We talked yesterday about Robert Kagan’s WaPo piece on the continuing danger the zombie Trump party poses. The most significant threat is that Trump loyalists installed to replace officials who balked at throwing out vote totals in 2020 will come through for the demagogue next time, causing chaos and/or violent upheaval. That’s a gloomy, doomy scenario, but it’s one we discount at our peril, IMO.
So, I was glad to see Jamelle Bouie’s column in the NYT today, which takes up the same subject. Bouie compares complacency on the part of some now to similar blasé attitudes that existed before the Civil War. Like Kagan, Bouie points out that the obvious remedy is for lawmakers to address this crisis by defanging new, bad-faith state-level laws, i.e., for the feds to insulate nonpartisan election processes from undue partisan influence. He also acknowledges, like Kagan, that this is unlikely to happen.
I know it’s a depressing subject, and we’d all rather put the Trump Error behind us. But it’s good to see columns in major mainstream outlets pointing to this danger. That said, while the danger is real, it’s not all gloom and doom. There are possible upsides to the unfortunate situation of having one of the two viable political parties captured by a toxic narcissist in a cult of personality. Valued commenter Kent pointed out one possible positive outcome yesterday:
I could see a lot of best cases. Including that Trump runs again in 2024, clears the field, then absolutely tanks in an utter landslide and brings the GOP down with him across Congress and the states.
Best of all, that outcome could be realized with an assist from the orange crybaby himself. From CNN:
Donald Trump is escalating his fight against Republican Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, and state Republicans fear it will give Democrats a stronger foothold in the key swing state as next year’s midterm elections loom.
The former President’s criticism of Kemp now includes hyping Democrat Stacey Abrams as a preferable alternative to the GOP governor, whose crime against Trump was staying out of his attempt to overturn the Georgia 2020 election returns.
“Having her, I think, might be better than having your existing governor, if you want to know what I think,” Trump said Saturday at his rally in Perry, adding later, “Stacey, would you like to take his place? It’s OK with me.”
Imagine being the chair of the GA GOP and having that dickhead running around saying shit like that! Especially after Trump’s sore loser butt-hurt after the 2020 election possibly depressed the Republican vote in the runoff elections, giving hardworking Democrats in the state a critical assist.
Trump is also foisting terrible candidates like Herschel Walker onto state Republican Party organizations. His only criteria is loyalty to himself, so of course his picks are of the lowest quality, and the need to cater to the zombie base inspires current officeholders to do stupid, extreme and unpopular things (see DeSantis, Ron and Abbott, Greg).
Maybe none of this matters, but we need all the help we can get to hold Congress and make headway in statehouses in a tough environment. I don’t think it requires rose-colored glasses to believe a deranged ex-POTUS out there interfering with his party’s internal politics and pushing the most extreme and ridiculous loyalists onto tickets could result in some of those tickets blowing up. So, reason for optimism!
Open thread.
lowtechcyclist
Well, I wouldn’t say reason for optimism, exactly, but at least reason for hope. That’ll suffice.
bbleh
Concur that Trump himself may prove to be an asset for Dems, by keeping slicker, more mainstream Republicans out of contention for long enough AND by being so toxic that he drives Dem turnout as hard as he drives Republican turnout. Perhaps “everything Trump touches dies” will, in the end, apply to the entire Republican Party as much as it has to everything else.
But there is still the problem of Republican subversion of election administration. That is NOT dependent on Trump, and it may yet be the worst thing of all. I don’t know what can be done about that except a full-court press to defeat Republicans at all levels — local, state and national — and I don’t know whether even that will be enough.
BGinCHI
I’ll take anything I can get today, hope-wise.
West of the Rockies
@lowtechcyclist:
Hope is never a bad thing…
Baud
Via Reddit, gangsta polka.
West of the Rockies
Wow, that Dawn of the Dead Trump cultists photo is still disturbing. Gaping pie holes of rage and ignorance…
Ten Bears
What if, just what if … drumpf uck has been a sekrit dem all along, out to destroy the repubes?
It might be hard to thank him …
Eljai
I keep wondering what happens to a cult when the cult leader implodes. There’s been kind of an air of invincibility over TFG, but nothing lasts forever.
West of the Rockies
@Baud:
Very funny. I think Weird Al’s Amish Paradise remains king.
Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)
@West of the Rockies:
Remember, though: Hope is not a strategy.
topclimber
Absent GOP voter suppression, I am quite optimistic about adding to our Senate lead in 2022. You can’t gerrymander a statewide election.
As for the House, I tell myself we will squeak by.
State legislative elections…ugh.
dmsilev
In the various postmortems after Newsom curb-stomped the recall, one thing that a lot of people pointed at was that the constant cries of “it’s a rigged election” among the GOP may well have depressed Republican turnout. After all, if the game is rigged, why play? Now, in this particular case it clearly didn’t impact the overall result; that was driven by California being a very Democratic state and secondarily by Larry Elder being a very prominent asshole, but you could certainly imagine it making a difference in closer races.
Mai Naem mobile
@Eljai: the question is what happens to a cult when the cult leader dies in the world of social media and deep fakes? I don’t know.
yellowdog
@bbleh: It won’t. There will be no Dem victories in Georgia for years, possibly decades. The GQP MIGHT allow a few congressional seats to remain in Dem hands for the lulz.
Felanius Kootea
I wonder what Stacey Abrams made of his “endorsement.” Bouie’s article makes me nervous because I think we’re at the point where Democrats know what to do but don’t know how to get there. How do you move a Manchin without having him decamp to the Republican party? What donors do you have that can persuade a Sinema to do the right thing? How do you leave things as they are, knowing that doing nothing on voting rights means election slaughter in 2022? I wish I had the answers.
yellowdog
@Eljai: TFG is largely irrelevant now. The state legislatures are taking their orders directly from the Federalist Society and their fellow travelers. He serves to whip up the base but the real damage is the fascistic (but constitutional) laws going into effect.
Another Scott
Relatedly, … TheHill:
So, it looks like there’s no One Weird Trick.
The US has defaulted, briefly, on some things in the past (e.g. a type of bonds in 1979 when the system was overloaded while they were changing offices, or something). It did cause a brief blip in some interest rates (that some argue was permanent).
I hope that Team D is gaming out what to do in the event of a default. People will get paid late, but will get paid eventually. Markets will price in that risk – that price may be very high. Democrats will be blamed because we have the majority. How will that be countered? Can we make it a winning issue, among many, in 2022?
