I haven’t been posting much lately due to the 5,000 mile road trip I took last month. Most of it was through fairly rural red states, or the rural part of purple states. I have an insight that I will share with you beautiful people, and you alone: the smaller and poorer your town, the more Jesus and/or abortion signs you’ll have. If your town is in the rural Midwest or Plains states, they’ll be abortion signs. If it’s the South or Texas, you’re gonna see a slogan about the Lord. Just like Dollar General, Jesus/abortion signs are a real tell-tale of the economic health of an area, if you missed the shuttered retail and broken windows. More after the break.
I have to hand it to the Jesus aficionados, since they’re far more creative than the abortion zealots. And, you know what’s always on their repressed little western Texas minds, because it leaks out all over their signs – it’s hard to stumble on your knees, but it’s a hell of a lot easier to do a bunch of other things that would make Jesus frown. (Sorry for the quality of this one, it’s a crop from a quick snap with my cell phone.)
The abortion zealots have standardized on a new slogan, which is a pink sign with a picture of a full-term baby, saying something like “did you know that a fetus can feel pain?” (Which, of course, is a lie.) I didn’t take a picture of those because, frankly, the whole abortion suppression project disgusts me.
Of course, there’s also the quasi-Jesus Trump stuff. This was in western Texas, but Wisconsin plates (that has to be some kind of double score in highway bingo).
This is from east Texas – the landscape is different, but the politics are the same.
I could have taken a hundred pictures like this during my drive just through Texas, not to mention the rural South. Some of those towns make The Last Picture Show look like a documentary.
ruemara
The urban version is counting how many churches and liquor stores are on a block. The more there are, the worse and more economically depressed the neighborhood.
trollhattan
What’s up with the Jeebus horse?
Jamie
@trollhattan: No idea, but I live in Dallas, and the Jeebus horse is everywhere.
Kay
Oh, God. They’re really going with “the President is a fucking idiot who doesn’t have a clue about his own foreign policy” defense. I didn’t think they’d actually assert it. I thought it would be a dodge. It’s affirmative.
Anthony K
“did you know that a fetus can feel pain?”
So do liberals, but that doesn’t register in the conservative mind.
Tim C.
@trollhattan: Rural cowboy imagery. In some ways it’s really interesting how the rural west, rural South and rural Midwest used to be independent things with fairly separate political issues and cultures and are now all merged into a festering pustule of racism and entitlement.
Matt McIrvin
@ruemara: Depends on the kind of churches, I think. What I notice is the rash of businesses providing poor people’s predatory substitutes for real financial services: check cashing/payday loan/pawn shops and Rent-a-Centers.
Kay
Look in the drug store to see how many self-help remedies there are for toothache. That’s a measure. No dental care hurts. It’s painful.
Olivia
We used to have to drive to and through Texas a lot. It always seemed that whenever you saw a large sign for a porn shop, there was always some crappy little off brand church within 500 feet.
[Individual 1] mistermix
@ruemara: I always go by bars on the windows and doors of whatever retail is around, though complete lack of retail tells you that things are really bad.
Uncle Jeffy
Rural Indiana is much the same and I’ll be checking rural Iowa just before Thanksgiving. The common element seems to be economic decay in farming, small-town manufacturing, or both. I got an angry reaction to a Coe College T-shirt because the person had been laid off from Quaker Oats and somehow assumed liberals were responsible.
dexwood
@trollhattan:
Cowboys for Christ?
different-church-lady
@Anthony K: Are you kidding? Making liberals feel pain is their only motivation in life.
rikyrah
Manu Raju (@mkraju) Tweeted:
After weeks of Republicans demanding that Schiff open up the doors and allow the public to see the impeachment proceedings, Trump says this morning: “They shouldn’t be having public hearings.” https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1192828052348252160?s=20
Matt McIrvin
The churches that are the easiest to notice are the big-box megachurches that seem to cater to comfortable suburban evangelicals, with shopping-mall-sized parking lots for their Ford Expeditions. But, yeah, you need a smaller number of those since they’re colossal.
Elizabelle
@Kay:
Ouch. That is so true.
Recent visit to Fort Wayne, Indiana: numerous billboards about kicking opioid abuse. All over the downtown.
CaseyL
Those dying areas are places where anyone with “grit” – and brains – got out long ago. They see how people live elsewhere, in cities with infrastructure, people with decent jobs, and it never ever occurs to them that living by a creed of ignorance and needy faith is the reason their hellhole is a hellhole. It’s always someone else’s fault, and FoxNews is happy to tell them who that “someone else” is.
I will note that the end of manufacturing was a deathknell in those places. In manufacturing, you didn’t need a whole lot of book-learning or, forgive me, smarts, to operate mass production machinery. That’s why those jobs were so easily replaced by automation.
We keep churning out not-very-bright people, without having or creating livable-wage jobs for them. I don’t know what to do about that, since they are utterly resistant to changing their beliefs or way of life.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Tim C.:
Case in point, in one of the midwestern states, maybe Kansas or Nebraska, actual socialism was politically viable and did fairly well there in the early 20th century.
In popular culture, Superman grew up in rural Kansas, and back in the 1930s, this was considered a good thing and “salt of the earth” wasn’t used ironically. However, I wonder to what degree this belief persists in mainstream popular culture still
Ma and Pa Kent might be Trumpers now. In the 1990s Lois and Clark tv show, the show specifically mentioned they marched for civil rights in the 60s and were generally liberal.
Howard Beale IV
Only the first image made it through the MAKA-plugin – the others, well you know the story…
NotMax
Signs of improvement: It’s, you’re and your used and spelled correctly.
//
JPl
Those MAGA hats must love those hour motels along the strip in East Texas.
Citizen Alan
My personal favorite is ginormous crosses planted next to … used car dealerships and other private businesses. Even I was stunned when the Governor of Mississippi, the Ayatollah Phil Bryant, along with several other state officials, made a personal appearance at the dedication of a 110-foot-tall cross next to a greasy-looking catfish restaurant.
“You cannot serve both God and Mammon,” indeed.
JPl
@Citizen Alan: Prosperity Bible trumpers.
The Dangerman
@Kay:
When life gives you lemons…
This will turn into some plot twist like “Being There” or “Dave” where Trump is a simpleton.
NotMax
@JPl
Opioid of the masses.
Marmot
Another gauge of poverty and decay I noticed across the West: Count the RVs (not RV dealerships). I swear it’s like 1 old RV per house in broken-down New Mexico, Utah and Idaho.
BroD
“You cannot serve both God and Mammon,”
But you can serve God and catfish.
dmsilev
@rikyrah:
(I’m a devoted Marxist)
MattF
I expect that, pretty soon, we’ll be seeing ‘crucified Trump’ artwork, bumper stickers, and merch. It’s inevitable.
Ladyraxterinok
@dexwood:
There’re a number of motorcyclists for Christ groups. I think Kenneth Copeland had one.
PST
@Elizabelle:
I spent quite a bit of time in Fort Wayne last summer, and I am confident that by the standards of moderate sized rust belt cities, Fort Wayne is actually way above average. It still shocks me that those signs — and the signs urging everyone to be sure to have Narcan on hand — can be found even in the better places, not just the complete ghost towns. I couldn’t believe all the Narcan billboards in my old home town of Toledo when my wife and I spent a few days there knocking on doors before the 2016 election.
I spent so much time in Fort Wayne because my mother, who lived there for the last 40 years of her life, was dying of cancer. I mention it because it is important to remember what a godsend opiates can be under the right circumstances. The problem would be easier to solve if we didn’t have to be careful not to go too far in limiting availability.
hedgehog the occasional commenter
@MattF: Don’t give Jon McNaughton any ideas….
Citizen Alan
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
I have made the comment before that the single most unbelievable thing about Superman is not his incredible powers or his alien origin but rather the fact that he has a credo of compassion and protectiveness towards all humanity despite having been raised on a farm in rural Kansas. If Kal-El’s ship had landed at any point since 1987, I would have expected Superman to have exterminated all the Muslims in the world from space with his heat vision. Because something something Jesus.
