Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Stay strong, because they are weak.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

So very ready.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Fucking consultants! (of the political variety)

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

You cannot love your country only when you win.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

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

The arc of the moral universe does not bend itself. it is up to us to bend it.

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

“Perhaps I should have considered other options.” (head-desk)

Weird. Rome has an American Pope and America has a Russian President.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

the 10% who apparently lack object permanence

How stupid are these people?

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Giving in to doom is how authoritarians win.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

When I was faster i was always behind.

When they say they are pro-life, they do not mean yours.

You are here: Home / Elections 2024 / 2024 Primaries / Sunday Morning Open Thread: Electioneering

Sunday Morning Open Thread: Electioneering

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209Comments

  6. 6.

    Starfish

    Yesterday, I went to a local political gathering. The main issues were voting rights and the attempts to overturn Roe v Wade by Texas and Mississippi.

    Earlier that day, some man was trying to explain how “pro-abortion” was the wrong messaging to a woman who is the executive director of a non-profit that focuses on reproductive rights. The confidence that some folks have in attempting to reduce healthcare to a language argument reminded me of the way that people here on Balloon Juice were trying to rebrand “defund the police” instead of focusing on the issue of police brutality.

  8. 8.

    Baud

    @Starfish:

    “Defund the police” is an actual slogan created by activists.  I’m not aware of any pro-choice organization that markets themselves as “pro-abortion.”

  9. 9.

    Starfish

    @Ken: I thought we were going to move towards moving Nevada up in the process for reflecting Latino demographics better?

  11. 11.

    Baud

    @Ken:

    I don’t understand.  SC is currently fourth, and it’s primary voters are more aligned with the base of the party than NH.

    Iowa gave us Obama but that doesn’t mean caucuses and Iowa-as-first shouldn’t be thrown into the dustbin.

  12. 12.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Starfish: I also would prefer “reproductive autonomy” to “pro-abortion”, but hey, it’s not my decision.  I for *certain* prefer “Gestation Slavery” [h/t to a B-J commenter]: “pro-life” is gaslighting and doesn’t expose the fundamental evil of that position, not near enough.

  13. 13.

    Ken

    @Starfish: I’ve heard[*] that Nevada’s Democratic party has been taken over by one of the fringes.

    [*] It was in the BJ comments, so it must be accurate.

  15. 15.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    they need to torpedo the Nevada caucus as well, in favor of a full primary​

  18. 18.

    lowtechcyclist

    I think there’s a certain logic to having relatively small states early in the process. It allows a wider selection of candidates to jump in and get a wider variety of points of view into the discussion.

    That said, (a) the early states shouldn’t be the same ones every year, and (b) shouldn’t be caucus states.

    And that said, the real problem with our primary system is the interminable fucking campaign before the first primary or caucus.

    There’s really no way to stop the Presidential primary campaign from starting practically as soon as the midterms are over. So let the winnowing commence in 2023: have small-state primaries in June and September and early November.

    If that doesn’t get vanity campaigns sufficient motivation to drop out, it’ll at least give the people running candidate forums/debates a clear basis for excluding candidates who weren’t able to draw any actual popular support, and once past that June 2023 primary, keep the number of candidates on stage down to a manageable number.

  20. 20.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    We had dinner last night with two lifelong Rs who voted third party in 2016 and Biden in 2020. But they don’t think Biden should run again because of his age, and they don’t think Harris is “up to the job.” My guess is that if the Rs run anyone other than Trump, they’ll vote R again. Their parents were Rs. The wife recalled her parents cheering when Roosevelt died. But they hate Trump.

  26. 26.

    Rusty

    @Baud: NH is schizophrenic at the moment, all blue at the federal level, all red at the state level.  The state republicans and getting more conservative, the last legislative session was a real roll back.  Everything from abortion restrictions to more gun friendly legislation, taking already inadequate funds from public schools to boost religious and home schooling, to the weird, our high school students now need to pass a citizenship test in order to attend the state universities.  The next elections are going to be interesting.

  27. 27.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Every now and again, reading the news pays off. Via Arwa Mahdawi at the Guardian:

    Ordinarily, I have zero regrets about not attending law school. But every so often there’s a legal shitshow that lights up every corner of my brain, and I understand why people get into the field.

    The insurance company GEICO, who have tormented us with corny ads and that British lizard mascot for way too long, are right now embroiled in a sordid affair involving a man and a woman known in court documents as M.B. and M.O. The latter has been seeking damages related to contracting HPV, the most common sexually transmitted infection in the U.S. She says this was the result of having unprotected sex with M.B. in his car in late 2017, when he supposedly knew he was positive for the virus but had not told her. M.O. received her diagnosis in 2018. Because the vehicle was insured by GEICO, in February of this year she demanded a liability settlement from the company to the tune of $1 million — or else she’d file for damages.

    Yes, a million dollars from his car insurance company. Because they had sex in his car.

  30. 30.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Starfish:  “Abortion is about your medical privacy and being able to make decisions about the most intimate aspects of your life without other people’s religious structures interfering.”

  33. 33.

    Geminid

    @David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch: Caucuses are a poor way to select candidates when states will conduct primaries at no charge. In 2018, Virginia 5th Congressional District Democrats chose their candidate through caucuses that attracted only a few thouand participants. By contrast, Democrats in the 7th District next door had a primary that was won by Abigail Spanberger with 35,000 votes. The next of four other candidates pulled in 20,000 votes. Fifth District were contesting an open seat, but they passed up an opportunity to mobilize tens of thousands of voters, and also picked (I thought) a weaker candidate.

    Now, Virginia Democrats seem to use primaries exclusively. It’s the Republicans who go the caucus/convention route. This advantages their radical faction, and seems to work to the detriment of the party in general elections.

  35. 35.

    Starfish

    @debbie: It was an interesting discussion that made a distinction that I had never really thought about too much.

    There are the activists who are pushing their issue the most and doing the policy work. The language used to target them is different from the language used to target a more general audience.

    A local police abolitionist who bailed people out of jail had the various jails in her cellphone listed as county cages. If anyone called her from jail, it would list the name of the county followed by the word cage. Up until that point, I don’t think that I had not known of someone so radically opposed to jails. The language that they used was completely different.

  36. 36.

    Geminid

    @Rusty: It looks like New Hampshire Senator Hassan will face the younger Sununu in next year’s Senate race. This will be a real fight, with high stakes nationally.

  37. 37.

