Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Thanks for reminding me that Van Jones needs to be slapped.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Prediction: the GOP will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

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

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

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

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Live Free Or Die! For Men Only? (Women’s March)

Reader Interactions

96Comments

  9. 9.

    m.j.

    It troubles me that our media is focusing on the loss of women’s rights in Afghanistan, but can’t quite bring themselves to look here and make a comparison.

    It also bothers me that very few have made this an issue about status, as in first class versus second class.

  10. 10.

    Spanky

    I thought the good Senator had a list to port, but now I see that the person she’s leaning in for is cropped out.

  19. 19.

    Betty Cracker

    Looks like there was great turnout in many cities. Kudos to everyone who participated, including Senator Klobuchar. I’ve been impressed with her over the last couple of years.

  20. 20.

    Sure Lurkalot

    “Same shit different century” is a good one too. The GOP is truly a revanchist organization. It seems they will double down on their culture war losses forever.

  22. 22.

    Ruckus

    @Sure Lurkalot:

    The entire conservative theme seems to want to remain in the 17th century when men were men, or some crap like that. It seems to me that conservatives want men to be double counted because they have some slight differences in reproductive gear and they don’t want to have to ask to use said gear. Also they seem to have trouble seeing anything ahead of them, what with having their heads inserted in a rather tight exit orifice that they own.

  23. 23.

    eclare

    @Betty Cracker:  I’ve been impressed by her, too.  Funny how that she’s no longer running for the presidential nomination all that “mean girl” talk has disappeared.

  24. 24.

    Kay

    I went to one in Ludington Michigan – where I was – very small but it’s only about 10k people- about 50 marchers. One woman on a bicycle at an intersection stopped and gave us a very dramatic and prolonged thumbs down and people made mean comments about the physical attributes of the women marching- the meanness towards women in general is always there- as every woman knows the entire public are self appointed judges of how women look, always and everywhere and that almost reflexive nastiness ramps up when we speak up. On the flip side we got a lot of encouraging horn honks from passing cars.

  25. 25.

    senyordave

    @m.j.: Maybe because women in this country at least have the right to be heard, both in the courts and the public square.  In Afghan women who dare resist face the real possibility of being killed.

  26. 26.

    Miss Bianca

    @eclare: Yeah, funny ’bout that…

    Also high-larious is how first slowly, then suddenly, I began seeing “HRC was right about everything!” tweets coming in fast ‘n’ furious once the full horror of Trumpism became apparent…seems to be the American way. We can only admire certain social/political visionaries and leaders once they have been rendered toothless – either through political defeat or assassination or cultural or literal genocide.

  27. 27.

    Kropacetic

    @senyordave: Maybe because women in this country at least have the right to be heard, both in the courts and the public square.

    How good is a right to be heard in the public square when the people responsible for informing the public mostly ignore you?

    I know women here don’t have it as bad as in Afghanistan.  Worse problems elsewhere don’t invalidate problems here.

  29. 29.

    Kay

    @senyordave:

    Why is this comparison always only made with women, though? There are tens of millions of people who make 3 dollars a week and live in huts made of scraps of refuse. Does that mean American men can’t demand better wages and expect media coverage of that issue? Weird how we get an international review of women’s rights to put it all in perspective that no one else is subject to. “You’re well above Afghanistan!” True, but let’s apply that to all US acivists, or none.

  30. 30.

    cain

    Because the media is all about narratives and they used that narrative to see if they can weaken Biden. It was never about women’s rights ..

  31. 31.

    Mike E

    @m.j.: Our indolent media’s purpose is to widen our crippling divide and please their sponsors. Class is as class does, clearly. Good eye on your part!

    ETA: cain’s point, too.

  35. 35.

    Ksmiami

    @Ruckus: if we could only take away their technology and access to antibiotics, I’d be ok with relocating them all to Iowa and building a wall

  42. 42.

    WaterGirl

    Also from Elizabelle, unrelated, but lovely photos from a  quincianera.

    Live Free Or Die! For Men Only? (Women's March) 10 Live Free Or Die! For Men Only? (Women's March) 9

    No doubt this young woman had her big day planned before the women’s march was scheduled.

  43. 43.

    Kay

    What bothers me about the media coverage is how they accepted the Right wing justice’s preferred interpretation of their action on the Texas law. Laws to normal people are “what happened” not a thesis on originalism and the shadow docket. What happened was abortion was banned in Texas. I know Barrett objects to the real world results of her rulings being discussed. I don’t care what she wants. They’re supposed to be covering “what happened” not the elite actors preferred narrative on what happened. What happened is in Texas and to women. That’s the story. They can do a bad job covering legal theory or a good job covering what happened. They chose the first.

  44. 44.

