Comments

2

Boeing might move its headquarters: From Renton to Everett:
to S. Carolina. 's'all 'bout them Benjamins, Friendo.

Life's just Cheaper below the Bible Belt.
no peeking!

3

You can’t give us that cremation story without some details. Is the problem that the modern lard-ass American is more flammable? Kind of like when the grease from a bunch of bratwursts drips into your bbq? And how was that castration/cannibal story not in Florida?

5

https://youtu.be/s-09gNDsPzQ

6

@1: It's the neighborly thing to do. At some point, your compassion should trump your politics.

7

Colonic robots?
The market value of gerbils has just dropped!

9

If you visit Idaho and are wearing a mask you will quickly find yourself the odd-person-out, as I was recently. Idaho: potatoes, no masks, and scary white-power militias!

10

@6:

I have relatives who live in N Idaho - remember the Aryan Nations? Their compound was right outside of Coeur d' Alene - and I can speak from personal experience: many of the residents in that area still cling to the same inbred racist white nationalist agenda as Richard Butler and his ilk. These are people who wouldn't hesitate to kill you for looking at them funny if they thought they could get away with it. If they want MY compassion they need to show a little themselves, because in just about every interaction I've had with people there, it's pretty much non-existent.

11

Actually, back when I lived in BC, I used to run in the Couer d'Alene marathon, there are nice people there. Pretty much most mountain folk are nice, it's the plains to the East that are chock full o' nuts. So makes sense to help them out.

It's only recently that far right wingnuts moved to the mountain areas.

12

I feel compelled to comment on this thread just to push back against the generalizations about Idahoans.

I worked in Boise for a time, and it has a lot of the same vibe that makes cities like Seattle and Portland so charming, just on a slightly smaller scale. With Boise State and its old bones, I have this romantic vision of Boise as the Tucson of the North. And I believe it's had Democratic mayors going back a while now.

And of course there's the Sun Valley area, which is a cultural hotspot.

Idaho is a wonderful place. It's one of those states that really should be getting an influx of more educated, progressive, cosmopolitan folk and trending red to purple to blue, following in the footsteps of Colorado.

13

10 - I live just south of Sandpoint, and you are 100% correct. The organizations were sued into bankruptcy, but their memberships (those not dead or in prison anyway) and their large number of supporters/sympathizers are still here.

I see far more confederate flags flying here than I ever saw in Texas, way more...and unlike Idaho, Texas actually fought in the ACW as a confederate state! I've overheard the n-word uttered by white people here more than I did in Texas, and I worked for the police department...in an actual former confederate state!

@6 - So, yeah, I say fuck these idiots and their militantly willful refusal to respect science and their insistence on jeopardizing the health of their neighbors. Being so determined to act in such a flagrantly stupid way should have consequences, and the hospitals being full is one of those consequences.

14

@11 - Come live in the area now, and you will leave with a vastly different opinion.

@12 - S. Idaho and N. Idaho may as well be two different countries rather than just different ends of the same state. You cannot use one as an example of the other.

White supremacists and plain ol' racists are moving to N. Idaho in droves and have been for years. They call it the "American Redoubt" or sometimes "National Redoubt," where white "patriots" are intended to settle so as to ride out the coming race/civil war.

We've made the national news at least 4 times by my non-scientific count just this year alone for all of our right-wing whack-job militia shenanigans. I have no doubt that with this election, that distinction will only become even more frequent.

15

@14 I seriously considered moving to Sandpoint. Great ski mountain, beautiful area, not too crowded. Then I realized there were some serious racists there; not like your average Karen, but like hardcore card-carrying racists. Nope!

16

Combatting a pandemic through a prism of stereotypes isn't helping.

17

"Exaggerated patriotism is the most insincere form of self conceit."

18

@16. It's not a stereotype when Trump leads his followers from the top-down by directing them to ignore Fauci and we are seeing 60,000 new cases a year because the GOP made it policy to politicize masks and good science. How many people at Trump events did you see wearing masks before he got Covid, and even after how many of them wear them correctly? Man, the things you say.

19

60,000 a day, not year. If only.

22

@8: Unless you have telepathic abilities, logic dictates you go with the former.
@21: We're one nation.

23

@21. The only reason I can think of is to help out the poor medical staff who are overwhelmed and disillusioned with the fact that some assholes can't love their neighbors enough to give a fuck about their health, especially neighbors whose entire ethos is racial separatism and instigating rebellion against the government while upholding sellouts who screw them and everyone else over because they subscribe to the same racist bullshit.

24

@6 is a shorter @23

26

@15 - Yeah, the great skiing in an affordable and beautiful area to live brought me here. I knew about the white supremacy gangs in Idaho, but I did not know they were so concentrated in the immediate area I was moving to. Should have done more research.

