It’s amazing how being a school teacher has prepared me to understand the mindset and behaviors of the American right and its loudmouth psychotic performance artists.
In fact, istening to them gives me more flashbacks to teaching middle school than talking to my own son does… https://t.co/1YjBaL3fra— Slava Malamud (@SlavaMalamud) November 20, 2021
Jennifer Rubin, for the Washington Post, “Republicans define themselves by misogyny and violence”:
When Donald Trump ran for president in 2016, Never Trumpers (now largely ex-Republicans) warned that he would corrupt the party in every way imaginable. His misogyny would morph in the party’s toxic masculinity and degradation of women, they cautioned. His infatuation with brutality and violence (boasting he would kill terrorists’ families, exhorting his supporters to slug protesters) would metastasize to the party as a whole. Boy, did those predictions pan out…
Threats and portrayals of violence against women have turned into a badge of honor for a party in which traditional notions about gender (back to the 1950s!) have become a key predictor of Republican support. Casting men (even a Supreme Court nominee) as victims of aggressive, “nasty” or unhinged women accusing them of wrongdoing has become standard fare in the Trump party…
Toxic masculinity now increasingly manifests in an infatuation with violence against both men and women. “From congressional offices to community meeting rooms, threats of violence are becoming commonplace among a significant segment of the Republican Party,” the New York Times reported this month. “Ten months after rioters attacked the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, and after four years of a president who often spoke in violent terms about his adversaries, right-wing Republicans are talking more openly and frequently about the use of force as justifiable in opposition to those who dislodged him from power.”…
We saw on Jan. 6 how MAGA fanatics took calls to “stop the steal” literally, launching a violent assault on the electoral vote-counting process. In short, if anyone thinks casual, incessant talk of violence and overt misogyny will not impact the rabid Trump base, think again. (Recall that in the wake of Trump mocking the “Asian flu” or “China flu,” we saw a spate of violent attacks on Asian Americans.) As Jones says, “Today, for an alarming number of white conservative Christians, the mark of Christian faithfulness is not a love that inspires them to lay down their lives for their friends, but a defensiveness that lures them to take the lives of their fellow citizens.”…
For example, any middle school teacher will tell you that one of the biggest challenges with controlling preteens is that they do not consider consequences as adults do.
It’s not even that they don’t understand the relationship between cause and effect. It’s that they don’t care.— Slava Malamud (@SlavaMalamud) November 20, 2021
To wit, “I know that throwing pencils at Jenni and Emma will get me into trouble. On the other hand, it will make my friends laugh and get Jenni and Emma mad. So, really, a no-brainer! Pencils go whizz-whizz!”
Delighting buddies and upsetting those you hate is Priority 1. Always.— Slava Malamud (@SlavaMalamud) November 20, 2021
Does Paul Gosar realize how incredibly stupid and psychotic his videos and his calls to award Rittenhouse the Medal of Honor are?
Probably.
Does Madison Cawthorn have an inkling of how dangerous his plea to “get armed and get dangerous” is? Maybe.
But they don’t care…— Slava Malamud (@SlavaMalamud) November 20, 2021
They are what the Russian writer Sergei Dovlatov had described as fools existing in “a cloud of billowing chaos.”
They are emotionally and mentally immature agents of destruction. They are children, without the cuteness and the ability to grow up.
And they are running the country— Slava Malamud (@SlavaMalamud) November 20, 2021
A deeply, deeply fucked country, I am sorry to say.
— Slava Malamud (@SlavaMalamud) November 20, 2021
Anyway
OT – I was out getting burger and brews with friends Monday night. One person was a FOAF others were friends/acquaintances. The conversation started off fairly innocuously – apparently the whole world but me takes supplements. Whatever. No judgement there.
Then they got into how they are buying stuff (food, household products, medication) stocking up for the upcoming shortages in January — WHAA? I missed that memo.
Then the FOAF starts off on how amazing RobertFKennedy’s new book is – how it proves somethingsomething about Fauci and Gates, how there are studies on tens of thousands of people
on hyrdroxychlo… and it is suppressed etc . This person of course instantly lost all credibility with me and I pushed a back a bit about “experimental vaccines”, why are vaccinated people still getting COVID, why do healthy people need to get an experimental vaccine and so on.
