen churches in St. Louis or Southern Illinois — ALL of which had a German cornerstone on the church building. One of them had a German service (monthly) until the last decade.
And the history of St. Louis? Polish neighborhoods, German neighborhoods, Slovak, an entire Italian “Hill,” and I bet the Irish neighborhoods had a contingent of people speaking Gaelic.
That we now have people speaking Chinese, Bosnian, Arabic, various Afghan languages, and lots of Spanish?
– – that’s just life.
Origuy
Apparently, the Proud
LosersBoys are marching in Springfield.VeniceRiley
Brexit racists spread a rumor that Polish immigrants were eating swans and ducks: https://x.com/WryCritic/status/1834684544026366019?t=tUS0f2juEEQrrPIiiScPKg&s=19
Steve in the ATL
@BC in Illinois: and St. Louis was founded by the French!
Luminous Muse
Living here in California practically the only people you see outside doing hard physical work look Hispanic. I doubt most are legal, either. Deport them and the state would cease to function in a matter of days (not to speak of all the fruit and vegetable pickers in the Central Valley.)
opiejeanne
@Sister Golden Bear: They used it against immigrants that we consider white now, sometimes referred to as the second wave immigrants: primarily people not from England. That was in the early 1800s, and they were treated so badly that many went back to their home country if they could scrape together enough for steerage. Some were so desperate they left their children behind on the streets of New York, and I mean tiny children and infants. It’s the origin of the orphanages in New York like Graham Windham, circa 1820s. My husband’s Irish immigrant great grandfather came through the House of Refuge and rode one of the Orphan Trains with his brother to Illinois.
Phylllis
@BC in Illinois: So before the school district, I was the Medicaid caseworker for the program that covers children and pregnant women. We would have the migrant women come in to apply & the program would cover them upon the birth of their babies. The babies were obviously US citizens at birth, which my supervisor at the time memorably said ‘They need to change that’. And I was like, what the hell do you think makes you a citizen?
NK
@Suzanne: Those are always powerful memories. Mine’s from a joint named Caballo Blanco. To this day do not know whether the name is prosaic or literal.
BC in Illinois
@Steve in the ATL:
Yeah. Them, too. But our best restaurants are Italian. And Indian
ETA: And Chinese. And Mexican. And Thai. (Our favorite Persian restaurant closed recently.)
Nobody wants MY ancestral cuisine: Scottish, German, English, Hungarian, Swedish.
trollhattan
@Suzanne:
Those are always powerful memories. Mine, in particular is from a joint named Caballo Blanco. To this day do not know if the name is prosaic or literal.
BR
@Luminous Muse:
Yeah, I wrote in a thread earlier today that there’s a solid economic argument against Trump’s immigration rants — if he were to deport all the folks he’s talking about deporting, milk would go to $20 and eggs would too, leave alone other groceries, and half the contractors in the country wouldn’t have enough people to do the work.
trollhattan
@Luminous Muse: You’re not wrong. Interesting to read how the migrant farm labor was initially from the old South and gradually shifted to Mexico instead. Cotton was king here a long time.
Suzanne
@Luminous Muse: LOL, it’s so true. Arizona was similarly full of undocumented labor in most of the so-called low-skill industries. And I am seeing more and more Mexican laborers in Pittsburgh these days. The house two doors down that caught fire….. got a new roof earlier this year. A beautiful job, looks great. Entire crew was Mexican. They were there 7 AM to 7 PM each day for the whole week, working their asses off. Meanwhile, the union electricians I was working with on a high-profile jobsite couldn’t figure out how to place an electrical backbox without an elevation drawing.
opiejeanne
@BR: See my comment above about the international group working on my bathroom remodel.
Jackie
@Sure Lurkalot: TCFG’s screwing around is the least of his evils. Other than it’s Lunatic Loomer… a QAnon MAGA is more suited to RFK Jr, I’d think.
RW conservatives voted for him despite his multiple marriages and affairs, they’ll look away again.🤷🏼♀️
UNLESS Melania raises a stink…
Origuy
There are still a few people in the area around Illinois County, MO who grew up speaking French.
Missouri French.
