A republic, if you can keep it. https://t.co/FJGoE19yLI
— Kai Ryssdal (@kairyssdal) May 18, 2021
And also Brian Mast, who told me earlier about the plan for the protest: https://t.co/gT0Pi5E39h
— Melanie Zanona (@MZanona) May 18, 2021
When asked if they were vaccinated, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene shouted it was a HIPAA violation https://t.co/oT5MnXnnht
— Nicholas Wu (@nicholaswu12) May 18, 2021
…. CNN has surveyed entire House: All 219 Dems say they’re vaccinated, but only 95 of 211 Rs will state their status. The rest refuse to answer.
If there’s been no increase in vaxx rate since early March, it’s all because House Rs won’t get the shots.
It’s on them. 2/2— Paul Kane (@pkcapitol) May 18, 2021
Perfectly on cue, CNN updated their story from last week. Here’s every House member who acknowledged getting vaxxed.
All 219 Ds got the shots, only 95 Rs will say so.
Of remaining 116 Rs, some are vaxxed & won’t admit it, many refused shots. https://t.co/ozvvu3khRb— Paul Kane (@pkcapitol) May 18, 2021
this is a party thoroughly unfit to govern i don’t give a shit what their policy positions are. half of them shouldn’t even be allowed to operate heavy machinery. https://t.co/pR5x4dOWiD
— World Famous Art Thief (@CalmSporting) May 18, 2021
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
The Aristocrats!
lurker
really, first? sad..
eta: and just like that, something slips in – much better
always worry when I see a thread with no comments…
Suzanne
There shouldn’t be a test to vote, but FUCK there clearly needs to be a test to serve in office.
Cue the meteor.
?BillinGlendaleCA
Rep. Greene doesn’t seem to understand HIPAA(this is my shocked face).
Mike in NC
Vaccinations for Congress should be mandatory, or maybe worth another $5000 fine for refusing.
West of the Cascades
@Mike in NC: how about expulsion?
dc
Nancy should raise the fine, $10,000 per incident.
namekarB
It is either:
I would be shocked if someone has not tried to explain how HIPPA only applies to unique circumstances so I am inclined to believe she knows better and also knows her constituents.
jackmac
I’d call them a bunch of spoiled adolescents, but that would be insulting to adolescents. So I’ll call them assholes instead.
Jerzy Russian
At this point, I am rooting for the virus when it comes to the minority party in the House.
There are those who call me...tim... (Still posh)
Still awaiting that return to normalcy.
O, this is it?
O.
Okay.
namekarB
Pelosi should have a direct one on one talk with the House Minority leader. Therefore she should go straight away to Mar-a-lago.
Jerzy Russian
@jackmac:
You can’t win here, since the above is an insult to assholes.
Danielx
Operate heavy machinery?
Fawwwk, they shouldn’t be allowed to operate a toaster.
different-church-lady
Being assholes for the sake of being assholes is the only value the GOP has left.
dmsilev
I dunno, I think putting the House GOP Caucus at the controls of a bunch of construction vehicles and then stepping back and watching from a safe distance might be exactly the sort of entertainment we can all enjoy.
dmsilev
@dc: With the money going to funds to pay for vaccine distribution in poor countries.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Jerzy Russian: Assholes serve a useful purpose, GOP House members, not so much.
Quinerly
@?BillinGlendaleCA: she is parroting the on line comments of small town local newspapers. They are all screaming HIPPA. (Yes, I got bored and fell back on a pre election habit…reading on line wing nut comments in mostly Southern newspapers. After today, though, I’m getting back in the boat… Biden in the truck has truly triggered them. Crazier than usual)
Mary G
Lord, I killed two threads with this post, and it was a lot of work, so I’m putting it here too, cause it was a lot of work going through my ActBlue history and credit card bills.
@smith:
Here’s my philosophy, I think the reasons the GOP did so much better than expected in 2020 that Republicans said the hell with covid and did a lot of voter contact, including canvassing, that got more people to the polls than Democrat’s remote contact did. Also, I was very disappointed that I spent a lot of my life savings donating to Cal Cunningham, Sarah whoever in Maine, Jaime Harrison, the woman in Texas, as did a lot of other Democrats, and got squat for it. I don’t want my money going to know-it-all-consultants to spend on their friends’ businesses. The wins in Georgia and Arizona were partly due to good old shoe leather door knocking, voter level, contacts. So I’m trying to cut out the middleman wherever I can.