I’ve been successful in staying out of these kinds of conversations – couldn’t believe I got suckered into it by someone reading RFK Jr. I came back and took a shower.
PS -All suburban middleclass women with jobs and stuff
zhena gogolia
He’s giving them too much credit. They know exactly what they’re doing. They are not children.
TriassicSands
“They are children, without the cuteness and the ability to grow up.
And they are ruining the country”
Fixed.
Mustang Bobby
I taught middle-schoolers for four years in school and ten summers as a camp counselor. With one or two exceptions, they would think that the behavior of the GOP is stupid and gross.
Chetan Murthy
@Anyway: Wow, I’m sorry to learn that happened to you. Yeah, showering indeed. And a covid test a few days later, maybe? Gggeeeeeeezzzzzzz. Before I engage in social relations with anybody, I always make sure to ask about their politics and [sigh, these days] their bio-politics. Not even gonna start with somebody who isn’t at least two-shots, and GrOPers are right out, right out. And at this point, anybody who didn’t vote to save our Republic, is a GrOPer, don’t want no excuses.
OTOH, that’s b/c I don’t want to end up in a screaming match[1]: I know that I couldn’t control my anger in a situation like you experienced. I certainly understand that *somebody* has to maintain social relations with the …. uh ….. “differently non-thinking”, and if you can do it, that’s a great thing.
[1] I once (>5yr ago) was having drinks with a friend, and he brought along his friend who worked in high-frequency trading. The guy was completely convinced that what he did was socially valuable, and after a few rounds, I got so angry I banged my fist on the table and shouted at him. In a crowded bar. I haven’t been back to that bar since. Would like to prevent that from happening again, and so I just don’t hang out with those types. Ditto (for instance) crypto bros.
Betty
@TriassicSands: Your fix makes a lot more sense. Republicans aren’t running the country yet. They are running too many states and being as obnoxious as they can be just about everywhere.
Litlebritdifrnt
@zhena gogolia: But they are, after Cawthorn made his offer so did Beaubert (probably spelled wrong) he then offered to have an arm wrestling contest with her to see who gets him. Beaubert then said on TV that she didn’t think she would win an arm wrestle cause “he has big guns” SO SHE CHALLENGED HIM TO A SPRINT! Two choices here, a) she doesn’t know he is in a wheelchair (in which case she is more stupid than anyone thought) or b) she was doing the mean girl stint challenging him to a spint KNOWING he is in a wheelchair “titter titter”. They are fucking five year olds pretending to be adults serving in the government. As the guy said your country is fucked. (So is mine but Boris is a whole other set of problems).
dopey-o
I have not worked out a practical plan for secession (still working on Step 2. That’s the one that comes before “Step 3: Profit!”) /snark
We are sharing a reality where 74 million voters have no connection with reality. And no desire to connect. As Sartre wrote, they wear their opposition to reality as a badge of honor. So they’re not going to change their minds.
Adam Silverman opened my eyes to the possibility that we are seeing low-level insurgent warfare in its opening stages. If you ask the Covidiots about their motivations, they answer with vague hand-waving. Their true motives are still hidden away from them in their toxic malevolent hearts. But anyone who watched January 6 unfold already knows.
Urza
@dopey-o: Secession, while an actual solution, isn’t actually possible in modern times. Would require walled cities, and then vast wastelands returning to nature real damn fast without those cities tax dollars to keep them developed and repaired.
The scary part to me is, there is no way to properly eliminate the nukes. And the Confederacy would absolutely use them on a whim. That alone is a reason to fight to stay together even if its painful.
If only there was more progress on skyscraper farms to make the cities more self sufficient.
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: Agreed. They are not children. They know what they are doing and those who they intend to intimidate harm get their message loud and clear.
Speaking of Congressional representatives, did anyone here see Tlaib’s interview with Axios.
UncleEbeneezer
@Chetan Murthy: When people say “You live in a Liberal Bubble” I’m like “Thank freaking GOD!” It’s so worth it.
rikyrah
Eric Boehlert (@EricBoehlert) tweeted at 7:11 AM on Wed, Nov 24, 2021:
“Trump’s VP is most famous for being chased by a mob that wanted to hang him during a deadly insurrection. But today, Harris supposedly feeling politically constrained is treated as breaking news.”
gimme a break
(https://twitter.com/EricBoehlert/status/1463495583218417667?t=onQAF-T3m485T9iQm6kkKw&s=03)
dopey-o
Sadly, true. Every point you make it irrefutable. But how can we peacefully co-exist when they want war? I despair.