Suzanne
@BR: It’s not just the “low-skill” industries that are full of immigrants. All the expensive services — healthcare, professional services like architecture and IT, etc. — have a lot of immigrants and foreigners.
And the prices for all of that stuff will spike, too.
anitamargarita
@zhena gogolia: 😍 lol, me too
scav
@Steve in the ATL: And had a serious influx of German immigrants.
In the 1830s over 120,000 Germans immigrated to the U.S., with at least one-third of those or 40,000 coming to Missouri.
source
Matt McIrvin
@Steve LaBonne: The claim that “*these* immigrants are different– they keep to themselves, they don’t learn English, they have suspect loyalties and repulsive customs, not like us or our parents” — this cycle goes back to before the US was even a country.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
As American as mom and apple pie.
Jackie
I sure hope the woman who started this unfounded rumor on FB is enjoying her newfound celebrity.😡
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Anyway: This reminds me of the time I was in Paris with my mother around 2000 eating at a bistro in the downstairs tourist ghetto (natch), and she couldn’t figure out what the couple at the next table were speaking. It wasn’t German, Danush, Swedish… so she asked them and it was Icelandic! Only about 100,000 or so native speakers, so they said they felt very safe speaking frankly since there a very low chance anyone else could understand them LOL.
My husband and I ate at the same bistro a few years later and were thrilled when they seated us in the main front room with the French patrons!
Steve LaBonne
@Matt McIrvin: Ben Franklin and the Germans. I like to tease my Pennsylvania German wife with that stuff. (And don’t forget the “swarthy” Swedes, LOL.)
bbleh
Just noticed, top hed on CNN site right now is:
Trump spreads more lies about Springfield, Ohio
lowtechcyclist
@Ruckus:
If you’re going to be accurate in either math or spelling, math is the better choice! If you make spelling mistakes (or even like this time, type the wrong word), it takes a lot of mistakes before someone trying to read it genuinely can’t understand what you mean. (I knew you meant descendant, of course, but the setup for wisecracks was too good to resist.) But math doesn’t have the same ‘give’ to it, getting the wrong answer doesn’t give much clue about what the right one was.
A LOT fewer, for me, but far from zero! Mostly, computers (especially being able to type in a WYSIWYG environment) have made writing WAY easier. Like you were saying elsewhere in this thread about how much change there has been in our lifetimes, that was a fucking MAJOR one.
You mean, the day before you become a decedent? ;-)
And you’re very welcome! I always enjoy what you have to say here.
trollhattan
Stop promising me a good time.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/new-yahoo-newsyougov-poll-after-debate-harris-surges-to-5-point-lead-over-trump-among-registered-voters-in-head-to-head-matchup-122213811.html
Pink Tie
@3Sice: does he really not understand that immigration is deflationary? or is he lying? (Hmmm… hard to say because he is dumb and a liar.)
Speaking of lying, I heard a clip of him doubling down on the pet-eating, claiming that he has heard directly from “constituents” who have experienced their pets being taken by Haitian illegal aliens. Because when my cat goes missing, I call my US senator.
Steve LaBonne
@trollhattan: Trump is doing everything possible to NOT expand beyond his hard-core base. That works very much in our favor.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Suzanne: Everyone knows beheaded cats look like rabbits, not chicken!
Baud
@bbleh:
After 9 years, it’s about time.
Ruckus
@BC in Illinois:
I live in SoCal and see and hear people of many different countries. My ex was born here in Los Angeles to immigrant Chinese parents. Who only spoke Chinese. In the same hospital I (and my mother) were born in. (Not the same building – it’s been rebuilt a number of times) I live in Los Angeles county, although I’ve lived in 2 other states far from CA. My genetic background is Irish and Italian. And I have met so many people from my travels both in and outside of this country. Humans are human. Some are very good, some are basically the opposite, IOW humans vary a lot. And the good are not always so and the bad can and often do get better. Sometimes we just need to learn a life lesson or two that most of us do at some point or other, but an unreasonable percentage never seem to do the learning. Maybe the teacher or the cause of the need of learning was not well understood. It is after all humanity. It takes all kinds. At least that’s the excuse. Or at least use to be. And life today is easier to see, there are more of us, and less space between us. Many people still seem to be blind. Nary a dog or cane or assistant nearby but blind they seem to be. Maybe they just don’t want to know. Anything outside their own little world.
lowtechcyclist
@Suzanne:
My wife has a similar grudge with TGI Friday’s, from just a couple years later. We haven’t been in one since then, and we’d have to be starving with nowhere else to eat before we set foot in another.
eclare
@lowtechcyclist:
Local restaurant in ATL, Treehouse, for me. It’s too bad, it was a cool bar/grill with a patio around a big tree.