Four Directions, which WG is spotlighting in the last thread, did great work on Indian reservations that had a lot to do with D wins in Arizona.
Very impressed with The New Georgia Project – Stacey Abrams gets all the credit, but there are many hands in the work.
Beto’s Powered By People is a monster – look at their web site and see all the canvassing, training, and phone banking they are doing right now, today. I know people think Texas is a lost cause, but Georgia turned and all the Californians moving to the sun belt (lol, no) will start to tip the balance. I stopped my donation to them, because there’s no Senate race, but I may change my mind.
Woke Vote holds GOTV boot camps in different regions of the country
Let America Vote, started by Jason Kander, did amazing work in 2018, but he’s moved on and a lot of what I get from them now is just “send more money” emails, so I am not sure I can recommend again, but I haven’t paid enough attention to say yes or no.
Movement.Vote is a clearinghouse that collects money and sends all of it on to local mostly Black-led organizations. They are giving to 41 right now in AZ, CO, lots in FL, GA, MI, MN, NV, NC, PA, TX & WI. Each one is listed so if you want to give directly or volunteer you can find them.
There’s also the oldie-but-goodie Vote Riders, and more, but I think I’m out of links.
RaflW
@Jerzy Russian: Steve Scalise was shot and seriously injured, and it hasn’t changed his views on guns. Probably hardened them, really.
So unless the virus kills House GOP caucus members, it won’t change things. They’ll just say “it was like a cold, I’m fine” and continue to preen and prance in favor of more Covid.
And to be clear, the only thing that will change if it kills House GOP members is that they’ll be dead. The prancing and preening will continue among the undead. Er, I mean, the not-dead.
Gravenstone
I can’t hear you through your mask.
Then clean the shit out of your ears, asshole.
Bill Arnold
If the Republicans really believe that Democrats are evil satanist Marxist atheists, then they must suspect that Democrats understand that (a) Republicans are differentially not getting vaccinated relative to Democrats, (b) anti-masking is strongly correlated with both anti-vaxxing and Republicanism, (3) elections in the US can be very very close (d) lifting the mask mandate is obviously a plot to cheat in the next elections by encouraging Republican voters to die, or be too disabled to get to the polls in a state where the Republicans have made it hard to vote by mail.
Right? I mean, it’s just Logic! Trust the Science!
UttBugly
Maybe they invested heavily in facial recognition software companies?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@RaflW: Sounds like a death cult.
burnspbesq
@dmsilev:
You’ll forgive me if I don’t see the humor. A law school buddy was killed when he flipped a grader.
Jeffro
I look at that picture and FSM help me the first thought is, “Just one grenade…just. one. grenade.”
A paint grenade, to be sure, but still…
Gravenstone
@dc: It should multiply by 10 each violation. Willing to bet none of them would be willing to push their luck beyond a third strike.
Calouste
Fractions can increase by increasing the numerator or by decreasing the denominator, while the other stays the same. Either could work in this scenario.
My assumption is that they are either too lunatic to get vaccinated, or too chickenshit not to. Hard to say which camp has the most.
Uncle Jeffy
I see Louie Gohmert is listed twice- fitting, inasmuch as he’s twice the idiot as any other person on that list.
lurker
@RaflW: sadly, there are a couple of house republicans who succumbed to covid. At least one was a young (early/mid-30s ish) newly elected representative who did not make it to swearing in. Did not make any difference.
RaflW
@Mary G: I did 3/4ths of my 2020 cycle giving directly to unglamorous down-ballot races. State Houses & Senates. Funding women and POC challengers to Republicans in ‘lean-R’ US House lists from Cook and such.
I realize not all of us have the time to research multiple seats, states and candidates, so some ideas for finding candidates to give to directly can be:
– Run for Something
– The Collective PAC
– Your state’s Democratic Party website
Etc.
