Monday Reads: People are strange
Posted: February 17, 2014 Filed under: morning reads 49 Comments
Well, Good Morning!
I’ve been doing this thing on my facebook every day this year where I thought I could select just one Republican Asshat of the Day. I figured it might be a bit of a stretch to come up with just one. It turned out that I’ve found multiples of them every single day. This has put me in a strange frame of mind. I’ve been sitting here questioning the nature of mind again; mine AND theirs. So, here’s a weirdish set of morning reads for you.
First up, the death of a snake handler that at one point had his own reality show. Yea. A snake bit and killed him. Are any of us really surprised? Oh, he’s from Kentucky and not to be confused with my governor as folks are want to do these days.
Snake-handling preacher Jamie Coots, who never backed away from his beliefs despite derision, criminal charges and excruciating bites, died Saturday night after being bitten by a rattlesnake during a church service.
Family members of Coots, 42, refused medical treatment for him. He was pronounced dead about two hours after the rattler sank its fangs into his right hand.
His son think he died some time before that, however.
“It was the quickest snakebite (death) I ever seen in my life,” Cody Coots said Sunday.
Jamie Coots’ death appears to be the first from a snakebite in a Kentucky church service since November 2006, when a woman died after being bitten while worshipping at a Laurel County church.
Coots, a third-generation snake handler, was the pastor of a small church in Middlesboro, Full Gospel Tabernacle in Jesus Name.
He had long been prominent among the small, close-knit circle of snake-handling Pentecostal churches in Appalachia, but he gained wider notice last fall though a National Geographic Channel program called Snake Salvation, which profiled him and other snake handlers. The show was not renewed for a second season.
Coots and 35 to 40 others were at a service at his church between 8 and 8:30 p.m. Saturday when a 21/2-foot-long timber rattler snake bit him near the base of his right thumb.
Cody Coots said his father was handling three rattlesnakes at the time.
Some of us are waiting for the verdict of the latest angry white man enabled by Florida Law to shoot and murder an unarmed teenage because he was very very scared. The jury appears to be hung up on the murder charge because of the weirdness of the laws in Florida . So, here’s a little bit on the poor frightened white man who is trodding in George Zimmerman’s psychopathic footsteps via a neighbor who knows him well. This little item was found by Susie Madrak. This appears to be another dude just out there looking for a confrontation where he can shoot and kills some one.
Charles Hendrix, Michael Dunn’s former next-door neighbor, describes violent behavior, lies, insurance fraud, cocaine use, bragging about putting a hit out on someone, and a first wife who said he’d held a gun to her head and threatened to kill her. He says Dunn bragged that he was smarter than everyone else and could outthink them.
Watch the video interview. I’ve lived next to a violent, angry, white man before. Thankfully, he moved to Florida last year. I’m just waiting for him to be the subject of the next stand your ground trial but I believe he will shoot a woman. However, it could possibly be his wife so they will probably ignore the whole thing and call it just simple destruction of unwanted property there.
Russian children will no longer be placed for adoption in countries that recognize same sex marriage. Perhaps Russia thinks Uganda is a hunky dory place to live and the UK is a hell hole?
Citizens of the countries that permit same-sex marriages are no longer able to adopt orphans from Russia. A decree to that effect was signed by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.
The Russian government has changed the rules for the transfer of orphans for adoption, having introduced an additional ban on foreign adoptions by same-sex couples. The decree published today on the government website contains a paragraph, according to which children can be adopted by adult citizens of both sexes, except for “persons of the same sex in alliance recognized and registered as marriage in accordance with the laws of the State in which such marriage is allowed, as well as persons who are not married, but are citizens of such state.”
Thus, the prohibition applies not only to adoption by same-sex couples (a law to that effect was signed by President Vladimir Putin in July 2013), but also to all citizens of the countries that recognize such marriages. “Implementation of this decree will ensure more streamlined arrangements for transfer of children without parental care to families of citizens of the Russian Federation and foreign citizens and will protect the rights and interests of these children,” believes the government.
Paul Ryan appears to be serious about trying to impeach President Obama over Executive Orders. Since when are executive orders a “high crime or misdemeanor”?
During an interview on CNN, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) laid the groundwork for impeaching President Obama by claiming that the president is abusing his powers and violating the Constitution with executive orders.
Ryan said,
There’s a difference between effectively using the bully pulpit to encourage good things in America and doing an end run around Congress. Look, everytime a president or a member of congress is sworn in, they swear an oath to protect and uphold the Consitution.