    NotMax

    @debbie

    “I am not sure what it means when one says that he is a conservative in fiscal affairs and a liberal in human affairs. I assume what it means is that you will strongly recommend the building of a great many schools to accommodate the needs of our children, but not provide the money.”
    – Adlai Stevenson
    .

  38. 38.

    The Oracle of Solace

    @debbie:

    social liberal/fiscal conservative

    I’ve always found this combination suspicious. When I’ve dug deeper into the beliefs of those who embrace this label, it’s turned out they’re saying they want workers of all races to be miserable.

  39. 39.

    evodevo

    @OzarkHillbilly: Hmmm…I wonder if some genetic sleuthing on the HPV genome she had might lead to clarity lol – might be difficult getting samples from all her copulatees, however…

  41. 41.

    Suzanne

    @Ken: We should change it every time, and represent different portions of the country on each primary day. Just because the system produced your preferred outcome one time doesn’t make it a good process.

  42. 42.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @debbie:

    “Pro-Choice” was a huge framing mistake. Roe was perfect libertarian doctrine – that there are decisions which are so private and intimate that rgovernment cannot intrude. Would have been a great vehicle for earlier approval of same sex marriage and striking down criminal laws regarding sex practices and homosexuality. By framing in in one contest only, it limited the impact and created a focal point that could be used as a social wedge.

  43. 43.

    Betty

    I just wish Biden did not have to keep begging his own party to get on board supporting his agenda. They need to move on to voting rights as soon as possible.

  50. 50.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Betty: If you watch it, almost the entire state of Misery turns black while the rest of the country remains green for just a few days. It has to be an artifact of data reporting, nothing more.

  58. 58.

    lowtechcyclist

    @The Oracle of Solace:

    I’ve always found this combination suspicious. When I’ve dug deeper into the beliefs of those who embrace this label, it’s turned out they’re saying they want workers of all races to be miserable.

    I used to characterize myself as fiscally conservative and socially liberal.  (This was 30-40 years ago; hell, I was still a Republican until Reagan.)  I was also pro-union.

  60. 60.

    JPL

    FYI   Hillary Clinton and Louise Penny are going to be on CBS Sunday Morning to discuss their new book.

  62. 62.

    Ksmiami

    @Betty: it’s insanity. I’ve never heard of Senators deliberately crashing their own like this… not esp on popular legislation

  63. 63.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Welcome to my micro museum

    Everything from the British Lawnmower Museum, to the The Bunny Museum in California, to Cuckooland in Cheshire, to Teapot Island in Kent, to the Museum of Salt and Pepper Shakers in Tennessee.

    Also we finally get the answer to whatever happened to Cole’s mustard: It’s in Wisconsin at the National Mustard Museum.

    Sadly, they did not include what has to my local favorite, The Vacuum Cleaner Museum which resided in St James MO for 10 years before it closed in 2019 but wonderfully found a new home months later just a few miles down I-44 in Rolla. A must see for the whole family!

  65. 65.

    Starfish

    @debbie: To me, it was interesting that the messaging to the two groups is different.

    It is important to remember when the general audience is real and when it is fictive. For example, the beltway media centrism is fictive. Anything they tell you about the feelings of rural America is usually a lie that they heard in a cafe that DougJ made up.

  67. 67.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Chetan Murthy: ​
     

    “pro-life” is gaslighting and doesn’t expose the fundamental evil of that position, not near enough.

    Not to mention, their lack of concern about and opposition to any coordinated response to a plague that’s killed millions in the past two years has amply demonstrated how little they actually care about human life.

  68. 68.

    Starfish

    @Chief Oshkosh: I don’t think that the reason we are not prevailing is due to a messaging problem.

    The first impulse of our leaders was to give police more money to fix what was broken and to continue with very little accountability to civilian bodies. Anytime that anyone tries to do anything that looks like accountability, it is sabotaged, and no one will say who sabotaged it.

    That type of thing is not a messaging problem.

  69. 69.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Chief Oshkosh: Since we’re not prevailing on either issue, maybe we do need to pay attention to messaging.

    The last I saw the majority of Americans are in favor of abortion up to varying points, which to me means the messaging is currently effective. The problem is our political structures that favor Republicans and their current run on the judiciary.

  73. 73.

    OzarkHillbilly

    California man dies after being beaten by people he tried to hit with truck

    A man died after he tried to hit people on a sidewalk with his truck, crashed against a building then was pulled out and beaten by the group in southern California, authorities said. The man was asked to leave a business in Hawthorne early on Saturday, then argued with someone while walking to his truck, said Lt Hugo Reynaga of the Los Angeles county sheriff’s department. The man then intentionally drove the truck on to the sidewalk, nearly hitting a group of patrons before his truck wedged against a tree, the Daily Breeze reported. As the patrons tried to take the man out of the driver’s seat, he accelerated again and hit the corner of a nearby building, Reynaga said. The patrons took the driver out of the truck and continued fighting with him as Hawthorne police arrived, sheriff’s deputy Grace Medrano said.

    The driver suffered blunt-force trauma, Medrano said. He died at the scene.

    I have mixed emotions.
    1st: The MFer was asking for it.
    2nd: Mobs and justice do not go together.

  75. 75.

    WaterGirl

    @OzarkHillbilly: Imagine the adrenaline that’s flowing after someone intentionally tries to mow you down with a car, and then tries again when you are trying to help him out of the car after it crashes.

    I can see how this could have been the response, even with decent people.

  78. 78.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @debbie: I agree that it seems spurious. However, maybe it’s another indictment of our poor healthcare delivery system in combination with how our business and legal systems work. Possibly M.O. feels that her suit is crazy, too, but that in our current systems her options for accessing healthcare and her options for dealing with the financial hits that may otherwise arise from being HPV+ are limited. As a society, we have set up the system to work pretty much exactly as she’s dealing with it.

  80. 80.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @John Barleycorn: The World’s Largest Rocking Chair (40′ tall or better) used to be just outside of Cuba, MO. The chair is still there but apparently somebody built an even bigger one as it’s no longer advertised as the world’s largest.

  82. 82.

    Shalimar

    @OzarkHillbilly: You laugh, but there is a common exception in homeowner’s policies for sexually-transmitted diseases because someone successfully sued for chlamydia in the ’80s.

  83. 83.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Wow. That is a stark visualization of how we had the pandemic licked in May/June and then pissed it away. Fucking Republicans.

    However, even the earlier parts show how much the Republicans and their fellow travelers fucked over the nation. Look at SD starting at 9/20, shortly after Sturgis. Right when we started to understand the effectiveness of masking and other mitigation, a half million dumblefucks go to a super-spreader event. Hilarity ensues.