I am looking forward to the Four Directions event, too. I did give to them, and to New Georgia, a Latino turnout group in Houston, and so on.
TD
You know every one of those jerks is smart enough to get secretly vaccinated. Except Greene and Boebert. They really do seem to be abysmally stupid.
Raven
@Jeffro: willie Peter make you a believer!
@Jeffro:
Benw
Anyone who is medically able that’s not rushing to get the shot is a fucking moron. Full stop. WTFF?
Bill Arnold
@Quinerly:
What are they saying? A twitter search (Biden F-150) sorted by latest first was pretty benign.
Quinerly
Rachel Maddow really good tonight. Linda Zhang, chief engineer for the new Ford, is on. She’s been working at Ford since age 19.
Mary G
WaPo has an excellent actually-reported piece in the Health section long read up about people the vaccine isn’t going to be effective on. Not great news for me:
I’m on both rituximab and steroids, so it’s probably mask on in public for me for the foreseeable future. And I took drugs they give people that have had organs donated for years before that. It’s comforting to know that the scientists are on it.
debbie
They need a serious time out.
Lulymay
@Mike in NC:
@different-church-lady: But assholes still have a significant function – these no-minds have no recognizable function.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
I called out a customer a few weeks ago for this. Politely, of course. A woman tried claiming she couldn’t wear a face mask for medical reasons. I asked her if she has a medical condition why is she going indoors without a mask on during a pandemic?
She was taken aback and muttered, “You’re not allowed to ask me that!”
I dropped it at that point as she was not in my line but behind me in another. It’s to laugh. Another older man on another, when questioned along the same lines, said he wasn’t afraid of COVID because “he sees his doctor often”. He did put his mask on when asked, though
Another guy, middle aged, (coffee shop owner, buying several gallons of milk for his business) was wearing a mask, but he told me he couldn’t wait to take off his mask once the mask mandates were lifted and expressed skepticism that masks worked. I tried to relate my experiences with working with isolation precautions patients during clinicals. Explained that PPE had to be worn in these rooms, which included surgical masks. I asked him why would doctors and nurses wear them if they didn’t work to some degree? Guy mentioned he knew surgeons wore them during surgeries procedures, but he couldn’t seem to grasp the basic concept that a barrier like a surgical mask can lower the spread of viral particles.
How can people be this stupid?
jackmac
@Jerzy Russian: I stand corrected!
lurker
@Mary G: is that the kind of treatment that could be interrupted for a brief quarantine (maybe not so brief, like two-three weeks) to allow a shot to take hold in the immune system?
sounds like an awful predicament – hope there is a work-around
dexwood
Ankle deep end of the gene pool right there in that photograph. Marjorie Terror Greene front and center.
Ruckus
@Jerzy Russian:
This is true.
How about…
Skin sacks of shit?
Fucking idiots.
It’s archaic but idiot does fit. And swearing has to be involved, I mean they are asking for it.
trollhattan
Republicans are the party of ideas. Arizona, for example.
“Write when you find work.”
–moms everywhere
Quinerly
@Bill Arnold: I checked in on some coverage in NC small town newspapers. Comment sections to articles posted on the newspapers’ FB sites Mostly comments about Biden being senile and a pedophile. Electric vehicles are Socialist. Actually, wasn’t even looking for that coverage. Was torturing myself with the Andrew Brown story and coverage in Elizabeth City, NC.
debbie
NPR ran a report comparing Q to the Satanic Ritual Abuse mania in the 1980s. I have to say there are creepily disturbing parallels.
West of the Rockies
Willful stupidity coupled with neon arrogance… this is your (their) GOP.
Quinerly
@debbie: heard it today.
Kinda mind blowing.
Ruckus
@Gravenstone:
If they clean the shit out of their ears it will just be replaced instantaneously because they are full of shit. That should be obvious because every time they open their mouths, shit falls out.
Salty Sam
This sounds like The Battle of Wits in “The Princess Bride”. “Never go up against a Sicilian when DEATH is on the line!”
RSA
@trollhattan:
That’s… amazing. Do they have maps of the U.S. in Arizona?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Quinerly:
Electric vehicles are socialist….