It sounds like to me the president looks like he is willing to circumvent the Constitution. The presidents do not write laws. That’s what Congress does. That’s Congress’ job, and if presidents try to circumvent congress by writing their own laws, then he is circumventing the Constitution. That is not our form of government.
I thought I’d give you some perspective on this. Executive Orders have been used by Presidents since George Washington who used them 8 times. Ronald Reagan used them a total of 381 times. Dubya Bush used them 291 times. Obama has used them 168 times.
Gov. Bobby Jindal‘s administration is on its way to completely draining a trust fund for elderly care that lawmakers had expected to last for decades.
Louisiana’s Legislative Fiscal Office reportsthat the Medicaid Trust Fund for the Elderly, once flush with more than $800 million in cash, will be “almost entirely depleted” if Jindal’s budget for the next fiscal year goes through as proposed. By the middle of 2015, it will be completely wiped out, according to the analysis.
The governor, with approval from the Legislature, has been drawing money out of the fund for years to backstop health care budget gaps. Critics says the elderly trust fund was not initially created to be used in that way, though the Jindal administration and lawmakers are allowed to withdraw as much money as they need.
The $800 million was essentially supposed to stay intact, with only the interest and investment revenue being withdrawn every year to pay for state services. The idea was that the $800 million principal would continue to provide a steady stream of funding for the state government through its interest and investment earnings each year.
Yet during the next budget cycle, the Jindal administration has proposed effectively to take what’s left of the fund’s money, around $232 million, and use it to pay for nursing home payments for Medicaid patients.
The Department of Health and Hospitals said it needs the funding to make sure critical services aren’t interrupted for some of the state’s most vulnerable residents. The federal government recently passed a Medicaid reduction that slashed the program’s funding in Louisiana to its lowest rate in 25 years, according to the agency.
“Ultimately, the trust fund has helped to prevent steep reductions in provider reimbursement rates that would have impacted access to care,” said Jerry Phillips, undersecretary of the Department of Health and Hospitals.
This may leave the next governor and future Legislatures in a financial pickle, according the Legislative Fiscal Office’s report, particularly if the voters approve a constitutional amendment on the ballot in November that ensures nursing home payments cannot be cut.
Jindal has been balancing the budget on the backs of higher education and public health for some time now.
I got a really weird phone call the other day from a pollster whose questions were so loaded that I could hardly answer them. I think this explains it all. I was being tested to see if these Koch ads had any impact on me as well as ads by outstate republican congressmen who may run against Landrieu. I basically told them I was an independent with a brain and they were barking up the wrong tree.
A new political attack ad from the Koch brothers-funded group Americans for Prosperity calls on Louisianans to tell Sen. Mary Landrieu that Obamacare is hurting their families.
The ad shows a number of people, who appear to be Louisianans, opening their mail to find a letter stating that their health care policy has been cancelled because of the Affordable Care Act.
“Due to the Affordable Care Act, your monthly premium has increased,” a voice-over says in the ad as a man in a rural neighborhood opens a cancellation letter and looks at his young daughter standing next to him. “No longer covered, due to the Affordable Care Act.”
But the people in the emotion-evoking ad are not Louisianans at all; they are paid actors
Landrieu’s support for the Affordable Care Act is a major sticking point in what promises to be a tough reelection campaign for the three-term senator. And her campaign is taking issue with the ad, characterizing its use of actors as “misleading” and “low.”
“Hiring professional actors to impersonate Louisiana families is low even for the billionaire Koch brothers,” Friends of Mary Landrieu Campaign Manager Adam Sullivan told ABC News. “If the Koch brothers had even a shred of credibility before launching their latest misleading ad campaign against Sen. Landrieu, they’ve surely lost it now.”
Americans for Prosperity is not backing down from the ad, with spokesman Levi Russell telling ABC News that it’s no secret that the people in the ad are actors.
“I think the viewing public is savvy enough to distinguish between someone giving a personal story and something that is emblematic,” Russell said when reached on the phone. “And we make it very clear when someone is giving a personal testimonial.”
Russell said the ad, in contrast to a “personal testimonial ad” that would use the story of a real voter, is “cinematic” and meant to be a “representative of Americans from all walks of life.”
My premiums have increased slightly but I am on a significantly better plan as a result of the Affordable Health Care Act. That’s just for the record from this Louisianan.
