Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Our messy unity will be our strength.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

Dear Washington Post, you are the darkness now.

We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.

Donald Trump found guilty as fuck – May 30, 2024!

Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.

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

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

If you don’t believe freedom is for everybody, then the thing you love isn’t freedom, it is privilege.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

Fucking consultants! (of the political variety)

She burned that motherfucker down, and I am so here for it. Thank you, Caroline Kennedy.

You are here: Home / Politics / Biden Administration in Action / Friday Morning Open Thread: Thank You, Brandon!

Friday Morning Open Thread: Thank You, Brandon!

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232Comments

  2. 2.

    Elizabelle

    I want that Thank You Brandon flag. Although all my neighbors are wonderful. So: maybe a bumper sticker instead.

    Agree. Grassley is lying. If he speaks for his party at all, which is topheavy on kooks. Why does the WaPost take him at face value? (Haven’t read the story.)

  3. 3.

    Elizabelle

    Grassley was speaking at a town hall to a constituent whose adult children have care through ACA.

    “Yes, I’m saying that I would not — we’re not going to repeal the Affordable Care Act,” Grassley said. He then appeared to leave himself some wiggle room, clarifying that there are 49 other Senate Republicans and that he was speaking only for himself.

    A Grassley spokesman said the Iowa Republican was making a prediction about whether the health-care law will be repealed as a whole.

    “While noting that he can’t speak for all of his colleagues, he predicted that the law wouldn’t be repealed in its entirety,” Grassley spokesman Taylor Foy said in an email.

  4. 4.

    geg6

    @Elizabelle:

    I want it, too.  But my neighbors are all horrible and we live on one of the major arteries of the county.  So I’m not sure I could fly it without some bullets, or at least eggs, hitting the house.

  7. 7.

    Kay

    @Elizabelle:

    It’s amusing they no longer call it “Obamacare” though. Now that it’s popular they all switched in unison to calling it the Affordable Care Act.

  8. 8.

    NotMax

    TCM alert. A Divine duo of flicks:
    Saturday 4/16, 2:15 a.m. Eastern, Lust in the Dust.
    Saturday 4/16, 3:45 a.m. Eastern, Female Trouble.

    Entirely unrelated: the sinking of Titanic reaches its supercentenary anniversary today.

  10. 10.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    Rule of thumb when judging the truth of anything a 21st century Republican says:

    If that Republican is hooked up to an functioning EEG that is showing a perfect flat line, you can trust what that Republican is saying right then. Otherwise, don’t trust them.

  12. 12.

    Kay

    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’s why the anti-abortion movement took out the rape exception. Because women are all liars and it might harm men.
    Claiming rape would be “her only way out”.
    It’s really revealing to read the actual statehouse debates banning abortion because they’ve dropped all the sickly-sweet “we love mommies and babies” stuff- now it’s just raw control of women, who are all bad and need constant supervision by fundamentalist religious sects.

  13. 13.

    Steeplejack

    @Baud:

    And how much weight does anything Grassley say carry with the only GOP voice in the Senate that matters—Mitch McConnell?

  14. 14.

    NotMax

    As FSM is my witness, hadn’t the slightest idea this was ever a thing.

    A California-based finance company has agreed to pay more than $900,000 to settle allegations that it was illegally leasing dogs in Massachusetts, the state attorney general’s office said. Source

  15. 15.

    Brit in Chicago

    @Kay: I think you’re misremembering. The wonderful ACA, which we all love (though it needs some tweaking) was passed by Trump. Trump also repealed the terrible Obamacare which was ruining people’s lives. Don’t believe me? Just check Fox News!

  16. 16.

    germy

    We have obtained never before revealed texts between Sen. Mike Lee, Rep. Chip Roy and then White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in possession of the 1/6 Committee.

    An example- Roy texted Meadows on 1/1:

    "We're driving a stake in the heart of the federal republic,"

    — Ryan Nobles (@ryanobles) April 15, 2022

    Why do they hate America?

  17. 17.

    Kay

    @Brit in Chicago:

    People who have it still call it “Obamacare”. People who buy on the exchanges. It makes me smile when they tell me in my office because they say it neutrally, no political inflection at all- like it’s the name :)

  19. 19.

    debbie

    @Kay:

    It always comes down to protecting the poor, delicate man, doesn’t it? //

    Where did I put my tiny, tiny ? ?

  21. 21.

    Kay

    @debbie:

    We’re back to all women lying about rape “to get out of it”. Still- I’m glad we uncovered the explanation for why the rape exception disappeared – poof!- and they now intend to force rape victims to carry to term and co-parent with the rapist for life. Because all women are devious, manipulative liars and none of them were probably raped anyway.

    How long before the liars can’t testify or sit on a jury? Who can trust these sluts?

  22. 22.

    Elizabelle

    OK.  The FTF NY Times made the generous Devang Thakkar take down his free Wordle archive.  Which let you play to your heart’s content.  (SulzbergerLand makes you wait at least 15 minutes hours. [howl howl] for the next puzzle they apportion them out — fuck ’em.  Terrible people.)

