531 Comments
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Nina's avatar

Matt, thank you for reading this dreadful book so that we don’t have to. I don’t think that I could bear it.

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James P's avatar

Clearly Matt has recovered from his injury... This piece is en fuego👍

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Franklin 14's avatar

I think Matt’s concussion came from reading the book.

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Don Reed's avatar

10/23/25: KABOOM! I got one laughing so hard at this remark!

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Jim Leahy's avatar

"Matt recovered from his concussion injury" is a good lead sentence. Bur I would go further: I'm surprised reading this book didn't put him into an insane asylum.

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Don Reed's avatar

10/22/25: Can this get any more inane?: "... traveled in my chocolate skin through rural towns." Sounds like a voice-over for Yoo Hoo! What other skin could she possibly been in? Just in time for Halloween! Check to see if she was on the Bud Light and Cracker Barrel board of directors...

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ChatterW's avatar

Yup! And the looks she was getting were not because of her skin color, it was due to the country’s understanding of what an incompetent press secretary she was.

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cottonkid's avatar

The looks she got were probably in reaction to her looks looking for looks.

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John Duffner's avatar

If you're motivated to find something, you will. Lots of identitarian libs see racism everywhere, like how some fundamentalists discover secret Satanic messages all over the place.

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cottonkid's avatar

That's it. The USA is becoming a madhouse of people everywhere projecting nasty ideas onto everyone else, and pointing ugly fingers of guilt, and declaring to know "that's who you REALLY are!"

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P.S.'s avatar

100%

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Don Reed's avatar

10/23/25: Subtle and perceptive. Do not apply for work at Cracker Barrel.

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Don Reed's avatar

10/23/25: Bravo! I am ashamed to say that that had never occurred to me. And I am ashamed for my country that such a incompetent hire made it blindingly obvious that we had lost our standards and even possibly our minds.

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Brian DeLeon's avatar

People were staring at her because someone dumped a pot of rotini pasta on her head.

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Belling the Cat's avatar

Honestly, I'm looking back affectionately at the rotini pasta head, at least relative to this new look.

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Cynthia of South Carolina's avatar

Also, what rural towns? Assuming she wasn’t recognized as a public figure and therefore stared at, or wearing $10,000 worth of clothes in an area where getting new dockers is a big deal—there is simply no reason to believe she was noticed because she was black. People in rural areas take notice if they don’t know you. Also, she may want to take a drive through rural SC sometime. It’s majority black and very poor, but rarely shoddy and run-down. Most folks have pride of ownership and maintain their tiny little houses or trailers beautifully.

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Belling the Cat's avatar

Flyover country is just a metaphor to big-city gals like the first melaninized lesbian (or whatever, please don't tell me about her/zir fetishes) has-a-uterus-and/or-identifies-as-female entities like oh so cosmopolitan (and Independent!) Karen, er, Karine. She doesn't have to actually *be there* to report her feelings about being there, just like she didn't have to /interact/ with President Cabbage to know he was sharp as a tack. Sigh. Peasants are so literal.

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Tricia's avatar

I'll bet she never stepped foot in a rural town. She was born in Martinique and grew up in Queens, New York.

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Barrett Lahey's avatar

Lololol

10k worth of clothes .

I can just see the scene. She walks into a rural CV and they all turn... likely smelling her perfume from the carpark.

"They're all racist. Honky just staring at my chocolate"

Honestly

They just didn't read books, and it's obvious.

No way you read Fear and Loathing on the trail or animal farm or anything by mailer.

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Don Reed's avatar

10/23/25: Pearls Before Swine... never in a million years would she do what you sensibly suggest.

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BookWench's avatar

I'm surprised her book didn't open with this: "I was born a poor black child. . . "

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Don Reed's avatar

"... in a Republican log cabin and then I saw the light..."

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Belling the Cat's avatar

"...when I stuck my finger in the wall socket and broke my brain and my hair-do."

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Don Reed's avatar

"Said the 'independent' shill for Auto-Pennsylvania!"

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Bonnie Beresford's avatar

"...we lived in a shoe-box on the median of a freeway..."

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Joni Lang's avatar

😂❤️🤣

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bestuvall's avatar

not the skin. people wanted to know if she was Little Orphan Annie

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Don Reed's avatar

10/23/25: I am staggered, having been reminded that about 30-40 years ago, and which continued non-stopped for Almost Forever, this country felt that it had had nothing better to do than to stage a musical about a girl with no eye pupils, a dog with a Broadway agent's fleas, and a Sugar Daddy that someday in real life will emerge from the wreckage of the Artificial Intelligence-Madoff financial hoaxes.

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Michelle Enmark, DDS's avatar

My thoughts exactly. I will not contribute one cent to this loser. When you listen to her incoherent tap dancing, it reinforces the extreme contrast between her and the much, much more competent Karoline Leavitt. I cringe when I watch her stumble and struggle to fabricate her twisted stories for the media.

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Belling the Cat's avatar

It's like they're from different species, like comparing a sea slug to an Olympic athlete.

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Michelle Enmark, DDS's avatar

So funny! Great comment.

