Leopards Eating MAGA Faces (The Trump Policies Being Implemented Thread)
- Thread starter Reality Check
- Start date
WTFisWallace?
All Star
"Too indiscriminate"
Equal Opportunity HYON Trump........non-discriminatory gutting of American labor, taxpayer money, & institutions.
They want it to be one (Black) way..........but it's the other way.
MAGA Christians
Immediately contradict yourself after the first four words, brehs
You no doubt would make that same “logic” based excuse for another 77 or so million people and get on your high horse and ridicule 70+ million people that voted for “the corporate dems”
At some point can someone figure out why smooth mind is always trying to absolve MAGA voters?
at least they're honest. trump is broadly doing what they voted for, but they weren't expecting equal opportunity pain. it was suppose to be more targeted at the sectors/people they don't give a fukk about. very christian of them.
Bleed The Freak
Superstar
idk what those people are but they're not "Christian"
They thought that the punishment was only going to hit the "wicked", AKA undeserving black folks, gays and non-christians.
How godly of them
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'I Feel So Stupid': Poll Shows Huge Percentage of Trump Voters Regretful After His Sweeping Dismantling of American Values
Last month, the Wall Street Journal released the results of a poll that was conducted after the election, but before the inauguration of Donald Trump. It sampled 1,500 Trump voters by both cell phone and landline — that second one is code for geezers these days — and by text messages inviting...
Politics - News Analysis
‘I Feel So Stupid’: Poll Shows Huge Percentage of Trump Voters Regretful After His Sweeping Dismantling of American Values
Great, they feel bad. Now how do we DEAL with them?
By Andrew Simpson
February 19, 2025
Last month, the Wall Street Journal released the results of a poll that was conducted after the election, but before the inauguration of Donald Trump. It sampled 1,500 Trump voters by both cell phone and landline — that second one is code for geezers these days — and by text messages inviting people to take the poll online.
The results were predictable, following the immediate announcements that Trump made after the election. It’s true of any candidate, of course: You can campaign one way, then tell your voters the morning after the election that you are someone entirely different, if you like.
The built-in mechanism that Trump has to combat the fury that anyone else who did something like that would likely face is that mostly, Trump voters just wait to decide what they think until after he’s told them what they think.
The highlights of the poll were:
- 53% wanted to see significant change to the way government works, BUT…
- More than 60% oppose his idea for doing so by replacing thousands of career civil servants with people loyal to him.
- More than 60% also oppose eliminating the Department of Education.
- Just 18% support his plan to overrule Congress and give himself more power over spending (which is important, because, duh, DOGE).
- Just under 75% (!) say that only undocumented immigrants with criminal records should be deported. That is, people who have committed crimes other than simply entering the country illegally.
- 50% said having Elon Musk as an advisor was a bad idea.
- 64% oppose ending birthright citizenship.
- Only 48% supported Trump’s tariffs.
Now, this is kind of a mixed bag of things that Trump was pretty clear about all along, and things that he got louder and more forceful on AFTER the election. Some of these things have been implemented in ways that could not have been foreseen until he did them. For example, he was clear about having Musk as an advisor — and indeed there has been a steady stream of hardcore Trumpers who insist that they intended to “elect” Musk right along with Trump.
But no one could have imagined that within just weeks of assuming the presidency, Trump would allow Musk access and control over every taxpayer in America’s personal information through the US Treasury. That was never brought up during the campaign, just like he never brought up that Musk would oversee the dismantling of several US agencies that never came up in debate: USAID, the National Park Service, etc.
Now WSJ has published a follow-up to the poll, and the level of regret is staggering.
They interviewed Staci White, a nurse at a dialysis unit in Omaha, Nebraska. She fears for her husband’s “government-adjacent” job, and says that at her own place of employment, the staff have begun doing ICE drills for what to do if the border agency comes to deport her patients, now that Trump has lifted the Biden-era ban on raiding “sensitive areas” like hospitals, schools, and churches.
The publication also interviewed Emily Anderson of Duluth, Minnesota, who used to consider herself a Democrat but inexplicably backed Trump after the candidate she liked — RFK, Jr. — dropped out and endorsed Trump. She now considers Kennedy’s appointment to Health and Human Services to be the only good thing about her vote that she calls the “biggest mistake of my life.”