Is the risk of disaster too high? Should Yellen go the 14th Amendment route (“debt of the US shall not be questioned”)? Would it work? What happens if the courts say some wingnut has standing and say “Nope, can’t do it”? What are the down-sides?
Lots to think about…
Cheers,
Scott.
Kay
I’m impatient with that, though. We’ve done way too much “putting things behind us” and way too little reckoning. The carpet we keep shoving our mistakes under is so lumpy one can’t even walk on it anymore.
We don’t get to just walk away from errors. There are consequences.
Old School
@Felanius Kootea:
If it’s truly a money thing, can an Act Blue be set up where the funds only go to Sinema if she votes for reconciliation?
piratedan
@Felanius Kootea: and the part where they’ve convinced themselves and their supporters that even if they didn’t win, you just pretend it isn’t so and bring down the country bit by bit.
Hildebrand
Hope may not be a strategy, but creating hopelessness is clearly a part of the right-wing plan. They want us despondent – which is why the congressional republicans are so busy simply thwarting everything that might do anything. They want the system of government broken because that crushes the idealism of those who believe that government can do good for people.
Hope may not be a strategy – but it is a vital tool for standing up to their white nationalist, soak the poor, misogynist, anti-democratic, hate-filled world view. Hope gets us to work the phone banks, donate, canvass, call our reps and senators, and push back on their knavery.
They want us to throw in the towel – we have to show them that we never will.
Cameron
@West of the Rockies: I had a similar thought: “What George Romero movie did this come from?”
JPL
It’s going to be difficult for Lucy McBath to win again if the current map changes hold. Negative ads have been running nonstop against Bourdeaux, but not Lucy. I guess the plan all along was to weaken Bourdeaux to suppress the vote.
Herschel won’t debate or if he does, he’ll only say we need trump. It’s all he knows.
Hope springs eternal though.
Betty Cracker
@West of the Rockies: I hope that photo becomes an enduring symbol of the time. It conveys the mindless rage so well.
japa21
@Another Scott:
I always appreciate the Cheers you put at the end, even if the comment preceding it doesn’t always justify the upbeat tone of the finish.
cwmoss
@Cameron: Dont know where that pic comes from, but it’s super similar to a shot from Shaun of the Dead. Edgar Wright, not George Romero, but still in the pantheon of zombie flicks.
Omnes Omnibus
@Hildebrand: Co-sign.
Eljai
@yellowdog: I agree with you about the dangers posed by extreme laws at the state level. But if TFG were truly irrelevant, the beltway media would not be discussing him as legitimately running in 2024.
Old School
@cwmoss: The picture is from Ohio. It’s a protest on the state’s coronavirus response.
LiminalOwl
@Baud: Thank you, I think.
Baud
@LiminalOwl:
You’re welcome, maybe.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
There is reason for hope; consider this, the Texas crap bounty hunter law is a desperate attempt to keep the evangelicals bailing from politics. However, polling shows that even a majority of Republicans want to keep Roe verse Wade.
https://americanindependent.com/republicans-voters-polls-abortion-rights-roe-v-wade-support-fox-news/
So damned if they do, damned if they don’t for the GOP.
Another Scott
@japa21: Yeah, it’s incongruous sometimes. I need something between Cheers and DIAF. ?
I expect both bills will be passed and the debt ceiling will be raised. The bond market seems to expect the same – yields have only moved up a tiny bit if at all.
Treasury.gov
Cheers!
Scott.
Kay
It isn’t just Trump. These people have been screaming since the Tea Party in 2010. They didn’t stop screaming even when Trump was President and they had Congress. Their complaint then was we weren’t compliant enough and didn’t show them enough “respect”.
Some of their real stand out racist, shrieking, violent rallies occured WHILE Dear Leader was in office. There was a Right wing attack body count every year Trump was President.
Whether you’re a “peacemaker” or not doesn’t matter. The behavior continues and accelerates no matter what anyone else does or what happens. If there hadn’t been covid it would have been something else- a birth certificate, a health care law, football players kneeling. It hasn’t let up one day in the last decade.
Roger Moore
@dmsilev:
I think a big lesson from the California election is how useful it is to have a crazy opponent. Newsom looks to get a slightly higher percentage of the vote and a bigger turnout in the special election than he got in the last general election. Both those things are surprising, and I think the absolute awfulness of the most likely Republican candidate had a lot to do with it.
It’s scary for Democrats to face someone really bonkers in the general election, but it’s potentially useful. I’ve never been a fan of the “heighten the contradictions” school of thought, but as a practical matter all the allegedly sane Republicans are bringing is a sheen of sanity; in practice they’re going to vote almost identically to the obviously crazy candidates. It’s probably better to have the insanity explicitly on the ballot so the voters can see their choices clearly rather than letting the Republicans hide behind a respectable facade.
Baud
@Kay:
Right. Even if they control government, they have no path to social respectability. That eats them alive.
Old School
@Roger Moore:
I thought that for Hillary Clinton. It didn’t work out.
El Fug
We can hope he dies or hope he implodes, but isn’t it much more likely that it’s a close election? As someone else said, hope ain’t a strategy. This is a drum that needs constant beating until POTUS and Congress prioritize safeguarding our elections.
lowtechcyclist
@Boris Rasputin (the evil twin):
Tru dat. Hope is reason to keep on trying. You’ve still got to get out there and try something.
Kent
@Another Scott: The one trick is to just set aside the filibuster and take a party line vote. That doesn’t take 4 weeks to do.
cleek
@yellowdog:
mm… well, there have been ~2x as many covid deaths in GA as Biden’s margin.
Kent
@Old School:That only works if you have a non-Crazy electorate. California has a non-Crazy electorate. Apparently a lot of other states do not.
Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)
@West of the Rockies:
I wonder just how many of the ‘people’ in that picture have since died from COVID…
The answer is ‘not enough’.
Cameron
@Kay: Constant, seething, free-form resentment – there is nothing over which they won’t feel offended and aggrieved. Cognitive dissonance doesn’t exist in this world; you can make two contradictory complaints in one sentence without breaking a sweat.
Kay
@Baud:
The voting “audits” are exactly the same as the birther investigations. In Arizona, it’s the same fucking COUNTY.
The photographs are even the same. Go look at photos of the Tea Party people screeching at town halls about death panels. Identical to the anti-mask screamers at school board meetings. It’s time to admit this is looking like a permanent condition. 25% of the country wil be screeching incessantly no matter what happens, and it’s the same 25%. The one and only question is can we maintain an orderly, functioning country by somehow getting around that 50 million or so.
burnspbesq
@topclimber:
One of the two new seats in Texas looks like a safe Dem district in and around Austin. The upside of unsustainable growth.