Luckily, the community of 25 or so 4-5 acre lots just outside Sandpoint I moved to has for some reason attracted a disproportionate number of left-leaning retirees. We're the majority here in our little island of sanity, but that makeup in N. Idaho is truly bizarre.

Inside the town limits of Sandpoint and the ski resort itself aren't bad, either; Sandpoint actually has a liberal mayor, much to the consternation of the surrounding racist, anti-science militants. Still, there are virtually no restrictions with respect to masks or distancing even in Sandpoint, and people are still packed like sardines in local restaurants and bars.

My very progressive GF, who moved here from Seattle to help her elderly Mom, is desperate to escape back to the Puget Sound area. As much as I love the great skiing, my place in the trees, and my mutually supportive group of left-leaning neighbors, I'm starting to agree with her. This place is just getting worse, and it will continue to get worse.

28

@26 - Since you have a significant other, better to chose the location that offers you skiing, trees, and sunshine rather than moving back to disgruntled expensive city encased in an eternal soggy cloud pit.

29

RE: Boise, ID

I used to watch the tv show "Insomniac with Dave Attell." If you've never seen or heard of it, Dave Attell is a stand up comedian and on this show, he'd visit random cities for a single evening and stay up all night see what there is to do at night there.

Most places he visited were pretty interesting, but his Boise, ID "insomniac" show was maybe the greatest.

30

@22:

Yes, one nation a full half of which would gladly murder the other half if it meant cleansing said nation of anyone not: white, evangelical Christian, and a supporter of the Republican Party. Why should I feel compassion for people who would do myself, my family, and people I care about harm? Just so YOU can reside smugly in your white heterosexual cis-male privilege? Fuck that, fuck you, and fuck all of them.

33

Nitpic: Her nomination is weeks old. Her confirmation is imminent.

34

*Nitipick

35

@30: 'heterosexual'?

LOL

36

Jesus-Horatio-fucking KeeRIST! Why can't Trump, Pence, McConnell, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, Barr, Guliani, COVID-Amy down to the sorriest of white supremacist MAGA trash drop dead from TRUMPVID-19 al-fucking-ready?

@13, @14, and @26 Morty and @10 COMTE: Thank you for commenting--and the dire warning about N. Idaho. The community that you describe sounds like the kind of horrible place where a woman is gang raped at a biker bar, then blamed for getting pregnant and then violently forced to carry and give birth to a child, all against her will.
I weep for the future of women and girls everywhere--especially those in pro-Trump parts of the U.S.
I obviously picked a good time to get a hysterectomy done this year. Ruth Bader Ginsburg must be rolling in her grave.

37

@30 COMTE for the WIN!
@22, @28, and @35: Begone, lil MAGA tool, before you draw flies.

41

@38: Our dear auntie is incapable of any such personal growth, introspection, or any commentary actually. She only provides yeas and nays - but is still entertaining with her Hana-Barbera cartoonish zingers.

Bless her sweet little grizzled heart.

42

@38 - Or she could listen to those of us who have actually lived here for years or did so in the recent past, whichever.

And yeah, they're so neighborly regardless of party that if you have a Biden sign in your yard, they'll come by in the dead of night, so as not to bother you and all, and replace your sign with with a small confederate flag! No need to go buy one yourself; so generous and neighborly!!

Google that with Coeur d'Alene.

44

@22: Yes, the old "we're one nation" thing. Just like "we're one state" when the state government is dividing up money going out to the counties, but "Olympia has their boot on our necks!" as soon as a red county is asked to pay a fraction of their share.

I'm quite not ready to just tell N ID to fuck off, but I'm also not real jazzed about propping up a system that has no interest in helping themselves. If you want an exercise in terror, go to a big box hardware store in Couer d'Alene on a Sunday. The parking lot is full and there are maybe four masks in the entire place. When they're ready to be adults about this, we can talk.

45

No, I meant that I felt bad for the poor medical staff in Idaho who have to keep treating people who willingly exacerbate the problem and make their lives harder because they refuse to care about their own neighbors by doing something as simple as wearing a mask, despite having allegedly Christian identities, so they run out of beds and are pushed to the brink and exhausted and killing themselves. I have sympathy for the people in those red states, democrats and science-following republican voters, who have to suffer and lose their loved ones because the psychotic trump cult allied with the worst racist elements of those states decide they want to uphold racist shitbags who sell out in Congress and the judiciary to the global billionaire economy that is fucking over our country. Don't let raindrip appropriate my words and spin them, I'm saying I agree with you on being pissed off as shit at these fuckheads using their white separatist and/or supremacist ethos and imposing it on us via Trump, and vice versa. But, the only reason I can feel some compassion for those very specific groups is because if we abandon the healthcare providers that live there and are doing the right thing, we fuck over people who could potentially contain those elements and whose voices get trampled underfoot of these bootlicking brownshirt fuckers who have no business fucking us all up.