    It has been a fun three months since I launched this archive and it brought joy to a lot of us but all good things must end. The New York Times has requested that I shut the archive down – to be honest, I was wondering what took them so long.
    To those of you who contributed to this open-source project, I thank you. To those of you who wrote to me, I thank you. To those of you who “requested” I take down the archive, I “thank” you.
    Cheers,
    Devang

  24. 24.

    debbie

    @Kay:

    This is all so enraging. They prosecute the doctor and criminalize the woman, but do SQUAT about the jackass who couldn’t keep his pants zipped! Poor, poor victim!

    Incels, rejoice!

  29. 29.

    debbie

    @Elizabelle:

    Bastards.

    Someone here shared Secedordle, where you get 21 moves to solve 16 words simultaneously. It’ll have to do, I guess.

    (My spelling may be off.)

  30. 30.

    Baud

    I think I’ll invent a Wordle like game that uses numbers instead of words.

    I’ll call it Numeral.

  31. 31.

    Kay

    @debbie:

    One just has to read the laws to see the total disregard for women. Women are absent in the laws. They have so little agency they’ve been effectively excised from laws regulating and controlling pregnancy. Just passive “carriers” of the pregnancy who don’t exist legally as seperate beings during the term of the pregnancy. There’s the state, the pregnancy and various health care providers. It’s why there’s no discussion of the inequity of the burdens of pregnancy- which all fall on the women. No discussion of months without pay, medical risk, dropping out of school, medical bills, etc. which will all fall on the women. They don’t discuss any of this on the Right because she doesn’t exist. State, pregnancy, medical providers. The passive pregnancy carrier doesn’t even merit mention.

  36. 36.

    Geminid

    Someone responded to Trump’s Georgia rally a few weeks ago with a Tweet showing Joe Biden sitting behind the wheel of a Corvette convertible. He has shades and a big smile on and is pointing at the viewer.

    The caption above reads, “Hi, I’m Brandon.” The one below reads, “I’m the Guy Who Kicked Trump’s Ass In 2020.”

  37. 37.

    Betty

    Regarding the deficit deception, it isn’t just Republicans. Manchin is now using it as a club in negotiations on the reconciliation bill. It never ends with him and his sabotage.

  39. 39.

    Baud

    @Betty:

    Mamchin will pull anything out of his ass to use as a club.  If they reach a deal, I’m sure it’ll be mostly positive, even if less than we want.  Regardless, I’m not interested in giving him any oxygen.  We hired Biden and Schumer to deal with his sorry ass, and I’m happy to delegate that responsibility to them.

  40. 40.

    Kay

    @debbie:

    It would be better for women in terms of retaining other rights if they did criminalize abortion. This is the absolute worst as far as agency and autonomy. It makes them non-persons. They don’t even have enough agency and free will to decide to get an abortion. Dumb, passive carriers. Can’t even be prosecuted because they don’t have sufficient personhood or moral agency to have an intent. They’re now in the “child” legal category, where they don’t have a full set of adult capacities so can’t be held responsible for actions. They’re incompetents in legal terms. It’s much more profound than criminalization, legally, which is punishment for an act– they just disappear as adults. The status of pregnancy consigns them to a lesser category.

  43. 43.

    Ohio Mom

    @Elizabelle: I am also bummed out by the closing of the Wordle Archive, that was the site I used, and I was slowly (very slowly) making my way through the entire archive.

  45. 45.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: Conservatives have always thought pregnant women were little more than incubators of their offspring; now they’re making it explicit in the law.

  46. 46.

    Baud

    @Kay: I wonder if the only way to out is to convince the anti-choicers that banning abortion will lead to an explosion of black and brown babies.  It would be an interesting experiment.

  48. 48.

    Ohio Mom

    I remain convinced that there will be an eventual backlash against these miserable anti-women laws. But not before too many women suffer and die. It’s a war after all.

  49. 49.

    Soprano2

    @Baud: My husband had a friend (now deceased) who was open about the fact that he supported abortion mainly so “those people” could get them. If he hadn’t t died in 2003, Obama’s election would have killed him!

  50. 50.

    Kay

    @Betty:

    Manchin doesn’t matter anyway. Sinema won’t repeal any of the Trump tax cuts, so the only way he’s getting “deficit reduction” is if he cuts existing funding or plays games with numbers. There’s never been any additional revenue committment from Manchin and Sinema. That was the essential piece and they never offered it in good faith or with any reliability.

  51. 51.

    smith

    Speaking of neighbors and flags, my fascist next door neighbor took down his thin blue line flag and put up a regular Merkin one. Driving around the neighborhood, I see the few Usual Suspects we have here have all done the same. Police State flags and Gadsden flags are gone and they’re all flying the stars and stripes. I’m guessing this has to do with Ukraine. I think we might have an opening here to make progress with Goobers, or at least those who are Goober-adjacent, if it can be firmly fixed in their minds that Trumpism = Putinism. Of course, they live in an ahistorical reality, so TFG’s fealty to Vlad is probably already down the memory hole, but I bet there are a lot of normies who could usefully be reminded clearly and repeatedly how much Rs have been doing Putin’s bidding.

  58. 58.

    Ohio Mom

    @Baud: They won’t worry about too many black and brown babies because their parallel effort is to disenfranchise black and brown people.