Jeffro
@Kay: Why not? He’s busy this morning saying that – get this – the Democrats shouldn’t be holding public hearings. Say what? But you…you just said..
Last week it was “private star chamber yadda gobble gook!”. Now it’s “public trials are bad gabba doo goo goo!”
They’re completely insane. They’re cycling through in matters of minutes not days anymore
ETA: rikyrah noted it first, above.
Baud
I would like to see a liberal Christian version with Jeebus Prius.
mad citizen
@Elizabelle: Fort Wayne, my hometown. Maybe opiod addiction factors positively in the livability indices, or there are so many other worse places, because at least by these people, it came in 93d as a best place to live (Bloomington and Indy ranked above, but the suburban cities seem like a weird omission): https://www.wane.com/news/local-news/fort-wayne-in-top-100-best-places-to-live/
Citizen Alan
@The Dangerman:
“Dave” actually was not a simpleton, IIRC. The joke of that movie was that he was an Everyman of at least average intelligence and above-average morals trapped in an environment where everyone else was an utterly amoral and ruthless politician.
Origuy
@trollhattan: Apparently there are such things as cowboy churches.
Ladyraxterinok
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
Early 20th century Oklahoma was apparently one of the most socialist states in the country
patrick II
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
I am trying to imagine a MAGA Superman. A scary thought.
Joey Maloney
If you haven’t seen it yet, please enjoy this video of Glenn Greenwald getting into a slap fight on live radio: https://twitter.com/chrislongview/status/1192821869759619073
dexwood
@Ladyraxterinok: Yeah, I’ve seen a few wearing patches that say so. And, I have seen Cowboys for Christ bumper stickers on pick ups here in New Mexico.
Baud
@Ladyraxterinok:
Not too socialist to do this, however.
Some things always take priority.
Elizabelle
@PST: My condolences on your mom’s cancer. Agreed re pain relief at end of life. It is merciful.
Impressed with what Fort Wayne has done with a waterfront park — Promenade Park. It was superb, complete with brewpub offerings and reasonably priced snacks onsite. The city bought up the land, because it flooded way too often (confluence of three rivers), and love how they reused it. Residents were out and about in it (of course, it was a beautiful and warm late September evening. More on the park, with even better pictures.
I like that Fort Wayne can think out of the box.
mad citizen
@PST: Finally after three years here a Fort Wayne thread! There I grew up, age 6 to 18, and on college breaks. They’ve done a really nice job redeveloping their downtown. They have a D mayor–even my aged dad, a usual R voter, voted for the D mayor this week. And of course they are one of the places claiming a Johnny Appleseed burial site, next to the Memorial Coliseum.
Kelly
In rural Oregon it’s guns, guns, GUNS. A decal with “Oregunian” over an AR rifle image covering the entire back window of your jacked up diesel pickup is particularly popular. Signs reading “I will not comply” referencing gun control proposals dot county road sides.
bemused
@Citizen Alan:
I can’t remember what state or interstate hwy we traveled through but there was a humongous cross not far away from a sex toy store. I couldn’t stop laughing.
Sister Golden Bear
@Marmot:
Not just overtly poor areas, in Palo Alto there’s a half-mile long stretch along one of the main roads in front of Stanford University lines with RVs of people who can’t afford housing. They’re not “living on the streets themselves” homeless, but still homeless.
There’s numerous other RV homeless clusters around the Bay Area, although most of them are more discretely tucked away in business parks/industrial areas.
?BillinGlendaleCA
So this post is basically saying this:
Citizen Alan
@patrick II:
Watch “The Boys” on Amazon. The main antagonist is The Homelander, a Superman pastiche who is an utterly insane RWNJ.
Shantanu Saha
It’s hard to stumble when your legs are cut off too.
Amir Khalid
@dmsilev:
Legendary French joke: Je suis Marxiste … tendance Groucho.
debbie
@trollhattan:
What cowboy doesn’t bow to the cross? //
Citizen Alan
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
It was true then. It’s true now. Michael Kinsley defined a “gaffe” as when a politician inadvertently says something that is obviously true but that no one is supposed to say out loud.
Ladyraxterinok
@Baud:
Plus like many places, by the mid 20s the KKK was a power in Tulsa.
It’s suspected that Woodie Guthrie’s dad may have taken part in a lynching in their small OK town.
From little I’ve seen, the socialism in OK was pre WWI
Ksmiami
we don’t need to do anything because the hospitals and medical services are being severely reduced in these dying towns for profit
Jay
Elizabelle
@mad citizen: Fort Wayne is my parents’ hometown too. We lived there for a few years, off and on.
Glad to see Fort Wayne in the top 100. Squeaked in because the Livability site changed its selection criteria, but that’s actually a big help. Link: https://livability.com/best-places/top-100-best-places-to-live/2019
This is all good. Affordability is a huge factor. And seeding the [lighter] red states with younger residents could be quite good, in the long or even medium run.
Still LOL that Tulsa OK cannot pay people to move there. $10 gift on arrival is not attracting many takers. (One comment: reader looked and saw way too many churches. Uh huh.)
mad citizen
It’s not on a google image or I would link it, but on Tuesday I-70 west in Illinois I saw a large white billboard with blue/red/green(?) words “Trump + Pence = Prosperity”. So at least they can still use basic mathematical symbols.
Ksmiami
@Citizen Alan: I love that show the super heroes are like Greek gods and goddesses- more petty and complex like humans.
swiftfox
Drove from MD to Tucson last summer. That stretch of I-20 after Pecos to I-10 had no topography, traffic, vegetation, or houses. When you hit I-10 you start picking up traffic to El Paso and the topography with the dry mountain ranges appears.
mad citizen
@Elizabelle: Thanks for reminding me that it was a millenial survey thing. I remember when my 87 year dad told me how Fort Wayne had ranked high in a millenial survey, my first reaction was to laugh.
TaMara (HFG)
Wow, Trump melting down hourly now – highlights of the latest Chopper Talk here.
Kent
I spent a decade living in Central Texas (Waco area) and have extended family scattered all over Trump Country (northern Michigan, rural Indiana, rural PA) so I’m pretty in-tune with this subculture. A couple of comments:
1. I’ve come around to the idea that Abortion is really just a sotto voce code for racism. What do I mean by that? I know a shitload of rural red state middle aged guy types who are always happy to cite Abortion as the reason they *must* vote GOP when I know them and I know damn well they aren’t particularly religious and don’t give the slightest shit about abortion. It’s tribal and racist and since Dems are the party of blacks then they must be GOP. But they aren’t so clueless as to actually say that out loud . So abortion becomes code and the un-arguable reason for voting GOP. Because no one ever questions your motivations if you say you are GOP because you are pro-life. Guns serves basically the same purpose.
2. These people are basically unreachable. You aren’t ever going to parachute in for some canvassing and convince them of anything. They get FOX news and similar propaganda on talk radio and facebook, etc. basically 24/7 and they get it from their churches and neighbors and right wing magazines, especially the evangelical news magazines. Someone knocking on their door or an ad during the campaign season is going to be about 0.1% of their media consumption. The other 99.9% is going in the other direction. I have an obese middle aged female cousin who works as a waitress at a truck stop with no health insurance. She just forwarded me a Glenn Beck tape explaining how the entire Impeachment thing is just the DNC covering up for its illegal actions in Ukraine. So some such nonsense. You can’t reach her. She votes on race and uses religion as the excuse.
3. What does that mean for winning elections? It means you have to mobilize the fuck out of every single voter who is indeed reachable. We are the majority. And even in the deepest bumfuck Texas there are blue voters scattered about. I was living in rural Texas during 2008 when the Dem caucuses came to TX for the first time when it actually meant something and I met all kinds of rural Dems who came out of the woodwork to caucus for Hillary or Obama. It was exciting as hell and I didn’t know I even had all those Dem neighbors because they tend to lay in the woodwork surrounded by the dominant GOP culture.
immanentize
@Kay:
I use dental care as a measure of poverty too. When I was young, Novocaine was an extravagance that was avoided if possible, because it really wasn’t in the family budget. I know many people younger than me who had the same experience.