ETA: if it stays substantially the same, TX-31 could flip. Williamson County grew much faster than Bell County.
smith
Hillary had a 30-year media vendetta aimed at her personally as well as deeply ingrained misogyny across the political spectrum. We will always have to contend with the latter if we choose our candidates equitably, but we won’t always have the former.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: I had the same thought this weekend. There was an anti-mask protest in courthouse square — the same spot the “Stop the Steal” shriekers occupied for weeks and weeks last winter in my town. Probably the exact same people too! (Usually, I have a few choice gestures for them, but one had brought a grandkid along, so I just rolled my eyes…)
Anyhoo, these people won. They don’t have Trump, but they have a Trumpy, anti-mask governor who just hired a crackpot anti-mask surgeon general (for $500K per year). School mask mandates are officially illegal in Florida, and this is one of the counties that doesn’t flout that law. This week, the new crackpot surgeon general fixed the quarantine problem in schools by saying kids who’ve been exposed don’t have to quarantine.
So what are they protesting? Nothing. It’s just endless screaming.
Cameron
@Kent: No, but you need all 50 Democratic senators.
piratedan
@Kay: its doable, but you have to have the will to shut down Rupert Murdoch and go scorched earth on the fascist media empire he’s created.
Omnes Omnibus
@El Fug: FFS, no one is saying hope is the strategy.
Kay
@Cameron:
I have lost patience with it, even in people I like. I was dumb enough to be GRATEFUL when the vaccine came out. That’s all I felt-gratitude. Thank god someone knows how to do this and did it.
Why are they so angry? What is it they feel they deserve but are not getting? They got Trump. They were still running people over and planting bombs and going on shooting sprees. What’s the fucking ransom demand here? Even if we wanted to pay it you couldn’t. It’s endless.
Baud
@Kay:
I recently saw an Amazon film about Gloria Steinem. The angry people have been with us for a long time. The only difference is they have not become concentrated in the GOP and they are more in our face because of the internet.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
Well, not anymore.
raven
@Baud: Ever heard of the hard hat riots?
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman): Maybe one. Probably none. However, at least one of them likely ended up in the hospital.
Cameron
I find it mildly disturbing that most comments I see posit Trump either dead or as the GOP nominee in 2024. Has everybody given up hope that he might be in jail?
raven
@Cameron: yes, and if you want to see blood in the streets wait for that.
Baud
@raven:
Yes. Another good example.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
They have more flags now. They had the don’t tread on me flag and the confederate flag and now they have blue flags and flags with Dear Leader on them. If 20 years they’ll have a whole gallery of flags and none of them will be the US flag.
It’s nice in a way. Now that the douchbags have abandoned the US flag we can take it up again. They almost ruined it.
smith
@Kay: What do they want? Rule or ruin, same as it ever was.
Betty Cracker
@Cameron: I didn’t have any hope to lose on that.
Baud
FWIW, I feel a lot that needs to be done isn’t strictly political or electoral but social. But these conversations don’t usually end up talking about what changes we’re willing to make socially to fight the bastards.
Roger Moore
@Kent:
I don’t know about that, or at least it’s more complicated than sane vs. crazy. Remember that Doug Jones was able to win in Alabama by running against an opponent who was bad enough. My belief is that there’s some level of awfulness that will get many Republicans to second guess their votes. And again, the only real difference between the obviously crazy Republican and the superficially respectable one is PR; they’re going to vote the same way on everything important. So let the Republicans bring the crazy. It won’t make a difference in governing and it will give the Democrats a better chance in the election.
Major Major Major Major
@yellowdog:
Now THAT’S the attitude it takes to win!
El Fug
@Omnes Omnibus: Good! What is the strategy then? Because I’m seeing a lot of people snarkily mentioning his lousy diet, his waistline, and his age. Then I’m seeing a lot of people talking about what needs to be done but acknowledging that it won’t be. So what is the strategy? I’m at a loss. I feel despondent and helpless here, which is how I felt for the four years of his presidency.
Brachiator
@bbleh:
This is possible in some states. This may have been at play in the recent California recall election. Larry Elder overwhelmed Republican alternatives, but he still lost big time.
But this dynamic is problematic where Democrats are not a clear majority. Trumpists live in a fantasy world where only Trump or someone like him can make them happy. It doesn’t matter how good their lives might be or whether Democrats have done a good job. These people have whipped themselves into a frenzy of perpetual unhappiness.
Major Major Major Major
@Another Scott: There absolutely is One Weird Trick to raise the debt ceiling: do it. A bare majority can actually do whatever it wants, whenever it wants. That they don’t, reveals things about their preferences.
Major Major Major Major
@Betty Cracker: Reminds me of the anti-mask/mandate I walked by in Times Square the other day. The speaker was ranting about AI.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
I’m maybe a little bit more optimistic. I think the 25% have been screeching incessantly because it has worked often enough to be worth the effort. We need to have the fortitude not to give in and see if that helps. Maybe being complete failures for the next 10 years will get them to STFU. It’s certainly worth trying.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: Hey, we are not relitigating your presidential campaigns here.
The Thin Black Duke
I remember when folks were saying Georgia was hopeless. (cue the voice of despair moaning, “Oh, but that was a fluke!”) An endless chorus of moaning how useless it is to struggle against the GOP juggernaut is boring.
Omnes Omnibus
@El Fug: Same as it is every night…. Vote, demonstrate, donate, etc. It’s a long slog; we need to keep going. There is no one simple trick. It took time to get here, and it will take time to make things right. But we won’t do anything if we give up.
Cameron
@raven: I think the same thing happens if he croaks – it’ll be played as an assassination by the Deep State.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
Respect. Acquiescence. They want not only to get their way but to have everyone go along quietly. Having people stand in their way, even if those people are eventually pushed aside, makes them angry. Having those people succeed in blocking them makes them furious. And as bad as Trump was, the Democrats were able to stymie him often enough to keep his supporters constantly angry.
Soprano2
I was listening to a podcast the other day with a man who talks to right-wingers a lot; can’t remember if it was Diane Rehm or Fresh Air. He said that one of their deepest beliefs and fears is that, because of changing demographics and the changing culture, they will eventually become a hated and discriminated-against minority. That’s one reason they never let up, because they can’t. They think if they let up even a little bit the raging liberal black and brown hordes will overcome them, the “true Americans”, and obliterate them. It’s why people like Tucker Carlson say the things they say about white replacement and crap like that. They’re terrified that black and brown people will treat them the way they’ve treated black and brown people. I know this isn’t exactly new to people here, but I think him saying it so starkly was new.
