I say YES. YOU say NO....Numero Tre! Enjoy!

Just a funny little story: 

All of WV is in Appalachia. You may know that the word “hoopie” was once sometimes used as a derogatory name for less sophisticated West Virginians (similar to “hillbilly”). But it can also be used in a good-natured way which is how dh and I use it; his dad’s side of the family was from “down hoopie” in WV, and we’re proud of it. 

Today dh and I were across the river in WV running errands, and as he drove, I saw a sign on the side of the road which I read out loud: “Hoopie Mountain Music Festival - July 27”

Dh quipped: “Maybe ‘Shillbilly’ will be there.” 

We got the biggest laugh out of that! 

Trump is only a hero to himself. Other people try to make him God or at least ordained by God I suppose. Trump, as George Conway says has had mental issues all of his life. His early home life seems to have not been able to make a difference. It does seem really in all I've read that he never really got better or had any sort of recovery - which leaves only the possibility of staying the same or becoming worse. So it becomes how you wish to see it.

I do know every person I've thought of as a hero has had a very good measure of humbleness about it. Pres. Biden is to me no exception. It has been amazing that in doing the upright, honest, decent (any other adjective you may think of) thing it has highlighted heroism that is for everyone - just as Pres. Biden has been from the first. It makes me proud to call myself a Democrat. It is hard for me to imagine people wanting to say they are Reps. if they are. Just the thought gives me a feeling of dread and horror. Yet I know a lot of Reps. here that I like. I don't agree with their choice to be a Reps. but they are good caring industrious people. I think no one here much talks to each other with the viewpoint in mind they are talking with a Reps. or Democrat. Keeps things on a better keel that way.

Lots of talk now that the campaign funds that Pres. Biden had shouldn't go to VP Harris. I think since she was always a part of the ticket that she does and can fall heir and use those funds. I think the Reps. are jumping on anything they think might have a chance to help them. The last three days has sucked the wind from any sails they felt had billowed out for them. I read earlier that they were expecting this and were prepared. I don't think so. They are now back in their chaos mode and if things keep on the way they are it sounds like the chaos will stick around.

Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) speaks during a campaign rally at Middletown High School on July 22, 2024 in Middletown, Ohio. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)© provided by RawStory

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz this week blasted JD Vance for being a “grifter,” because Vance claimed he was some sort of a hillbilly who grew up in rural Appalachia when, in fact, he grew up in the suburbs of Cincinnati. Governor Walz, on the other hand, grew up in a town of 400 people with “24 kids in my graduating class” where “12 were cousins.”

In Vance’s autobiography Hillbilly Elegy he trash-talks his poor relatives, essentially accusing them of not being successful in life because of moral defects like laziness and addiction; he doubled down on these memes in his RNC speech, pointing out his own mother’s drug use.

In fact, they’re victims of Republican policies that make the rich richer and keep poor people poor; his mother’s addiction is a symptom, not a cause.

Often, the media refers to his life as a true “Horatio Alger story.”

When I was a kid, my dad was the national president of the book-collecting group The Horatio Alger Society: Vance’s is a story right out of Alger’s books. Alger wrote stories about poor young men being lifted up into business success by wealthy older men, although he’s now out of favor because was busted as a gay predator. Even the Horatio Alger story itself, it turns out, was a grift.

Just like Vance’s career and his life story are a grift. Just like most all of Donald Trump’s failed businesses. Just like Nixon’s racist “law and order” grift. And Reagan’s tax-cut-for-the-rich “supply side” grift. And Bush and Cheney’s oil-grabbing Iraq “weapons of mass destruction” grift.

Republican policies, in fact, have been one long grift for more than half a century.

They’ve even turned our entire economy into a massive grift.

For example, when Louise and I moved to Washington, DC in 2008, we bought a Chris Craft Constellation 46-foot motorboat to live aboard (in the same marina where Joe Manchin keeps his much, much larger yacht) for the following seven years. It was built in 1986 — over 30 years earlier — and all the appliances were original and still worked, including the washer and dryer, stove, and refrigerator.