  60. 60.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: One thing that struck me about the absence of rape and incest exceptions in the new red state anti-abortion laws was the lack of public discussion of about it. It seems like a pretty radical development because, as you said, it removes women’s agency, and the bill’s sponsors (at least in FL) were open about writing it that way because women are lying sluts. You’d think that would inspire a lot of public comment, but not really. That’s chilling in its own right.

  61. 61.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @Kay: Yes. Yesterday, we got a flyer from a candidate for state office that didn’t list part affiliation, but the whole thing was about how taxes are too high and we have to cut them. I wanted to ask what programs he’d cut the funding for in order to finance those tax cuts. Actually, I wanted to throw the flyer away and that’s what I did

  63. 63.

    germy

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    In NY we’ve got a millionaire trying to buy his way into the governor’s mansion.  We’re always seeing his TV ads during the local news.  He never wears a suit.  He’s always in WorkingMan cosplay.  He says he wants to cut taxes and fix the roads.

  65. 65.

    zhena gogolia

    No, new Outlook, I don’t want you, I want old Outlook. Really, I want Eudora.

  66. 66.

    NotMax

    @Raven
    Going in an alternative direction with a different tune, as we were taught to sing in grade school music class,
    Uncles and aunts
    (Little children lost their pants!)
    It was sad when
    That great ship went down
    ;)

  67. 67.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    I know this is my refrain but it’s because the mainstream media coverage is so poor. They’re simply not covering it. Without the Texas Tribune there would be little or no on the ground coverage of the abortion ban in Texas. It’s a “women’s issue” and it’s not connected to powerful or famous men like “me too” was, so they’re not interested. This is a really sexist country.

    It pisses me off because I think the far Right SCOTUS repealed Roe on the shadow docket as a political tactic. They want it to be a done deal by the time they get around to doing their jobs and holding a hearing and issuing a decision. It’s a political machination with political timing, and it was deliberate. The lack of media coverage plays right into it. They couldn’t be helping them more if they were actually employed by them. They’re going along with this excessively legalistic fiction that Roe has somehow not been overturned, which matters only to lawyers. For women it’s overturned. Just incredibly dishonest and sleazy tactics by the Court. They’re not just wholly political actors, they’re now political operatives.

  70. 70.

    artem1s

    @Baud: ​
     

    Grassley is lying.

    (They might not try to hard because of Biden’s veto.)

    (They will continue to whittle away at it at the state level, like they do everything else and blame the state’s resulting economic problems on the Dems)

  73. 73.

    WaterGirl

    Can I put in a plug for the Michigan fundraiser?  We are currently at $14,451.

    As soon as we get $149 in donations, we’ll be at $14,600 – then Angel #4 will add her $400, and we will be at the magic $15,000 amount that will allow them to start the process of hiring for the fellowships.

  77. 77.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    Not that it matters to this Court, but it’s also really corrosive to the “rule of law”. There’s supposedly federal case law in this country that the right to an abortion is protected. It’s good law. They just no longer follow it. Wow. So much for that!

    No one cares really because it’s just women (lying sluts), but I don’t care who you are. If they can ignore this one they can ignore any others they don’t like. They already do – the Voting Rights Act and the Clean Water Act. Just..don’t follow them.

  78. 78.

    prostratedragon

    @NotMax: I used to live near Straus Park. It was a place i often stopped by to sit a spell while on a stroll. Never saw it decorated as in the photo, though the story of the Strauses was about. Did see Tiny Grimes and a friend playing a brief impromptu there once. Anyone in the neighborhood, stop by. They love company.

  79. 79.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    Say what you will about Roe but at least those justices had some intergrity. They heard it and wrote an opinion and signed their names to it. These clowns barely show up for work.

  81. 81.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Kay: It’s amusing they no longer call it “Obamacare” though. Now that it’s popular they all switched in unison to calling it the Affordable Care Act.

    It actually surprises me the GoP isn’t telling their voters that Obamacare was replaced with ACA. lol

  83. 83.

    Kay

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    Democrats shoud run on them repealing it anyway, because the news report is innaccurate. Grassley may have said he won’t overturn it but his handler walked it back and said he won’t repeal it entirely.

    They got the headline they wanted but it’s not accurate. So fair game to use it against them. They’re lying.

  85. 85.

    Eolirin

    @Kay: Even if they weren’t lying we should still run on it. They don’t have credibility on health care and having to defend their position only works in our favor.

    It’s what they’d do if the situation was flipped, and it’ll be effective. We shouldn’t flinch at taking the knives out here.

  86. 86.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @germy:

    I had a neighbor who displayed both a “thin blue line” flag AND a gadsden flag.

     

    Back during my decades in red, rurl Central Misery, I drove to KS, IA, OK and NE often for work, much of the routes being on rurl backroads and their were a lot of that duo flying proudly. A lot.

  87. 87.

    FelonyGovt

    @Kay: This was always the logical conclusion for these anti-abortion nuts. If the “baby” is so precious, it doesn’t matter how it was created- even by rape or incest – and its survival is more important than the life of the mother.
    I hope women begin to realize the full extent of this. Any woman or girl could have her life derailed.