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Yuri Bezmenov's avatar

“For Democracy: DNC x GoT” - a short film about the coup on President autopen: https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/for-democracy-dnc-got-biden-obama-movie

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Kathleen McCook's avatar

That made me feel bad for jb...

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rtj's avatar

I just watched that again for old time's sake. Looking at Schumer, Jeffries, and Pelosi, in that, i can't help feel that they're up for the treatment next. We can but hope.

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Bonnie Pfeil's avatar

I was going to say the same thing.

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ChatterW's avatar

Took the thought right out of my mouth!

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Steven Sugars's avatar

My sentiments, exactly 💯

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Indrek Sarapuu's avatar

I certainly won't!

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Earl Camembert's avatar

Seriously, who reads these books? Who is interested in the thoughts of minor political apparatchiks, much less excruciatingly dull politicians? (Much to my horror, the answer to my googled "Did Mitch McConnell ever write a book?" was "Yes.")

I maintain that the only reason we are blessed by such tomes as Amy Klobuchar's memoir (yep, that's a real thing) is that they are legalized bribery - get a big advance, unopened crates of the book are bought by mysterious figures, the publisher earns their advance back, and everyone involved is happy, even if 98% of the books are pulped or sent to landfills.

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Susan G's avatar

You nailed it, it is like payola in radio. Explains a lot when you realize this.

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Janet's avatar

They get a turn on the Best Seller” lists too. Yup. I worked at a library. These vanity books showed up often in donations. Sometimes multiple copies. They went to the dumpster. Poor Sarah Palin’s book hung around for 2 years on the book sale shelf until I personally walked it to the dumpster.

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Don Reed's avatar

10/23/25: You have overlooked one feature of the racket --- librarians are delighted to accept these books because in three, six or nine months time, books that cost the libraries nothing will be shipped out to a used-book store for pennies on the dollar.

Multiply this by hundreds of thousands of books a year, and the money "earned" by the libraries becomes the identical reward comparable to the scams that race tracks used to engage in with "breakage" (cheating customers of pennies when cashing winning tickets).

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BookWench's avatar

Our library just donated books to its Friends group. Books that were too far gone were simply destroyed.

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DaveL's avatar

Clearly what's going on. See Bolton's machinations to get stuff for his book--a waste of time, since who reads these things (except Matt, who does as a hazardous duty so we don't have to)? And as someone else pointed out, libraries buy these things, so they can sit in the library unread.

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BookWench's avatar

I used to work for a large regional library in Maricopa County, and they routinely ordered huge numbers of books by political figures. Most were never even checked out, and were eventually donated to the library's Friends group.

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Earl Camembert's avatar

My only knowledge of the economics of local libraries just came from the past five minutes of googling, but if they are using tax dollars to acquire these books... your community'a tax dollars are paying for books from the likes of such historical footnotes as Claire McCaskill and Tim Pawlenty.

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BookWench's avatar

One thing I learned about myself while working as a librarian, was that I am not cut out to be a government worker. I was always noticing the waste of taxpayer dollars. I came away from the experience as a big proponent of privatizing public libraries — which did not win me many friends in librarian land.

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TLR's avatar

The majority of anything to do with the government would function better in private hands. When any entity is relying on profit they are efficient because their existence relies on it. Real charities even do better. Government will just incentivize incompetence.

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Anti-Hip's avatar

"Seriously, who reads these books?"

Between the lines can often be found some important incriminating circumstantial details that neither the author, editor, or reviewers observed. It might take years for them to be recognized, but they are permanently there for the taking.

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Belling the Cat's avatar

The only place I disagree is "even IF" -- read as "when".

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Random Shmo's avatar

The question of who reads these books likely never crosses the minds of these self-worshipping, microcephalic mooks. These solipsistic dingbats think that they are so utterly fascinating that they assume everyone would be falling over themselves in a scramble to the bookstore to buy their incoherent ramblings. In short, they're narcissists - and they demonstrate that DC is Hollywood for ugly people.

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P.S.'s avatar

Yes, they should call Publishers, the Laundrymat..Maybe they do in private..

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Don Reed's avatar

10/2/3/25: And thus for decades witness airport "book" stores constipated with thousands of unsold copies in display cases featuring Hillary Clinton's ghost writers' latest creations.

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Tim Hinchliff's avatar

I'm just struggling with the videos in the stack.

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Ellen Evans's avatar

Would any of us even think of soiling our minds? We're lucky we have Matt who, as you note, do it for us. Almost like having an illegal immigrant nanny ;).

Not that Matt deserves the comparison, but do not we? We're thankful he does drudgery we'd rather not do ourselves . . .

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Freedom Lover's avatar

I dont think anyone will ever write a true account of this insanity. This nincompoop is perhaps the most incompetent person ever to serve as press secretary and thats saying something when you consider the Pyschedelic Jen Psaki. The sad thing is this earthworm thinks she's a brilliant genius. Of this I have no doubt.

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Indecisive decider's avatar

You have to give Psaki some credit. Not only did she pull the rip cord before things really went to hell, but she gave her show a highly sexualized, provacative name. "Inside Jen Psaki" - that's hot. Granted, she has the sex appeal of a bucket of lice, but still. That name.

