Wouldn't Trump's plan to deport (or more likely, just murdering) all immigrants pretty much cause the collapse of our agricultural system? I hope not because I like food.
Every time I hear a center-left commentator say we have to reach out to rural or Red State voters, I have to ask “Which marginalized groups will you have to throw under the bus first? Blacks? Latinos? Women? Muslims? LGBTQ? Atheists (Everyone, left and right, hates us!)?”
As has been obvious for years, their refusal to vote blue is entirely culture-war-based and has nothing to do with policy, i.e., they hate us because of who we associate with. I wish this could sink in with the reach-across-the-aisle types: They won't EVER vote blue UNLESS WE DUMP PART OF OUR BASE.
You're massively underestimating the large part that propaganda plays here. They hate you and who you associate with because they've been misinformed and misled.
You want them to vote differently without dumping part of your base? Do something about the propaganda. Hate is taught, it doesn't come natural. Without the propaganda they will hate less each year.
You're massively misunderstanding the role of sheer hatred and bigotry. They hate us because they live for hate. It's no longer 'taught'--it is absorbed through every pore from the moment of their birth. They cannot and do not want to think, reason, or use even basic logic.
You want them to vote differently? Lobotomize them. You're one of the reasons we wound up with Pussy Ass Bitch in the first place!
How do you think they came to that level of hatred and bigotry? They weren't born with it, they're constantly indoctrinated. Fox news is on every television, radio stations are blaring the hate all the time. So if you can stop the TV and radio signals, within a generation you will see a change. It might only be a few percent the first generation, but the change will accelerate. Culture require regular maintenance, especially cultures of hate.
I have a different viewpoint on freedom and the effect of our environment on our choices. I don't think we are 100% free, the effect of our environment is too strong.
If you want cleaner streets, make it easy for people to put their trash away by having enough trashcans in the right places.
If you want less hate, do something about the constant shower of hate radio, TV, and social media. Dilute it by giving them more options, even if that means funding a radio station that has very few listeners for decades.
Exactly. All these people who think all we need to do is reach out with pamphlets "Why Hate is Bad" and "Fox is Lying to You"
They've already been inoculated against the truth. This is at the level of identity. They identify as terrible people. They wear shirts proudly stating they will vote for the felon. They think they're the good guys on the side of God. Anything and anyone who tells them otherwise, is dead to them, immediately.
How did a Manhattan metrosexual become the darling of rural; voters in the first place? Makes no sense. Trump is the "City Slicker" who always was the nemesis of rural folk
He promised to pick on the nonwhites, shove the LGBTQ “perverts” back into the closet, and cram Jeez-us down everyone’s throats. That’s more important to them than any government policy, largely because they think economic downturn is divine punishment for not doing anything of the above. (i.e. God is blighting your crops because abortion is legal.)
A high school classmate of mine was a doctor in Namibia for almost 40 years--for the entire time (we're talking pre-internet and then spotty internet here)-- the country's major health care delivery paradigm was telehealth, first by literal phones and later via internet. She was SHOCKED when she came home for the first time in 25 years (for our 40th reunion!) to learn that this was against the rules here. So yes, folks, Namibia is more advanced in basic hc delivery than the US of A. But on the other hand we also charge more and have worse health outcomes so trade offs?
Policy does not matter when there's blood libel that provides justification to vote for terrible people. I remember Hillary Clinton campaigning in Appalachia, for example. And she told people to their faces that coal wasn't coming back. But people wanted to cling to the past, they wanted to blame immigrants and minorities for their woes, and here we are.
A great many people are kinda dancing around the fact that there is a lot of racism, misogyny and homophobia/transphobia, stoked by the right wing media human centipede and the pulpits in many rural areas, and many of these rural areas are of course unreconstructed. All the data show that Democrats are just better for the economy and increase jobs in such areas. But it doesn't matter because people choose to be tuned into the culture war. Hell, Democrats even got blamed for NAFTA and all the rich people who sold the factories, automated them and busted the unions got to skate.
