Republican twitter is panicking because it has realized that the GOP has not won a single redistricting lawsuit. Not one.
— Marc E. Elias (@marceelias) February 21, 2022
Sixteen tribal nations will receive $1.7 billion as part of Indian water rights settlements, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced today.https://t.co/CG28ZSzQIT
— Axios (@axios) February 23, 2022
Per the Associated Press:
… The money will ensure that tribes get access to water they’ve been promised but have been unable to use because of a lack of funding for infrastructure to store and move it.
“I am grateful that tribes, some of whom have been waiting for this funding for decades, are finally getting the resources they are owed,” Haaland said in a statement during a trip to Arizona, where she announced the funding.
Access to reliable, clean water and basic sanitation facilities on tribal lands remains a challenge for hundreds of thousands of people. The funding for settlements is part of about $11 billion from the infrastructure law headed to Indian Country to expand broadband coverage, fix roads and provide basic needs like running water.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1908 that tribes have rights to as much water as they need to establish a permanent homeland, and those rights stretch back at least as long as any given reservation has existed. As a result, tribal water rights often are more senior to others in the West, where competition over the scarce resource is fierce.
Litigation can be expensive and drawn-out, which is why many tribes have turned to settlements. The negotiations generally involve tribes, states, cities, private water users, local water districts and others and can take years if not decades to hash out.
Nearly 40 water rights settlements have been reached with tribes, some of which include more than one tribe. The Interior Department said 31 of the settlements are eligible for funds from the infrastructure bill. Altogether, the infrastructure bill included $2.5 billion for water rights settlements in the coming years.
The settlements receiving funding this year are: Aamodt Litigation Settlement (Pueblos of San Ildefonso, Nambe, Pojoaque, and Tesuque), Blackfeet Nation, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, Crow Nation, Gila River Indian Community, Navajo-Utah Water Rights Settlement and Navajo-Gallup Water Supply Project, San Carlos Apache Nation, Tohono O’odham Nation, and White Mountain Apache Tribe…
United State Secretary of the Interior, Deb Haaland, is in Colorado Friday to highlight new federal funding that will make a major investment in science and research in the Centennial State. https://t.co/EQ6CfSV0rr
— FOX31 Denver KDVR (@KDVR) February 18, 2022
First Lady of the United States Dr. Jill Biden and U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland visit with students to experience firsthand how the tribe is successfully making historic investments in preserving and perpetuating the Cherokee language. https://t.co/UEAj2PtX7z
— J.K. Sloan (@jameskeithsloan) February 21, 2022
Baud
Glad to see the Navajo in there. They turned AZ blue.
Gin & Tonic
Cool history:
Ohio Mom
Ohio Republicans may have lost both of their redistricting cases but they are refusing to draw new, corrected versions of the maps. That’s creating a fair amount of chaos. There are potential candidates for the state legislature who don’t know what district they live at in —can they run or not?
I hope Kay or debbie will be by with more details, else I will have to google some. I try not to follow stories that enrage me too closely, just for my own mental well-being.
Karen S.
Good news about the water rights settlements! I needed it, what with everything else going on in the world. My mother died on Feb. 11, peacefully, at home with the house full of friends and family who had come to say goodbye. We had services for her on the 18th. She was amazing, and I miss her so much. A few times since her death, I’ve seen, read or heard something and thought, “I should tell Mom about that,” and then I remember.
Baud
@Karen S.:
My condolences.
SiubhanDuinne
@Karen S.:
I am so sorry, and I can just imagine how much you miss your mom. My mother died in 1975, and I still find myself wanting to share things with her. So the missing won’t go away, ever, but I promise you it will become less acute as time goes by. Condoling hugs on your loss.
Ohio Mom
Okay, here is an article from the Columbus Dispatch on this hollow victory: amp.dispatch.com/amp/6801298001
It reminded me that there are primaries for the Statehouse in May, so the clock is ticking.
debbie
@Ohio Mom:
I heard this morning they’ve said they’ll come up with a new map. The Supreme Court hearing is today.
The thought of standing before Maureen O’Connor must be very scary to them. ?
WereBear
@Karen S.: That’s a rough time that does need other good news. My sympathies. I’ve been through it.
Betty Cracker
@Karen S.: So sorry for your loss. I still have an “I should tell Mom about this” thought sometimes, and my mom has been gone for nearly eight years. Losing an amazing mom leaves a big hole in your heart, but remembering the love and laughter helps.
Soprano2
@Karen S.: That’s tough, I’m so sorry. I sometimes still think “I should call Mother about that”, and then remember that I can’t.
Ohio Mom
@Karen S.: My condolences.
My experience is that after a while, you get to the point where you can say things like, “Mom would have liked that,” “Mom would have thought that was hilarious,” “Mom would have felt so vindicated,” and so forth, and you feel comforted instead of bereaved.
For me, I often hear my mother in my mind’s ear reacting to my MIL’s latest: “She is very peculiar.” And I feel less lonely and aggrieved.
gene108
https://twitter.com/hollyotterbein/status/1496455601416814598?s=20&t=VsydsHYSr6KHFlDLjPHNBw
topclimber
@Karen S.: May it comfort you that she is sill with you in a way, in your heart and mind.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone???
rikyrah
@Karen S.:
So sorry for your loss??????
Baud
@gene108:
While I endorse this message, depending on the details, I
don’t mindDON’T LIKE normalizing the practice of Dems having separate responses to the SOTU.fixed
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
OzarkHillbilly
@Karen S.: It’s a hole in your life that can never be filled, but with time it can be ameliorated by memories. I hope the time of healing is short for you.
gene108
@Karen S.:
Condolences
gene108
@Baud:
I think feeding the “Democrats in disarray” narrative will be more counterproductive, because of Manchin and Sinema causing legislation to fail.
fancycwabs
Marc Elias, apparently unaware of the existence of Alabama.