  85. 85.

    Kay

    @Starfish:

    I went to a legal education seminar on bail reform and I was suprised to learn that a lot of the bail reform bills are still moving and even have bipartisan support, at the state level. The expectation is Ohio will pass their version. The only people talking about it are prosecutors and defense, because they’ll have to apply it :)

    I think the demise of criminal justice reforms has been exaggerated, because it’s been put into a national context but “national” was never where the real action was on criminal justice-it was always state and local. National media focused almost exclusively on “defund the police” and high-profile initiatives like the one in Minnesota, but criminal justice reform has been a quieter issue for at least the last decade and there IS GOP support for it.

    In some ways I think it’s better if national media and national Republican operatives announce it’s dead or focus exclusively on “defund the police” and set it up as an either/or issue. They can keep spinning in circles on it while bail reform moves forward even in red states. The issue with bail reform was always one of fundamental fairness and due process- these people haven’t been convicted yet. That’s a problem in a country that purports to offer a presumption of innocence.

    The nutshell version is bail used to be predicted wholly on whether the person would appear – likelyhood that they would show up to the next hearing- that was Ohio state law until the 1980’s. When they changed it to include “potential to reoffend while on pretrial release” pretrial detentions exploded and they ended up essentially incarcerting tens of millions of people who hadn’t been convicted of anything yet. There’s broad recognition that this is unjust and also unworkable as a practical matter- jail populations exploded.

  89. 89.

    Ken B

    @Geminid: The caucuses in VA normally favor the wild-eyed radicals, but the GOP in VA has been moving that way in general. The country  club\big business types are losing control of the party.

    That said, the latest GOP caucus was done specifically to nominate Youngkin, who can wear a mask over his lizard king face, and prevent a wild-eyed Trumper that would never consider hiding it from getting the nomination  and losing the actual election by forty points or so.

  90. 90.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Kay:

    The main problem with any bail reform in any state is the tendency of judges and prosecutors to want to seem “tough on crime”, particularly in rural spaces.

    As a young lawyer, I once almost went to jail for suggesting that a judge might want to take a position as a prosecutor instead of he were so interested in assuring convictions.

  91. 91.

    Kay

    @Starfish:

    When you get judges in a room where they think they’re “safe” (Ohio judges are elected) they all admit it’s broken, even in my practice area which is overwhelmingly Republican.

    He says that before he retired, the Cleveland Municipal Court modified its bail schedule for misdemeanors. It significantly reduced pre-trial detention, with no increase in failure-to-appear rates or criminal activity. “All these years, we had been detaining people in jail pretrial when in fact, we could have allowed them to continue to pursue their lives,” Adrine said.Studies by legal and public policy scholars show that people who remain in jail pending trial have worse outcomes, including being more likely to be convicted and receiving longer sentences. Minorities and low-income people are disproportionally affected

    People losing jobs or housing due to pretrial detentions seems to bother judges the most, and I get that, although the effect on their families is not just economic and in my neck of the woods I would like if judges actually acknowleged these people have families that they are attached to. They’re actually making things worse, and they know it.

  92. 92.

    LiminalOwl

    @Baud:  Split off Nashua and assimilate it to Massachusetts, and you could get your wish (for what’s left). I know quite a few people from farther north in NH, and all of them escaped to MA for a reason.

  93. 93.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Starfish: I don’t think it’s binary; sorry if it came across that way. OTOH, “Defund the police” was simply a non-starter with an enormous number of people, as amply demonstrated by how things went. It’s so bad that when I first heard it, I was convinced GOP operatives had been seeding it in the MSM. Obviously you and I disagree on this. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

  94. 94.

    Kay

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:

    Absolutely, so you have to let them bullshit and blame the legislature. But they know. They’ll admit it privately!

    The nice part is it can be done with a change in a criminal procedure rule so only lawyers notice it :)

    Once “Right wing activists” get hold of it and make it dumb and inaccurate the whole thing collapses. No one tell the NYTimes this is going on. They’ll fuck it up all up.

  95. 95.

    LiminalOwl

    @Baud: I’m not aware of any such organization either. But there was definitely a move by some feminists to claim the term proudly. (I agree that it woukd have been terrible branding.)

  96. 96.

    Kay

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:

    I know you were involved locally in the criminal justice reforms that were at the heart of BLM and I think they’re following a very common trajectory in US politics. The activists are at the leading edge so the thing never looks exactly what they proposed- it gets modified as it moves forward, but it MOVES. This is still moving below the level of the national screaming by the political classes. Senator Tim Scott is all but irrelevant to the real reforms. He just doesn’t matter.

  97. 97.

    Starfish

    @Kay:

    Once “Right wing activists” get hold of it and make it dumb and inaccurate the whole thing collapses.

    The area that I am most concerned about is all the CRT nonsense and book banning in K-12 education. We do not need the school boards to get any dumber.

  98. 98.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @OzarkHillbilly: I don’t disagree that much of our system is geared towards Republicans (mainly, geared towards the wealthy). It seems to me that abortion-as-politics is fundamentally a ploy to get low-income, low-information (white) voters to vote against their own interests.

    Anyway, I’ve always thought the “pro-choice” as a motto is good. I think “Mind your own fucking business” is even better, but it’s tougher to put on a poster or bumpersticker. So maybe “Pro-Privacy/Pro-Choice”? Hey, I didn’t say I was any good at this stuff…

  99. 99.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Kay: The biggest problem with police reform efforts is that White voters* love the police and largely try to block, or kneecap every effort.  Getting White, Latinx, Asian-American etc. voters behind serious policies that would reduce police power, provide civilian oversight, more transparency and hold bad cops accountable, is very difficult.  Messaging matters but the core of the problem is that too many White voters freak out at the mere mention of any form of reduction of police funding or power.  And even the ones who don’t immediately reject them will often do so as soon as there’s a rise in crime.  America is still very much stuck in the default position that the answer is always more police funding.  As someone who has spent hundreds of hours working locally on this stuff since 2017, it’s extremely frustrating.  I’m not even a hardcore Abolition person, I just want better less racist police that treat everybody the same and actually serve the public as their slogan demands, but man the pushback for even the tiniest reforms is always a startling reminder that we (America) love police almost as much as we love guns. :

    * Other, non-Black voters (Latinx, Asian-American etc.), are also very tough to get on board.  Black voters seem to be the only ones that consistently are willing to vote for reforms.

  100. 100.