Kay
@Jeffro:
They just wing it hour by hour. The objective is to get thru the next hour. If they need to say “public hearings!” at 3 and then “no public hearings” at 4 they will do so. It doesn’t have to make sense or be consistent. It just has to be words in some organized sequence each hour, and thus the day passes. They then crank up the word machine the following morning and it starts spitting out more.
Elizabelle
The Tulsa story, from the WaPost: This city is offering you $10,000 to move there
misterpuff
@patrick II: Uberman
joel hanes
@dmsilev:
I’m a devoted Marxist
https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/81Lkh%2Bb37sL._SL1500_.jpg
Patricia Kayden
There are a few Dollar Generals here in Southern Maryland and I never considered them to be a sign of economic distress. It’s a little cheaper than Walmart.
MattF
@TaMara (HFG): I’m OK with Trump going to Moscow for the May Day parade.
justawriter
@Ladyraxterinok: And North Dakota came out of that era with a state owned mill and elevator and bank.
Ladyraxterinok
@Elizabelle:
Found that Tulsa Remite got 10,000 applicants
Elizabelle
From the Institute for Local Self-Reliance: Dollar Stores Are Targeting Struggling Urban Neighborhoods and Small Towns. One Community Is Showing How to Fight Back.
14-year life expectancy gap.
Terry chay
@Sister Golden Bear: where is this? I know of a huge RV park in Sunnyvale, but none in Palo Alto. Are you sure you are not confusing Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC) with an RV park?
From the 280, SLAC looks like a mile long line of RVs.
Elizabelle
@Ladyraxterinok: Thank you. I have not looked at that article for ages. Wonder how that will turn out for them. We shall watch.
debbie
@TaMara (HFG):
Disgusting creature. Sondland gives him a million dollars, and he doesn’t remember him??? And why go to the May Day Parade? It’s not like the Soviet Union was at Normandy or anything.
I’m sorry that Colbert won’t be live tonight.
DanR2
@bemused: Probably I-75 through East Tennessee. “Big Cross Porno” shop north of Caryville.
joel hanes
@Sister Golden Bear:
in Palo Alto there’s a half-mile long stretch along one of the main roads in front of Stanford University lines with RVs of people who can’t afford housing
To be scrupfair, at least some of those are owned and occupied by construction workers who are working in Silicon Valley’s current condo construction boom, but own houses in places like Stockton or Vacaville or Grass Valley, and find it convenient to live close to the work site, in their RV, during the week.
Metric: check the difference between the number of such RVs on Saturday evening compared to Tuesday evening.
Kent
@Kelly:
I’m a 5th Generation Oregonian although I live across the river in WA now. Oregon is basically Portland, Salem, and some college towns surrounded by Arkansas or Kentucky. When I dive into the facebook feeds of most of the guys I knew from HS who are now in their 50s it is mostly all MAGA shit and endless photos in cammo posing with rifles over the deer and elk they have killed or the steelhead they have caught. I’m not sure why one needs cammo for fishing for steelhead but they wear it fishing too. And the big trucks they drive are basically the same you see in Texas.
Kay
@immanentize:
When factories here went to perfect attendance for bonuses people would go to work sick, because the bonus accrues and an absence can snatch it away. We had people going to work with the whole side of their face swollen up. Just makes your heart hurt. There aren’t too many things worse than that pain. Boom, boom, boom. That’s what it feels like. The older people use clove oil to numb the pain and it reeks. I smell it now on someone and I know exactly what it’s about. We just treat people like shit in this country. We don’t value them at all. I’m not surprised so many of them took to pain killers. They want to be zombies.
Amir Khalid
@Elizabelle:
TEN WHOLE BUCKS?! For every single person who moves into town? What crazy spendthrift approved that amount?
opiejeanne
@Matt McIrvin:
And bearing the NOTW stickers. Being in the world and not of it seems to include driving the larger & higher-priced SUVs to haul your two children to soccer practice.
Ocotillo
@trollhattan: There are Cowboy churches and a lot of them have similar logos on their signs or logos.
Gravenstone
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Wisconsin. A series of Milwaukee mayors were socialists in the late 1800 and early 1900s.
Elizabelle
@Ladyraxterinok: The website for Tulsa Remote. They have put together a good one.
Elizabelle
@Amir Khalid: Yeah. Noticed I dropped a K there.
$10 is not even enough gas money to flee back home. ;-)
Richard Guhl
@Kay:
In Restoration England, 6% of the population died from tooth abscesses.
Terry chay
@Patricia Kayden: you should look up the numbers on Dollar General (and similar stores) because your anecdote does not jibe with the numbers.
In fact, they’re only “cheaper” because they carry cheaper products with a longer shelf life. Even the Walmart superstore would be better than a dozen Dollar Generals.
immanentize
@Kay: Dental care (basic) was one of one of the things that my hometown industry and factories (Endicott Johnson — EJ — Shoes) offered workers. They also could buy basic houses from EJ at $5/week from their pay. It was paternalistic labor policy, the tradeoff for which was NO UNIONS!
But the titans of my town’s industry understood how dental care was critical. My Dad said the best thing the Navy did for him in WWII was fix his teeth (OK, by pulling a few, but they made him a plate).
Edmund Dantes
@rikyrah: where’s Nelson Muntz when you need him?
Gravenstone
@mad citizen: Fort Wayne was our closest cultural outlet when we were in college 30ish years ago. Campus was about 40 minutes west, so we’d head down once a month or so on a Saturday to wander Glenbrook and catch whatever current (bad) movie caught our interest.
immanentize
@Richard Guhl: That is super interesting because of a case I just recently taught my students about dental care (lack of) on a reservation leading to the death of a child by abscess.
I could look, but do you have a cite/link?
mad citizen
I think this quote might be a lasting one, at least it always comes to my mind: “They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
Remember when? “Obama angers midwest voters with guns and religion remark” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/apr/14/barackobama.uselections2008
Kelly
@Kent:
Truth.
When I retired I moved back to rural Marion county Oregon where I grew up after spending my adult life in Eugene and Portland. Lovely hiking and kayaking within minutes of home. My old high school friends that never left are all RWNJ. A few that went off to college are sorta OK.
Ladyraxterinok
@Elizabelle:
A few yrs ago State Farm made big push to support agents and others in NoTulsa. Don’t know what came of it.
Booker T HS in NoTulsa is a magnet school. Teaches Chinese, etc. My niece went there
Interesting fact One of Oral Robert’s sons taught there IIRC he was gay and committed suicide.
One of Oral’s grandsons is also gay. He’s talked and written about growing up gay in that religious environment. He was not allowed to sit with the family during Oral’s funeral. IIRC he did not learn his uncle was gay until sometime after he became an adult.
PST
@mad citizen: I think we could get more people for a Toledo thread, but I’m happy to be part of a Fort Wayne thread, even though I’ll have to fake it a bit. My folks moved there while I was in college, perhaps in part so I could never come home and claim my old room back. Their house was very close to Memorial Colosseum, so I’ve driven past Johnny Appleseed Park hundreds of times and walked the dog there a few. It’s also close to the Purdue campus there, which has been expanding and is no longer shared with IU. Like so many other regional cities, Fort Wayne seems to rely a great deal on healthcare and higher education for jobs, which may be part of the reason life there is pretty good.
Edmund Dantes
@patrick II: Kingdom Come story or several other what if comics do go into what happens when Superman goes fascist or around the bend.
NotMax
OT. Somehow missed this nugget from the tail end of last month.
Southwest Pilots Streamed Video From a Bathroom Cam, a Lawsuit Alleges
Jay
Linked article where the owner of Politico admits his media is in the bag for wingers.
mad citizen
@Gravenstone: I walked inside of Glenbrook in August–surreal for me. I visit Fort Waybe regularly but hadn’t been in the mall for probably 20 years. They are tearing down the Sears store with the white concrete arches on the outside, etc. It was a good run, though. The mall is still going strong, just with the current weird (to me) mix of stores.
