Valued commenter germy brought this to our attention in a thread downstairs: Jen Psaki’s comment during a live taping of the Obama bros podcast:
Jen Psaki is asked if “Peter Doocy is a stupid son of a bitch or does he just play one on tv:”
“He works for a network that provides people with questions that, nothing personal to any individual including Peter Doocy, but might make anyone sound like a stupid son of a bitch.” pic.twitter.com/2FYMPX12Rr
— Eugene Daniels (@EugeneDaniels2) April 15, 2022
As I’ve shared here before, I think it’s a mistake for any Democrat to have anything to do with Fox News. I don’t believe they deserve the privilege of White House press credentials anymore than InfoWars does, and I wish Psaki would stop calling on the stupid son of a bitch. For a contrary take, see this WaPo column from Erik Wemple on the Biden admin’s Fox News strategy.
Also from the Obama bros podcast taping, in response to a question, Psaki said there are no plans for the president to visit Kyiv (but of course she WOULD say that if there were a secret plan for a surprise visit, right?), and she declined to share a timeline for her eventual exit as press secretary. I’m going to miss her. She’s the best press secretary I can remember.
Also from an earlier thread, Kay linked to this HuffPo story about Florida’s new forced-birth law and the rationale Republican lawmakers have for not including exceptions for rape and incest:
Despite several attempts from Florida Democrats to include amendments to make exceptions for rape and incest, the GOP-controlled legislature voted all of them down.
State Sen. Lauren Book (D) shared her own story of being drugged and raped by several men as a child in an attempt to sway her Republican colleagues into voting in support of an amendment that would make exceptions.
Stargel, the main Senate sponsor of the abortion restriction, was not influenced by Book’s personal experience. Instead, she argued that most women will lie about rape in order to get an abortion. “I fear for the men who are going to be accused of a rape so that the woman could have an abortion because that’s her only way out,” Stargel said during floor debate last month. “A woman is going to say she was raped so she could have the abortion.”
That would be State Senator Kelli Stargel (R-Of Course), a religious fanatic who reps a district in the central part of the state. I’ve known women like Stargel all my life since I grew up in a contiguous geographical area and within the same crackpot culture. If anything, they’re worse than white evangelical men and even more determined to punish people they suspect of being lying sluts.
And finally, via CNN, the January 6th committee strategically released almost 100 text messages to Trump CoS and vote fraud committer Mark Meadows from two Trump stalwarts: Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and Rep. Chip Roy of Texas. Here are some of the lowlights:
ROY, 11/7: We need ammo. We need fraud examples. We need it this weekend.
LEE, 11/7: Sydney Powell is saying that she needs to get in to see the president, but she’s being kept away from him. Apparently she has a strategy to keep things alive and put several states back in play. Can you help get her in?
Reader, Powell got in, and the situation did not develop necessarily to the president’s advantage…
ROY, 11/9: We must urge the President to tone down the rhetoric, and approach the legal challenge firmly, intelligently and effectively without resorting to throwing wild desperate haymakers or whipping his base into a conspiracy frenzy.
ROY, 11/19, after infamous Powell-Giuliani press conference with the hair dye malfunction: Hey brother – we need substance or people are going to break.
LEE, 11/19: The potential defamation liability for the president is significant here. For the campaign and for the president personally. Unless Powell can back up everything she said, which I kind of doubt she can.
ROY, 11/22: Frigging rudy needs to hush.
The two lawmakers continued to beg Meadows for guidance on how to oppose the certification of Biden’s win. They never received it and became increasingly despondent:
ROY, 12/31: The president should call everyone off. It’s the only path. If we substitute the will of states through electors with a vote by congress every 4 years… we have destroyed the electoral college… Respectfully.
LEE, 1/3: I only know that this will end badly for the President unless we have the Constitution on our side. And unless these states submit new slates of Trump electors pursuant to state law, we do not.