47

@35:

Wait, are you saying you ditched the trophy wife you were always bragging about in your Seattle Blues days - did she get the Italian villa or did you have to sell it to cover the divorce settlement? - and are now playing for the other team? (As if ANY self-respecting gay male would touch you with anything less than an electrified cattle prod). Or have you simply reached the point where the tangled briar-batch of lies, fabrications and falsehoods you've concocted over the years has finally caught up with you and you just can't keep your story straight (pun intended) any longer?

50

@47: No I was never SB.

As a self-respecting gay male, I also have respect for other viewpoints, diversity of thought, respect for adversaries, compassion for the sick no matter who they voted for.

51

@45: I see the trees, you see the forest.

52

I worked a brief shift in Idaho Falls a few years ago. The people I met were hard working, humble, and polite.
But I sure as Hell wouldn't discuss politics with them.

53

@50 you belong to a political party that doesnt want you to have civil rights. You cant be that self-respecting.

54

@53: My self-respect, as well as sexual orientation, is immutable. That goes for you too.

55

Why does it fall to the liberals to always be the adults in the room? Republicans can be terrorists, can enact policies that harm life, can destroy the economy, can enable and empathize with white supremacists, but by god those leftists should should be civil. You dont want to wear a mask during a pandemic? You want to deny science and endanger other people? Then you get sick? Face the consequences on your own. Party of personal responsibility. Dont come trying to the leftists with their fancy hospitals and science adherence you spend all your time shitting on. The herd needs to he thinned a bit.

56

@54. Other than Trump, why do you vote Republican?

57

@54 you sadly cant be muted, that's true.

58

56 I'm assuming hes going to give some stock answer like he believes in fiscal conservatism or some shit even though that party hasn't pretended to care about that for almost half a century.

59

Or maybe he believes in the free market. even though if a company hurts a Republicans feelings they always bitch and moan for them to be investigated or shut down. Or maybe he believes in gun rights. Even though more people own guns now than ever before despite decades of fear-mongering over Democrats taking guns.

Or maybe he just has an authority fetish.

61

@57: Immutable and muted are two entirely different things.

62

I would assume people vote Republican because of tax cuts, white male identity (generally, of course, due to its demographic makeup, or being rewarded for acculturation), anxiety about multiculturalism, Christian conservatism being conflated with Republican identity, or because they have always been Republicans. But, that doesn't really answer the question. I could understand fiscal conservatism (when it existed?) and believing in a strong national defense, but it seems these days to be either IGMFU, because of ingroup psychology, or to own the libs.

63

@60: No, Seattle Blues and David from Shoreline had quite different styles, as I recall.

64

@59:

Or maybe he's just a fucking sock puppet troll who's made up an online persona that bears absolutely no correlation to who he is in real life, because he's so pathetic and miserable and lacking in self-respect it's literally the only way he thinks he can garner even a scintilla of sympathy from anyone?

65

@61 and it's a shame your self respect is immutable since it's so low.

66

"Victimization.

One thing that surprises people about demagoguery, or that they don’t expect to see, is that it relies heavily on a rhetoric of victimization. The ingroup is being victimized by the situation (often by being treated the same as the outgroup, so there is a kind of political narcissism operating), and the claim is that the ingroup has responded to this victimization with extraordinary patience and kindness. (If the actual history is disenfranchisement and violence, then that behavior is reframed and patience and kindness because it could have been worse.)

Now, however, to react with anything other than punitive violence (to try to think about the situation, or deliberate on it, or include the outgroup in any deliberations) is weak, vacillating, cowardly, and feminine.

As a consequence, demagoguery has to square the circle of inspiring fear while not looking fearful (since fearfulness is being paired with thinking and deliberating)—there are often claims of extraordinary courage in the face of a terrible situation, or a representation of one’s self as calm and reasonable while making apocalyptic predictions, and the odd insistence of the sheer rationality of hyperbolic claims (I will admit, this is one aspect of demagoguery that often makes me laugh)."

I need to remember this one from my old prof I always quote.

67

@65: Goodie for you. You consulted a dictionary and used the word correctly.

Now, about self-respect. How could I retain self-respect being affiliated with a party that, among other things:

Hates cops
Hates religion
Hates success and wealth
Doesn't address the homeless crisis
Conflates rioting with peaceful protest
Abuses taxation

That said, I voted for Joe because Trump is essentially a RINO.

68

@rainy -- your projections
are becoming slightly
less Predictable.

Well done.


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