Chet Murthy
@Suzanne: Huh, I woulda figured it was for the absolutely terrible food they serve.
The Audacity of Krope
@Chet Murthy: I never thought over seasoning was a thing until Chili’s served me a pile of salt with corn on the cob in the middle.
bbleh
@Baud: granted, tho at this point this is pretty much of a gimme. Let’s see if they’re quite as forthright the next time he cranks out an egregiously false and objectively dangerous lie that hasn’t already been fact-checked to death elsewhere.
bbleh
@The Audacity of Krope: so, not enough butter?
The Audacity of Krope
@bbleh: There was no telling…
Ruviana
@Lyrebird: Lol! I moved to upstate NY from LA and found myself carefully following Spanish speakers through stores just to hear Spanish.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
But during National Brotherhood Week…
Avalune
I was born in Springfield, Ohio. I went to Springfield North High with John Legend (though he was some years behind me and I can’t say I knew him). I still have some family and friends there though I’m mostly estranged. I haven’t been home more than twice in the last thirty years, so I’m no expert on what it’s like to be there these days, besides pretty Trumpy. Part of me feels like well ya’ll kinda brought this on yourselves for being part of this extra hateful very of the Republican Party. This is your guy. Reap what you sow and all that. But part of me really hates him and his idiot cronies for this and feels for my hometown (not that I needed more reasons to just truly despise that orange fuck).
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
We need more political commentary expressed via the piano these days.
BR
@Suzanne:
That’s true — I just figured as a political argument, in theory he’s talking about undocumented workers, and not that many folks working in healthcare and such are undocumented (because those are generally W2 jobs with paperwork). Though we all know that his goons wouldn’t pay attention to legal status.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): We aren’t by any means fluent but try as much as possible to get by without English when in Europe. If we happen to be seated next to an American group doing their best to meet the worst stereotypes of American behavior, we generally do not out ourselves as fellow Americans.
I love being surrounded by other languages. I really don’t get the mentality of being offended by hearing not-English. Some of my favorite memories are when I ended up talking with a local in a third language which is not native to either one of us.
Suzanne
@Chet Murthy: Well, the absolutely terrible food (I was with a few family members and went with the flow) was violently rejected by my body. So, yes, agree that it is terrible.
I think I had just ordered a hamburger and French fries or something? I don’t even remember. Vomiting on a city sidewalk? That I remember.
ETA: Maybe it was fish and chips? I don’t know.
The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
@Sister Golden Bear: I feel this. They were still honor-killing “queers” in the Mid-South of my childhood. The few who were open lived in constant dread.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
And so is his base. Layers and layers of stupid, and viciously proud of it.
Chet Murthy
@Suzanne: I can’t remember the last time I went to a chili’s, but it had to be >20yr ago. 40+ yr ago, it was one of -the- places to go for dinner for us freshmen at Rice. Sigh. It was burgers and faux-mexican food. So the idea of getting fish-n-chips there ….. hahaha. I do remember reading they’d branched out to be come something like TGIFridays with a dash of red pepper.
Jay C
Easy enough to see, for me: it’s white in front of our eyes…..
Another Scott
@Chet Murthy: +1
Also, just as the stagflation of the mid-late 1970s will be forever just around the corner, the Midwest will forever be the Rust Belt because the Big 3 closed a bunch of factories, steel plants closed, mechanical cash registers and typewriters were replaced by computers.
It’s just the way it is. No need to see if anything has changed since the days of the Reagan Democrats™.
[ groucho-roll-eyes.gif ]
It’s apparently always and forever 1973-1988 in America’s Newsrooms when it comes to covering anything outside the coasts.