  88. 88.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    If we run against the GOP wanting to repeal Obamacare, we’ll be forcing them to repeal Obamacare if they win. #Punditry

  89. 89.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    Everyone doesn’t have to take a lawyers view of this. People should ask if the laws still have practical effect or protections. If they don’t – and they don’t- then no one has to accept legalistic analysis that they’re still technically in place, which benefits the Right politically and was managed politically by that Court.

    I didn’t tell them to become political operatives but now that they have we play by those rules. They can’t have both sides of this. They can’t have the protections of posing as non political actors while being political operatives.

  90. 90.

    Soprano2

    @germy: I never understood their friendship. In a way it was easier, though, because he was open about his bigotry. I was proud that he never gave me a nickname, because he could never pigeonhole me into one of his categories. I think I drove him nuts.

  91. 91.

    schrodingers_cat

    White women makeup the largest demographic of voters, it is in their hands to make the Republicans pay for the shit show they are subjecting all of us to. Will they come through? Previous trends don’t make me sanguine but I remain hopeful.

  92. 92.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: Yep, they’ll preserve the ban on not covering pre-existing conditions and say they didn’t repeal it. You’re right, it was all for the headline they got.

  93. 93.

    Ken

    @Elizabelle:  Grassley then appeared to leave himself some wiggle room, clarifying that there are 49 other Senate Republicans and that he was speaking only for himself.

    Has he not noticed that it only takes one Senator to withhold unanimous consent?  Until there are 60 other Senate Republicans, Grassley has complete power to block any effort to repeal or modify Obamacare.

    And if there are 60 other Senate Republicans, the country will be a charred wasteland within two months anyway, so it won’t matter at that point.

  94. 94.

    NeenerNeener

    I just had to check that the Wordplay site was still up and running. They took over when Unlimited Wordle had to shut down. So far, still working….

  95. 95.

    Kay

    @Ken:

    Grassley barely functions in the town halls. None of these people know when to retire. It’s ridiculous.

  96. 96.

    O. Felix Culpa

    Question for the BJ cognoscenti:

    I’m flying to Europe tomorrow via ATL (sending out bat-signal to SteveinWTF!). I will have a grand 45 minutes–assuming flights are on time–to get from my domestic Delta to my international flight.

    I’m not familiar with ATL, but I know it’s big. Gate info isn’t available yet, but I’d be grateful for reassurances that the plane change is doable and/or strategies on how to get to the international terminal QUICKLY.

    TIA.

  97. 97.

    Matt McIrvin

    @debbie: I found that Octordle is actually addicting but Sedecordle was one step too far, just seemed like showing off.

    (I think the doubling and the associated naming scheme, at that point in its development, may have been a reference to the Cayley-Dickson construction in abstract algebra, which is one of the nerdiest deep cuts I’ve ever seen.)

  102. 102.

    Kay

    @Soprano2:

    There can’t be a ban on not covering preexisting conditions without a shitload of people without preexisting conditions paying premiums. It’s shared risk, which is why conservatives could never manage any health care law at all. The facts of the thing don’t align with their dumb, rigid, “me, me, me” ideology and never will. Just be grateful for Medicare, which takes the biggest and most expensive health care users completely out. Twenty two years olds would be paying 9,000 a month but for that.

  104. 104.

    mrmoshpotato

    Sen. Grassley (R-Iowa) said this week that Republicans will not try to repeal the Affordable Care Act if they retake the Senate, in the latest signal that the GOP is abandoning its long-running effort to scrap the national health-care law.

    I’ll believe that when all Rethuglicans are out of power!

  105. 105.

    Betty Cracker

    @schrodingers_cat: White evangelical women are as complicit as white evangelical men in driving the patriarchy agenda, so IMO, the only real hope to roll it back is if women who’ve been apathetic wake up.

    This is why I find it so alarming that there’s so little public discussion of increasing Republican radicalization like dropping rape and incest exceptions. If you’re just scanning news alerts on a smartphone or skimming the headlines on media sites, you could easily miss that.

  106. 106.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @O. Felix Culpa: I originally had more connection time, but Delta in its infinite wisdom rescheduled the flights. Arrgh. I should never have broken my personal rule about not flying that airline.

  108. 108.

    Betty Cracker

    @O. Felix Culpa: Last time I flew to Europe from Atlanta (years ago), I also had a narrow window to catch my connecting flight, and there was one of those golf cart trams waiting at the gate to shuttle us across the airport. Hopefully they still do that!

  109. 109.

    Kay

    @Soprano2:

    And be grateful for Medicaid, which covers nursing home costs when they spend down all their money, which they do thru no fault of their own and simply thru the passage of time.

    Someone would have to be paying for that and it would be younger people. Everybody benefits.

  110. 110.

    zhena gogolia

    @O. Felix Culpa: I’ve only been in that airport once, many years ago, and it was cumbersome. Maybe it’s improved since then. (Unhelpful comment, I know.)

  111. 111.

    Baud

    @Betty Cracker: Not that I disagree with your general point, but I’ll note that the Today Show did mention the lack of an exception for rape and incent in reporting on the new Florida law this morning.