A separate survey by the Pew Research Center found that 47% of Americans, as of February, oppose “all or most” of Trump’s plans for the country. His disapproval rating is higher than 50%.
“At first glance, ‘oh no,’ you cringe. You’re like ‘holy s— he’s going to start a war,’” said Denver resident Gary Dixon. “He’s doing 80 miles an hour. I wouldn’t mind if he went around 55.”
Gosh, Gary. The rest of us think he’s off the tracks completely.
She’s a Foot Soldier in America’s Losing War With Chronic Disease
In places like Mingo County, W.Va., where working-age people are dying at record rates, a nurse learns what it takes to make America healthy.
Sam Runyon, a nurse, treats Cora Perkins at home in Williamson, W.Va. All of her patients have at least one chronic disease.
She’s a Foot Soldier in America’s Losing War With Chronic Disease
In places like Mingo County, W.Va., where working-age people are dying at record rates, a nurse learns what it takes to make America healthy.
Sam Runyon, a nurse, treats Cora Perkins at home in Williamson, W.Va. All of her patients have at least one chronic disease.Credit...
By Eli Saslow
Photographs by Erin Schaff
- Published March 2, 2025Updated March 3, 2025, 10:26 a.m. ET
Sam Runyon navigated to the house by memory as she reviewed her patient’s file, a “problem list” of medications and chronic diseases that went on for several pages. Sam, a 45-year-old nurse, had already seen Cora Perkins survive two types of cancer. During previous appointments, she had found Cora’s arms turning blue from diabetes, or her ankles swollen from congestive heart failure, or her stomach cramping from hunger with no fresh food left in the house. It had been a week since Sam’s last visit, and she wondered if anyone had come or gone through the front door since.
Listen to this article with reporter commentary
She knocked, but nobody answered. She walked across the porch to a hole in the window and called into the house. “Cora, honey? Are you OK?” A light flickered inside. A dog began to bark. Sam pushed open the door and walked into the living room, where she found Cora wrapped under a blanket.
“Sam. Thank God you’re here,” said Cora, 64. She tried to stand, but she lost her balance and sat back down in a recliner.
“It looks like you’re wobbly this morning,” Sam said. “Are you feeling really bad or just normal bad?”
It was the same question she asked her patients dozens of times each week as she made home visits across West Virginia, traveling from one impending emergency to the next in a country where feeling bad had become the new normal. All 31 patients in her caseload for the Williamson Health and Wellness Center were under 65 years old, and yet each had at least one of the chronic diseases that had become endemic in the United States over the last two decades: death rates up 25 percent nationally from diabetes, 40 percent from liver disease, 60 percent from kidney disease, 80 percent from hypertension and more than 95 percent from obesity, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Sam was offered a job at a hospital, but she prefers the intimacy of home visits.
Image
Most of Sam’s patients have to manage several chronic diseases.
Americans now spend more years living with chronic disease than people in 183 other countries in the World Health Organization — a reality that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. framed as a “national crisis” in his first weeks as health secretary. “We will reverse the chronic disease epidemic and make America healthy again,” he was promising members of Congress that same morning, while Sam confronted the challenges of that work in Mingo County, where the average life expectancy had been dropping steadily for a decade to 67 years old.
“Are we calling that your breakfast?” Sam asked, pointing to Cora’s side table, where two bottles of sugar-free Dr Pepper sat next to a bag of pepperoni-flavored Combos.
“It’s the end of the month,” Cora said. “It’s whatever’s left. I got the pops on sale at Dollar Tree.”
“You know Dollar Tree isn’t a good place to buy real groceries,” Sam said.
“How am I supposed to get to the grocery store if I don’t have a car?” Cora said.
Sam had been visiting Cora every week for almost two years, helping her to lose 40 pounds, stabilize her blood sugar levels and lower her cholesterol back into the normal range, but each problem they solved revealed another. Cora and her live-in boyfriend regularly had less than $100 in their joint bank account, so she needed help applying for government assistance. She finally qualified for food stamps, but she had no way to go shopping. She occasionally managed to buy meat and vegetables, but her oven was usually broken, so instead she relied on the cheap, ultraprocessed foods that make up 73 percent of the U.S. food supply. Those foods made her sick. Her illnesses made her anxious and depressed. Anxiety raised her blood pressure and complicated her ability to manage diabetes.
Image
Sam’s graduation portrait hanging in her dad’s home, where plastic in a doorway helps hold in the heat.
