www.grandforksherald.com
I spit laughed.
It's some impressive denial.
jesus christ, these people are mind numbingly stupid and stubborn.
After more than four decades working in the paper industry, Gaetano “Guy” Spinelli poured his life savings into developing an eco-friendly yet durable paper straw and opened his company, Boss Straw, in Woodstock in 2021.
Then in February, President Donald Trump signed an executive order promoting plastic straws while declaring that paper straws “don’t work.”
“I’ve had them many times. On occasion they break. They explode,” Trump said. “If something’s hot, they don’t last very long, like a matter of minutes, sometimes a matter of seconds. It’s a ridiculous situation.”
The president’s rant incensed Spinelli, who had voted for Trump in November. Business immediately dropped following the executive order.
“He’s put me from a profitable picture to a nonprofitable company,” Spinelli said. “And my product is a strong product. I’ve got a paper straw that lasts two weeks in any drink, hot or cold,” without compromising taste.
Despite the recent hit to his company, the 75-year-old business owner said that if he could go back, he would still cast a ballot for Trump in the 2024 presidential election.
“Outside of what he did to me, I think he’s doing a pretty good job,” Spinelli said.
...
Nemer, who was born in Lebanon and had been a loyal Democrat, instead voted for Trump, who penned a letter in late October to the Lebanese American community pledging a commitment to peace in Lebanon and the rest of the Middle East. A few days before the election, Trump met with Arab American leaders in Dearborn, Michigan, the nation’s biggest Arab-majority city, where Nemer resides.
But she grew alarmed in February, when Trump proposed the evacuation of millions of Palestinians from Gaza, with plans to turn it into a “Riviera of the Middle East.” In March, Trump shared an AI-generated video depicting “Trump Gaza,” featuring him and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sunbathing together.
The Trump administration has also targeted college campus protesters who demonstrate against Israel and the war, threatening some with deportation. But on Friday, the government reversed course on student visa terminations amid a barrage of legal challenges to the policy.
“Our freedom of expression, freedom of demonstration and just overall liberties are at stake,” she said.
Yet even in hindsight, Nemer doesn’t think she could have voted differently.
“We weren’t getting that empathy from the Democratic Party, unfortunately,” she said. “But Republicans are almost making the same mistake now.”
...
The United States appropriated or otherwise made available around $180 billion in aid for Ukraine since the full-scale invasion. But shipments of weapons were stalled by internal debates within the Biden administration over the possibility of Russian escalation — delays that Alik Kasman of Buffalo Grove believes proved debilitating for the military of the nation of his birth.
“President Biden … understands, or seemed to understand, the nature of the war. He committed to helping Ukraine,” said Kasman, an activist for military aid for Ukraine, who was born in Kyiv. “However, we have seen that his material support, actual weapons transfer to Ukraine, were not nearly sufficient.”
Moscow was counting on a quick victory and not ready for prolonged resistance; if Ukraine had immediately received everything Congress allocated, Kasman contends that “the war could have been finished.”
During the 2024 presidential race, Kasman didn’t see any good options for Ukraine on the ballot. He voted for Trump, hoping for a change in the status quo.
“Kamala Harris did not indicate that she would do anything different than President Biden would have … a cautious supply of weapons that would prolong the war but would not lead to any decisive outcome.,” he added.
In February, Trump called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a “dictator” while falsely claiming he started the war. During a contentious White House meeting later that month, Trump berated Zelenskyy and declared himself “in the middle” and not either the side of Ukraine or Russia in the war.
Kasman said he is not happy with Trump. But he doesn’t believe the alternative would have been better.
“As an advocate for Ukraine, it is much easier to deal with Trump because I can go to (Washington, D.C.) and I can contradict his point of view,” he said. “Whereas with Biden, that was a much more difficult task. I had to go and explain why I believe Biden is saying one thing and doing something else.”
...
A few days after the election, J. Marcos Peterson wrote a Chicago Tribune letter to the editor explaining why he — a self-described gay, first-generation Mexican American with family members in the U.S. without legal permission — voted for Trump.
The letter took Democrats to task for failing to build coalitions, botching the economy and mishandling the southern border. The opinion piece also expressed ire at the Biden administration’s fast-tracked work permits and other assistance for recently-arrived migrants.
“Seeing my undocumented family members, who have been in the U.S. for more than 20 years, work, pay taxes and buy their own homes with zero benefits, then watching millions of new migrants skip the line with government funded help, only enflamed me and other Latinos like me,” he said in the letter.
As the first hundred days of Trump’s second term come to a close, Peterson said he’s been generally pleased.
“Everything he promised to do, he’s doing,” Peterson said during a phone interview.
...
its staggering, really.
As long as these people continue to get their "news" from Tiktok, X and Facebook, nothing is going to change. I don't think Dems have any hopes of regaining a lot of these voters until the messaging vehicles change.