  113. 113.

    NotMax

    @Kay

    Quarterly bill for Medicare received this month increased by ~15% from last quarter, which itself increased from the quarter previous to that.

  117. 117.

    Citizen Alan

    @debbie:  Conservatives are the worst. But conservative women are the worst of the worst. Almost invariably more evil and cruel than juit’s cruel and destructive than their male counterparts because they have to be in order to rise to their positions.

  118. 118.

    Matt McIrvin

    @lashonharangue: I heard somebody made a 1000-word version, at which point it’s just a reductio ad absurdum.

    There’s also Semantle, which has you guessing words by closeness in meaning rather than spelling, using a machine-learning project called Word.Net for its infrastructure. That one is entertainingly hard.

  119. 119.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    I think a lot of more well-off people assume that Planned Parenthood might be closing but they’ll still be able to get abortions from their own doctors. But the laws don’t seem to work that way.

  121. 121.

    Citizen Alan

    @Baud:  Republicans are perfectly capable of thinking abortion should be banned and also thinking that black and Brown women who have children they can’t afford are just trying to cheat the system by manipulating welfare payments and EBT.   Also, increasing the number of unplanned  pregnancies in that group will help ensure that blacks and Browns stay in poverty forever.

  122. 122.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    But women aren’t an identifiable or discrete political coalition in any group. The only place where there was a “gender gap” with Latina women (Trump v Biden) was in Texas and that was driven by more Latino men voting for Trump. It may change but they (we) don’t seem to be voting on “women’s issues”. I know we want them to or think they should but they don’t seem to.

  123. 123.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: I think we’re going to have to get a nationwide abortion ban, people doing international abortion tourism on the down low and lots of women dying before the backlash is significant. And I think the nationwide ban is coming sooner or later. Question is just whether it’s through federal legislation which is easier to reverse, or SCOTUS declaring embryos persons, which would be way harder.

  125. 125.

    eclare

    @O. Felix Culpa:   ATL has underground trains, def take those.  Forty five minutes is really cutting it close, the intl terminal is pretty far from the domestics.  I would def tell the flight attendant your situation so maybe they’ll let you deplane first.

    Good luck!

  126. 126.

    Baud

    @Matt McIrvin: Declaring embryos persons doesn’t get them a whole lot.  It just means that the state can’t take way their “life” without due process of law.  It doesn’t do anything for private abortion providers. You’d still need Congress or the state legislature to pass a law.

  127. 127.

    Geminid

    @Kay: I notice that Fred Upton (MI-6th) has decided it’s time to retire. His decision may not be due to age so much as a tough primary in prospect. Upton was one of four midwestern Impeachers. Anthony Gonzales  (OH) and Adam Kinzinger (IL) announced their retirements last year, and now Peter Meijar of Michigan is the last midwestern Impeacher* standing.

    Upton’s Congressional District is based in Kalamazoo and covers the southwest corner of Michigan.

    *I like calling the ten Republican Representatives who voted to impeach Trump in January, 2021 “Impeachers,” after the group of medieval English lords who “impeached” their King’s counsellors. I think that subsequently the Impeachers were all beheaded.

  128. 128.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kay: Women are significantly less anti-abortion than men, particularly when you get into the more pro-choice categories–women aren’t that much less likely than men to be hardcore religion-driven prohibitionists, but they’re much less likely to drop into abstract discussions of “well, what about this extreme hypothetical, I think it should be illegal then” instead of just being completely pro-choice.

    I recall some old surveys implying the opposite but I think they were outliers that looked at hardcore opposition in the first place.

  129. 129.

    Heidi Mom

    @Kay: In my senior year of law school (1987) the members and professor of the Supreme Court seminar visited the Supreme Court and met with Justice Blackmun.  (There was some obscure connection that made that meeting possible–someone’s college roommate, maybe.)  Lovely, gracious human being.  When someone asked him about Roe, he said (as best I can remember) “I still consider it absolutely essential to the emancipation of women.”

  132. 132.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: Wouldn’t the existing laws against murder then allow/require arresting them all immediately as mass murderers?

  133. 133.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: I think that’s why my city no longer allows retirees to stay on the health insurance – even with them paying the full premium it was driving up the cost too much.

    I know it won’t work, but when has that stopped them before?

  134. 134.

    Kay

    @NotMax:

    I didn’t know that but I do know it’s not “free”. It would just be an absolutely insane health insurance market without it. It really would be 9000 a month for a 30 year old.

  135. 135.

    Baud

    @Matt McIrvin: No.  The state still has prosecutorial discretion.  Are companies criminally charged every time a worker dies?  No. Maybe the Republican 6 would make new law by creating a different rule in the abortion context, but simply declaring embroyos to be persons would not be sufficient.

  137. 137.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @eclare: Thanks. I’m messaging the airline now, to see if they can (will) help. I always build in a cushion for making connections, and their schedule change caused this super-tight connection time. Grrr.

  138. 138.

    Baud

    @Kay: I assume if the GOP kept the preexisting condition ban as a political matter, they would get around it by allowing insurance companies to price discriminate more than the ACA allows (and it allows very little).