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Thomas Heath's avatar

"has the sex appeal of a bucket of lice" lmfao!!!

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Ellen Evans's avatar

I was going to post almost those exact words, but since you did, I needn't. Thanks.

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Brian DeLeon's avatar

I’ll have to circle back on that.

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Bea South's avatar

She’s very well endowed which is discussed a lot on the internet

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Alex's avatar

brutal. and true.🤣

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Freedom Lover's avatar

Pshe doesnt have much psex appeal.

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Patrick's avatar

Psad.

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Garrett Phillips's avatar

Psaki also deserves mad props if she had anything to do with choosing her successor. Nothing she could have done would have placed her in a better light.

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Bryan J. B.'s avatar

I still think they should have gone with "Circling Back With Jen Psaki"

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Indecisive decider's avatar

Alternatives: 'Round back with Psaki', 'Psuki Psuki and Pswallow with Psaki featuring guest Pswalwell'

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James P's avatar

Pretty sure there was a movie from the "golden age" of porn in the 70s with a title like that....

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DaveL's avatar

Psaki Performs Portland?

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Studio Largo's avatar

Psaki Psucks Pseattle

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rtj's avatar

Remember Inside Marilyn Chambers? At least i remember the MAD mag parody of it.

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Glitterpuppy's avatar

LMAO. “ a bucket of lice ”. Brutal. Excellent

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I remember the 70s's avatar

She owes a royalty to Amy Schumer.

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Susan Abbott's avatar

Except I suspect that with Amy's the irony was intentional

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Karl H Graf's avatar

I remember memes of her and peppermint patty with some saying she was "hot"???

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Po Lutken's avatar

Good one! Really good.

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Jeanne Walsh's avatar

Maybe she was chosen for the part because she is an idiot and truly could not tell Biden was going in and out of dementia. Plausible deniability built in!

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Glitterpuppy's avatar

I’m totally with you on that. They looked for the absolute end of the alphabet in her. They got their money’s worth. Dumb as a stump

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Ellen Evans's avatar

Drying paint is literally twice as intelligent.

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BillS's avatar

It was glaringly obvious to anyone with a brain that Biden was cognitively compromised before he even took office.

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Anti-Hip's avatar

No one trustworthy will write a first-person account, but boy am I looking forward to the excellent investigators who will piece together probability-compelling accounts.

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Ministryofbullshit's avatar

I still have hope Jill will come through. The goods on Kamala, Pelosi, whoever the nuclear engineer dude (dressed as a woman) stealing suitcases from airports, all of them.

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Nobody's avatar

Ugh, thanks for reminding me of Sam Brinton. I believe when I looked up his resume that it was fairly impressive, but, uh, it should have been clear that he had a disqualifying personal life from what is really and truly a very important job. For nuclear waste disposal I want the most up tight, annoying pencilhead on the planet.

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Katie B's avatar

Jill is only interested in herself! If she writes any book, it will only be about how ‘fabulous’ she is!

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DarkSkyBest's avatar

Respectfully disagree. Did you see Hunter’s latest comment about The Chosen One leading Pres. Pops off-stage? Oh no. When Dr. Jill lets loose, it will be deeper than the mines of Moria. Bring it.

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Anti-Hip's avatar

She has the facts, but Jesus, could you trust her any more than KJP?

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Ministryofbullshit's avatar

She seemed pretty pissed at Pelosi. Wore all Republican red after the coup

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norica's avatar

She wore red.

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Anti-Hip's avatar

The gravity of this escapes me. Could mean she's just angry at everyone around her, not that she's actually endorsing Republicans and/or wants *really* to torpedo the Democratic Party for the forseeable future out of personal spite. Unless you all here know her better than me...

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Lawyers Guns & Money's avatar

If she and Joe have beef with certain Democrats (Pelosi, Half-Black Jesus), I wouldn’t blame her for going nuclear.

Just as I have no problem with Trump going nuclear with all the shithooks who tried to cripple his administration, then tried to put him in jail.

You KNOW she hates HBJ. First he tells Joe in 2015 to stand down, not his turn yet, and the only person in America incapable of beating Trump gets nominated instead. Hell, he didn’t support Joe in 2020 until Bernie had dispatched all the Obama wannabes like Booker, Klobuchar, Mayor Pete. Ain’t no Christmas card going to Martha’s Vineyard.

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Indecisive decider's avatar

Ugh, can you imagine trying to satisfy Jill Biden sexually. Just the constant complaining and her clearing her throat. Ugh.

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Garrett Phillips's avatar

We don't have to imagine it, we just need to ask Rachel Levine what it was like.

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Ellen Evans's avatar

I never ask questions I don't want to know the answer to.

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Indecisive decider's avatar

I forgot about Rachel. The man of the year.

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Tricia's avatar

I totally did not. I called him the Thing in the White House. Not being mean since it doesn't want to be a man, but I will not say it is a woman because it isn't. It is, therefore, it. Just being respectful. I am going to get so canceled.....

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DarkSkyBest's avatar

Ha! THAT will be so evil. And at the same time, truth.