ROY, 1/6, as insurrectionists stormed the Capitol: This is a shitshow. Fix this now.
Really looking forward to the January 6th committee hearings. Open thread!
trollhattan
Repeat from below, because the senate could get even worse.
Instead of bringing a snowball onto the senate floor, Pruitt will slaughter a penguin simply because, “I’ve always hated these bastards.”
Baud
Sounds like another reason to just keep it legal.
VOR
@Baud: They have the same excuse to exclude the exception for the health of the mother, They claim doctors will simply lie about whether the woman’s life is in danger.
eclare
If I were a young person there is no way I would choose to live and work in one of these repressive states. I’d love to leave TN, but financially not feasible.
Kent
These states that are trying to regulate abortions outside their state boundaries by making it illegal to help someone with an out-of-state abortion?
States like CA should respond in kind. Abortion is a right guaranteed by the state constitution and anyone who interferes with that right, including anyone in any other state is subject to $1 million in civil damages with the burden of proof on the defendant. Or some such. So if you mess with the right of anyone (state resident or otherwise) to get an abortion in CA then you can be sued for a cool $1 million in CA court.
We can work out the details. But fight fire with fire. Make it possible to sue all those anti-abortion fanatics in TX and FL in CA courts for massive damages if they dare fuck with anyone’s rights.
dmsilev
@VOR: Hell, they claim that ectopic pregnancies can be viable.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I don’t know the make up of the IA SC, but this was a pleasant surprise
I know a few people here think Franken is a better candidate. We’ll see….
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Good. I don’t have a dog in the primary fight, but I’m glad to see her vindicated in this dispute
ETA: Let the better candidate win.
cope
But do GQP cultists believe that a shooter or driver will not lie about feeling their lives are threatened when they shoot an unarmed person or drive into a crowd of protesters? I call bull and shit.
I am perpetually flummoxed at the ability of these people to function while as seriously demented by cognitive dissonance as they must be.
germy
Enhanced Voting Techniques
These people talk like they think abortions are fun.
Baud
@germy: More Dems punching back!
Mart
@Baud: I’m guessing 15-20 years ago we learned of their reason for objecting to allowing exceptions to rape and incest from a friend’s mega-church attending wife. Back then she was also wailing about transgender men in her daughter’s bathroom. A few years back she was incensed that we said Trump was a dunce and a crook, saying he is the greatest President we ever had – as her eyes glazed over. The brainwashing of a once normal Catholic woman is really frightening to me and my wife.
Kent
@Mart: I have relatives who have gone down that rabbit hole. It is truly terrifying to watch. They are unreachable. Truly unreachable. Luckily they are mostly old. But fuck, all you can really do is wait for them to die off.
Baud
@Mart: My father suffered from severe mental illness before he died. Although his illness manifested itself in personal crazy rather than political crazy, the cult of the right reminds me of his affliction.
Asparagus Aspersions
One of the big problems we have with the Republicans being so overtly extreme now is that people simply don’t believe it. TMy non-political-junkie friends all vote Democratic, but simpyly don’t understand that the Republican party is now past dumpster-fire status. That dumpster could be blown up with a hydrogen bomb, and it still wouldn’t approach where the Republicans are now.
These are people that catch some of the nightly news from time to time, listen to some NPR, check the home page of the NYT, scroll through Google News or their social media feed, and that’s it. These sorts of reprehensible comments about women faking rape for the sake of abortion just doesn’t get through to them. There’s too much of it. Sometimes some of the shit breaks through, like that poor woman who got arrested for a medical abortion in TX, but there’s just SO DAMN much of it, most of it stays under the radar for them. Remember those heady days when a comment like Todd Atkins’s “the women’s body has ways of shutting that whole thing down” could doom a candidacy? Hell, I’m surprised he’s not on a red state gubernatorial ticket. But *this* (waves hands vaguely at the neverending shitstream coming from the right) was less present in 2012.