Do they think easily extractable oil is going to be around forever? Is the internal combustion engine “socialist” to these people? Should we go back to the good old days of horses and carriages?
I don’t even know what “electric vehicles are socialist” means. Unless it’s in reality a cultural grievance of theirs because god forbid they won’t be able to ruin new diesel trucks with coal rolling in the relative near future
Gin & Tonic
Folks, it’s HIPAA, not HIPPA. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.
/rant
Mary G
@lurker: There is some kind of long strange protocol to let your disease get bad, have shot 1, wait many weeks, have the treatment, wait many more weeks, have shot 2. I am completely unwilling to let a flare run, so mask it is. There are more studies going on, and California is still mandated to wear masks indoors until June 15, so I’ll be OK.
Orange County got promoted to the yellow level because our daily new case rate is down to 1.5 people of 100,000 and the positivity rate is 0.9%. So the odds are in my favor, but I hate that I still worry.
Ruckus
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
When we used IQ as a measurement of intelligence it used to be noticed that half the people had an IQ less than 100 and half had higher. 100 was the mean. We also used words like idiot, moron and they had specific levels of IQ. The point is that not everyone is even at the mean level. Now the average also runs around the mean but I believe it’s less. Take into account how much school really doesn’t teach you, unless you go to college and actually study some tough subjects and you should have the picture. Some people are as dumb as a rock. Some don’t make it that far up the scale.
NorthLeft12
@Uncle Jeffy: My reaction was more like “Oh my dog! Are there two of those dumbasses now?”
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Gin & Tonic:
That’s a violation of HIPPA! You can’t tell me how to spell it! //
Gin & Tonic
@Ruckus: “Idiot” sounds best when said by Joel Cairo.
geg6
@Mary G:
You should get an antibodies test. My sister has Crohn’s and her doctor has had her tested post-vax for this very reason. She’s had all kinds of medications over the almost 45 years since her diagnosis, including steroids, and, thankfully, she seems to be producing enough antibodies.
NorthLeft12
@Ruckus: This brings to mind my favourite George Carlin joke;
“You know how stupid the average person is? Just imagine that half of the people are stupider than that.”
Ivan X
What a bunch of scumholes. I am going to stop visiting this site so that I can imagine commonality between me and people from other places.
Gravenstone
@Ruckus: Which gives rise to that other eternal classic, “you’re so full of shit, your eyes are brown.”
lurker
@Mary G: sorry to hear that – sounds tough either way. hope they find a way to make things work better on the vaccine aspect of the situation.
the whole reopening by June 15 should be interesting – not sure of what to make of that. hoping for the best and planning to take things slowly though.
Quinerly
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): who knows what they mean?
Has anyone checked in with Tucker Carlson? I’m sure it is something he is ranting about. These are the same people who think somebody fed Trump ballots to Arizona chickens and then burned the chickens to hid the “fraud.”
karen marie
@Mike in NC: If it’s $5,000 a day, absolutely.
Quinerly
@Gin & Tonic: autocorrect doesn’t know that. ?
Ksmiami
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): because our system has protected them from their own stupidity so far. I’m hoping we let them Darwin themselves out of the gene pool
craigie
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Winner
namekarB
@trollhattan:
OMG. Do they plan on a 10 foot dam that stretches from the Appalachians in Alabama to the Rocky Mountains in New Mexico? Lets. see, that only floods about 100 million people so Phoenix can water its lawns
Frankensteinbeck
Republican elected officials were elected by assholes, because they’re assholes, to act like assholes, under the political philosophy that society is increasingly shaming being an asshole and a huge number of people are enraged about that and are willing to defend their right to be an asshole literally to the death. Although very, very few of them are willing to defend it to the effort. But if they or their loved ones die without having to get out of their chair, it’s worth it for their god-given, constitutional right to hurt others.
TL;DR Nothing but ‘lib tears’ matters in Republican politics.
NotMax
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Practice, practice, practice.
BruceFromOhio
These people campaigned and were duly elected. If they are re-elected again in ’22, it says more about the electorate than it does about the candidates.
