Wingnuts are among the most entitled creatures on the planet. They meep endlessly about made-up oppression like the persecution of white Christian men, even though white Christian men have always been the most powerful group in the country. They feel entitled to validation by Hollywood elites and whine unceasingly about being disrespected by writers, artists, musicians, actors, etc.
But for my money, no wingnut entitlement is quite so annoying as the demand that feminists circle the wagons around a conservative woman who has spent her entire career helping powerful men denigrate and oppress women. Even if she’s legitimately a victim of sexism, it takes some goddamned nerve for a conservative woman to demand that the sisterhood kiss her boo-boo when she’s busily advancing a sexist goon’s agenda. She should at least have the fucking decency to accept the terms she’s trying to impose on the rest of us.
Making such demands based on a lie about sexism is even more galling. The latter spectacle has been on display all week, with liars and/or idiots misunderstanding a comic’s routine and shrieking like scalded wombats about a nonexistent insult to Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ looks at the WHCA dinner. Here’s a sample of an annoying demand for women to circle the wagons from another lying Trump mouthpiece:
Is an attack on one woman an attack on all women, or does it matter who the woman (women) are? https://t.co/hmQe9UQOJ8
— Kellyanne Conway (@KellyannePolls) May 1, 2018
Talia Lavin on Twitter wasn’t having any of Conway’s bullshit, and the multi-tweet smack-down response (rendered below in paragraph form) is a thing of beauty that not only vaporizes Conway’s dumb comment but gets to the heart of what feminism is with uncommon clarity:
no. you don’t get to work your entire life against women’s rights and advancement, work for the most poisonously anti-woman admin in modern memory, and then turn around and beg for faux-feminist solidarity.
Feminism means something. It is NOT a sugar-spun cloak of girl power. It’s not a pink ribbon on an expensive coat. It is a fight to be free. It is a liberation struggle and the wages of losing are death or worse. You don’t get to make me forget that. I will never forget that.
I will fight against anyone, male or female, who does not want me to be free. I will fight against anyone who wants womanhood to be a punishment. I will fight for my flesh and my blood and my soul to be free until I die.
Too many people think feminism is decorative, a sugar pill to be bottled and sold at a markup. I grew up in a religion that gender-segregated during prayer, that taught me my body was dirty and my mind inferior. I left. Feminism gave me that strength.
I have been raped and assaulted and groped and beaten, and I have had an easy life. So many women are suffering. So many are not free. And this is because of systems of power, political and social, that feminism’s white-hot core seeks to burn down.
We have to claim it. We have to own it. Feminism isn’t easy or simple. You can’t buy it and you’re not born into it because you’re female. You have to choose it. You have to take the power yourself. No one will give it to you.
A-fucking-men. Had the comedian at the WHCA dinner actually insulted Sanders’ appearance, feminists would have spoken up, even though Sanders, Conway, et al, are enablers and apologists for the grotesque sexist nightmare in the Oval Office. But their speaking up wouldn’t be what Lavin rightly calls “faux-feminist solidarity,” and it wouldn’t be out of any sense of obligation to those particular women; it would be part of the larger struggle for recognition of our full humanity. That battle goes on, regardless of the turncoat status of Sanders, Conway and every idiotic woman who voted for Trump.
sdhays
Flint still doesn’t have clean water.
Emma
A-fucking-men.
rikyrah
Mueller floated possibility of issuing subpoena to Trump: WaPo
Carol Leonnig, reporter for The Washington Post, talks with Rachel Maddow about new reporting that Robert Mueller threatened the possibility of using a subpoena to get answers from Donald Trump if Trump would not submit for an interview voluntarily.
MattF
It was just so unfair that a liberal made jokes about Sanders that didn”t involve her physical appearance.
rikyrah
Vance: Mueller subpoena talk unlikely without Rosenstein blessing
Joyce Vance, former U.S. attorney, talks with Rachel Maddow about news from the Washington Post that Robert Mueller suggested the possibility of issuing a subpoena for Donald Trump to appear before a grand jury, and points out that Mueller wouldn’t have presented that option without first having cleared with with Rod Rosenstein.
