Midweek Meh-Ness [21/2/24]

21/2/24 MegMegMcGee 63

Well this is nice, it’s Wednesday already!

Naturally

Trump compares death of Putin critic Navalny to his legal troubles
https://wapo.st/3I4MkiT

Yikes

Bullet-riddled body found in Spain was Russian defector, Ukraine says
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/02/20/spain-russia-ukraine-kuminov-assassination-defector/

Stonks!

Amazon to replace Walgreens in Dow Industrial Average next week
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/20/amazon-to-replace-walgreens-in-dow-industrial-average-on-february-26.html

Sprots (adjacent)

Two charged with murder over Kansas City Super Bowl parade shooting
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/feb/20/charges-kansas-city-chiefs-parade-shooting

Today in turtle content:

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63 Comments

    • I don’t understand why the Democrats aren’t screaming from the rooftops that first they came for abortion, and next they’re coming for contraception, because that is 100% the next step for the forced birthers, and anyone who doesn’t see it is willfully looking away.

      • In NY03, the political press narrative was that Suozzi was all about the border. Excuse me, not narrative, the establishment press doesn’t do that.

        The limited set of reporters who actually covered the race noted that his advertising and campaign appearances leaned hard into the connection between abortion rights and the threat radical Republicans posed to personal freedom.

        It’s a parallel to the political press narrative in 2020 and 2022 that Democrats were spending too much time talking about Black Lives Matter and defunding the police, when they needed to pivot to issues like health care and education.

        The limited set of reporters who actually followed contested races noticed that Democrats were actually focusing on bread and butter issues and not calling for defunding the police.

        Oops, did I say the political press had a narrative? Silly me.

        The reason this stuff keeps happening is that the political press takes its narratives straight from a tiny circle of GOP insiders. It’s exemplified by junk like that Bret Stephens piece, but it’s true on the news side too, and the common thread is nobody will ever admit whose pitches they listen to or who makes up their primary source network.

         

        • …if we leave out the idea that arguably campaigns themselves…& candidates/parties…are somewhat by design intended to convey their actual position to voters & have means at their disposal other than the press…which is arguably fair because who trusts the campaign feed to say where they stand on your issue, anyway…or bothers to check the form guide on who votes how about what…dumbing it down is pretty much baked into the model to the point I’m not clear if that narrative would be cart or horse…like…if you take a spread of the sort that purport to tell you who’s running on what then you get this sort of thing

          https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/interactive/2023/presidential-candidates-2024-policies-issues/

          …&…economy/elections/foreign policy/abortion/immigration/climate/”crimes & guns” & education…if you assume “elections” is a proxy for the race issue…that’s a pretty standard spread that could cover the dominant themes of american headline politics for about as long as I can remember…which is probably why they don’t seem to have updated that part since early nov of last year…while the NYT shot their bolt back in august…using the time-saving exercise of only addressing one side of the ballot

          https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/08/18/us/politics/republican-candidates-2024-issues.html

          …& maybe it tips their hand that they’re about that side of the overton window…but they run a longer list of the laundry they think people want given an airing…Abortion/China/Climate Change/Crime and Guns/Democracy/Economic Policy/Education/Health Care/Immigration/Impeaching Biden/Israel/Labor and Unions/Social Security and Medicare/Transgender Rights/Trump Investigations…& maybe in that light I ought to reconsider the quote marks my brain insists belong arund the pairing of crime & guns…& making it an alphabetical list muddies the pitch about what order of precedence they think they lie in…but you can probably file them as sub-headings without having any that don’t fit in the WaPo rubric…& presumably some more thorough version of that process…which hopefully pulls from beyond the press for its datasets…is what has spawned these kinds of places

          https://www.ontheissues.org/default.htm

          …& when even NPR seems to swing the Times’ way on making it all about the received narrative of issues the GOP is campaigning on

          https://www.npr.org/series/election-2024-issue-tracker

          …I can see how that tracks with you making it the horse…but…while I’d be inclined to agree that not successfully conveying the ways he’s exceeded a lot of expectations in the last few years is by way of a self-inflicted wound…there’s a not-inconsiderable extent that biden’s pitch has always been that of the known quantity being a feature not a bug…so focusing on where the proposed alternatives propose their alternatives is a not wholly-irresponsible requirement for informing people about the retinue of the devil they show signs of somehow not knowing…so I can buy that NPR would have it down as the cart-load of manure they have to drag along for the ride