Or of Tennessee and Texas, where Democrats see no path to victory in court in spite of gerrymanders that look those pictures drawn by people who’ve taken a very concerning level of drugs, so they haven’t even filed a suit.
Another Scott
Excellent news. Thanks.
Elsewhere, FORTE11 is doing laps again, this time closer to the border. I noticed a UK and another big US sigint plane (left from Germany) as well.
flightradar24.com/FORTE11/2ae98408
Cheers,
Scott.
Another Scott
@Karen S.: Condolences to you and to everyone who knew and loved her. It’s hard.
Remember the good times.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Baud
@Baud:
@gene108:
Ugh. “I don’t mind” should be “I don’t like”.
satby
@Karen S.: Deepest condolences.
hueyplong
@fancycwabs: Well, the existence Alabama had slipped from my consciousness until you so rudely reminded me of it.
germy
Geminid
@gene108: Tlaib may also go after the nine House moderates led by Gottheimer, who signed the letter calling for a stand alone vote on the infrastructure bill (another “Squad” member has blamed one of the signers for killing the Child Tax Credit and the rest of the BBB bill). We shall see.
I kind of like Tlaib, but repping the Working Families Party is part of an effort to form a party within the party along with the Democratic Socialists of America and independent lefties. A Tea Party of the Left,” so to speak. Some proponents of this movement even contend that the party would be better off if it had a smaller and “more ideologically cohesive” House Caucus. I don’t see many of the House Progressive Caucus advocating this, though. This problem will be worked out in this year’s primaries and in 2024.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: I understand the arguments against using a SOTU “rebuttal” format because of what it implies about party divisions. But we’re in unprecedented times here, with upwards of 95% of the party united around Biden’s agenda and a few corrupt hacks not only stymieing that agenda but refusing to shore up a democracy that’s under sustained assault. I’d rather Biden himself call the hacks out, but that would be out of character.
satby
Sad news: Dr. Paul Farmer, founder of Partners in Health, passed away aged 62. I need to go leave them a donation in his memory.
Starfish
@hueyplong:
Dear Mr. Huey P. Long,
You are from Louisiana. You have to remember Alabama because sometimes its policies are more failed than your own.
Karen S.
@SiubhanDuinne: Thank you.
Baud
@Betty Cracker: Depending on what she actually says, I agree that the content of this particular response could be helpful. But this is not the first year this has happened, and I suspect not the last, and I think long-term it is a bad idea for various factions of the Dem party to have separate messages in response to a Dem president SOTU.
Baud
@Geminid:
That’s hard to accomplish when your goal is to get things done rather than break things.
narya
I’m excited to see the language immersion school–ensuring the continuation of Native languages has to be important, and so many genocidal campaigns tried to wipe them out.
Karen S.
@Ohio Mom: Thank you.
I look forward to that visceral twinge of pain becoming less acute for me.
Mom was 94 when she died and one of the things I did was get her address book because I wanted to call her friends and let them know. Most of the names in the book were crossed out. Mom had outlived nearly all her peers. I ended up making three or four calls. The people I did talk to were sad, of course, but also shared lovely memories of Mom with me.
Benw
@Karen S.: so sorry. I’m glad you had an amazing mom.
zhena gogolia
@Karen S.: I’m very sorry. It is a terrible loss, I know.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: Me too. Symptomatic of where we are now. People don’t seem to get what the stakes are.
germy
It seems that Rashida Tlaib isn’t rebutting or responding to Biden, but to centrists who have thwarted Biden.
I would prefer we show a unified front. Let the republicans be in disarray.
zhena gogolia
@germy: That subtlety will be lost on the MSM and broad audience.
Baud
@germy:
We won’t know until she delivers her speech.
Starfish
@Baud: I think we are going to see the importance of a particular faction of the left shift into relevance quickly as the generational shift happens.
The only thing that I remember about Tlaib is that she yelled IMPEACH at Trump all the time.
Like there are one-issue gun voters and one-issue anti-abortion voters on the right, I would like to see the left hold onto a couple of issues and act like they matter.
Those issues can be ones like women’s bodily autonomy and possibly environmental ones (but the environmental ones will lose some oil and fracking campaign contributions and lose states that are really about oil and fracking so maybe not.)
germy
@zhena gogolia:
Yes, unfortunately.
SteveinPHX
@Karen S.:
Very sorry for your loss. Because I started a family a little later, my old man did not live to see his grandkids. He would have enjoyed them. I think about that often.
Soprano2
@Karen S.: I’m glad you were able to do that. I’ve yet to find anything like an address book in my mother’s stuff; I’m still hopeful that eventually I’ll find one. I did find a diary she kept when she was between 9 and 12, which is touching and hilarious to read.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
To be fair, no one is going to pay attention to her speech. I think it’s bad form as a general matter, but absent her something outrageous, it won’t make much of a splash.
hueyplong
@Starfish: Nonsense. Mine were high popalorum. Theirs were low popahiram.
Gin & Tonic
@SteveinPHX: Since circumstances deprived both my dear wife and me of grandparents, we have seized the opportunity to dote on our grandkids shamelessly.
Gin & Tonic
Some dude commenting about “peacekeepers.”
Jeffro
god I love having competent people (who actually care about our country and its people) in charge, doing competent, caring things instead of lining their own pockets and trying to set the country on fire
JMG
@Baud: “Response to State of the Union” is a political loser. The best a pol assigned to deliver one can hope for is that it goes unnoticed. I mean, who’s going to watch Tlaib’s speech, really? And if she fails to criticize Biden, the media will give it as scant coverage as it can muster.
Citizen Alan
@fancycwabs:
Somewhere out in the multiverse is a world in which Supreme Court Justice Merrick Garland wrote the opinion holding that partisan gerrymandering violates the equal protection clause. But we don’t live in that world because something something Hillary’s emails.