Omnes Omnibus
QFT
bbleh
@Brachiator: helps in purple states too, where turnout is everything (leaving aside Republican sabotage of election administration), and also with never-Trumper fence-sitters, who at least can be persuaded not to vote. He actively LOST in 2020.
But yeah, serious Republican anger-junkies, thanks in significant part to their dealers in right-wing media, are pretty much unreachable at this point, which means that some states are basically write-offs. But that’s not to say they shouldn’t be contested — there are local and state races that are winnable, and even a losing campaign is useful for the experience and the networking. And some once-red states are getting very purple indeed…
smith
I’m lucky enough not to know any MAGAts, but those of you who do might be able to answer this: The current vax numbers for the voting age population show that over 77% have gotten at least one shot. All states have a rate above 40%, and even the worst are now near 50%. Relatively few mandates have fully kicked in, so this means that a substantial portion of TFG’s voters have voluntarily gotten vaxxed, in direct defiance of their stated community standards. Do you think that their allowing this little wisp of reality to intrude into their beautiful minds might soften some of them up a bit? Or would it cause them to double down?
JPL
@raven: Imagine if you will his being charged with breaking campaign election laws in GA. He’d never be convicted, but that’s besides the point. His militias would be out for blood.
Soprano2
They are terrified because they know they are outnumbered. They want things to go back to the way they were when white people controlled pretty much everything, and it was ok to say racial and religious and misogynistic slurs in public. When it was OK to advertise “help wanted male” and “help wanted female”. When they felt comfortable with the way everything was. When they never had to see two men holding hands and kissing in public, and when men and women didn’t live together openly without being married. When most people went to church and were Christians. I think they feel extremely uncomfortable in the modern world; instead of learning how to adapt to it, they are screaming for the way things used to be to come back.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Baud:
You were always lousy as a campaigner. Lackluster on the road, no fire.
El Fug
@Omnes Omnibus: I hear all that and I do all that, and I am not giving up, I can’t and I won’t. But it seems to me that we’re up against something for which these strategies are incommensurate with the threat. I’m scared. I’ve been scared ever since he became the nominee in early 2016. Things so far have played out closer to worst case scenarios than best case. I would love to see some urgency from the Democratic leadership about this stuff (I know they’re busy).
Hoodie
@Roger Moore: One of the lessons of 2020 is that the GOP is losing out with suburban voters because of the perception of craziness and nihilism. Seems like now would be a good time for some targeted ads in suburban areas in states like WI, PA, and NC having at-risk GOP senators. Introduce a montage of stuff like this photo, 1/6 riot footage, videos of antimasker/antivaxxer crazies at school board meetings, mixed in with some Trump nuggets. “Now that they’ve become servants of Donald Trump, Republicans in Congress are fine with attacking the Capitol and other dangerous stunts . . . now they want to go after your job and savings by defaulting on US Government debt they played a large role in creating by giving massive tax breaks to billionaires (show Bezos’ dick rocket) . . . Call your Republican Senators today and tell them to stop performing dangerous stunts with our economy.” There is nothing more scary to suburbanites than losing their jobs, homes and savings.
Roger Moore
@Cameron:
So what if it is? It doesn’t seem to me that believing something crazy like that helps the Republicans in any way. Yeah, they’ll screech about the deep state, but it’s not as if that’s anything new. And in all likelihood it will make them more inclined to disconnect from politics.
Seriously, we need to stop being so worried about how the Republicans will react to anything that happens. If we don’t give them something to be crazy about, they’ll find something anyway. Just accept that the Republicans will be crazy and focus on doing what we want done.
lowtechcyclist
And now they’re the death cult.
Jonestown, writ large.
Betty Cracker
@smith: Every single one of my older wingnut relatives got vaxxed and pretty promptly after the vaccines became available. It hasn’t made them more reasonable on any other issue though. My grizzled wingnuts still bitched about masks and complained that the media used COVID to take Trump out. (I should also add that they don’t repeat the stolen election bullshit, at least not in front of me. They seem to think Trump was “cheated” out of a second term, but through bad PR, not electoral shenanigans.)
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Soprano2: The ever hysterical Rod Dreher has been saying that about hard-core Christianity, too. He really believes, and he does have some justification, that Christians like him will be demonized and have their opportunities shrivel up because of their beliefs (no gay marriage, binary gender, women MUST have children, etc). Tucker echos a lot of what Dreher says. They think we are out to destroy them.
Benw
I have a Hate Has No Home Here sign in my yard. BLM, pride flag, trans/non-gendered heart, the works. Is it because I value tolerance and kindness? Heck no, it’s there to enrage all the RW assholes that drive by in their big, dumb pickups. I hate them
Hoodie
@Roger Moore: The best weapon against Republicans is tying them to the craziness. You’re not going to change their base, you just want to peel of those at the margins who don’t want to be associated with or are scared by the craziness.
Major Major Major Major
@Betty Cracker: My FIL, who gets most of his news from VOA and Vietnamese-language WhatsApp threads*, was anti-vax for a little bit, but even he got his shots by like March.
*One of the reasons Vietnamese-Americans swung Trumpwards this time
lowtechcyclist
@smith: Democrats need to be quoting this all the time. We need to make it clear that those are the stakes, that this is exactly what’s going on.
Maybe if all their colleagues are quoting it, Manchin and Sinema might have to consider that it might possibly be true, and centrism and bipartisanship are a waste of time.
Hoodie
@Betty Cracker: To a point, but I think this stuff can be cumulative. My FIL was a pretty big Trump supporter, but 1/6 and the antivax stuff was a tipping point. Now he thinks Trump is crazy and dangerous.
Bill Arnold
@The Thin Black Duke:
Yep. Consider all GOP +N areas in play if N is like < 10 percent.
The GOP “juggernaut” is in part an illusion, used to boost their own morale and to (deliberately, this is) depress Democrats. As e.g. D.J Trump’s loss, and Georgia Senate races 2020/2021 demonstrated, the Republicans can be surprised/flabbergasted/befuddled by losses, even to the point of losing contact with reality.
Geminid
@Felanius Kootea: Stacey Abrams probably took trump’s statements in stride. She knows that trump just cares about trump, and has no qualms about undercutting Republicans. Abrams will probably save the tape for next fall, and in the meantime let Georgia Republicans stew in their own caustic juices.