  139. 139.

    Kay

    @Soprano2:

    They could repeal and replace the whole thing with some cheap garbage. They actually tried this with Trump. They encouraged rip off, over priced “health care plans” that didn’t cover anything.

    Conservatives had two ideas for “health care”. ‘Across state lines’ and ‘tort reform’. Neither did shit.

  140. 140.

    Betty Cracker

    @Baud: That’s good to hear. One thing I wonder about is how this news is filtering down to the people it affects the most, younger women, who consume news in an entirely different way than we middle-aged folks do. I mean, maybe it’s a hot topic on TikTok or wherever. I don’t know. I’ll have to ask the kids and report back.

    @Kay: Agreed. Maybe when women start dying from back alley abortions again and access to birth control is curtailed, etc.

    @schrodingers_cat: Sometimes I feel like that’s my full-time job. It’s definitely how I acquired my reputation as a paranoid crank. ;-)

  142. 142.

    Baud

    @Betty Cracker: Yeah, I think as a general matter people who follow politics from the left-of-center do a poor job judging the amount and types of information that has penetrated the minds of normie Dems (or even fellow liberals who do follow politics)

    ETA:  We also do a relatively poor job in making new information accessible to people IMHO, possibly because we incorrectly assess our audience’s prior knowledge.

  143. 143.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Betty Cracker:  In NM, we worked hard to get an old law criminalizing abortion off the books, in anticipation of the SC overturning Roe v Wade. It took several election cycles: first we had to win a Dem majority in the state senate; then we had to eject several ConservaDems who went back on their promise to vote for decriminalizing abortion; and then we got a sufficiently pro-woman majority to pass the measure. Took six years of effort, but we finally got it done! Just in time, too

    ETA: We also had to elect a Democratic governor who would sign the measure into law. Thankfully we got that done too. She’s now up for reelection. We can’t take anything for granted. Ever.

  144. 144.

    Ms. Deranged in AZ

    @geg6: Same here. My neighbor to the north flies an American flag plus a Gadsden flag.  And on a walk last night I discovered not one but two F**k Biden flags around the block.  At the second house there were four or five adults sitting in their garage with a TV on watching Fox news and the entire wall around the TV was decorated with rightwing batshittery, eg, a 6 foot tall Infowars banner.  Only thing missing was the Confederate flag, which I probably didn’t see because I was too busy getting the hell out of there.  My eldest wants to put an LGBTQ flag on our house but I don’t want to be dodging bullets (or patching the holes from them either).

  146. 146.

    Kay

    @Soprano2:

    Here is the cheap, rip off junk that was the Trump Administration’s sole “idea” for health care:

    Then in August 2018, the Trump administration issued new regulations that would make short-term plans and other similar products more accessible and superficially appealing. Such plans don’t have to cover preexisting conditions, and they don’t have to provide comprehensive financial protection from major medical bills. People being sold these plans are often told they are not only cheaper than Obamacare-compliant coverage but will also provide the same level of financial benefits.Such noncompliant plans still existed under Obamacare. But the Obama administration had promulgated regulations that restricted such insurance to cover people for just three months. The idea was to push people off those skimpy plans and prompt them to buy (thanks to the individual mandate) the new comprehensive coverage available on the law’s marketplaces.

    So that’s what they’ll do. They’ll sell you junk and tell you it’s “health insurance”. More garbage “work” from the low quality hires on the Right.

  147. 147.

    Baud

    @O. Felix Culpa:

    Took six years of effort, but we finally got it done! Just in time, too.

    Can you imagine how much progress we could make at the federal level if Dems had 6 years of complete control?

  148. 148.

    Betty Cracker

    @Baud: Yep. I have several normies in my life whom I use as yardsticks. The anecdata is mostly discouraging. Le sigh.

  149. 149.

    Yarrow

    I saw some coverage of DeSantis signing the forced birth law. It looked like every single person on the stage behind him was white.

  150. 150.

    Betty Cracker

    @NotMax: Yes, and thank dog I’ve got several pounds of frozen butter as a hedge against pandemic panic buying, so no grocery store trip is necessary. I’ll be making the butter lamb early tomorrow morning and shuttling it over to the MIL for her all-bubbee Easter festivities.

  151. 151.

    Baud

    @Yarrow:

    It looked like every single person on the stage behind him was white.

    Those are probably the Blacks for Trump people.

  157. 157.

    Geminid

    @Baud: I noticed recently that when a Republican state (maybe Tennessee) passed one of these extreme laws, the CBS hourly radio news report on the new law described the provision allowing rapists and their family members to enforce the law against their victims.

    A lot of people get much of their news through these hourly radio reports. There is not much depth or follow up, and no editorializing, but information gets out there for people who pay attention.

  159. 159.

    Yarrow

    @Betty Cracker:  Biden had the right idea meeting with the social media influencers. Get some of them on board with it or maybe there’s a new one out there who can become a star. Needs some zingy slogans or memorable lines. Talk to young men too. They’re not all ready to be dads.

  160. 160.

    Elizabelle

    @Steeplejack:   Thank you!  WordMaster for the win!