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Skenny's avatar

Everyone has certainly written their own book. They all want to tell their story, but none of them agree. Narcissists, strivers, climbers, grifters, and bullshitters.

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Ellen Evans's avatar

"Muh truth!!!"

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Geoff Paterson's avatar

Nobody will ever top Leavitt

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Wyllamizer's avatar

Oh no, she had mad skills - she was a master at bad gaslighting, coming up with impossible, twisted lies on the spot, and covering incompetence by deflecting and projecting. She is a master narcissist, and has been practicing it her whole life.

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Rick Olivier's avatar

"Peppermint Psaki" was a tough act to follow but Rotini Gal lowered the bar even further. Leavitt is a breath of fresh, factual air compared to those two.

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Tricia's avatar

Hey! Psychedelic Jen was an excellent liar!!!! KJP, not so much. But she did fulfill the most important qualifications, being black, female AND lesbian. Eye on the ball, people.

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Bea South's avatar

Whenever I listen to her I hear an ambulance chasing Plaintiffs’ lawyer using all the shady rhetorical tools to avoid answering truthfully

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DaveL's avatar

She sounds deranged. It's a case of believing the world is such-and-such, and then getting mad at everyone else for not agreeing.

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D.A. Douglas's avatar

Man I completely forgot about her. Does she still have a show?

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Ellen Evans's avatar

It keeps surprising me to find it's still running.

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Rob F's avatar

I can’t read this book but I did like the summary from Matt. Here are the chapters I’ve imagined:

1. “History Will Thank Me (Eventually)”

— A reflective look back at decisions that were brave, misunderstood, and occasionally catastrophic.

2. “Sharp as a Tack”:

— How quick thinking, selective memory, and post-event spin built a legacy.

3. “High-Energy Joe and Other Inspirational People I Reminded to Hydrate”

— A study in leadership by proximity and caffeine (and some

Other stuff)

4. “Hunter Is Smart: Lessons in Family Governance, Laptop Management, and Grace Under Investigation”

— Includes bonus appendix: how to say “no comment” with empathy.

5. “Communicating with the Easter Bunny: A Masterclass in Messaging the Unbelievable”

— Tips for maintaining eye contact while explaining the inexplicable.

6. “Queer Competency and Other Buzzwords I Mastered at 2 a.m. Before the Press Briefing”

— A deep dive into the performative side of inclusion — and lighting for televised empathy.

7. “My Truth, Your Misinterpretation”

— Why everyone else got it wrong, and how I learned to rise above the headlines I definitely didn’t leak.

8. “The Courage to Edit Myself Lightly”

— Behind the scenes of turning a 600-page therapy document into a 280-page bestseller.

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Heidi Kulcheski's avatar

You win, hilarious!

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EndOfTheRoad's avatar

My sides are splitting! 😂

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Lawyers Guns & Money's avatar

Well done, man.

I wonder why no one has yet invoked the words of Kellyeanne Conway: alternate facts. They observed something not seen by 300+ million, and therefore there are two sets of facts. Who’s to say?

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Patrick's avatar

She of the alternate husband.

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Lawyers Guns & Money's avatar

That dude still gets a story a week on HuffPost. That’s some old material recycled 2-3 times.

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Tricia's avatar

I can't go to HuffPo anymore. They got viruses over there.

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Rick S's avatar

I am the Queen of Hearts & here is the rabbit hole..

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Ellen Evans's avatar

Oh, that's beautiful! Thank you!

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Indecisive decider's avatar

The best thing that can be said of Karine is that she was an accurate reflection of her boss' thinking abilities, expressiveness, honesty and judgement. She's exactly like Biden but without the dirty diaper and night nurse.

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Skenny's avatar

Sorry, could only "like" once....

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Don Reed's avatar

10/22/25: She WAS the night nurse (Hunter's).

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Ellen Evans's avatar

Um, that's one thing I wouldn't accuse her of - she's gay, and if there were any force on earth that might turn me so it would be the prospect of "night-nursing" Hunter Biden.

Though, after pondering this for a few minutes, I still don't want to take a woman to bed any more than I do Hunter.

Still straight, after all these years . . .

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Don Reed's avatar

10/23/25: You are correct. She send the White House Auto-Pen into the Hunter bedroom to do the job for her.

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Ellen Evans's avatar

He likely would be too wasted to know the difference between an autopen and a vagina. And that's more wasted than I have ever been, which, from someone who came of age in NYC in the 70s says something.

I once attended a Grateful Dead concert at the Meadowlands, fortified by lots of weed and a nifty caplet combining dexedrine and methaqualone, and was supplemented by a kind couple with liquid LSD and a cooler of vodka and grapefruit juice. Best concert experience of my life, but I wasn't too baked to know the difference between genitalia and writing instruments, automated or otherwise.

Or to enjoy a surf and turf dinner with my companions afterwards.

Ah, yout'. I'm a terrible lightweight now, just wine and weed (totally legal in my state).

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Don Reed's avatar

10/23/25: !!! As a lad, how come I never read things like this in Readers' Digest?

My one and only G. Dead experience was one evening in the 80s, being forced to listen to their greatest hits on an endless audio tape loop.