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Remember Trump’s brain is frozen at 12 years old. Hot cool girl Harris blew him off so, weird crazy chick Loomer is to show Harris he doesn’t need her. Trump is having the rumor spread because it’s unpossible in his screwed up mind Harris really thinks he is a pathetic loser.
Bostondreams
Just getting pathetic. And dangerous. Rufo mixes up cats and chickens. And Vance spreads it.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/jd-vance-cats-grill-chicken-ohio-b2612999.html
Another Scott
@Avalune: My mom lived in Springfield for the last part of her life. It was a little city that had seen its share of tough times, but was still fighting to be better.
I was always struck by the mosque not too far down the road from where she lived, near the corn fields.
Too many people think that the midwest is just a bunch of white people stuck in the past. It’s much more than that.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
bbleh
@Jay C: LOL! Multiple merit points! With extra gold stars!
BR
@Bostondreams:
These folks are legal immigrants and are Vance’s constituents. I know he doesn’t care, but I would think Mike Dewine would have to step in at some point.
Enzymer
The towns with meat production plants, such as my Nebraska hometown are full of immigrants. They have been good for the community, & diversify the population. Also much better & more diverse food. The old hometown has Somali, Central American & Sudanese food now along with more Mexican places
Expletive Deleted
It definitely feels like something has changed, I have seen two separate reports now that used the word “lies” or “lying” for Trump. Not “misleading” or “untrue” or any other softening.
Steve LaBonne
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: My wife and I visited Paris and Nice in 2018. I can read pretty challenging books in French but my conversational French is quite rudimentary. Anyway, we had lunch in a little café in the Marais which was displaying (and the waitress was wearing one) “Fuck Donald” T-shirts (I’m still kicking myself for not buying one). We had a delightful conversation with the owner (who was fluent in English) in which he told us about an American couple who left a very huffy note before they left. We heartily encouraged him to keep pissing off people like that.
Steve LaBonne
@BR: He has made some ineffectual noises in support of the Haitians, in his usual manner. But he will never say a word against Couchfucker.
Mark’s Bubbie
@Baud: Yeah, doing all kinds of sexy repair stuff — doing the gutters, changing a tire, spackling a hole in the ceiling… Yer gettin me all excited…
Ruckus
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
SFB has been a loser his entire life. Every single damn day.
He “inherited” $400 million from his very unadored landlord father, and could have lived a life of luxury but he had to prove to someone, anyone that he is worthy of – well anything. And that was what got him to this place, people seeing who he really is, that he stands for him and no one else. He never learned the concept of respect in any direction other than to him. He has about zero skills at anything. Hell he can’t even recognize or put on makeup, dress himself or – OK I’m stuck because I think that all he can actually do with any skill whatsoever – is put on makeup and dress himself. Of course he does both of those remarkable poorly. He’s monied out the ass and what does he have to show for his entire life? How bad he is at anything/everything?
Another Scott
@Expletive Deleted: Biden said the word “lie” during his debate.
He lost, so it didn’t count.
Harris said the word “lie” during her debate.
She won, so it counted.
[ sigh ]
HTH!!
Cheers,
Scott.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: I also remember being on the train (?) to Versailles and being excited because along with the usual French and English, there were clearly a few other languages being spoken. Versailles is a universal tourist attraction:-). Besides the amazing building itself, the gardens are beautiful and huge, and Parisians use it as a giant park on the weekends for picnics, etc. Very cool.
Steve in the ATL
@eclare: many years ago, I saw Fred Savage get his fake ID confiscated there!
Matt McIrvin
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): On Wednesday night I saw a band from Iceland–Kaleo, performers of excellent heavy blues rock. Most of their stuff is in English and often seems to take place in some mythologized cowboy America where people are always about to flee to Mexico, but they did one song in Icelandic.
