Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

You cannot shame the shameless.

This really is a full service blog.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Infrastructure week. at last.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

After roe, women are no longer free.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

The willow is too close to the house.

I really should read my own blog.

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91Comments

  7. 7.

    frosty

    @Patricia Kayden: I’ve been following Dave’s covidexitstrategy.org daily. I can deal with PA and MD flipping back and forth from red to yellow but it broke my heart when NY went from green to yellow. I wonder if we’ll ever get out of this, vaccine or no vaccine.

    ETA: NY was my psychological firewall, if that’s not clear. If they could hold the line, then the rest of us could find our way too.

  8. 8.

    Another Scott

    ?: In a 2019 dissent, Amy Coney Barrett said the Constitution protects the right of non-violent felons to own guns, but does NOT protect their right to vote.

    Gun ownership is an "individual right," but voting is a "civic right" belonging "only to virtuous citizens", she wrote. pic.twitter.com/rar2WByuIf

    — Ashton Pittman (@ashtonpittman) September 26, 2020

    “… but some are more equal than others.”

    Grr…

    (via LOLGOP)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  10. 10.

    Sab

    @frosty: Ohio here. Gov reprimanding local school people for trying to eject and eventually tazing a Mom for refusing to wear a mask at high school football game, and refusing to leave when asked.

    She said she had asthma. I realize masks are an issue with asthma. I also realize asthma is a high risk issue with Covid 19.

    I don’t know where I come down on this. What was the social distancing? We all have health problems. I don’t want your health problems to allow you to endanger me because you can’t wear a mask. On the other hand, I don’t want you to be at risk when you sat by yourself at the end of the bleacher maskless.

    On the other hand, if you go maskless you have to expect social distancing expectations/ requirements will increase dramatically.

  11. 11.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Another Scott: It is either a right or it isn’t.  She clearly does not believe in a right to vote.  But that’s one of the reasons she’s been nominated.  To me, she is like Bork.  She is intellectually qualified, she seems to be a “decent” person in a way that Kavanaugh isn’t, She has experience on the federal appellate bench, but her legal philosophy is so far out of the mainstream of legal thought that she could be classified as a kook.  And, yes, kooks can be very dangerous.  She deserves a fair hearing and a vote of no.*

    *Since this isn’t going to happen, she deserves to have the whole thing held up until Biden is in office and reason can prevail.

  18. 18.

    Kay

    @Another Scott:

    It’s actually even weirder than that. The case was about whether non-violent felons can be barred from carrying a gun. She’s arguing that they should not be barred and to do that she goes back to antiquated and discredited ideas on voting rights, like the idea that whole categories of people can be denied the right to vote based on “civic virtue”. The comparison itself is bizarre. What a strange way to approach a gun case. It’s like “I think gun regulations are unconstitutional and oh, by the way, I also probably think whole categories of people can be denied the right to vote based on ‘civic virtue’, not that anyone asked”. Yowza. Where’d that come from?

  19. 19.

    Mai Naem mobile

    @Kay: my niece’s orthodontist was telling my sister that he thought only property owners should have the right to vote! WTF kind of thinking is this. This is a few years ago. He was also bitching about property taxes because he had picked a bunch of property during the housing crash. I don’t know why you discuss politics with your patient sitting in the chair and I sure as hell don’t know why you discuss RWNJ stuff like that. He also asked my niece if she was going “home” for the summer because you know brown people can’t consider the US home.

  22. 22.

    Kay

    @Another Scott:

    So great that she’s brought back “virtuous citizens”. Here I was thinking we had put that behind us since we used it to keep black people off juries but I guess we’ll be dredging up that garbage again and trotting it out as legitimate.

    There are no discredited ideas on the Right. We must endlessly repeat, forever. They make the whole idea of “learning” impossible. No one ever learns anything. Again and again and again, same bad ideas, forever. 150 years later, here they are again, all the intervening and tragic history is just disappeared as if it never happened.

  23. 23.

    Mallard Filmore

    @Mai Naem mobile:

     

    he thought only property owners should have the right to vote!

    And only property owners should pay taxes! No, that can’t be right. Property owners should NEVER pay taxes. Yeah, there we go, that’s the ticket.

  24. 24.

    Bruuuuce

    @frosty: Most of NY State is doing well. There are several neighborhoods here in NYC and just outside where mask wearing is spotty at best, and large gatherings are becoming common again. As you might expect, Governor Cuomo is most unhappy with this.

  25. 25.