Geminid
@Baud: Very few of the Progressive Caucus members buy into the idea of a “Tea Party of the Left.” It’s bg among independents and third parties on the left who think the Democratic party needs to broken before it can be properly fixed.
lowtechcyclist
@gene108:
I’m a fan of Tlaib, but it’s really time to stop focusing on M&S, and remind everyone that all fifty Republican Senators voted against doing anything about climate change. Susan Collins, Mitt Romney, Ben Sasse, Lisa Murkowski – yep, even all the Republicans that the media would like to pretend are the sane Republicans that Dems can work with. Plus all the loathsome ones from Mitch McConnell to Ron Johnson to Marco Rubio.
And how many GOP votes are there in the Senate for legislation protecting a woman’s right to choose? Any? Certainly not any to carve out a filibuster exception, amirite?
And we know about voting rights. Been there, tried that already.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: I think it’s probably true that in general, it’s a bad look. This year, it may be useful, but it further entrenches a controversial practice. Maybe that’s the lesser evil under the circumstances; I don’t know.
I wonder about the behind-the-scenes conversations. Do the folks who are doing the “rebuttal” run their remarks past Pelosi and the Biden admin, etc.? I have no idea.
Baud
@Starfish:
I don’t know. But I would not support a moderate Dem offering a response to President AOC’s SOTU either.
I think the main difference is that most one issue voters on right don’t act like they are outside the system and indifferent to which party is in power. Lefties have a different tradition they draw from.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
I don’t know. My guess is that they don’t share the actual text, because neither Pelosi nor the White House would want to say they saw what was said in advance, in the event the speech isn’t well received.
Geminid
@Starfish: Pennsylvania has a large natural gas extraction industry, as well as a lot of people who heat with gas.The two leading candidates for the Democratic Senate nomination there, John Fetterman and Conor Lamb, want just to regulate fracking, not ban it. This is a sticking point for some “progressives” who otherwise might rally behind Fetterman.
Likewise, New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham supports her states petroleum industry, even though she pushed through a clean power plan to wean the state off of fossil fuel electrical generation. State revenues from the oil indusrty account for a signifiant chunk of the state’s budget.
Baud
@Geminid:
Sometimes I wish a state would try proportional representation for its legislature with ranked choice voting for state-wide offices, just to see how it would work out. I do think there is a lot of desire on the left to be able to be in a smaller, more ideologically cohesive party, but that’s not doable in a two-party, first-past-the-post system.
hueyplong
Maybe in a turnout election Tlaib gets a chance to keep the left from 2022 demoralization by piping up in a way Biden and Pelosi can’t because of the time-honored fear of having “official” leaders offend “moderates.”
zhena gogolia
@hueyplong: Maybe the left should grow up and notice what happened as a result of their “demoralization” in 2016.
lowtechcyclist
@Citizen Alan:
We wouldn’t have lived in that world even if Hillary had won.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: I am not convinced that the populist left is not for breaking things. Putin’s men in Ukraine were running BS campaign and the Trump campaign in 2016 . Lefties including the most popular member of the Squad were against sanctions just last week. She has since deleted the tweet
The goal is to make the country ungovernable. The ends of the horseshoe are working towards that
Starfish
@Geminid: Yeah, Wyoming and Colorado are like this too. Wyoming has a lot of its school funding paid for by “severance tax” which is the tax on oil and gas.
Kalakal
@Karen S.: My condolences. I still talk to my deceased parents, after many years I now find it comforting
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
I too wish that, but we might need to accept the fact that lefties are going to be disappointed about what’s happening just like normies are going to be blissfully unaware of what’s happening. What’s the best way to approach voters given those condtions? I don’t know, and I suspect no one really does.
Kay
@lowtechcyclist:
But they didn’t kill BBB, because the whole premise was no Republicans would vote for it. Democratic centrists killed it and dragged out killing it for months and took Biden’s approval ratings down with them. We have to address what actually happened. You could “move on” if something had passed but they killed the whole deal.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
If the goal is to break things, then a Tea Party of the Left is one way to do it.
Gin & Tonic
@schrodingers_cat: The “populist left” has, as far as I can recall, not legislatively blocked a single Biden initiative. “Centrists” have.
lowtechcyclist
Our own Adam Silverman says they’re useless. Damn those lefties.
Betty Cracker
@zhena gogolia: Okay, but it’s important to get the less affiliated voters who turned out for Biden in 2020 back to the polls this year. We always say the people who just show up for presidential elections need to get it through their heads that every election matters. I’m for anything that sends that message and makes people believe they have a stake in the outcome of the midterms. I’m not sure this format is the best way to send that message, but it looks like that’s what they’re attempting.
lowtechcyclist
That shouldn’t get them off the hook. They have agency. Just because we knew in advance that they were going to use that agency for evil, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t rip the fuck out of them for being evil.
People have to be told over and over again, with specifics, that one of our two parties has gone totally off the deep end. It won’t sink in without frequent repetition. If we just don’t say it at all, people will continue thinking the Republicans are a normal political party. And that thinking is our worst enemy.
Kay
@lowtechcyclist:
We can’t make this transactional- vote for Democrats, get X- then get mad at them when they see it as transactional. We told them it was. If you’re really saying something different- this is a generational project with some broad shared goals – then that’s a different message than a get out the vote message for a cycle. I would suggest the broad shared goals approach because the transactional approach isn’t really true. It may or may not be true that they get X if they elect Y more Democrats because actually they need 60+, so perhaps don’t promise them that. It isn’t how senate races work anyway. No one votes for the Pennsylvania or Ohio senator based on “54” (or whatever the number is) in the senate. Tim Ryan isn’t running to nullify Joe Manchin’s vote in the senate. What?
hueyplong
@zhena gogolia: Saying they should grow up don’t make it happen. And in any event they’ve been the bigger persons compared to the “moderates” since Biden took office.