          …NBC came at it from a by-candidate info-dump…which was the non-default option for sorting the WaPo table of responses…but it doesn’t lend itself to the apples to apples sort of comparison that the whole thing seems ill-equipped to offer in the sort of comparative-view that’s fairly standard when shopping online

          …would be nice is somewhere like the https://informationisbeautiful.net lot made a nice interactive graphic that displays well cross-platform across screen-sizes & let’s you flit around who stands for what…even a homebrew version out of  https://reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful would probably hold more eyeballs than that ontheissues effort

          …but…the way the human mind is wired makes it almost impossible to stop people from framing things in a narrative model…it’s kind of why we call them news stories…so I’m not convinced either way about whether in a meaningful way anyone has directorial control in a final-cut sense when it comes to sculpting it?

          …not saying a lot of the players don’t approach the game on the assumption that there is & in some cases it’s literally all they’re about…which only seems to become more true the further right the stuff they want to push leans…just that it feels like the emphasis in that equation is on the banality rather than the evil by the time you reach NPR or NBC…or even in a lot of ways WaPo or the NYT…or the guardian or whoever…so I’m open to the idea there are other ways to parse the whole mess that can offer as good or better in terms of RoI?

      • I don’t understand why they don’t force the semantic issue.  I would sue the IVF clinics for child abuse and neglect.  Those poor “children” are being kept in a freezer, unfed and unclothed.  Get the courts to admit there is a fundamental difference between the two.

         

        Hell, for that matter sue the clinics to implant all the zygotes/embryos, because a child has the right to grow, develop, and thrive.  Get the courts to admit that’s not actually the case.

  3. …not that anyone ought to be rushing to find out what bedbug boy is saying…but it’s sort of grimly enthralling that the internal genre rules have forced the hand of those in his profession…what with the patented insanity of the often contradictory positions his tribe have decided to run with?

    …I mean…ukraine has been pretty straightforward about how a major component of their whole effort to look like they might be able to swing the thing in their favor has been kinda hamstrung by running up against a gap between what they need & what they’ve been given by a bunch of countries who have reason to be grateful that they aren’t using that stuff at home right now…to the point that the pissing contest over the re-up from the US…is killing them…more or less in a literal fashion…but bret can’t say that because it doesn’t make biden out to be the one fucking things up…& he can’t talk about the things joe’s said about vlad & navalny because his chosen one has chosen to soft soap that whole thing

    …so he’s gone for “joe said he’d make putin regret it if anything happened to navalny but I bet he doesn’t, what a pathetic look that is”

    Biden needs to act as a matter of moral clarity and personal credibility, and for the strategic imperative of demonstrating to a dictator that American threats aren’t hollow.
    [How Biden Can Avenge Navalny’s Death – NYT]

    …so…if you don the appropriate blinkers & ride the roller coaster…it loops around a few corkscrews…to avoid all the ways that it might otherwise run into what’s hollowing that shit out

    …weird how avoiding the part about stalling $60 billion-with-a-b has his first swerve claiming the big gesture is to seize a few hundred million in frozen funds as though that would leave a bigger mark…while skimming through the part about it maybe making other sets of deep but dodgy pockets nervous about holding their funds in dollars…sure is embarrassing for biden that he hasn’t done the thing with the downside to get orders of magnitude less money & materiel on its way than it is that the other team stepped on rakes to keep the big money fenced off…but…understandable…when his second-best is “when he gets “re-elected” to another term we could say we won’t call him president…that’ll really hurt his feelings

    …third place goes to a quick bout of bitching about how the US has been outplayed on the prisoner-exchange front that’s supposedly part of suggesting that getting other political hostages out of putin’s clutches is a candidate for the “devastating” response joe promised…& it’s not an awful idea in its own right but by definition it’s a trade to swap prisoners & those ones are useful to him so if the bargains to date have favored him I’m unclear how exactly bret thinks the hypothetical ones he’s advocating would devastate the man

    …& that gets us to the bottom of bret’s barrel…which…is more about tanks than barrels, I guess…but not the ones which need ammo…because he’s talking about ramping up production of LNG…& I’m familiar with the argument that a lot of places are using to ramp up extraction of fossil fuels rather than curb demand for the stuff as a means of denying revenue to russia (&/or others)

    …& now we’ve covered all four of the bases bret promised to hit so we’re done…except for the other thing…the give-them-missiles-that-go-twice-as-far part…that he got petraeus to say would be a great gift…which…is totally do-able…if it’s part of that $60 billion package the one guy’s clownshow is busy holding up

    …not sure if he assumes his readers will peter out before they read his whole piece…forget by the time they get to the bottom who’s responsible for denying that support & by extension supporting the other side of that conflict pretty explicitly…or thinks he’s somehow going to be able to rely on their trance remaining undisturbed no matter what gets put in front of them…but that’s the closer he goes for?