Try buying reasonably priced appliances today that will last 30 years:they don’t exist. After we moved back to Portland, we went through four toasters in the first five years, although one of my brothers still has my mom’s from the 1950s. And don’t get me started on dishwashers. Manufacturing has become a grift.

Largely thanks to Ronald Reagan’s 1983 suspension of enforcement of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and other similar legislation, the entire American economy has become one giant grift.

Every company, it seems, is trying to hustle us. Pretending they care about customer service or making/selling quality products as a corporate mission statement has become a rude joke. It’s all a grift.

So why should it surprise us that our post-Reagan politics have also been dominated by grifters for 40+ years? And now two grifters are running for the presidency on the Republican ticket…

As I document in gruesome detail in The Hidden History of Neoliberalism: How Reaganism Gutted America, since Reagan and Republicans on the Supreme Court adopted Robert Bork’s idea that monopolies were a sign of economic success rather than a crisis, everything has gotten more consolidated and, thus, more expensive. Reaganomics killed competition.

Cell phone service that costs $15 a month in France or $12 a month in Australia bills out at an average of $61.85 per month in the United States. High-speed broadband that’s a bit over $31 a month in France or $36 in Germany (for higher speeds and better reliability than almost anywhere in the United States) averages nearly $70 per month in the US.

America is literally the only developed country in the world where families get wiped out and rendered homeless by medical bankruptcy simply because somebody got sick.

We’re the only developed country in the world with widespread college debt.

We’re the only developed country whose entire healthcare system rests on predatory for-profit health insurance companies, doctors’ offices and hospitals owned by hedge funds, and “pharmacy benefit managers.”

Similar metrics are found with virtually every other product or service category dominated by giant corporations. They’re all grifting us and getting rich doing it.

The average American family pays around $5,000 a year more for the general necessities of life than the average European, Japanese, South Korean, Canadian, Taiwanese, or Australian family. And things are steadily getting worse as monopolistic corporations and cartels tighten their grip on every American industry from banking to telecom to energy to food.

They even used inflation as an opportunity to grift, pushing prices up way above the actual inflation rate; corporate profits and executive pay in America over the last two years are higher than they’ve ever been in American history.

It’s all a grift, making stockholders and executives rich while impoverishing working people.

We pay more for pretty much everything and, as a result (along with stagnant wages from 40+ years of Reagan’s War On Unions), more than half of America is stuck in something close to (if not deep within) a type of debt-driven poverty from which escape is nearly impossible.

Social and economic mobility in America, the envy of the world for over a century, is today lower than in any other developed country.

The GOP grift that started when Reagan adopted Reaganomics and began destroying unions and imposing “austerity” took us from a nation where two-thirds of us had a middle-class lifestyle that let people buy a home and car, take an annual vacation, put their kids through school, and retire comfortably with a pension to where only around 45 percent of us today qualify.

The largest cohort in America today is, like it was before the New Deal, the working poor. The Republican grift has already reversed over 50 years of progress, and now Trump and Vance want to double down.

Meanwhile, conservatives on the Supreme Court told usthat those same rip-off corporations are “persons with constitutional rights” and their “money is First Amendment-protected free speech.”

Thus, businesses and billionaires can now buy and sell politicians as easily as they buy and sell companies. Five conservatives on the Court — Clarence Thomas being the deciding vote after taking millions in naked bribes from billionaires with business before the Court — nailed down this new grift in 2010, over the loud and shocked objections and dissents of their colleagues, with their Citizens United decision.

So now corporations are people, and they can legally buy politicians and judges/justices. Most recently, the Republicans on the Court ruled that if a bribe is paid after the vote, legislation, or decision is rendered, it’s merely a “tip.” It’s a whole new grift.