The rally tape could end up propagated by a Democrat-aligned PAC with a conservative name. Abrams doesn’t need need to win over trump voters, just to get them to stay home. More Republicans than Democrats stayed home for the Senate runoffs, and that made the difference.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
I’m OK with destroying the Tuckers and Drehers of the world.
piratedan
if you want this country to return to any semblance of sanity you have to turn off the propaganda spigot.
That means putting the screws to Rupert M. and Mark Z.
remove their means to monetize treason and misinformation.
lowtechcyclist
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
Christians like him will be
demonizedostracized because they’re hateful assholes who grab any excuse to be cruel to people they regard as The Other.‘Demonized’? They’ve demonized their own selves by acting like demons.
taumaturgo
@Betty Cracker: It is not useless screaming, These folks are divorced from facts and reality and they won’t stop until democracy, the constitution, and the bill of right are shredded and a new version to their liking is established. Caos and mob rule will come first -think the storming of congress- then a Trump-like figure along with the military will declare a theocracy, wherein all the current suburban Karens will be enshrined and empowered to go after the blasphemous. Sounds like a new Afghanistan but with nuclear weapons. Ms. Atwood gave us a clear blueprint in her seminal work.
Fair Economist
@dmsilev: The thing about the recall is that Newsom did better, in both absolute votes and in percentage, than in 2018, a Democratic wave year. Better than any contested gubernatorial election in CA history, even.
Nationally, if we get more votes in 2022 than in 2018, we’ll be fine. And the recall shows it’s possible.
JWR
Good 10+ minute interview with Mike Lofgren from yesterday afternoon about invoking the 14th Amendment to get around the R generated sh*tshow:
Somebody’s got to get Machinima onboard, because absence of success will result in utter devastation. And on this morning’s always “helpful” NPR, one of the hosts said that there’s “some” polling out there, no sources given, indicating that the American people are onboard the R plan to tank the economy. WTF?
Betty Cracker
@Major Major Major Major: Thank dog he changed his mind! I think Trump deserves 100% of the blame for politicizing the pandemic and dooming mitigation efforts in many areas, but someone correctly made the point yesterday that the anti-vax stuff took on a life of its own and that a small but vocal base of anti-vaxxers were in place well before Trump came along.
Roger Moore
@Hoodie:
I think this is a very important point. We’re used to thinking of Republican voters as beyond reach, but that isn’t necessarily so. They’re in the grip of a cult that tries to surround them with misinformation that will keep them involved, but it’s not inevitable that it will work. Once people reach some breaking point, they can leave the cult and become vehement opponents.
I often say I’m not surprised that some people in the Republican party rejected the cult of Trumpism, but I’m constantly surprised at who and why. Let that give people some reason to think Trump believers are not beyond hope. And let people be prepared for the next event that might push people out of the cult and back into reality. Be ready to embrace people leaving the cult and keep them connected to reality so they don’t slide back.
eclare
@lowtechcyclist: I have been saying for months that TFG is a modern Jim Jones.
Major Major Major Major
@piratedan:
How?
Ksmiami
@lowtechcyclist: such a dweeby little incel fascist… he deserves to be shoved into a trash can
eclare
@Betty Cracker: That pretty accurately describes my older relatives. At least we don’t argue about vaccines, like some families.
JoyceH
@Betty Cracker:
It seems to me that the anti-vax hysteria is a more recent development. The elderly were vaccinated early, and the anti-vax sentiment just hadn’t appeared yet. I’d sure like to know where this anti-vax stuff came from, but it definitely wasn’t there from the beginning.
smith
@Betty Cracker: Interesting. Do you know if any of their friend cohort are all-in on anti-vax fables and how they respond to them? I realize there must be shades and gradations of MAGAtry, but from the outside anyway, it looks like there is a basic catechism that all are expected to adhere to. Maybe that’s more anti-mask than anti-vax?
lowtechcyclist
@JWR:
I don’t see why anyone needs to get anyone else on board. The language of the Amendment is very clear: “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law…shall not be questioned.”
ISTM that if there’s no legislation to raise, suspend, or remove the debt ceiling, the Administration should keep on paying all debts as if the debt ceiling didn’t exist. Just say the debt ceiling is blatantly unconstitutional, and this Administration is treating it as such.
And from that point on, the ball’s in the Republicans’ court, in a way that really doesn’t work for them. They can submit an impeachment resolution, or they can take Biden to court. Either way, they’re taking the initiative to try to blow up the economy, in a way that’s much more visible than merely filibustering.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@lowtechcyclist: @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: And that is the point, isn’t it? For the Drehers and Tuckers of the world, we are an existential threat. This is why they are so hysterical and willing to do anything to stop us, even if it means destroying the country they say they love.
Major Major Major Major
@Betty Cracker: Yeah, the Trumpers very much self-radicalized on this one. As that recent “oh shit, our oppositional defiant disorder is killing us” Breitbart piece can attest to.
Even my Trumpy anti-vax brother’s ex-wife finally relented and let their 15yo get the Pfizer. Took months, but better late than never.
A relatively small percent of the country is actual hard anti-vax. Not all of them are Trumpists. I am not sure I care about any of them though. Not any more.
piratedan
@Major Major Major Major:
Elizabelle
@Major Major Major Major:
Does anyone have a link for that Breitbart piece? Have heard you all discussing it, and that is one story that might get me to click.
Gin & Tonic
@JoyceH: Russia.
Elizabelle
@Major Major Major Major: I am on piratedan’s page on this one.
Your “how” is kind of a passive aggressive response. We need to get there. And we need to figure out how to do it.
The Murdoch family, Zuckerberg and others should not be making millions off spreading disinformation and — literally — killing people during a pandemic. Shut that firehose of disinformation down.
Regulate them. Sue them. Make the fines so onerous that it hurts. Not just “a cost of doing business.”
Public health is important, but so is democracy. And democracies are more frail than expected, in the age of unaccountable social media and disinformation platforms.
dopey-o
@Roger Moore:
If 670,000 American deaths didn’t change their minds, we can confidently assume they are immune to facts.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@lowtechcyclist: @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
I will also add, I want tolerance, not mutually assured destruction. I’m not going to change those people and they aren’t going to change me. Rather than suing businesses that don’t want to participate in gay weddings (like mine was), I’d rather I KNEW which ones they were so that me and mine could avoid them. I’ve grown up with those people coming after me and mine. Now that they have less ability to do that and the culture has changed, I feel like there are people on my side who want revenge and go out of their way to get it, like gay people enrolling in fundamentalist Christian schools and suing to stay in married housing. Why on Earth would they do that? Its a deliberate provocation. It just riles these people up and gives their propaganda media more ammunition against us. These people are a large chunk of the electorate and they aren’t going anywhere. Instead, the are getting radicalized. The more we drive them out of polite society, they less they have to lose.