    Kay

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:

    Why ISN’T there any coverage of rural (white) crime though? I mean, admittedly that’s “my space” but this seminar I went to was not addressing black urban crime- it was addressing white rural crime.

    Imagine how different the “criminal justice reform” conversation would be if it were “this is Austin- he was held in pretrial detention for 9 months and then acquitted”. That’s the reality! I’m not asking them to cover something that doesn’t exist. My whole conversation on bail reform locally is regarding white people. There’s like this almost nutty effort to put a black face on crime, to the extent of ignoring reality.

  102. 102.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Chief Oshkosh:

    That is a stark visualization of how we had the pandemic licked in May/June and then pissed it away. 

    It’s extremely irresponsible to go licking pandemics.  Please don’t.

  103. 103.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Kay:

    Because America is extremely racist and “Crime=Black/Brown” is absolutely central to the world view of way too many voters.  The media simply follows suit in their coverage, sadly.

  105. 105.

    Kay

    @UncleEbeneezer:

    You’ve been at it a long time so I won’t try to tell you how to do it, but I think there wasn’t enough focus on the second part of your demand- police serving black communities. Providing police protection. Black people want safe communities like everyone else – it’s ridiculous to make them choose between being killed by police OR having police protections. They get both of those things. Neither is negotiable. No such demand is made of white people “oh, so you don’t want police brutality? Guess what- now you get NO police”. They get BOTH.

  106. 106.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Chief Oshkosh: I don’t disagree that much of our system is geared towards Republicans

    I’ve been reading Steven Taylor (PHD in Political Science) over at Outside the Beltway, he’s really good on this stuff. His latest, The Power of Mythology, in which he tears the Senate and it’s rules to shreds. It’s long but well worth the read.

    Hey, I didn’t say I was any good at this stuff…

    I’m the worst person in the world at this stuff, the last person you’d want heading up a messaging campaign.

  107. 107.

    UncleEbeneezer

    The Bunny Museum is literally at the end of our street and it is kind of a dump.  It really just looks like a junk collection.

  108. 108.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Kay: That’s exactly the framing we always use (we listen to and are guided by some amazing Black community activists who get it) but even with that more positive framing, police unions always manage to twist it into something that scares white people and sadly it pretty much always works.

  109. 109.

    Kay

    @UncleEbeneezer:

    I know exactly what the coverage of Ohio’s bail reform will look like “now we take you to Cleveland, where they are letting black people (the only criminals obviously) out on bail”.

    I’m like “where…are the white defendants they’re letting out?” I know they exist! I see them every day!

    They said they were going to start covering low income white people after Trump but instead they covered only Trump voters in diners, the vast majority of whom were not even low income. It starts to feel like DELIBERATE cherry picking. There’s kind of “a story to tell” in low income rural America but they’re not telling it, at all. It would be an interesting story, because it goes against long held beliefs.

  111. 111.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay: Why ISN’T there any coverage of rural (white) crime though?

    Because it “doesn’t” exist on TV.

    Got into an argument over this exact thing not long ago. People out here will just insist that crime is a purely urban problem and then turn around 5 seconds later and start bitching about the meth heads just down the road. Pick up the local rag and read the crime page and it’s full of burglaries and assaults and all to often a murder or 3. But it’s not on TV every night so it isn’t real.

  112. 112.

    Kay

    @UncleEbeneezer:

    There’s so much that can be done once you put away the hammer and pick up another tool. I was looking at drug courts in Ohio (they have a mixed record) but they’re not all the same. Some are much more successful than others. The most successful county did a really easy fix- they jailed people in the drug court program for skipping drug tests or counseling, but only for one day. Their success rate went up 20%, which as you may know is a huge jump for drug addicts. 20% is like a miracle. They will do a lot to avoid that one day, half of which they would spend on the jail bus and in processing. It’s a giant pain in the ass, so they show up to avoid it. There’s so much room in this system for improvement – they just have to try things and keep hitting it. Drug court people burn out really fast, because it’s heartbreaking, but that also seems to “work” in the sense that you don’t get an entrenched group of people who are averse to trying things.

  113. 113.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Kay: Yup.  It all makes sense of course, when you remember that alot of Americans only see some groups as criminals.  Defined more by where they live and what they look like, than what they actually do.

  114. 114.

    MagdaInBlack

    @OzarkHillbilly: If your rural area thinks like the folks in the area where I come from, the thought goes something like ” The crime all comes from the cities. They move out here to escape the problems, but instead just bring it with them.”

    The crime ( they believe) comes from “outsiders.”

  116. 116.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    A commenter said here the other day that the NYT wanted her daughter to cover the Women’s March but they were only interested in stories in women disappointed with Biden. The daughter nobly turned it down.

  118. 118.

    Kay

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    It’s partly why I stopped watching cable news. It was too far from my observed reality.

    I was talking to my middle son last night – one of the people he went to high school has relapsed (again) which both he and I are aware of for different reasons. This will be the 4th friend he’s buried due to drug addiction. There are a HUGE group of white rural people who have lost family members. You could fill a football stadium with them if you combined the 4 rural counties where I practice. I sat in on a juvenile drug court once and I asked the counselor why it’s so utterly sad. They’re kids! No joking, no moving around, they’re just silent.  She looked at me like I was a fucking idiot and she said “they’re grieving- they’ve all lost people– a lot of what we do is grief counseling”. Of course they are. We all are.

  120. 120.

    Another Scott

    @UncleEbeneezer: It’s a long, hard slog to get normie whites on board but it can be done.

    A few local examples: Shooting of John Geer:

    It was the first time in the 75-year history of the Fairfax County Police Department that an officer had faced criminal charges in connection with an on-duty shooting.

    […]

    Geer’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Fairfax County on September 1, 2014, seeking $12 million in damages. On April 20, 2015, Fairfax County agreed to pay $2.95 million to Geer’s daughters.

    Amanda Perry:

    McIntosh was driving her Toyota Corolla out of the Mount Vernon Plaza shopping center Feb. 12, 2008, and was pulling onto Route 1 with a green light. Officer Amanda R. Perry, then 22, was heading north on Route 1, with her emergency lights on but not her siren, when she drove through the red light at Boswell Road and struck McIntosh’s car on the passenger side. McIntosh was ejected and died the next day.

    Fairfax prosecutors charged Perry with reckless driving. She was found not guilty by a visiting judge from Stafford County in October 2008. McIntosh’s family sued Perry for wrongful death.