    Formerly disgruntled in Oregon

    @cain: This. With this politicized reporting, it’s not about the pursuit of truth or objective good. It’s about weaponizing the liberal values that we (mostly) share in service of a harmful agenda that they can’t be honest about.

  46. 46.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Kropacetic: How good is a right to be heard in the public square when the people responsible for informing the public mostly ignore you?

    Ignore you, put words in your mouth, worse yet, only bother reporting voilance.

    If it was me and I was one of these woman’s right leader I would make the message “do we have to act like the other side and start shooting right wing judges who are enabling the laws that taking our rights for you press buffoons trouble yourselves in reporting our side of this since voilance is the only thing can be bothered with since you find civil discourse so boring?”

  47. 47.

    cain

    @Kay: ​
     
    The media likes to use themes like women’s rights almost as a subtle way to show superiority over countries like Afghanistan. Their great concern about wanting women equality just like we have here at home.. don’t you know.

    Their complete lack of awareness that those rights are being attacked here at home clearly shows that all they have is a moronic combo of virtue signaling and performance art.

  49. 49.

    Kropacetic

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: voilance

    Also, I LOVE this misspelling.  It needs a definition.  Something to do with the properties of something being revealed, from the French “voila.”

    @cain: The media likes to use themes like women’s rights almost as a subtle way to show superiority over countries like Afghanistan. Their great concern about wanting women equality just like we have here at home.. don’t you know.

    Their complete lack of awareness that those rights are being attacked here at home clearly shows that all they have is a moronic combo of virtue signaling and performance art.

    If they aren’t careful, before long they won’t have that favorable comparison to make anymore.

  50. 50.

    cain

    @Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: ​
     
    They do it constantly. Themes like ‘Dems in Disarray’ are all ways to weaken the party. So the person on the streets gets the ‘oh look at that.. how predictable!’
    But they have not realized that it’s all changing. With everything we support under fire we are more united and incensed and have less tolerance for centralism than before.

    I would submit the petulant display by anti-vaxxers this year is one of the driving force of our lack of patience.

  52. 52.

    Kropacetic

    @cain: One might think that a violent insurrection to overturn the results of a secure democratic election would lose Republicans sole rights over the term “real Americans.”  One would be wrong.

  55. 55.

    Kay

    @Kropacetic:

    How is I’ve heard more from Right wing justices than I have from women in Texas? Ridiculous. Barrett and Thomas and Alito already have a forum. It’s a court. If they want to expound on their radical legal theories they can order some of the clerks to write an opinion.

  56. 56.

    eclare

    @Kay:  As always, great analysis.  So many pols and judges, justices, are so disconnected from how people live.

    ETA> Kropacetic said it better and more succinctly.

  57. 57.

    Citizen_X

    @Kay: One woman on a bicycle at an intersection stopped and gave us a very dramatic and prolonged thumbs down

    Ooh, Sinema was there?

  59. 59.

    Betty

    I wish I knew what it would take to get through to these journalists. It seems as though the prestigious papers, the Times and Post, are getting worse. Winning elections hasn’t changed the narrative.

  60. 60.

    Kay

    @eclare:

    I don’t care if they cover it anymore. There are some political issues that are below ground until they aren’t- I’m hoping this is one of them. Women’s rights isn’t a history of media coverage. It’s a history of groups of women plotting, which I admire and approve of, plotting, scheming, all those words that are applied to women. I support all of that. Just direct me to my local meeting.

  61. 61.

    Yutsano

    @WaterGirl: Oh that’s not the quinceñera. That’s just the numerous pictures that have to be taken before the actual party. I will say she chose a lovely dress for herself.

  63. 63.

    Kay

    Steven Greenhouse @greenhousenyt

    NYT Editorial—January 6 Was Worse Than We Knew “The country was hours away from a full-blown constitutional crisis—not primarily because of the violence & mayhem inflicted by hundreds of Trump supporters but because of the actions of Donald Trump himself”

    Well, “we” didn’t know but some actors in elite media knew. They just chose to not release what they knew and instead wait and put it in a book. Many of us suspected but we weren’t told what they knew- we were told the opposite – that the loveable scamp Donald Trump was just doing his usual hijinks and we should all rest easy.

    In 2024 we probably don’t want to wait for the book. We’ll need timely information. They’re not writing news they’re writing a recent history. We can’t wait for that.

  70. 70.

    raven

    I mentioned that the march here was scheduled for 3:30, right as the game would end. Cooler heads prevailed and my bride just announced that they are having it today at 3.

  72. 72.

    JWR

    Peggy Nooners on with Chuck Todd this AM said something like “why can’t the Dems just pass the $1.5T infrastructure bill, call it a win, and do the rest, bill after piddling little bill, instead of using this all or nothing, “maximalist” approach?” (Her word, her emphasis, her exasperation.)