The name of the game at this point is to turn people who care out in America. The Democrats have been trying to cater to rural voters with the economy and so many times in the present era they've been rejected for people who drive the economy into the ditch.
To that end, folks make sure you are putting your voting plan in motion.
Massachusetts got hit pretty hard by the Steward Health mess (private hospital chain going under while CEOs and execs are busy buying yachts and going on trips to the Paris Olympics). Most of the urban or suburban hospitals got taken over by other hospitals in the state. The rural ones were not so lucky.
Nashoba Valley Medical in Ayer, MA, shut down at the end of August and it doesn’t look like it will open again. Even before it closed down the hospital was suffering from staff, equipment, and supply shortages, along with maintenance problems. The locals are looking to the state to do something, but I’m not sure what the state can do at this time. I doubt they could force a private company to buy the facility; by now it would take millions to make it a working hospital.
For now, locals in Ayer, Groton, and other nearby towns will have to drive to Worcester or NH for their healthcare.
The Mild Jrs have found a hospital and birthing center in Nashua that they’re thrilled with. They live a few towns over from Ayer. We’re glad they found a place to go for when Baby Mild Jr is born that’s close to where they, and we, live.
Not just rurals, and not just greedheads. A major Seattle hospital recently shut down its birthing unit. Guess xatholic hospitals don't like moms and babes either.
Catholic hospitals are a money making industry. Birthing centers are not always high profit enterprises, and with the Catholic ban on many reproductive surgeries and pregnancy related issues they may have trouble staffing an ob/gyn section anyway. If I were a pregnant woman and a non-Catholic hospital had a birthing center I would probably pick that because I would trust that staff to be open and honest with me. Unfortunately in many areas Catholic hospitals are your only choice since they have been expanding even in areas where they already own one.
"On the other hand, Trump promises to deport all the immigrants who currently work in rural areas, so that ought to be real popular with people who don’t rely on their labor, the end."
The problem is that many of the people who BELIEVE they don't rely on immigrant labor don't know their asses from holes in the ground
I know there's a lot of rage and resentment to spare for the voters who will vote Republican next month. Some of it (not all of it) is deserved.
I reserve most of my rage for the wealthy: the millionaires and billionaires, privileged, insular, entitled, who have used their wealth to corrupt the courts and buy up the legislatures and control the narrative, all so they wouldn't have to abide by regulations, obey the rule of law, or pay their goddamn taxes.
How many ordinary folks do you suppose would have abandoned old civic verities if the billionaires hadn't sunk decades of effort and huge sums of money into creating a propaganda apparatus from Limbaugh to Breitbart, from Fox to Twitter, that has flooded the zone with terror, lies, and more terror going back to the 1980s? Even the antebellum South couldn't have been sustained without propaganda---much of it from the pulpit, the Fox News of its era.
What began under the radar, on religious radio and in John Birch Society pamphlets, did relatively little harm (relatively). But when the billionaires took the propaganda mainstream with talk radio, Fox, and social media, that's when this poison overwhelmed us.
I just can't find it in my heart to hate some nice old lady in rural Illinois who gets her local news from Sinclair Broadcast and her national news from Fox, and who has come to believe appalling things: but I sure do hate the billionaires who have deliberately broken her brain so they won't have to pay their taxes.
Welllllllll . . . yes, but she had to be susceptible to a certain extent in the first place or it wouldn't have worked. Not everyone falls for the propaganda; you kinda have to WANT to fall for it . . .
Lots of rural voters belong on the blue side of the line.