    That case took a crucial turn last August when a Fairfax Circuit Court judge ruled that Perry was not entitled to “sovereign immunity,” as a government official performing her duties, because her actions were grossly negligent. In a pretrial hearing, Perry acknowledged that she didn’t use her emergency lights for several miles while heading to a reported “fight in progress,” in violation of police policy, although she believed the call was an emergency.

    And the “fight” was actually the capture of a shoplifter, evidence at the hearing showed. Dispatchers sent text messages to Perry as she zoomed up Route 1 at 45 mph, tape from her in-car camera showed, but Perry said she didn’t see them. The dispatchers didn’t radio the information because an ice storm was hitting and the airwaves were busy.

    Though Virginia law grants police an exemption from traffic laws in an emergency, Fairfax Circuit Court Judge R. Terrence Ney said the capture of a shoplifter, miles away at a Beacon Hill grocery, was not an emergency. Ney’s ruling meant that attorneys for McIntosh’s parents, John McIntosh and Cindy Colasanto, would only have to prove simple negligence at trial.

    Bijan Ghaisar:

    FAIRFAX COUNTY, Va. — A judge has ruled that Fairfax County’s case against two U.S. Park Police officers charged in the shooting death of 25-year-old Bijan Ghaisar – who were scheduled to go on trial in May – will be moved to federal court.

    USPP officers Alejandro Amaya and Lucas Vinyard faced Ghaisar’s family for the first time since the shooting during a hearing Friday morning at the U.S. District Court in Alexandria. The officers’ cases lay dormant in the court of Senior U.S. District Judge Claude M. Hilton in Virginia for several months after both Amaya and Vinyard first requested that it be heard in federal court rather than state court.

    On Friday, Hilton ruled in favor of the officers.

    The unarmed Ghaisar died after being shot multiple times by Amaya and Vinyard on Nov. 17, 2017. Vinyard and Amaya face up to 15 years in prison if convicted of the charges.

    (The Park Police and TFG’s DoJ stonewalled the investigation for years.)

    Accountability is coming, slowly. But it’s coming. And it will be better for everyone who values justice.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  121. 121.

    henqiguai

    @Kay: (#100)

    There’s like this almost nutty effort to put a black face on crime, to the extent of ignoring reality.

    What “effort”?  It’s a fundamental belief in the US that the bulk of criminal activity is Black-based.

  122. 122.

    Just Chuck

    @OzarkHillbilly: The mob didn’t exactly track him down to his house and drag him out, it was an immediate deadly response to an immediate deadly action.  I’d have rather seen him ground down by justice too, but he really was asking for it, and I hope that crosses the mind of the next piece of shit contemplating using their vehicle as a weapon.

  123. 123.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @MagdaInBlack: The crime ( they believe) comes from “outsiders.”

    That’s a little harder to swallow out here. They all know each other, their families have been here for generations. They still find a way to blame others or excuse the guilty. My ex’s husband was a classic case of the latter. He “made mistakes”. Was a “hard working man”. “Never convicted,” so what if the court clerk lost that paperwork just before the trial. That fire the day before the search warrant was served? “Shit happens.” etc etc.

  124. 124.

    Kattails

    @Geminid: yes, and there was a lot of anger against Sununu at the women’s march. I would like to see Hassan stick her neck out a bit more. I think our seat will be safer if we see some real results on the national level, which is one reason I’d like to throttle fucking  Manchin and Sinema.
    The Republicans are also going to try to redistrict Annie Kuster out.

  125. 125.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay: Juvie court is the worst, nothing but depressing. ALL the kids are caught in bad situations and there are rarely any good options.

  126. 126.

    Kay

    Dave Jamieson
    @jamieson
    ·2h
    Until my oldest son entered pre-K last month, our monthly child care costs for two children were nearly double our mortgage

    If I coud just make a suggestion/request to men. If we want child care subisidies, and we should, all other countries have them, it CANNOT be a women’s issue. If it’s a women’s issue we won’t get them because this is a horribly misogynist country and while we don’t much value children we value women even less.
    If child care becomes “assist women” we’ll never get it – I suspect that’s why we never got it before. Has to be men.

  128. 128.

    Another Scott

    The minority party in the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body©®™, everyone. TheHill:

    Several Republican senators, who requested anonymity to discuss Trump frankly, said they don’t want to see Trump return as the party’s standard bearer.

    “I think we’re better off when he’s not part of any story,” said a Republican senator, who said his view is widely shared in the GOP conference.

    “He’s a clinical narcissist. He threw away the election in the debate with Biden and he threw away the Senate out of spite,” the lawmaker added, referring to Trump’s first against Biden, which many Republican senators viewed as a disaster, and his influence on Republican voter turnout in the Georgia special election.

    He’s bad for our brand! How can we do our race-baiting and installing incompetent ideologues as judges and grifting and stealing from the Treasury on the down-low when he’s so blatant about it??!1 Plus his mob scared me and made me run for the first time in 35 years!!11 Don’t make me say I like him and force me to vote for him again! It’s unfair to meeee!!!11ONE

    They’re shameless.

    Grrr…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  129. 129.

    Kay

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    I interned in one in law school and this very sad (but quite good lawyer) told me “this is the saddest place in the city” (it was in Toledo). So of course I said “sign me up!” :)

    It’s horrible to say but I think my essential shallowness helps me in my job. I’m a mover-onner. I don’t know how other, more introspective, people survive. You’d never get out of bed.

  130. 130.

    debbie

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Wow. Both sides made the wrong choice.

    O/T: I’m listening to Jane Mayer interviewing Merrick Garland on The New Yorker Radio Hour. To the naysayers, he and every AG (other than Puerto Rico) are very busy on both 1/6 and voting rights.

  131. 131.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Another Scott: Oh I know.  But the pace is just frustrating as hell.  Especially with the incredible power that Police Unions (spit) still have over our voters and City Councils.  And that’s in Blue regions.  When I imagine how hard it must be in deep red States, it’s really disheartening.  Major props to the people who still fight the fight in places like that.  I can’t even imagine how futile it must feel.

  132. 132.

    debbie

    @Chief Oshkosh:

    What’s interesting is that the segment of this country who used to bemoan frivolous lawsuits and shriek for tort reform are now the ones indulging in ridiculous and absurd lawsuits.

  133. 133.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Just Chuck:

    To repeat myself: I have mixed emotions.
    1st: The MFer was asking for it.
    2nd: Mobs and justice do not go together.

    The fact that they “didn’t track him down” is beside the point.

    Question: Did he kill anyone? No.
    Another question: Did he injure anyone? Not seriously enough to make the story.