James E Powell
@Citizen Alan:
Right. And also because Al Gore is not as environmentally friendly as he makes himself out to be.
schrodingers_cat
@Gin & Tonic: They vote with Republicans more often than the much reviled Manchin and Sinema.
They haven’t been able to block stuff because they don’t have the numbers yet.
James E Powell
@lowtechcyclist:
Complete agreement.
hueyplong
@schrodingers_cat: “She has since deleted the tweet.”
That seems like a fairly important fact. It seems to indicate a change of position.
Another Scott
@gene108: Dang you. Dang you to heck for making me click a WARNING Politico link:
Coloring added.
Two senators acting up is “deep rifts“. (groucho-roll-eyes.gif)
It’s Politico being Politico.
Cheers,
Scott.
schrodingers_cat
@hueyplong: If that was the case she would have referenced the original tweet and issued a correction.
Baud
@hueyplong:
Yes and no. Probably important here to distinguish between regular folks and elected officials. WRT elected officials, the progressives have been better than the centrists.
WRT regular folks, however, your average liberal Dem who is on Twitter or otherwise online is probably more likely to come across or hear about an asshole lefty than an asshole centrist (mostly because the centrists aren’t online as much or, if they are, they have a different social network). I think the frequency of that contact colors the conversation, here and elsewhere.
Betty Cracker
@lowtechcyclist: From the article linked at #13:
I don’t think they plan to let Republicans off the hook. The Beltway press will focus mostly on criticism of the handful of Democrats who sabotaged Biden’s agenda because that’s how they roll. But I expect Tlaib will blast Republicans early and often, as she should.
hueyplong
@schrodingers_cat: Bullshit. That’s just what you (well, and I) wanted her to do.
Baud
@Another Scott: Yeah, that’s straight up propaganda.
schrodingers_cat
Squad sloganeering may help in deep blue privileged environs like this comment section and on Red Rose Twitter but lands with a thud everywhere else.
Their Defund the Police slogan had the popularity of Ebola even in my neighborhood which is Bernistan.
ETA Someone had dressed their snowman as BS at the inauguration complete with hideous mittens, last year.
OzarkHillbilly
A good read, enough to make one wonder.
schrodingers_cat
@lowtechcyclist: Adam Silverman is not God and his every utterance is not the gospel truth.
Another Scott
@schrodingers_cat:
I don’t think anyone thinks that Biden and most sensible people interpret that as:
(and avoid sanctions) that hurt the Ukrainian people
and instead mean:
and avoid (sanctions that hurt the Ukrainian people)
Biden’s sanctions are targeted to hit the malefactors, not the Ukrainian people. Biden’s people are trying to find a diplomatic solution.
But, Twitter is horrible for nuance…
[eta:] IOW, getting upset about a Tweet from someone nominally (and demonstrably in the vast majority of cases) on our side seems like wasted energy to me. YMMV.
Cheers,
Scott.
Kay
@Another Scott:
Democratic centrists went to a Right wing outlet and pre-blamed losing Congress on progressives:
Read this garbage and tell me again how centrists are the unifiers and progressives spoil everything. It could have come from Fox News.
If centrists can launch these broadsides against progressives, progressives are permitted to fight back.
The biggest damage they did was not even killing BBB. The biggest damage they did was failing to repeal some or all of the Trump tax cuts. 70% of people wanted that done and every single Democrat ran on it.
schrodingers_cat
@Karen S.: My condolences. Losing a parent is hard.
hueyplong
@Kay: Nothing honest precedes or follows the phrase, “top Democrats tell us.”
Geminid
@Starfish: Hydraulic fracturing- “fracking”- has been around since at least 1950.* The process is notorious now because when used along with horizontal drilling fracking allows recovery of “tight” oil and gas from shale formations. This has led to a resurgence of American oil and gas production this past decade. Modern horizontal drilling was pioneered by engineer Harold Hamm in the first years of this century.
* I once listened to a National Press Club appearance by Ted Turner and T. Boone Pickens, where they talked about the climate crisis and what to do about it. Pickens cracked me up when he answered a question on fracking, in his broad Southwestern accent:
Pickens did allow that he was not familiar the Marcellus and other eastern shale formations that were in the news, and that they might be more problematic than the ones he had fracked.
Another Scott
@Kay: A Mike Allen piece, really? Life is too short.
I’ve mentioned before that Manchin claims he wants to repeal TFG’s tax cuts. You can hammer on him more effectively for things other than that, IMO.
Cheers,
Scott.
Citizen Alan
@lowtechcyclist: I stand by my belief that if Hillary had won, the republicans would have rushed through Garland pre-inauguration rather than risk her being able to get someone younger and to his left through after taking office. That would have tilted the court 5 to 4 in favor of liberals. The case that allowed partisan gerrymandering was 5 to 4 conservative.
Chief Oshkosh
@Karen S.: I’m two years out from my fathers death, and me and my sibs still do that. We call each other instead, or some of his old friends. I hope you have such people available to you.
Kay
@Another Scott:
And this insane denial by centrists that Republicans aren’t running on culture war issues. Yes they are. 5 of 11 of Rick Scott’s bullet points are straight up culture war. Democrats should just surrender on that and talk about infrastructure? Republicans won the culture war? No they didn’t. None of this stuff is at all popular.
I absolutely want to talk about racist speech codes in schools and don’t say gay laws and draconian abortion bans. I think I win that. The savy take is don’t even fight? That’s a bad plan, especially if you’;re looking at a 40% drop in youth approval which is in fact what you’re looking at.
Stick up for your people! They expect you to get a little bloodied up on their behalf. Say “no we will NOT stop talking about racism in US history” You’ll be right AND you’ll win.