So many challenges and dreams in common with blue folks in cities and suburbs --
Challenges:
• Chronic poverty
• Ill-served by banks, telecom companies, public utilities, education and more
• Skimpy, expensive health care
• Deindustrialization
Dreams:
• Economic opportunity that lets a person thrive where they grew up, or supports efficient re-location to a new place -- and encourages new intellect, human capital and money to want to move in
• Sound basic education for their children, and their neighbor's children
• Convenient access to higher education
• The ability to see a clinician when they're sick or pregnant, and for preventative care
• Convenient access to at least one good hospital, especially one that has a low error rate and a med staff that knows the latest about treating wonky hearts, kidneys and lungs
• Clear air, water and soil -- and unspoiled outdoor places to refresh and recreate in nature
• Affordable housing and utilities
If you're older, forget everything you learned about American civilization between 1969 and 2000. That America is gone. The "inner city" does not exist. The "bustling small town" does not exist.
These have been replaced by the Revitalized Urban Core and the New Ghost Town.
The big difference between the way Americans live today and how they lived through most of the years between 1945 and 2000 (roughly) is that cities are back -- American cities are once again huge, irresistible magnets for investment and invention. Pericles was goddam right that "all good things come to the city." It's never been more true. Is that new energy and prosperity widely shared? No nearly enough. But one thing long in surplus in Urban Cores is now running somewhat in short supply --- despair.
If you're looking for despair, you'll find it now in small rural towns. Especially among whites. Especially among those rather elite whites who used to run those towns. Or rather, are the children or grandchildren of people who used to run those towns. You known them -- the family that ran the Chrysler dealership, and the store, and the feed mill. The ones who most everybody else rented from. The sons of Mr. Haney. This is the core of the Trumpers, you know --- people with family wealth from exurbia and the rural spaces who are pissed off that Wal-Mart closed the family store, deindustrializing impoverished their customers, and some goddam demycrat passed laws and regulations that won't let them keep fleecing the poor folks of the community like grandpappy used to.
It's not their despair I'm talking about. They're just entitled wankers with money in the bank that they gladly send to the Trump because he makes them believe he'll bring back the "good ol' days" when Daddy ran this county like the unholy child of Caligula and a character from a Faulkner novel.
It's the despair of everybody else. In rural spaces, especially those that have not seen, or have successfully prevented an influx of migrants, the average middle to poor white person is pretty sure life is a living hell. Makes them ripe prospects for extremism and worse. And, what they want is what good people have always wanted -- healthy kids, a meaningful way to spend their days, and respect and security in old age.
The blue side knows how to do this. Has done this. The rural spaces of this nation only have indoor plumbing, telephones, electric power and paved roads because a "class traitor" from Dutchess County, NY, led a coalition of farmers, industrial workers, Blacks, Catholics, new citizens, urban poor and more to completely makeover for the better every corner of American life with Social Security, deposit insurance, labor rights and anti-fascism.
Yes, let's do it again. And bring the rural brothers and sisters along with us. But first thing, you gotta meet them where they live. You gotta show them how they'll benefit. And you gotta let 'em pray over you. And you gotta let 'em show you their gun collection, of which they are mighty proud.
If "they" pray over me, it does me no harm. As to the guns, it seems those spectacular shootings, and gun-nuts running around are usually from suburbia, not from the rural communities.
Nope. There have been at least 2 pretty publicized cases where people turned into the wrong driveway in a rural area and were gunned down by the gun nut living therein.
No, no, and no. They can bend. They can compromise. Democrats have been doing it for at least 40 years. Republicans have never, to the best of my knowledge, done it.
Where those in rural areas? Suburban or urban incidents that I recall.
One of the issues in rural areas is a lack of access to among other things, mental health professionals and adequate policing (out where I lived for a time in the Texas Big Bend, the sheriff regularly had to tell visitors it might be two hours to reach them if they had an emergency).
I agree that people have guns who have no real need for them, but that would seem to be a matter more of perception (people FEEL unsafe) than of where they live.
How would Jewish people feel being prayed over? "It does them no real harm." Or Muslims. "It does them no real harm."
Not all of us are this cavalier about christofascists praying over us. It goes quite a bit beyond that. They want to force their religion on the rest of us.