Major Major Major Major
@piratedan: Well I don’t see how 1 would survive a constitutional challenge, even from like a 5-4 D court. IANAL of course but I understand this one is pretty cut and dried, especially once you expand beyond the “broadcast networks” part of the original. Indeed, the court found in Red Lion that the Fairness Doctrine was constitutional because the broadcast spectrum is necessarily limited, not because the government has blanket authority to censor the news.
2. Define untrue. Who decides what’s untrue? Aren’t there constitutional protections for untruths, anyway?
How do you scrutinize an algorithm? Who does it?
I dunno, industrial society? Not much to be done about that.
The second question is much more interesting. I definitely wouldn’t do it with likely-unconstitutional speech restrictions. The portability/interoperability internet regulation bill that’s sitting in committee is pretty interesting, would stop many of the worse excesses of the tech monoliths, and would help usher in a new era of the Web.
As for the media, it ain’t what it used to be. I think most of the problems happen online. Restricting the ability of a corporation to be a world-spanning monolith is the best way to address that IMO, be that rolling back mergers or just slapping down a game-changer like interoperability.
Not opposed to reforms, just bad ones!
Brachiator
@smith:
Many of them will double down. They feel that their submission is coerced. They refuse to see the danger of the pandemic.
Betty Cracker
@smith: The only anti-vaxxers I personally know are wingnuts who are young enough to think a bout with COVID won’t hurt them. (Not coincidentally, they can now point to lived experience since they had it and survived.)
They also don’t believe they can still spread it around to vulnerable people. They will tell a medical doctor whose ER is overwhelmed with COVID patients that there’s no public health crisis. There’s just no reasoning with them.
My sample size is pretty small, so I don’t know how representative this thinking is, but it seems pretty consistent with other stories I hear and what we’re seeing in available data.
As for older wingnuts, I believe Joyce may be onto something at #108 — anti-mask sentiment came first (fed by Trump), and the older folks got themselves vaxxed before refusal became such a prominent identity marker. It’ll be interesting to see how open they are to receiving a booster.
Citizen Alan
@taumaturgo:
Actually, things didn’t turn out too well for Karen (aka Serena Joy) in that book either.
Roger Moore
@dopey-o:
No, we can’t. We can assume they’re in the grip of a cult that tries to keep them from seeing or understanding those facts, but that doesn’t mean they’re immune. It means they have been kept from seeing and understanding the facts we want them to understand in the way we want them to understand. But people who went along with Trump have been brought back. We just need to figure out what will get them to leave the cult one person at a time.
smith
@Betty Cracker: Hmm…they don’t believe that it’s a serious disease or that it’s a public health crisis, yet they keep shoveling money at magic potions that they think will make it go away. (Yes, I know, foolish of me to think there would be any cognitive consistency there.)
Elizabelle
@Major Major Major Major: You have some good points.
Break up the big “news” and social media corporations. They should have never been allowed to accumulate so many stations and outlets.
I think that anything calling itself “News” should be accountable to a set of standards for accuracy and fairness. We are dealing with propaganda networks, not news.
Our issue is not so much “balance.” It is accuracy. And, as Kay points out frequently, lack of timely publication.
Uncle Cosmo
@Roger Moore: Bravissimo. Good small-d democrats won’t be able to rest easy until the fraction of cultists shrinks to where incipient fascism is unacceptable to the great mass of civil society. Even if most of us don’t have the dedication or stamina to “peel them off,” we should welcome their disillusion when and where it occurs. “Hate the sin, not the sinner” – because it is always possible for the sinner to be redeemed.
Ksmiami
@Roger Moore: death. Theirs. Sorry not sorry
SiubhanDuinne
Anybody else watching Forever FLOTUS speaking at the groundbreaking for the Obama Presidential Center?
ETA: Michelle’s done, but a young man is introducing POTUS #44 right now. MSNBC, dunno who else is carrying it.
Betty Cracker
@Elizabelle: Here’s a link. It’s a reverse psychology thing: Pelosi, Biden, Fauci want you to die — don’t give them the satisfaction!
Ascap_scab
Imagine being the chair of the GA GOP and having that dickhead running around saying shit like that!
You say that like David Shafer would be against Trump.
Here ya go.
Honored to speak yesterday in Perry at President Trump’s Save America Rally. Great to visit with President Trump and be with so many enthusiastic Georgia Republicans!
https://twitter.com/DavidShafer/status/1442234591868329987?s=20
piratedan
@Major Major Major Major: before we start to wax rhapsodic about what free speech is and isn’t; the chilling effect that the SCOTUS has managed to circumvent half a century of accepted law when it comes to Roe and turn even a blind eye in regards to the enforcement of such, tells me that what we used to understand as the tried and true bedrock of law is anything but (at least speaking from the perspective of an ordinary citizen).
Apparently the most successful way to codify law is to flood the courts with bullshit, call into question the legitimacy of anything and have someone look the other way while you run amok on the margins. We might just as well have greater success having the States of California and New York outlaw the Republican Party as a terrorist group and start arresting people.
and my apologies for venting out on this, I used to have a decent amount of faith that the law served the ideals of justice and to discover that it’s apparently nothing more than a high priced hooker is disconcerting, which shame on me for not remembering that the law is essentially written by lawyers, who are just as subject to bad ideas and temptation as the rest of us.
RaflW
I don’t watch cable news, and I suspect Brian Stelter isn’t viewed by other journalists with that much respect, but he is bang on right about this, calling it a “gathering storm” and calling out the networks by name for not covering the Trump coup memo.
prostratedragon
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: I’ve often felt the same way about kkk types, so long as, and this is key, their visible expressions don’t take the form of denying public accommodations and the like. Might be better that they not keep secrets. But the line beyond which avoidance is no longer tolerable is murky. Furthermore, there’s that camel’s nose effect.
JWR
@lowtechcyclist:
Yes, you’re right. I should’ve said that they’ve got to get on board for all the other stuff, such as Biden’s agenda, and not the debt limit. TY.
Elizabelle
@Betty Cracker: Thank you, Betty!! Appreciate it.
Also, moar limpets, please.
