Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

Another missed opportunity for Jamie Dimon to just shut the fuck up.

If you are in line to indict donald trump, stay in line.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

I’m more Christian than these people and I’m an atheist.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

It’s easier to kill a dangerous animal than a man who just happens to have different thoughts/values than one’s own.

Cole, when it comes to calico cats, restraint is overrated.

Found liable for massive fraud, is required to post a massive bond, gets a break, then files a *fraudulent* bond!

The US Supreme Court is on the ballot in november.

Republicans can’t even be trusted with their own money.

Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.

Balloon Juice, where there is always someone who will say you’re doing it wrong.

In short, I come down firmly on all sides of the issue.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

“That’s what the insurrection act is for!”

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

People are complicated. Love is not.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

You are here: Home / Civil Rights / Friday Evening Open Thread: Sometimes Things *Do* Improve…

Friday Evening Open Thread: Sometimes Things *Do* Improve…

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Yeah, vaping isn’t a great substitute. But on the other hand, if you’re old like me, you can remember when expectant fathers smoking in the maternity wards was so common as to be a joke trope. Change for the better happens, even while sometimes it feels like we’re stuck in an endless loop of reactionary backlash.

Reader Interactions

91Comments

  1. 1.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

     

    Yeah, vaping isn’t a great substitute.

    In Ohio at least, if IIRC, the new tobacco law covers vaping too. 21 and older.

  5. 5.

    ThresherK

    The current Vice President wrote an op-ed about how there’s no link between cancer and smoking *in 2000.*

    Huh. They grow tobacco in Indiana?

  8. 8.

    Brachiator

    The FDA has officially raised the age to buy tobacco from 18 to 21

    If you can join the military at 18, vote at 18, you should be able to buy tobacco.

    I have never smoked, never worked for or owned stock in a tobacco company, and support tobacco taxes and anti-smoking campaigns. In my old age, I have become more lenient with respect to some vices.

    I think you can buy cannabis at 18 in California. And yes, it is probably much less harmful than tabacky, but still…

  11. 11.

    KithKanan

    @Brachiator: 

    I think you can buy cannabis at 18 in California.

    No, it’s definitely 21 for recreational use. It might be 18 with a doctor’s recommendation, I’m less sure of that.

  12. 12.

    James E Powell

    Does everyone remember this?

    In 1995 a bill was introduced that would abolish a yearly $49 million giveaway of taxpayer money to tobacco companies. During the vote on whether or not to do away with the subsidy, Boehner circulated the House floor literally handing out campaign checks from tobacco companies to his fellow members.

    While Boehner dolled out the dough lobbyists for Big Tobacco swarmed the House floor, bullying members as the vote grew near.

  14. 14.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    Kitten Update:

    The humans in the house have been sick with the horrible coughing cold that’s been laying people out. (I know two people who had it turn into pneumonia.) And Carlos the Garage Cat has been sick and had to be kenneled in the spare room so we could get his daily medication into him.

    So please forgive us for not noticing that the kittens have gotten a bit … round.

    We’re still working out how to balance our need for sleep against the need to cut way back on free feeding.

    Once the Christmas boxes go back to storage, there will be lots of games of red-dot in the kittens’ future. (Right now, the hallways are kinda clogged.) They have started climbing the big cat trees, much to the dismay of the Vorwiggles twins, who had been using the trees to escape the constant demands for play time from the Underfeet.

  17. 17.

    Scout211

    @KithKanan:

    Yes, age 21 in California and doctor’s prescription required between the ages of 18 and 21. Age 21 for tobacco in California, too.  That was raised in 2016.

  20. 20.

    WaterGirl

    Imagine the uproar if this had happened under Democratic watch.  They are taking away our liberties!  They are coming for our cigarettes!  This is the end of the world!

  22. 22.

    zhena gogolia

    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:

    College classrooms were all equipped with little blue, green, and red metal ashtrays. I remember them vividly. (I’ve never smoked, so it was annoying to me to have classrooms filled with smoke. Mostly a problem in English classes.)

  23. 23.

    Aleta

    @Mary G: “increasing fears”

    What kind of people don’t get worried until they’re caught or close to it ?   A:  criminals, sociopaths or ones who believe they’re protected

  24. 24.