But when corporations kill people — like PG&E did when they were convicted of burning 84 people to death in 2018 and faced charges of murdering 4 more people in 2020 — they don’t get the death penalty or even have to send their decision-making executives to prison. They just reduce slightly the payouts to their stockholders to cover the fines so they can keep on making money and, from time to time, killing more people.

And, up until recently, we’ve just been accepting these grifts.

Few California politicians dare stand up to PG&E any more than national politicians are willing to stand up to any other corporation: the resources of even middle-sized national and transnational corporations are more than adequate to destroy — or put and keep in office — any politician from a Town Clerk to the United States Senate. Just ask sellouts like Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema.

A column in The Washington Post asked the question: “Why is Washington so dysfunctional?” The author interviewed two former members of Congress (a Democrat and a Republican) and a reporter whose beat is Congress.

Not a single one identified the obvious and simple answer to the question: the giant grift driven by money in politics, adopted by literally every Republican in Congress and more than a handful of Democrats, courtesy of Republicans on the Supreme Court and the last four Republican presidents.

It’s as if big-money grifting in politics has become so normalized since Reagan that it just doesn’t occur to people inside the beltway that it’s at the core of our problems.

The latest grift is Trump and Vance promising that they’ll “restore American greatness” when it was their Party and policies that stole America’s greatness, handing it off to the morbidly rich and the world’s largest corporations.

This is not complicated and, finally, voters have figured it out.

Joe Biden is the first American president to repudiate neoliberalism since Reagan adopted it and imposed it on America in 1980, writing NAFTA, creating the GATT, gutting unions, defunding education, blocking enforcement of antitrust laws, and cutting taxes on the morbidly rich.

Kamala Harris promises to continue Biden’s return to the policies of Keynesian economics, and the proof that Americans want it is obvious from the explosion of donations and support for her candidacy.

Finally, after two generations, the working class is beginning to climb out of the hole the GOP (and a few bought off “problem solver” Democrats) threw us into.

We’re on the verge of a new day in America. And it can’t come soon enough.

George Conway’s Anti-Psychopath PAC highlights Trump gaffes in new campaign © Provided by The Hill

Conservative pundit George Conway’s PAC released a campaign ad targeting former President Trump over his speaking gaffes.  

The Anti-Psychopath PAC’s newest campaign is a TV ad featuring Conway saying, “Donald Trump has never, ever been right in the head,” before playing clips of the former president’s previous comments. The PAC said in a press release that the six-figure ad campaign is meant to highlight Trump’s “mental unfitness for office.”  

The 60-second ad, titled “Trump is Crazy,” features clips of Trump speaking, including him referring to the notorious fictional serial killer Hannibal Lecter as a “wonderful man.” It also includes the GOP nominee for president saying the “kidney has a very special place in the heart.” 

The ad targets other confusing past comments, as well, such as Trump suggesting a voter ID is required to buy a loaf of bread and claiming noise from windmills can cause cancer.  

Conway, a frequent critic of the former president, launched the Anti-Psychopath PAC last week by installing billboards targeting Trump around the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. He said in a statement that the former president “wanted to make this election all about mental fitness.” 

“Even before he began showing age-related cognitive decline, Trump had a long history of doing and saying bizarre things,” Conway continued. “He was never right in the head. And as he’s gotten older, he’s only gotten worse.”

“Especially now that he’s the only old guy in the race, it’s more important than ever for the public to focus on Trump’s lack of mental fitness when they make their decision this November,” he added.

President Biden and his allies — before the incumbent announced his decision to withdraw from the race — previously tried to capitalize on Trump’s verbal slips and other misleading statements. Biden was frequently targeted by conservatives and some members of his party for his own verbal gaffes, especially in the wake of a stumbling debate performance last month.

Biden has now endorsed Vice President Harris to be his replacement, and she has already garnered major endorsements and record-breaking fundraising numbers.

The Hill has reached out to Trump’s campaign for comment.