But normal people can’t believe that a party like the GOP could have positions that extreme, and still be viable. So by that logic, if the GOP is viable, it must not be that bad.
Old Dan and Little Ann
Leaving for spring break trip to Florida tomorrow. Feel kind of guilty for spending money there. Leaving behind possible flurries, though.
Awaiting moderation? That’s new.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I gather they tell themselves the shooter or driver was actually a secret liberal or the their victims were all crises actors who volunteered to be murdered. It’s just one No True Scotsman fallacy after another.
eclare
@Asparagus Aspersions: And people still believe SCOTUS would never overturn abortion rights or same sex marriage. People are going to be shocked that all, and I mean all, precedents are meaningless.
Baud
@Asparagus Aspersions:
I think one thing we should keep in mind is that, while there is a lot of extremism in the GOP right now, the vast majority of Republicans in office are mostly silent and we never hear from them. While we understand that the problems with the GOP are institutional, a lot of people who aren’t paying attention probably see them as outliers.
germy
I’m surprised The Simpsons wasn’t cancelled decades ago.
Geminid
Lee’s and Roy’sreferences to Sidney Powell remind me that I want to watch the January 6 Committee appearance of former White House Counsel Anthony Pasquale “Pat” Cippoline. That could be good. Cippoline had a ringside seat.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Asparagus Aspersions: Go take your own statement and read that exchange between those to Republican senator’s. The two of them were trying to convince themselves the Trump and company had some logical plan they were following and not just doing random shit.
eclare
@germy: I don’t watch the show much, but one scene has stuck with me. Homer goes to a gun store to buy a gun, and he is told there is a 24 hour waiting period.
Homer’s response: but I’m angry *now*!
Baud
@germy: 33 years.
ETA: South Park, which I never got into, has been going on for about 25 years.
Old Dan and Little Ann
Whoops. Totally fucked up my email address in earlier comnent at #17. Hence the moderation.
NotMax
Music, maestro, please: Belligerent.
;)
trollhattan
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
But, what about the Todd Akin Rule, did they ever think of that? This dude is contradicting the Todd Akin Rule!
Peale
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: But neither of them will raise a peep in 2024 if the Democrat wins Wisconsin and the legislature sends Trump delegates instead. Their both by now all in on legislative override as long as its the GOP doing it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@eclare: that episode is a classic– easy to forget now how good that show was in the (I believe) Sam Simon years
Betty Cracker
@Asparagus Aspersions:
Well said — I think that’s an underrated factor.
To offer a gross analogy, the GOP is like a town diner that’s been around forever and has passed through an ever-shadier series of managers. The “dirty dining” section of the local news (does everyone have those?) might report an alarming increase in the number of sanitary violations. But most people won’t see it, and some won’t believe it until they personally see a roach on their plate.
Bon appétit, y’all!
Asparagus Aspersions
@Baud:
Indeed, they probably do. In fact, years ago I also would have thought of them as outliers. But they keep growing in volume (in terms of both numbers, and decibels). And the silence of the less crazy Republicans emboldens those who would once have been too extreme. The Tea Party wing is morphing into the Q Anon wing. I assume Tea Partiers are probably considered RINOs at this point.
debbie
@germy:
They still have their moments.
Baud
@Asparagus Aspersions: Oh I agree, but I frequent this here blog. I’m just saying that a lot of regular folks probably aren’t making the connection.
cmorenc
State attempts to make it illegal for their residents to travel for abortions to states where abortion is legal – cannot stand against a long, solid line of SCOTUS precedents upholding right of citizens to travel. Consider eg the same scenario in another context – Alabama cannot outlaw its citizens from traveling to Las Vegas to gamble, whether because the Alabama leg disapproves morally of gambling or because they want their citizens to spend their gambling money in Alabama casinos, not those in other states.