RaflW
BTW the junior senator from the above average state of Minnesota has now come out officially in favor of expanding the Supreme Court by co-sponsoring Ed Markey’s bill to add four seats. Tina Smith isn’t as well known nationally as some in that chamber, but I think it matters that he’s gained a moderate-ish, definitely midwestern sign-on.
(I say she’s moderate-ish in the sense that she’s a bit to the left of Amy K, but hardly a rabble rouser. I do not mean moderate in the idiotic sense of Manchin or Sinema. They’re apostate jackasses.)
Elizabelle
Could somebody with twitter link directly to this one, so that those of us not logged in can follow his series of tweets? Found this on the Brian Stelter twitter response feed. And I am glad to see journalists weighing in on this.
Geminid
@Uncle Cosmo: I’ve wondered what happened with your neighbors whose house caught fire a few weeks ago. Will they be able to keep their house?
Betty Cracker
@Elizabelle: Do you mean birds rather than mollusks? ;-)
RaflW
Elizabelle:
@MarkJacob16
I used to edit Page 1 stories for the Chicago Tribune, including many from Washington. In this thread, I explain why the media (including me) have been unintentionally complicit in the rise of fascism that threatens our democracy.
Mainstream media have long tried to treat Republicans and Democrats equally. Some, like me, thought that was the way to be fair. In fact, it was the way to be lazy and not have to sort out the facts. Just quote a Democrat and quote a Republican and you’re done.
When I edited political stories, I went so far as to count the quotes from Republicans and Democrats, thinking an equal number would make us fairer. I didn’t think I was helping either party. I thought I was helping the readers. I was wrong.
If you look back 3 or 4 decades, you see many corrupt pols in both parties. Scandals like Abscam and Keating 5 were mostly Democratic. But in recent decades it’s obvious the GOP is more unethical and anti-democratic. Which means treating the parties equally helps Republicans.
Hillary Clinton mishandled emails. George W. Bush lied to get us into a war. Both were bad. But one was way worse. The media’s self-assigned job to treat Republicans and Democrats equally has compelled them to pump up coverage of Democratic scandals. It’s fairness-signaling.
The Republicans have overwhelmed the media with corruption. They’ve created scandal fatigue, prompting journalists to do something I call ethics norming. That’s when something that would have been a huge scandal in the recent past is considered normal now.
The Republicans have pulled off quite a trick. If news is defined as something unusual happening, GOP corruption is not news because the party is so widely corrupt. Some media have turned off their outrage impulse and decided that corruption is normal.
What’s needed is new framing. Not party-oriented but democracy-oriented. Truth-oriented. The media shouldn’t elevate liars in the interest of “fairness.” Yes, media should be fair – to the readers, to the facts. But not to the 2-party system. To our democracy.
We are now in the midst of an assault on democracy unlike any our country has ever seen. Any journalist who doesn’t frame their reports in that context is doing a grievous disservice to our country. [end]
Elizabelle
@SiubhanDuinne: Thank you for the head’s up on PBO speaking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mq6e5TMBoh8
PBS feed of Obama’s live remarks.
Betty Cracker
@RaflW: Let me see if I can fix…
Never mind. That didn’t work!
Elizabelle
@Betty Cracker: Oh, um .. right.
Wings. Not a tiny marine foot. I iz not a naturalist.
Major Major Major Major
@Elizabelle: IMO the fairness doctrine was workable as a regulation because it did not target ‘news’, but all broadcasters. The station could deal with the requirements however they wanted. Once you get into the business of defining ‘news’ and ‘truth’ I think you open up the system to a lot of abuse. As always, consider if Trump had this power.
Or, you just end up with a world where Fox News rebrands as Fox
Newswith “censored” stamped over the word.Maybe that’s an improvement. I dunno. The media is often no better in countries with fewer speech protections (which is most countries)–but the chilling effect on disfavored individual speech sure exists.
Miss Bianca
@Another Scott:
“DIAF…cheerfully”? : )
Geminid
@Ascap_scab: A lot of Republican officials like the Georgia party chairman have said complimentary things about trump that they don’t neccesarily believe. Even if they despise the man, they fear his voters.
SiubhanDuinne
@Elizabelle:
I miss him so much.
Elizabelle
@SiubhanDuinne: Yes.
He’s discussing now how we are living through a time of rapid change. Just used the word tribalism, and that it’s true in Asia and Africa and here at home.
Also that we can reverse these trends. I hope that he is correct
ETA: Maybe we can have a thread later to highlight the PBO and Michelle O speeches.
Cameron
@Betty Cracker: One of my closest friends is an anti-vaxxer because he’s been into alternative medicine for 40+ years. I don’t have a problem with that, since he recognizes that COVID is both real and dangerous, and he’s willing to mask up/social distance/etc. It’s just he thinks that elderberry and vitamin C and zinc will save him. We agree to disagree.
trollhattan
In pondering this evidently new and Quite Wrong drug craze in Congo, how can we put it forward to our homegrown wingnuts as the Next Best New Covid Preventive & Cure. What could possibly go wrong?
“Why doesn’t Fauci want you to know about bombe? Is he in the pockets of Big Pharma?”
Ksmiami
@piratedan: yes – what we are experiencing is complete institutional failure because norms have been discarded
MisterForkbeard
@RaflW: What bugged me about this was that even in the both sides don’t do it article, this author decided to talk about how Hillary’s e-mail was bad. It was the security equivalent of jaywalking, and folks need to get the fuck over it.
Ksmiami
@Elizabelle: meh I love them both but the rot I fear is just too damn deep
Elizabelle
@Cameron: I think the insurance industry should wallop your friend with medical bills, should he end up in the ER, because elderberry and vitamin C could not save him that outcome.
Enough. These dicks are costing us all with their foolishness. Even when they are amenable to masking and distancing. That is not always enough.
Chief Oshkosh
@smith: If we go that route, can we skip McClelland and go straight Sherman?
lowtechcyclist
@Major Major Major Major:
I agree with your basic point, but even given Red Lion, the Fairness Doctrine could be expanded to cable. Maybe 500 cable channels isn’t as limited as a handful of VHF and UHF channels, but it’s still limited: I can’t just call up my local cable provider and say, “hey, where’s my channel?” and get one.
And that’s why the Fairness Doctrine can’t apply to the Web: if you don’t like what someone else is saying, you can start your own blog, create your own website, or whatever. You may not draw much of a following, but that’s your problem: the First Amendment guarantees your right to free speech, but it doesn’t guarantee you an audience.
But on cable, you don’t have the right to speak in the first place, hence there’s no reason the Fairness Doctrine shouldn’t apply.