It’s interesting to me that while attempting to refute, and defeat, the Republican campaign of lies, rumors and fabrication, that some Democrats are willing to do the same.

On another forum I belong to, there was a discussion regarding some of Vance’s stands on working mothers, childless unmarried women , etc. Someone write that his wife was from India and perhaps subservient woman were a “cultural thing”. Someone speculated that she was perhaps the docile mail order bride that his manly self demanded. This went on for a while, filled with stereotypes and unfounded assumptions.
Usha Vance was not born nor raised in India. San Diego is her birthplace. Her mother is a well respected academic (molecular biology). She is an attorney in her own right so none of this speculation has any basis in fact yet many felt it was ok to run with the falsehoods to illustrate “a point”. When I pointed this out, I was accused of supporting Vance! Though I do not support him in any way, shape, or form, it is very important that in opposing his political stance that I be honest and not try to obfuscate and lie about him and his family. Isn’t that one of the things we so often object to about the Reps?

Exbrnxgrl, Cincinnati is southwest Ohio; I grew up (and still live) four hours away on the opposite side of the state, Northeastern Ohio. We are just across from the WV Northern Panhandle. So my knowledge of Kentucky is minimal. The county I live in and all those bordering it are part of Northern Appalachia. Growing up, my area had steel mills which provided great paying jobs and many offshoot jobs and Pittsburgh was just an hour away; I never felt I lived in a poor part of the country.

I read Vance’s book, and my take away was exactly what the above NYT article wrote: “…he trash-talks his poor relatives, essentially accusing them of not being successful in life because of moral defects like laziness and addiction;….. In fact, they’re victims of Republican policies that make the rich richer and keep poor people poor; his mother’s addiction is a symptom, not a cause.”

I’m thrilled that others saw the book in the same light as I did. The patriarchy and Republican policies are what held Vance’s grandmother and mother down. His mother was intelligent and attractive. While white men in power helped JD Vance get ahead, they held his mother back. I’m sure she experienced sexual discrimination at her job, was probably propositioned to do sexual favors for things like getting money to pay her rent instead of a white guy giving her a job promotion or pay raise like they would do for a man. Imo, many women don’t see the invisible forces of the patriarchy working against them. They know something is not right but cannot figure it out which can literally drive them insane. This is what happened to many of the 1950s housewives. My mom was one of them.

I have no huge thoughts either way about this, but thought it interesting. I do think LOVE is, will be and always was the answer and obviously it has gotten pretty hard to do. For some it seems almost impossible.

Contrary to popular opinion, having God on your side, as Donald Trump claimed he did after the failed attempt on his life, is no piece of cake.

One would think that the companionship of the divine makes for smooth sailing. In fact, the God of the Bible prefers rocky roads that culminate in crucifixion. Simon Peter, who definitely knew God was on his side, ended up upside-down on the cross.

One doubts that Trump, who says the Bible is his favorite book, and his faithful running mate JD Vance fully appreciate the stormy seas that God has likely planned for them in the months ahead.

Many commentators have pointed to the obvious fact that Trump’s personal history and lifestyle aren’t exactly consistent with the Christian values he claims to espouse. But that was all before Trump had his Pauline conversion — possibly as the bullet whizzed by and his first, ungodly, reaction was to raise his fist, not to cross himself — and realized that God was on his side: presumably, both in the sense of standing next to and protecting him from harm and in the sense of supporting his political agenda.

This is potentially dangerous terrain for Trump. Sure, God has now cast his lot with Trump, and that’s great for him and his MAGA supporters — especially as that must mean that God has read the Republican Party platform penned by Trump and approves of it. But having God at your side all the time is no fun. If nothing else, He will want to make sure that his devotee obeys all Ten Commandments — not just when it suits him, but all the time, especially in the gilded rooms of Mar-a-Lago, when the media aren’t watching and good behavior should come naturally.