Well, the term "Christofascists" is a fighting word, especially if someone is rural and not a Christofascist. I respectfully suggest that you're as hardbitten a bigot as a true Christofascist.
Doesn't hurt and only takes a minute. And you can repeat "Satan take me away" in your head the whole time.
Seriously though, a mumbly prayer is an awfully cheap thing to be a deal-breaker. Not strategically smart.
For me, it's easy resort to violence. That's a deal-breaker. My values don't allow violence to be a solution. Everything else, nearly, is negotiable.
As to why they can't meet you half-way? It is a truth that peacemaking requires at least one of the parties to unilaterally end the bullshit. If you're expecting the other party to do that first, you'll be waiting a long time.
Progress and peace require the courage to surrender something first.
Where is your data that every reachable person in the rural America is all those awful thing? Without that, you seem very much the same sort of hardbitten bigot is that the people you claim to oppose.
A lot of people here have written persuasive screeds against corporate medicine and insurance companies, WHICH ARE ALL POINTS WELL TAKEN.
But as I understand it, there's another thing at work here -- the fucking American Medical Association lobbies consistently to restrict the number of new doctors and pushes against e.g. physician assistants being allowed to do lots of routine stuff. When I was younger, at least, the AMA was well-known to push reactionary crap designed to maximize physician take-home pay at the expense of all else.
And something Dean Baker harps on frequently -- the AMA resists allowing medical professionals from other countries to be certified here. Countries with GOOD medical schools.
A friend of mine, his wife is a physical therapist originally from Germany. She had to get her PT certification all over again in America. She said the German educational/training requirements were just as demanding if not more.
So at least her American classes were easy stuff for her -- but she did have to pay a bundle for them.
The current bottleneck is requiring residencies and internships before allowing a doctor to practice. There's been noise about finding an alternate path for clinicians, especially those who want to stick to general practice and not specialties, and a rural apprenticeship program would solve both problems.
The problem with PAs is that most university health science center programs typically tell PA students that they should expect to earn upwards of $100K starting salary as soon as they flip their tassel at graduation. This puts them way the fuck out of reach of most rural healthcare facilities where you're lucky if you get a traveling nurse.
Selling a career on its financial potential is always a problem. Of course, a socially valuable job should be rewarded, but one shouldn't be in health to be a business person.
Wouldn't Trump's plan to deport (or more likely, just murdering) all immigrants pretty much cause the collapse of our agricultural system? I hope not because I like food.
You know , this had also crossed MY mind........
Every time I hear a center-left commentator say we have to reach out to rural or Red State voters, I have to ask “Which marginalized groups will you have to throw under the bus first? Blacks? Latinos? Women? Muslims? LGBTQ? Atheists (Everyone, left and right, hates us!)?”
Well, who’s it gonna be?
As has been obvious for years, their refusal to vote blue is entirely culture-war-based and has nothing to do with policy, i.e., they hate us because of who we associate with. I wish this could sink in with the reach-across-the-aisle types: They won't EVER vote blue UNLESS WE DUMP PART OF OUR BASE.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAND of course you get a bothsides Cletus-sucking troll going but, but, but, it's YOUR responsibility to change NAZIS!!!!!!
You're massively underestimating the large part that propaganda plays here. They hate you and who you associate with because they've been misinformed and misled.
You want them to vote differently without dumping part of your base? Do something about the propaganda. Hate is taught, it doesn't come natural. Without the propaganda they will hate less each year.
You're massively misunderstanding the role of sheer hatred and bigotry. They hate us because they live for hate. It's no longer 'taught'--it is absorbed through every pore from the moment of their birth. They cannot and do not want to think, reason, or use even basic logic.
You want them to vote differently? Lobotomize them. You're one of the reasons we wound up with Pussy Ass Bitch in the first place!