    …given what we know bret’s project to be & what lodestars he charts that course by

    …I confess I’m a little taken aback by how embarrassing that little outing is for bret…I mean…if this is the best he can bring it…might be time to think about hanging up them spurs, cowboy?

    • Nonsense. A NYT bien pensant showing any kind of contrition, let alone resigning in shame? The more wrong they are the more powerful they become. Look at Tom “The Mustache of Wisdom” Friedman, husband of a shopping mall heiress, chatting up his cab drivers in the developing world for pearls of wisdom like, “People who are poor don’t want to be poor.” And then there’s Ross Doubtthat, who always hits it out of the park whenever his pieces appear. The eyebrow never arches higher.

      • …the mustache’s wisdom has a bit more pep than the bedbug’s friend today

        I’ve got a suggestion for the next Trump-G.O.P. fund-raising scheme. You know how sports memorabilia stores sometimes sell basketballs autographed by an entire N.B.A. team? Well, I was imagining that Donald Trump could sell white flags at $1,000 a pop that say, “We surrendered Ukraine to Russia,” autographed by him and the House and Senate MAGA sycophants he’s assembled to deny Ukrainians the weapons they need to stave off Vladimir Putin’s onslaught.

        For an extra $500, you could get a white flag autographed solely by Trump and J.D. Vance and emblazoned with Vance’s immortal words, “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine.” Or one signed by House Speaker Mike Johnson, big enough to sum up his worldview: I was for Ukraine aid until I was against it, but I could be for it again if Trump is not against it. This is a matter of principle for me. Either way, it’s all Biden’s fault.

        And then the ultimate collector’s item. For an extra $1,000, a giant white surrender flag, made from the softest Sea Island cotton, signed by Lindsey Graham, that says: “I gave up the principles of John McCain and a free Ukraine because Trump told me to. But I got a round of golf at Trump’s West Palm Beach course. Can I still be on ‘Meet the Press’?”

        The last gift comes with a pair of Trump’s new branded tennis shoes, guaranteed by Trump and personally tested by Graham, to be the fastest shoe on the market to run away from any ally or foe — or anything principled that you’ve ever said.
        [Trump’s G.O.P. Is a Confederacy of Fakers – NYT]

        …& gathers-not-ross is…well…at least rolling with the punches better than bret?

        If you were to pluck a key phrase from his comments, it would be “world of scarcity,” which Vance used five times to describe the American strategic situation: stretched by our global commitments, unable to support Ukraine while simultaneously maintaining our position in the Middle East and preparing for a war in East Asia, and therefore forced to husband our resources and expect our allies in Europe to counter Russia’s armaments and ambitions.

        In my Sunday column I wrote about the tensions in the hawkish case for U.S. spending on Ukraine, the tendency for the argument to veer from boosterism (“We’ve got Putin on the ropes!”) to doomsaying (“Putin’s getting stronger every day!”) while describing the same strategic landscape.

        The case Vance pressed in Munich is more consistent, and its premises — not isolationist but Asia-first, more concerned about the Taiwan Strait than the Donbas — have supplied the common ground for Republican critics of our Ukraine policy since early in the war. But consistency is not the same as correctness, and it’s worth looking for a moment at why this kind of argument makes Ukraine hawks so frustrated.

        In part, there’s a suspicion that some of the people making an Asia-first case don’t fully believe it, that it’s just a more respectable way of sloughing off American obligations, and that if the conservative base or Donald Trump decided it wasn’t worth fighting for Taiwan, many China-hawk Republicans would come up with some excuse to justify inaction.

        But assuming good faith — and whatever the calculations of Republican politicians, many China hawks are entirely on the level — there’s also the problem that this argument privileges hypothetical aggression over real aggression, a potential war over a current one, “contingencies in East Asia” (to quote Vance, again) over an actuality in Eastern Europe. We can’t do everything to stop Vladimir Putin today because of something Beijing might conceivably do tomorrow is the fundamental claim, and you can see why people chafe at it.