    Yarrow

    @Brachiator:

    If you can join the military at 18, vote at 18, you should be able to buy tobacco.

    The next thing they’ll come after is raising the voting age. Wouldn’t want those young people being able to vote for things that impact their futures.

  25. 25.

    Starfish

    @Brachiator: Libertarian nonsense is what people use to come to the defense of garbage like this. However, a lot of these actions affect other people. For example, with smoking, people were having more health incidents due to second-hand smoke. It was an occupational hazard for people who worked in restaurants.

    A lot of people where I live are using Libertarian arguments to defend their anti-vaccine stances, and that is another situation where personal choices affect other people.

  27. 27.

    chopper

    @zhena gogolia:

    that musta been great in medical school. everyone’s smoking in class and the professor’s all “today we’re going to be talking about that crazy ‘lung fever’ that seems to be going around…”

  29. 29.

    Roger Moore

    @David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:

    where did you put the ashes?

    Many of the older lecture halls at my alma mater had ashtrays at each seat.  People just accepted smoking everywhere as normal to the point that everyone was expected to do things to make smoking as easy as possible.  One way was to put ashtrays everywhere.  Even non-smokers were expected to have them available in case they had guests who smoked.

  31. 31.

    hells littlest angel

    @ThresherK:They grow tobacco in Indiana?

     

    No but they passed out checks from the tobacco lobby in the House (before pence’s time, but still …).

  33. 33.

    hells littlest angel

    The BBC drama Call The Midwife, set in the 1950s and ’60s,  commonly has scenes of patients, nurses and doctors smoking cigarettes in hospitals and doctors’ offices. It never fails to jar me.

  35. 35.

    Brachiator

    @Starfish:

    Libertarian nonsense is what people use to come to the defense of garbage like this.

    I am not a libertarian. I don’t, for example, favor the legalization of all drugs.  But I definitely favored the legalization of cannabis in California.

  38. 38.

    Catherine D.

    @Starfish: Even vaping has a second hand effect, and the contents of vape juice have microscopic metal particles. I work with a K-12 science program that uses ciliates to show the effects of alcohol, tobacco and vaping, and the smoked vape liquid kills the cells faster than tobacco and beer.

  39. 39.

    hells littlest angel

    Weirdest weird-but-true thing about tobacco use once being acceptable and normal: ashtrays on elevators.

  40. 40.

    NotMax

    @Nicole

    Put it another way – if they’re deemed old enough to make a choice for president, then they’re old enough to make a choice about smoking.

  41. 41.

    ET

    Big tobacco has fallen in stature to a place that their bullying isn’t as effective, so maybe the NRA could be the next target?

  42. 42.

    WaterGirl

    @Yarrow: Yep, exactly.  If they are doing something that looks to be good, look for the plan behind the plan that’s behind it, and you will find the ulterior motive.

    They are truly evil, and they (unfortunately) have some smart people who play the game several steps ahead.

  45. 45.

    Brachiator

    @Yarrow:

    The next thing they’ll come after is raising the voting age. Wouldn’t want those young people being able to vote for things that impact their futures.

    When I was trying to keep up with the BREXIT news in the UK, I ran across this little tidbit about voting over there:

    You can vote when you’re:

    • 18 years old in England, Wales and Northern Ireland
    • 16 years old in Scottish Parliament and local elections (and other elections when you’re 18)
  46. 46.

    Another Scott

    @Cacti: Yes, and no.

    I remember the “cool kids” smoking during breaks in middle school in the mid-70s (with the acceptance of the school teachers and administrators).

    Smoking isn’t something that most people can easily take or leave.  It is a drug delivery system that is specifically designed to get people hooked on nicotine.  It’s not a choice like hairstyle or what color shirt to wear.  It is dangerous to people’s health and safety (burning down houses, etc.), even to people who don’t partake.

    And we know that human brains don’t stop developing until sometime around age 25.  As such, I’d probably be fine with pushing the drinking and smoking age off to 25, myself, though the details would matter.

    These things have little relation to joining the military, IMHO.  Most people who join the Army don’t actually go out and kill people – it’s an avenue for training and a job.

