Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

We can agree to disagree, but i’m right.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Where tasty lettuce and good mustard aren’t elitist.

… makes me wish i had hoarded more linguine

I swear, each month of 2020 will have its own history degree.

No one could have predicted…

Yes we did.

I’m going back to the respite thread.

People are complicated. Love is not.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

This is a big f—–g deal.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Everybody saw this coming.

Women: they get shit done

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

The math demands it!

The house always wins.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

You are here: Home / All the jim-jims in this town

All the jim-jims in this town

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We’ve heard a lot about the opioid problem and its political ramifications over the past couple years, about how the worse an area was ravaged by opioid addiction, the better Trump did in the area, about how folks in diners in Fentanyl Falls, Wisconsin think Trump is doing a great job, and so on.

But the Trump administration still gets way with letting clowns like this run its drug policy:

A former Trump campaign worker appointed at age 23 to a top position in the White House’s drug policy office had been let go from a job at a law firm because he repeatedly missed work, a partner at the firm said.

Let’s change things in November. Here’s the Balloon Juice fund that is split equally among eventual Democratic nominees in House districts currently held by Republicans.

Goal Thermometer

Reader Interactions

58Comments

  1. 1.

    Frankensteinbeck

    about how the worse an area was ravaged by opioid addiction, the better Trump did in the area

    Correlation is not causation. If there’s a link, it’s multiple steps long and has to do with shitty people either being or causing miserable people.

  2. 2.

    Raoul

    There was a nice Womens March contingent in Sarasota, FL yesterday (I was at a conference nearby). Got me curious, and I guess FL-16 is considered safely blue. But it’s really just one of many with a PVI (partisan voter index) of +7. Given the recent swings in specials, that seems surmountable!

    Fat cat white dude incumbent did have a D opponent last time, but let’s fund all these races so he & all the shit-heels have a real chance of losing in the coming wave!

  3. 3.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Raoul: Amen to that. No Republican should run unopposed this November. Our side should always give voters a choice. You just never know given Trump’s nauseating behavior.

  4. 4.

    The Moar You Know

    I wonder if Tom Petty voted for Trump? (I really doubt it)

    In all seriousness, his doctor needs to go to jail. Prince’s too. Fentanyl is for burn victims and bone cancer. The laundry list of shit Petty was on is stunning, and not in a good way. Looked like his doctor wrote him a scrip that read “take one Rite-Aid daily”. Three different tranquilizers, Oxy and Fentanyl. Anyone taking that sort of cocktail should be in a hospital under 24/7 supervision.

  5. 5.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    @Raoul: I assume you mean safely red? We’ve been stuck with Buchanan for longer than I care to remember (and we had Katherine Harris before him). Ousting him might actually be doable this year though. I sure hope so.

    @The Moar You Know: Jesus. I’d known Petty had had drug problems in the past, but I hadn’t known his doctor was the drug problem.

    Also, thanks Doug for the ear worm.

  8. 8.

    Fair Economist

    @The Moar You Know:

    Three different tranquilizers, Oxy and Fentanyl.

    That prescription is manslaughter. Almost nobody could take all that for an extended period without accidentally overdosing.

  10. 10.

    John Revolta

    @The Moar You Know: Petty had a hip fracture and knee problems and was trying to keep a tour going. Yeah he should’ve been hospitalized probably, but your doctor, or doctors, can’t force you into it.

  14. 14.

    Davebo

    Ikea has smarter cabinets. (Great sign at one of the rallies yesterday, I can’t take credit.)

  16. 16.

    (((CassandraLeo)))

    @Fair Economist: I tend to think recreational usage of all drugs should be decriminalised, with the more harmful/addictive ones (e.g., meth, opiates) being responded to with policies designed to nudge people to using less harmful equivalents. Portugal has had great success in reducing overdoses, new HIV infections, etc., this way.

    Fentanyl is the one exception I’m willing to make. That shit might as well be rat poison.

    @Raoul: It happens to all of us. Hope you’re enjoying/have enjoyed Sarasota. I’d ask if you’d want to get a bite to eat at some point, but my car’s in the shop right now thanks to a (fortunately, relatively minor) traffic accident, so maybe some other time. (Not sure you’re even still here anyway.)

  17. 17.

    debbie

    @Jeffro:

    I was just wondering if it was too early to think that a Jaguars win might be a good omen for the rest of the year.

  19. 19.

    Marcopolo

    Just finished up GOTV postcard writing for Ethan Perkinson, a policeman who is also a 27 year old progressive in rural MO. We did 600 today (half of last week but it is almost 70 outside and turnout was smaller). We did get visits from 3 area D state House reps, though, along with Ethan Perkinson’s father. Good to know we are getting noticed for our efforts.

    I tried to post a link to Ethan’s ACTBlue page in the prior thread—didn’t work. Here’s a link to his campaign page. The ACTblue link is on it. (https://www.google.com/search?q=ethan+perkinson&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari) His Dad said they were expecting turnout of 3000 or less to decide this election. Any amount you can chip in would help.