    So what crime did he commit that was deserving of the death penalty?

    I can understand the reaction of the crowd, but that doesn’t make it right. As one who is opposed to the death penalty in all cases I can not find this murder acceptable, and make no mistake, that’s what it was.

  134. 134.

    Honus

    @JML: I find it amusing that with Hassan, Shaheen and the Sununus, New Hampshire has been pretty much run by the Lebanese for decades.

  135. 135.

    debbie

    @Kay:

    Kay, did you hear Sykes’s acknowledgment that the legislation extending statute limitations for Strauss’s victims was always a sham? Nothing more than an attempt to intimidate OSU? Bastard.

  136. 136.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @henqiguai: It is the default position of probably the majority of Americans, but there is indeed constant effort to keep it that way. By the media, GOP politicians, police unions etc.

  137. 137.

    Kay

    Will Ragland
    @citizenwillis
    ·Oct 8
    The unemployment rate is now 4.8%, lower than any point during the Reagan admin.
    Before the Rescue Plan passed, CBO, projected that it would take until 2023 to get to a 4.8% rate.
    That 4.8% is down from 6.3% in January.
    Nearly 5 million jobs created in the last 8 months.

    I know Democrats are contractually obligated to start every speech with how “people are hurting” but can they push their success on the economy a little?
    It’s fucking booming here. Crow about it!

  141. 141.

    zhena gogolia

    @Kay: I can’t believe all the negative headlines about the “poor jobs report.” Even fucking Colbert led off with that.

  142. 142.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay: When my youngest was going thru it, it was the worst, and he had a good case officer, somebody who actually cared and was trying to do the best thing for my son. My ex was a nightmare tho, and there was no getting around her. At least not until she went to prison. All of a sudden things improved exponentially after that.

  143. 143.

    Kristine

    Just popping in to say that I love that photo of Biden with the kids. I’m still adjusting to seeing normal human interactions at the White House.

  144. 144.

    Kay

    @debbie:

    No, I haven’t followed it at all. I’m in the northern-most part of the state where OSU is less dominant as a topic. Still big, but less so than in some other parts. I’m in the part of the state that thinks Columbus gets everything – the resentful part :)

  146. 146.

    debbie

    @Kay:

    Oh, boy!

    It has wider implications. Seitz’s (spelling matters!) statement to one of the victims:

    In an email to one of the victims, republican leader bill Seitz said, “I do not support a resurrection of HB 249.”

    “HB 249 was intended to apply pressure to Ohio State to come to the table and make meaningful settlement offers.”

    Seitz called the bill flawed and said lawmakers ‘never’ really considered suspending the statute of limitations.

    The victims told NBC4 they are not giving up on changing the law, especially since the judge who dismissed their claims pointed out state lawmakers have always had the power to change the statute of limitations, just not the will.

    “‘Our legal system failed you.’” He said that. those were his words. The legal system failed you, that OSU failed you, and now the legislators, it’s in their court not to fail you,” said Steven Snyder-Hill who is a Strauss survivor.

    That’s why Strauss’ victims were stunned to learn House Bill 249, which they hoped would suspend the statute of limitations, was always doomed to fail.

    “Bills are always introduced for a number of reasons sometimes they are introduced to get leverage, sometimes they are introduced to start a conversation, sometimes they are introduced in hopes that they pass,” said Chris Graham a survivor of an abusive priest.

    According to Seitz, this one was never meant to pass. In his email pointed out that if it did, other abuse victims would then want the same help.

  147. 147.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @UncleEbeneezer:   At the same time, everyone knows that it isn’t black/brown people from the big cities robbing places in rural counties to get meth money.  Everyone knows that the guys who stole the brass plaques from the cemetery to sell for scrap were white.  But somehow crime is a black/brown thing because they saw on the news that a few Hmong guys got busted for bring drugs in from the Twin Cities.  And, of course, the mall parking structure in Wausau isn’t safe because of gangs. The story of much of north-central WI and that’s why they need their guns, and not just for hunting.

  149. 149.

    debbie

    @Kay:

    Coverage of the Rodan murders (where 8 family members were butchered over disputed custody of the illegitimate baby of two members of the families) in some rural county got plenty of coverage. We’ve all been able to witness the slo-mo wheels of the justice system.  //

  151. 151.

    Benw

    I’m playing a high stakes game of Sorry against my kids where loser has to go upstairs to get the remote

  152. 152.

    Dave

    @UncleEbeneezer: When dealing with my fellow white people I always frame reforms as good for the police. And to be fair I actually mean it. They aren’t my primary concern by any means but the outcomes for police from the current situation aren’t exactly great either.  That includes both the local level policies to our national policies regarding everything from homelessness, infrastructure, how we view time off, and so on.

    Mind you I’m not at all convinced it actually convinces anyone but what can you do.

  153. 153.

    zhena gogolia

    I hate the way the people supposedly on “our side” always pile on. I just got E. J. Dionne in my in-box saying “Biden needs a reboot.” Go boot yourself.

  155. 155.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @zhena gogolia: Well, it was a lackluster jobs report that strongly points to the need for the BBB plan. Job growth for women was negative. I understand Kay’s point about misogyny and how issues like child and elder care, family leave and child tax credits need to be embraced by men to be successful, but that illustrates the chicken and egg of misogyny. These issues affect women more because we are a misogynistic society so we need men’s support.

  159. 159.

    sab

    @UncleEbeneezer: Our police sued and got the law changed so that they don’t have to live in their work city. Ha ha. Now they can’t vote against the mayor because they all live in cop suburbs.

  161. 161.

    Miss Bianca

    @OzarkHillbilly: In this case, I find it hard to sympathize with a guy who tried to commit vehicular homicide getting homicided himself by the people he tried to run over. Does that mean I approve of mob violence? I guess the answer would be – “depends on the mob and their provocation.”

  162. 162.

    J R in WV

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    They’re interesting. The wife is Unitarian and an atheist. You don’t find too many atheist Unitarian Republicans. The husband is Episcopalian.

    My parents were atheist Unitarian socially liberal Republicans. Dad was also a member of the NAACP and a nudist, probably unique in the whole world!

    Mom quit voting for Republicans as soon as they climbed on the gestational slavery bandwagon, though. She most likely had a close friend/cousin who died of an abortion long before Roe made it legal.

    ETA Mom died back in the late 1990s, dad in 2004, so both long gone way before Trumpist madness took over their party. They were both Rockefeller Rs.

  164. 164.

