Branch Trumpvidians

[GreyhoundFan]

A good one from Jennifer Rubin: "Spare the outrage over Harvey Weinstein. These people voted for Trump."

Spoiler

The Post reports:

In a 2011 Post-ABC poll, 47 percent of Americans said they felt that sexual harassment in the workplace was a serious problem. That number has now risen to 64 percent. Nearly two-thirds of Americans say men who sexually harass female coworkers usually get away with it.

This surely matches the near-universal outrage over Harvey Weinstein, whose alleged abuse, including alleged rape, of multiple women goes back decades. As with almost everything in the United States, however, the poll reflects a partisan breakdown. “While 79 percent of Democrats and 66 percent of independents say harassment is a serious problem — both rising over 20 points in the last six years — this number falls to 42 percent among Republicans, little changed over that same period.” (In 2011, 38 percent of Republicans said harassment was a very serious problem). The Post’s pollsters tell me that among all conservatives, 51 percent say harassment is a serious problem in the United States. Among those who identify as very conservative, it’s 45 percent. And among conservative Republicans, 37 percent say it is a serious problem.

Hmmm. All of this occurs in the first year of a president whose boasts about sexual assault were captured on video and who racked up a dozen or so accusers claiming he sexually harassed or abused them, not counting several former beauty pageant contestants (some of them minors) who accused him of bursting into their dressing rooms when they were naked or partially dressed. Trump has denied all allegations and said his “Access Hollywood” boasts were locker talk.

So how is it that 64 percent of Americans recognize sexually harassment is a serious issue and that the country nevertheless elected Trump?

Some Trump supporters would say that they didn’t believe any of the Trump accusers. That same skepticism apparently does not extend to Weinstein’s accusers, which suggests this might be a case of extreme confirmation bias. (I like Trump, therefore these women have to be lying.) Oddly, most if not all of the pro-Trump/anti-Weinstein crowd was entirely willing to believe Bill Clinton’s accusers. It’s almost as though we have a pattern: Right-wingers are just against liberals harassing women.

Another troubling conclusion is that Trump’s core supporters (very conservative voters and conservative Republicans) may not much care if women are harassed. Not even a bare majority of each of these groups thinks harassment is a serious problem. They might think women shouldn’t be in the workplace anyway. That’s not as improbable as one might think. The New Yorker reports:

At the White House, Pence has been hosting a Bible-study group for Cabinet officers, led by an evangelical pastor named Ralph Drollinger. In 2004, Drollinger, whose organization, Capitol Ministries, specializes in proselytizing to elected officials, stirred protests from female legislators in California, where he was then preaching, after he wrote, “Women with children at home, who either serve in public office, or are employed on the outside, pursue a path that contradicts God’s revealed design for them. It is a sin.” Drollinger describes Catholicism as “a false religion,” calls homosexuality “a sin,” and believes that a wife must “submit” to her husband.

Oh yes, you blue-state Americans, there are many Americans among the evangelical community, Trump’s strongest base of support, who buy that.

Alternatively, many of the very conservative and conservative Republicans may think that harassment reports in the hated mainstream media are untrue or exaggerated. And yet, they are filled with outrage over Weinstein’s and Clinton’s alleged conduct.

It’s hard to escape the possibility that Trump’s most devoted supporters aren’t very sympathetic toward harassment victims and tend not to give credence to them — unless they are attacking a liberal. If you think that level of hypocrisy is unimaginable, consider Pence and his wife’s handling of the “Access Hollywood” tape:

When the “Access Hollywood” tape surfaced, revealing Trump’s boast about grabbing women “by the [p–––y],” Karen Pence was horrified. According to a former campaign aide, Pence refused to take Trump’s calls and sent him a letter saying that he and Karen, as Christians, were deeply offended by his actions and needed to make an “assessment” about whether to remain with the campaign. They urged Trump to pray. When Trump and Pence finally did talk, Pence told him that his wife still had “huge problems” with his behavior. But in public Pence was forgiving, saying, “I am grateful that he has expressed remorse and apologized to the American people.”

You see they were offended, but not too offended to remain on the ticket and continue to vouch for a candidate whose grotesque behavior and language were unrivaled in modern American history. They — and their followers — were not going to let a whole lot of misogyny get in the way of political ambition.

Listen, if those who proclaim their own virtue will applaud Stephen K. Bannon, cheer Trump’s hateful comments about Mexicans and defend any lie he tells, it’s not a stretch to imagine that they don’t give a darn about victimized women, unless it suits their political objectives.

She has a point. "Conservatives" only care about sexual harassment if the perpetrator is liberal.

[GrumpyGran]

On 10/17/2017 at 9:02 PM, GreyhoundFan said:

A good one from Jennifer Rubin: "Spare the outrage over Harvey Weinstein. These people voted for Trump."

  Hide contents

The Post reports:

In a 2011 Post-ABC poll, 47 percent of Americans said they felt that sexual harassment in the workplace was a serious problem. That number has now risen to 64 percent. Nearly two-thirds of Americans say men who sexually harass female coworkers usually get away with it.

This surely matches the near-universal outrage over Harvey Weinstein, whose alleged abuse, including alleged rape, of multiple women goes back decades. As with almost everything in the United States, however, the poll reflects a partisan breakdown. “While 79 percent of Democrats and 66 percent of independents say harassment is a serious problem — both rising over 20 points in the last six years — this number falls to 42 percent among Republicans, little changed over that same period.” (In 2011, 38 percent of Republicans said harassment was a very serious problem). The Post’s pollsters tell me that among all conservatives, 51 percent say harassment is a serious problem in the United States. Among those who identify as very conservative, it’s 45 percent. And among conservative Republicans, 37 percent say it is a serious problem.

Hmmm. All of this occurs in the first year of a president whose boasts about sexual assault were captured on video and who racked up a dozen or so accusers claiming he sexually harassed or abused them, not counting several former beauty pageant contestants (some of them minors) who accused him of bursting into their dressing rooms when they were naked or partially dressed. Trump has denied all allegations and said his “Access Hollywood” boasts were locker talk.

So how is it that 64 percent of Americans recognize sexually harassment is a serious issue and that the country nevertheless elected Trump?

Some Trump supporters would say that they didn’t believe any of the Trump accusers. That same skepticism apparently does not extend to Weinstein’s accusers, which suggests this might be a case of extreme confirmation bias. (I like Trump, therefore these women have to be lying.) Oddly, most if not all of the pro-Trump/anti-Weinstein crowd was entirely willing to believe Bill Clinton’s accusers. It’s almost as though we have a pattern: Right-wingers are just against liberals harassing women.

Another troubling conclusion is that Trump’s core supporters (very conservative voters and conservative Republicans) may not much care if women are harassed. Not even a bare majority of each of these groups thinks harassment is a serious problem. They might think women shouldn’t be in the workplace anyway. That’s not as improbable as one might think. The New Yorker reports:

At the White House, Pence has been hosting a Bible-study group for Cabinet officers, led by an evangelical pastor named Ralph Drollinger. In 2004, Drollinger, whose organization, Capitol Ministries, specializes in proselytizing to elected officials, stirred protests from female legislators in California, where he was then preaching, after he wrote, “Women with children at home, who either serve in public office, or are employed on the outside, pursue a path that contradicts God’s revealed design for them. It is a sin.” Drollinger describes Catholicism as “a false religion,” calls homosexuality “a sin,” and believes that a wife must “submit” to her husband.

Oh yes, you blue-state Americans, there are many Americans among the evangelical community, Trump’s strongest base of support, who buy that.

Alternatively, many of the very conservative and conservative Republicans may think that harassment reports in the hated mainstream media are untrue or exaggerated. And yet, they are filled with outrage over Weinstein’s and Clinton’s alleged conduct.