Will
@Chetan Murthy: I’m sorry you can’t have a conversation with someone without losing your shit. I keep running into these people that are similar and they keep talking about this Q person and lose their shit when anyone says something remotely out of their belief system.
West of the Rockies
The rightwing people are composed of rage, arrogance, ignorance (willful, gleeful ignorance), fear, resentment, and appetite, a voracious, porcine hunger for power and resources.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
Happy D.B. Cooper Day.
50 years ago today a passenger going by the alias Dan Cooper hijacked a Northwest airlines commuter plane and parachuted out of the back with $200,000 in cash (equivalent to $1.35 million today).
The suspect likely was an out of work Boeing employee, as they found rare elements used in the production of the Concorde jet on the clothing he left behind. He was likely of Canadian origin as “Dan Cooper” was the name of a popular french Canadian comic book in the military adventure genre. The hijacker likely had military training and experience making air drops of supplies.
Unfortunately, Cooper picked the wrong time of the year to jump as it was 7 degrees below zero. He likely perished from hypothermia when he landed in the Columbia river.
Will
@West of the Rockies:
I bolded the four that describe about a quarter of the commenters here when I dare click the comments section button.
Chetan Murthy
@Will:
There are two kinds of those people:
A.R. Moxon had it right:
They all want to put me and mine in camps and murder us. There is good reason for me to lose my shit.
West of the Rockies
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Good lord. It’s like the worst kids from jr. high being terrible.
zhena gogolia
zhena gogolia
@Will: Очень интересно. Расскажите дальше.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
OT – Do not make smart ass comment about “are you sure you don’t want to put in new kitchen drawer liners, since you’re demanding I vacuum behind furniture?”
Last week she was in Prague with middle daughter, week before, Punta Cana with oldest. I’ve bought most of the stuff, planned the menus, not cleaned the bathrooms well enough, not vacuumed well enough, etc.
I’m really choking back pithy comebacks. Keep me level, guys! I don’t want to say the thing that lands me on a couch tonight!
Chetan Murthy
@Will: Perhaps you haven’t been keeping-up with current events. In 2015, it was not socially-acceptable to call Trumpists by the term Deplorables. Today, it’s clear they’re Nazis. Today, it’s clear that Fox News is Radio Rwanda.
Try to keep up.
ETA: Today, it’s clear that they *all* support overturning our Republic, destroying our democracy. All of them. All of them. It might be instructive to read histories of the rise of Hitler in Germany.
Litlebritdifrnt
@rikyrah: The worst they can talk about Harris is that she went to a high end cookware store in Paris and bought some pots. They are outraged that she would spend $600 on some cooking pots. I must admit that I am delighted that the majority of the responses to the tweet are “have you ever been to Williams Senoma?” “She likes to cook, she is buying pots that will be handed down to her grandchildren” etc., etc., and of course the best one “tell me you don’t cook by telling me you have never bought expensive cooking pots”. He he.
West of the Rockies
@Will:
Some days..
I certainly get the rage and fear.
CarolPW
@Will: Sometimes the pie just jumps up and down like “look at me!”
zhena gogolia
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Here’s what you say: Nothing.
She’s your lovely wife with whom you renewed your vows in front of a bearded priest!
lowtechcyclist
This is why it’s so important for the Dems to STFU about working with Republicans, and make a point of painting the Repubs as the traitors to America that they are. It’s important that nobody outside of a few far-left types think that the parties aren’t all that different.
There really shouldn’t even be such a thing as a ‘swing voter’ anymore, given how complete and far-reaching the chasm between the parties is. We need for voters to understand this, even – especially – the low-info ones. If some of them choose the other side based on that info, then they probably weren’t going to vote for Dems anyway.
Chetan Murthy
@Litlebritdifrnt: I’ve never bought expensive pots. Instead, I’ve bought cheap ones that end up losing their surface coating (anodized aluminum mostly) and then I end up throwing them away, buying new ones. The next time I buy a pot, it’ll be an expensive pot.