Elizabelle
@smith: The Cooper Union address. Very good.
I love the links that turn up here. Even when it’s a doomscrolling read, BJ always yields up great article and information links.
Elizabelle
@RaflW:
Thank you!
Gravenstone
@trollhattan: Take enough of it, and those Bombe users are going to leave some pricey corpses behind. Those catalyst metals ain’t cheap.
smith
@RaflW: I think one reason bothsidesy journalism continues despite being called out again and again and again is that the consumers these outlets rely on don’t punish them for their bad behavior. Goobers do not subscribe to FTFNYT. They do not donate to Nice Polite Republicans They do not watch CNN. The people who do are the ones whose values are actively undermined in exactly the way Mark Jacob describes. Why do their audiences tolerate this?
smith
@Chief Oshkosh: Sure, why not? Stacy Abrams this time, with votes.
trollhattan
@Gravenstone:
True that. It’s thought the sky-high prices of platinum and rhodium will speed adoption of EVs considerably.
billcinsd
@smith: in 2020, Trump got about 31% of the total adult population to vote for him (46.9% of the 66.8% that voted), so it is possible that few that voted for Trump have been vaccinated
trollhattan
moved upstairs
Geminid
@Gravenstone: The bombe phenomenon is a good argument for legal cannabis. There’s weed out there that will produce the effects the bombe-r describes with fewer side effects. And you don’t need to chop up car parts, just good seeds and a sunny space.
billcinsd
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: Dreher is already ridiculed because he is an idiot, not because of his flavor of the month Christianity
Uncle Cosmo
@Geminid:
It looks like they might. The other day there were contractors filling up a dumpster with fire- and water-damaged material from the inside. The conflagration itself was more smoke than fire, and my guess is the insurance paid enough to have the interior restored.
The question is whether they should. Two residents, mother in late 80s and son in early 60s, and he’d been fearful for some time that something like this would happen. (Mom lit candles during the recent power outage & when she went onto the porch one of them touched off something flammable, voilà.) I remember when my mother started leaving burners lit and water running in the sink & realize we were damn lucky nothing too terrible happened before we moved her out (at age 94!). They might be better advised to sell the place and move somewhere safer.
Anyhow I should find out more when the son comes by to mow my lawn (as he has for the last >30 years!) in a few days. Now that it seems at least one person here is interested, I’ll post updates when there’s something to report.
Antonius
Assuming, of course, they just don’t fix the votes to be what they want.
gvg
@JPL: So what? Don’t charge him is the proof is there? I don’t think so. Prepare as much as we can, because the laws are the laws. I am angry he hasn’t already been charged decades ago with financial fraud and tax cheating. I don’t want rich or famous people to not have to obey the same laws I do.
Geminid
@Uncle Cosmo: Thanks for the update. I hate it when people lose a house that way.
gvg
@Betty Cracker: Older people remember friends and relatives dying or being crippled for life by things we now have vaccines for. I am 58. I got chickenpox and was miserable. My parents had a friend when I was very young who had had polio, and was in a wheelchair but I barely knew her. I was a bookworm and also read a lot of old fiction, like the little house on the prairie series (mom loved it) and other pioneer days fiction. I NOTICED then, how many people died of things like smallpox and yellow fever. How many illnesses I am not even sure what they were, if we still have them under a new more scientific name or something? Younger generations didn’t even slightly touch that past and don’t read the same books. I notice that most my age also didn’t notice that the past had lots more death, but my parents generation sure knows. Also early news really pushed that the elderly were in more danger. Possibly hearing some GOP politicians actually say that we needed to sacrifice Granny for the economy wised up a few too.
Elizabelle
@gvg: I remember reading a kid’s book during the 1960s. Illustrations were from 1950s.
It was about having empathy for a young girl who was weak and could not play and do the things other kids her age did. Guessing it was about polio or some other childhood illness that was less prevalent even by the mid1960s. Author never precisely identified the health issue.
Jim Appleton
@trollhattan:
As fire chief in dry country with an Interstate, many groundcover fires were started by chunks of the ceramic honeycomb blown out of a tailpipe. We’d usually address the fire, then hear about someone towed a few miles away with an engine problem.
If I’d known it was fungible, I’d have saved the chunks we found.
Miss Bianca
@gvg: Yep, me too. Same age, same sorts of experiences. I hate to frame it as, “too many people don’t realize what it was like to die or get fucked up from infectious diseases”, but…here we are.
Maybe it’s more like “vaccinations are a victim of their own success.”
planetjanet
So I have been relatively pleased with CNN’s online coverage. I take exception to whomever came up the the headline “DOW drops more than 550 points due to inflation fears” on the day after the Republicans voted to default on the debt. Really. Try harder.
catclub
@Gravenstone:
But heavy metals are really bad for you. I wonder if it is concentrated neural damage that gives the response. Strikes me as very strange.
RaflW
@billcinsd: Dreher is that most odious of Christian scolds: He is aware that other people enjoy having sex, he knows he’s never going to figure out how to do so himself, so he must be relentlessly moralistic and utterly dull.
J R in WV
In grade school I had numerous classmates who had terrible illnesses that are totally treatable today. Benny was a good looking youngster, died of a “weak heart” which would probably be treatable with drugs or stents today.
In second (or third maybe?) grade there was a girl — not in class long enough for me to remember her name — she had had polio and was disabled with deformed joints, which made it hard for her to write, she was slow, but bright. Never showed up again at some point…
And I leave so many out, the point is that there were so many deaths and disabilities in the 1950s compared to today. Especially among kids. The polio vaccinations were so significant. I was so young I didn’t really understand it, but I could tell from the attitude of the adults how important this new thing was.
And now we have news readers and politicians telling us that vaccinations aren’t important, that we should be too healthy for these diseases to bother us. Right! Just man up and work through it, right? Oh, yeah!!
burnspbesq
@JPL:
The fuck he won’t…venue will be Fulton County.
billcinsd
@RaflW: Well, Rod has a kid or two so he figured out how to have sex, but he probably didn’t enjoy it. He only seems to enjoy eating fine food in Europe with fascists.
Just Chuck
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
After how they’ve been acting, they ain’t far off. Hell, I’m a white guy and I want to destroy these fuckers.
Just Chuck
@Another Scott:
“Bless your heart.”
sab
@West of the Rockies: @Betty Cracker: Also, with that photo Ohioans can no longer ridicule Floridians. Those are Buckeyes pounding on those doors to their own capitol. That blonde in front was running for a staye office.