“I don’t mean to nag you,” Sam said. “I know it feels impossible. I can see how hard you’re trying.”
She took out a blood pressure cuff and started her examination while two dogs crawled over her lap and nipped at her neck. She had been offered an extra $8 an hour to work as a nurse at a nearby hospital, with a sterile office and a support staff, but she preferred the messy intimacy of home visits, where she could spend an hour with her patients and see the systemic decay behind their conditions. She’d grown up nearby in another drafty rental home, and she knew how to spot the empty jar of cooking oil in Cora’s kitchen, the collection notice on the refrigerator for an electric bill of $766, and the pill box on the counter with several outdated prescription medications.
Many of Sam’s patients stabilized and even got well. They were more likely to take their medications and less likely to visit the emergency room while under her care. More than half lowered their average blood sugar levels or improved their kidney function. But in other cases, no amount of intervention was enough to stop the progression of chronic disease, and Sam ended up listed among the survivors in her patients’ obituaries.
“We’ve still got work to do,” she told Cora. Her blood pressure was high. Her resting pulse rate was 93. Her legs were swollen from eating too much salt. Sam went back to her car and brought in a box from a nearby pantry that had some canned goods, noodles and a bag of potatoes.
“I’m sorry it’s not more nutritious,” Sam said, as she packed her nursing bag and gave Cora a hug.
“I’m pretty much used to the junk,” Cora said.
“You and everyone else,” Sam said.
Image
Sam’s caseload in Williamson, the county seat of Mingo, reflected the broader upward trend of chronic disease in the United States.
She had worn out five cars while visiting patients on the back roads of Mingo County, and over time she had come to recognize every pothole, every scar on the hillsides left from logging, deep mining and mountaintop removal. It was a place where every resource, including the residents, had been exploited for a profit. Sam turned into Williamson, population 3,042, where two local pharmacies had distributed more than 20 million opioid painkillers over the course of a decade, though the drugs didn’t so much numb people’s pain as exacerbate it. Now the downtown was largely vacant except for rehab centers, budget law offices and a methadone clinic. She drove by a liquor store offering three-for-one shooters of vodka and a gas station advertising two-liter bottles of soda for a dollar each. “Every business is either trying to kill you or selling a cure,” she said.
She pulled up to a house on the edge of downtown to check on another diabetic patient, Joe Miller, 48, who was lying shirtless on his bed, immobilized from hip pain as his pit bull chewed his socks. On his night stand was a bowl of Kraft macaroni and cheese, a box of salt and a photograph of him from a few years earlier — thin and smiling in a button-down shirt, his arm wrapped around his wife. Now she was dead of a heart attack in her 40s, and he was struggling with depression and closing in on 300 pounds with dangerously high cholesterol. He told Sam he’d kept having a recurring nightmare in which he found dynamite stuffed inside his chest.
She reached for his wrist to take his pulse and measured his heart rate at 130 beats per minute.
“Geez, Joe,” she said. “Are you sneaking out to ride roller coasters on me?”
He pointed to a portable toilet in the corner of the room. “That’s about as far as I’ve moved from this bed in two weeks,” he said. “It’s so sad I can’t help but laugh.”
“Well, we might as well try to bring some light to the situation,” Sam said. “But I can tell you’re in pain, and I hate that. Let’s set you up to talk with a counselor.”
Image
Sam taking the temperature of Joe Miller, one of her patients.
She got back into her car and followed the Tug River into the mountains as she opened her second energy drink of the day. “You have to cope with the stress somehow,” she said. “If there are any saints around here, I haven’t found them.” About half of the county’s 22,000 residents were obese, a quarter of them smoked cigarettes and almost 20 percent were diabetic — numbers that had become increasingly typical in rural America, where working-age adults were dying at higher rates than they were 20 years earlier, according to data from the C.D.C. People in the country’s poorest places were now almost twice as likely to develop chronic disease as those who lived in wealthy, urban centers on the coasts, helping to create a political climate of resentment. Mingo County had been solidly Democratic for much of its history, but more than 85 percent of voters supported Donald J. Trump in the 2024 presidential election.
Sam passed one of the only fresh grocery stores within 30 miles, where inflation had driven up the cost of produce. She slowed next to a roadside stand and saw a couple reselling off-brand soda, charging $3 for 12-packs containing 500 grams of sugar each. “Fill up for cheap,” their sign read.