Under the circumstances, it was a blind date with Hunter Biden.

We were on a beach on Long Island Sound, trapped up in a tent getting blown around in wind gusts of 50-60 miles an hour as a storm raged (the only thing keeping it from sailing to Connecticut was the combined weight of myself and the other camper).

And I'd just come down with an instant, violent attack of influenza.

I steered clear of the Grateful Dead for a long, long time afterwards.

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DaveL's avatar

Like most of us...

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Ellen Evans's avatar

Yeah, we didn't need any term like "cis-gender," coined only to distinguish most of us from the tiny few "transgenders," there was always a term - USUAL. Can't say "normal," these days . . . but usual we are, too.

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Tricia's avatar

Since I am not a terribly nice person, instead of "cis" I use the word "normal."

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Ellen Evans's avatar

I might, also, were not "usual" used in one of my favorite 20th century plays, Christopher Fry's The Lady's Not For Burning, by the ingenue Alizon Eliot, in illustration of her normality. "I am quite usual . . ."

But, in fact, men and women who accept their manhood and womanhood, who desire those of the sex they do not belong to, are indeed "normal," as illustrated by the 90+%of human beings to whom these qualities attain.

So, we definitely agree. And I appreciate your downrightness, and don't think it makes you not nice at all! In fact, we would quite likely get on famously. Let's talk more.

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Indecisive decider's avatar

huh... you think she was holding the camera when he hit the crack pipe in the tub? I mean.... it had to have been someone. Why not 'shit for brains' JPierre?

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rtj's avatar

I'll vote for a camera phone stand.

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Indecisive decider's avatar

There's no way Hunter could have set up one of those on his own.

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Don Reed's avatar

10/23/25: A "Ménage a Tripod" is not inconceivable.

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Don Reed's avatar

10/23/25: FanDuel has just opened a betting page on whether or not she was a Chinese spy.

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Glitterpuppy's avatar

LMAO

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Clever Pseudonym's avatar

"I’d been in the body of a Black woman all my life." lol

Is she some sort of metaphysical spirit or entity that inhabits various bodies, human and otherwise? Is this meant to signal a belief in metempsychosis where she's inhabiting a black female body this time but in the past has been other people? Maybe in past lives she's been past press secretaries? (Probably not, or she wouldn't have been so inept.)

The whole "bodies" jargon is dumb and manipulative, like every other product of Left academia's rhetorical hysteria factories, but even dumber than the people who concoct this nonsense are the lame apparatchiks like KJP, who do so in order to portray themselves as both smarter than the rest of us but also more oppressed, thereby signalling that only evil bigots would ever contradict her.

The sad truth is that Left academia and its White Savior Industrial Complex has done terrible things to the brains and souls of the black people formed under its dispensation. Instead of grown adults proving their skills and intelligence they've been trained to be modern blues singers, always singing tales of woe about how TIRED they are and how their BODIES constantly feel the lash of the slavedriver's whip, even if just metaphorically.

The Social Justice Victim religion has poisoned our culture and politics, turned all of us against each other, but it's ironically been worst for the members of their sacred victim castes, who learn to get ahead by remaining helpless children reliant on the welfare of our White Savior progressive gentry. Thus when KJP was forced to stand under the bright lights on her own two feet, she was already doomed, as she has much more experience denouncing questioners than answering questions.

Black liberation in the 21st century means liberation from the victim narrative, which makes White Saviors feel all a-tingle with righteous virtue but which hobbles those it's supposedly meant to benefit.

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Anti-Hip's avatar

"Instead of grown adults proving their skills and intelligence they've been trained to be modern blues singers, always singing tales of woe about how TIRED they are and how their BODIES constantly feel the lash of the slavedriver's whip, even if just metaphorically."

Currently, my favorite howler is the use of the term "historically oppressed", which *under their own claimed standards* makes no sense to use when distinguishing how to dole out goodies. What should matter in helping people *now* is to include only those who are oppressed *now*.

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Clever Pseudonym's avatar

I learned Crit Theory back in college (in the 80s sitting behind Matt Taibbi's enormous head) and at its root it is a project designed to "rectify historical injustice", every day in every way in everything from the books you read to the friends you make to the words you speak and write etc.

I'll always be shocked that the world's most miserable people armed only with moralistic jargon managed to conquer the globe and almost every left-brain on it, but I guess I'm just immune to their charms.

The postmodern post-Christian post-Marxist command to "rectify historical injustice" (aka the last shall be first and vice versa) has captured the commanding heights of the West and any smart member of a victim caste knows to follow incentives and speak whatever magic incantation will get them some juicy rectification, ideally in cash.

I feel "historically oppressed" just having to listen to them....lol

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Indecisive decider's avatar

It is a religion of obedience. That line from Rush's Subdivisions just keeps repeating - "Conform or be cast out".

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Rick S's avatar

IMHO Crit is just a dodge to keep academics & DEI grads busy reinterpreting the country's historical past to highlight its unredeemable white racism, avaristic capitalism & colonial dominance. It is a jobs program.

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Clever Pseudonym's avatar

yes, among other things...