How do you think they came to that level of hatred and bigotry? They weren't born with it, they're constantly indoctrinated. Fox news is on every television, radio stations are blaring the hate all the time. So if you can stop the TV and radio signals, within a generation you will see a change. It might only be a few percent the first generation, but the change will accelerate. Culture require regular maintenance, especially cultures of hate.
They are free to choose not to participate in that level of hate. They are free to seek enlightenment. It's still sort of a free country LOL.
They never will. Social media hell, personal dildoes (oh, sorry, 'smartphones' lol), and Pussy Ass Bitch have seen to that. Permanently.
I have a different viewpoint on freedom and the effect of our environment on our choices. I don't think we are 100% free, the effect of our environment is too strong.
If you want cleaner streets, make it easy for people to put their trash away by having enough trashcans in the right places.
If you want less hate, do something about the constant shower of hate radio, TV, and social media. Dilute it by giving them more options, even if that means funding a radio station that has very few listeners for decades.
Exactly. All these people who think all we need to do is reach out with pamphlets "Why Hate is Bad" and "Fox is Lying to You"
They've already been inoculated against the truth. This is at the level of identity. They identify as terrible people. They wear shirts proudly stating they will vote for the felon. They think they're the good guys on the side of God. Anything and anyone who tells them otherwise, is dead to them, immediately.
Rural juror. Rural juror. It's fun to say it!
You get extra bonus points if you're a doctor who hangs out at The Brick.
If you're a "hayseed" how can you be so stupid as to not realize that Trump despises you? You're something he'd scrape off of his shoe.
Yes but he also encourages you to bask in hate, it's a kink
How did a Manhattan metrosexual become the darling of rural; voters in the first place? Makes no sense. Trump is the "City Slicker" who always was the nemesis of rural folk
He promised to pick on the nonwhites, shove the LGBTQ “perverts” back into the closet, and cram Jeez-us down everyone’s throats. That’s more important to them than any government policy, largely because they think economic downturn is divine punishment for not doing anything of the above. (i.e. God is blighting your crops because abortion is legal.)
And all that outweighs the fact that he shits in a gold toilet, the flush handle of which probably costs more than many of his cult make in a month
Anyone who still lives in rural areas is entirely motivated by culture war stuff. This will do nothing.
I live in a rural area.
Yes Trump understands you. He's a poor farm boy who walked 2 miles to a one room school house every day. After getting up at 4:00AM to do chores.
I wonder how often in his life Trump has walked two miles nonstop.
Uphill both ways.
A high school classmate of mine was a doctor in Namibia for almost 40 years--for the entire time (we're talking pre-internet and then spotty internet here)-- the country's major health care delivery paradigm was telehealth, first by literal phones and later via internet. She was SHOCKED when she came home for the first time in 25 years (for our 40th reunion!) to learn that this was against the rules here. So yes, folks, Namibia is more advanced in basic hc delivery than the US of A. But on the other hand we also charge more and have worse health outcomes so trade offs?
Policy does not matter when there's blood libel that provides justification to vote for terrible people. I remember Hillary Clinton campaigning in Appalachia, for example. And she told people to their faces that coal wasn't coming back. But people wanted to cling to the past, they wanted to blame immigrants and minorities for their woes, and here we are.
A great many people are kinda dancing around the fact that there is a lot of racism, misogyny and homophobia/transphobia, stoked by the right wing media human centipede and the pulpits in many rural areas, and many of these rural areas are of course unreconstructed. All the data show that Democrats are just better for the economy and increase jobs in such areas. But it doesn't matter because people choose to be tuned into the culture war. Hell, Democrats even got blamed for NAFTA and all the rich people who sold the factories, automated them and busted the unions got to skate.
The name of the game at this point is to turn people who care out in America. The Democrats have been trying to cater to rural voters with the economy and so many times in the present era they've been rejected for people who drive the economy into the ditch.
To that end, folks make sure you are putting your voting plan in motion.
Mount up!