Also amazing to me how there is a Putt-Putt across the road that has been there doing business since the 1960s.
Ladyraxterinok
@Amir Khalid:
I believe it’s $10,000
Kent
One thing I’m noticing more of today is that I think the class divide is widening into more of a gulf than it ever has been. This isn’t news but I see evidence of it every day teaching. I’m taking some time off from full-time teaching and working as a sub in a variety of high schools in the greater Vancouver WA area this year. So I bounce around from one or two very affluent schools that are mostly white and Asian and have poverty rates under 10% to schools across town that have over 50% poverty rates (free and reduced lunch) and are still mostly white but with maybe 25% Hispanic populations.
Just looking at the attendance rosters I can instantly know which school I’m in. Not because of the Hispanic names, those are oblivious. But because of all the lower class white names that are entirely different from the upper class white names across town. It is a sea of girls named things like Princess, Krystal, Shawnah, Paytun, etc. And all kinds of really Kre8tiv spellings of ordinary names. The wealthy schools are all full of Emmas, Isabels, Olivias, Elizabeths, and all the ordinary WASPy names correctly spelled. 5-miles apart and two different worlds, even in the white population.
Obesity rates are also MUCH MUCH higher in the poorer schools. In today’s America you can pretty much guess as to the wealth of the HS just by looking at how thin the kids are. This is one of the weird things about 21st Century America. And, I think why you have less obesity in Europe (outside the UK). Because there is just a much smaller white underclass.
And, of course when I walk into a poorer school the military recruiters have basically set up camp in the cafeteria most days. While in the rich schools it is the college recruiters.
Maybe my memory is somewhat rose colored, but i just don’t remember this striking of a class difference back in the 70s and 80s when I was in school. I don’t think it bodes well for this country that we are dividing so extremely into rich and poor.
dmsilev
I feel this really should be an Onion headline rather than WaPo: Buffalo Wild Wings chemical mixture leaves worker dead, 10 people hospitalized.
Edmund Dantes
@Terry chay: nah. Right out on el Camino real where it cuts just south of the football stadium. That stretch often has RVs all along it during the week. They have to move elsewhere for football weekends otherwise they are there.
Miss Bianca
@Origuy: Yep. Got a cowboy church here in my little hometown. They are definitely a thing in rural CO.
MattF
OT. There is now a clearinghouse for public documents related to impeachment at
https://www.justsecurity.org/67076/public-document-clearinghouse-ukraine-impeachment-inquiry/
mad citizen
@PST: I can tie them together. I saw Willie Nelson at the Coliseum August 5, then he played Toledo two nights later and then took his month break to deal a “breathing problem”. I remember seeing Bob Dylan in Sept 2007 at the single A ballpark outside the Coliseum. He had a new album out that day, and it was even #1 on amazon or billboard or something. Of course he played no songs from it that night and did not acknowledge it in any way.
The Moar You Know
@Baud: The only cars I see here in San Diego who reliably have GOP stickers on them are Prius.
Mixed messages, man.
Kent
@Kelly: It wasn’t always like that. When I grew up most of the dads were WW2 or Korea vets and pretty heavily unionized with all the timber and mill jobs. And even the farmers were pretty pro New Deal and Roosevelt with the living memory of all the government programs like rural electrification and farm supports that helped out ag country. That is all gone now.
JoeyJoeJoe
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Kansas also had a progressive history. Newspaper editor William Allen White was known as the voice of Kansas progressivism in the 1940s I think, and there was a woman from around 1910 whose famous line was that farmers should raise less corn and more hell. This is stuff I read in old political almanacs
Gravenstone
@dmsilev: Chloramine (what you get when you mix bleach and ammonia) is nasty shit. Sad thing is, tragedies like that aren’t uncommon because they don’t teach expendable minimum wage staff about dangers like that.
Kent
@JoeyJoeJoe: The original Progressive Movement came out of Kansas in the 1890s until it was co-opted by William Jennings Brian and the evangelicals.
Gravenstone
@mad citizen: I’d just like to state for the record that the Toledo Sports Arena was an unmitigated shithole. Saw my first ever concert there and never wanted to go back. Although I did once, five years later for a band I really wanted to see and not travel to Chicago or Detroit.
Jay
Richard Guhl
For many years I supported the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights, and I know that might sound incredible to people who assume that Christians are of one mind about abortion, but that’s far from the case.
First, the claims of evangelicals and fundamentalists notwithstanding, the Bible says nothing about abortions. Mostly, they engage in circular reasoning by ascribing personhood to fetuses. But there is a curious passage in Exodus that casts that assumption as specious.
It involves a weird incident where two men are fighting, a pregnant woman intervenes, and she miscarried. It goes on to say that if there’s no harm, a fine is assessed, payable to the father, but if there’s harm, then an eye for an eye rule applies.
The anti-abortion crowd goes through all sorts of contortions to make the harm as applying to the fetus. The ancient rabbis, however, clearly saw this as applying to the pregnant woman.
In other words, the fetus doesn’t enjoy personhood status until birth.
And the thing is, when you claim a fetus is a person, then you negate the personhood of women. Taking away their reproductive rights is tantamount to saying that they have no rights, no agency, save what we deign to grant them.
That’s tyranny in my opinion.
Jay
The Dark Avenger
@Patricia Kayden: They open up around here in rural California in the small towns in the San
Joaquin Valley and elsewhere.
Richard Guhl
@immanentize: I read it in The Traveler’s Guide to Restoration England.
J R in WV
@patrick II:
Wait… isn’t Trump the MAGA Superman!?!?!?!!!!!! Wassa matta wit you not knowing that!
Ruckus
@Jeffro:
When your leader is a lunatic, nothing is going to make sense.
One of the issues with the all the lunatic churches is that there becomes a leader, someone who promises that if you only follow him, life will become better. And this shitty life is all around them, with no actual relief in sight. The pills take away a bit of the horror that is most of their lives. And they get told by their political leaders that the big cities are far worse, that the gangs and the drugs are horrible. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy that makes the situation worse. And the only answer they know is more of the same. And conservatism does exactly the same thing, they have all the answers and it’s always follow us backwards down the road to when life was better. And it never actually was. But that is one of the major issues, politics, they can’t go forward because forward has been vilified, but going backwards, with con men never works. But going backwards is all they are told is the answer. The con men have swallowed the con.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@The Moar You Know: Well, there are a lot of Prius on the road in CA(including mine). Most of the RWNJ bumper stickers I see here in the LA area are on trucks. Though I did see a “Recall Newsom” bumper sticker, it was on a Toyota, but not a Prius.
West of the Rockies
So Mulvaney defies a subpoena and faces no repercussions… Shit, I’ve heard of people being hauled in for ignoring a jury summons.
Jay
Kent
@Richard Guhl: Abortion was practiced in the Roman Empire during the time of Jesus. They were not unaware of it. If it was truly a moral sin one expects it would receive at least one direct reference somewhere in the New Testament from ether Jesus or the Apostle Paul.
But logic and consistency has never been a hallmark of organized Christianity. If Evangelicals even practiced 10% of what is in the Sermon on the Mount this country would be a very different place.
Kelly
@Kent: “The Government is the Problem” took over Rural Oregon during the spotted owl fight. Government timber receipts sharing paid for schools and infrastructure. The blue part of Oregon always paid with local (mostly) property taxes. Tax rates in timber country never caught up. It’s kinda like these independent folks had been leaching off of the public purse for generations.
The cut rate in federal forests was never sustainable. If it had kept we’d have cut the last old growth by 2000 and be about where we are now. Very, very few timber people will believe it.
Kent
@West of the Rockies: The statue of limitations on Obstruction of Congress doesn’t run out in 2020. He can be prosecuted for Obstruction of Congress as well as stripped of security clearances and the right to ever work again in the Federal Government if a future Dem AG decides to do it.
I’m guessing they don’t need any testimony from him and are happy to use obstruction as further evidence of guilt.
Cacti
DJT gave all?
Ripping off a slogan used for veterans killed in wars for a 5-time draft dodger?
There is no bottom of the barrel for his cult followers.