The road twisted up a creek bed, and Sam stopped to check on a 43-year-old patient. She had cut her average blood sugar in half with Sam’s help, but her diabetes was still causing hemorrhaging in her eyes. “I brought you some exercise bands,” Sam said. “We’re going to get all Jane Fonda up in here.”
She went back to her car and opened another energy drink. “This job is like fighting gravity,” she said. Her younger brother had died in his early 40s of heart and liver failure. Her father was a diabetic who loved Wendy’s and drank several sodas a day. The father of Sam’s two children was prescribed opioids after a work injury, and then he spiraled into addiction. Sam had raised the children mostly by herself, worked three jobs and put herself through nursing school at night while driving her relatives back and forth to the methadone clinic. “I keep thinking I can fix people,” she said.
Image
Sam exercising with a patient.
Image
A schedule of when to take which medication on a patient’s wall.
She pulled up to see her last patient of the day, Harry Ray, who lived with his brother in a single-wide trailer tucked against an icy hillside. Next to the house were two gravestones: one for their mother, who died from kidney disease at 56; the other for their father, killed by diabetes at 61. Harry had lost his leg to diabetes in 2009, but with Sam’s help, he’d dropped almost 75 pounds in the last two years. She taught him how to organize his medications and manage his diseases. He took notes during each of their meetings and tacked them up on the trailer walls. “You are what you eat, big boy,” one of them read.
Sam checked his blood pressure and bandaged a wound on his skin. The house smelled of unkempt cats, but she brushed a bug off the couch and sat down to visit for an hour before saying her goodbyes.
“Now hold on a minute,” Harry said. “You’re not leaving empty-handed.”
Sam tried to protest, but he disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a small bag.
“I wouldn’t be alive without you,” he said. “I’m sorry it’s not much, but it’s what we’ve got.”
Sam gave him a hug and went back to the car. She opened the bag and found a single can of Sprite, a pack of Fritos and eight pieces of hard candy. She closed her eyes for a moment and then drove in silence out of the mountains, until she made it back into cell range and her phone started to ring. One patient had a temperature of 101.6. Another couldn’t seem to pee. Cora called to say she was experiencing chest pain.
“Why does it feel like somebody keeps stabbing me?” she asked.
Sam listened to Cora describe her symptoms as she squeezed the wheel. “When was the last time you ate a real meal?” she asked.
Image
Sam with a patient. Some days, she is just as much a social worker as a nurse.
Lunch had been a package of ramen noodle soup. So had dinner the previous night and lunch the day before. Cora hung up with Sam, checked her blood sugar and saw that it was 255, which was dangerously high. Sam had given her a pamphlet on heart-healthy foods, and Cora glanced at the list: avocados, pumpernickel bread, fish, blueberries, broccoli. She called out to her boyfriend, John Ratcliff, who was in the kitchen.
“Do we have any vegetables left?” she asked
“I doubt it,” he said, but he started to search the pantry and refrigerator. They had a bottle of mustard, a half-eaten microwave meal, a package of American cheese, a box of cornflakes and a bag of flour. This was what their kitchen often looked like at the end of each month, after they had used up their $380 in food stamps. The only accessible food within walking distance was at Pizza Hut, KFC, Taco Bell, Little Caesars, a dollar store and a tiny convenience mart where avocados sold for $2.99 each and a 12-pack of ramen noodles cost $2.50.
Cora turned on the television and saw an advertisement with close-up images of fried hash browns, steaming sausage patties and melting cheese, all on sale for a dollar. “Boy, doesn’t that look good?” she said. She muted the television and called into the kitchen. “Any luck?” she asked.
John came out holding a package of beef-flavored ramen. “Honestly, I’d rather starve,” Cora said.
John Ratcliff, Cora’s boyfriend, preparing a dinner of fried potatoes for themselves.
Toward the end of the month, John and Cora can barely afford to buy food.
He searched again and found a leftover bag of potatoes in the back of the pantry. He sliced them into cubes and doused them with salt. Sam had told him once that potatoes could cause a spike in blood pressure for diabetics, and that they were healthier when they were baked, but the oven was still broken. He filled a pan with oil and turned on a burner. “I found you some vegetables,” he called out to Cora.