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Rick S's avatar

Many other things grievance & victim studies, CIS centric bias, it is the indispensable schtick

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norica's avatar

Christopher Langan has proclaimed that the majority of highly intelligent people have big noggins.

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cottonkid's avatar

--I've also heard there's a correlation between intelligence and talking to oneself. I've been talking to myself more ever since.

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Ellen Evans's avatar

Does constant running commentary in one's head count? I have a small head and a high IQ, and I am always talking to myself silently. I live in a small town, and am already at high risk of being considered odd.

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Rich Smith's avatar

The North Korean defector Yeon Mi Park incredulously points out how punishing people for who their ancestors were is straight out of the totalitarian playbook, and is one of the woke ideas that she cannot believe is seriously discussed in the U.S. It’s even dumber than that, as people like me whose ancestors weren’t even in this country until the 20th century and who never lived in the south are lumped in with oppressors, and people with dark skin who have nothing to do with slaves or even Africa are lumped in with the oppressed. Though it’s dressed up in the language of critical theory—“black bodies”, “historically oppressed”—it is simply racism.

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DaveL's avatar

Good comment, but I don't think it's as all encompassing as you describe. For example, most black people don't believe this shit, just like most people don't believe in it, either.

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Clever Pseudonym's avatar

Oh I completely agree, which is why I said "black people formed under its dispensation", meaning more or less those processed by our elite universities who then move on to media, culture, academia etc and become "official spokesman of their people" aka Professional Blacks—people like Kendi, Coates, or Roxane Gay who do well by selling indulgences to guilty white liberals, who pay top dollar for curated black pain, esp the kind that makes them feel morally superior to conservatives. White guilt is a valuable natural resource, if you're in position to exploit it.

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DaveL's avatar

There's certainly those!

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Bull Hubbard's avatar

Right on. I've seen some evidence that a growing number of black people are getting their shit together and understanding how demeaning the obsolescent civil rights movement is, how it has been capitalized on by grifters like Jean-Pierre, the infamous Al Sharpton, Ibraim Kendi and others, and how the D party has played them as fools with flattery and by treating them as children who need to be protected by a Big White Daddy.

It's difficult sometimes to understand this when X trolls continually post the bad behavior of some black people in fast-food restaurants, in WalMarts, on city streets, etc. A decadent subculture that glorifies thug life and ugliness doesn't help.

Your comment also reminded me of "Met him pike hoses" in Ulysses.

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Clever Pseudonym's avatar

Booker T. Washington said this about Professional Blacks over 100 yrs ago:

“There is another class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.”

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Bull Hubbard's avatar

'Twas ever thus, eh?

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merfdaserf's avatar

My thought exactly---the"Met him pike hoses" in Ulysses---and I would have said so except that, #1: You said it first, and, #2: I wasn't sure that English Majors were welcome in These Pages or, indeed, anywhere. I mean, it gave me an Agenbite of Inwit just to think of it.

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Bull Hubbard's avatar

No shame. Took an MA in English literature back in '97, taught composition--rhetoric-literature for 20 years, retiring just before peak TDS. Some of my best days were in, yes, CA. Now I wouldn't move back there for love or money. UC Santa Cruz should be converted into a Buddhist retreat complex. It has some of the best ocean views I've seen. Shame it's wasted on a dumbass zealot factory. (I went to San Jose State.)

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EndOfTheRoad's avatar

Poetry, my friend.

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Clever Pseudonym's avatar

Thanks!

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Ellen Evans's avatar

It's just a sign that the strenuous efforts to divorce us from physical realities like the physical presence of family, friends, and ultimately, our bodies, is working with those of low candle-power, intellectually.

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Glitterpuppy's avatar

I do miss her. What an entertainer

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Linda H Oistad's avatar

Dumb, well-groomed, and manipulative.

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Paulette Altmaier's avatar

She was a DEI hire with no other qualifications than skin color and sexual preference.

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Indecisive decider's avatar

To me, she always looked like a furry. It's weird to see her with human hair now.

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Billy The Kid's avatar

Can't call her "Firecracker Head" any more.

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Rich Smith's avatar

She does have the incredible skill to go in front of the press day after day and talk and talk without saying anything.

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DarkSkyBest's avatar

Apparently you have exited concussion protocol territory, because otherwise why would you expose your brain to this tripe.

This person is an unqualified moron. Just like real people knew Pres. Joey had lost his fast ball, any person watching her in action knew she was incompetent, and it had Nothing to do with race or gender.

That there exists a universe where any number of people can publish books and appear on TV + and get oxygen for their worthlessness. Meanwhile, school kids don’t learn phonics anymore. It’s wild.

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DaveL's avatar

Phonics are now making a resurgence, since whatever they were replacing it with failed.

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DarkSkyBest's avatar

I hope that happens everywhere, along with realizing there is value to learning cursive. I wonder how humans will communicate when the machines shut down the com systems between the carbon units.

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Tardigrade's avatar

Cursive will be a code as inscrutable to the millennials as the Navajo language was to the Germans in World War II. This could be valuable knowledge when the younger generations come for us Boomers.

When the time comes, we can theft-proof our transportation by making sure it's all manual transmission.