Citizen Alan
@James E Powell:
Don’t be silly. Al Gore lost because he was a deranged compulsive liar. And he sighed loudly that one time. I know this because reporters, including supposedly liberal reporters, insisted this was the case at the time.
schrodingers_cat
Who is saying this, do they have names? Maintaining the status quo that favors white supremacy (aka culture war) is all the Republicans have left.
Kay
@Another Scott:
Manchin killed the mechanism to repeal some of the tax cuts. Whatever he says, that’s what he did.
I think it’s good they finally stopped negotiating with him. Unless I miss my guess his plan was to raise payroll taxes. He’s a fucking moron. That’s he’s the 49th vote doesn’t change that.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
The “leaked” article in Axios. Have you seen the upcoming SCOTUS cases? Every single one is straight up Right wing culture war. But we’re afraid to defend public school teachers, lest we offend the mythical “angry parents in Virginia”, when there was never a shred of evidence that’s why they lost Virginia.
The biggest bump in turnout for the Right in Virginia? Voters over 75. Now I don’t know what they were mad about but I doubt it was a 6th grade civics text.
NotMax
@Baud
Well, she’s no Bobby Jindal.
//
NotMax
@Citizen Alan
Also too, “earth tones.”
The horror, the horror.
//
schrodingers_cat
OT Do you guys want to see an art deco theater where I saw a lot of movies when I was growing up?
Old School
@Kay:
Well, it might have been. After all, that’s what the guy on TV told them to be mad about.
Geminid
@Kay: I think the extra turnout of older voters in Virginia’s election was among older Republican voters who refused to come and vote for Trump. Youngkin portrayed a more reasonable, pragmatic politician that these voters could get behind.
hueyplong
@schrodingers_cat: Looks like they were showing a 1939 movie. Great pic.
Steeplejack
@schrodingers_cat, @schrodingers_cat:
You hurt your credibility when you misrepresent the situation. A.O.C.’s tweet was deleted “after 1 week at 3:00 PM on 07 Feb,” which means it dates from the end of January, when the situation was somewhat different. As evidenced by the fact that the tweet says, “We must seek a diplomatic resolution rather than escalate tensions—and avoid sanctions that hurt the Ukrainian people.” That seems fairly anodyne and is quite different from blanket opposition to sanctions “last week.”
Ksmiami
@Kay: Manchin and Sinema need to pay for their treachery
Jeffro
That’s absolutely true. People wanted that done just to do it – they didn’t even need to be told where the money was going to go. It was more popular than most of the provisions of BBB.
Hoodie
@Kay: This particular angry parent trope never made much sense to me, seeing as no one has more day to day contact with teachers than parents. Again, it’s probably the 80/20 problem, a few nutjob parents make some noise and it gets picked up by rightwing media and injected into old folks who have nothing better to do all day than watch Fox. In turn, the dimwits in the mainstream press turn this into a burning issue because Fox has pre-heated it. Most of the parents I’m familiar with from my wife’s teaching are worried about things like why their kids aren’t turning in assignments and generally having performance issues that evidence a high level of distraction. That seems to be a real thing, which may have something to do with the social isolation and breakdown of structure caused by the pandemic and some scattering in the parents’ own lives caused by the same. Of course, a bunch of anti-vax, anti-mask idiots are not making this any easier to deal with because they’re affecting the operation of school boards, who are distracted by this nonsense.
Jeffro
btw folks here’s Jamie Raskin today, bringing the fire after trumpov praised Putin:
now THAT is someone I want in my foxhole
Take note, national Dem leaders: you cannot go overboard bashing the shit out of trumpov and any/everyone allied with him & Putin. You will win this argument and split the GOP. Go for broke.
PST
@Geminid:
And of course if it is broken we may never get the opportunity to fix it. I get so frustrated at times with my daughter, who is transgender, for her Pacific-Northwest-style ultra progressive rhetoric, which demonizes “corporate Democrats,” especially the President and the Speaker (of all people), for being little better than Republicans. “Why should we vote at all if the Democrats don’t give us something to vote for?” In my opinion, she ought to view partisanship in this era as part of an existential struggle, literally. There is a party that would like to erase her, with an extreme wing that wouldn’t object to killing her. And what is true for trans people is true for many others as well, including Muslims. It is shattering to contemplate a Republican sweep at some future date that could be our last free (or freeish) election — two years ago I would have laughed at anyone who said something so alarmist — and to think that some with the most to lose didn’t take part because they couldn’t help letting the perfect (in their view) be the enemy of the good.
Baud
@PST:
Because we’re not sociopaths.
lowtechcyclist
My point is that this isn’t some sort of outrageous lefty position, so it doesn’t quite fit into your continual “the Squad are the baddies” framing. Better luck next time.
schrodingers_cat
@Steeplejack: Good catch. I saw it in Feb don’t remember exactly when perhaps last week or the one before. I concluded that she had tweeted recently. I have seen many lefties simping for Putin, I didn’t view her tweet and an interview with Medhi Hasan as anodyne YMMV.
schrodingers_cat
@hueyplong: The image is from the 1950s. Here is a more recent photo.
schrodingers_cat
I have no idea why it is so but it is difficult for many to see this and acknowledge it. It is frustrating. Case in point see this comment section.
I would respect the so called Squad and EW and all the other leftie populists if they aimed their fire at the elected Republicans instead of elected Democrats and worked on flipping Republican held seats instead primarying members of the Black Caucus.
Geminid
@Old School: The recent Wason Center poll of registered Virginia voters showed a substantial majority of Virginians rejecting a ban on teaching “Critical Race Theory” in public schools. There may have been other education related issues that motivated some voters. And “CRT” worked for Youngkin as a way to rally wingnuts without the blowback he would get by hollering about baby killing and gun grabbing.