    And FTF NY Times and FTF Sulzbergers with Clinton Derangement Syndrome, who employ Maggs Haberman

    ETA:  On a train in Spain, was watching the woman next to me play Wordle in Spanish.  (Asked if it was Spanish or Catalan.)  Popular worldwide.

  161. 161.

    Ken

    @Baud: Back when that Mayhew guy was a front-pager, he had a lot to say about the three-legged-stool of healthcare insurance. As I recall, two of the legs were coverage of pre-existing conditions, and bans on price discrimination.

  162. 162.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @NotMax: Huh? Medicare Part B premium is set every year.

    Nov 12, 2021 — The increase in the standard monthly premium—from $148.50 in 2021 to $170.10 in 2022.

    Medicare Advantage plan?

  163. 163.

    Nelle

    @O. Felix Culpa: That happened to me once, where United rerouted me and tightened the time between flights.  I was complaining to the gate agent when the pilot was nearby.  He came over and said that he was flying both flights, asked my seat number for the second flight, and said he wouldn’t depart without me.  I felt special after that.

  164. 164.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @eclare: That info wasn’t available yet. HOWEVER, I was able to contact Delta–who do NOT make contacting them easy–and change my flights. So now I have much better connection times and no assigned seats. But the rep assures me that they’ll be able to take care of it at the gate. Will renew my vow never to fly Delta again.

  166. 166.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Nelle: I’m glad it worked out for you! And that you were (rightly) made to feel special. :)

    I’ve rebooked tomorrow’s flights, gaining more time for connections and losing my preferred seat assignments. Ah well, at least there’s a fair chance of getting to my destination.

  168. 168.

    bluegirlfromwyo

    @Kay: We could see this coming with all the right-wing mothers who oh so empathized with Justice I Like Beer (what if that were my son?) without one single thought about Christine Blasey-Ford being their daughters.

  169. 169.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Kay:Democrats shoud run on them repealing it anyway, because the news report is innaccurate. Grassley may have said he won’t overturn it but his handler walked it back and said he won’t repeal it entirely.

    That’s not what’s going on, the Right is doing outright doublespeak.  Accusing Grassley of lying would actually be assisting him like what happened with that hedge fund dipsit in Virginia.

  172. 172.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Kay: Anec-data but…the women I almost-know (family members of friends) who support Trump seem to do so more out of fear of a Brown Planet (BLM, Immigration, Voter Fraud, CRT!!1! etc.,) than concerns about abortion.  I’m sure they are all very opposed to abortion too, but the Black/Brown Menace (now including Trans) is the one they talk about most.

  176. 176.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @UncleEbeneezer: My rural high school ex-friends are similar. They live in fear of the brown hordes harming them and their grandchildren. They live 1000’s of miles away from any border and of course there aren’t any brown hordes happening anyway and such browns that make it here just want to make a decent living and therefore won’t go to these ex-friends’ corner of the world, but facts don’t matter, as I found out when I foolishly but valiantly tried to engage them in reasonable discourse.

  177. 177.

    JCJ

    @O. Felix Culpa:

    If not already mentioned get the Fly Delta app for your phone.  You will be able to see gate information for your flight when you land before getting off the plane and won’t need to find a monitor in the airport.  45 minutes is very tight but can be doable since you should not need to go through security again

     

    ETA:  Ah – glad you were able to reschedule.

  179. 179.

    bluegirlfromwyo

    @Kay: They don’t discuss any of this on the Right because she doesn’t exist.

    She exists plenty after the pregnancy. That’s when the Right tells her about personal responsibility and how she shouldn’t have had the sex that may or may not have been forced upon her. Then she’s given a pamphlet of charities who will decide if she deserves help.

  181. 181.

    Kay

    @UncleEbeneezer:

    I just think there’s been a 30 year effort to depict women as a voting bloc who vote on “womens issues” when they’re not, or dont seem to me to be. The only political salience I’ve seen of “me too” is blowback from conservative men. There was no “plus”. Just the blowback, to the point where I think a Right wing politician who harrasses women sexually or even has a couple of DV’s under his belt may have an advantage.

  183. 183.

    Kay

    @bluegirlfromwyo:

    I sat at a bar event with well off Right wing women while they discussed the fake “clinic” they operate where there is no actual clinic but is instead just religious indoctrination. They were talking about how “the moms” have to “earn” a car seat or a bag of diapers with good behavior. Just as smug and self satisfied as people could be. It’s going to be really bad.

  184. 184.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @JCJ: Thanks. I used the Delta app to contact an agent to reschedule, since their online messaging function was borked.

  185. 185.

    JustRuss

    Did the Post happen to mention that  in 2017 only 3 Republican senators voted against repealing Obamacare, and that Grassley wasn’t one of them?

  186. 186.

    Kay

    Jan Wolfe
    @JanNWolfe
    ·1h
    I bet Dominion and Smartmatic’s lawyers are interested in these Mark Meadows texts.
    Sen. Mike Lee saw that infamous Trump legal team press conference and warned of “defamation liability for the president.”
    Meadows texted back: “I agree. Very concerned.”

    I keep hoping the Dominion lawyers will travel to Right wing counties and collect info at the Boards of Elections meetings. They’re openly discussing how they can’t use the defamed company, which is measurable harm. Money.