@Frankensteinbeck:
There has GOT to be a way to leverage this. These people are dumb as a box of fucking rocks and give all their money to grifting assholes. Its gonna be something really simple.
Steve in the ATL
I stopped by Costco this afternoon to pick up some wine and check out the relaxed mask rules.
Most people, including moi, were still masked. Unmasked were six in total: two couples, one man, one woman. All older (60+) and, needless to say, all white.
Quinerly
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): ?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
“We have informed the Trump Organization….”
BruceFromOhio
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Tick … tock ..
Steve in the ATL
@trollhattan: great idea— now the folks in Memphis don’t have to worry about fixing that bridge over the Mississippi!
NotMax
@Steve in the ATL
Some of the Kirkland brand wines are pretty dang fine.
HumboldtBlue
@debbie:
That’s pretty apt.
Steeplejack
@Gin & Tonic:
Thank you! [Ungritting teeth]
artem1s
@RSA:
the last time Georgia had a bad drought the legislature dreamed up a scam to move the northern border so they could steal water from Tennessee. All because the governor was afraid to ban filling pools and watering golf courses
you wouldn’t believe how many times the Great Lakes Consortium States have had to fight off lawsuits from Colorado suing for the right to run water pipe lines from the GLs to Denver. Water is going to be the cause of more wars than oil in the next century.
Kent
If it was that easy, trust me, Texas would already be doing it.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@namekarB: The probably wouldn’t need a dam, they could just pump it out, and the aqueduct would only 3 times the length of the California Aqueduct(if you measure from point to point).
Ruckus
@debbie:
Something along the line of a 100 year timeout?
Spanky
Yes, but they also have Sharpies.
Spanky
@Gravenstone: Since their heads are up their asses, they’re actually a Klein bottle of shit.
Steeplejack
New York attorney general has announced that the investigation into the Trump organization is now a criminal matter, not just civil. Coöperating with the Manhattan district attorney. (Via Lawrence O’Donnell’s show.)
Quinerly
@Spanky: Internets won!
trnc
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Of course, you are completely allowed to ask her that. You weren’t asking what her medical issue was; you were asking her to justify her claim of a medical issue. Which, of course, you didn’t know about until she volunteered that she had one (assuming she was telling the truth, which I doubt).
Jeffro
@Raven: well yeah, I’m good with that too ?
debbie
@Ruckus:
Something more permanent, I think.
Hilbertsubspace
@NotMax:
Both palatable and palletable.
Pete Downunder
@Kent: As the saying goes “whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting over”. Often attributed to Mark Twain but there is no evidence he ever said it.
JoyceH
Okay, at what age does this start happening? I got a begging letter from my alma mater, only this time instead of asking me to send them some money now, they’re asking me to consider leaving them something in my will. Sort of… took me aback.
Wag
@Hilbertsubspace: Lol.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Kent: Texas probably wouldn’t want to pay for that large of a public project.
Soprano2
@artem1s: At my work we’ve been saying for years now that water is the oil of the 21st century
I wish the AZ legislature luck with that idiotic idea. The answers will be “no” and “Fuck no you want to do what?”
HumboldtBlue
Get your groove on like this little drummer.
Edmund Dantes
@namekarB: a lot of people don’t understand It at all. Cops, politicians, reporters, etc.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@JoyceH: 53 and I’ve been getting those for years. “Include us in your estate plan…”
Kent
They will for water. Just like CA.
Right now San Antonio alone is spending half a billion dollars on a new desalination plant so they can use the brackish water in the local aquifers. https://www.water-technology.net/projects/saws-brackish-groundwater-desalination-plant-san-antonio/
There are MASSIVE water projects all over Texas. The state spends massively on two things. Water projects and freeways. Everything else like education, environmental protection, and healthcare gets the short shrift.
Wyatt Salamanca
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I like the idea of an orange man in an orange jumpsuit.
Hopefully, Trumpy is truly going down for the count.
mrmoshpotato
Destination F#%Ked – into the Sun! Fuck these shitstain slapdicks.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Kent: Heh, in California, we do MASSIVE. The California Aqueduct is about 400 miles long.