Shakti
It doesn’t actually have to be a wingnut; an obstensibly liberal man will do this too. I will never forget, that days after the election, a “liberal” white man misquoted Gandhi at me because I said I would get to defending Melania Trump after I defended myself and scores of other people who were going to be hurt by this administration. It was simply a matter of choosing battles, see. He started freaking out. He was lucky I wasn’t saying the other things on my mind.
JPL
@rikyrah: That would delay the investigation, and Trump might want that. His supporters won’t care though.
rikyrah
Rosenstein unintimidated by threats from Congress to remove him
Rachel Maddow shares video of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s dismissive treatment of a threat by Republicans in Congress to impeach him, and notes that the case those members of Congress are making hinges on the dubious merits of Carter Page.
rikyrah
Messages for Manafort, ex-Trump lawyer seen in Trump questions
Rachel Maddow takes another look at the questions the New York Times published on Monday that reportedly reflect what Robert Mueller wants to know from Donald Trump, and considers who would benefit from the insights available from the leak of those questions.
Miss Bianca
Yup. Amen to all of it.
How is little Badger McMurtry doing this morning, Betty? : )
Nicole
I think it’s because Michelle Wolf insulted things SHS actually DOES, rather than things over which she has no control, like her physical appearance, that has freaked out the media. They don’t know what to do about it because it’s so outside their frame of reference.
Funny thing to remember- Michelle Wolf DID insult someone based on their appearance. Chris Christie. But no one in the media is clutching pearls about that. Probably because he isn’t of any use to them.
germy
Has Dennis Miller come up with any witticisms yet about Ms. Wolf’s performance yet?
Maybe he’s still researching her?
Here’s an old comment:
rikyrah
BRAVO
BRAVO
BRAVO
Frankensteinbeck
@Nicole:
I do think this is involved. Somewhere in the mix of what’s going on is a media and a Republican Party for whom a woman’s looks and the fact that she’s a woman both are so important that they have difficulty grasping someone might be focused on something else.
Nicole
Also, in the, ah yes, white men gotta white men department- an acquaintance of mine today posted on FB how he met a nice girl that he liked, and they were talking Greek mythology, until she started spouting “nonsense” about Jason and the Argonauts, who, everyone knows, were not part of Greek mythology; they were invented by Ray Harryhausen for the 1963 movie (I know, I know. WUT). Several comments by (lady) friends later, pointing out that none of what he said was correct, he was reduced to wailing that everyone was being mean to him.
(I know, I know. #notallwhitemen )
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et Al.)
These people rival Calhoun and Davis and the others who dragged us into the Civil War for sheer appalling awfulness. Everything is so unrelentingly ugly and nasty and cruel. And there’s so much of it. It doesn’t end. How many “career ending” scandals have we seen, things that would have brought about the end of a Democratic presidency? And with this crew, all it is is one more thing in a long line of crimes and cons. This needs to end.
rikyrah
Principal Shanna Swearingen of @SpringISD (TX)
If a black special needs student runs potentially placing himself in harms way:
“I’m not going to chase him. I’ll call the police & TELL THEM HE HAS A GUN so they will come faster!”@RodneySpringISD why is she still employed? pic.twitter.com/7uwWXDRxlc
— S. Lee Merritt, Esq. (@MeritLaw) May 2, 2018
jeffreyw
Late feeding the birds this morning, mea culpa!
schrodingers_cat
@jeffreyw: Please not to feed the birds to your six kittehs!
Frankensteinbeck
@germy:
Wow. Just unpack that. The idea that Hillary might want to be president, just that desire itself, offends Miller as an obviously bad thing. Conservatives really are threatened by women seeking power. We hate Romney, and we have much scorn for his getting back into politics, but we never phrase it that way, with the subtext that the desire by itself is wrong.
rikyrah
#BREAKING:@DNC MUST INQUIRE from.@TXsecofstate as to why Texas’ UNVERIFIABLE E-Voting Machines ARE PACKED IN DEM STRONGHOLDS#TheResistanceVotes #unhackthevote #DNC #CNN #MSNBC #FoxNews #bbcnewshttps://t.co/3MwUktkl2R
— Emoluments Clause (@Emolclause) May 1, 2018
Platonailedit
Hold your big umbrella for me while I keep kicking you – every rethug
The Moar You Know
@germy: I love Dennis Miller. He’s what a stupid person thinks a smart, funny person sounds like.