Massachusetts got hit pretty hard by the Steward Health mess (private hospital chain going under while CEOs and execs are busy buying yachts and going on trips to the Paris Olympics). Most of the urban or suburban hospitals got taken over by other hospitals in the state. The rural ones were not so lucky.
Nashoba Valley Medical in Ayer, MA, shut down at the end of August and it doesn’t look like it will open again. Even before it closed down the hospital was suffering from staff, equipment, and supply shortages, along with maintenance problems. The locals are looking to the state to do something, but I’m not sure what the state can do at this time. I doubt they could force a private company to buy the facility; by now it would take millions to make it a working hospital.
For now, locals in Ayer, Groton, and other nearby towns will have to drive to Worcester or NH for their healthcare.
The Mild Jrs have found a hospital and birthing center in Nashua that they’re thrilled with. They live a few towns over from Ayer. We’re glad they found a place to go for when Baby Mild Jr is born that’s close to where they, and we, live.
Not just rurals, and not just greedheads. A major Seattle hospital recently shut down its birthing unit. Guess xatholic hospitals don't like moms and babes either.
Catholic hospitals are a money making industry. Birthing centers are not always high profit enterprises, and with the Catholic ban on many reproductive surgeries and pregnancy related issues they may have trouble staffing an ob/gyn section anyway. If I were a pregnant woman and a non-Catholic hospital had a birthing center I would probably pick that because I would trust that staff to be open and honest with me. Unfortunately in many areas Catholic hospitals are your only choice since they have been expanding even in areas where they already own one.
"On the other hand, Trump promises to deport all the immigrants who currently work in rural areas, so that ought to be real popular with people who don’t rely on their labor, the end."
The problem is that many of the people who BELIEVE they don't rely on immigrant labor don't know their asses from holes in the ground
I know there's a lot of rage and resentment to spare for the voters who will vote Republican next month. Some of it (not all of it) is deserved.
I reserve most of my rage for the wealthy: the millionaires and billionaires, privileged, insular, entitled, who have used their wealth to corrupt the courts and buy up the legislatures and control the narrative, all so they wouldn't have to abide by regulations, obey the rule of law, or pay their goddamn taxes.
How many ordinary folks do you suppose would have abandoned old civic verities if the billionaires hadn't sunk decades of effort and huge sums of money into creating a propaganda apparatus from Limbaugh to Breitbart, from Fox to Twitter, that has flooded the zone with terror, lies, and more terror going back to the 1980s? Even the antebellum South couldn't have been sustained without propaganda---much of it from the pulpit, the Fox News of its era.
What began under the radar, on religious radio and in John Birch Society pamphlets, did relatively little harm (relatively). But when the billionaires took the propaganda mainstream with talk radio, Fox, and social media, that's when this poison overwhelmed us.
I just can't find it in my heart to hate some nice old lady in rural Illinois who gets her local news from Sinclair Broadcast and her national news from Fox, and who has come to believe appalling things: but I sure do hate the billionaires who have deliberately broken her brain so they won't have to pay their taxes.
Welllllllll . . . yes, but she had to be susceptible to a certain extent in the first place or it wouldn't have worked. Not everyone falls for the propaganda; you kinda have to WANT to fall for it . . .
^^ THIS ^^.
Lots of rural voters belong on the blue side of the line.
So many challenges and dreams in common with blue folks in cities and suburbs --
Challenges:
• Chronic poverty
• Ill-served by banks, telecom companies, public utilities, education and more
• Skimpy, expensive health care
• Deindustrialization
Dreams:
• Economic opportunity that lets a person thrive where they grew up, or supports efficient re-location to a new place -- and encourages new intellect, human capital and money to want to move in
• Sound basic education for their children, and their neighbor's children
• Convenient access to higher education
• The ability to see a clinician when they're sick or pregnant, and for preventative care
• Convenient access to at least one good hospital, especially one that has a low error rate and a med staff that knows the latest about treating wonky hearts, kidneys and lungs
• Clear air, water and soil -- and unspoiled outdoor places to refresh and recreate in nature
• Affordable housing and utilities
If you're older, forget everything you learned about American civilization between 1969 and 2000. That America is gone. The "inner city" does not exist. The "bustling small town" does not exist.