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Tricia's avatar

It already is. My husband was doing some genealogical research with his 24 year old nephew when they came across some letters in the attic written in cursive. The 24 year old handed them to my husband (66 years old) and said "I can't read this. What does it say?" This boy graduated from Marist in New York.

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DarkSkyBest's avatar

It suddenly strikes me as handy for those who don’t want us to be able to read our founding documents, on file at the National Archives.

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Tardigrade's avatar

Don't be silly—there are digital transcriptions of those founding documents. Of course, one is trusting the transcriptions are accurate ;)

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DarkSkyBest's avatar

Even more confounding? Wait till the navigation systems go down. “What is a North? . . .”

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Tardigrade's avatar

'Pres. Joey had lost his fast ball'

Priceless.

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Aaron S's avatar

"...like untangling a monkey’s fist with mittens on." Died laughing at this.

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DH's avatar
Oct 22Edited

I had to look it up. My initial thought upon seeing that was, "This makes no sense," followed by, "He must not mean a *literal* monkey's fist."

Now I feel a compelling urge to learn to tie one.

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An Inconvenient Truth's avatar

I DID take it literally. I did kind of wonder about the term "untangling", but I figured, 'well, trying to unclench small thin fingers might be similar enough to disentangling string....'

So I guess it's some kind of sailor's knot?

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Glitterpuppy's avatar

Look it up

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Tricia's avatar

OMG, I just did!!! Now I want to learn to make one. I learn so much here....

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Judith Cohen's avatar

My favorite line!

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Glitterpuppy's avatar

Omg! What a great line

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merfdaserf's avatar

Casey Stengel, wasn't it?

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Florida ER Doc's avatar

Matt, from a clinical perspective, I am going to have to insist you put that book down immediately. Given your recent traumatic brain injury, you really should be giving yourself a chance to heal. These excerpts are making my brain hurt, and I didn’t just take a half-gainer off a roof.

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Glitterpuppy's avatar

Thanks doc. Btw, I’ve got this pain I wanted to ask you about…..

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Christopher Gaskins's avatar

(Background: I'm a 14-year TBI survivor. Thank you for properly identifying Matt's condition as TBI.)

I timely read Matt's piece "Note to Readers" on October 16. When I read about the insult event, the loss of consciousness, and the ensuing post-insult sequelae, and saw it labeled as concussion, my heart ached for him. I SO wanted to reach out to Matt to help educate/inform him about the realities he was and will be dealing with. The broader population is understandably unaware about the realities of TBI and how it existentially and non-negotiably involves identity trauma. Bear with me here, as I am being very literal and not framing the issue in victim-elevating/virtue-signaling terms.

Neurodivergence falls into three broad categories: congenital, acquired, and degenerative. Being neurodivergent from birth means that it is part of the identity formation and evolution process from T=0. Neurodegenerative conditions are characterized as having a life arc of population-typical identity formation and development, but then the plane (brain) loses its engines and enters a disease-controlled glide slope of memory (identity) loss. What distinguishes acquired neurodivergence (e.g., TBI, stroke, hypoxia, etc.) from an identity perspective is that it is a bright line differential condition. A person is living their v1.0 identity (I call it "one-point-oh") and then...BAM!...in an instant the biological scaffolding on which their memories had accumulated and evolved is physically reconfigured. The true consequences of the insult event—i.e., the functional strengths and weaknesses of the new connectome—can only be learned over time, but what is existentially true is that the insult event buried one-point-oh and birthed two-point-oh. Hence, acquired brain injury fundamentally involves identity trauma.

The core challenge of acquired brain injury is learning about and accepting one's two-point-oh self free of self-abasing judgment. I believe the reason suicide rates are three times higher among TBI survivors than the national average is because survivors get trapped in an affectative doom loop comparing their two-point-oh selves to their deceased one-point-oh selves. The only way to avoid the doom loop is a brutal Catch 22: The broken brain has to understand how it is broken. That is hard enough to do on a solo and TBI basis, but the headwinds are amplified by the fact that the survivor's closest relationships were all between one-point-oh people, but post-injury they are between one-point-oh people and a two-point-oh person, and the former naturally exerts pressure on the survivor to revert to one-point-oh. Anyway, I can blather on and on about this stuff (obviously!), so I will exert some self control and wrap this up.

Matt, if you read this, you are now part of the two-point-oh family. Accept that reality. We are here to help you along your two-point-oh journey in any and every way possible. You could greatly expand your positive influence on the world by openly embracing your TBI-ness and connecting with others to help educate/inform the broader public about TBI realities. I would love it if you read this post and it motivated you to DM me. FWIW, I did some stats analysis of CDC data back in 2012 and calculated that about 14% of the US population is TBI. There is a reason the CDC calls TBI a silent epidemic.

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michael888's avatar

A friend who is head of neurology at a major hospital specializes in traumatic brain injury (particularly in car accidents) and believes, as with boxing and football, that the effects are cumulative and probably lead to dementia, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's as people age. The brain smushes against the skull with momentum and cannot be totally protected by helmets.