There probably were a small number of Biden voters who voted for Youngkin. That, overperformance in turnout by Republicans, and the reverse among Democrats, would account for the twelve point swing between 2020, when Biden won by 10 points, and 2021, when Youngkin won by two.
Last year there were real differences in the quality of the Youngkin and McAuliffe campaigns, I think. Youngkin had a tightly focused campaign that made the most of a narrow path to victory. I’m not sure I could say the same for McAuliffe’s. He and his people may have been overconfident. And while McAuliffe is fairly similar in policy to Northam, Kaine, and Warner, they come across as sincere and authentic in a way McAuliffe does not.
laura
@Karen S.: We are never old enough or ready to be a motherless child. My condolences on your loss and take comfort in your memories.
lowtechcyclist
@PST: Agree with all of this. It IS an existential struggle.
And even if your daughter and her friends view the Dems not even as good, but mediocre or corrupt (and yeah, money alters what the Dems are willing to stand for, so no argument), the fact remains that there’s no path to preserving LGBT rights, or a woman’s right to choose, or voting rights for minorities and everyone else on the Rethugs’ shit list, or addressing climate change, or bringing this damned plague under control, or preserving democracy itself (as you’ve said), that doesn’t involve supporting the Democratic Party.
There have been other times when the stakes weren’t so high, and with luck those times will come again before we’re all six feet under. But right now, it’s all on the line, and it’s a choice between supporting the Dems or letting the fascists take over and ruin our world.
lowtechcyclist
You’re saying they don’t?
MisterDancer
My mileage certainly varies. Pelosi would not, for a second, put up with any Democrat in Congress pandering to Putin, no matter that Democrat’s level of support in their district.
Nor do I see the Biden Administration allowing such to happen, either, without pushback.
There’s a long-standing Left-of-center position around strong resistance to mucking around in foreign lands, a result of seeing the horrors that Colonialism inflicted, among many points (isolationism is not new to these lands). I recall hearing concerns very similar to what AOC’s tweet said in college in the early 1990s, to give one personal example, even prior to the 1st Iraq War.
That doesn’t mean it’s right. It just means that it’s not something I’d start a fight over, because it’s a long-standing set of values on the Left, just ones we’ve not heard much in our media. It’s a set of positions I’m used to hearing, and aren’t (in my mind, at least) directly aligned to being sympathetic to Putin (although I 1000% agree people be twisting out that way, and that’s worth calling out!)
I mean, no one really looks back on Congressperson Rankin’s votes against WWI and WWII and calls her a traitor, or sympathizer to authoritarian regimes. By Rankin’s standards, at least so far, The Squad are practically warmongers.
Mai Naem mobile
@Baud: its a pity Kyrsten Sinema doesn’t seem to realize that. The ballot harvesting and mail in voting issues are huge on the Navajo reservation(houses are far apart, cold winters,lack of transportation) and the Arizona GOP legislators are well aware of that. I always remember one leg of Janet Napolitano’s gubernatorial wins was based on the Navajo reservation voter turnout.
MisterDancer
@Karen S.: I am so sorry for your loss — and I get it.
My Mom passed over a decade ago. And although our relationship was fraught, I still miss the good times, and the power and clarity she taught me, the desire to learn and grow.
lowtechcyclist
Why would they regard that as a risk, with a Senate majority? Not to mention, Mitch had already pretty much promised to block any of Hillary’s SCOTUS nominees, and let them make do with a smaller Court.
Steeplejack
@PST:
Off topic: I wanted to thank you again for the recommendation of the Aftershokz OpenMove headset. It has been a game-changer. Even makes being on hold for customer service pleasant. Well, okay, less unpleasant. One thing I particularly like is that when I use it in the car with Google Maps on my phone I can clearly hear the oral cues without blocking out the surrounding traffic noise.
Best tech acquisition of the last year!
Geminid
One example of the “Centrist”/”Progressive” struggle will provide an interesting counterpoint to the State of Union address and it’s rejoinders. We’ll probably know the outcome of the Texas 28th District primary that night. The March 1st primary pits Jessica Cisneros against nine-term Congressman Henry Cuellar
I will also be interested in the outcome of the Attorney General primary. Watergate prosecutor Leon Jaworski’s grandson, Joe Jaworski, ids a candidate. Jaworski is the former mayor of Galveston and is vying with several candidates, one of whom has gotten endorsements by “progressives.” Four viable candidates in the Republican primary will probably force a June runoff on their side, and Democrats may have one also.
hueyplong
@schrodingers_cat: I knew it was from the 50s (your labeling, maybe). Was just noting that they were showing what, at the time, was an old movie.
Mai Naem mobile
This post should be another Proud to be a Democrat post. The Obama folks also did a lot of settling of old Native American disputes. The GOP meanwhile decide to show up for a supply delivery photo op in the height of an airborne disease pandemic.
schrodingers_cat
@hueyplong: Sorry was not trying to pedant or imply that you didn’t get when the photo was published, was just contrasting it with picture I took in 2014.
J R in WV
@Karen S.:
Sorry for your loss, it is hard no matter what.
My mom died in dad’s arms around 530 am. When my phone rang @ 7 am I knew what the news was before dad said a word… I was able to spend a lot of time with mom her last few months, she had COPD from Pall Mall poisoning and was bed fast.
They were so very close, I was glad she went that way, although I know it was hard for dad. She was so very talented at everything she did, from watercolor art to furniture restoration.
You will always miss your mom, but it will stop hurting so much over time. She will always be there with you in the most important ways. Take care, keep in touch with the rest of the jackal pack, believe it or not, it helps quite a bit, especially the snarky bits.
Again, Sorry to learn of your loss.
Miss Bianca
@OzarkHillbilly: So, I’m a big, big fan of a show called Slings and Arrows – to the point where I rewatch it pretty much every year.