        Indeed, despite agreeing with the overall Asia-first assessment, I chafe at it myself — enough to think that the Biden administration made the right call backing Ukraine initially, and that a sharp cutoff in aid would be a mistake even if we should be seeking an armistice.
        [What It Means to Choose Between Ukraine and Taiwan -NYT]

        …& even if the economist is on the money

        https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2023/05/11/america-is-less-dominant-in-defence-spending-than-you-might-think

        …& it’s not an entirely false dichotomy to suggest that the nation whose military spending is equivalent to the next 10 biggest spenders combined…& runs a federal deficit bigger than the sovereign wealth of many a nation…can’t afford to walk & chew gum at the same time…at least he’s got something to hang his chosen hat on with the taiwan angle…not to mention the bit where withdrawing from afghanistan as per hair furore’s parting shot would look like top-drawer foreign policy compared to dropping ukraine like a hot potato the way the guy he quotes the hell out of would like to…given what that says to a bunch of NATO & european allies about a US stance towards russia’s ambitions…which you wouldn’t ordinarily think of as a candidate for hobson’s choice from the habitual big dog in “global coalitions” that involve boots on ground considered to belong to other sovereign states…but that’s still basically par for their usual course on this stuff

        …maybe bret is just weak from hunger because the others keep taking his lunch money & the scraps he can scavenge just aren’t enough to clear the subsistence bar…but either way that was some seriously thin gruel from mr “please sir, can I have some more” this morning, if you ask me?

    • The funniest thing about Bret — and there are many — is that if he didn’t have his job at the Times, where would he have a job?

      Though I’m quite sure he voted for him and/or will vote for him come November, he’s professional anti-Trump, so he’s out basically everywhere in the right-wing media sphere. No left-wing anything would want him. I’m not sure he’s been effective with whatever he’s aiming to do at the Times so not sure another centrist den would be interested. He writes in a haughty well-educated style, so he’s not likely to pick up a devout following on his own via blog or substack or whatever, but he’s also not nearly smart or interesting enough to be a “thinker” (even on the right.) He’s a man without a country!

      It’s also really funny that the Times prides itself *coughs politely* on having a diverse range of thought *coughs less politely* but doesn’t have a single openly pro-Trump guy among its opinion writers. That’s a crazy miss! Even if every pro-Trump writer is insane (and they kinda have to be) like you’re missing 45-48% of the electorate. It would literally be the same if they had 0 male writers on staff. Hmm, though now that I say it, that doesn’t sound terrible …

      • And of course the need to have “diverse” thought means they hired last year Stephens’ ex wife Pamela Paul for the Opinion section and she is even dumber and more obvious on the same issues he brays about.

        When AG Sulzberger says it’s important that the Times doesn’t reinforce “narratives” in the abstract, what he really means is that he sees his job as being a reactionary against evidence of reality offered in good faith by liberals.

    • You beat me. The most infuriating thing is that the case has obviously been a mess from the beginning, but it’s been reported as straight news. The chain of who controlled the data now used against Hunter Biden literally ran through drunken Uncle Fester Rudy Giuliani before it ended up with the prosecutor.

      Reporters bent over backwards to give credibility to Trump’s claims on financial fraud and downplay evidence against him, but they’re working overtime to not consider the problems with the case against Hunter Biden. The demands of “objectivity” only run one way.

    • I think if history has taught us anything, it’s that Trump would not be embarrassed by a pee tape.  It’s got to be something financial.  Or maybe Putin is Barron’s dad.

      • Feinberg’s theory is that the tape she saw was designed to pull in credulous people so that it could be revealed as a fake, in a similar way that the fake GW Bush paperwork ended Dan Rather’s career at CBS and blew up the draft dodger storyline.

        She looked at it a long time and found it increasingly plausible, until she found something disqualifying staring her right in the face. It was 100% a pee tape made in the exact room where Trump stayed in Moscow. But it was also one made after the room was remodeled several years after he had stayed there. It was a detail like the typeface on the Bush’s form – easy to overlook but impossible to deny once it was revealed.

  5. So it turns out that not only was the guy the House GOP’s supposed key witness to Joe Biden’s “crime” a Russian agent, now he’s saying Russian intelligence planted intel with him on Hunter Biden.

    https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/20/politics/biden-former-fbi-informant-russian-intelligence/index.html

    Prosecutors also said Alexander Smirnov has been “actively peddling new lies that could impact US elections” after meeting with Russian spies late last year and that the fallout from his previous false bribery accusations about the Bidens “continue[s] to be felt to this day.”