Immanentize
@Richard Guhl: Thanks, I just found an article about it on-line….
Kent
@Kelly: That’s true. And, of course mechanization in both harvesting and processing of timber means that you basically need about 5% of the manpower to cut and process logs into lumber as you did in the 1950s. Same story as in agriculture and manufacturing. If we could somehow bring timber harvests back up to where they were in the 1960s it would still only employ 5% of what it did then.
I was living in Eugene and going to HS back when the timber crisis started in the early 80s. A big part of it was all the logs being exported. Whole forests were being mowed down and the logs were going straight to Japan who could outbid all the little local mills scattered about Oregon. But of course “Spotted Owl”
What a lot of people I don’t think understand is that rural Oregon timber country is basically indistinguishable from Western KY coal country. Both are mountainous rural areas dependent on blue collar resource extraction jobs that have disappeared never to return. Old logging towns in OR look strikingly similar to old coal towns in KY or WV. And the people are basically the same too.
Jay
Jay
In moderation for hashtags in a tweet,
trollhattan
Speaking of Republicans I’ll say this about Dick Cheney, he’s consistent.
Mike G
@mad citizen:
“I was told there would be no math.”
Cacti
@trollhattan:
Christian Bale thanking Satan for giving him the inspiration to play Cheney might be the greatest award acceptance speech ever.
trollhattan
@dexwood: @Origuy:
I’d like to know how they get the sticker to stay put on their horse.
We used to have a drive-in church off of 99 south of Sac. That church deserved to issue bumper stickers.
“Beep ‘amen.'”
“BEEP!”
“Start your engines and go in peace.”
“Vroom!”
Kelly
@Kent: I’ve never been to Appalachia but your analogy makes sense. I tend to think logging has been far more like tree mining than tree farming.
trollhattan
@Cacti:
Heh, forgot about that one!
MattF
@trollhattan: It’s always a bit irritating that when one describes Dick Cheney as ‘heartless’ it’s merely factual.
cain
@Citizen Alan:
But they are going to make the best effort they can!
Jay
@Kent:
The mills in Japan wern’t cheaper, they were Japanese. Instead of hacking up a straight grain, no knot Douglas Fir log into 2×4’s and mouldings, they cut it into dimensioned timbers and quarter saw. Planks for temple and castle restoration, ( timbers) and planks for traditional furnature, boat, etc building.
Waste not, want not.
I have a friend on the Island that has a hand logging TFL, that has provided his family with 5 generations of income. He has more board feet of old growth timber now, than when his great, great grandfather got the TFL. The beauty of selective cutting, highsticking, and treating the forest as a sustainable resource, not a gold rush.
trollhattan
@Kelly:
Waaay back when I took the Boy Scouts course for the forestry merit badge the “accepted science” was that clearcutting was good for the forest. Our troop’s camping grounds were in second-growth western Cascades forest that were mostly maple and alter. We would see the enormous cedar and doug fir stumps and wonder how many centuries it would be before they returned. I didn’t put two and two together for another decade or two and by then, most of the first-growth had been mowed flat.
CODave (pka NJDave)
@CaseyL: This describes my small, rural Pa. hometown to a T. In the ’60’s there were two tanneries in the towns east and west of us. About an hour away were manufacturing jobs in Corning and Elmira, NY. By 1980 the tanneries were closed and US Steel, American La France, … downsized or closed. Now, there are a few small manufacturing plants paying minimum wage and no benefits.
And yes, those in the top 5% of the senior class left for college and never came back.
mad citizen
After putting if off because who wants to be reminded of the W-Cheney years, I watched Vice last weekend and it was much much better than I thought it would be. Adam Mackay did a great job in how he told the story. Of course Christian Bale was great, as well as Amy Adams. It was a good reminder and education of just of effed up we’ve become and why. And if Frank Luntz is the reason we went from “global warming” to “climate change” I REALLY want to go back to using the term “Global Warming”. I know some say climate change is more accurate, but on the whole it’s Global Warming.
And Dick Cheney can “go phuck himself” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmhmYYjrVUY
Kelly
@Kent: Yep, timber is much more automated. I paid for my last two years of college working summers in the woods. Which was a really fun job for a outdoorsy 20 year old guy. A single operator on a feller buncher can move more wood, more safely than a whole crew in the old days.
trollhattan
@MattF:
If anybody didn’t deserve a do-over, it’s Cheney. He’s Mr. Potter, not George Bailey.
Ruckus
@Elizabelle:
We had a manufacturing business just east of south central Los Angeles decades ago. My parents grew up there, long ago, they would be over 100 if they were alive. At one point another fellow and I worked a separate shift, into the night. We would go to the closest grocery store, a chain, in south central, and there was an armed guard, very limited food on the shelves and the prices were 20-30% more.
This concept has been going on for a very long time. There are all types of discrimination and wealth discrimination is one of the worst, because it means that the people can’t get out. Their wages are lower and the prices are higher, massively stagnating them, keeping them “in their place.” And even if that isn’t the goal, it is the end result of people profiting from economic racism.
Jay
@Kelly:
In the West, every resource from grass to salmon, has been developed as if it was a gold rush. There was always “more” across the next mountains, or in the next valley,
Until there wasn’t.
Steve in the ATL
@ruemara: how about the downtown wig shop index?
LuciaMia
Were they trying to cancel each other out? ;-)
trollhattan
@mad citizen:
IIUC last year was the first measured where there were no regions to experience anomalous cold, or something like that. Of course when somebody notes, “Now, will you accept this is happening?” they can’t hear because they’re too busy sawing down and moving the goalposts.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@mad citizen: I also liked that movie more than I expected. It was infuriating and entertaining.
Also from my perspective, it accurately represented what a heart attack is like.
Kelly
@trollhattan: I was told many time Douglas fir seedlings will not grow in the shade of “over mature” Douglas fir. I think at the time we were pulling logs out of salmon streams to improve fish passage and habitat.
StringOnAStick
@Kelly: We’re looking hard at leaving the Denver area for Bend when we retire (4 years max, less if the pre existing condition protection is saved by results in 2020). Our trip last June has me all in, but it has to pass the “is there decent back country skiing” test for my husband. We will conduct that test between Christmas and New Year’s. We have a D House rep here and I know we’ll be giving that up if we move.
trollhattan
FFS Donny!
the Conster
These fuckers have voted to immiserate themselves for 5 decades now, and have demanded to be lied to by religious hucksters, con men, crazy lunatics like Alex Jones, cynical race baiting panderers like Limbaugh, all who are picking their pockets, instead of believing their lying eyes because they hate *those people* more than they love their own children. The evidence of their own stupidity is all around them and so is the escape route, but they choose racism, sexism, delusion, alcohol, drugs, violence and willful ignorance instead. They’re crabs in a bucket.
Origuy
@Terry chay: I think the reference is to the RVs parked along El Camino Real next to the campus. I was never sure if people were living there or just storing their RVs for free. There’s also a bunch in Mountain View near Rengstorff Park. The park is on one side and the Caltrain tracks are on the other, so there are no neighbors to bother.
LuciaMia
Worst inflight movie ever.
J R in WV
IIRC Dollar General is making a bigger profit than WalMart. Could be wrong, but I think that’s true.
Their stock appears to have gone from $83 two years ago to $156 today. The crummier the economy, the better their business gets, which is sad, but makes them a good investment — there’s a technical term for that flavor of investment, but I forget it.
Ruviana
@Kent: He can be extremely annoying but this issue and its history are exactly Erik Loomis’s jam. He grew up in rural Oregon and is now a labor historian. Loomis is at LGM for them that don’t recognize the name.
Fred Fnord
@trollhattan: I dunno what it’s supposed to be but for me it makes a pretty good pun on ‘Calvary’.
Fred Fnord
@J R in WV: Countercyclical.
lee
@Jamie: Also live in Dallas (if there are any others we should probably have a meetup).
That is the symbol for ‘cowboy churches’. Never been to one but my understanding is they tend to go more toward the ‘trust in the lord’ type and certainly not prosperity doctrine type.