But, I’m still not a person from Kansas or Mississippi. Kansas still gives Texas a run for the money on outrageously horrible things to do to people. Maybe we should offer the people there up to Russia and turn the entire place into a Buffalo wildlife preserve.
The state’s wealthy governor, a moderate Republican, was hobnobbing with the attorneys at a prestigious Kansas City law firm one day in 1998; the mood was one of pleasant professional joviality, till one person worked up her nerve and chastised the governor to his face. Who among them dared? A secretary at the law firm, who faulted this celebrated Republican for insufficient conservatism.
What I found was that the descendents of the Populists were in rebellion; they were furious at “elites” and their social betters; it’s just that the politics of the situation had been inverted. (“Like a French Revolution in reverse — one in which the sans-culottes pour down the streets demanding more power for the aristocracy,” I wrote.) This was the dark secret of the whole nasty business: The right had developed an entire ersatz proletarian movement, a full-blown astrology of class discontent in which the hard-working average citizen was invited to feel himself imposed upon by upper-class liberals. Class animus was — is — central to who they are and how they think about the world. And it has caught on. In a place like Wichita, Kansas, you encounter it on every street corner. Hating “elites,” hating Hollywood, hating government, hating scientists — these are all part of everyday life. Yes, the reasoning behind this philosophy may be faulty; its origins may be suspicious; but it is powerful stuff, and in lots of heartland locales these days, it is just about the only form of social grievance being offered.
I say “secret,” but in truth the thing was obvious. It is everywhere — bestseller lists, cable news, AM radio, the floor of Congress. Polls have steadily tracked the migration of the white working-class vote to the GOP, and the disastrous results of this shift are plain to anyone with access to a Web browser. It is “secret” only because looking deeply into this situation was and is something that few are really interested in doing.
Why not? Well, for conservatives, the whole thing is mentally off-limits thanks to the blatant contradictions between their populist rhetoric and their rich-enriching policy deeds. They may talk proletarian righteousness constantly, but always in an evasive, sentimental way, more Norman Rockwell than John L. Lewis. If you want something more than rhetoric from them — something more solid than anger-stirring culture-war clichés — you basically have to be the Koch Brothers.
I should mention something in passing about that prestigious law firm and my cousins’ presence. Don’t disown me. I’m considered the strange one in my family.
Since I ripped off the song title today, I thought I’d share the actual song.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
peej
Carissa
ecocatwoman
mablue2
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
The irony is that the current GOP has been infested with the same mindset of snake handler Coots.
The insanity of their beliefs have managed to infect a huge portion of this nation on both state and local levels as they rail against women, gays, immigrants, the poor and any chance of healthcare reform but at the same time holding the bible firmly in hand and announcing they are doing “god’s work”.
It is simply mind boggling that we have come to this in a nation who prides itself on diversity and the progressiveness needed to advance. Instead we get these dimwits holding forth from the well of congress and taking pride in denying climate change and anything pertaining to science.
When the media insists on offering a “debate” that challenges evolution vs Creationism we may as well admit that we are lost. Debating facts against superstition shows just how stupid a culture we have become.
It ranks right up there with the belief that Santa Claus is “white”.
Insanty prevails.
It all starts with gutting education. We have a nice big batch of stupid in this country thanks to the Reagans, Bushes, Jindals, etc. Now they can manipulate these idiots into thinking whatever they want.
Michael Dunn sounds like clone of George Zimmerman. I wonder how many of these angry white guys are floating around Florida looking for an opportunity to kill a black kid?
I believe the mistrial on the murder charge is final. Prosecutors say they will retry Dunn.
…and like dak’s former neighbor, how many lunatics are headed to FLA to fulfill their fantasies of shooting someone. After all, they’ve spent so much money on their guns and rounds that they have to find a way to justify their behavior. FLA is the perfect place.
I put the video of those neighbor interviews on the thread last night. Dunn was a murder waiting to happen. There are probably a lot more like him and more made every day by the right wing nut jobs spreading their insanity and constant cries of victimhood.
Black men don’t get to use this defense evidently. It’s only for scared white men.
What happened to that woman who only fired warning shots was pure evidence of racism. No more was needed, it’s an abomination!