It’s hard to escape the possibility that Trump’s most devoted supporters aren’t very sympathetic toward harassment victims and tend not to give credence to them — unless they are attacking a liberal. If you think that level of hypocrisy is unimaginable, consider Pence and his wife’s handling of the “Access Hollywood” tape:

When the “Access Hollywood” tape surfaced, revealing Trump’s boast about grabbing women “by the [p–––y],” Karen Pence was horrified. According to a former campaign aide, Pence refused to take Trump’s calls and sent him a letter saying that he and Karen, as Christians, were deeply offended by his actions and needed to make an “assessment” about whether to remain with the campaign. They urged Trump to pray. When Trump and Pence finally did talk, Pence told him that his wife still had “huge problems” with his behavior. But in public Pence was forgiving, saying, “I am grateful that he has expressed remorse and apologized to the American people.”

You see they were offended, but not too offended to remain on the ticket and continue to vouch for a candidate whose grotesque behavior and language were unrivaled in modern American history. They — and their followers — were not going to let a whole lot of misogyny get in the way of political ambition.

Listen, if those who proclaim their own virtue will applaud Stephen K. Bannon, cheer Trump’s hateful comments about Mexicans and defend any lie he tells, it’s not a stretch to imagine that they don’t give a darn about victimized women, unless it suits their political objectives.

She has a point. "Conservatives" only care about sexual harassment if the perpetrator is liberal.

Something's missing with this Harvey thing. Trump followers are certainly using it as political fodder. But maybe I missed it-has Trump himself said anything about it? 

[GreyhoundFan]

No big surprise: "Many Trump voters who got hurricane relief in Texas aren’t sure Puerto Ricans should"

Spoiler

HOUSTON — Sitting on Mary Maddox’s back porch, which flooded with 22 inches of water when Hurricane Harvey hit nearly two months ago, is a Lady of the Evening plant from Puerto Rico that a friend gave her. Ever since Hurricane Maria ravaged the island, she says, she has paused at the blooming plant when she passes it, rubbing a leaf and saying a prayer for those still without water or electricity.

Often, the prayer is accompanied by frustration with President Trump, whom she voted for and who visited this neighborhood after Harvey.

“He really made me mad,” said Maddox, 70, who accused Trump of trying to pit those on the mainland against Puerto Ricans, even though they’re all Americans.

“I don’t know,” said her husband, Fred Maddox, 75. “I think he’s trying.”

He continued: “It’s a problem, but they need to handle it. It shouldn’t be up to us, really. I don’t think so. They’re sitting back, they’re taking the money, they’re taking a little under the table. He’s trying to wake them up: Do your job. Be responsible.”

The divide in the Maddox household is one playing out across the country, as those who voted for the president debate how much support the federal government should give Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory without a voting member of Congress that is not allowed to vote in presidential elections.

Some supporters of the president, like Fred Maddox, agree with Trump that Puerto Rico’s infrastructure was frail before the storm; that the crisis was worsened by a lack of leadership there; and that the federal government should limit its involvement in the rebuilding effort, which will likely cost billions of dollars. But others, like Mary Maddox, are appalled by how the president talks about Puerto Rico and say the United States has a moral obligation to take care of its citizens.

A survey released last week by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that a majority of Americans believe that the federal government has been too slow to respond in Puerto Rico and that the island still isn’t getting the help it needs. But the results largely broke along party lines: While nearly three-quarters of Democrats said the federal government isn’t doing enough, almost three-quarters of Republicans said it is.

It has been two months since Hurricane Harvey hit Texas and Gulf Coast states, and more than a month since Hurricane Maria slammed into Puerto Rico.

On Oct. 3 — two weeks after the storm — Trump toured a neighborhood outside San Juan, Puerto Rico, and has repeatedly proclaimed, against much evidence, that his administration had a “tremendous” response to Maria. He gave his administration a “10” during a White House appearance with Puerto Rico’s governor this week. “I think we did a fantastic job, and we’re being given credit,” he said.

In fact, conditions remain dire throughout much of the island. Nearly 80 percent of Puerto Ricans still lack electricity, and 30 percent do not have access to clean drinking water.

Here in the Maddoxes’ neighborhood of Sageglen, by contrast, life is slowly returning to normal. On Sept. 2, just after the storm, Trump briefly toured Sageglen — a middle-class enclave on the southern edge of Houston — and announced in a cul-de-sac piled with Sheetrock debris and trash bags: “These are people that have done a fantastic job holding it together.”

There’s still a near-constant sound of construction in the heavily Republican neighborhood, which is filled with ranch-style and modest two-story homes. But there are no longer mountains of debris on the curbs, thanks to the local municipal utility district, which shared the cost of removal with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. There are brand-new cars sitting in several driveways, thanks to car-insurance companies quickly totaling flooded vehicles and local dealers offering flood deals.

Those in the neighborhood without flood insurance were able to apply for and receive assistance from FEMA — including the Maddoxes, who recently had $14,000 in federal money land in their checking account.

In the nearly two decades that the Maddoxes have lived in their ranch house on Sagelink Circle, they had seen no need for flood insurance. And, after recently helping one of their daughters pay legal fees for a divorce, the couple’s savings isn’t what it once was.

“I’m very appreciative to FEMA. I really, really am,” said Mary Maddox, who has been married for more than 50 years and raised five children. “I was just so excited when I saw that they loved us.”

On a recent afternoon on nearby Sagelink Court, David Hogg stopped by the driveway of his neighbor Donna Ramirez, showing her the latest handful of screws he had collected from the cul-de-sac.

Hogg and his wife, Patsy Hogg, have had flood insurance for decades after watching water come dangerously close to flooding the first floor of their two-story home soon after they moved to the neighborhood in the late 1970s. They now pay about $450 per year

Ramirez and her husband also said they thought that they had flood insurance on their home, which they bought a year ago, only to learn weeks after the storm that they did not.

To Ramirez, the role of the government is to broadly coordinate relief efforts and ensure that insurance companies are fulfilling their obligations to policyholders — but that people should take personal responsibility for their property or look to churches or charities for assistance.

“Do other people think that other people should pay for me to fix my house? Because it’s not their fault that I flooded,” said Ramirez, taking a break from sorting through soggy research documents in her garage.

Ramirez, who describes herself a “throw-the-dice-type voter,” said she reluctantly voted for Trump in November — although her support deepened after meeting Trump in her cul-de-sac about a month ago.

“In person, he’s totally different than on TV, and he gave us just such a feeling of confidence, like we weren’t forgotten about,” said Ramirez, who has one grown daughter. “He talked directly at a lot of people in the crowd, and his word for me was: ‘Don’t lose hope, you’re going to be all right.’”

Ramirez worries that when the government makes money easily available after a natural disaster, there’s an opportunity for corruption and a chance that some people will take more than they need. And she thinks that media coverage of the crisis in Puerto Rico has lacked context, especially in reporting that nearly all of the island is still without electricity.

“Guess what? There’s a big chunk of the population that lives without electricity all the time,” Ramirez said, saying he was sharing the experiences of a friend who has family on the island.

Hogg, 76, nodded his head in agreement: “They never had it. Never had it.”

“They don’t live deprived because it’s a beautiful environment,” she continued. “The weather is nice, the climate is good, most of the time, so it’s different from here . . . It works there because of the climate. It wouldn’t work here.”

About 96 percent of Puerto Rico electricity customers had service before Maria made landfall, according to federal data; many of the rest had no power because of Hurricane Irma two weeks earlier.

Ramirez said the government should encourage those living in the hardest-hit areas to move to the mainland, out of the direct path of hurricanes and into communities with more reliable infrastructure.