Of course, with the current makeup of SCOTUS, overturning long, solid precedent is always a risk, eg Roe. But undermining the federal constitutional to travel would be extremely difficult to pull off without causing wildly inconsistent and counterproductive impacts on interstate commerce.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Geminid: interesting that Cippollone and his deputy (Philbin?) were not under oath, nor was their testimony transcribed, and TFG was enough aware of it to pretend he gave them permission (Chris Cillizza repeated this uncritically on NPR’s 1A this morning )
Question for lawyers or anyone who knows : I’m assuming all testimony given to the 1/6 committee, under oath or no, is or will be part of the public record and the Justice Department will be able to use it? In grand juries? In trials?
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Testimony in grand juries and trials needs to be under oath. Also, the testimony needs to be live unless the witness is unavailable, in which case you might be able to use a transcript of testimony given under oath. Although in trials, I don’t think you can use testimony that hasn’t been subject to cross-examination.
Mike E
@Baud: Maya Angelou said it best, about taking self admissions seriously at their first utterance. We ignore this advice at our peril.
Baud
@Mike E:
Agreed. But our problem is not that people like MTG are popular. Our problem is that people who see MTG don’t hold it against the GOP generally. Compounding that problem is that a lot of people don’t give Dems the same respect, and often engage in guilt by association.
If every Republican was as vocal and extreme as MTG, maybe it would break through. But most really fly under the radar.
debbie
debbie
Asparagus Aspersions
@Baud: Back in my lurking days (so from 2008 to about eight weeks ago) I would occasionally send to friends or family a BJ post that highlighted whatever tomfoolery was being performed on the right, and invariably whomever I sent it to had never heard about what was happening.
One of the ways this blog has been invaluable for me is it’s provided a context for Republican statements and actions that seemed unrelated, but in fact were all part of larger shift towards extremism. It really helped me understand over the past years how the whole GOP apparatus is just rotten.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: so in an actual trial, let’s imagine US vs R Stone, they would have to call Jared in to testify, not just use a transcript of his testimony?
My hunch is a lot of the strategy on the part of the committee is to scare the loons, the second-tier plotters and the small fish by making them wonder if JarVanka and the fancy suit lawyers aren’t throwing them under the bus. My other hunch is that JarVanka and the fancy suit lawyers are, in fact, doing everything they can to throw Roger Stone, Sidney Powell, Rudi and their lesser-known ilk under that bus.
TM
@Geminid: The arc of the texts from Lee and Roy is like a comedy sketch.
“Mr. President, we are ready to go 100% all-in with you on the fraudulence of this election. Just tell us what to do.”
“I’m happy to do that, Mr. President, but I’ll need some ammo. You know, some facts.”
“For God’s sake, get Sidney Powell and Giuliani the hell out of there, stat!”
“This is the flaming ignominious death of the Republic!!”
Hilarious.
Baud
@Asparagus Aspersions: I think one of the differences between political junkies and normies as that junkies see patterns and trends over time and, so, can connect the dots to understand political reality. The normie sees a bunch of isolated snapshots, 99% of which they don’t retain in their consciousness.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Generally, yes. They can subpoena him to testify, and may be able to use his prior statements against him if he contradicts himself, but for purposes of convicting Stone, it’ll be his live testimony that counts (including cross-examination by Stone’s attorney).
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Peale: There you go; looking for patterns that aren’t there to make it seem logical to you,
Seriously, if the GOP fixed the election don’t you think they would do tried and true methods like voter suppression and losing votes. rather than some half assed,”oh yes, the state voted that way, but weren’t not going to accept the results for shut up, that’s why”? The whole thing was just Trump’s half assed “the dog ate my homework” excuse.
trollhattan
Huh, where do you suppose it all went?
germy
@trollhattan:
alimony?
MisterForkbeard
You know what’s really bad about all this? Even these “reasonable” Republicans who thought 1/6 was a shitshow were totally onboard the “steal the election” train. They just wanted Trump to manufacture some evidence. Because they didn’t have any evidence of fraud or any other problems and they supported Trump anyway, saying “we should probably find some ammo for these accusations”.