To this random blast of idiocy the only reply is why? Would any “conservatives” vote for her if she did?
Thought not.
The only mistake Hillary Clinton made in her campaign was apologizing for anything. Especially the deplorables remark. That was some stone-cold obvious truth right there.
MattF
@Frankensteinbeck: Which, btw, totally justifies the harrassment of Chelsea Clinton.
Major Major Major Major
See also: people who only care about LGBT rights when the target is Milo/Peter Thiel/Caitlyn Jenner.
@Frankensteinbeck: As The Onion nailed in their old op-ed, Hillary Clinton is just too ambitious to do what no woman has ever done before.
gene108
Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ name irks the shit out of me. I am old enough to remember, when Hillary got shit, in the 1990’s, because she wanted to go by Hillary Rodham Clinton. How dare Hillary try to interject her maiden name into what people call her. What kind of shrill man-hating woman thinks her husband’s name isn’t good enough for her?
And now, 20 years later, Sarah uses her maiden name and no one batts a smokey-eyed eyelash at her.
Ambitious conservative women piggyback off the sacrifices feminists endured to move up the ladder of what they can achieve in a career, all the while trying to pull the ladder up behind them.
Also, too being addressed as Mrs. Sarah Sanders is a product of feminism. Prior to the 1960’s feminist revolution women, she would have been addressed as Mrs. Bryan Sanders; her name subsumed by her husband’s.
oatler.
Fuck ABC for keeping Meghan McCain on The View to keep it “Fair & Balanced”.
Jager
They work for and defend a guy who said to Corey Lewandowski, “Hope (Hicks) is the best piece of tail you’ve ever had!”
germy
MattF
@gene108: Also, the ‘Huckabee’ in her name is a call-out to the evangelical Right. So, they can say “She’s one of ours.”
germy
@gene108:
well, if her maiden name was “romney” she would have dropped it.
Yarrow
Michelle Wolf did us all a favor when she said Sarah Huckabee Sanders was Aunt Lydia. It’s a great shortcut name for women who support the patriarchy in keeping other women down.
Barbara
The only women that Kellyanne Conway ever bothers to defend from insults to their appearance, not to mention assaults on their person or their dignity, are the very specific subset of women who (a) are conservative and (b) have theoretically been victimized by people who are not conservative. Other than those special circumstances, women are fair game for anyone for any purpose. Which is to say, this is one of those many areas where an activity is perfectly acceptable except insofar as it can be used to attack feminists or liberals. Making money (George Soros) or spending your own money on campaigns (John Kerry) is another topic of asymmetrical ideological warfare.
The only pithy response I could make to Conway is something to the effect of, “Yeah, you’re right. Wolf should have grabbed Sanders by the p*ssy like your boss. Then everything would have been cool.”
Tony Jay
Bang on. Nail meet head.
Feminists didn’t go after Wolf because she called out Sanders for her deplorable words and actions. Wingnuts want to make this about ‘Liberal hypocrisy’ but, yet again, they’re just Crying Wolf.
………………………….
I’ll get my coat.
Juice Box
@Frankensteinbeck:
If you changed that to “conservatives and liberals (including some women)” I would agree with you.
ruemara
It’s the unmitigated gall of female conservatives calling themselves feminist & demanding feminist support that kills me. The only thing worse is when they get it.
SRW1
Dear Kellyanne,
The way it is, is that a con is a con.
jeffreyw
@schrodingers_cat:
It’s a self service buffet.
chopper
yeah that smokey eye comment was so much worse than trump’s “how can you vote for fiorina? she’s ugly!” bit amirite
MomSense
@Yarrow:
I was listening to her roast at the WHCD and thinking she would fit right in as a jackal. Calling SHS Aunt Lydia is perfect and pointing out how Pence fits in is also perfect. I call him Under His Eye Pence.
zhena gogolia
@Yarrow:
“smoky eye” seems to have more legs at the moment
chopper
@germy:
exactly. hilz needs to step forward every day and say the sort of stuff we think she needs to or she’s just the worst. also she needs to shut up and go away forever.