“I object. I object. They should stay where they are and fix their own country up,” Hogg responded softly, shaking his head, wrongly referring to the U.S. territory as a separate nation.

Later in the day, as Hogg and his wife sat in their garage workshop, they again debated where the government’s role starts and ends. Patsy Hogg said she’s trying to figure out where exactly she stands — she’s worried about the ever-growing national debt, but she can’t stand to see people suffer.

Both are longtime Republicans, although lately they consider themselves first and foremost “Trumpsters.” Patsy Hogg described meeting the president and his wife, who gave her a hug, as a blessing from God.

“We love Trump,” she said. “We voted for him. We pray for him every day.”

The couple agrees that the president needs to be more careful with what he says on Twitter, especially when it comes to Puerto Rico.

But David Hogg, a retired electrical engineer who once worked at NASA, also said that Puerto Ricans’ “lack of responsibility is not an emergency on my part.” The same goes for Texans without flood insurance, he said.

His wife frowned, stared at him and asked: “So you have no mercy?”

“Uh uh. No mercy,” he said. “They should do what I do: Spend the money, get insurance.”

Patsy Hogg said one of their friends at their Baptist church, a retired single woman, didn’t have flood insurance when her two-story townhouse flooded and FEMA quickly provided her with some money.

“I was glad that they did that. That made me feel good,” Patsy Hogg said. “She’s certainly not destitute, but I’m just really glad that they did that. If that’s my tax dollar at work, I’m okay with that.”

She then came to her husband’s defense: “And he’s not really as hardhearted as he sounds. He was very glad when he learned that they had given her money.”

The Maddoxes, who live in the next cul-de-sac over from the Hoggs, were away from home when Trump visited and struggled to get back into the neighborhood until after his motorcade had left.

The couple, both “cradle Catholics” and longtime Republicans, cannot remember a time when they disagreed about politics like they do now. Mary Maddox has hit the point where she believes Trump needs to be impeached and replaced with someone who will unite and heal the country.

“I get so disgusted,” she said, sitting at her dining room table. “He is like a 13-year-old girl, tweeting and everything. I just want him to act his age, and be nice to people and bring the country together. I voted for the man but I’m just — I want our country to be friendly. “

Fred Maddox, who is retired from inspecting commercial airline planes, says he doesn’t agree with many of the things Trump flippantly says, but he still believes in the president and would vote for him again. He likes having a businessman in office, especially one who’s not afraid to speak the painful truth — even if that means publicly calling out Puerto Rican officials during a crisis.

“It’s time,” he said, “we had someone in there to fight for us.”

Shaking my head.

[GrumpyGran]

36 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

No big surprise: "Many Trump voters who got hurricane relief in Texas aren’t sure Puerto Ricans should"

  Reveal hidden contents

HOUSTON — Sitting on Mary Maddox’s back porch, which flooded with 22 inches of water when Hurricane Harvey hit nearly two months ago, is a Lady of the Evening plant from Puerto Rico that a friend gave her. Ever since Hurricane Maria ravaged the island, she says, she has paused at the blooming plant when she passes it, rubbing a leaf and saying a prayer for those still without water or electricity.

Often, the prayer is accompanied by frustration with President Trump, whom she voted for and who visited this neighborhood after Harvey.

“He really made me mad,” said Maddox, 70, who accused Trump of trying to pit those on the mainland against Puerto Ricans, even though they’re all Americans.

“I don’t know,” said her husband, Fred Maddox, 75. “I think he’s trying.”

He continued: “It’s a problem, but they need to handle it. It shouldn’t be up to us, really. I don’t think so. They’re sitting back, they’re taking the money, they’re taking a little under the table. He’s trying to wake them up: Do your job. Be responsible.”

The divide in the Maddox household is one playing out across the country, as those who voted for the president debate how much support the federal government should give Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory without a voting member of Congress that is not allowed to vote in presidential elections.

Some supporters of the president, like Fred Maddox, agree with Trump that Puerto Rico’s infrastructure was frail before the storm; that the crisis was worsened by a lack of leadership there; and that the federal government should limit its involvement in the rebuilding effort, which will likely cost billions of dollars. But others, like Mary Maddox, are appalled by how the president talks about Puerto Rico and say the United States has a moral obligation to take care of its citizens.

A survey released last week by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that a majority of Americans believe that the federal government has been too slow to respond in Puerto Rico and that the island still isn’t getting the help it needs. But the results largely broke along party lines: While nearly three-quarters of Democrats said the federal government isn’t doing enough, almost three-quarters of Republicans said it is.

It has been two months since Hurricane Harvey hit Texas and Gulf Coast states, and more than a month since Hurricane Maria slammed into Puerto Rico.

On Oct. 3 — two weeks after the storm — Trump toured a neighborhood outside San Juan, Puerto Rico, and has repeatedly proclaimed, against much evidence, that his administration had a “tremendous” response to Maria. He gave his administration a “10” during a White House appearance with Puerto Rico’s governor this week. “I think we did a fantastic job, and we’re being given credit,” he said.

In fact, conditions remain dire throughout much of the island. Nearly 80 percent of Puerto Ricans still lack electricity, and 30 percent do not have access to clean drinking water.

Here in the Maddoxes’ neighborhood of Sageglen, by contrast, life is slowly returning to normal. On Sept. 2, just after the storm, Trump briefly toured Sageglen — a middle-class enclave on the southern edge of Houston — and announced in a cul-de-sac piled with Sheetrock debris and trash bags: “These are people that have done a fantastic job holding it together.”

There’s still a near-constant sound of construction in the heavily Republican neighborhood, which is filled with ranch-style and modest two-story homes. But there are no longer mountains of debris on the curbs, thanks to the local municipal utility district, which shared the cost of removal with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. There are brand-new cars sitting in several driveways, thanks to car-insurance companies quickly totaling flooded vehicles and local dealers offering flood deals.

Those in the neighborhood without flood insurance were able to apply for and receive assistance from FEMA — including the Maddoxes, who recently had $14,000 in federal money land in their checking account.

In the nearly two decades that the Maddoxes have lived in their ranch house on Sagelink Circle, they had seen no need for flood insurance. And, after recently helping one of their daughters pay legal fees for a divorce, the couple’s savings isn’t what it once was.

“I’m very appreciative to FEMA. I really, really am,” said Mary Maddox, who has been married for more than 50 years and raised five children. “I was just so excited when I saw that they loved us.”

On a recent afternoon on nearby Sagelink Court, David Hogg stopped by the driveway of his neighbor Donna Ramirez, showing her the latest handful of screws he had collected from the cul-de-sac.

Hogg and his wife, Patsy Hogg, have had flood insurance for decades after watching water come dangerously close to flooding the first floor of their two-story home soon after they moved to the neighborhood in the late 1970s. They now pay about $450 per year

Ramirez and her husband also said they thought that they had flood insurance on their home, which they bought a year ago, only to learn weeks after the storm that they did not.

To Ramirez, the role of the government is to broadly coordinate relief efforts and ensure that insurance companies are fulfilling their obligations to policyholders — but that people should take personal responsibility for their property or look to churches or charities for assistance.

“Do other people think that other people should pay for me to fix my house? Because it’s not their fault that I flooded,” said Ramirez, taking a break from sorting through soggy research documents in her garage.

Ramirez, who describes herself a “throw-the-dice-type voter,” said she reluctantly voted for Trump in November — although her support deepened after meeting Trump in her cul-de-sac about a month ago.

“In person, he’s totally different than on TV, and he gave us just such a feeling of confidence, like we weren’t forgotten about,” said Ramirez, who has one grown daughter. “He talked directly at a lot of people in the crowd, and his word for me was: ‘Don’t lose hope, you’re going to be all right.’”