They had been together for more than 20 years, and had taken turns as each other’s care givers. He suffered from seizures and had survived a quadruple bypass surgery. For the last decade, they had been measuring out their days to the relentless rhythm of her chronic disease: checking her blood sugar every few hours, decoding nutrition labels, taking six medications in the morning and five more with dinner.
He finished cooking the potatoes and stirred flour and milk together in a bowl. He dropped the mixture into the leftover oil to make what he called fry bread, Cora’s favorite. A few minutes later, he walked into the living room with two plates of fried carbs and a couple of Dr Peppers.
“This is so good,” Cora said. “Thank you. It’s exactly what I needed.”
They played a game of gin rummy and started to watch “Little House on the Prairie,” but Cora kept dozing off in her chair. She checked her blood sugar, and it was up to 270. Her mouth felt dry. She could feel the beginning of a headache. She tried to distract herself by playing a game on her phone, but her hands started tingling. “It never ends,” she said.
Her mother was diabetic. Her brother had died of complications from diabetes before he turned 60. Her daughter, 37, was already one of Sam’s patients. Her grandchildren were surviving mostly on processed school meals.
Image
John and Cora have been together for more than two decades, taking turns caring for each other when they are sick.
“I can’t remember the last time I felt decent,” Cora said.
“Maybe you should call Sam,” John said. Cora usually checked in with Sam at least once or twice a day, sometimes just to say good night, but now it was already close to 10 p.m.
“I don’t want to bother her,” she said.
The tingling persisted. Her headache got worse. A chill spread into her hands and then her arms. She slept for a few hours and then awoke to another day of Dr Pepper and ramen. By the next afternoon, her ankles were swollen, and her lips had gone numb. She called Sam, who was driving into the mountains to see another patient.
“I’ve got problems,” Cora said. “My lips keep going numb.”
“Your lips? Uh-oh. What’s your blood pressure?”
“I don’t know.”
“That isn’t good, Cora. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
Sam drove out of the hills and back into Williamson, remembering the previous calamities that had brought her to Cora’s house and filled her patient file: “Pain in spine.” “Chronic pain.” “Neuropathy.” “Lower respiratory infection.” “Depressive disorder.” “Hypertension.” “Transportation insecurity.” “Obesity due to diet.” “Noncompliance with dietary regimen due to financial hardship.”
Image
“My lips keep going numb,” Cora told Sam.
But lip numbness was something new, and Sam ran through the possibilities in her head. Cora’s lips could have gone numb from eating too much salt, since one package of ramen included almost a full daily serving of sodium. Or maybe she was freezing cold and losing feeling in her face — especially if the power company had made good on its threat to cut off the heat for nonpayment. Or the numbness could be a sign of anxiety, an allergic reaction or even an oncoming stroke. “I might have to transport her to the ER,” Sam said, as she parked out front and walked up to the house.
Inside, the dogs were barking and half a dozen relatives were gathered in the living room. It was the first day of the month, and Cora’s extended family had loaded up two cars to drive with her to the grocery store. Sam gently pushed away the dogs and made her way to Cora’s recliner. “I’m so sorry about all this, girl,” Sam said, as she took out a blood pressure cuff and reached for Cora’s hand.
Her blood pressure reading was 146 over 80 — high, but not an emergency. Her pulse was normal. Her blood sugar was in the typical range. Cora said she was feeling a little better, and she wanted to go shopping with her children and her grandchildren. None of them had groceries. She finally had a little money to spend. If she didn’t take the ride now, it could be days before she had transportation to the store again.
“Cora, listen to me,” Sam said. “You have to take care of yourself first.” She told Cora that she should consider going to an urgent care clinic or at least resting until she felt more stable.
“They could take me around the store in a motorized cart,” Cora said.
“It’s up to you,” Sam said. She packed her nursing bag as Cora weighed another impossible choice in a country where one urgent need was sometimes eclipsed by another.
“I have to get us some food,” she said.
The road twisted up a creek bed, and Sam stopped to check on a 43-year-old patient. She had cut her average blood sugar in half with Sam’s help, but her diabetes was still causing hemorrhaging in her eyes. “I brought you some exercise bands,” Sam said. “We’re going to get all Jane Fonda up in here.”