    James E Powell

    @Kay:

    Although I realize the list of things that Biden & the Democratic congress must do is kind of long, a constitutional amendment stating that every citizen has the right to vote is in order.

  27. 27.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Kay: She didn’t bring it back.  Didn’t you listen to the right wing students in law school?  It’s always lurking there.  Along with all the ideas about restrictions on speech, lack of restriction on “acceptable” religion, narrow 4th Amendment protections, etc.  These ideas are like herpes.  Always there, always waiting for a chance to surface.

  29. 29.

    Kay

    @Mai Naem mobile:

    The whole thing is so ungenerous and mean-spirited it’s just beyond my ken. This is a country where half the people don’t even vote, yet we have an entire huge group of powerful people who spend years of their lives arguing that certain people can’t, or shouldn’t, as if the EXCLUSIVITY of the thing is the point, as if that’s where it derives its value. I can’t even “disagree”. We just have a fundamentally different view of what voting is.

  30. 30.

    Marcopolo

    @Bruuuuce:  I read a piece recently that there is a serious outbreak in NYC’s orthodox Jewish community so I guess that is part of it.  But are they also having the same problem as a lot of places with numbers ticking up in rural areas.

    I live in MO & KC & StL have been fairly stable for a few months but rural MO is on fire with new infections.  One of the reasons we have an all time high hospitalization rate atm.

  31. 31.

    Kay

    @James E Powell:

    a constitutional amendment stating that every citizen has the right to vote is in order.

    I’m in. It will be really hard and really long but voting rights fits beautifully with everything else Democrats do so every D campaign should include it. You don’t have to choose.

  32. 32.

    Benw

    @Mai Naem mobile: @Kay: I have actually had someone (a guest at my extended family’s house) sincerely try to explain to me that slavery was good because Jesus saved the slaves’ souls. It was like an audiobook of a pamphlet from the 1730s. Terrible ideas never die as long as they let some people believe they are good for doing whatever they want

  33. 33.

    Ian

    I just read this over at digby

    Just by beating the rap on impeachment, Trump became a Yoovian constitutional paladin, fending off an assault that “would undo the original Constitution’s greatest innovation: an independent executive.”

    Its about John Yoo (yes, the torture guy) embracing Trump.  A Yoovian constitutional paladin is my recommendation for Cole’s next video game character.

  35. 35.

    patrick II

    I was sitting outside when a thirtyish couple walked by on the sidewalk. She was telling the guy what a beautiful fall day it was (it was about 75). So, he explained to her that it wasn’t really cool enough to be a fall day, but perhaps too cool to be a summer day. He went on to say the weather is changing and you can’t really tell the seasons anymore. I’m thinking to myself “The guy is at least not a climate change denier”. Then he went on to explain to her that’s because the earth’s spin has become twisted and so the angle is different and also the earth is a different distance from the sun then it has been.
    I don’t know if she was impressed.

  36. 36.

    Omnes Omnibus

    Programming note:  Due to overtime in the Stanley Cup final, a rerun of the Eddie Murphy hosted SNL is just getting started.

  38. 38.

    Bruuuuce

    @Marcopolo: Yes. I didn’t want to mention it, because indeed the positivity rate in some Orthodox neighborhoods is as high as 6%. But it’s not only Orthodox; a 600-person indoor wedding got busted yesterday that was, I think, South Asian (but the articles left it kind of vague, so I’m going on location, rather than any other indicator).

    Sorry to hear that Missouri is as bad as that. I’m concerned for my sister, who lives in Lake Worth, Florida, and has three sons, two in high school (and yes, in person classes) and one at university, where for the moment, they’re doing distance learning.

  39. 39.

    TS (the original)

    @Sab:

    She said she had asthma. I realize masks are an issue with asthma. I also realize asthma is a high risk issue with Covid 19.

    1. She should have stayed at home
    2.  No doubt she appeared without mask to cause a scene.
    3. I don’t believe in tazing. Should have stopped the game until she left.
  40. 40.

    Kay

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Andrew Sullivan argues “virtuous citizens” except he doesn’t read enough to know it’s an actual discredited Right wing idea with a viciously racist history so he believes he invented it. Eureka.

    They come to this naturally. You can mostly just substitute “mean spirited and ungenerous” for their entire legal scholarship and you’ll be close enough, missing only the specific terms.

  41. 41.

    frosty

    @Ian: …the original Constitution’s greatest innovation: an independent executive.

    Isn’t that a monarch? And wasn’t the greatest innovation the creation of an executive that wasn’t a king, that had limitations on power? Sheesh. Talk about old arguments never dying. We’re still fighting the English Civil War from the 1600s.