    Just a reminder that this is the second supposed key witness to be indicted, after Gal Luft was exposed as an arms dealer last year who worked with countries like China and Libya. Not that it meant more than a little road bump for the GOP and the press pushing the story.

    The current Special Counsel on the Hunter Biden case is incompetent, by the way. He used as evidence of Biden’s drug use a photo he claimed was cocaine. Except it turned out to be a photo of sawdust on a table saw.

    https://www.thedailybeast.com/hunter-bidens-lawyers-say-feds-mistook-lines-of-sawdust-for-cocaine

    • oh wow, (((George))) (((Globalist))) (((Soros))) (((star-of-david emoji))) (((globe emoji))) is going to own some media? LIGHT THE CONSPIRACY BEACONS!

      More seriously: I’m not sure how well a left-wing version of Rushbo/Hannity works in practice but any media owned by a non-conservative billionaire is good news, even if it’s just non-hateful and non-religious radio.

      • I don’t think you can have a left-wing Rush/Hannity. Rachel Maddow has been trying for years and doesn’t really catch on (I got no beef with her, BTW). Honestly, if you’re reasonably intelligent you listen to left wing news for 15 minutes, nod your head, and change the station. It’s only the troglodytes that listen to right-wing crap nonstop.

        If I really wanted to upend the landscape, I’d try to put together an 8-hour syndicated block of programming by comedians. You probably couldn’t get Seth Myers, John Stewart, or John Oliver, but I’d try to get people like Samantha Bee and Jordan Klepper (not saying you could get them but people LIKE them) and a bunch of others to riff on current events every day. Put some up-and-comers in there, new voices that need exposure. Run the 8-hour block three times a day. Add some music so the personality only has to fill 15 minutes every half-hour or something.

        You might even find that some bigger names would participate, if only weekly, since you really wouldn’t have to get dressed up and go anywhere — you can record from wherever and collect a check (kind of like big names that do animation voices).

        • …I think part of it is that it isn’t a script that suits flipping…if you’re a moderately hateful person then you haven’t got a noticeable upper limit to the time you can spend basking in a professionally hateful idiot professing their hatred…& you can regurgitate bits to make it seem like you know what “rebuttal” means

          …but if you are by contrast a hatred-averse type…there’s definitely a limit to how much someone can bend your ear without it falling into either telling you things you already know in a hard-not-to-sound-condescending way…or straying into the realm of holier-than-thou with its boon companion “virtue signalling”

          …I do think you’re on to something with the comedians bit, though…in terms of traditional roles & licensed speech the jester/fool/stand-up has a good deal of latitude to speak as they find & poke fun where they spot things worth taking a jab at…so it’s sort of a natural fit that when people don’t trust the voice of the establishment they look for truer words spoken in jest…or allegorical commentary in various other mediums that the right isn’t fond of…like books & plays & songs & paintings & so on & so forth

          …you wouldn’t even need a full 8-hours of content, either…the average tik tok clip is measured in seconds, I believe…so…take an hour of 20-sec to 1-min clips…run that…then shuffle it & start bleeding in “reacts” from social media so it looks like it isn’t just the same thing on a loop…& you’re good for a news-cycle

          …could be the next big thing you’ve got there?

          • Yeah, social media is where I got the idea from. Back when Twitter wasn’t X, there used to be some seriously funny stuff on there. I don’t think they were getting paid other than through followers/publicity. I have to believe you could find enough talent to put together programming blocks of funny stuff on current events.

            And it doesn’t always have to be funny. You can just be outraged. Even if every minute wasn’t a zinger, I bet you’d get enough that people would still listen.

        • Yeah, I’m generally pro-Maddow/the Maddow type as well, I just don’t think listening to spew for 2-3-4-5 hours straight is ever a strong selling point to left-leaning folks in the way it works so well on the righties.

          I do think, in the podcast era, that there are ways to produce a ton of halfway decent content for limited cost to at least try and get something off the ground. And even if it’s not my cup of tea, that it either competes with or takes nutbar stations off the board is a boundless good. The question is are they going to be willing to give it time to grow.

        • Randi Rhodes stomped Limbaugh in every market they were in together.  But she kind of disappeared from the national scene after Air America went under.

          Air America did the comedian thing.  They had Al Franken, Marc Maron, Lizz Winstead, and some others.  It was solid programming.