P.S. I bought a (cheap) Lodge enameled dutch oven, used it for baking sourdough. It got permanently stained with carbon ash pretty quickly. No amount of scrubbing restored it. Next time, I’ll be buying Le Creuset. I guess the Lodge pot is still useful: I continue to use it to bake, but I’ll never be able to use it for actual stews and such.
Urza
@dopey-o: I’ve been contemplating that problem since the Bush years. Gotta break their disinformation networks, turn their funders into paupers, and humiliate their leadership in a way that the base has no choice but to give up on them.
Given the rise of the far right worshippers of WW2 failures recently in Europe after so long, I’m not sure there is a way to eliminate them permanently. Have to always be vigilant, can’t allow them to have free speech to propagate hate speech, educate against it, push the haters to the margins of society so they don’t have any power.
Woodrow/asim
The truth of the Antebellum South, or the Jim Crow South, or the White Supremacists who founded Oregon, or the many, many groups in America who implement “civilization” while abusing Women on every level, is that they are lazy and greedy. And their bloodshed informs that greed and dis-interest in putting in the work — like trying to launch a nuke at an American city.
How does it inform? As noted before, Race Massacres — and I’ll extend, as another example, to the bloody attempts to stop Suffragettes — happen for very specific reasons. And they are contained events, in the sense that the blood shed and pain inflicted is for a Purpose, even if the people doing the actual violence don’t grasp that. They exist so long as there’s a perceived threat from an oppressed group — and “perceived” is doing a lot of work, in that sentence.
There’s a reason lynchings and cross burnings are public, y’all. They are warnings, as horrific as they are. They are efforts not to eliminate a population, but to control — and that control isn’t just for the suppressed population(s), but for everyone, really. They remind the people who have privilege, how to act and react — and the cost of not toeing the line.
Nuking a “liberal” city won’t subjugate people in the way folx are talking about, here. It doesn’t give a Cawthorn the power-over these kinds of assholes seek. In fact, it wipes out the people they actually want to control, and that’s…not how they tend to work. Hell, even the Philly MOVE bombing, as horrific as it was, was a city block, and it’s the closest we have to a modern example of such activities (and note it’s above the Mason-Dixon line…)
In other words, PLEASE have a caution about conflating the very real efforts of genocides, where people do want to wipe out entire populations of The Other, with the kinds of efforts we have and continue to see from these kinds of folx. They are, yes, terrifying similar, and yet the differences really do matter — not the least which, is to allow us to talk about things without risking hyperbole.
Will
@Chetan Murthy:
This is just ignorant fear because not everyone that decides not to vote Democrat want to put you in a camp and murder you. The lady that I help maintain the building holiday decorations and maintain the little garden behind said building during the summer is a Trump supporter. She knows my family voted for Biden and she still loves us. She has gone out of her way and continues to go out of her way in helping my wife from India adjust to moving to the United States. They spend hours during the summer with her teaching her how to garden since my wife had absolutely zero access to such things in India.
I’ve got two IKEA Finnby bookshelves filled with non fiction historical works. I usually consume news a couple hours a day. I’ve been reading this blog for over a decade and a half. I’m well aware of history and I’m well aware of how quickly things can go down the slope from normal to straight crazy. I don’t need someone on the internet that can’t have a conversation in real life without losing their shit on someone for saying something they don’t agree with lecturing me on what is actually happening in the real world. Thanks.
Eljai
@schrodingers_cat: I read a little bit of that interview but I didn’t have the stamina to go on. I’m not a fan of Tlaib but I do think we lock up too many people for non-violent offenses. But oh my lord she walked right into “let’s get rid of prisons” while Jonathan Swan brings up her own quotes & he’s not even that bright. Please, please Rashida, formulate your argument, be prepared & for crissakes don’t give the opposition ammunition!
Chetan Murthy
@Woodrow/asim:
I take your point, and I do know that these bastards don’t want to line us all up and shoot us. After all, they need somebody to do the actual *work*. But I don’t really see the difference between being subjugated and being murdered.
MAGAts aren’t the only ones who get to talk about freedom, after all.
P.S. IIRC, you’re Black, and so you and your ancestors have endured more subjugation than I can imagine. I just don’t think I could do it, is what I’m saying. I’d do something [redacted, b/c you don’t post stuff like that on the Internet].
debbie
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
“Yes, dear” always worked in my family.
scav
@CarolPW: It certainly is a seasonal feast when pies deliver themselves!