Will God be happy with Trump’s self-identification as a “non-denominational Christian” or will He now insist on a bit more clarity? After all, is Trump on the side of the wheat or the chaff? His wishy-washy self-identification sounds like wanting to have his cake and eat it too.

In any case, now that God is on Trump’s side, nothing else but Trump’s willingness to abide by God’s precepts really matters or should matter — above all to his disciples. What are petty human affairs compared to the infinity and majesty of God?

But that means that Trump, like all self-declared Christians, must be judged less by his political vision and more by his ability to lead a good Christian life. We generally eschew discussions of God in policy debates, but Trump’s alliance with the Almighty makes such a discussion imperative.

The German sociologist Max Weber insisted that the ethic of responsibility is ultimately incompatible with the ethic of the Sermon of the Mount, and that the policymaker has no choice but to opt for the former. Not so Trump. His place is on the Mount, next to his God’

The same holds true for JD Vance. He converted to Catholicism, claims to be a devoted believer and is apparently familiar with several Catholic philosophers. At the very least, Vance must “love his neighbor as himself.” That’s hard in the best of circumstances, but refusing to follow this core precept is not an option.

One can’t be a Christian and state, as Vance did, that “I’ve got to be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other.” That’s like saying that I don’t really care what happens to the millions of poor, hungry and oppressed people in the world. It’s one thing to say that I care but can’t do anything about it, or that I care but can only affect things on the margins. It’s quite another to express complete and utter indifference to massive human suffering.

In Ukraine’s case, Vance is effectively saying he doesn’t care that tens of thousands of innocent Ukrainian men, women and children have been, and still are, subjected to the horrors of war and genocide. Even Pope Francis, who has knee-jerk pro-Russian sympathies, has expressed outrage at the suffering and wants it to stop. Vance, in contrast, doesn’t care that it may continue for years.

In fact, he’s said as much: “I do not think it is in America’s interests to fund an effectively never-ending war in Ukraine.” How does Vance know that a two-and-a-half year war is never-ending is beside the point — though it does raise questions about his ability to tell time and to distinguish between really long wars, such as those in Vietnam, Israel/Palestine and Afghanistan, and relatively short wars, such as both world wars, which lasted a mere four to six years.

The real issue is that Vance is indifferent to the real length of the ongoing slaughter in Ukraine and the total number of casualties. Once again, he’s entitled to bemoan the loss of life in a pointless war that appears to be going nowhere, but he cannot — as a committed Catholic — claim he doesn’t care.

Trump and Vance may learn that having God on your side is a mixed blessing. They might want to recall that, as the former’s favorite book says, Jesus was strict in his moral demands and modest in his behavior. Indeed, he washed the feet of his disciples, all of whom were sinners.

Hubris, triumphalism, narcissism, opportunism and egoism weren’t Jesus’ style. If Trump and Vance mean what they say about the God that’s on their side, neither should these qualities be theirs.

This piece was copied and pasted from: The Hill

exbrnxgrl, it’s a mixed conundrum. I’m more than 25 yrs older than Vance, actually live in Appalachia and yet was not necessarily immersed in the “don’t get above your raising“ mentality he was. Because of good paying steel mill jobs, parents in my area could afford to send kids to college, and they did, in droves. Some college grads still came back and got jobs in the steel mill because it was a union job with benefits and paid better than jobs they could get with their degrees. But in my high school graduating class of 300 students, a lot of the girls went on to achieve high academic success and impressive careers at a time when these opportunities were just starting to open up more for women (late 1970s-early 1980s).

What’s happening now is that the cult-type religions, like those that refused to wear masks in the pandemic, that have Christian-style beliefs similar to the reality show Duggar family—these are the ones turning their nose up at education. Daughters in these religions are expected to marry, be submissive and have many children. They are given little education, yet they must also homeschool their children. How do you think that’s going? Sons are to work in family businesses. If anyone goes to college, it is often to unaccredited religious ones. Girls are sent there to find a husband if they can’t find one sooner. They’re all taught to live within the confines of people in their religion and only associate with each other. They are antiabortion, say women can put their babies up for adoption, yet rarely adopt themselves because they worry it could bring bad karma into the family. This religious, anti-education stance seems pervasive in the south.