    Captain C

    @OzarkHillbilly: I’d like to see the legalese for a (no doubt notional) clause which states that the insurer is responsible for STIs you get from the owner or operator of the car that they failed to disclose.  Otherwise, I suspect the argument will be a simple “not covered.”

  168. 168.

    germy

    Google Docs told me I should replace “less teeth” with “fewer teeth,” and i was like, oh honey, we are talking about two completely different things

    — Ginny Hogan_ (@ginnyhogan_) October 9, 2021

  170. 170.

    J R in WV

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: WTF happened on March 13, 2021??? (the 41 second mark)

     

    Hoobs Is Wearing His Mask @ArkarianTheDur

    On that date, Missouri put all of the antibody tests into their count on one specific day, instead of the dates that the tests were actually taken. You can see the spike in Google’s tracker

    An artifact of shitty data management in Missou.

  171. 171.

    Eunicecycle

    @Dave: I’ve never understood why police aren’t for gun control. It seems like their job would be so much easier.

    ETA: and/or safer.

  173. 173.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Omnes Omnibus: I know that WI mentality all too well.  I have a cousin who moved from the North Side of Pittsburgh to a remote (extremely white) suburb  and is very proud that she has a gun to protect herself because she is convinced criminals are going to attack her home at any/every moment.

    I’m sure it has nothing to do with the fact that our Grandpa was an unrepentant racist who used to go into “there goes the neighborhood” tirades about the North Side and those people while our Grandma listened to “her boys” on police radio every night…/sarcasm

  174. 174.

    Geminid

    @OzarkHillbilly: There is a good article about the Mustard Museum in the September 24 The Times of Israel, titled “Meet the Jewish mustard maven who founded a museum for his favorite condiment.” The museum’s story began when lawyer Barry Levenson, despondent after his Red Sox lost the 1986 World Series, went grocery shopping. When he was in the condiments aisle, Levenson heard the mustard jars calling to him, “collect us and they will come.” Levenson went on to found the Mustard Museum in 1992. Now, the museum has 6090 mustards from 70 countries. Besides his work as the museum’s Chief Mustard Officer, Levenson is an adjunct professor of food law at the University of Wisconsin.

    Levenson was accepted to Rabbinical school, but in his words “chickened out” and chose a legal career instead. But he retained his interest in religion, and quotes references to mustard in the New Testament, the Koran, and in writings by Jewish philosophers like Nachmanides and Rashi (who lived 100 miles from Dijon, France).

    Levenson is not so ecumenical when it comes to other condiments, though. He is chafed by the modern preeminence of ketchup: “You never hear anything about ketchup in the Torah, right? No, nothing!”

  175. 175.

    Geminid

    @Eunicecycle: I’ve seen leaders from law enforcement bodies advocating some gun safety measures. This was true recently in debates about the terrible permitless concealed carry laws that have passed in South Carolina and Texas. Ohio Republicans hope to pass a similar law this legislative session, despite reservations by Republican leadership and law enforcement organizations. One feature of the law would end the requirement that someone carrying a concealed weapon inform police officers of this.

  176. 176.

    NotMax

    @Geminid

    “Shake and shake
    The catsup bottle.
    None’ll come —
    And then a lot’ll.”
    – Richard Armour, Going to Extremes (1949)
    .

  178. 178.

    jonas

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: I’m hearing a lot lately that apparently the consensus in the beltway media, as well as among a lot of “independent” voters, is that Harris is now history’s greatest monster for some reason. Or the second coming of Hillary Clinton at the very least and thus utterly unelectable. Is it the pantsuits? I don’t get it. Since when has Harris become such a lightning rod of outrage?

  179. 179.

    Geminid

    @mrmoshpotato: I’ve read stories of people in fancy New York clubs cheering when FDR’s death was announced. A lot of wealthy people hated him, especially as a traitor to his class.

  180. 180.

    smith

    @jonas: Since when has Harris become such a lightning rod of outrage?

    Since she made the very poor decision to be born female.

  181. 181.

    James E Powell

    @Chetan Murthy:

    I also would prefer “reproductive autonomy” to “pro-abortion”, but hey, it’s not my decision.

    Those Greek & Latinate words will never be able to compete with the gut punching Middle English “baby killer”

  182. 182.

    James E Powell

    @Suzanne:

    Just because the system produced your preferred outcome one time doesn’t make it a good process.

    But that’s how I judge every system.

  184. 184.

    Anoniminous

    @Kay: ​
     
    Because media reports of rural white crime doesn’t invoke fear in suburban whites that “THEY” are moving into the neighborhood.

  185. 185.

    Another Scott

    @jonas: They’re trying to use the same playbook as always.  The horrible woman who will make everything worse.  Similarly, they are trying to drum up fear of crime against Biden and Terry Mac, talking about the “explosion” in crime rates, etc.  It’s all false, but it’s what they always do to try to make people afraid and to weaken Democrats.  I like to think that it’s getting less effective over time, but then I remember that I’m not the audience…

    Grr…

    Cheers,

    Scott.

  187. 187.

    J R in WV

    @Geminid:

    I’ve read stories of people in fancy New York clubs cheering when FDR’s death was announced. A lot of wealthy people hated him, especially as a traitor to his class.

    I grew up in a working class neighborhood, our house was the only big new house around. In my neighbors’ houses I saw three pictures on the living room wall. Jesus, FDR, who saved America from the depression AND won WW II and JFK, the working class’s murdered hero.

    Yet when news of the JFK assassination was announced in my science class in 8th grade, the teacher, Mr Pugh, didn’t even try to hide his smile. Of course he was an obvious racist and didn’t try to hide that at all either.

    ETA : FDR to win WW II…

  188. 188.

    Ruckus

    @UncleEbeneezer:

    There are white people that want police reforms, I’m one and I know one who was a cop for 30 yrs that wants them. Now we may for sure be a minority of whites but there are more than a few of us. But. I do have to agree with you that a lot of whites want the police to be even worse than they are now and every reason they want that is wrong.

    That 30 yr cop was a CHP officer, a high school friend, I attended his CHP academy graduation in the early 70s. We didn’t see much of each other for the next 40 yrs but did get to discuss policing over a long lunch in 2013. He said he watched the decline in police forces over that 30 yrs to the point he had trouble wearing the badge to finish his 30 yrs early in this century. His description of that decline is what this discussion is about, the concept of the militarization of the police, that they are the gate keepers against the invading criminals/minorities, that the police are at war with the populace. It has changed a lot of the entire criminal justice system, mainly the removing the concept of justice from the equation right at the start of the process, the police and the public interaction, especially the minority public and extending that into jailing/bail/incarceration. Now minorities had suffered this concept forever but this concept, that we are all guilty until proven otherwise and the only justice is police justice is seemingly now the basis of all policing.