These have been replaced by the Revitalized Urban Core and the New Ghost Town.
The big difference between the way Americans live today and how they lived through most of the years between 1945 and 2000 (roughly) is that cities are back -- American cities are once again huge, irresistible magnets for investment and invention. Pericles was goddam right that "all good things come to the city." It's never been more true. Is that new energy and prosperity widely shared? No nearly enough. But one thing long in surplus in Urban Cores is now running somewhat in short supply --- despair.
If you're looking for despair, you'll find it now in small rural towns. Especially among whites. Especially among those rather elite whites who used to run those towns. Or rather, are the children or grandchildren of people who used to run those towns. You known them -- the family that ran the Chrysler dealership, and the store, and the feed mill. The ones who most everybody else rented from. The sons of Mr. Haney. This is the core of the Trumpers, you know --- people with family wealth from exurbia and the rural spaces who are pissed off that Wal-Mart closed the family store, deindustrializing impoverished their customers, and some goddam demycrat passed laws and regulations that won't let them keep fleecing the poor folks of the community like grandpappy used to.
It's not their despair I'm talking about. They're just entitled wankers with money in the bank that they gladly send to the Trump because he makes them believe he'll bring back the "good ol' days" when Daddy ran this county like the unholy child of Caligula and a character from a Faulkner novel.
It's the despair of everybody else. In rural spaces, especially those that have not seen, or have successfully prevented an influx of migrants, the average middle to poor white person is pretty sure life is a living hell. Makes them ripe prospects for extremism and worse. And, what they want is what good people have always wanted -- healthy kids, a meaningful way to spend their days, and respect and security in old age.
The blue side knows how to do this. Has done this. The rural spaces of this nation only have indoor plumbing, telephones, electric power and paved roads because a "class traitor" from Dutchess County, NY, led a coalition of farmers, industrial workers, Blacks, Catholics, new citizens, urban poor and more to completely makeover for the better every corner of American life with Social Security, deposit insurance, labor rights and anti-fascism.
Yes, let's do it again. And bring the rural brothers and sisters along with us. But first thing, you gotta meet them where they live. You gotta show them how they'll benefit. And you gotta let 'em pray over you. And you gotta let 'em show you their gun collection, of which they are mighty proud.
I was with you right up until the last sentence.
Naw. I don't have to let anyone "pray" over me. They can come to the table w/o that.
Why is it that liberals/Democrats ALWAYS have to bend and have to "meet [conservatives] where they are?"
Why can't THEY meet US where we are for a change?
If "they" pray over me, it does me no harm. As to the guns, it seems those spectacular shootings, and gun-nuts running around are usually from suburbia, not from the rural communities.
Nope. There have been at least 2 pretty publicized cases where people turned into the wrong driveway in a rural area and were gunned down by the gun nut living therein.
No, no, and no. They can bend. They can compromise. Democrats have been doing it for at least 40 years. Republicans have never, to the best of my knowledge, done it.
These MAGAts can bend.
Where those in rural areas? Suburban or urban incidents that I recall.
One of the issues in rural areas is a lack of access to among other things, mental health professionals and adequate policing (out where I lived for a time in the Texas Big Bend, the sheriff regularly had to tell visitors it might be two hours to reach them if they had an emergency).
I agree that people have guns who have no real need for them, but that would seem to be a matter more of perception (people FEEL unsafe) than of where they live.
How would Jewish people feel being prayed over? "It does them no real harm." Or Muslims. "It does them no real harm."
Not all of us are this cavalier about christofascists praying over us. It goes quite a bit beyond that. They want to force their religion on the rest of us.