Ramirez worries that when the government makes money easily available after a natural disaster, there’s an opportunity for corruption and a chance that some people will take more than they need. And she thinks that media coverage of the crisis in Puerto Rico has lacked context, especially in reporting that nearly all of the island is still without electricity.

“Guess what? There’s a big chunk of the population that lives without electricity all the time,” Ramirez said, saying he was sharing the experiences of a friend who has family on the island.

Hogg, 76, nodded his head in agreement: “They never had it. Never had it.”

“They don’t live deprived because it’s a beautiful environment,” she continued. “The weather is nice, the climate is good, most of the time, so it’s different from here . . . It works there because of the climate. It wouldn’t work here.”

About 96 percent of Puerto Rico electricity customers had service before Maria made landfall, according to federal data; many of the rest had no power because of Hurricane Irma two weeks earlier.

Ramirez said the government should encourage those living in the hardest-hit areas to move to the mainland, out of the direct path of hurricanes and into communities with more reliable infrastructure.

“I object. I object. They should stay where they are and fix their own country up,” Hogg responded softly, shaking his head, wrongly referring to the U.S. territory as a separate nation.

Later in the day, as Hogg and his wife sat in their garage workshop, they again debated where the government’s role starts and ends. Patsy Hogg said she’s trying to figure out where exactly she stands — she’s worried about the ever-growing national debt, but she can’t stand to see people suffer.

Both are longtime Republicans, although lately they consider themselves first and foremost “Trumpsters.” Patsy Hogg described meeting the president and his wife, who gave her a hug, as a blessing from God.

“We love Trump,” she said. “We voted for him. We pray for him every day.”

The couple agrees that the president needs to be more careful with what he says on Twitter, especially when it comes to Puerto Rico.

But David Hogg, a retired electrical engineer who once worked at NASA, also said that Puerto Ricans’ “lack of responsibility is not an emergency on my part.” The same goes for Texans without flood insurance, he said.

His wife frowned, stared at him and asked: “So you have no mercy?”

“Uh uh. No mercy,” he said. “They should do what I do: Spend the money, get insurance.”

Patsy Hogg said one of their friends at their Baptist church, a retired single woman, didn’t have flood insurance when her two-story townhouse flooded and FEMA quickly provided her with some money.

“I was glad that they did that. That made me feel good,” Patsy Hogg said. “She’s certainly not destitute, but I’m just really glad that they did that. If that’s my tax dollar at work, I’m okay with that.”

She then came to her husband’s defense: “And he’s not really as hardhearted as he sounds. He was very glad when he learned that they had given her money.”

The Maddoxes, who live in the next cul-de-sac over from the Hoggs, were away from home when Trump visited and struggled to get back into the neighborhood until after his motorcade had left.

The couple, both “cradle Catholics” and longtime Republicans, cannot remember a time when they disagreed about politics like they do now. Mary Maddox has hit the point where she believes Trump needs to be impeached and replaced with someone who will unite and heal the country.

“I get so disgusted,” she said, sitting at her dining room table. “He is like a 13-year-old girl, tweeting and everything. I just want him to act his age, and be nice to people and bring the country together. I voted for the man but I’m just — I want our country to be friendly. “

Fred Maddox, who is retired from inspecting commercial airline planes, says he doesn’t agree with many of the things Trump flippantly says, but he still believes in the president and would vote for him again. He likes having a businessman in office, especially one who’s not afraid to speak the painful truth — even if that means publicly calling out Puerto Rican officials during a crisis.

“It’s time,” he said, “we had someone in there to fight for us.”

Shaking my head.

A lifetime of practice to get that good at cognitive dissonance! Can you imagine the horror of living in that neighborhood?

[candygirl200413]

Cause those brown people guys *again alll the sarcasm*. It's only okay for them to get help and to benefit, no one else.

[47of74]

A Chicago area Branch Trumpvidian in action

Quote

Amid criticism from the widow of an Army Sergeant  killed earlier this month and their family friend, Congresswoman Frederica Wilson, comes a Chicago-area investigation into alleged social media posts made against Wilson over the weekend.

WGN is not naming the man because while there is an investigation he has not been charged.

According to the Chicago Tribune, Des Plaines police are investigating a local man who reportedly posted in reference toward Wilson referencing needing 10 good men for “lynching.”

Later he told the Tribune he couldn't recall if he made those posts and then that he was just kidding.

 

[fraurosena]

What's worse than a Branch Trumpvidian?  An evangelical Branch Trumpvidian, of course! 

Televangelist Mary Colbert: Trump’s Use of ‘Rough Language’ Is Just Like Jesus

Quote

Televangelist Mary Colbert and prophet Mark Taylor appeared on the “Something More” program, where Colbert said that President Trump is like Jesus in his use of coarse language and, like God, is “a man of his word.”

She said that Christians who oppose Trump because of his use of “rough language” must also “have a problem with Jesus because he spoke to the Pharisees and Sadducees and said, ‘You vipers, you snakes.’ He referred to Herod as a fox and then there is the account of the woman he called a dog. So if you want to find offense, you’ll find offense in anything.”

Colbert said that Trump “is a man of his word, he says what he means and he means what he says. Well, what character does that imitate? Who is that? God. God says what He means and He means what He says, so I believe that God saw in the character of Donald Trump a fighter.”

“The church has had its butt kicked for the last 100 years,” Colbert said, adding that God chose a brawler like Trump because He knew that America could not survive with a “mamsy-wamsy, love and peace kind of a president.”

 

I notice she didn't say anything about pussy-grabbing though. I wonder how she would religiously spin that one?

[Howl]

Gosh, and I always thought Jesus was a mamsy wamsy peace lovin' kinda guy, not Macho Jesus. 

[GrumpyGran]

18 hours ago, fraurosena said:

What's worse than a Branch Trumpvidian?  An evangelical Branch Trumpvidian, of course! 

Televangelist Mary Colbert: Trump’s Use of ‘Rough Language’ Is Just Like Jesus

 

I notice she didn't say anything about pussy-grabbing though. I wonder how she would religiously spin that one?

Wow. Just wow. That is some fucked up logic. And quite a stretch. How do these people keep their children out of trouble when they openly condone bullying and name-calling?

And why is there an ad for asshole Phil Robertson's new show on my FJ page? 'In the Woods', that's what it's called. Such imagination. I hope he goes into the woods and never comes back out. It's on CRTV, what is that, Crazy Republicans TV?

[Cartmann99]

On 11/5/2017 at 9:42 AM, GrumpyGran said:

And why is there an ad for asshole Phil Robertson's new show on my FJ page? 'In the Woods', that's what it's called. Such imagination. I hope he goes into the woods and never comes back out. It's on CRTV, what is that, Crazy Republicans TV?

The ad servers can't tell the difference between folks who love them some nuttery, and those of us who snark about it. I learned about Mike Hucksterbee's Olde Tyme Ayn Rand Jesus & Trump Worship Hour because of an ad here at FJ. I should look and see if he's started shilling doom buckets and "miracle" cures on his show yet. 

Trump supporter Laura Ingraham has some advice for Republicans:

If the Republicans follow her advice, I shudder to think what the ads for the 2018 races will be like. 

Evan McMullin stirred things up yesterday with the Trump supporters and some of his former fans:

Some of the folks who are upset claim to have voted for him last November. This dustup with his former supporters is very confusing to me. Didn't his voters choose him over Trump because of his convictions? 

[AmazonGrace]

I know everyone is getting fed up with the  endless "Sad Trumpkins in dying towns are adamant about stuff" articles  but this article may be the best thing in its genre. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/08/donald-trump-johnstown-pennsylvania-supporters-215800

Not quoting all the economic anxiety bits because we've heard it before , just some highlights about why Trump's base is not budging. . 