She went back to her car and opened another energy drink. “This job is like fighting gravity,” she said. Her younger brother had died in his early 40s of heart and liver failure. Her father was a diabetic who loved Wendy’s and drank several sodas a day. The father of Sam’s two children was prescribed opioids after a work injury, and then he spiraled into addiction. Sam had raised the children mostly by herself, worked three jobs and put herself through nursing school at night while driving her relatives back and forth to the methadone clinic. “I keep thinking I can fix people,” she said.
Image
Sam exercising with a patient.
Image
A schedule of when to take which medication on a patient’s wall.
She pulled up to see her last patient of the day, Harry Ray, who lived with his brother in a single-wide trailer tucked against an icy hillside. Next to the house were two gravestones: one for their mother, who died from kidney disease at 56; the other for their father, killed by diabetes at 61. Harry had lost his leg to diabetes in 2009, but with Sam’s help, he’d dropped almost 75 pounds in the last two years. She taught him how to organize his medications and manage his diseases. He took notes during each of their meetings and tacked them up on the trailer walls. “You are what you eat, big boy,” one of them read.
Sam checked his blood pressure and bandaged a wound on his skin. The house smelled of unkempt cats, but she brushed a bug off the couch and sat down to visit for an hour before saying her goodbyes.
“Now hold on a minute,” Harry said. “You’re not leaving empty-handed.”
Sam tried to protest, but he disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a small bag.
“I wouldn’t be alive without you,” he said. “I’m sorry it’s not much, but it’s what we’ve got.”
Sam gave him a hug and went back to the car. She opened the bag and found a single can of Sprite, a pack of Fritos and eight pieces of hard candy. She closed her eyes for a moment and then drove in silence out of the mountains, until she made it back into cell range and her phone started to ring. One patient had a temperature of 101.6. Another couldn’t seem to pee. Cora called to say she was experiencing chest pain.
“Why does it feel like somebody keeps stabbing me?” she asked.
Sam listened to Cora describe her symptoms as she squeezed the wheel. “When was the last time you ate a real meal?” she asked.
Image
Sam with a patient. Some days, she is just as much a social worker as a nurse.
Lunch had been a package of ramen noodle soup. So had dinner the previous night and lunch the day before. Cora hung up with Sam, checked her blood sugar and saw that it was 255, which was dangerously high. Sam had given her a pamphlet on heart-healthy foods, and Cora glanced at the list: avocados, pumpernickel bread, fish, blueberries, broccoli. She called out to her boyfriend, John Ratcliff, who was in the kitchen.
“Do we have any vegetables left?” she asked
“I doubt it,” he said, but he started to search the pantry and refrigerator. They had a bottle of mustard, a half-eaten microwave meal, a package of American cheese, a box of cornflakes and a bag of flour. This was what their kitchen often looked like at the end of each month, after they had used up their $380 in food stamps. The only accessible food within walking distance was at Pizza Hut, KFC, Taco Bell, Little Caesars, a dollar store and a tiny convenience mart where avocados sold for $2.99 each and a 12-pack of ramen noodles cost $2.50.
Cora turned on the television and saw an advertisement with close-up images of fried hash browns, steaming sausage patties and melting cheese, all on sale for a dollar. “Boy, doesn’t that look good?” she said. She muted the television and called into the kitchen. “Any luck?” she asked.
John came out holding a package of beef-flavored ramen. “Honestly, I’d rather starve,” Cora said.
He searched again and found a leftover bag of potatoes in the back of the pantry. He sliced them into cubes and doused them with salt. Sam had told him once that potatoes could cause a spike in blood pressure for diabetics, and that they were healthier when they were baked, but the oven was still broken. He filled a pan with oil and turned on a burner. “I found you some vegetables,” he called out to Cora.
They had been together for more than 20 years, and had taken turns as each other’s care givers. He suffered from seizures and had survived a quadruple bypass surgery. For the last decade, they had been measuring out their days to the relentless rhythm of her chronic disease: checking her blood sugar every few hours, decoding nutrition labels, taking six medications in the morning and five more with dinner.
He finished cooking the potatoes and stirred flour and milk together in a bowl. He dropped the mixture into the leftover oil to make what he called fry bread, Cora’s favorite. A few minutes later, he walked into the living room with two plates of fried carbs and a couple of Dr Peppers.
“This is so good,” Cora said. “Thank you. It’s exactly what I needed.”
They played a game of gin rummy and started to watch “Little House on the Prairie,” but Cora kept dozing off in her chair. She checked her blood sugar, and it was up to 270. Her mouth felt dry. She could feel the beginning of a headache. She tried to distract herself by playing a game on her phone, but her hands started tingling. “It never ends,” she said.