Chetan Murthy
@Will: Oh fuck off. Anybody who didn’t vote Democrat voted for the overthrow of our Republic, and they fucking tried in 1/6/2021. Fuck right off.
Chetan Murthy
@Will: Re: your wife, perhaps you’ve heard the phrase “oh, you’re not like the other ones!” That’s racist too.
And people being personally nice to POC, while voting to disenfranchise and oppress them, doesn’t given them a fucking pass.
debbie
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Ask them to name one Democrat who would spend thousands to roll coal in their pickup truck, and then an additional five figures to replace the engine when it is destroyed rolling coal. ?
zhena gogolia
@Chetan Murthy: I agree.
Spanky
Mmmmmm!
Pie.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@zhena gogolia:
I know! Actually, a couple of martinis have helped qualm my acid tongue…
Will
@Chetan Murthy:
If I actually cared about wild people in the comments section I would say I weep for you.
Sorry, no one has used this phrase with my wife. I have a very diverse circle of friends, be it race, nationality, or political beliefs. None of my friends that have said they support Trump have ever said such a thing. In fact, one of my Trump supporting friends in Tennessee got into a huge fight when the treasurer of the Homeowners Association made a comment about immigrants and it pissed him off that they got into a very public feud that caused them to end the meeting. Now the old crones yell at his kids to stay off their lawn and he finds ways to fuck with their lawn that they can’t directly pin to him.
Also, the Trump lady in my building? Huge supporter of the vaccines. Raves about the miracle that she says Trump brought about. Anyone that moves into the building she has cornered at some point and asked if they have been vaccinated and/or told that they need to be vaccinated.
I’m sorry you can’t accept that everyone out there that doesn’t agree with you isn’t in a monolithic cult out to put you in a camp and murder you. At least you have this comment section to rail against the world in and it has a couple of people that harbor the same ignorant fears and resentment that you do to provide some sort of comfort for you.
James E Powell
@Will:
But you do need something, right? Do you know what it is?
Josie
I spent 26 of my 30 years in education at the junior high level, and I never dealt with anything like what I am seeing from the Republican party. One half of the time was in a school south of the railroad tracks and one half on the far north side. Both groups were eager to learn (if a bit sassy) and fun to be with. It is insulting to middle school students to compare them to today’s Republican party.
Woodrow/asim
This is why Intersectionality really fuckin’ matters. This is why getting out of one’s lived experiences, and into understanding others, is critical.
Honest truth — I could not speak as I do, had I not spent a lot of time in the late 80s/early 90s working Feminist issues. I could not engage as I do, had I not spent about a decade learning “how to research” thru fighting against Creationism, then learning about Mid-East/North African/Turkish cultures.
I’m not here to tell you what you can, and cannot endure, exactly. What I can do, is talk about what I, my Parents, and my Ancestors have endured, and use that as a springboard to bring not only context, but real heartfelt emotion, to these debates that are oft-disconnected from the people who’ve actually dealt with shit like this.
And y’all don’t need me to do that. There’s a whole-assed Black Twiiter to inform on, or Academic Twitter to guide, or websites like The Root or The Griot to educate. Most of the stuff I talk about? It’s just what I’ve read and double/tripled checked for accuracy, y’know? So that I try not to talk on anything where my knowledge is skin-deep. Add to that a filter for “this doesn’t jive with my own lived experience/what people I respect opine,” and I spit out a wall o’ text, like this. :)
JPL
@Litlebritdifrnt: They are going to have pry my Le Creuset from my cold dead hands.
schrodingers_cat
@Eljai: It is like an early Christmas gift to the Republicans. Is she that naïve or is she a Republican in DSA clothing?
Chetan Murthy
@Woodrow/asim: I’m not saying that my reaction to some awful future oppression would be effective, nor that it would be rational. I’m just saying what I fear I’d do is not what your ancestors did. B/c it took a lot of self-control to do that. Self-control that I know I do not possess.
Anyway
@Chetan Murthy:
I know my friends are vaxxed, not sure of the FOAF. She teaches at a vo-tech HS and goes in twice a week.