Quote

So many people in so many other areas of the country watch with dismay and existential alarm Trump’s Twitter hijinks, his petty feuds, his penchant for butting into areas where the president has no explicit, policy-relevant role. All of that only animates his supporters here. For them, Trump is their megaphone. He is the scriptwriter. He is a singularly effective, intuitive creator of a limitless loop of grievance and discontent that keeps them in absolute lockstep.

Spoiler

When Trump won, people here were ecstatic. But they’d heard generations of politicians make big promises before, and they were also impatient for him to deliver.

“Six months to a year,” catering company owner Joey Del Signore told me when we met days after the election. “A couple months,” retired nurse Maggie Frear said, before saying it might take a couple of years. “He’s just got to follow through with what he said he was going to do,” Schilling said last November. Back then, there was an all-but-audible “or else.”

A year later, the local unemployment rate has ticked down, and activity in a few coal mines has ticked up. Beyond that, though, not much has changed—at least not for the better. Johnstown and the surrounding region are struggling in the same ways and for the same reasons. The drug problem is just as bad. “There’s nothing good in the area,” Schilling said the other day in her living room. “I don’t have anything good to say about anything in this area. It’s sad.” Even so, her backing for Trump is utterly undiminished: “I’m a supporter of him, 100 percent.”

What I heard from Schilling is overwhelmingly what I heard in my follow-up conversations with people here who I talked to last year as well. Over the course of three rainy, dreary days last week, I revisited and shook hands with the president’s base—that thirtysomething percent of the electorate who resolutely approve of the job he is doing, the segment of voters who share his view that the Russia investigation is a “witch hunt” that “has nothing to do with him,” and who applaud his judicial nominees and his determination to gut the federal regulatory apparatus. But what I wasn’t prepared for was how readily these same people had abandoned the contract he had made with them. Their satisfaction with Trump now seems untethered to the things they once said mattered to them the most.

“I don’t know that he has done a lot to help,” Frear told me. Last year, she said she wouldn’t vote for him again if he didn’t do what he said he was going to do. Last week, she matter-of-factly stated that she would. “Support Trump? Sure,” she said. “I like him.”

When I asked Del Signore about the past year here, he said he “didn’t see any change because we got a new president.” He nonetheless remains an ardent proponent. “He’s our answer.”

I asked Schilling what would happen if the next three years go the way the past one has.

“I’m not going to blame him,” Schilling said. “Absolutely not.”

Is there anything that could change her mind about Trump?

“Nope,” she said.

All this, perhaps, is not so surprising, considering polling continues to show that—in spite of unprecedented unpopularity—nearly all people who voted for Trump would do it again. But as I compared this year’s answers to last year’s responses it seemed clear that the basis of people’s support had morphed. Johnstown voters do not intend to hold the president accountable for the nonnegotiable pledges he made to them. It’s not that the people who made Trump president have generously moved the goalposts for him. It’s that they have eliminated the goalposts altogether.

This reality ought to get the attention of anyone who thinks they will win in 2018 or 2020 by running against Trump’s record. His supporters here, it turns out, are energized by his bombast and his animus more than any actual accomplishments. For them, it’s evidently not what he’s doing so much as it is the people he’s fighting. Trump is simply and unceasingly angry on their behalf, battling the people who vex them the worst—“obstructionist” Democrats, uncooperative establishment Republicans, the media, Black Lives Matter protesters and NFL players (boy oh boy do they hate kneeling NFL players) whom they see as ungrateful, disrespectful millionaires.

And they love him for this.

“I think he’s doing a great job, and I just wish the hell they’d leave him alone and let him do it,” Schilling said. “He shouldn’t have to take any shit from anybody.”

***

Del Signore is by his own admission not a person who’s focused on policy specifics. A short, stout genial man who wears gold chains around his neck and rings on both pinkies, he last year did something for Trump he had never done for any other political candidate. The 61-year-old Johnstown native proudly planted a Trump sign in the ground in front of his catering company. And nothing that’s happened in the past 12 months, he told me when we met for lunch on Italian buffet day at the Holiday Inn, has lessened his enthusiasm for the man who so energized him.

Joey Del Signore still loves Trump. “Everybody I talk to,” he says, “realizes it’s not Trump who’s dragging his feet.” | Scott Goldsmith for Politico Magazine

“Everybody I talk to,” he said, “realizes it’s not Trump who’s dragging his feet. Trump’s probably the most diligent, hardest-working president we’ve ever had in our lifetimes. It’s not like he sleeps in till noon and goes golfing every weekend, like the last president did.”

I stopped him, informing him that, yes, Barack Obama liked to golf, but Trump in fact does golf a lot, too—more, in fact.

Del Signore was surprised to hear this.

“Does he?” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

He did not linger on this topic, smiling and changing the subject with a quip. “If I was married to his wife,” Del Signore said, “I don’t think I’d go anywhere.”

He added: “Some of these things are like that thing he said to Billy, Billy Bob, Billy Bud”—searching, unsuccessfully, for the name Billy Bush—“on the bus, that comment he made.” Del Signore shrugged. “He’s a human male. I’m glad he wasn’t saying, ‘Hey, I like little boys.’ You know? So he’s not perfect.”

Del Signore said he’s been following politics far more than before because of Trump. Trump, he said, is just “more interesting.” So now he likes watching the news. “Ninety-nine percent of the time I watch Fox,” he said. “Sometimes I’ll be sitting there listening to all this Fox stuff, and I’ll say, ‘Maybe they aren’t right, maybe I’ll flip to CNN’—but every time I’ve found that Fox has been correct, and CNN is definitely fake news.”

A Catholic whose wife goes to church every Sunday, whereas he, “shame on me,” does not, Del Signore told me toward the end of our lunch that some people at church told his wife that Obama is the antichrist. “She comes home and tells me these things that they tell you in church,” he said. I asked him whether that’s what he thinks. “I don’t know,” he said. “Some people say that.”

 

Spoiler

At Johnstown’s JWF Industries, a 450-employee manufacturing company, business hasn’t gone up this year, owner Bill Polacek told me, but he’s expecting a 30 percent jump next year. He chalks that up to Trump and his “pro-business” “mood.”

Spoiler

 

Something I heard last week that I didn’t hear last year: resignation. Drapes drawn, Maggie Frear, the retired nurse, sat in her darkened living room and told me there really wasn’t all that much Trump could do to help Johnstown and Cambria County.

“You know, we’re sort of a depressed area,” she said. “We’re just a little area, you know—but it’s a good area. Good people here. And I think he would, if he knew of a place that had a lot of problems, I think he would try to help. I don’t know what he could do, or would want to do, for Johnstown, you know?”

He said he was going to bring back the steel mills.

“You’re never going to get those steel mills back,” she said.

“But he said he was going to,” I said.

“Yeah, but how’s he going to bring tSo many people in so many other areas of the country watch with dismay and existential alarm Trump’s Twitter hijinks, his petty feuds, his penchant for butting into areas where the president has no explicit, policy-relevant role. All of that only animates his supporters here. For them, Trump is their megaphone. He is the scriptwriter. He is a singularly effective, intuitive creator of a limitless loop of grievance and discontent that keeps them in absolute lockstep.hem back?”

“I don’t know,” I said, “but it’s what he said, last year, and people voted for him because of it.”

“They always say they want to bring the steel mills back,” Frear said, “but they’re going to have to do a lotof work to bring the steel mills back.”

He hasn’t built the wall yet, either. “I don’t care about his wall,” said Frear, 76. “I mean, if he gets his wall—I don’t give a shit, you know? But he has a good idea: Keep ’em out.”