She’s still awaiting her new trial. Last I heard she was out on bail. I guess there needs to be a campaign for that young man to get a new trial too. In Florida, they have to be shamed into doing the right thing, apparently.
http://www.firstcoastnews.com/story/news/local/2014/01/30/marissa-alexander-trial-delayed/5059845/
Okay, I am slowly coming out of my sickness fog, but this is something I had to post: Woman found guilty of killing Clayton County officer | http://www.wsbtv.com
Compare that verdict with the Dunn crap…
Surely that will be reversed on appeal? That’s the mark of a vindictive prosecutor.
Appalling. Guess they think if the wife is property of the husband, then she should be a scapegoat too.
I watched as much of the trial as I could and I think the prosecution did a poor job of convincing the jury that “the gun” Dunn claimed to have seen in the possession of the teen was really a lame ass excuse to shoot an unarmed child, basically because he was black and had the audacity to argue with a “white man”. Dunn fired 10 shots into an SUV with 4 teenagers in it. 3 of those shots he took after the teenagers had backed out of the parking space in an effort to get away from his gunfire. Dunn got out of his car and fired those shots into the tailgate as the teens fled to save their lives. Don’t you know if they had any sort of weapons whatsoever they would have blown him away?.
Dunn’s girlfriend, who was in the convenience store at the time of the shooting, testified that Dunn never told her the teen had a gun. Dunn left the scene, returned to his hotel room, ordered a pizza, drank several rum & cokes, went to the hotel common area and lounged around. He testified on the stand that after the murder he lived a “waking nightmare” because he feared the SUV with the 4 teens was going to find him, even though the evidence showed that he left the scene after the teens fled in fear of their lives. Hotel video showed Dunn walking his dog and there was no indication that he was in fear. There was no evidence produced to support that the teen that was killed even had a gun, which Dunn claimed was a single barrel shotgun. The defense accused the teens of throwing the gun out in a parking lot at an adjacent mall, but since Dunn didn’t report the shooting until the State Police tracked him down the next day at his home, which is an hour and a half drive from the murder scene, there was no search for a gun except in the vehicle that the teens were in. When Dunn was arrested at his home he had nunchucks in the back seat of his car and a silencer for his firearm in his trunk. Possession of a silencer is a violation of Federal Firearms laws and is illegal in all states.
I don’t know how the jury didn’t figure out that the police couldn’t search for a gun in the adjacent parking lot because Dunn didn’t report the crime until they tracked him down at his home. There were several witnesses that contradicted Dunn’s testimony concerning the teen flashing a gun barrel and also contradicting Dunn’s version of the argument that preceded the shooting. Had a bystander at the scene not copied Dunn’s tag number it’s likely he would never have reported the crime and would have never been found. His girlfriend testified that when she returned to the car from her trip into the convenience store that he never told her about a gun in the other car or most of things he testified to in trial. I would love to know which jurors were hung on the murder 1 charge, because I’m sure that someone bought the self-defense/stand your ground theory. The jury makeup was 4 white men, 4 white women, 1 Asian man, 1 Hispanic man, 2 African American women. WTF is wrong with that picture? Don’t you know that the Murder 1 dissenters were likely white men? It makes me sick but at least Dunn will go to prison for 60+ years with no parole due to the mandatory minimum. He’s 47, he’ll die behind bars. that’s some consolation.
Yeah. Scared, angry, crazed white men of the world unite!
And it seems that reporters on CNN and HLN that are expressing concern with the failure to convict on the first count, are receiving death threats, on Twitter of all things. Talking about “trolls”. WTH is wrong with people that they would threaten the life of another because they don’t want to hear a white person say that some white people are racist. The haters are thriving on the internet and when people make death threats or threats of violence in blog comments or on Twitter they should be arrested. It’s time for some rules of the road and some serious enforcement of those rules where internet websites, blogs and Twitter are concerned.
During my activist days I was on the receiving end of threats against my life and the life of my family on numerous occasions. That is not a fun experience.
Me too. I got all kinds of threats of violence and so did my small children from those right to life hell realm beings.
Here’s probably my essential problem. I have no idea why any man should be scared or angry about anything. Other than Wall Street thieves, of course.
Ralph, you are much too intelligent, lol! 🙂
Another child murdered. No SYG law in Arkansas.
Man Allegedly Shoots And Kills 15-Year-Old Girl For Egging A Car
Bob Cesca: The Latest Snowden Revelation is Another Clear Example of Reporters Misleading the Public
The media handling of the Snowden mess is almost exactly the same as their handling of intelligence in the selling of the Iraq war. Utterly wrong and misleading as possible. My question is “why” this time. Before it was pushing the Bush/Cheney line. Who has bought them out now? Whose narrative is this?