A big part of the second season is when the managing director of a theater company that
in no wayresembles Stratford, Ont., gets snookered by a charismatic conman running a fake ad agency called Frog Hammer.Sure enough, when this story broke, Pal D called up the stairs the other day, “Oh look – it’s a real live Frog Hammer!”
The twist in the show (SPOILER ALERT) is…
The Frog Hammer ad campaign actually works, against all odds and expectations.
Don’t think the same can be said of Madbird.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
so the defense of a Democratic backbencher seeking attention by giving a “reply” to the Democratic President’s SOTU on behalf of a third, and barely existent, political party at a moment of multiple domestic, International and political crises is that this time, history notwithstanding, she might not say something usefully idiotic for the other side?
Okay
tam1MI
@schrodingers_cat: Adam Silverman is not God and his every utterance is not the gospel truth.
And people on this blog are far too credulous when it comes to his caterwaulings.
NotMax
@Miss Bianca
Gotta link it.
(Not some kind of one-off parody, it was an actual storyline in the comics.)
;)
Miss Bianca
@NotMax: Whoa.
So…*hushed voice*…
There really *was* a Frog Hammer!
Miss Bianca
@tam1MI: As opposed to your caterwaulings, which no one takes seriously.
schrodingers_cat
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: You cannot show people something that they refuse to see. Friendly fire from the populist left is not helpful.
Tenar Arha
@Karen S.: May her memory be a blessing. I know how you’re feeling. My mother passed away in 2007, and even now I find myself with stuff I’d love to tell her. My condolences.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I think the defense is the perpetual hope that a progressive leader will someday and somehow persuade perennially disappointed progressive voters to turn out for midterm elections in order to give Dems more than 2 years of control for the first time since the 1970s.
J R in WV
Speaking of real-life frogs, the earliest spring wood frogs in our tiny front door pond have been frolicking and spishing for several days now. Warm spring-like rains have brought them out of their winter hibernation and they are indulging in the annual orgy of froggy copulation — which we can hear in the kitchen end of the great room. More than a dozen of them in the tiny 8×10 foot pond.
So wonderful to have spring like noises in your ears, even if we all know there is plenty of winter to come ahead.
And one of our cats, Spike, just spent an hour on my shoulder purring. She learned to purr from perching on that shoulder soundlessly 15 and 16 years ago as a kitten. I talked to her in my low range voice, and one day the ear against her little chest heard a tiny sound, her first barely audible purr. Now, and for the past 12 or 14 years, she has been a prolific purring machine. Such a sweet combination of springy sounds, purring and froggy splishing just outside the front door.
zhena gogolia
@J R in WV: I hope your wife is doing well. Lovely story about the cat!
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Can’t speak for other so-called defenders, but that’s a better representation of what I was trying to convey above, albeit drizzled with “someday somehow” sarcasm sauce.
The Manchinema sabotage project predictably led to voter demoralization and plunging approval ratings. IMO, it’s not stupid or naive to look for ways to highlight who the obstructionists ostensibly on our side are. Not sure the SOTU “rebuttal” is a great venue for that, but it is a message that needs to get out, IMO. Otherwise, “Dems” writ large own the problem.
PST
@Steeplejack: Thank you for the thank you. Now that we are traveling again, I have learned that the Aftershokz are terrible in an airplane, something I should have been able to figure out without needing to run the experiment. The characteristics that make them perfect on a bicycle make them useless amid a roar of white noise. They are the opposite of Bose noise-canceling headphones.
Steeplejack
@PST:
Yeah, I can see that. They’re definitely not about blocking out ambient noise.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
You should also be mad at the centrists then- they spent a solid year attacking the Democratic agenda- mostly without using their names and in a cowardly manner- and got nothing accomplished, although their entire claim to fame is “getting things done”.
It would be one thing if we were making concessions to these people because it was beneficial politically, but it isn’t even that. They don’t mean anything to people. No one “knows what they stand for” because they stand for nothing.
If you’re asking voters to get behind some 50 year generational project then don’t put transactional centrists in the lead. No one will follow them. They don’t even hold up their end of the transaction, let alone present some coherent central theme or idea.
Kent
@Baud: Radicals on the right like the so-called “Freedom Caucus” basically just block shit and try to burn the place down.
Their progressive counterparts are the opposite. They try to do useful shit and get stymied.
It is a fundamentally opposite mentality.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: I don’t jump to the defense of Manchin or Sinema at every opportunity and pretend that what they do is helpful.
I would say that Biden didn’t get the bump from passing the infrastructure bill because the populist left held it hostage until BBB passed. If you want Biden to govern like FDR give him the Senate that FDR had. Pissing on other elected Democrats and especially the President from their Twitter perches is not the best way to go about it.
EW tweets at Biden about student loans at least once a day. Last I checked, she (and Schumer does it too but not as often) should write legislation to make that happen. We are not paying lawmakers to shitpost on Twitter. That is not their primary job.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The centrists won every round! They got infrastructure with no reciprocity on BBB and BBB is dead so none of them have to do anything even slightly risky going into the midterms. No one will be able to accuse them of being radicals, that’s for sure! They’re all but comotose.
This is their campaign plan. If it doesn’t work they can hardly blame the progressives in Congress, who gave them everything they wanted.
Why are Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton(!) the only Democrats we have heard from over the last 3 months?
Where are they? They’re not legislating. Could they maybe..talk? Defend some of our people? Women in Texas, teachers, gay kids, AA kids, people who get vaccines, Democratic voters in GOP led states? Or is that too risky too?
We had 9 months of Manchin and Sinema and now we have Joe Biden, alone, as usual.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
Biden was never going to get a bump from infrastructure. The only people who were ever going to benefit from infrastucture were Republicans, who will run on it although the vast majority of them didn’t vote for it. They already are.
Obama got no political benefit at all from his infrastructure bill, within the stimulus. People expect Democrats to do it. It’s not a net plus for us. It’s a net plus for Republicans.