Suzanne
Despite being in the mid 80s today, I want it to be fall! There’s a pumpkin cake in the oven.
persistentillusion
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan):
I was in London in ’85 and some Dutch guys were being rude. I speak a little Dutch (from my father, who learned from his grandparents who raised him). I told them, in enormously archaic Dutch to go eff themselves. The look on their faces…..
eclare
@Steve in the ATL:
Wow! What a small world.
raven
@Steve in the ATL: Fucking lightning.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
I’ve skimmed the comments over the last few days in between doing other things, but never seem to get a chance to reply, so I’ll put this here. Pope Francis saying that neither Trump nor Kamala is pro-life makes some here angry. I have a different take. It gives the devout Catholics who are disgusted by Trump permission to vote for Kamala. She is strongly pro-choice, so he cannot indicate support for her. I’m happy that he isn’t signaling support for Vance and Trump either. I’m sure that makes Vance plus some the Cardinals & Bishops angry. Anything that makes those people angry gives me joy.
lowtechcyclist
@Matt McIrvin:
One of their songs, “Way Down We Go,” got airplay on alternative rock stations about six or seven years ago. I thought it was pretty good.
Steve in the ATL
@raven: is that the holdup? Dang it.
@eclare: @raven: did y’all watch the LSU-USC game? Both teams were trying so hard to lose! Eventually , the cocks tried a little harder….
raven
@Steve in the ATL: Yes, 40 minute delay. The Gator fans have left , why do we to watch?
and yes, I’ve watched everything ! 2 pick sixes called back.
Steve LaBonne
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: The reactionary American bishops and fuckhead converts like Couchfucker can’t hate Francis and more than they already do.
RevRick
The vicious, racist, anti immigrant rhetoric echoes that of the 1920s. The KKK ‘enjoyed ‘ a huge upsurge in membership and held demonstrations against Jews and Catholics and Aliens, who were polluting the blood of the nation. Two successive Immigration laws enacted in the early 20s cut immigration 90% and imposed rigid quotas that slammed the door shut on Eastern and Southern Europe. The big story of these years was the Sacco and Vanzetti trial. It wasn’t until WW2 that these prejudices diminished. But they don’t go away.
Before there was Trump there was Lou Barletta (oh the irony) who became the mayor of Hazelton and the US Representative by campaigning against the Hispanic influx. He succeeded in driving them away and tanking Hazelton’s economy.
Matt McIrvin
@lowtechcyclist: Yep, they made sure to do that one.
Their best stuff goes WAY HARDER than that, though–sometimes it sounds almost like AC/DC, without the screaming vocals.
eclare
@Steve in the ATL:
I caught the end of that one. Hoping for Texas A&M to hold on, now watching UT.
UncleEbeneezer
Got our Covid and Flu vaccinations and now just waiting for the shitty feeling to begin. Making some Korean Chicken Stew and listening to “10,000 Hz Legend” by Air. Damn I forgot how great this album is. About 20 years ago I used to listen to it (and the Virgin Suicides soundtrack) obsessively. Then for some reason I forgot about them. Anyways, we are also about to watch a Fall-ish, horror film The Significant Other, which looks fun.
Skepticat
I have a home on a tiny island in the Bahamas, and I know quite a few Haitians fairly well. They’re the hardest workers I know, and most are very intelligent. Most send most of their wages back to family still in Haiti. In our early days there, the only full-time residents were a Haitian family who worked for the developer. The father had been a successful lawyer who left to escape the Duvaliers, and he always wore a white Panama hat and blasted opera from his golf cart. Over several years, my father sponsored his five children so they could go to school and become citizens in the U.S. Three of them became doctors, and two became lawyers. The parents also became U.S. citizens and were replaced in the job by another Haitian family, the patriarch of which loves cats as companions and daily helps me feed 56 free-range felines, a dozen of which live at his house. My French is very weak, so I’m trying to learn some Creole so I communicate more easily with the newer workers. The most useful word here at the moment is BETIZ, which sometimes is translated as ridicule, but which I use as BULL MANURE. “Rethuglican” might be even more apropos.
lowtechcyclist
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
I just don’t see how a serious Catholic could support Vance, and that obviously includes the cardinals and bishops.
Here you have this guy who is committing a very serious sin – bearing false witness against the Haitians of Springfield in a way that very much endangers them – and it’s not just a one-off; he knows he’s bearing false witness, he knows he’s putting them in danger by doing so, and he keeps right on doing it. I would think that persisting in evil like that would be anathema in any rules-based version of Christianity, and Roman Catholicism certainly qualifies as one.