I was depressed after the encounter because (I think) these people should be gettable by Dems and they seem out of reach.
Woodrow/asim
The problem…ugh. There are so many issues here, it’s hard to parse out.
Because, yes, there are “good people” who will vote for not just a “bad” system, but one that actively oppresses vast swathes of Others. A lot of ink has been spilled on this situation, so I’ll just do my usual “quote MLK at ’em” approach:
Your Trump-voting neighbor is very likely one of these folx. They would never directly hate on anyone. Nice as heck! I know people like this — hell, my Mentor for a few years turned out to be one of these people, as did a friend I’d had since High School, so if she’s like him, I’m pretty sure I know their stance.
And so, I know: they’ll vote in the kinds of people’ll who’ll oppress, and call it freedom. They’ll tell me, to my face, I just don’t understand, or see “reality,” or whatever it takes to reconcile the horror show they punched the ticket for, and the Nice Guy/Gal position they take in day-to-day dealings.They talk about things in ways that are honorable, right up until they get in a voting booth.
Let’s not play around. Their desires to shave a few hundred bucks off a tax bill, means that more innocent lives will be sacrificed. That’s the baseline of this concern, Will, and as I just noted, let’s not plug in genocidal language for a situation with is still horrific and ugly as hell.
That’s not fair to any of the people their blindness puts in harm’s way.
Woodrow/asim
If we appear of one mind on this (and we are not, Black folx are not a monolith), it’s because many of us learned from our past, and from others who tried…alternative approaches.
That’s the core of what I was recommending, to you.
Chetan Murthy
@Woodrow/asim:
I’d be long-dead before I could learn such a lesson. As a Hamas commander once said during the first Intifada: “the suicide vest is the poor man’s F-16”.
Litlebritdifrnt
So my darling husband (an American living in the UK you remember) has decided that we MUST have Thanksgiving tomorrow. We have invited my late mother’s partner for dinner so he is going all out to do this thing. We are getting our dinner from a local carvery (because lord only knows what would happen if he had to cook an entire Thanksgiving dinner). However he is insisting having pumpkin pie for dessert. He ordered canned pumpkin from Amazon and then relied on his Mom for the recipe. Dear readers it took five hours to make a pumpkin pie. This included him having to go to the 24 hour grocery store because he bought condensed milk instead of evaporated milk (I had told him twice that he needed evaporated milk). My DH is one of those “following the recipe to the letter” to the extent that he was sat in the kitchen with his phone timer while looking at the oven while the pie baked. I hope to damn hell that the pumpkin pie is okay to be honest if it isn’t I think he will have an entire meltdown. Happy Thankgiving everyone!
J R in WV
@Chetan Murthy:
All baking pots will get like that. Le Creuset will also look “stained” after being in your oven at 375 or 400 degrees for an hour or two. Only way to avoid that look is to buy black iron goods, which won’t show that same carbonized stain look.
If you buy Le Creuset you will be disappointed if you expect it to look new after a half dozen trips into the oven, it will look just the same as the Lodge. Ask me how I know…
Ksmiami
@dopey-o: Covid mutations taking out the remaining… yes I’ll go there
WaterGirl
@Litlebritdifrnt: Please don’t tell him that pumpkin pie (not counting the crust) can be put together in 10 minutes.
Chetan Murthy
@Woodrow/asim: For Will, about his Trumpist neighbors: there’s an anecdote about Himmler in the runup (or maybe during) WWII: he was receiving many letters from “Good Nazi Party members” who were asking for clemency for some “deserving Jew” whom they wanted to save. Perhaps a family friend, or a co-worker. Himmler wrote an interoffice memo, saying (paraphrasing) “I’m so sick of getting these entreaties to spare some “deserving Jew”: let me make this clear, there are no “deserving Jews””.
You vote for the racist scum, you are racist scum. Doesn’t matter if you treat some individual untermenschen with decency and respect: you voted to put people in power who want to oppress them , you are the oppressor.
J R in WV
@Will:
Gee whiz, Will… get over yourself, please. This is one of the more civilized places to discuss current events.
Chetan Murthy
@J R in WV: Oh, *interesting*. Really! It gets pretty gray-looking, even after I clean it as thoroughly as I can. And I’ve used tons of baking soda, barkeeper’s friend, etc, all to no avail.