He also had lots of stories about personality changes after serious head injuries, never for the better (contradicting Walter's "not true", hackneyed plot lines.) Most commonly people become more agitated, impatient and angry and don't recover their earlier personalities. "Sometimes worse than death".

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GB HeBe's avatar

Don't have a problem with the media going after KJP but I have a serious problem with their hypocrisy. They couldn't see Biden was long gone during his regime?

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Anti-Hip's avatar

Their cognitive dissonance about the magnitude of their dereliction has resulted in many serious cases of denial.

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DaveL's avatar

It's called lying.

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An Inconvenient Truth's avatar

This is simply a case-study in the free-for-all that follows the implosion of ANY groupthink leviathan/corporatist buck-passing engine; the Nuremberg Trials broke down the same way.

Just wait'll the ENTIRE Luftreich (as Walter Kirn dubbed it) finally implodes, we ain't seen nothing yet...!

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Bonnie Pfeil's avatar

Exactly.

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Bull Hubbard's avatar

Of course they did. Their transparent attempts to blow smoke for him were laughable, as are Jean Pierre's excuses.

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Paul Harper's avatar

As Megyn Kelly notes - KJP claims that her book's sub-title "Inside a Broken WH actually refers to the Trump WH - wtf? Talk about incoherent! Failed professional prevaricator and dissembler unable to explain her own book title without notes. - KJP is auditioning for a seat on the View.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flEV3alInyA

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Ministryofbullshit's avatar

Date and odds of KJP getting a hosting gig at The View- January 2026. I’d place real money on that bet.

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Skenny's avatar

Very gameable. She's certainly an intellectual equal of the existing crew. In fact, she might be slightly too intellectual. But she's as full of shit as any of them.

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Ellen Evans's avatar

No bet from me, since she's renounced her DNC creds.

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Neo's avatar

When your ego writes a book, it doesn’t make sense.

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Frank Lee's avatar

I saw bit of her stint on The View. The thing that hit me listening to these chickens cackle so much irrational hogwash and intellectual dishonesty is that we will never be able to effectively communicate with aliens from another planet.

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EndOfTheRoad's avatar

Star Trek's universal translators would simply give up and initiate a self destruct sequence after three minutes of listening to current political discourse.

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Tardigrade's avatar

I wonder how well a Babel Fish would perform.

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An Inconvenient Truth's avatar

Don't give up hope on account of them; the first step to communicating with extraterrestrials is learning to communicate with Earth's very own cephalopods, which is MUCH more promising!

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Ellen Evans's avatar

It is likelier that those of us who still employ reason would find better converse with those from another planet than with some of our fellow earthlings.

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An Inconvenient Truth's avatar

No question; one thing I've noticed is that, in all my time travelling to other countries and also talking to foreigners online, ALL of my worst conflicts have been with my fellow Americans (or at least Anglophones; my worst interpersonal experience abroad with with a picture-perfect "Karen" on a train in Australia).

It almost seems as if the further afield I get, the more we get along.

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JD Free's avatar

Was the head injury from the ladder or from reading Karine Jean-Pierre?

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Bill Lacey's avatar

Hilarious!

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Madjack's avatar

What a tragedy that this corrupt, idiotic person was allowed in the White House outside of a tour. I don’t care that she is a woman, or black or “queer”. I care she is an incompetent fool.

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Trev Rink's avatar

So it's your view that nobody who's corrupt or idiotic should be allowed in the White House?

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EndOfTheRoad's avatar

I thought it was part of the job description.

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Glitterpuppy's avatar

Omg! That eliminates a lot of peeps

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Anti-Hip's avatar

If you're trying to frame Trump, remember it was our owners who channeled him into the White House in the first place. Among others, you had the Adelsons funding him on the right, while on the left the Democrats' press kept the spotlight on him. A majority of his voters simply held their noses to throw a Hail Mary pass, as in true Chomsky-BBC fashion, no one else would have ever made it that far.

So, yes, those who are corrupt or idiotic *should not* be allowed to work in the White House, and our owners should be ashamed of themselves, if not in jail or run out of the country.

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Ellen Evans's avatar

Well, ideally, yes.

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Nick Brown's avatar

The clear belief that blacks and specifically black women are superior to the rest of us is so appalling. That more people are not waking up to how racist the Left is makes me depressed.

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Elmore's avatar

Plus the clear belief that Democrats had a duty to follow the desires of Black women (she said that!)--who make up 6-7% of the US population. The other 94% is apparentlu irrelevant.

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rtj's avatar

Chevy Chase would have done an awesome Biden.

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Roger Holberg's avatar

From Matt's column: "turning every public ceremony into a potential Chevy Chase routine.". Hilarious! If SNL wasn't now just another Dem propaganda organ, and if it had good writing and performers, the Biden administration would have been a comedy goldmine. Alas, SNL missed the opportunity.

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rtj's avatar

Yep, great call by Matt.

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LosPer's avatar

Remember when Akroyd did a great Jimmy Carter?

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Roger Holberg's avatar

I do. That and Chevy Chase doing Ford, although unfair to Ford, was very funny as well. Those were the days!

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John Duffner's avatar

Possibly our most athletic president, but SNL turned him into a klutz in many people's minds.

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