    Have a great day everyone.

  22. 22.

    Mr Stagger Lee

    @debbie: A team with an owner who is Muslim, “Quelle Horror”. An to think can this nation survive a $100,000 plate dinner where caviar is served with plastic spoons.

  23. 23.

    PsiFighter37

    Speaking of assholes, fuck the Pats and fuck the refs for giving those assholes free points and time on the clock.

  25. 25.

    Raoul

    @(((CassandraLeo))): Very kind – and I had a rental car, but flew home to the briefly thawing tundra last night. We had dinners at restaurants in the downtown zone, some great food there

  26. 26.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @(((CassandraLeo))):
    My philosophy on drugs is that the primary measure of how much they’re regulated should be how addictive they are. Tobacco products should probably be flat-out illegal, since once you start, you’re stuck. Opioids are also heavily addictive, and need a lot of regulation to try and protect people from that. There are other considerations, like how damaging the drug is, but I’d put addictiveness at the top of the list. Following that logic, marijuana should have very few controls, if any. Alcohol’s an odd duck. Hard to pin down on how addictive and how much damage it does.

  28. 28.

    Quantumman

    At Knoxville women’s march today there were 10,000 participants. Twenty neo-Nazi counter protesters showed and marched.

  29. 29.

    Patricia Kayden

    @Quantumman: **standing ovation** Good to hear because it sounded as if Neo Nazis were planning to be confrontational. They’re punks at heart.

  32. 32.

    Gvg

    @The Moar You Know: Petty did not vote for a racist. He was famous and gone by the time I moved back to Gainesville, but there was an attempt at a KKK recruitment rally here about 20 years ago and Petty flew home to participate in the much larger counter rally. Gainesville Sun posted a pic of him arguing with one of the Klan leaders face to face and both angry.
    I think the right has liked provoking liberals for a long time. UNiversity town is very anti racist.

  33. 33.

    Mnemosyne

    @Quantumman:

    At Knoxville women’s march today there were 10,000 participants. Twenty neo-Nazi counter protesters showed and marched.

    This is BY FAR the best way to get the neo-Nazis to go away — by showing them how vastly outnumbered they really are.

    A lot of people forget that, after the American Nazi Party won their famous court case saying they had a First Amendment right to march in Skokie (the American city with the highest proportion of Holocaust survivors living there), the Nazis actually chickened out and canceled their rally after they saw how huge the counter-protest was going to be.

  37. 37.

    Patricia Kayden

    @eemom: Glen Greenwald. Nope nope nope. He has become a Trump apologist. Don’t need to read anything from him.

  38. 38.

    Baud

    @Davebo: The Dems need hacks, but I would like to think we could do better than Matty Y.

    I could be a better hack than Matty Y.

  39. 39.

    Davebo

    @Baud: That was sort of my point.

    On Maddow.

    “I used to be really good friends with Rachel Maddow,” he says. “And I’ve seen her devolution from this really interesting, really smart, independent thinker into this utterly scripted, intellectually dishonest, partisan hack.”

  44. 44.

    PAM Dirac

    Went to the Women’s march on Frederick, MD. Full crowd (~2000?) and very enthusiastic. Message was vote, vote, vote. My favorite sign: “I fix toys, dinner and boo-boos. In November I’ll fix Congress.”

  46. 46.

    Brachiator

    @The Moar You Know:

    The laundry list of shit Petty was on is stunning, and not in a good way. Looked like his doctor wrote him a scrip that read “take one Rite-Aid daily”. Three different tranquilizers, Oxy and Fentanyl. Anyone taking that sort of cocktail should be in a hospital under 24/7 supervision.

    Compliant doctors and celebrities have been connected for a long time. In the 60s there was a guy known as Dr Feelgood who everybody knew about.

    And maybe the celebrities try to lie to themselves, “if a doctor is monitoring me and measuring dosages, it’s not an addiction.”

    Didn’t Michael Jackson’s doctor do jail time?

    In Prince’s case, I wonder if he would have been better off had he stopped performing, since he seemed to have bone and joint problems related to his need to put on a highly physical performance.

  51. 51.

    Gin & Tonic

    @SiubhanDuinne: Thanks for asking. Yes, she is much improved. Still tired, but has her appetite back, and we managed to go to the symphony last night, so it’s looking good.

  53. 53.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Gin & Tonic:

    I am so glad! Great news! What symphony, who conducted, and what did they perform?

    ETA: why in the world would FYAC change “what did they perform?” to “What didn’t they perform?”?

    Autocorrect can DIAF, except sometimes it’s funny so I am reluctant to disable it.

  58. 58.

    efgoldman

    @Baud:

    I could be a better hack than Matty Y.

    At least he finally learned to use a spelling and grammar checker.
    Harvard degree, my ass.

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