Aleta
@MomSense: I’m in awe of the skill and brains behind her routine, and the courage it took to deliver.
randy khan
If it wasn’t obvious before, this tweet makes it crystal clear that Ms. Conway doesn’t know much about feminism.
germy
@Aleta: I read somewhere that when Michelle Wolf arrived at an afterparty (a real afterparty with her friends) they greeted her with shouts of “Lock her up!”
gvg
@gene108: No, at first she did go by Sanders, but with Bernie Sanders running and still pontificating, it was too confusing. I actually appreciated when people started calling her Huckabee Sanders after a little while. It actually helped the news make more sense and prevented misplaced outrage.
The context is at this moment, there are too many Sanders.
I am assuming they aren’t even related, but does anyone actually know?
randy khan
@gene108:
I think there are some circumstances in which the etiquette rules would permit Mrs. Sarah Sanders, although none of them apply to her right now.
That said, in practice women did not always follow the official etiquette rule even in the early part of the 20th century. My wife and I took a drive along the historic scenic highway that follows the Columbia River in Oregon last summer. (Highly recommended, by the way.) At the first overlook, there was a plaque from the women’s club that was important in the development of the road, and it was interesting to how many variations there were in how married women gave their names. On the other hand, when I was in high school I won some kind of award from the local Daughters of the American Revolution chapter, and all of them were Mrs. [husband’s first and last name].
Elizabelle
@zhena gogolia:
Smoky Eye = Lying Mouth
zhena gogolia
@randy khan:
That highway is amazing!
schrodingers_cat
While the WH press corpse was upset about the imaginary insults lobbed at the liar who lies to them everyday, the President was demonizing all immigrants at the exact same time, in his Nazi rally in Michigan.
Mnemosyne
@MomSense:
I feel a little bit sorry for Ann Dowd, the actress who plays Aunt Lydia, because the first attempt to pretend that Wolf was insulting Sanders’ looks was a lot of sneering about how “ugly” Dowd is. She is not, though she plays a character who is very ugly thanks to her beliefs and actions. It’s called acting, morons.
JPL
@Mnemosyne: I doubt that Sarah read the book or watched the show.
kindness
Having given it a couple of days for the dust to settle, I’m not really offended at Kelly Anne or Sarah. They lie & obfuscate for a living. I’m offended at our Vishy press who took what they knew to be a truthful statement of Administrative lying as a matter of policy and tried to turn it into an insult of a woman’s looks. There is no way any of Michelle Wolf’s lines attacked Sarah’s looks but attacked her constant lying and yet all too many swallowed to codswallup hook line and sinker. Vishy is the correct term for these people.
Frankensteinbeck
@Juice Box:
We did decisively nominate Hillary and deliver 3 million more votes for her than her opponent, so I’m going to call ‘threatened by women seeking power’ a problem within our ranks, but not a majority liberal issue. It seems thickest on the flanks of the party who claim to be liberal but don’t vote Democrat anyway.
Mnemosyne
@JPL:
It wasn’t Sanders doing the sneering — it was the members of the press. They shut up pretty quickly once they realized that it might not be a great idea to make people curious about that show and how it might relate to the Trump/Pence administration.
Mnemosyne
@kindness:
Ahem. “Vichy.” Reference to the French government that collaborated with the Nazis which had its capital in Vichy, France.
bemused
@oatler.:
Wingnuts are really the biggest whiners. Poor Meghan puts her foot in her mouth so often. She just can’t fathom why liberals don’t understand what she is getting at, groan, laugh and poke holes in her feeble arguments.
The Other Chuck
@kindness: Vichy. Just so you know :)
dww44
@rikyrah: I listened to that and what I gleaned is that Leonnig was popping the balloon of liberals who believe that Mueller’s issuing a subpoena would actually result in getting Trump in front of a grand jury.. That that March meeting of Trump’s attorneys with Mueller and team was more a legal dance for positioning by both sides and that Mueller could actually choose to not issue a subpoena but rather just report his findings and let the political system take over.