Another Scott
@JoyceH: I’ve been getting those for a while too, and not just from my alma maters. COVID has wrecked all kinds of budgets and they’re shaking every tree they can.
(Don’t feel bad – when I was in grad school, a fellow 20-something student was getting regular invitations to join AARP.)
Cheers,
Scott.
Citizen Alan
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Yes. I had an absolutely stupifying conversation with an elderly client years ago and somehow the topic of peak oil came up. And he was absolutely 100% certain that we’d never hit peak oil because “something will happen” to replenish our oil supply.
And that’s before we get to the not insignificant number of them who base all decisions on the assumption that the Rapture will happen before then.
Roger Moore
@lurker:
I’m worried that it’s Newsom thinking about his recall election rather than what’s right for the state. I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad idea to reopen the state, but it seems like he has a specific deadline in mind rather than being governed by the public health situation. I hope at least that there are clear plans for when we’d shut down again if the public health situation gets worse.
Jay
Another Scott
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Popehat the Crusher appears in a puff of smoke…
We’ll see, but we shouldn’t get our hopes up.
[ pout ]
Cheers,
Scott.
dnfree
@Mary G: I completely agree with you. I regret the money I sent to people who had tons of money and were probably wasting it on repeated ads on TV and flyers in the mail. There was one local race (county) where we got a giant shiny postcard every day from both the Republican and the Democrat, just slinging mud at each other. She lost—most of the other Democrats at that level won. We voted for her, but we got sick of the mailings. She had too much money, as apparently did the Republican. I’m glad for the money I spent on local races that were close.
mrmoshpotato
@West of the Cascades:
Expulsion into the fucking Sun? So many of these assholes aren’t fit to be treated like adults, much less be legislators. They’re fucking bratty, shithead children in the US House of Representatives.
Roger Moore
@JoyceH:
I think it’s less about your age and more about how aggressive charities are getting in asking for money. Lots of them have started asking about this kind of thing, and even of quite young people.
GregMulka
To channel some Edward Abbey:
Water, water, water….There is no shortage of water in the desert but exactly the right amount , a perfect ratio of water to rock, water to sand, insuring that wide free open, generous spacing among plants and animals, homes and towns and cities, which makes the arid West so different from any other part of the nation. There is no lack of water here unless you try to establish a city where no city should be.
Martin
@Roger Moore: From what I understand, they want to get things down to outbreak levels. At that point contact tracing should be useful to keep things under control without yo-yoing through lockdown states. Plus, this gives the care community some time to recover.
I have a former staffer that is now an epidemiologist up in Sacramento area. This is what I’ve gleaned from talking with her.
Another Scott
@Another Scott: Also, too:
Cheers,
Scott.
James E Powell
OT, but we have yet to see Trump’s tax returns, right?
smith
@James E Powell: We haven’t, but Cyrus Vance has them, and if Letitia James is now working with him, she probably does, too. Since tax evasion seems to be a big topic of both investigations, if they go to trial we may get a glimpse then.
Gary K
I have to vent. My wife is reading about a recent death on Facebook, a distant member of her extended family. Everyone’s lining up to say what a gentle and kind lady the deceased was. Yeah, I met her once: the wife of a tobacco company executive, dressed in a full-length mink coat, and the first thing I heard her say was that “Michelle Obama dresses like a whore.”
They Call Me Blue
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Now that I’m fully vaccinated I’m back to umpiring baseball games. Sunday my partner for one of the games used that same HIPAA line complaining about his work wanting to know if he’s been vaccinated. I don’t have the energy to argue with these people.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Gary K: She seems nice.
dmsilev
@They Call Me Blue: My employer has been mandating vaccine reporting for a while now; once the vaccines are approved for full non-emergency usage, the mandate will shift to ‘get the shot’. In the meantime, there are some incentives (beyond, you know, being protected from the disease), such as being able to opt out of surveillance testing and being allowed to participate in some larger group events.
Mallard Filmore
@trollhattan:
How many years does it take for salt to become a problem? Fresh rain is needed to wash away salt from irrigation.
frosty
@Steve in the ATL: Southern Utah. Hardware store, RV parts, fast food… I was the only one with a mask. Groceries that require masks, about 50%.