The single most important thing Democrats needed to accomplish was to roll back the Trump tax cuts. They didn’t get it done, not because of “progressives” who negotiated in good faith and stayed at the table, but because centrists got scared. Schumer is bad at his job, too, but that’s no their fault. And please don’t tell me Schumer gets judges confirmed. That’s the bare minimum for that job. We all laughed at McConnell doing nothing but tax cuts and a judge approval assembly line but now that it’s Schumer it’s 5 dimensional chess. Our base isn’t stupid.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
Sell the infrastructure bill and the stimulus! Fine with me. But pretending that the BBB debacle didn’t happen isn’t going to work. Blaming it all on progressives might! After all, one of them did say “defund the police” that one time 2 years ago.
Just tell them the truth. They tried for voting rights and Democratic legislation and every Republican and two Democrats blocked all of it. Try that. It’s what happened.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: how does what you said respond to what I said, or did you hit the wrong button?
eachother
@Karen S.: After 16 years, I still occasionally say things to her. Usually an expression of affection or salutation.
My condolences.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay:
Yeah, I just laughed myself silly all through the Kavanauh hearings and the two week dance on Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s grave to get a forty-something Ratzinger Catholic on the USSC for probably the rest of my life.. I had no idea about the danger and damage to the country that represented. Ha ha ha, I said. “Judges or whatever teh hell,” I said, dismissively.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I’m glad there’s at least two Democrats responding to Republicans for the SOTU. Joe Biden and the progressive.
Maybe the rest of them will come out from under their desks now that the “defund the police” threat has passed. It was true when political media said Clinton was the first Democrat they’d heard from (outside Biden and Harris) for months. Months and months of attacks on OUR PEOPLE, no response. They lost a Virginia governor’s race and they had a nervous breakdown and don’t seem to be able to recover.
Audrey
For those who are, is it helpful to complain about how the Democrats have “gotten nothing done?” Especially since that isn’t even true? How can you complain about Democrats supposed bad messging if highly politically engaged people seem to be under the impression that they’ve done nothing when that is complete nonsense? The lack of the BBB is definitely disappointing, especially since it was killed in the most obnoxious way by a bad faith prima donna. But the infrastructure bill is good! The ARP was good! The Post Office bill is good! Etc. Want more, that’s reasonable, but don’t pretend that you’ve gotten nothing. It’s just not true.
Peale
@Kay: And they probably were happy as clams when Scott released his manifesto yesterday calling for basically the arrest of “socialists!” Because they think “yeah, that Bronx woman does need to shut up.” I’m sure they’ll have the backs of progressives when the time comes. Maybe they should run on letting us know that the infrastructure funds the roads school librarians can use when they’re fleeing from their homes when they were caught stocking the shelves with books about a black gay kid.
1 or 2 things on the BBB list would have been enough. Something.
Kay
@Peale:
I want them to defend their voters. Their people. Dont say gay laws, don’t mention racism in history, bans on abortions- those are attacks on Democratic voters. Their most loyal voters. It isn’t complicated. They don’t need polling or some carefully calibrated “issues” roster. Just defend them. Go all in. It’s all people really want. They won’t care if you get bloodied up a little. They will be loyal for life if you take a risk on their behalf. Democratic principles aren’t just under attack. Institutions aren’t just under attack. OUR PEOPLE are under attack, which is nice from a political standpoint, because “principles” and “institutions” don’t vote but our people do.
Just stick up for them. That’s what advocates do.
Kay
@Peale:
Dont say gay or attacks on teachers? You couldn’t stop me from going wherever and holding events with them. It should be automatic. Public school teachers? Those are pretty good D voters. The Washington Post says they are all afraid – long article about the chilling effects of these laws. Go there! Tell them you have their back.
They’re firing AA school principals because they put in equity programs- programs that were completely mainstream prior the CRT panic. Someone has to tell the Democratic Party that’s an issue for them?
The absolute worst thing we could do is hunker down and hope the storm doesn’t do too much damage. If that’s the plan they should give up now. It’s both shameful AND it won’t work.
The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
@schrodingers_cat: Heretic! You abjure that blasphemy this instant, do you hear me?!?! This instant!
Peale
@Kay: Yep. As far as I know, none of the constituent parts of the Democratic party has become less popular with the base. We still support universal public education and we think that there should be African American educators, who are going to receive extra scrutiny now and I’m going to guess that principals aren’t going to hire AA teachers who are just automatically going to be assumed to be too “controversial”. But nope…I guess the has decided not to worry about those things.
And the parents of gay kids in Florida are going to be worried that social services could be showing up at their homes. Good to know the state of Texas now has a list of Trans kids, too. I’m sure they’ll do such good things with that.
I’m going to call it now that we’re going to find out that the goal is to give the state reasons to force kids into conversion therapy in Florida. Even though federal court struck down the ban on conversion camps in Florida, fewer and fewer parents are sending their kids. There’s probably some damn donor who wants those kids put in a system he or she will profit from where they won’t be able to see their parents until they go back in the closet. So let’s get public school teachers and nurses to help feed that industry.
Kay
@Peale:
I’m sorry she’s doing the response to the SOTU because it just becomes another excuse for the Democratic Party on why they’re going into the midterms with a President at 40% and even in generic congressional polling. This excuse can now replace the “defund the police” excuse.
Centrists, who make up the majority of Democrats in Congress and probably the majority of voters in states like mine, should take some responsibility for the fortunes of the Democratic Party. They win every round they fight with progressives. They’re in charge. That comes with a duty to stop blaming everyone else when their actions lead to losses.
Gravenstone
@PST: That’s why they ship ear plugs with them, for use in high ambient noise environments. I tried a pair based on the discussion here and greatly appreciate them for streaming music. Can’t say I’ve used them for other applications, nor tried the microphones in them.