          • I just found her web site. She’s still livestreaming daily. That’s pretty much the kind of thing you need. It just proves you can pretty much take the daily news and go off on it. She’s more outraged than funny, but like I said upstairs, that’s okay too.

    • …in the UK…which is currently having a bun-fight over the precise wording used to request that people stop killing each other in that part of the world…saying less than the dipshit from tennessee did was enough to lose people from at least one party their spots…although to be fair the tories I don’t think punted the guy who came with the “15min cities are bad” shit & tracked in links to a website that says things like “zelensky is a war criminal”…so…horses for courses & all

      …but it sure would be great if while we were being all respectful of tradition & stuff we could bring back “resigned in disgrace” as a political fixture?

      • Oh yeah, I deeply wish shame was still an emotion powerful people felt occasionally. I don’t agree with the online left on everything, but not gonna lie: we really might need (at least the threat of) guillotines if they don’t start feeling a little more nervous about being giant assholes all the time.

      • …in the sense of “don’t worry about it – it’ll all turn out ok in the end & you’ll feel better if you don’t think about it”…then…ummm…yes…I believe that’s pretty much the way it was explained to me?

    • Note that’s messaging targeted toward Long Islanders thinking about their commutes, the risk of another Hurricane Sandy, and their right to family planning, and positioning these things as middle class values, which they are.

      Look for the NY Times, if they bother to cover a race in their backyard at all, to put the stupidest possible national spin on it.

      • …if it speaks to his voters that seems like a solid bid…& unless I’ve been grossly misinformed about the view of albany &/or D.C. taken from long island…it doesn’t seem like his biggest vulnerability in terms of vectors or surfaces to attack in order to whittle his votes away would be the opinions of the NYT about his candidacy…so I’ll certainly note it & keep my eyes peeled for the punchline whenever the times runs with it…but I’d be inclined to keep it in the good news column on at least a probationary basis?

        • Like Santos in the 03 district race, Republicans on Long Island benefit when a big local paper – the Times – turns away from honest coverage of the issues candidates actually campaign on. The resulting news vacuum gives greater leverage to the local GOP’s get out the vote machine.

          The Democrat in NY03 in 2022 was pushing hard on issues like infrastructure and health care.  The Times, by their own admission, barely covered the race. When it did, what did they cover instead of issues?

          They chose to portray it as a contest between two gay men. Seriously.

          And then despite the fact that the Times is one of the main de facto local news sources for Long Island, their national reporters tried to blame their post-election failure on voters not subscribing to local news.

          It would be fine if the Times used this alibi for its coverage of a race in New Mexico or Alaska. But despite the attitude of the national political reporters, the Times has a distinct, large Metro section that has as its official mission providing in depth coverage  of NYC suburbs on Long Island. Maybe they’ll honor that mission better than 2022.

  10. Parents news: mom is going to a dementia rehab clinic for a few weeks to help figure out her behaviors and treatment because she is a hard case for the seniors home.

    I parked next to a car festooned with Socialism Sucks and other Wingnut bullshit stickers. When I entered I saw a fat cranky looking white guy with a ugly ass MAGA cap filling out forms. Part of me wanted to flip the fucker off and tell him to get the fuck out of this Socialism hospital but I was here to drop my mom off and not get into a fight with an oblivious stupid man so I just rolled my eyes and moved on.

    Meanwhile dad refuses to shave or shower or change clothes like a stubborn kid.

    • …feel for you…& for you folks…& everyone trying to help them

      …hope someone finds a way to get both of your folks what they need for their day to day to be less uphill struggle & more even keel

      …& that the excess of sympathy you’re in no danger of tapping out is somehow more use than it feels like on the donor end?

      • I am actually okay. The stress and hapless feelings I had are mostly gone. I just worry about how they do. Mom needs a lot of help. At least she is in good hands.

        Dad… Well he will endure.

    • Hopefully that is a big step in the right direction for your mom. I’m sorry she’s been such a handful.

      For your dad, sounds like he feels pretty powerless right now. I really feel for him, and you as well. Hang in there.

    • Sorry bub (I’ve learned bub can be negative to some, my cousins and I have used it as a term of endearment and that is how I mean it here, just to be clear.)

      • It’s been a tough spot. In this case more optimism than gloom. These are experts that can help her. Her temp location just makes visiting her a bit of a stretch. Hopefully in a few weeks she will be back at the seniors facility in a slightly more stable frame of mind.

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