There was a lot of discussion emphasizing that this is as much a political issue as a legal one So, the outcome next November is even more important, albeit that Trump is now predicting that the GOP will hold the house.
Mandarama
Betty, I love you. You deserve all the puppy happiness. And to bathe in the tears of our enemies.
That is all.
bemused
@randy khan:
There is a small town, weekly paper in my area that has three columns written by women from surrounding rural communities that give news about residents, their trips and activities, people ill, born or died, etc. One writer really puzzled me because she always addresses women and Mrs or Miss Smith in 2018! I might expect that from an elderly, old school senior citizen but she’s probably in her 40’s. Then she wrote about her conservative church and her comments explained her old-fashioned writing style.
Villago Delenda Est
@Nicole: Dumbshit deserves all the shit slung at him. Idiot.
the Conster
@dww44:
Mueller isn’t going to save us. We have to save ourselves. Half the country is fine with treason, so I’m not even sure voting is going to do it since the systems are so vulnerable to hacking. I’ve actually come to believe that nothing short of mounting a sustained occupation of DC – like, literally, physically surrounding the buildings of Congress and the White House like Occupy did in other places – will work.
Brachiator
The lie about an “attack” on Sanders is a tiresome distraction. It is great to see the pushback on this.
Great post and great comments by Talia Lavin.
The Moar You Know
This would just be such a wonderful time to break out some of those purple bandaids that the wingnuts were plastering themselves with during the 2004 convention. Conway and Huckabee can each get a box.
@sdhays: Flint won’t have clean water before I die of old age. You can take that to the bank, unfortunately. GOP feds and GOP state will make sure of it.
scav
it’s simply a gross miscaricature of feminism to reduce to “All girls ganging up to respond to any attack against another girl.” That’s how they — the mostly male opposotion (for lack of a better word) — would like to characterize it as: just a gang of knee-jerk wimminz knee-jerkily going after the non-wimminz in a zero-sum binary warfare scenario.
Frankensteinbeck
@dww44:
Well, that’s sure enough for me.
Aleta
Whenever T’s gang deliver viciousness and lies, the words appear print and video on mainstream news, repeating all over the internet. To hear a speech on CSPAN you (normally) have to specifically tune in to CSPAN, or take time the next day to find it. (The entertainment-world buildup for Wolf shortly before the dinner doesn’t come close to the administration’s loudspeaker.)
Imbalance of power from the start for her speech. That’s another of the differences between her act and their daily offenses.
But then—her points being dangerous—the RW just had to attack her and distort her. The press covers them, along with a few defenders. They RW tries to manufacture and store advantage, but in responding they’re losing some strength they had at the start.
cynthia ackerman
@zhena gogolia:
I live on it, just outside Mosier.
The Moar You Know
@bemused: I do this as well, no church involved. With men as well. It’s simply respectful.
You may find it of interest that most public schools have a policy forbidding teachers from having students address them by their first names.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@the Conster: @the Conster:
Roy Moore wishes this had been true in Alabama last year. #takeheartandkickass #nomoregloom&doom
MomSense
@Mnemosyne:
INORITE she is wearing a severe hairstyle, a no makeup makeup look, and her character is reprehensible which all add up to ugly. It’s why I find Sarah Palin so ugly. It’s not the outside. It’s the inside.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Frankensteinbeck: He is a political genius, after all…
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Personally, watching it over my working career, I think women’s rights have been hijacked as weapon for women 1%ers. There is something seriously wrong in a world were you can get written up for screaming the F-bomb when something falls on your foot while the CEO can turn the secretary pool into his private full service dating service. I really think the Carly Fiona’s of the world warped harassment so they can use it as something to attack male subordinates they don’t personally like while as the same time have an excuse for these women’s own failures.
SHS claiming sexism when called out on being a lying sack of shit fits that.
Timurid
OBSTRUCTION INTENSIFIES
low-tech cyclist
This is dumbass in ways that go well beyond Betty’s excellent critique. If someone said this to me in conversation, I’d just roll my eyes and walk away, it’s so dumb.