  42. 42.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Kay: For most of them, liberalism stopped when Burke did.  They claim to venerate Adam Smith, but none of them actaully read his works.  A very few read Mill’s On Liberty, but nothing else that he wrote.

  43. 43.

    James E Powell

    @Kay:

    You would think that an amendment stating everyone has a right to vote would be popular, but then I remember what went down with the one about treating women and men equally.

  45. 45.

    patrick II

    The basic premise of our country is that all people are equal. So, to cooperate, which is necessary for survival, they must agree on decisions for the common good.  The way you do that among equals is to have an equal say through a vote.  It is, along with free speech and fair trials, the most necessary of rights for a functional democracy. You can intellectualize excuses for limiting an individual’s right to vote, but then you are attacking the very foundation this country was declared to exist for.

    Sorry for the basic civics lesson.  No one here needs it and no one “over there” can hear it in any sense of the word.

  47. 47.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    Folk are setting off firecrackers here, I understand they’re happy that the Lakers are in the finals, but don’t they remember the days when the Sun looked the same color as Trump’s face?

  48. 48.

    James E Powell

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    It’s like what they do with the Bible. Pick out quotes that seem to support their “mean-spirited and ungenerous”* ways and ignore the rest.

    • – H/T Kay – I’m going to be using that.
  49. 49.

    Platonicspoof

    Just wanted to add my thank you, Anne Laurie, for your COVID-19 updates. E.g., just read the WP article also linked here about potential mutations. Even though there’s limited cataloging of the mutations, much less understanding of their significance, questions about their proofreading mechanisms, etc., the “herd mentality” people are probably providing a bigger gene pool for more infectious strains to develop.

  51. 51.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: Exactly.

    @patrick II: We have never lived up to that premise, but our history has moved toward getting closer to it.  What progress we have made has been made in fits and starts and often greased with the blood of the least privileged.  The anti-democratic elements in our society never go away, and we need to push back against them every fucking generation.  No matter now tiring it seems.

  54. 54.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    Poll  —  ABC/Washington Post*  — Sept 24 (link)

    Likely Voters

    Biden……………………..54%

    Dump…………………….44%

     

    * rated A+ by 538

     

    Among other groupings, Biden leads by 54-42 percent in the 13 states that currently are the most contested by the candidates (Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin). Moreover, it’s Biden +20 points in the blue states won by Hillary Clinton, while dead even, 49-49 percent, in the 2016 red states. Trump won those states four years ago by 53-42 percent.

  55. 55.

    patrick II

    @James E Powell:

    I watched a documentary on Creationism on Netflix.  A fundamentalist Christian was explaining why the various layers of the Grand Canyon with the different types of fossils embedded in each layer, which is normally explained by evolution over time, came to be.  He had to explain it in a way that met his literal translation of the bible in which the earth is only 7,000 years old.  So, he said all of that sediment came from a giant explosion in the ocean and the reason that different layers held different types of fossils is because different animals live at different depths in the ocean so when the debris from the explosion settled in the Grand Canyon the difference in the types of fossils in each layer is explained not by evolution over time but by how deep each fossilized animal was when the explosion hit.

    He wasn’t a dumb guy exactly, but constrained by his the basic framework of his thinking which is a literal interpretation of the bible.  That’s his starting point, so everything must be explainable in that context.  And that happens in other fields like law which explains Bill Barr and now Amy Coney Barrett.  The smarter ones don’t come to different conclusions, they just have more complex rationalizations.

  59. 59.

    James E Powell

    @David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch:

    Any poll showing Biden over 50 is a good one. A major difference between this election and the last one is that the percentage of undecideds is low. People have decided and once they do, it’s very hard to get them to change their minds.

    I see three potential outcomes from the ridiculous farce they call debates next Tuesday: press/media seize on some stupid thing and declare a Trump comeback, Trump does something stupid and his support drops 3-5 points for a week, or everything stays pretty much the same. I fear the first, hope for the second, and expect the third.

    I’m sending postcards to Iowa. I may join a texting brigade even though I’m chary of texting strangers. We have got to get our people to the polls.

  62. 62.

    Edmund Dantes

    I have heard Barret also thinks the 14th amendment is Suspect. I.E. she’s a believer in the reconstruction amendments aren’t real trope.

  63. 63.

    Sally

    @patrick II: It was supposed to be no taxation without representation, not the other way around. And certainly not representation without taxation! Which is how some seem to have reimagined it.

  64. 64.