Except this time the media is anti-government. Ironic, since domestic spying has changed quite a bit by Obama admin.
BB I’m not sure they are so much anti-government as they are anti-Obama administration. It seems like we don’t read anything about the Bush/Cheney actions, unless it can be used to tar Obama as somehow worse.
An alternative theory to the “bought narrative” may be that Greenwald initially set a meme and now the courtier press is either too stupid or too afraid of some backlash to challenge his preferred narrative. With a billionaire behind him, and like paranoids employed, that could be it.
Paul Ryan must be gearing up for a presidential run: He’s giving up Ayn Rand because it’s an “atheist philosophy”
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/ryan-reverses-course-rand
If he wasn’t going to run, he would have voted for the debt ceiling increase. That was a pretty big tell.
There is a person on the local banjoville fora who is pushing the Ayn Rand “Atheist Philosophy” right now…must be a new tactic.
Sexual Predation: Same Story, Different Ministry
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/sexual-predation-same-story-different-ministry/
http://www.alternet.org/education/4-most-profound-ways-privatization-perverts-education
The 4 Most Profound Ways Privatization Perverts Education
Compared to other developed countries, equal education has been a low priority in America.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-zuesse/final-proof-the-tea-party_b_4136722.html
Final Proof The Tea Party Was Founded As A Bogus AstroTurf Movement
And all of the ratfuckers they tossed out onto the blogosphere to agitate at liberal/progressive, feminist and LGBT websites in 2008/2009. IMHO, PUMA’s too were co-opted early on. Many people never had a clue what was happening until it was over.
Yup.
Lots of people remain co-opted. That’s a sign of something and it ain’t good.
It all got to be too much for me when it became apparent that Sarah Palin, other than being a woman, had absolutely nothing in common with Hillary Clinton. When people continued to worship at her throne even after truth of her came out, I knew the ratfuckers had taken over.
When McCain first chose Sarah there wasn’t much information about her on the internet and she was marketed so carefully that the effort to interchange Hillary with Sarah went almost seamlessly until we began to see that Sarah was a bedrock extreme rightwing religious neo-con and to top it all if, basically DUMB!! or perhaps a better word would be ignorant.
I defended Palin against the misogyny and I defended her daughter against the slut shamers. I even cast my protest vote in this deep red state against Obama (who I still don’t believe was a better choice than Hillary), but nothing brought me back to reality quicker than the zealots on the PUMA blogs that defended Palin’s politics and her embrace of the TP when her political and personal opinions become common knowledge. I might step on cat shit accidentally, but when I realize I’ve stepped in cat shit, I clean my shoes off quickly and move on. And so it was with Palin. 🙂
Here, Here………….recycle that cat shit, mail it Sarah Palin.
🙂 I know, I just compared stepping in cat shit to supporting Sarah Palin, My apologies to all you cat lovers.
Cats everywhere appreciate the apology Mouse 🙂
My cats say there is no way in the whole wide world they would ever deign to have Palin for their human.
Hear hear.
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/climate_desk/2014/02/internet_troll_personality_study_machiavellianism_narcissism_psychopathy.html
Internet Trolls Really Are Horrible People
Narcissistic, Machiavellian, psychopathic, and sadistic.
No surprise there! But I’m glad they did the study.
I can take a guess at which sites they went to give are past history with some doozies.
I had been thinking about that too!
Fascinating:
While not agreeing with his labels, I think this quote from Dan McCarthy at American Conservative may explain Krystal Ball’s anti-Hillary schtick.
tpm: Bill Maher Is Breaking Up With MSNBC: ‘You’ve Stopped Leaning Forward’
Maher has a point. MSNBC programming is completely boring now with coverage of tiny bits of Chris Christie information or rumor. Someone please let me know if they stop that because I’m no longer watching.
Man Allegedly Shoots And Kills 15-Year-Old Girl For Egging A Car
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/02/17/3299111/adrian-broadway/
Here’s a follow-up; Marwan was reunited with hi family.
http://www.euronews.com/2014/02/17/four-year-old-fleeing-syria-found-alone-in-the-desert-report/
More here:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/refugee-marwan-4-found-desert-fleeing-war-syria-article-1.1617606
https://twitter.com/joshuafoust/status/435475909970493440