Dear Kellyanne: Feminism means (among many other things!) that women’s words and deeds should be evaluated and critiqued on the same basis as men’s, by women and men alike.
Women aren’t exempt from critiques from other women just because they’re women. If you think that’s what feminists believe, you’re an idiot.
(Kellyanne doesn’t actually believe this, of course. She’s just trying to avoid losing an argument by throwing bullshit into it. But she’s still an idiot.)
the Conster
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon:
If it’s not the Russians, it’s the voter ID laws, the broken machines, the reduced polling places, the shortened voting times, etc etc that Republicans know they need to enforce to win.
Yarrow
@zhena gogolia: It does, but I think Aunt Lydia will be a very useful shorthand for the kind of woman SHS is. The one who polices other women in service of the patriarchy.
@MomSense: Exactly. I mentioned yesterday that I have seen a few photos of SHS with her husband, one from before they were married. I didn’t even recognize her because she looks so happy. That’s telling.
dww44
@the Conster: While I wouldn’t go this far, I just got off the phone with the broker who manages our retirement assets, While he said that while he avoids bringing up politics with his customers, they all come in and say that Trump is doing a great job and they’d vote for him again. The somewhat apolitical broker said that if the election were held tomorrow Trump would win.
None of them have any problem with the moral, ethical and character deficiencies of our reality show President. It is truly depressing, even more so when I recall how both Obama and Clinton were treated.
Betty Cracker
@The Moar You Know: It’s the Miss or Mrs. rather than Ms. that’s puzzling.
Aardvark Cheeselog
Preach!
Sanders didn’t get attacked as a woman for being a woman. She got attacked as a liar for lying.
catclub
@dww44:
In this case, the report can be buried in DOJ. Not that it will, but it could be. There is nothing to force release of report in the statute.
zhena gogolia
@cynthia ackerman:
Lucky you! The scenery looks like pictures in a children’s storybook.
Betty Cracker
@Miss Bianca: He’s learning not to BITE people! :)
Juice Box
@Frankensteinbeck: There’s just a lot of cadual sexism out there: Hillary “the flawed candidate” vs. John McCain “the war hero” — one lost on a technicality, the other one just lost. Only one of them is told to go away. Many so-called supporters of the #metoo movement became very vocal about the need to “protect” and “cherish” women rather than admit that women are perfectly capable of protecting themselves — those of us who stand up for ourselves are “unwomanly”. It’s been a bad period for women.
zhena gogolia
@dww44:
His info is irrelevant. We need to get the people who didn’t vote last time.
Aleta
@scav: Such a good point. I thought first of her hypocrisy in ignoring 20 years of attacks on HRC, and 8+ (and counting) against FL MO. KAC’s warped definition invalidates any conservative claim of feminism. But as you point out, it’s an attempt to undermine feminists. By extension, to try to undermine the activists who point out the number of GOP abusers who T has put in power.
Aardvark Cheeselog
@dww44: People who have brokers are not a representative sample.
Brachiator
@JPL:
Mike Pence wife lives it. Or Pence wishes she would.
Aleta
@jeffreyw: What a handsome and diverse group. Nice cheerful photo.
eclare
@Mnemosyne: Ann Dowd was lovely on Colbert.
J R in WV
@gene108:
“And now, 20 years later, Sarah uses her maiden name and no one batts a smokey-eyed eyelash at her.”
Well, but no one would know who Sarah Sanders was if she didn’t stick that Huckleberry name in the middle, to remind everyone that she’s from the child abuse, dog torturer, multi-child family AND that her dad was Gov. of Arkansas who pardoned a Saved by Jeesus Christ criminal who then went on a spree of raping and killing worse than Willie Horton ever dreamed of.
So that’s why it’s OK for Sarah Huckabee Sanders to use her maiden name in the middle of her name. Plus she’s a stay at home mother conservative woman, so everything is OK for her… right? Right???