Sorry. That's not "no real harm."
Is your assumption that rural residents are, by definition, "christofascists", or that "christofascists" are only a rural phenomenon?
Well, the term "Christofascists" is a fighting word, especially if someone is rural and not a Christofascist. I respectfully suggest that you're as hardbitten a bigot as a true Christofascist.
Murc's Law governs so much. I really want to find an article that extolled a winning Republican administration to reach out to Democrats.
And what Snackmeier and the other guy above are doing seems very much like gaslighting to me.
I'm not having it.
You don't know what word means.
Thank you.
Doesn't hurt and only takes a minute. And you can repeat "Satan take me away" in your head the whole time.
Seriously though, a mumbly prayer is an awfully cheap thing to be a deal-breaker. Not strategically smart.
For me, it's easy resort to violence. That's a deal-breaker. My values don't allow violence to be a solution. Everything else, nearly, is negotiable.
As to why they can't meet you half-way? It is a truth that peacemaking requires at least one of the parties to unilaterally end the bullshit. If you're expecting the other party to do that first, you'll be waiting a long time.
Progress and peace require the courage to surrender something first.
Naw, I can't make common cause with racists, homophobes, transphobes, etc.
I can't make common cause with people who cannot compromise.
Guess we'll have to agree to disagree on that.
Where is your data that every reachable person in the rural America is all those awful thing? Without that, you seem very much the same sort of hardbitten bigot is that the people you claim to oppose.
Point out where I said "every."
And you can shove that assumption right up your snacking ass, sir.
Rape imagery. You're wonderful.
A lot of people here have written persuasive screeds against corporate medicine and insurance companies, WHICH ARE ALL POINTS WELL TAKEN.
But as I understand it, there's another thing at work here -- the fucking American Medical Association lobbies consistently to restrict the number of new doctors and pushes against e.g. physician assistants being allowed to do lots of routine stuff. When I was younger, at least, the AMA was well-known to push reactionary crap designed to maximize physician take-home pay at the expense of all else.
And something Dean Baker harps on frequently -- the AMA resists allowing medical professionals from other countries to be certified here. Countries with GOOD medical schools.
A friend of mine, his wife is a physical therapist originally from Germany. She had to get her PT certification all over again in America. She said the German educational/training requirements were just as demanding if not more.
So at least her American classes were easy stuff for her -- but she did have to pay a bundle for them.
The current bottleneck is requiring residencies and internships before allowing a doctor to practice. There's been noise about finding an alternate path for clinicians, especially those who want to stick to general practice and not specialties, and a rural apprenticeship program would solve both problems.
The problem with PAs is that most university health science center programs typically tell PA students that they should expect to earn upwards of $100K starting salary as soon as they flip their tassel at graduation. This puts them way the fuck out of reach of most rural healthcare facilities where you're lucky if you get a traveling nurse.
Selling a career on its financial potential is always a problem. Of course, a socially valuable job should be rewarded, but one shouldn't be in health to be a business person.
Would probably help if the cost of medical education went WAY down.
Here in Mexico, it's free at the public universities, although new graduates have to do two years of public service.
hiiiiii wonket it is tiiiiiiiiiime
for lighting of the smoking lamp! :]
I'm already blazing abundantly and appreciate the good stoner company.
yeeeeeees :]
Oh Lawd, im in a different time zone getting ready to be in a really different time zone.
safe travels!
I’m about to get in the giant trans-Atlantic people tube
mask up pls!
May it bring us an Open Thread with kitty pictures.
close!!
Lamb.
Hmm . . .
1 lb lamb, cut into bite-sized pieces
3 tbsp red wine vinegar
9 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp salt
a pinch of Hing
finely-chopped cilantro
1 tbsp dried thyme
1. Blend marinade together; let it sit for 30 minutes.
2. Marinate the lamb for an hour.
3. Put the lamb on skewers and grill till done as desired.
4. DEVOUR