He also hasn’t repealed Obamacare. “That’s Congress,” she said.

And the drug scourge here continues unabated. “And it’s not going to improve for a long time,” she said, “until people learn, which they won’t.”

“But I like him,” Frear reiterated. “Because he does what he says.”

 

Spoiler

 

Next to Bala was a gray-haired man who told me he voted for Trump and was happy so far because “he’s kept his promises.”

I asked which ones.

“Border security.” But there’s no wall yet. “No fault of his,” the man said.

What else? “Getting rid of Obamacare.” But he hasn’t. “Well, he’s tried to.”

What else? “Defunding Planned Parenthood.” But he didn’t. “Not his fault again,” the man said.

I asked for his name. “Bill K.,” he said. He wouldn’t give me his last name. “I don’t trust you,” he said.

More than anything, what seemed to upset the people I spoke with was the National Football League players who have knelt during the national anthem to protest police brutality and racial inequality.

“As far as I’m concerned,” Frear told me, “if I was the boss of these teams, I would tell ’em, ‘You get your asses out there and you play, or you’re not here anymore.’ They’re paying their salaries, for God’s sake.”

“Shame on them,” Del Signore said over his alfredo. “These clowns are out there, making millions of dollars a year, and they’re using some stupid excuse that they want equality—so I’ll kneel against the flag and the national anthem?”

“You’re not a fan of equality?” I asked.

“For people who deserve it and earn it,” he said. “All my ancestors, Italian, 100 percent Italian, the Irish, Germans, Polish, whatever—they all came over here, settled in places like this, they worked hard and they earned the respect. They earned the success that they got. Some people don’t want to do that. They just want it handed to them.”

“Like NFL players?” I said.

“Well,” Del Signore responded, “I hate to say what the majority of them are …” He stopped himself short of what I thought he was about to say.

Schilling and her husband, however, did not restrain themselves.

“The thing that irritates me to no end is this NFL shit,” Schilling told me in her living room. “I’m about ready to go over the top with this shit. We do not watch no NFL now.” They’re Dallas Cowboys fans. “We banned ’em. We don’t watch it.”

Schilling looked at her husband, Dave McCabe, who’s 67 and a retired high school basketball coach. She nodded at me. “Tell him,” she said to McCabe, “what you said the NFL is …”

McCabe looked momentarily wary. He laughed a little. “I don’t remember saying that,” he said unconvincingly.

Schilling was having none of it. “You’re the one that told me, liar,” she said.

She looked at me.

The NFL?

“Niggers for life,” Schilling said.

“For life,” McCabe added.

 

 

[GrumpyGran]

29 minutes ago, AmazonGrace said:

I know everyone is getting fed up with the  endless "Sad Trumpkins in dying towns are adamant about stuff" articles  but this article may be the best thing in its genre. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/08/donald-trump-johnstown-pennsylvania-supporters-215800

Not quoting all the economic anxiety bits because we've heard it before , just some highlights about why Trump's base is not budging. . 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

When Trump won, people here were ecstatic. But they’d heard generations of politicians make big promises before, and they were also impatient for him to deliver.

“Six months to a year,” catering company owner Joey Del Signore told me when we met days after the election. “A couple months,” retired nurse Maggie Frear said, before saying it might take a couple of years. “He’s just got to follow through with what he said he was going to do,” Schilling said last November. Back then, there was an all-but-audible “or else.”

A year later, the local unemployment rate has ticked down, and activity in a few coal mines has ticked up. Beyond that, though, not much has changed—at least not for the better. Johnstown and the surrounding region are struggling in the same ways and for the same reasons. The drug problem is just as bad. “There’s nothing good in the area,” Schilling said the other day in her living room. “I don’t have anything good to say about anything in this area. It’s sad.” Even so, her backing for Trump is utterly undiminished: “I’m a supporter of him, 100 percent.”

What I heard from Schilling is overwhelmingly what I heard in my follow-up conversations with people here who I talked to last year as well. Over the course of three rainy, dreary days last week, I revisited and shook hands with the president’s base—that thirtysomething percent of the electorate who resolutely approve of the job he is doing, the segment of voters who share his view that the Russia investigation is a “witch hunt” that “has nothing to do with him,” and who applaud his judicial nominees and his determination to gut the federal regulatory apparatus. But what I wasn’t prepared for was how readily these same people had abandoned the contract he had made with them. Their satisfaction with Trump now seems untethered to the things they once said mattered to them the most.

“I don’t know that he has done a lot to help,” Frear told me. Last year, she said she wouldn’t vote for him again if he didn’t do what he said he was going to do. Last week, she matter-of-factly stated that she would. “Support Trump? Sure,” she said. “I like him.”

When I asked Del Signore about the past year here, he said he “didn’t see any change because we got a new president.” He nonetheless remains an ardent proponent. “He’s our answer.”

I asked Schilling what would happen if the next three years go the way the past one has.

“I’m not going to blame him,” Schilling said. “Absolutely not.”

Is there anything that could change her mind about Trump?

“Nope,” she said.

All this, perhaps, is not so surprising, considering polling continues to show that—in spite of unprecedented unpopularity—nearly all people who voted for Trump would do it again. But as I compared this year’s answers to last year’s responses it seemed clear that the basis of people’s support had morphed. Johnstown voters do not intend to hold the president accountable for the nonnegotiable pledges he made to them. It’s not that the people who made Trump president have generously moved the goalposts for him. It’s that they have eliminated the goalposts altogether.

This reality ought to get the attention of anyone who thinks they will win in 2018 or 2020 by running against Trump’s record. His supporters here, it turns out, are energized by his bombast and his animus more than any actual accomplishments. For them, it’s evidently not what he’s doing so much as it is the people he’s fighting. Trump is simply and unceasingly angry on their behalf, battling the people who vex them the worst—“obstructionist” Democrats, uncooperative establishment Republicans, the media, Black Lives Matter protesters and NFL players (boy oh boy do they hate kneeling NFL players) whom they see as ungrateful, disrespectful millionaires.

And they love him for this.

“I think he’s doing a great job, and I just wish the hell they’d leave him alone and let him do it,” Schilling said. “He shouldn’t have to take any shit from anybody.”

***

Del Signore is by his own admission not a person who’s focused on policy specifics. A short, stout genial man who wears gold chains around his neck and rings on both pinkies, he last year did something for Trump he had never done for any other political candidate. The 61-year-old Johnstown native proudly planted a Trump sign in the ground in front of his catering company. And nothing that’s happened in the past 12 months, he told me when we met for lunch on Italian buffet day at the Holiday Inn, has lessened his enthusiasm for the man who so energized him.

Joey Del Signore still loves Trump. “Everybody I talk to,” he says, “realizes it’s not Trump who’s dragging his feet.” | Scott Goldsmith for Politico Magazine

“Everybody I talk to,” he said, “realizes it’s not Trump who’s dragging his feet. Trump’s probably the most diligent, hardest-working president we’ve ever had in our lifetimes. It’s not like he sleeps in till noon and goes golfing every weekend, like the last president did.”

I stopped him, informing him that, yes, Barack Obama liked to golf, but Trump in fact does golf a lot, too—more, in fact.

Del Signore was surprised to hear this.

“Does he?” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

He did not linger on this topic, smiling and changing the subject with a quip. “If I was married to his wife,” Del Signore said, “I don’t think I’d go anywhere.”

He added: “Some of these things are like that thing he said to Billy, Billy Bob, Billy Bud”—searching, unsuccessfully, for the name Billy Bush—“on the bus, that comment he made.” Del Signore shrugged. “He’s a human male. I’m glad he wasn’t saying, ‘Hey, I like little boys.’ You know? So he’s not perfect.”