Aleta
@Betty Cracker: Puppy teeth, so good at piercing the hand that nears them.
dww44
@zhena gogolia: Well, not sure that his info is all that irrelevant, certainly not where I live. It’s relevant to the fact that I cannot believe that the party of personal responsibility not only elected this guy but remains enamored of him. Perhaps there are enough persuadables in other parts of the country who will vote Democratic in November, but I’m not seeing it here.
dww44
@Aardvark Cheeselog: If you are retired, you likely do. A goodly number of us had 401-K’s as our sole retirement assets, since there are no longer any defined benefit pension plans.
zhena gogolia
@dww44:
The people I know who voted for Trump are keeping their heads firmly in the sand. They pay no attention to his outrages. We have to motivate the people who are paying attention (and who weren’t really paying attention last time, or just assumed Hillary would win).
Frankensteinbeck
@the Conster:
As with the last argument, they broke out every single thing they could think of, in the most conservative state there is, and Moore lost. Yes, he was a horrific candidate. Irrelevant, except to make it a fight. The demonstration that Republicans and their allies don’t have enough cheating power to stop a wave is clear. Obstacles to voting are a big deal, but we can do this.
@dww44:
So? The anecdote of the people you see around you in person is just that, an anecdote. It might as well be a prediction Romney will win based on yard signs. The pattern of the special elections is not only shockingly clear, it’s intensifying.
Mnemosyne
@the Conster:
We can win back the House just by flipping currently Republican House seats in blue states like California and New York. I think Massachusetts still has a few R House members, too.
Flipping the House is not dependent on red states playing fair. That’s why the Republicans are freaking the fuck out.
Shana
@gvg: Don’t know, but PBS’s Finding Your Roots discovered that Larry David and Bernie Sanders actually are distantly related.
WhatsMyNym
@dww44: The downside of defined benefit pension plans is that you’re betting your company will survive longer than you, which is unlikely. You can take a 401k, and buy annuities and bonds that will support you for longer. That’s what my Dad did and my Mother has a pretty decent income even though my Dad didn’t make that much as a scientist.
JoeyJoeJoe Junior Shabadoo
@Mnemosyne: There’s actually only one left in all of New England- Bruce Poliquin from northern Maine. Massachusetts hasn’t elected a Republican to the House since 1994.
Tenar Arha
@Yarrow: I’ve always thought of some conservative career women as Serena Joys because they’re interested in increasing their wealth and power by whatever means necessary. I always thought Aunt Lydias were the ones who also took pleasure in the gaslighting, the thrill of male power they were entrusted with, that essential sadism of it all that is putting one over on other women.
Which is why Sarah is an Aunt Lydia, but I’m not quite sure about Kellyanne. Is she a Lydia or a Serena? Maybe it’s simply because she looks like she’s drying up & about to blow away, but I’m not sure she’s quite as comfortable with the gaslighting sadism of SHS. There’s also something weird about her response when her husband’s Twitter feed was brought up last week….Basically she’s not an ally, she’ll never be an ally, but I think she’s beginning to realize she’s making herself irrelevant, that she will now always be irrelevant, & that’s exactly what happened to Serena Joy once Gilead was declared.
Tenar Arha
@Mnemosyne: As noted above, no Republicans left at all in Mass delegation. Stephen Lynch is about as “conservative” as we get.
Which don’t get me wrong, if you look at the maps of the voting returns for the Brown vs. Warren election…parts south of Boston can be conservative. However, I hope Scott Brown is the last national GOP legislator for a long time. If only because Massachusetts realizes that if we send a GOP’er to DC, they end up voting with the extremists against the interests of the state.
Bonnie
Good commentary, Betty.
debbie
Anyone who listened to Terri Gross’s interview with Michelle Wolf yesterday knows that SHS was being dickish the entire evening. Prior to the televised segment, journalism awards were handed out. People stood up and applauded the winners; SHS pointedly did neither. There’s some context for the evening. SHS’s “simmering” wasn’t the result of Wolf’s remarks. Like Pence’s walking out of an earlier DC gathering, this was preplanned. I guarantee it.
NorthLeft12
This is the kind of equality that MLK always wanted, fought for, and died for…….where you are judged on your actions and the content of your character.
Unfortunately for Republicans and other rightwing nut jobs too cowardly or stupid to call themselves Republicans, that does not work out well for them.
sukabi
@bemused: I think she’s lost several IQ points and developed a chronic whine since she married Virgin Ben last summer.