I’ll tie all that in with the article above about Vance saying he doesn’t care what happens in Ukraine. Is his God only concerned about Americans, then? Why on earth should this “Catholic” , so lacking in basic compassion, become VP?

Another HRC excerpt:

Harris’s appearances are generating such enthusiasm from audiences that when she delivered the keynote address this morning at the convention of the American Federation of Teachers in Houston, Texas, the applause delayed her ability to begin. After a speech defending education and calling out the cuts to it in Project 2025, Harris ended by demonstrating that after decades of Democrats being accused of being anti-American, Trump’s denigration of the country has enabled the party to claim the position of being America’s defenders.

“When we vote, we make our voices heard,” Harris said. “So today, I ask you, AFT, are you ready to make your voices heard? Do we believe in freedom? Do we believe in opportunity? Do we believe in the promise of America? And are we ready to fight for it? And when we fight, we win! God bless you and God bless the United States of America.” 

Today the Commerce Department reported that economic growth in the second quarter was higher than expected, coming in at 2.8%, thanks to higher spending driven by higher wages. The country’s changing momentum is showing in media stories hyping the booming economy Biden’s team tried for years to get traction on. “Full Employment is Joe Biden’s True Legacy” was the title of a story by Zachary Carter that appeared yesterday in Slate; CNN responded to today’s good economic news with an article by Bryan Mena titled: “The US economy is pulling off something historic.”

Divine, such good thoughts which are insightful and entries from HCR are as well fantastic. My great love of HCR stems from her being able to decipher what things REALLY mean and reading anything from her generally leaves me more comfortable and with way less questions/fear for the future.

I too am surprised by Meghan McCain. Then again, Reps. women have in fact, been hurt by many of the decisions that the Reps. men have 'made' for them. There is a make-break point for everyone and perhaps they are there now. Also I'm thinking there must be a fair amt. of angst about the fact that the conservative part of the Reps. party seems not to have much standing at all.

I do think the Reps. were though perhaps somewhat aware of possibilities, still blindsided by Pres. Biden willingly stepping down and the huge groundswell and immediacy of people accepting VP Harris. I do think it was orchestrated since Pres. Biden is such an astute judge of politics and political moves after all his experience through the years. There is talk about the honeymoon period and while some excitement will settle, I'm not so convinced that it will be over. After all there is only 100 days to go and I think the Reps. might just, in their haste to try and destroy VP Harris, make one mistake after the other. Already Trump is backing out of the debate — for the flimsiest reason. He DOESN'T know if Harris will get the Democratic nomination. He is I think now terrified after the bravado and confidence of the Reps. convention. That party paid its money and took its chances — and they are not working well. I return to you, Reps. all the sympathies I know you extended to me when Trump was in the WH. I say to all the losses he has wracked up since then, along with you who wanted and needed his sleazy voters, oh well. I think/hope/pray you will continue on with those losses since so many of you have lost your minds and wills to greed and power.

I read on the way here after C. Wray's time yesterday in a hearing, he does not know whether Trump felt a bullet to the ear or if it really might have been glass. It sounds to me (my opinion) like someone is withholding evidence that could "prove" what REALLY happened.

It was wrong and horrid, but lying and refusing transparency isn't so much better. Since Mr. Trump lived and in fact had little wrong, what matters at this point is only that the attempt was made — and the sad fact remains that rather than Trump someone else died and was injured. Trump is using this to make statements and try and glean sympathy and standing that is not necessarily deserved. He is upset that 'people' are not aligning automatically with his 'taking a bullet for democracy' stance. To use a word he loves to use to refer to himself, SIR, someone else took the bullet — we don't know for sure what you took. You are hiding that information.