Even if they ultimately said Trump needed to back off, they clearly don’t care about stealing elections. They just care about being caught with legal consequences.
debbie
@trollhattan:
Bumps, baby!
Baud
@debbie: Heh.
debbie
Boy, he showed us!
eclare
@trollhattan: Hookers and blow
Baud
@debbie: Why couldn’t Abbott just drive around the DC Beltway like normal people?
debbie
For those in the D.C. area:
eclare
@debbie: Nice!
Sure Lurkalot
@Asparagus Aspersions: So interesting you juxtaposed Todd Akin’s so-called “gaffe” that cost him the election a decade ago vs today’s out and proud “every woman will lie about rape to have an abortion.” My St. Louis sister and I just had a conversation about this not 15 minutes ago.
Another Scott
(via Popehat)
Cheers,
Scott.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@trollhattan: That’s obvious; cocaine and hookers.
debbie
Guess he had no patience for a letter from 30 GOP county chairpeople:
(Lousy Pesach present for Josh, too!)
Another Scott
@Baud: HarrisonJaime is pretty good at counter-punching.
Cheers,
Scott.
Roger Moore
@VOR:
Shorter: it’s better to let 100 women die of ectopic pregnancies than let 1 woman get an abortion when her life isn’t in danger.
Geminid
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I don’t know anything about Cippoline’s testimony or why Tim Heaphy, the January 6 Committee’s chief investigator, let him testify without putting him under oath.
Trump may not have intentionally told Cippoline much of his schemes. My impression is that Trump found Cippoline insufficiently loyal, and may have ended up regretting hiring him, like he ended up wishing he had hired a more compliant acting AG to replace Barr. I’m hoping Cippoline testifies in a public hearing.
Fun Pat Cippoline facts: Cippoline was born in the Bronx, went to Catholic high school in Covington, Kentucky, and got his law degree from the University of Chicago.
mrmoshpotato
Assholes.
waspuppet
That’s about the least important thing they were trying to destroy.
laura
@trollhattan: cocaine and lube is where it went.
MarkPainter
Funny how Florida passed a Stand Your Ground law without any thought about how a murderer might say they were assaulted so they could beat the rap.
laura
I duplicated ?
laura
Who’s going to be the Becky Bell in your family is what I’ll be asking forced birthers- you should too.
Peale
@debbie: Did they find 1 illegal immigrant? I mean it totally was worth 100s of millions in rotted crops if they found 1. Definitely worth it if they found 2.
Urza
@Peale: I don’t get how even the people watching the performative politics are ok with it at this point. TV, which is a primary source of information for those people, shows theres tunnels all the time. Fake passports and whatever else to sneak across. Why would they think anyone’s using a shipping truck, especially at a period they know everythings being inspected. Hell a woman died on the wall recently cause she had a climbing harness and somehow got caught upside down hanging. But again, its on tv and the internet, of non-Americans climbing the wall in minutes without any gear so. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if someone could work up a way to use a couple drones to get someone over, already the easiest way to smuggle drugs.
The Golux
@eclare:
I’ve always thought the name of the gun store, “Bloodbath and Beyond,” was especially clever.
Brachiator
@The Golux:
Very good in a very grim way.
The Pale Scot
Since polls I’ve seen have almost 40% of women under 35 saying they are not interested in having children how about free vasectomies and tubal ligations on demand? That Dr’s refuse to to do TL’s to any woman unmarried and without children is BS. Their claim that they want to avoid a lawsuit from a woman who changed her mind is BS. The only lawsuits I have ever found concerning this are ones suing the dr because they fucked up and she got pregnant, I have not found one demanding damages because the woman changed her mind and wants to get pregnant.
But of course, the issue is sluts having sex the hateful cadre don’t approve of
satby
@Baud: I am watching that now with a dear friend who is very slowly wasting away, and it’s a sad, horrible process. I’m so sorry you had to go through that Baud.