    Matt McIrvin

    If there are whole classes of people who have the right to the bullet but not the ballot, what does she think they’re supposed to do with their political grievances? Does she think it will turn out well? Do people think these things through?

  65. 65.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Matt McIrvin: *cough* I’m sure she meant “*white* nonviolent felons”, not Black ones.  The Black ones (or brown ones) show up with rifles, they’ll get murdered, because reasons.

  67. 67.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    @guachi:  I don’t see people standing in line for hours, risking Covid, to vote for someone they never heard off (libertarian/green).

    Gary Johnson was a well known former governor who had previously run for president, with a cult like following because of his long support for legalizing weed, and he still only managed 3% of the vote. Some nobody isn’t going to equal that.

  68. 68.

    Bruce K

    It hit me this morning: 2020 marks the end of an era of American history. The America we’ve known all our lives is dead. We’re fighting to determine what’s going to replace it.

    We can’t stop the neo-fascist GOP from packing the court this year, but if we win big enough in November, we can make sure that the move won’t profit them. The calculus is eight plus one this year equals thirteen next year, right?

  70. 70.

    James E Powell

    @David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch:

    Gary Johnson was a well known former governor who had previously run for president, with a cult like following because of his long support for legalizing weed, and he still only managed 3% of the vote.

    Added to that, he was running in an election where the public’s dislike of both parties’ candidates was high.

  74. 74.

    Geminid

    Blasts from the past: Historians say that Carthaginian history was more or less erased when in their third war the Romans destroyed Carthage, sowed its fields with salt, etc. But the Washington Nationals baseball team has two players with Carthaginian names- pitcher Annibal Sanchez, and infielder Asdrubal Cabrera. Hannibal was the famous general who came close to conquering Rome. Hasdrubal was his father, another top general. These names are probably revivals, but I’d like to think they are survivals. The Carthaginians controlled much of the Iberian Peninsula for a century or so.    Not much else interesting going on with the Nats, who in their first season as world champs have pretty much laid an egg.

  75. 75.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    @TS (the original): I had to google them, they’re so obscure.  The libertarian is a professor of pysch from Clemson.  The green worked in shipping/receiving for UPS and has run for office unsuccessfully 24 times in New York state and locally in Syracuse.

  76. 76.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    @James E Powell:  That’s a good point.  Plus everyone thought Hillary would win and too many thought she didn’t need their vote.

    Absentee voting probably played a role, where people cast a vote in early October with Clinton ahead, before the FBI coup.

  77. 77.

    Geminid

    @David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch: The Rhode Island Green Party declined to put the GP presidential nominee on the ballot. He then tried and failed to get 1000 signatures to qualify as an independent. The R.I. Greens said they want to concentrate on local and state races. They probably understand that having a presidential candidate topping the ticket this year could drive voters away. And the Greens probably got cussed out enough after 2016 to last them awhile.

  78. 78.

    satby

    @Sab: asthma is a reason to wear a mask, not a reason not to. Most people (like me!) who have asthma would wear a mask or stay away from an event like that. Some people without asthma have decided it’s their “get out of wearing a mask” card. I’d have tazed her myself if I had been there because I’m sick of those selfish fakers.

  81. 81.

    evodevo

    @patrick II: Yeah…they do a Gish Gallop if you dare to confront them with any facts that disagree with their worldview…like how come there aren’t any deep ocean fish species in the bottom layers, or large trilobites in the top layers, etc. etc. A lot of evolutionary biologists refuse to debate these people because all it does is give them media exposure and gins up their supporters.  And the facts get lost on the way…

  85. 85.

    Gvg

    @Benw: slavery was also bad because it damned the souls of the owners and the complicit.
    I have had this opinion for awhile. It seems to me to be an overlooked point. The clearer visual of how bad slavery is to the slave seems to overshadow what nasty things it does to the character of those getting material benefit from owning. They become bad in other ways too, more hypocritical in religion and civic responsibilities. Once you are corrupted, it usually gets worse, as you lie to yourself. It also infects families as your relatives deny.

  86. 86.

    A Ghost to Most

    @Benw: Religion allows people to justify any behavior that is convenient and profitable to them personally.

    Religion, like war, is a racket.

  89. 89.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

    @Gvg: I learned recently that one of John Brown’s main concerns over slavery was exactly that point (the moral degradation of the slaveowner). He was trying to save white people as well as black.

  90. 90.

    J R in WV

    @satby:

    asthma is a reason to wear a mask, not a reason not to.

    Everyone I know with asthma wears a mask most all summer. Always. Has nothing to do with covid, they need it to keep allergans out of their lungs.

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