By some chance, if I gave you an email address, could you send me a pic of one of your enamel pots that you’ve used for baking? with the carbonized stuff on it?
mrmoshpotato
Narrator: They fucking aren’t ex-Republicans.
geg6
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Your husband is adorable. Lie about the pie, if you must. He’s very sweet and a little homesick, I dare say.
Citizen Alan
@dopey-o:
I’ve taken to describing them as follows: Imagine the Manson Family or the Branch Davidians, except there are 74 million of them and they all vote.
Citizen Alan
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch:
Huh. And here I thought it was Loki and he escaped by being teleported to Asgard.
Kay
Sometimes you can’t believe they’re real until you check.
Just flat-out propaganda now. “Hellish” and “careening”. Jesus. And the INSANE focus on the price of turkey!
This is what a turkey costs where I live:
It’s on sale. They’re basically giving it away. But even the “normal price” is 20 dollars.
mrmoshpotato
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Why not set a timer for half the time, then go check on the pie? (Yes, I know you don’t have an answer for this.) :)
Will
@J R in WV:
Yeah, sure it is when someone’s only retort to someone that doesn’t agree with them 100% is the below.
My mistake for ever reading the comment section. In the decade and a half of reading this blog I’ve known well enough to usually avoid it because it will just depress me how some of the people on my side are just a looney as those on the far right.
I’ll let this brief interruption of a view from the real world stop and let the “they are going to put us in camps and murder us all” group continue on.
mrmoshpotato
Is that also tweeted out so people can tell RollCall to get fucked?
gwangung
@Will: No, you’re just very comfortable and very privileged and never have to think about what occurred to actual people in recent memory.
Be off with you, now.
lowtechcyclist
@WaterGirl:
I just use a Keebler graham cracker crust. That solves the crust problem, so 10 minutes it is.
For the filling, I buy a can of Libby’s pumpkin, and follow the recipe except I double the recommended amounts of cinnamon, ginger, and cloves. Definitely improves the pie.
Ruckus
@Litlebritdifrnt:
They are fucking five year olds pretending to be adults
serving indestroying the government.FIXITFY
Ksmiami
@Chetan Murthy: There are no good Republicans… – trolls all the way down
Chetan Murthy
@lowtechcyclist:
I’ve been doing a lot of cooking lately (gee, wonder why, could it have to do with something that happened in March 2020?) and I’ve pretty much come down to “start by doubling all the spices, then experiment with even more”. I wonder if this is a common thing: I mean, recipes are so bloody …. bland, it seems like. And I mean cinnamon buns, mexican chicken, black beans, spanish rice, red beans [for “… and rice”], various chicken dishes, pasta sauce, and on and on.
I mean, it seems like all recipes are written for supertasters? Am I alone in feeling like this? Am I am “subtaster”?
Ruckus
@mrmoshpotato:
Withholding republicans?
Temporally non voting republicans?
Ashamed republicans who will revert to unashamed as soon as they figure out how to hold their noses and vote for the stench?
Kay
@mrmoshpotato:
They’ve created a turkey price panic.
We’re going to have to crowd source prices. Everyone has to post what their turkey cost. We’ll get our own average.
Kay
@mrmoshpotato:
And no putting any weird “luxury turkeys” into my average.
Supermarket turkeys. NORMAL ones :)
FelonyGovt
@Chetan Murthy: I’m the same way. I usually (at least) double the cumin, garlic cloves, etc. I hate bland food.
LongHairedWeirdo
Actually, Gosar and Cawthorn both have really, really good ideas of the consequences of their actions *on themselves*. There won’t be any negative consequences, and the few people who point out that their words and actions are horrifying, anti-patriotic, etc., will suffer for having been “shrill”.
Face it: we live in a country where a famous person on cable news can call someone a baby killer, and then act shocked, *shocked*, to find someone thinks murdering said “baby killer” is a good idea. While rational actors in the reality based community see that there are huge costs to boosting such toxic attitudes, those are all externalities… the costs accrue to others, like the stench of a hog farm ruining the quality of life of the nearby town. And the Republican Party has always been a big believer in letting the poor handle the costs of externalities.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kay:
You ignored a lot of economic data that Roll Call article was citing:
Emphasis mine. It’s not just about the turkeys themselves, it’s the entire grocery bill.