Her mother was diabetic. Her brother had died of complications from diabetes before he turned 60. Her daughter, 37, was already one of Sam’s patients. Her grandchildren were surviving mostly on processed school meals.
Image
“I can’t remember the last time I felt decent,” Cora said.
“Maybe you should call Sam,” John said. Cora usually checked in with Sam at least once or twice a day, sometimes just to say good night, but now it was already close to 10 p.m.
“I don’t want to bother her,” she said.
The tingling persisted. Her headache got worse. A chill spread into her hands and then her arms. She slept for a few hours and then awoke to another day of Dr Pepper and ramen. By the next afternoon, her ankles were swollen, and her lips had gone numb. She called Sam, who was driving into the mountains to see another patient.
“I’ve got problems,” Cora said. “My lips keep going numb.”
“Your lips? Uh-oh. What’s your blood pressure?”
“I don’t know.”
“That isn’t good, Cora. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
Sam drove out of the hills and back into Williamson, remembering the previous calamities that had brought her to Cora’s house and filled her patient file: “Pain in spine.” “Chronic pain.” “Neuropathy.” “Lower respiratory infection.” “Depressive disorder.” “Hypertension.” “Transportation insecurity.” “Obesity due to diet.” “Noncompliance with dietary regimen due to financial hardship.”
Image
“My lips keep going numb,” Cora told Sam.
But lip numbness was something new, and Sam ran through the possibilities in her head. Cora’s lips could have gone numb from eating too much salt, since one package of ramen included almost a full daily serving of sodium. Or maybe she was freezing cold and losing feeling in her face — especially if the power company had made good on its threat to cut off the heat for nonpayment. Or the numbness could be a sign of anxiety, an allergic reaction or even an oncoming stroke. “I might have to transport her to the ER,” Sam said, as she parked out front and walked up to the house.
Inside, the dogs were barking and half a dozen relatives were gathered in the living room. It was the first day of the month, and Cora’s extended family had loaded up two cars to drive with her to the grocery store. Sam gently pushed away the dogs and made her way to Cora’s recliner. “I’m so sorry about all this, girl,” Sam said, as she took out a blood pressure cuff and reached for Cora’s hand.
Her blood pressure reading was 146 over 80 — high, but not an emergency. Her pulse was normal. Her blood sugar was in the typical range. Cora said she was feeling a little better, and she wanted to go shopping with her children and her grandchildren. None of them had groceries. She finally had a little money to spend. If she didn’t take the ride now, it could be days before she had transportation to the store again.
“Cora, listen to me,” Sam said. “You have to take care of yourself first.” She told Cora that she should consider going to an urgent care clinic or at least resting until she felt more stable.
“They could take me around the store in a motorized cart,” Cora said.
“It’s up to you,” Sam said. She packed her nursing bag as Cora weighed another impossible choice in a country where one urgent need was sometimes eclipsed by another.
“I have to get us some food,” she said.
When you realize your small town is exactly where all that federal "waste" is going
Same old same old. "I want OTHER people to lose federal funding. Not my little ol' town though!"
fukk. Them.
fukk. Them.
How do you live in the middle of nowhere and not realize the road that got you there was built by the government.
iceberg_is_on_fire
Wearing Lions gear when it wasn't cool
A lot of these problems people are having, I do understand and they resonate with me. For a lot of people, finances are scarce. Case in point, we have a kid who is theatre and yesterday, my wife volunteer to help feed the kids since they have all day rehearsals. Bought around 100 in fruit (blueberries, strawberries and grapes) in addition to various juices and teas. She came back home with empty containers. She was shocked. I wasn't as we make more than twice the median income in our town and with fruit and juice costing as much as they do, I'm sure a lot of families are passing these items up in the grocery store due to cost.
I say all of this to say, 'economic anxiety' is likely a thing and many people are trying to stretch a dollar far. However, we also live among stupid people and if their finances are really the reason they voted for trump, they've doomed not only the rest of our lives but that of their kids as well.
I say all of this to say, 'economic anxiety' is likely a thing and many people are trying to stretch a dollar far. However, we also live among stupid people and if their finances are really the reason they voted for trump, they've doomed not only the rest of our lives but that of their kids as well.
It's probably a thing.