And forget the rules, it takes a genuine malevolence to persist on his course. He’s intentionally evil.
RevRick
@scav: MISSOURI Synod Lutherans who claimed they were being oppressed in Prussia by the decree of the king that there would be only one Protestant church in his realm, thus forcing together Lutherans and Calvinist Reformed.
citizen dave
Just realized (as a Neil Young fan), after a little googling confirmation, that Springfield, Ohio, is indeed the “Springfield” in Buffalo Springfield. The Buffalo-Springfield Roller Company was the market-dominant leader in rolling roads in the 1950s. Stephen Stills and Richie Furay spied the nameplace on a roller outside their producer’s house in L.A. in 1996, and named their band after it. https://www.arizcc.com/post/old-school-equipment-the-buffalo-springfield-roller-company
citizen dave
@UncleEbeneezer: I got the covid jab on Thursday afternoon (first for a long while) and had a sore upper arm, but no other symptoms. Intentionally doing it and the flu shots separate this time. We’ll see what the flu shot does.
Steve in the ATL
@raven: can I get a “dammit, Bobo!”?
mrmoshpotato
@Another Scott:
Maybe they should be paid 1973-88 payscale.
Lyrebird
@Ruviana: Glad I am not the only one! And I don’t know if you’ll see this, but if your part of upstate ever puts you on 90 or 87 thru the capital district, you *want* to know that there is real Central American food in, bear with me, the food court of Colonie Center Mall, just NE of the intersection of those two interstates.
Elizabelle
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: That’s a good take re permission to vote. Otherwise, a true SMH moment.
We all remember how thrilled Pope Francis was to pose with the Trumps. Melania in her widow’s weeds. (Dress for the job you want.).
WaterGirl
@Expletive Deleted: I like the sound of that.
wjca
I realize it’s probably a dead thread. But unable to resist noting that the US Congress could qualify. And some state legislatures as well.
Ruckus
@lowtechcyclist:
I may have said this here before but I was sent to an all boys catholic trade school instead of public HS and I lasted one year. I met one of the worst humans I’ve ever met, and in my world that is fucking bad. He was the VP and I remember his name over most people I’ve met over the decades. He was the perfect example of how not to human. His name was Father Schaffer. At the end of the second week we had a all student assembly so that he could make fun of the shortest kid in 9th grade. Part of the story is that I’m not now and wasn’t then catholic. The other freshmen in my shop picked me to go up on stage, and I told them if I stand up I’m waking out the back door because I know what is going to happen, and I’ll be flipping off Father Schaffer while doing it. And if any one even attempts to stop me I will aim low and hurt them badly. They selected another kid. And then the show commenced exactly as I said it would. My entire class looked at me and asked how I know. “I haven’t grown for almost 5 yrs, not 1/4 of an inch. I know.” I got a lot of respect from my classmates. And they all learned how much of a fucking asshole Father Schaffer was. He proved that over and over during that year. Told my parents I’m not going back to that fucking school, ever again. And I never set foot on the property ever again.
I may have told this story before….
Frequent_lurker
@BR: regarding post 120 I’ve noticed the poster linked to mastodon may have had a typo because they are talking about voting trump out on november 6th but the actual election day is on november 5th so someone may want to alert the poster on mastodon on that.
Lyrebird
@Skepticat: THank you for your excellent post. And yeah BS for betises seems right on to my inexpert ears! before reading your comment I might have said “idiocy” but your translation is better!
CAM-WA
I’m going to get nailed for saying this, but I find the condescending tone of many of these comments to be crossing the line. Yes, the “other side” is way “outer of line,” but that’s no justification.
Kayla Rudbek
@mrmoshpotato: and Springfield, VA would send her into orbit. It has a Metro station!
Juice Box
Where I live, coyotes eat the cats. You’d have to be pretty spry to outrun a hungry coyote.
Ruckus
@lowtechcyclist:
Thanks!
Chris T.
@BC in Illinois:
Hey, I like (some) German and Hungarian food!