I have a fond memory of that (spoilered because it is so far off topic)
A guy in a black nova came into the gas station I was working at and gave me a handful of grass, clover and mushrooms, on the evening of the last day of October. He urged me to eat them then and there, but I waited to the end of my shift. Upon arriving home, I found my roommate one sarah passed out on the couch in front of Masque of the Red Death, featuring Vincent Price of course. So, in my state of weirdness, I sat and appreciated it, until my other roommate eric came storming out of the bedroom annoyed that sarah was zonked out on the couch instead of in bed with him, so he picked up the TV and made a big show of hauling it to the door to throw it out into the front yard. There was much shouting and acrimony, and I was greatly entertained. The TV survived the incident.
It has been said that* Masque* was the high point of Vincent Price’s career, but personally, it has always seemed to me that the sublime mastery of the Doctor Phibes series is much underestimated.
America has long been a place where corporate people were valued much more than people people, so this really shouldn’t be a surprise… yet it still rankles.
Suffer? No. But I hope that the rest of his life is spent between a cell and a courtroom. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. This is of course what Trump is afraid of, and the primary reason he is trying to remain President.
Well that, and the penny ante scams he can run while in the White House. Seriously, he doubles the prices on Mar-a-Lago for his entourage and SS agents? He’s not just a crook and con man, he’s really, really bad at it.
He did one thing that great conmen are very good at: finding the right mark. Related to that, he made one very smart decision: running as a Republican.
He was one of the few who was willing to bet big that the Republican party would allow him to engage in his scams, run up the deficit, enrich himself and his cronies on the taxpayer dime, sell out to foreign countries, lie constantly, wipe his feet on the Constitution, and all the other horrors of this administration. He had the foresight to see through the Republican rhetoric and see them for the money-grubbing, party before country, group they are. He realized that the Republican base of brainless, liberal hating bigots was much larger than party moderates wanted to admit, and that there would be little to no repercussions to his blatant idiocy and corruption.
It’s important to keep in mind that the root problem lies in the rank and file’s attitudes and preconceptions about how the world is supposed to be.
I suspect a lot of his fanbase are “just-world” types, who, if confronted with a quick and painless exit for the America-hating fuckstick, would be easily persuaded to view it as a case where the Creator of the Universe was calling His faithful servant Home, with his Holy Work completed. A certain amount of suffering and ignominy for the A-H FS would presumably make such an argument less compelling.
All of which is to say “pour encourager les autres.”
The metaphor is somewhat inapt. Katrina happened in '05, when W was already past re-election, so it was merely embarrassing for him. What we do know is that this will most assuredly not be Individual-ONE’s Sandy moment – the time right before the '12 election when Obama rolled up his sleeves and got to working alongside R governor Christie while somehow managing to not call him a reptile.
Y’all are a lot more kind than I am. There’s already been multiple Katrina/Sandy moments. We’ve just forgotten (to our shame) or moved onto other disasters.
Much of Puerto Rico’s infrastructure is still in shambles. Even in states like Texas or Florida, the FEMA response to hurricanes was underwhelming and the national flood insurance program continues to be a slow motion trainwreck. California was told they only need to sweep their forests and managed a lot more on their own than they should have.
If this one seems worse, it’s because it’s not limited to a relatively small geographic footprint. It’s easy to forget about a hurricane if you live 1000 miles away. It’s much harder to ignore a disease that your next door neighbor might have and one that nature itself will not contain on its own.
You give him far too much credit for thinking about these things. He doesn’t think, consider, calculate…any more than a five year old does, anyway. He just IS… his only thoughts are about himself and how much attention he can get, of any kind. That’s it. He is pathologically immature; his emotional processes ceased developing at about age 3, leaving him operating only by the simplest, most infantile urges.
I’ll agree, but think that he fell backasswards into that ‘decision’. I doubt that he thought that he would become president, no matter what he ran as. He wanted to start the ‘Anti-Hillary’ network that would put FOX to shame. I think he was also pissed off that his silly bullshit show got canceled, and he needed attention. That’s a big reason why bullies are bullies. They need attention.
But oops, he actually underestimated just how stupid his supporters are. The are so stupid, they elected him. Now under the microscope that is the Presidency of the United States of America, he’s trying to stay out of prison. As are many of his political supporters in the Senate. Who has what on Lindsey Graham for instance? He hated Trump, despised him. But Lindsey is now one of his most ardent asslickers. Live boy or dead girl?
Holy shit, that reminds me of his meeting with that Iraqi woman who won the Nobel Peace Prize. After telling him that her father and brothers were killed, Trump asks “Where are they now?” They’re dead", she replies. So Trump decides to change the subject. “You won the Nobel Prize?”
[sup]∞[/sup]