This state is Mississippi with Mormons and not as many Dollar Stores. We hit the road again tomorrow, but not for any place less Republican.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
there were elections in Pennsylvania today
Steeplejack
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
That sounds like good news.
frosty
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I thought the current mayor of Pittsburgh was doing a good job. He did a lot of pushback of Trump, including signing the city up for the Paris accords. Hope the new guy can keep up the momentum and move the city forward some more.
ETA That being said, all the other things the voters approved sound positive.
trollhattan
@Steeplejack:
Tick
Tock
HumboldtBlue
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Good news.
Sister Golden Bear
@artem1s: As the Western saying goes: “Whiskey’s for drinking, water’s for fighting.”
mrmoshpotato
@trollhattan:
Wapiti
@They Call Me Blue: My dentist sent out a email to all of her patients notifying us that we will need to either need to be vaccinated or have a recent negative Covid test for appointments in August and beyond. Good for her; she’s taking care of her staff and making it safer for the patients.
Steeplejack
@trollhattan:
Yet Popehat is not so enthusiastic.
Sister Golden Bear
@?BillinGlendaleCA: The Los Angeles Aqueduct is 419 miles long — and entirely gravity-fed. It’s an especially impressive piece of engineering given the original bits were built in 1908-13.
Mary G
@Roger Moore: They’re also scared that Dems will take away raising the stock’s basis upon its owner’s death, meaning nobody pays tax on the appreciation.
Calouste
@Sister Golden Bear: I don’t think the Romans build aqueducts that were 400 miles long (after all Italy is only about 700 miles north to south) but there are parts still standing 2,000 years later.
Mary G
New follow of mine, clips and cartoons from old newspapers and magazines:
mrmoshpotato
@Mary G: Yoink!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Sister Golden Bear: Yes, and there are 2 of them. There was a bit of a problem with the St. Francis Dam though.
Martin
@trollhattan: I’m sure the Arizona leg is the first party to consider building a dam on the Mississippi.
If the AZ leg was worried about water, why are they floating billions in tax breaks for semiconductor fabs to build there. Fabs are a bit famous for consuming a large amount of water. Plus that seems like a pretty good excuse for everyone to tell the AZ leg to go fuck themselves.
Lacuna Synecdoche
Melanie Zanona via Anne Laure @ Top:
There are actually people in the world who deserve to come down with Covid-19 and drown to death in their own blood and phlegm. These are they.
evodevo
@debbie:
Yes….the fundie Satanic Panic died down for “normal” people quite a while ago, but has always been simmering on the back burner for talibangelicals. People for whom critical thinking is alien will always be present for nutjob ideas to take root. I liken it to a virus reservoir in an animal host, that reproduces quietly in the background, and breaks free every few years and crosses over to human hosts. This kind of mass hysteria has always been a problem. We are just seeing the latest iteration…
Uncle Cosmo
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
matt the somewhat reasonable
I’d favor a ‘heads on pikes’ approach to this group.
Glen Tomkins
Don’t let them on the floor of the House, or in the building itself.
Our side has the majority of the House, and with it, the power to exert majoritarian tyranny. With that power goes the responsibility to make and enforce rules of the House necessary to preserve the health and safety of its members as they go about the people’s business. The rules need to do all sorts of other things, with the ultimate goal of creating an orderly process for getting the people’s business done, but keeping the members free of threats to their health and safety clearly comes before any other goal of these rules, as a necessary precondition. Obviously you can’t have free and open debate over what the people’s needs are and how to meet them unless a safe workplace is assured.
Members who cannot prove that they are vaccinated need to be excluded from the floor, from all committee hearings, from all Congressional offices, and from the Capitol itself. If these restrictions interfere with their ability to vote, so be it, that’s their choice.
Of course this is not what our D majority is going to do. There is indeed this one sense in which both sides do it, that neither party takes the power and responsibility of governing seriously.
matt the somewhat reasonable
@They Call Me Blue: Thats not a good partnership.
matt the somewhat reasonable
@Gary K:
People will always suck up to rich people, especially when they’re dead and can’t make it cost much.