As someone who has traveled the highways of Texas my whole life and have seen towns go from boom to bust to ghost the images are spot on. The people in these towns have no idea why their successful kids move off and never come back. They absolutely believe in the ‘small Republican government’ lie they have been fed for decades. They don’t see that the town down the road that built a new park with lots of soccer fields has lots of young families while they keep their taxes low and only spend what they have and no one moves in. As the towns start to die they start to cling to their guns and their god further driving off anyone that would even think of moving in.
Some of these small towns for a reprieve from the fracking boom we had a decade or so ago, but it is starting to wind down and the ones that didn’t invest in their future are already starting to struggle.
Soprano2
I live in SWMO – my representative is the porcine Billy Long, who made his fortune as an auctioneer, and my senators are Roy Blunt (who as far as I can tell has spent his entire life working for some kind of government) and Josh Hawley, who is probably one of the stupidest new senators. He campaigned for attorney general in 2016 by saying he wasn’t going to use the job to “climb the ladder”, then two years later he campaigned for the Senate. I say that just to establish my bona fides for understanding red state Trump voters. It’s been my observation that support for getting rid of abortion is also because of misogyny – the real reason they want to eliminate abortion is to control young women’s sex lives. Somehow they think if they get rid of abortion our mores will go back to those of the 1950’s, and all the women will be “pure” again. (Of course they have no idea what was actually going on in the 1950’s with sexuality and abortion, but this is what they think.) Mark my words, their next target is safe, effective birth control. They want women to have to go back to having a hard time controlling their fertility so that they’ll all go back home “where they belong”. At least that’s what the extremely religious ones want.
Mohagan
@Terry chay: Sounds to me from her description that the RVs are lined up on El Camino.
Mohagan
@Origuy: I see you got there before me
Kelly
@StringOnAStick: Bend is trending purple and the skiing is great. Greg Walden is retiring but I fear a nuttier Republican will replace him. There are two active chapters of the Oregon Nordic Club https://onc.org/ . One focuses on groomed trails and the other is more back country oriented. I ski ungroomed Santiam Pass routes. Santiam Pass is about an hour from home. The Bend trails are are couple hours further away.
trollhattan
@Soprano2:
You’re 100% correct that abortion and contraception are co-travellers and they won’t be satisfied until both are eliminated. I’m awaiting the first RW “medical expert” who declares condoms to be “abortifactants.” What will Hobby Lobby do then?
lee
@J R in WV: You are correct about Dollar General. For whatever reason Walmart decided to no longer specifically target that demographic and Dollar General stepped in. I’ve stopped in one or two while traveling. I don’t recommend it.
Kent
@Kelly:
Word is that the leading candidate to replace Walden is Knute Buehler who is a pro-choice moderate physician from Bend who ran against Kate Brown in the last governor’s race. He has huge name recognition in Bend from his time in the state legislature and that might be enough win the district although even more of the population of the district is from the Medford and Grant’s Pass area. Buehler is probably the least-bad scenario. Although I don’t know how he would fit in with today’s GOP in Congress.
Tim C.
@Kent: Can confirm.
Kelly
@StringOnAStick: Hmm looks like the two chapters merged. Check out https://conordicclub.org/ when you make your trip. The Oregon Nordic Club is very welcoming.
Bluegirlfromwyo
@Kay: Why wouldn’t they? He’s an idiot about his own foreign policy worked in Iran-Contra. It isn’t like this crowd’s full of original thought leaders.
Kent
@StringOnAStick:
There is a tremendous amount of good backcountry skiing from Bend. Here’s the NYT travel article on the topic from a few years ago:
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/16/travel/skiing-in-my-own-backyard.html Basically you drive up to the Mt. Bachelor area 30 min from Bend but then head off north into the back country for endless terrain. It will be a long time until you exhaust the backcountry options. And then if you want new terrain, head up to WA where there’s lots more. Or do a long weekend to BC.
Kelly
@Kent: Buehler would be least bad. Oregon from Roseburg south is dense with crazies. Ashland is an island of sanity.
Ruckus
@immanentize:
Just a boomer side note.
How many people know someone with full dentures? My grandfather born in 1890 had them. They were not all that uncommon and in the drug stores would be denture cleaning products, along with TV commercials. I don’t know of anyone who has them today.
theturtlemoves
My little corner of Oregon just barely outside Eugene definitely leans Alabama. One of the patrons at my local gym has helpfully been donating copies of Concealed Carry and Verdict (newsletter for Judicial Watch) magazines for the table in the lobby. They sit there next to Time, Variety, and Good Housekeeping. It is very, very strange.
StringOnAStick
@Kelly: Thanks for the link, I’ll have a look. I had my knees replaced this year because even a perfect powder back country day became too painful to be fun anymore. I’m looking forward to skiing pain free for the first time in at least 10 years.
One thing I won’t miss from here (aside from the serious smog and crowds) is the wind, and the often wind hammered snowpack. We’ve lost shingles several times and the house often shakes from it. Plus the hail (3 roofs in 11years). How’s the wind situation in OR?
RAVEN
Six o’clock silence of a new day beginning
Is heard in a small Texas town
Like a signal from nowhere the people who live there
They’re up and they’re moving around
‘Cause there’s bacon to fry and there’s biscuits to bake
On the stove that the salvation army won’t take
You open the windows and you turn on the fan
‘Cause it’s hotter than hell when the sun hits the land
Now Walter and fanny well they own the grocery
That sells most all that you need
They’ve been up and working since early this morning
They’ve got the whole village to feed
Well they put out fresh eggs, they throw bad ones away
That rotted because of the heat yesterday
The store’s all dark so you can’t see the flies
That settle on ’round steak and last Monday’s pies
And sleepy hill’s drugstore and the cafe they’re open
The coffee is bubbling hot
And all the folks that ain’t working gonna sit there ’til sundown
And talk about what they ain’t got
Someone just threw a clutch in the old pickup truck
It seems like they’ve been riding on a streak of bad luck
The doctor bills came and the well has gone dry
Seems their grown kids don’t care whether they live or die
Kelly
@StringOnAStick: There is great paddling in central Oregon. Beautiful quiet water on lakes, Waldo Lake is marvelous in the fall after the mosquitoes decline. Much of the Deschutes river is quiet water perfect for a hot summer day. You need to know the routes as the Deschutes has a few unrunable water falls and stretches class 3 and 4 whitewater.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Ksmiami:
I work for a healthcare system that serves rural and suburban areas. We are a nonprofit and we, like most healthcare systems that serve rural areas, lose money on rural hospitals. They reduce services to keep the doors open, and often that isn’t even enough. Rural hospitals are closing in droves in places that didn’t expand Medicaid.
MattF
@Ruckus: My family, on my mother’s side, was mostly toothless as adults. I think I’ve got the bad teeth gene(s), but regular dental care has kept the damage under control.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Elizabelle: The whole State of Vermont is offering people with a job that lets them telework in another State $10,000 plus some incentives to set up the IT infrastructure to enable such telework. They don’t want people taking $10,000 to take a job from a Vermonter, but if your employer is in Boston, NY, or anywhere, really and says you can telework full time, Vermont will pay you to move there.
Roughly 10 years ago my hometown of Grand Rapids, MI was named by Forbes Magazine a dying city. Anyone who’d been there for even a couple days would have known that it’s a pretty nice place even if, at the time, the economy was in a slump. Since then it’s come roaring back and is very nice – probably similar in size, feel and vibrancy to Ft. Wayne. Tells you what the financial press knows about anything.
trollhattan
@Ruckus:
One of my granny’s go-to stories was about “The time I lost my dentures in the Platte River.” As the tale unwound you’d learn she had a stomach bug and actually lost them in the john, but since the Midwest sewer system ran straight to the nearest river voila, that’s where they probably ended up.
Dentures stowed in a water glass remain a chilling childhood memory.
The Moar You Know
Our very own Cletus safari. Hooray. I have not the slightest interest in these people or their pathetic lives, and am sorely aggrieved that they can influence my life in any way at all.