    I especially don’t like that the “my freedom to do what I want as an adult” arguments are often tied up with big industries who are more than happy to take the profits and have no care for the consequences (cancer, stroke, surgery in smoking; alcoholism, surgery in drinking; burned out stoners in marijuana; bankrupted, broke, destroyed families in gambling; etc.).

    To be clear: I don’t like the overbearing nanny state either, but the choice isn’t between that and some glorious free choice.  Yes, there are consequences in prohibition and age restrictions and getting the balance right is hard – maybe impossible.  But when vast amounts of money is involved, the field isn’t level.

    My $0.02.

    Cheers,

    Scott.

  51. 51.

    West of the Rockies

    I wonder if it ever happens that a yiung person, growing up in s conservative home suddenly realizes, “Holy shit, I’m wrong about every damn thing:  science, race, sexuality, economics, diplomacy…”

  53. 53.

    trollhattan

    @Another Scott:

    Nicotine addiction is one of the most powerful, whatever the form, and it cannot be made “safe,” only delivered in forms more or less immediately deadly.We put up with it only because it’s been around so long. Today it would probably be introduced as a “supplement” in an attempt to avoid regulation. I wonder how that would go?

  55. 55.

    JaySinWA

    @James E Powell: Ah yes I remember the tobacco check episode now. Paul Ryan managed make Boehner at least look effective, if not good. Open graft in the good ole days! There was a brief period of pout-rage in the media, and then it was as if it never happened.

  56. 56.

    germy

    Tobacco companies diversified into selling candy, chocolate and other stuff.

    Maybe the gun manufacturers can branch out into selling garden implements?

  57. 57.

    NotMax

    @dnfree

    For now.

    Climate change is already putting production and cost pressures on the supply of coffee in significant parts of the world’s ‘bean belt’ of coffee producing countries. Increasing temperatures and extreme weather events will cut the area suitable for production by up to 50 per cent, erode coffee quality and increase coffee prices for consumers….
    [snip]
    “Without strong climate action, the areas suitable for growing coffee could halve in a few decades, pushing production upslope, away from the equator and into conflict with other land uses, such as nature conservation and forestry. By 2080 wild coffee, an important genetic resource for farmers, could be extinct.” Source

  59. 59.

    The Golux

    Regarding old smoking practices, I can remember way, way back in the aughts when Connecticut declared that bars were smoke-free zones.  I thought it would kill the night clubs, but folks still needed their booze.

    It completely changed my return home from a gig.  Before, I’d take off all my clothes before going into the bedroom, to spare my wife (most of) the tobacco stench.  I didn’t notice it too much while actually at the club, but I could tell that I reeked when I got home.

    I remember opening our tool box (containing microphones and other gadgets) a week after a gig and being greeted by eau de Sir Walter Raleigh.  Good times.

  63. 63.

    Minstrel Michael

    Wait for the court case from the kid that turned 18 last week, finally able to buy smokes legally for the habit he’s actually had since he was 12, and now he can’t. Betcha the Roberts court can figure out how to overturn all tobacco regulation!

    I’ve always thought the logical thing to do was to pass a law to say “Nobody born after 31 December 2000 can buy smokes, and your ID will always be checked.” Ongoing habit maintenance for those who got hooked when it was legal and can’t kick, but no more addicts going forward.

  68. 68.

    NotMax

    @TomV
    Gotta love ol’ William Claude.

    In the fall of 1938, W.C. Fields became the star attraction on radio’s Your Hit Parade, adding comedy to the popular variety program that counted down the week’s most listened-to songs in the nation. Like his Chase and Sanborn duties, W.C.’s time on Parade was also brief…but it did provide a momentary bit of subversive Fieldsian humor when the star took to reading letters from his son Chester each week on the show. It took sponsor Lucky Strike a while to catch on that their star comedian was getting mail from “Chester Fields”…but when they did figure it out, the letters came to a screeching halt. Source

  73. 73.

    pat

    In 1983 or so I spent some time in the hospital with stomach pains.  Got a shot of demerol.  There was a smoking room round the corner from my room.  Whenever I smelled the smoke from that room I threw up.  No more demerol, no more cigs for me.  It was the only way I could have quit at that time.  Vomit when I smell smoke for two or there days.  That’ll do it.