But most of all ... FOX
News. That's the primary conduit for idiocy in our country.
Or maybe we just have too many idiots, racists, bigots, Christian nationalists and greedy assholes in this country.
Urine
It’s hard to admit being wrong especially when your choice has put the entire world in a bad place.
As with so many, they only see what he did to them and not what he's doing to everyone.
After more than four decades working in the paper industry, Gaetano “Guy” Spinelli poured his life savings into developing an eco-friendly yet durable paper straw and opened his company, Boss Straw, in Woodstock in 2021.
Then in February, President Donald Trump signed an executive order promoting plastic straws while declaring that paper straws “don’t work.”
“I’ve had them many times. On occasion they break. They explode,” Trump said. “If something’s hot, they don’t last very long, like a matter of minutes, sometimes a matter of seconds. It’s a ridiculous situation.”
The president’s rant incensed Spinelli, who had voted for Trump in November. Business immediately dropped following the executive order.
“He’s put me from a profitable picture to a nonprofitable company,” Spinelli said. “And my product is a strong product. I’ve got a paper straw that lasts two weeks in any drink, hot or cold,” without compromising taste.
Despite the recent hit to his company, the 75-year-old business owner said that if he could go back, he would still cast a ballot for Trump in the 2024 presidential election.
“Outside of what he did to me, I think he’s doing a pretty good job,” Spinelli said.
...
Peterson said during a phone interview.
...
+1. While I don't doubt that Fox and other right-wing media have played a huge role in brainwashing Trumpers, I also think a good percentage of his supporters know they screwed up but out of pure mulish pride will never publicly admit it. To do so would be to admit that their enemies and critics were right all along and that they were wrong. To admit they were wrong about Trump would mean that "librul elitists", loathed college-educated experts, RINOs like Cheney and Romney, and pretty much everyone they hate were right, and they'll never let that happen. I've met people over the years that I honestly think would rather die than admit they were wrong about something, and my guess is that some Trump supporters likely fall into this category.
How do we know the toothbrush was invented in West Virginia?Sara Busse needed to make a hot meal for 40 needy seniors. She had promised a main dish, a starch, a vegetable, a fruit and a dessert.After Trump Aid Cuts, Food Banks Scrounge and Scrimp
In one of the country’s poorest areas, the quantity and quality of government deliveries have dropped, forcing one charity to make do with thin soup and dried cranberries.www.nytimes.com
In the past, she had gotten many of those ingredients for free from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
This time, she had dried cranberries, crackers and vegetable soup.
“What am I supposed to do?” she said. “What am I supposed to cook?”
Earlier this year, the Trump administration cut about $1 billion in federal aid to anti-hunger groups, according to the national advocacy group Feeding America.
That put more pressure on charitable organizations that distribute groceries or meals to hold up their corner of the American safety net, dipping into reserves and scrounging for donations to replace the food they had lost.
Ms. Busse’s charity in the shadow of West Virginia’s Capitol illustrates this struggle in miniature. Trinity’s Table serves meals at a senior gathering, a child-care center and a women’s shelter, all to people living in or near poverty. For many of her clients, Ms. Busse said, this may be the heartiest meal of the week — and perhaps the only one of the day.
In the past few months, Ms. Busse had already spent $10,000 — a third of her group’s savings — to keep the meals going, replacing the ingredients the government was no longer providing.
She said she had begun to feel as if she were trapped in some grim reality cooking show, forced to turn a dwindling supply of federal aid into 600 meals a week, for as long she could.
...
The Agriculture Department began helping food banks this way in the 1980s, with a program that served a dual purpose: It provided nutritional items to needy individuals but also propped up prices for U.S. farmers, by buying their goods and then giving them away.
During his first term, President Trump did not cut this aid; he increased it, sharply, to accommodate farm surpluses caused by his trade wars and the hunger that followed the Covid-19 pandemic. Spending on food aid quadrupled, to $3 billion in 2020.
This time, however, Mr. Trump’s administration did the opposite. It canceled about $1 billion in food aid announced last fall by President Joseph R. Biden Jr., according to Feeding America. Feeding America said that, before those cuts, it had projected that the government would spend $2 billion on aid to food banks this fiscal year.
...
The sudden cutbacks hit hard in Appalachia, where hunger is especially prevalent and government aid plays an outsize role in fighting it.
Food banks in cities typically get 25 percent or less of their food from the Agriculture Department. They have other options: donations from big-box stores and grocery distribution centers, wealthy benefactors and companies.
Not here.
Facing Hunger Foodbank, which supplies groceries to food pantries and charity kitchens in the southern half of West Virginia, relied on the government for about 40 percent of its food.
It had been expecting 16 truckloads from the government for April. Then 11 of those were canceled, said Cyndi Kirkhart, the food bank’s chief executive.
I didn’t enjoy “liking” this post; but, the post is accurate as hell.