Wish they’d fucking secede already. They can have their bumper stickers, their Jesus, their poverty and their stupidity. And they can start paying for those choices themselves.
Kelly
@StringOnAStick: Central Oregon is high desert. It can be be windy but it varies daily and depends on where you are. On of the best things about retirement is skiing when the weather is perfect in the middle of the week. Expensive new houses are built on exposed windy ridge tops with a 7 mountain view. The old timers built down in the draws and visited the views when the weather was pleasant.
Baud
@trollhattan:
In fairness, if Russia hadn’t interfered in our election and installed its puppet in the White House, I can see that as something a true American president might attend.
StringOnAStick
@Kent: we’ve been doing BC back country lodge trips since the late 90’s; it’s our main recreational activity. I saw something about an established back country yurt/lodge in the Wallowa’s and that would also be close.
We’ve got one place here with often consistently good snow (if it hasn’t been windy, so 50/50) 45 minutes from our West side home, but it is over run now, you have to leave Denver before 6am due to ski area traffic and the other areas we used to go to are always trashed by snowmobiles even though they are in designated non-motorized areas because there is no enforcement by USFS. Coming home from hiking yesterday you couldn’t even see the downtown high rises because we’re in the middle of a stretch of NWS high particulates warning days.
Ruckus
@Kent:
I grew up in Los Angeles. It’s been this way my entire life, seven decades. It was that way before my time, according to previous generation relatives. It wasn’t as obvious then because we didn’t travel as much on a daily basis and see news from other areas as much, on TV/internet. Now we communicate daily with people from around the world. Look where people on this blog are from. Most states, the Far East, Europe, the South Pacific.
We are talking, on this blog, right now, with people in many time zones, walks of life, job skills, religions or lack of, etc. That is dramatically different than when I was a kid, not actually all that long ago. We can fly halfway around the world for not all that much money, in hours. And yet we haven’t figured out how for more people not to live in poverty, no matter how hard they work. We haven’t figured out how people hate others because of some bullshit difference we’ve decided is massively important, just because. Well not just because, it’s because having that difference closes our eyes to the fact that some are greedy and screwing us and using the hate as a diversion. We haven’t really figured out that a lot of wealthy people are huge assholes, who got wealthy by being huge assholes and cheating and/or rigging the system.
trollhattan
@theturtlemoves:
That would tempt me to subscribe to “Gay as Hell” and “Manbun Monthly” magazines just to plop alongside the gun-humper stuff. I’d probably tear off the address bit first, though.
Kent
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
My wife worked for a public clinic attached to a residency program in Central Texas for a few years. After Obamacare was implemented in 2012? their billings plummeted because Texas was a non-expansion state but they still had all the same patients as before, just got paid less for them. The clinic is still there (and growing) but physicians such as my wife saw their pay and benefits bleed year after year. Basically the profit-sharing retirement plan got smaller and smaller every year. Yet all the Republican Baptist white male physicians she worked with could not manage to draw the connection between their governor’s (and their) hatred of Obama and the impact on their own salaries. We have since moved to Southwest Washington in the Portland suburbs, a state that supports healthcare and my wife works for Kaiser and it is just absolutely night and day.
debbie
Oh, boy. Gym Jordan will be joining the House Committee for the public hearings. I guess we’re supposed to feel intimidated or something? //
Omnes Omnibus
@Kent: I think you may be conflating Populist and Progressive.
trollhattan
@debbie:
The, uh, timing with today’s other Gym Jordan news can’t be a coinkidink. I think Kevin McCarthy is just that “smart.”
mad citizen
@RAVEN: I used to really be into Lyle Lovett, he’s great. Another appropos tune for this thread is James McMurtry’s Choctaw Bingo: https://www.google.com/search?q=james+mcmurtry+choctaw+bingo&oq=james+mcmurtey+&aqs=chrome.3.69i57j0l5.8175j0j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
If you’ve never heard it it’s quite a fun ride.
StringOnAStick
@theturtlemoves: Our widowed SIL has been dipping her toes into online dating. She had coffee with a guy who showed up strapped, grilled her about how she feels about the 2nd amendment and then talked about nothing but guns and gun rights for 2 hour; she says she couldn’t get a word in edgewise and that’s how we are with her so he must have been a fanatic.I would have walked out the moment I saw he was wearing a gun but she’s less political.
Baud
@debbie:
#ICanDream
Chip Daniels
@trollhattan:
You heard of “…and the horse you rode in on”?
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
If Christian Bale is a dick because he played Dick Cheney then he must have done a pretty good job playing dick Cheney.
Jamie
@lee: Thanks for demystifying that for me! (I’m a transplant. Been here fifteen years, but still…) And, heck yeah–if there are more of us, a meetup is definitely in order.
J R in WV
@Kent:
Minor correction… Western Kentucky is both flat and low. Flatter and lower now that the giant strip mines have plowed through much of it. We were somewhat surprised to see the highway sign when entering Muhlenberg County, after hearing about it in the John Prine song about “Mr. Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away!”
It is really flat now, and was obviously fairly flat before Peabody Coal processed nearly the whole county.
There’s actually a big quarry in W Ky where the floor is below sea level by now.
Eastern KY was formerly big deep mine coal country, but like WV, mostly those mines are closed now.
In WV the only new mining permits are for metallurgical coal used in steel mines, which is worth much more than steam coal for generating plants. Most of the big easy-to-mine coal seams in WV are gone, mined out and burned. The vast majority of commercial steam coal produced now is in Wyoming where the coal seam is hundreds of feet thick. Nothing like that in the east.
Mike in NC
Years ago we were driving through eastern rural PA, maybe between Harrisburg and Gettysburg. Came upon a large double billboard: one sign was for abortion services, and the other was for a nearby adult bookstore/video/novelty shop.
Kent
@StringOnAStick: The premier backcountry ski location in the Pacific Northwest is probably the Methow Valley in Central WA which would be maybe a 6-7 hour drive up highway 97 from Bend: http://rendezvoushuts.com/theexperience.html but there are also options in Oregon. When I hear backcountry skiing I think ski mountaineering and telemarking which is what I spent much of my younger years doing. The hut-to-hut stuff on nordic skis is something I’ve not done. But I know there are backcountry huts in the Three Sisters area just west of Bend as well as the Wallowas as you say. The Wallowas is really extraordinarily remote and unpopulated. Even in the summer. But it is a beautiful area. There are also lots of options in Idaho too.
Jager
@justawriter:
And the RWNJs in charge won’t give them up
Kent
@J R in WV: Sorry, I meant EASTERN Kentucky. As depicted in the TV show Justified. Get my directions mixed up.
StringOnAStick
@Kelly: We saw some of the rougher parts of the Deschutes in June; I’m an old whitewater kayakers and very safety conscious, hence the “old” part. Such gorgeous clear water! We did some mountain biking 12 weeks after my first knee and I loved how smooth (bumps were still painful then) and well designed the trails were. Everything about the place hit all our recreational sweet spots, and not being too near a major city helps a lot.
Kent
@Omnes Omnibus:
You are correct of course. It was the Populist movement that came out of rural Kansas and the plains in the 1980s. But it was also very progressive, both for its time but also by today’s standards.
gbear
Those baby billboards are all the way up and down I-35 from the Twin Cities to Duluth. I want to make one that says “When I’m 15, I’ll realize that I’m GAY! Will you still love me then?” I wish I could afford to do that.
debbie
@Baud:
Heh. I predict Bill Hader will be very busy on SNL for the next several weeks.
rikyrah
ClearingTheFog (@clearing_fog) Tweeted:
Fiona Hill also talks about the fact that McMaster and others were “hounded out of the [NSC] because they became frightened about their own security.”
How many people in this admin were intimidated into leaving due to literal threats against their personal safety?
WTAF? https://twitter.com/clearing_fog/status/1192874225897373696?s=20
StringOnAStick
@Kelly: We both have Thursdays off now so that’s a guaranteed ski/bike/hike day, but being retired so we could be completely opportunist about it is the goal. We could retire now but can’t take the pre existing conditions risk. We will most likely work until 63.5, then pay for 18 months of COBRA, cash out our house, downsize a bit and spend all our days outside from then on. Only 2 more years!