    I don’t know why I am posting so much the last few days.

    But I just got an email from my cousin and my last aunt died last night.

  76. 76.

    David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch

    @M31: In “Chinatown” the medical examiner is coughing up his lungs while he smokes and can’t figure out why he’s coughing.

  77. 77.

    MomSense

    @NotMax:

    And now they will haunt us forever.  I wonder how many tracks there are. It feels like they only use about 7 different ones.

  80. 80.

    phein60

    @Starfish: It might be people, like myself, who served in combat arms units at the age of 17.  The sacrifices you make to do that are not easily understood by those who haven’t.

    Now, if you want to raise the age to enter the military to 21, I’d be all for that!  No more preying on the poor, the gullible, the impressionable.   (Flip side:  no more path out of poverty, and who knows how many will lose because of that.)

    Sure, young-dumb-full of * is the perfect age to enter the infantry (even more perfect for airborne infantry), but I’d delay that for 4 years if I could.

  81. 81.

    Martin

    Yeah, vaping isn’t a great substitute.

    There’s a good documentary – Netflix I think? that went into the vaping industry and compared the US to the UK. The UK  doesn’t have teen vaping culture like the US does, so there, it’s a straight up replacement for cigarettes, so there vaping is viewed as a treatment – basically  the opposite of how US policy-makers see it.

  82. 82.

    phein60

    @JaySinWA: Smoking for tobacco, or weed?  We had “The Hill” at my high school in the early ’70s for weed and tobacco, but no one got busted for smoking tobacco elsewhere on campus.

  85. 85.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Martin: Vaping helped my wife get off cigarettes (and eventually all tobacco) after 25 years of smoking.  So it definitely can serve a good purpose when used the right way.

  86. 86.

    Spc123

    @Starfish:  it’s not always that. US is the world leader in infantilizing young adults. Supporting some consistency around age of majority doesn’t automatically make one a libertarian but thanks for the lecture.

  88. 88.

    The Moar You Know

    The UK  doesn’t have teen vaping culture like the US does,

    @Martin:  I have been in the UK (London for Christmas, then promptly to Scotland) for the last ten days (hence the paucity and weird timing of my commenting for anyone who keeps track of such things) and will be here for another 10 days, and if that is what that documentary asserts, they are flat out full of shit.  My breakfast place is less than a quarter mile from where I’m currently staying in Edinburgh, and I walk by four vape shops on the way there.  Every day. And no shortage of youths hitting those cartridges.  London’s  no different.

    No shortage of youths smoking here, for that matter. Far more here than when I was in South Carolina a few months ago, never mind our great state of California.  It is truly amazing how few people smoke in the US these days.

    BTW, the UK is fucking awesome.  This is my third time here and in spite of their fucked up politics I’m seriously considering emigrating.

  89. 89.

    J R in WV

    @pat:

    But I just got an email from my cousin and my last aunt died last night.

    So sorry to hear that sad news. I know this is a dead thread, and I didn’t see your news last night, but here I can give you my condolences. All the members of my family’s previous generation have died, no surprise at my age of 69.

  91. 91.

    PenAndKey

    @The Moar You Know:

    If true, then nobody under the age of 25 has any business voting as they are simply not mentally competent.   An argument which I don’t buy, by the way.  Not with respect to drugs, guns, cigarettes, serving in the armed forces, having sex…or voting.

    Let’s quit infantilizing the young and just let them be adults at 18.

    This has been my take on it since I was a teenager, and despite never having smoked I see absolutely no difference between the age restrictions for smoking than I do for, say, the draft.

    At the end of the day at 18 a person can have sex with any other willing adult, get married, join the military and kill other’s on government order, be forced to join the military in a draft, sign a legally binding contract, etc. If they can do all of that they should damn well be allowed to pursue any legal vice they want.

    Is secondhand smoke an issue? Yes. Is smoking bad for everyone? Also yes. But either someone is an adult, with all the restrictions and rights that entails, or they’re not. If we’re going to insist on treating developing minds as “not adult” until 21 or 25 it should be one age across the board. Right now? Right now we saddle young 18-year old adults with the responsibilities of adulthood while still treating them, and restricting them, like they’re children for years longer.

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