    This is to say that I think we really need term limits for political reporters, and not the veneration some who’ve been there since Nixon or before regularly receive, like CBS digging up Bob Schieffer for his jejune, (Ha ha! I used Jejune!), opinion about BLM, or whatever the hot topic happens to be that day.

    But geez, Lady Pegs, this ain’t 1988, and this ain’t your beloved, all growed up Republican party we’re all dealing with anymore. This is 95+% of the Democratic party arguing with a very few, namely TWO, recalcitrant members, precisely because the Republicans decided long ago that we can’t have nice things, and picked up their ball and walked, a fact not brought up by anyone, not Even The Liberal Donna Brazile.

  73. 73.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @raven: It was a pain getting home from the Madison march.  It ended at the same time as the debacle vs Michigan.

  74. 74.

    Ksmiami

    @Kay: my issue is I don’t see the party leaders messaging and fighting back hard enough. Either we reform the Supreme Court, or we burn it to the ground, but something has to change…

  76. 76.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @Kropacetic: They’ve already talked about how women are mere “vessels” for babies, so yeah.

    Plus it was a time when the poors knew to tug their forelock to their betters.

    @senyordave: the Tabliban are also persecuting (and likely) killing LGBTQ people in Afghanistan, so I guess I shouldn’t worry my pretty little head that after abortion the current SCOTUS will overturn protections against discrimination that I just gained in the past few years.

  77. 77.

    JWR

    @Martin: Yeah, it looks really bad. Last night’s TV news said the spill was 5 miles long, and that the oil, partially refined?, had already hit Huntington Beach, and was threatening the Bolsa Chica Wetlands.

  80. 80.

    Ksmiami

    @Sister Golden Bear: this Court is on a serious collision course to destruction. I mean that- they’re literally unelected Spanish Inquisition tribunals and as far as I know, their robes are not bulletproof

  82. 82.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Ksmiami: I’ve been trying to figure out how the conservative Supreme Court justices really feel about public opinion. I would have thought that were paternalistic enough to ignore it on the grounds that they know best. But the PR tours seem to say otherwise.

  83. 83.

    Ksmiami

    • @Dorothy A. Winsor: they think they’re insulated by the reputation of the institution, but the place has become a stain of their hackery and as more and more lives are affected, fierce blowback will be the only response appropriate. If I cooked in a DC restaurant…
  84. 84.

    sab

    @WaterGirl: I think we should stop giving Justice Barrett the benefit of a first name and maiden name. Also stop giving her the benefit of Justice title. Just Mrs. Jesse Barrett, a wife who happens to have a job. See how she likes that traditional treatment.

  87. 87.

    WaterGirl

    From comrade scotts agenda of rage:

    From Denver.  We got there after the featured speakers had left so I’d estimate about 20% of the crowd had left when this photo was taken.

    Live Free Or Die! For Men Only? (Women's March) 18

  88. 88.

    WaterGirl

    @sab: I could go with that!

    All these right-wingers want to be RBG and AOC.  They are not, and they never will be.

    The Marge person and the Barrett person do not deserve to be called by their 3 names.

  89. 89.

    JWR

    As for the upcoming Supreme Court session, I really wonder how they’re going to split the hair in the Mississippi case, and then claim that “see, we didn’t reverse Roe, just refined it a bit!” No, women deserve far better than to be left hanging in the lurch like this, and after listening to a few of the Breyer interviews, I’d say that yeah, he really needs to go. Just retire already.

  91. 91.

    Bill Arnold

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    I’ve been trying to figure out how the conservative Supreme Court justices really feel about public opinion. I would have thought that were paternalistic enough to ignore it on the grounds that they know best. But the PR tours seem to say otherwise.

    Better than even odds, IMO, that at least two of them have been called partisan hacks to their faces.
    At any rate, the feelings of these partisan hacks are being hurt, and whatever we’re doing to hurt their feelings should be increased 10-100 X.

  92. 92.

    Ruckus

    @Betty:

    It is not necessarily the journalists themselves. It is who they work for.

    Also, it might be the journalists themselves. It’s also still who they work for.

    The people that own the checks that get signed are the people who decide which way the stories are written, if by no other way, who they hire as editor. I don’t know that journalism has ever been any different, and I don’t think that it has. The old way of saying it was who owns the printing press, the paper and the ink. That’s who decides who gets hired and what gets written, even if they do it through an intermediary.

  94. 94.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @schrodingers_cat: That there are still a lot of white women who oppose TFG and his evil cohort?

    ETA: In my multicultural state of New Mexico, our marches had considerable Hispanic and Native representation.

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