Is that what most voters carry into the voting booth?
Do they honestly look at the economic policies of their local officials, Congressional Reps and Senators, the President?
Do they have the capacity to figure out what policy being proposed will actually be in their own financial interests?
Or do they vote on other
criteria?
A farming county that voted just shy of 70% for trump loses its farm services center, which connected farmers with government programs. This is right before planting season begins.
Saving $278k in real estate costs, loses the community millions in aid. That’s just MAGA Math
It's estimated Trump's golf trips have cost taxpayers $20 million already. That money needs to come from somewhere /s
Here is a great Trump Golf Track.
I wish nothing but the worse for these people'I Feel So Stupid': Poll Shows Huge Percentage of Trump Voters Regretful After His Sweeping Dismantling of American Values
Last month, the Wall Street Journal released the results of a poll that was conducted after the election, but before the inauguration of Donald Trump. It sampled 1,500 Trump voters by both cell phone and landline — that second one is code for geezers these days — and by text messages inviting...www.politicalflare.com
Politics - News Analysis
‘I Feel So Stupid’: Poll Shows Huge Percentage of Trump Voters Regretful After His Sweeping Dismantling of American Values
Great, they feel bad. Now how do we DEAL with them?
By Andrew Simpson
February 19, 2025
Last month, the Wall Street Journal released the results of a poll that was conducted after the election, but before the inauguration of Donald Trump. It sampled 1,500 Trump voters by both cell phone and landline — that second one is code for geezers these days — and by text messages inviting people to take the poll online.
The results were predictable, following the immediate announcements that Trump made after the election. It’s true of any candidate, of course: You can campaign one way, then tell your voters the morning after the election that you are someone entirely different, if you like.
The built-in mechanism that Trump has to combat the fury that anyone else who did something like that would likely face is that mostly, Trump voters just wait to decide what they think until after he’s told them what they think.
The highlights of the poll were:
- 53% wanted to see significant change to the way government works, BUT…
- More than 60% oppose his idea for doing so by replacing thousands of career civil servants with people loyal to him.
- More than 60% also oppose eliminating the Department of Education.
- Just 18% support his plan to overrule Congress and give himself more power over spending (which is important, because, duh, DOGE).
- Just under 75% (!) say that only undocumented immigrants with criminal records should be deported. That is, people who have committed crimes other than simply entering the country illegally.
- 50% said having Elon Musk as an advisor was a bad idea.
- 64% oppose ending birthright citizenship.
- Only 48% supported Trump’s tariffs.
Now, this is kind of a mixed bag of things that Trump was pretty clear about all along, and things that he got louder and more forceful on AFTER the election. Some of these things have been implemented in ways that could not have been foreseen until he did them. For example, he was clear about having Musk as an advisor — and indeed there has been a steady stream of hardcore Trumpers who insist that they intended to “elect” Musk right along with Trump.
But no one could have imagined that within just weeks of assuming the presidency, Trump would allow Musk access and control over every taxpayer in America’s personal information through the US Treasury. That was never brought up during the campaign, just like he never brought up that Musk would oversee the dismantling of several US agencies that never came up in debate: USAID, the National Park Service, etc.
Now WSJ has published a follow-up to the poll, and the level of regret is staggering.
They interviewed Staci White, a nurse at a dialysis unit in Omaha, Nebraska. She fears for her husband’s “government-adjacent” job, and says that at her own place of employment, the staff have begun doing ICE drills for what to do if the border agency comes to deport her patients, now that Trump has lifted the Biden-era ban on raiding “sensitive areas” like hospitals, schools, and churches.
The publication also interviewed Emily Anderson of Duluth, Minnesota, who used to consider herself a Democrat but inexplicably backed Trump after the candidate she liked — RFK, Jr. — dropped out and endorsed Trump. She now considers Kennedy’s appointment to Health and Human Services to be the only good thing about her vote that she calls the “biggest mistake of my life.”
A separate survey by the Pew Research Center found that 47% of Americans, as of February, oppose “all or most” of Trump’s plans for the country. His disapproval rating is higher than 50%.
“At first glance, ‘oh no,’ you cringe. You’re like ‘holy s— he’s going to start a war,’” said Denver resident Gary Dixon. “He’s doing 80 miles an hour. I wouldn’t mind if he went around 55.”
Gosh, Gary. The rest of us think he’s off the tracks completely.