And as for the BBB lowering inflation, it could take months or years for the federal government to identify projects:
The article also noted that political forecasters on both sides of the aisle see a map awash in red for 2022. As Adam Silverman says, perception is reality
Chetan Murthy
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Goku, surely you are aware that there was a collapse in gas prices, when the pandemic started, yes ? So measuring inflation over the past 12mos is *intrinsically* gaslighting. If you want to do it honestly, you do it over 24mos, so the window starts *before* the pandemic.
Villago Delenda Est
If they ever were actual Christians, they’re not now. They worship Mammon and Moloch. They are heretics. They actively oppose the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Chetan Murthy:
That may be so, but all I ever hear from people is complaining about higher gas prices and grocery bills. Guess who they’re going to (and are, if polls are to be believed) blame? The president’s party, that’s who. And I will reiterate that as Adam Silverman has said, perception is reality
J R in WV
@Litlebritdifrnt:
I make a pretty good pumpkin pie, and I want to warn you, pumpkin pie is only a substrate for whipped cream. Its only purpose is to hold whipped cream on the pumpkin pie as you moves the whole thing into your mouth.
So get some heavy cream and whip it up! With just a little dab of sugar before it starts to whip up. And maybe a few drops of vanilla. Or rum. Maybe a grind of nutmeg… you get the picture.
Steeplejack
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Good to see your nym here. It has been a while. Let us know how things are going for you and the hubby sometime.
J R in WV
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
I got a tank full of high-test yesterday on my way home, it was $3.66/gallon — but I got $0.66 off with my Kroger’s card, so was actually $3.06 a gallon.
Being just the two of us, I got a pair of cornish game hens, but Kroger’s was bringing in fork-lift pallet loads of frozen turkeys of all sizes. I’m sure they were a little more than last year, but still… not crazy high at all.
Steeplejack
@dopey-o:
Secession is not a solution. Even if it were possible, which I doubt, what would you end up with? Life bordering a violent, dysfunctional state probably run by a succession of fascist dictators with Putinesque territorial ambitions. That would be better than dealing with the nutters now?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
It’s shocking how Germany transitioned from an Absolute Monarchy to the Absolute Dictatorship in the span of little more than 10 years.
planetjanet
@Kay: I was not planning on getting a turkey. But on a trip to Wegman’s, they had frozen turkey at $0.39 per pound. Could not pass that up!
LongHairedWeirdo
@Will: Seriously, with warm regards and respect:
To me, you’re coming across as someone saying that your lack of “losing your shit” makes you superior to someone who has a lot more to lose, and who feels the threat more keenly. It looks callous – again, to me.
Not trying to lecture you – just hoping I can act as a bit of a mirror, for a bit of reflection.
Sister Golden Bear
@Will: Я нахожу ваши идеи интригующими и хочу подписаться на вашу рассылку.
hueyplong
The cover thread is a more wordy version of saying that President Internet Troll gave his millions of followers license to take their repugnant online personalities and fantasies out of mom’s basement and into the streets/school board meetings/the Capitol.
The only entity effectively fighting back against them is the Delta Variant, and it mainly takes out a fraction of the goateed reserves aged 51-70.
brantl
@Will: I think it’s just willful idiots that he’s having a problem with, and I sympathize. I’m 65 years old, and I don’t have time for these morons. Willful disbelief in science? JFCoaC.
brantl
@Will: Grow up. And preferentially, go away.
brantl
@Will: Do you just play a condescending puke on TV, or is this the real you? Good god, you’re an asshole.
brantl
@Will: Please, get a heart transplant, or implant in your case, there appears to be nothing to replace, it will be a fresh install.
brantl
@J R in WV: Try sweet potato pie, then, it’s 3 times as good as pumpkin.
Matt
A key mistake that’s easy to make: assuming that Never-Trumpers are capable of telling the truth, or of even recognizing it. As conservatives, they are not.
The GOP has been the party of gun nutz threatening everyone for THIRTY YEARS. Remember how mad they got at Janet Reno?
Oddly enough for a party composed entirely of professional liars, the only real change recently has been more honesty. Used to be, they’d publicly condemn a murderer like Rittenhouse while high-fiving in private; now they just do the high-fives in public.