Del Signore said he’s been following politics far more than before because of Trump. Trump, he said, is just “more interesting.” So now he likes watching the news. “Ninety-nine percent of the time I watch Fox,” he said. “Sometimes I’ll be sitting there listening to all this Fox stuff, and I’ll say, ‘Maybe they aren’t right, maybe I’ll flip to CNN’—but every time I’ve found that Fox has been correct, and CNN is definitely fake news.”

A Catholic whose wife goes to church every Sunday, whereas he, “shame on me,” does not, Del Signore told me toward the end of our lunch that some people at church told his wife that Obama is the antichrist. “She comes home and tells me these things that they tell you in church,” he said. I asked him whether that’s what he thinks. “I don’t know,” he said. “Some people say that.”

 

  Reveal hidden contents

At Johnstown’s JWF Industries, a 450-employee manufacturing company, business hasn’t gone up this year, owner Bill Polacek told me, but he’s expecting a 30 percent jump next year. He chalks that up to Trump and his “pro-business” “mood.”

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Something I heard last week that I didn’t hear last year: resignation. Drapes drawn, Maggie Frear, the retired nurse, sat in her darkened living room and told me there really wasn’t all that much Trump could do to help Johnstown and Cambria County.

“You know, we’re sort of a depressed area,” she said. “We’re just a little area, you know—but it’s a good area. Good people here. And I think he would, if he knew of a place that had a lot of problems, I think he would try to help. I don’t know what he could do, or would want to do, for Johnstown, you know?”

He said he was going to bring back the steel mills.

“You’re never going to get those steel mills back,” she said.

“But he said he was going to,” I said.

“Yeah, but how’s he going to bring tSo many people in so many other areas of the country watch with dismay and existential alarm Trump’s Twitter hijinks, his petty feuds, his penchant for butting into areas where the president has no explicit, policy-relevant role. All of that only animates his supporters here. For them, Trump is their megaphone. He is the scriptwriter. He is a singularly effective, intuitive creator of a limitless loop of grievance and discontent that keeps them in absolute lockstep.hem back?”

“I don’t know,” I said, “but it’s what he said, last year, and people voted for him because of it.”

“They always say they want to bring the steel mills back,” Frear said, “but they’re going to have to do a lotof work to bring the steel mills back.”

He hasn’t built the wall yet, either. “I don’t care about his wall,” said Frear, 76. “I mean, if he gets his wall—I don’t give a shit, you know? But he has a good idea: Keep ’em out.”

He also hasn’t repealed Obamacare. “That’s Congress,” she said.

And the drug scourge here continues unabated. “And it’s not going to improve for a long time,” she said, “until people learn, which they won’t.”

“But I like him,” Frear reiterated. “Because he does what he says.”

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Next to Bala was a gray-haired man who told me he voted for Trump and was happy so far because “he’s kept his promises.”

I asked which ones.

“Border security.” But there’s no wall yet. “No fault of his,” the man said.

What else? “Getting rid of Obamacare.” But he hasn’t. “Well, he’s tried to.”

What else? “Defunding Planned Parenthood.” But he didn’t. “Not his fault again,” the man said.

I asked for his name. “Bill K.,” he said. He wouldn’t give me his last name. “I don’t trust you,” he said.

More than anything, what seemed to upset the people I spoke with was the National Football League players who have knelt during the national anthem to protest police brutality and racial inequality.

“As far as I’m concerned,” Frear told me, “if I was the boss of these teams, I would tell ’em, ‘You get your asses out there and you play, or you’re not here anymore.’ They’re paying their salaries, for God’s sake.”

“Shame on them,” Del Signore said over his alfredo. “These clowns are out there, making millions of dollars a year, and they’re using some stupid excuse that they want equality—so I’ll kneel against the flag and the national anthem?”

“You’re not a fan of equality?” I asked.

“For people who deserve it and earn it,” he said. “All my ancestors, Italian, 100 percent Italian, the Irish, Germans, Polish, whatever—they all came over here, settled in places like this, they worked hard and they earned the respect. They earned the success that they got. Some people don’t want to do that. They just want it handed to them.”

“Like NFL players?” I said.

“Well,” Del Signore responded, “I hate to say what the majority of them are …” He stopped himself short of what I thought he was about to say.

Schilling and her husband, however, did not restrain themselves.

“The thing that irritates me to no end is this NFL shit,” Schilling told me in her living room. “I’m about ready to go over the top with this shit. We do not watch no NFL now.” They’re Dallas Cowboys fans. “We banned ’em. We don’t watch it.”

Schilling looked at her husband, Dave McCabe, who’s 67 and a retired high school basketball coach. She nodded at me. “Tell him,” she said to McCabe, “what you said the NFL is …”

McCabe looked momentarily wary. He laughed a little. “I don’t remember saying that,” he said unconvincingly.

Schilling was having none of it. “You’re the one that told me, liar,” she said.

She looked at me.

The NFL?

“Niggers for life,” Schilling said.

“For life,” McCabe added.

 

 

Holy Shit. There isn't an emoji for that. I'm sorry, I don't care what happens to these people. We need to step around them politically. They love him because he's a bully and they are bullies. Delusional bullies. He validates all the horrible emotions and opinions they have and nothing will change that, until he literally shits on them.

They are a waste of time, money and energy when it comes to appealing to voters who may be willing to move away from our current toxic administration. So much pure stupidity and ignorant hatred.

[Zola]

I don't understand why people who aren't part of Trump's base should have to tolerate a president who caters to that base - some 30% of the population. I want a president who values all people, not just the select group that feeds his ego best. What the fuck is up with that? What rational, reasonable adult would find this bullshit at all acceptable?

And how does his base not realize that Trump is lying out of both sides of his mouth any time he claims to care about anyone other than himself? How can they not see that he personally does not give a shit about any one of them, and never will? Will they be able to figure out that he used them for all he could get and threw them away when all of his shyster scheming catches up to him?

No. He's going to be a damn martyr to them. I cannot wait to see how history deals with this.

[AmazonGrace]

I love the one dude who is okay with sexual harassment because at least Trump isn't a pedophile.... But what do you want to bet that if it turned out that Trump was a pedophile, he'd find some excuse?

"I don't think he's a pedophile, it's just that people are so damn politically correct these days.  Liberal snowflakes claim everyone on the right is a pedophile  but have you heard about all these Democrats who are pedophiles? Oh, there's proof? It's fake news.  Deep state made it up. Hillary made it up with her Russian hacker friends. Oh, Trump confessed?  He's so honest. See,  maybe Trump is a pedophile but at least he's not a serial killer. Oh, he's a serial killer? Well never mind as long as he's killing people I hate too." 

[Cartmann99]

 Trump really could get these folks to chop off one of their own legs, as long as he told them that he would make sure that their enemies lost both legs. 

[GrumpyGran]

56 minutes ago, Zola said:

And how does his base not realize that Trump is lying out of both sides of his mouth any time he claims to care about anyone other than himself?

Well, they don't care about anyone but themselves so...And as for lying, "Who doesn't lie, everybody lies, I lie to my wife, my boss, my kids. Sometimes you just have to lie to get what you want. I mean, it's tough here in Johnstown. We need to lie, we got nothing else. Except Trump!"

[GreyhoundFan]

I'm originally from a town very close to the one mentioned in the Politico article. It is spot-on. My mom left my dad and worked her fingers to the bone in multiple jobs to get us out of there. She knew there was no future in that area. Mom and I have many disagreements, but I will always be thankful that I didn't have to live in that area beyond my young childhood. Leaving there opened up so many avenues for both mom and me. I have very little contact with my relatives who still live there, but the few times I have talked with them in the last 20 or so years, I've been shocked by how increasingly small-minded they all seem to be. I have little doubt they are all BTs with MAGA hats and worship at the altar of Faux News.