  189. 189.

    Cameron

    @jonas: Huh?  I see very little about her in the news, and I can’t recall anything she’d said or done that sounded weird.

  190. 190.

    Mary Ellen Sandahl

    As this thread’s still cooking, I want to hearken back to the part about the great pic of Biden and the military aides’ kids proceeding toward Brian Karem’s camera while conversing. I read the responding tweets, 98@% happily appreciative with only a few sick belches from MAGA bots, but one of them really got to me. It’s a posed outdoor photo of Trump Jr grinning while leaning over the shoulders of his 3 young kids, all looking at the camera. The children look absolutely miserable and frightened.
    You can see it at twitter.com/kindredspiritWA/status/1447249983619489792?s=20
    What does that family do to its children? Toxic’s way too weak a word.
    I once saw a photo of Donald Trump taken when he couldn’t have been more than 2 or so – a pretty golden haired little boy. But he already had the beginnings of that look of non-stop fear on his face.

  192. 192.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Geminid: I knew the rich hated Social Security and other safety nets for the unwashed masses, but to cheer FDR’s death… Deplorable.

  193. 193.

    Geminid

    @Cameron: Republicans want people to believe that Democrats are a bunch of police-defunding, capitalism-wrecking, family-hating radicals. It’s hard to tag Biden with this caricature, so they pin it on the less known Harris, and pretend that she and others are propping up the doddering President.

  196. 196.

    cain

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    Not very Christian of them, eh? But I suppose if you are that aggrieved by the fact that Roosevelt was providing a safety net so that some American can recover from bad times..

  197. 197.

    Soprano2

    @MagdaInBlack: Here in Springfield, MO it’s that all the crime came here from St. Louis and Kansas City, because that’s where the black people and gangs come from (they don’t say it outright but it’s implied). Same with the homeless, they say few of them are from here, they all came from somewhere else because this is a “mecca” for the homeless. They say it in spite of censuses showing most are from the area. I’ve been hearing this for 40 years.

    We had an altercation here between the Southwest Honkies gang and the Family Values gang, true story.

  198. 198.

    cain

    @Rusty: ​
     
    I actually applaud the citizens test. Many do not know what it means to be a citizen. Of course it depends on whats in the test.

  199. 199.

    MagdaInBlack

    @Soprano2: I’ve been hearing it since I was a kid. It was blamed on white-flight from Aurora, IL area, which in turn was because the wrong color people were moving to the Chicago western and southwestern suburbs.

    It’s the story folks tell themselves to absolve themselves of blame and reinforce their own superiority.

  200. 200.

    Just Chuck

    @Soprano2: I guarantee you even among the migratory hobo population that there’s not a single one of them that says “I really wish I had a bus ticket to Missouri right now”.

  201. 201.

    dnfree

    @The Oracle of Solace: I’m a fiscal conservative. I think we should raise enough taxes to pay for the social programs we want, and I think if Republicans want to cut taxes they should have to cut spending first instead of claiming the tax cuts will work like magic.

    I remember t-shirts in the 1970s that said something like “It will be a great day when the schools have all the money they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber”.

  202. 202.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: Heck, unemployment is 2.9% here, and people still think the labor shortage is due to lazy people sitting on their butts! And they blame Biden for inflation, shortages, and high gas prices, never mind it would all be happening regardless of who was president.

  203. 203.

    Soprano2

    @sab: Several years ago all the cops tried to get a city council candidate elected even though most of them don’t live here! It made me so mad,  and luckily they failed. They don’t want to live here but they want a say in who runs the city. If they want that, they should move here.

  205. 205.

    Geminid

    @Soprano2: Policemen in your city who don’t live there probably can afford good city housing, and are making a choice. The city nearest me is Charlottesville, Virginia, is different. It’s always attracted a good share of the wealthy, but now people with portable wealth and portable jobs are flocking to the place and driving housing prices beyond what teachers and police can afford. The city allows it’s cops to drive their police cars home, and when I lived “over the mountain” in Stuarts Draft, I’d see plenty of Charlottesville Police cars coming and going on I-64 from their homes in Waynesboro and Augusta County. This only increases the rift between police and citizens.

    Charlottesville politics are dominated by middle and upper middle class white people who care in principle about their Black neighbors and the quality of law enforcement, but know very little about either. The Black community had been suppressed by segregation for generations before Charlottesville used “Great Society” money to flatten blocks of a Black neighborhood just west of downtown to put up parking lots and stores where kids used to play and older generations lived poor but proud. These people were placed in “Projects.” Now gentrification is chasing Black people out of the remaining single home neighborhoods between Downtown and the University of Virginia. The remaining Black middle class is hanging on, but many of their kids who earn college degrees move on to places with more opportunities and affordable housing.

    A few of my white Charlottesville friends understand and care about what is happening to their Black neighbors, but I think many of their counterparts don’t really care. They make think they care but they are not really interested. And they view the police as good employees who who would not mistreat their real employers.

  206. 206.

    evodevo

    @debbie: Yep…when I first saw the chyron on Cincy TV when it first happened, I thought they were talking about Pike Co. KY…they don’t call southern OH little Appalachia for nothing

  207. 207.

    Geminid

    @evodevo: In his Memoirs, Ulysses Grant wrote that there wasn’t one day his his native town in southern Ohio wouldn’t have voted for Jeff Davis over Abe Lincoln, except maybe the day after Confederate raider John Hunt Morgan passed through.

  208. 208.

    Soprano2

    @Geminid:  Yes, they could afford to live here but choose not to. It’s an article of faith here that north of a certain line (which is where I live) is a killing field of crime. That is so not true, though. I had one co-worker tell me that people who live near where we work (also on the “bad” side of town) are either old or crackheads. I saw one person on FB be honest about it – he posted a picture of the city with a line drawn at a particular street. South of the line said “good”; north of the line said “hood”. It’s what they really think.

  209. 209.

    artem1s

    @Chetan Murthy:

    I also would prefer “reproductive autonomy” to “pro-abortion”,

    uh, yea no. we need to stop parsing out what ‘good’ reproductive rights and ‘bad’ reproductive rights are. that’s been the losing message for the last 60 years. either you support equal rights…ALL rights for women or you don’t. either you hedge your opinion on abortion is murder or you don’t. time to stop sitting on the fence.

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