Ruckus
@lee:
Walmart only builds in places with I believe 50,000 within a certain radius. The different dollar stores go where the poverty is, because that is their market. Walmart at least pays lip service to the we have everything you want, the dollar stores have only what you need, cheap.
I’ve wondered if the different dollar stores are all owned by the same corp, they just use different names to squeeze every last penny from those that basically only have pennies.
Baud
@rikyrah:
I don’t know what it’s like to be military, but that seems like an embarrassing thing for a lieutenant general in the U.S. Army to admit.
StringOnAStick
@Kent: I started on telemark but we use alpine touring gear now and have always done a lot of ski mountaineering. Mostly I am a powder turns junkie and while we usually get 50 to 70 days in each year, we’ve done less than 3 at a ski area over the last 10 years. My knees screamed about groomed snow for at least 15 years; I’ll be able to do that from now on but the number of people is overwhelming at a ski area and I don’t feel normal skiing without wearing my backpack! ?. Thanks so much for the hints!
Kelly
@StringOnAStick: Similar snowmobile problems in Oregon. Many of the parking lots are shared with snowmobiles. Mid week skiing cuts the problem way down. on the Santiam Pass everything north of highway 20 & 22 is closed to snowmobiles and when the freezing level stays low it’s great.
LesGS
@The Moar You Know: I see a lot of the COEXIST bumper stickers on the Priuses (Priusii?) that *I* see in San Diego. Of course, I see most of them in the parking lot of my UU church. ;)
Kent
@Kelly: I mostly ski on the WA side in the Mt. Adams area these days out of Trout Lake and other snow parks. We haven’t had the same problem with snowmobiles invading the ski-only areas. But they have a lot of their own terrain and this area doesn’t get quite the population pressure as more popular spots.
StringOnAStick
@Kelly: I noticed the joint ski/snowmobile parking areas and I wondered about how much of a problem that is. My experience is that the closer a mixed use parking lot is to a big city, the worse it is. I have been diligently researching everything I can about the area and we’ll do several more trips there before we decide to pull up stakes. Like I wrote before, I’m already sure it would be an excellent choice for us but my husband wants to be sure. It’s a little scary to move away from everyone you know; my husband’s comment was that “we’re musicians, we’ll make new friends” .
Ruckus
@Baud:
I doubt they are talking about physical security, although they might be. But either is not really in doubt in the military for command officers. Most high up officers do not end up in a war zone. Most are not cowboys like Patton.
And this is trump and vlad. Who the hell knows what goes on in their minds, except how great they are and who is standing in their way.
Kelly
@Kent: @StringOnAStick: I keep hoping for a carbon tax that would make snowmobiles, ATVs and trucks need to haul them 10 times more expensive to operate. Save civilization and quiet landscapes at the same time.
Kent
@Ruckus: I sort of expect they were talking more about not being able to go out dining in fancy DC restaurants without being harassed like Kirstjen Nielsen was about the kids in cages.
Palolololo
@trollhattan: A Christian cowboy.
Fair Economist
@StringOnAStick: Walking out on a gun nut isn’t just good politics, it’s good for your lifespan. Gun nuts are dangerous to everybody, but more so romantic partners than anybody else other than themselves.
Don K
@justawriter:
These were artifacts of the socialism that was common on the northern plains (along with the “FL” in Minnesota’s DFL party). Saskatchewan was the province of origin of Canada’s state-run medical insurance, back when it had a soshulist government. Now, the NDP and Liberals can’t get the time of day in SK, so the right-wingization of the sticks isn’t just a U.S. phenomenon.
Jager
@Ruckus:
Hockey players 55 plus. No face cages or visors and you couldn’t breathe through the early mouth guards. I lost 3 bottom teeth and chipped my two front teeth in a high school game when I was a sophomore. The bridges I’ve had replaced over the years and now three implants I’ve probably got 60k invested in my mouth. I have a friend in Toronto, who played high-level JR and a year or so in the minors, he’s had a full set of false teeth since he was in his early 30s. A friend’s teenaged grandsons are on the USA Development Team and they don’t know any fellow hockey players who have even chipped a tooth. Things sometimes change for the better.
Olivia
@Origuy: Even in Minnesota
PST
@J R in WV:
I didn’t check to see if anyone else has answered this, but it brought back a recollection from first year college economics. An “inferior good” is one for which demand increases as incomes fall. When people earn less, they normally buy less of everything, but there are goods that substitute for more expensive goods that can become more expensive and move in greater volume when incomes fall. The classic example is potatoes, which people buy more of when they can’t afford meat. I think the situation for Dollar General is analogous. When you can’t afford to shop at Target any more, that’s where you go.
PST
@debbie:
That’s a good thing. He will play to his small audience and at the same time make the extreme Trump claque look like idiots to a large one.
Don K
@LesGS:
The stickers are really common in West Bloomfield, MI, which is known for its high proportion of Jews.
RobertB
There’s a Dollar General in what I thought was a pretty good neighborhood. Within walking distance of the Krogers where I shop. I think it was because they could get the building for cheap. However, the closest Family Dollar and Dollar Tree are in not-so-nice neighborhoods.
They’re both competing right next to big supermarkets; the Family Dollar is also in walking distance of that Kroger, and the Dollar Tree is in the same strip mall as a Giant Eagle.
ThresherK
@Kelly: It’s my experience that the bulk of people in car/motorized recreation culture are the first to squawk “ButThePoors!!!!” whenever the price of driving is discussed as public policy.
And I go back to when fellers got introduced to motorcycling with a minibike. Powered by a Briggs & Stratton engine.
Kent
@RobertB:
Here in Vancouver WA we have a Dollar Tree RIGHT NEXT DOOR to a Trader Joe’s. They share the same building. Seriously: https://goo.gl/maps/fpoxgS4a11gbSCpRA
theturtlemoves
@trollhattan: I’ve been considering getting print subscriptions to something like Mother Jones or The Nation and just casually slapping those down. The only print magazines I get are almost exclusively motorcycle related, so that wouldn’t be a good counter to the gun-humpers.
Mel
@trollhattan: @Baud:
I suspect that they’re riffing on Revelation 19 – something about Jesus returning on a white horse, if I recall correctly from the frantic diatribes of some RWNJ neighbors of a few decades ago, who spared no opportunity to tell anyone and everyone in sight that the apocalypse was coming in 2000, and would then cite Bible passages as their “proof”.
Shouldn’t the Jeebus horse be a dinosaur, though? And why is Jeebus riding western style? Jeebus in chaps…
Just One More Canuck
@mad citizen: Did you yell “Judas” at him?
mad citizen
@Just One More Canuck: Ha! I get it now–a Dylan reference. Seen him many times but he was just up the road last Saturday night and I skipped it. Reading good reviews from his fall U.S. tour, though.
WaterGirl
quick note.
SuzieC
@Kent: This is just about the best comment I have ever seen on BJ. Thanks!! I have kinda a similar story about living in rural Arkansas but too late in the thread.
opiejeanne
@theturtlemoves: I have a t-shirt with your name on it: The Turtle Moves. Were you in Tempe in 2009, early September? Or are you just a fan of Sir Terry?
debbie
@WaterGirl:
Very. Also, cryptic.
Procopius
@Ruckus: Can’t remember who it was, probably Mark Twain, who commented that the rich actually spend less than the poor. They buy a pair of shoes at three times the price of the poor man’s shoes, but will last twenty years. The poor man has to buy a new pair of shoes every year or two. The rich man buys trunks and suitcases that will last twenty years, the poor man buys suitcases made from cardboard and has to buy new ones whenever he goes on a trip.
Sister Golden Bear
@Terry chay: It’s not an RV park. It’s numerous RV and campers parked along El Camino Real, south of Embarcadero — I drive over there at least once and see them every time.
Sf-dre
Lots of RVs and campers along Lake Merced Blvd and Winston, near SF State. There are plans to make a parking lot by Balboa Park BART availble to RVs including showers and servicesper the Chron