[GrumpyGran]

14 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I'm originally from a town very close to the one mentioned in the Politico article. It is spot-on. My mom left my dad and worked her fingers to the bone in multiple jobs to get us out of there. She knew there was no future in that area. Mom and I have many disagreements, but I will always be thankful that I didn't have to live in that area beyond my young childhood. Leaving there opened up so many avenues for both mom and me. I have very little contact with my relatives who still live there, but the few times I have talked with them in the last 20 or so years, I've been shocked by how increasingly small-minded they all seem to be. I have little doubt they are all BTs with MAGA hats and worship at the altar of Faux News.

My DIL's mother is from J'town. She's fundie. Struggling with having a lesbian daughter. Would love to visit there for the history, but outside of Pittsburgh, western PA is kind of scary.

[GreyhoundFan]

1 hour ago, GrumpyGran said:

Would love to visit there for the history, but outside of Pittsburgh, western PA is kind of scary.

Amen, my sister, amen. I called my aunt, who left Cambria County decades ago, and she actually knew one of the people in the article. She said it sounded exactly like him. She said she's so happy to be out of that area.

[AmazonGrace]

On 4.11.2017 at 10:51 PM, fraurosena said:

What's worse than a Branch Trumpvidian?  An evangelical Branch Trumpvidian, of course! 

Televangelist Mary Colbert: Trump’s Use of ‘Rough Language’ Is Just Like Jesus

 

I notice she didn't say anything about pussy-grabbing though. I wonder how she would religiously spin that one?

Well if Jesus grabbed you it wouldn't be a problem because you would be healed.

[Cartmann99]

According to Trump nutter Mark Taylor, our living former presidents are in big trouble:

Quote

They were doing this Hurricane Harvey relief effort,” Taylor said. “They were trying to raise money for Hurricane Harvey, but we all know that is a bunch of lies. These guys could care less about people, it’s about their agenda. They disguised it as a relief effort for Hurricane Harvey victims and they go in there and they trash Donald Trump.”

“The Bible says, ‘Do not touch my anointed, but especially my prophets,'” he continued. “These guys have now touched God’s anointed, Donald Trump. They used it as a platform to go in there and attack.”

If you have "former presidents revealed as Baal worshippers" on your Bingo card, you've won a slightly used bug zapper and a headless Cabbage Patch Doll!

Quote

Taylor said that God told him that because of their supposed attack on Trump, “the covenant that these five presidents have had with that entity called Baal—because Baal is the strongman over America—is going to be broken. And then He said, ‘Two of these ex-presidents will be taken and and three will be shaken.'”

“God is just going to take these guys home, period. He is going to remove them and it will be a sign for certain things,” said Taylor. “The other three will be shaken and I believe that two of them will run the risk of going to prison and the third one will also be shaken due to having to testify or legal issues or whatever the case may be. Now, I don’t know if all three of those will go to prison, but I believe there is a very good possibility that two out of the three could face jail time because of what they have done.”

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/mark-taylor-two-ex-presidents-will-die-and-two-will-face-jail-time-as-divine-retribution-for-criticizing-trump/

Also, too, Baal has an unusual diet:

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“People have to realize the strongman over America is Baal,” he said. “Baal is a very violent entity, he is the second in Satan’s triune, he is the second in command, he is the counterfeit Christ. It feeds off the blood of the innocent, which is the aborted babies. This is why Baal is the strongman, because the aborted babies are the food source that is empowering Baal.”

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/mark-taylor-aborted-babies-are-the-food-source-that-is-empowering-baal/

You're listening to 101.5, The Satan Frequency. Eternal damnation that's easy to listen to at work, at home, or on your way to a blood sacrifice!

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On Friday, Taylor appeared on “The Sharpening Report” where he expanded on this theory, explaining that people who have had their bloodlines corrupted by sins committed by their ancestors are now being targeted by Satan via a frequency that is making them unable to see how God is using Trump to save America.

“People are picking up on the frequency of Satan right now,” he stated. “The goal of the Freemasons, the goal of the Illuminati, the goal of the globalists is to change your DNA. They want to change your DNA, they want you to hear what they want you to hear, see what they want you to see and speak what they want you to speak, act like they want you to act. They’re wanting to totally control you and the only way they can do that is through the bombardment of these frequencies.”

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/mark-taylor-satans-frequency-is-making-people-unable-to-see-how-god-is-using-trump-to-save-america/

 

[hoipolloi]

 

11 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

I know everyone is getting fed up with the  endless "Sad Trumpkins in dying towns are adamant about stuff" articles  but this article may be the best thing in its genre. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/11/08/donald-trump-johnstown-pennsylvania-supporters-215800

It is good. Thank you.

Itʻs also depressing as hell and reinforces my opinion that the Democratic Party should not bother going after these voters at all, let alone rely on an election strategy for 2018/2020 that is focused on them.

Mired in their own failures and bigotry, these voters are hopeless & a lost cause. Nothing anyone does or says is going to change their minds. 

[Howl]

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She said that Christians who oppose Trump because of his use of “rough language” must also “have a problem with Jesus because he spoke to the Pharisees and Sadducees and said, ‘You vipers, you snakes.’ He referred to Herod as a fox and then there is the account of the woman he called a dog. So if you want to find offense, you’ll find offense in anything.”

So Mary Colbert shouldn't mind if we call her a bitch?

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“People are picking up on the frequency of Satan right now,” he stated. “The goal of the Freemasons, the goal of the Illuminati, the goal of the globalists is to change your DNA. They want to change your DNA, they want you to hear what they want you to hear, see what they want you to see and speak what they want you to speak, act like they want you to act. They’re wanting to totally control you and the only way they can do that is through the bombardment of these frequencies.”

Oh, Mark Taylor! Bless your heart. 

Somebody please help me with the maths.  Trump's overall approval is hovering in the thirties, but among Republicans overall, his approval is around 80% and that isn't dropping.  I don't get how you can have a large percentage of people with a high rate of approval, and yet the "overall" approval rate is somewhere down in the thirties, which is pretty dismal. 

[Audrey2]

@Cartmann99, thank to for your post. In no way is this rant directed at you.

Mark Taylor, you are an obnoxious bit of cow patty that humanity accidentally stepped in.

Jimmy Carter is a truly good and Godly man. (You played the religion card, so I will too.) Of course, in your words, two will be taken- both Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush are WW2 vets and are over 90. As for the others, Obama (still having a hard time not calling him President Obama) is also a good man, and Clinton cares about the common man. Even Bush 2 (the shrub) cared about the U.S. more than his own interests, especially when compared to Trump. All Trump cares about is fame and power, and manipulating the system so he and his buddies can pillage the U.S.

[Ali]

3 hours ago, Howl said:

Somebody please help me with the maths.  Trump's overall approval is hovering in the thirties, but among Republicans overall, his approval is around 80% and that isn't dropping.  I don't get how you can have a large percentage of people with a high rate of approval, and yet the "overall" approval rate is somewhere down in the thirties, which is pretty dismal. 

I haven't looked at the numbers, but I am assuming he is losing support from Independents and Democrats. 

According to the link below, 26 percent of Americans identify as Republicans, 29 percent as Democrats, and 42 percent as Independents.

http://news.gallup.com/poll/188096/democratic-republican-identification-near-historical-lows.aspx

I will just assume perhaps 20 percent of Democrats and Independents still support him.

Here is a weighted average calculation:

0.26x0.80 plus 0.29x0.20 plus 0.42x0.20 equals 0.35

So, this is how he could still be in the thirties. I imagine his support among Independents is higher than Democrats though.