  188. 188.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kay: Oh, yeah, “crisis pregnancy centers”? I recall their first tactic was to spam the Yellow Pages section for abortion services.

  189. 189.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @Baud: I don’t think he’s lying. I think that enough time has passed that all of the normal bad actors have figured out how to grift off of the ACA and therefore don’t want it changed. Obamacare IS a big fucking deal, but it’s also a big fucking mess (largely because of Republicans).

    In chaos there is profit.

  190. 190.

    Kay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    We have one county on my regular rounds with competing billboards- a real clinic and the fake clinic, two sides of a state route. The real clinic lists services, including, prominently, “birth control” so it’s easy to tell. The fake clinic has that Hallmark card, soft focus mush that they all use in public, but not when drafting these laws, where they go right to lying sluts will accuse our men of rape.

  191. 191.

    Martin

    @NotMax: This is why California is slowly moving to eliminate the sale of pets. These companies started popping up almost a decade ago from the ashes of the subprime market.

  192. 192.

    WaterGirl

    @SiubhanDuinne: Thank you!

    I just looked and I see that we made it!  I’m not sure if we made it without there $400 from Angel 4 or if she has already put her $400 in.

    She was going to be hard to reach this week – out of town for work – so I have not idea if she has seen my email yet.

    Either way, I am thrilled to be able to let them know that we are at $15,000 so they can begin the hiring process.  There’s still $10k left so they can hire for all the fellowships, but starting the process if everything, because they can start communicating with those underserved communities.

    Big thanks to everyone for helping to make this happen!

  193. 193.

    Kay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    We also have this lady that I love. She’s really good with coupons and sales, so she buys diapers at reduced prices and gives them away. She parks a van at the Job and Family Services building and just asks people going in if they need them. They interviewed her in the paper and she doesn’t seem to be political. I laughed out loud though because she only buys “brand name” diapers- they really are better :)

    She’s not handing out junk here. Quality. She just woke up one day and said “I am a GREAT shopper. What do people need?” :)

  196. 196.

    Martin

    @VeniceRiley: You’re welcome. We’re having a 6 figure withdrawal from the IRS on Monday.

    Part of the financial housekeeping that was needed before retirement. I don’t mind it apart from the psychological impact of watching money (that to be fair, I didn’t work for) go whooshing out of my account.

  197. 197.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Martin: Joan Rivers used to say in the fifties and sixties, in the leafy NY suburbs, the code was “She went to Puerto Rico for a short vacation…”

  198. 198.

    Cameron

    @smith: I think Trump already addressed that, by telling an interviewer that if he had been President at the time Putin wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine.

  199. 199.

    Brachiator

    @mrmoshpotato:

    Sen. Grassley (R-Iowa) said this week that Republicans will not try to repeal the Affordable Care Act if they retake the Senate, in the latest signal that the GOP is abandoning its long-running effort to scrap the national health-care law.

    I don’t believe them.

  202. 202.

    Martin

    @Kay: Democrats really need to address some of the discrepancies between ACA and Medicare though. I’ve heard a lot of whining from seniors that they think ACA is unfair because it provides benefits that Medicare doesn’t. Most notable was when Medicare wouldn’t cover the at-home Covid tests. Now, that’s more due to the stupidity of the Medicare laws rather than ACA being overly generous, but their only objection to socialism is when someone else benefits more than them.

    And Iowa is the oldest state in the US. Lots of Medicare there, and a really, really shitty ACA marketplace. Grassley knows how to tap into that.

  203. 203.

    zhena gogolia

    @O. Felix Culpa: They used to be very good for flying to Moscow. Sigh.

    It was Delta that caused me to have to deal with ATL, because our flight to New Orleans was cancelled.

  204. 204.

    oatler

    @Ms. Deranged in AZ:

    I saw a Let’s Go Brandon flag atop the pole of a charter school in AZ, over both the US and state flags. This is their true religion, hating “the left” who did whatever evil Tucker said they did.

  205. 205.

    VeniceRiley

    @Martin: I can’t even count that high. ;-) Congrats on retirement!
    I’m retiring too. But I couldn’t were it not for my wife. Thinking of not drawing anything until after a few (5 or so) years and converting my 403B to a Roth after I move.

  206. 206.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @Kay: Medicare Advantage programs are sold touting they will save you the Part B premium, then lock you into an HMO regime where most travel will leave you out of network and quite exposed. They are private insurance plans designed to eat Medicare and CMS has to spend money advertising these private plans.

    For young and healthy 65 year olds who don’t travel or who have more resources, these plans may work but IMHO, they are deceptively marketed.

  207. 207.

    Martin

    @VeniceRiley: Yeah, we’re coasting on savings for about 6 years. Then the pensions start to kick in. The ACA really made it possible because I could just continue our benefits on the exchange, exactly as I had them at work.

  208. 208.

    Ruckus ??

    @Baud:

    Grassley is lying.

    He’s a rethuglican, lying is more natural than breathing. It seems they may have more practice at lying than breathing, which may explain why they do it easier.

  211. 211.

    laura

    Anyone besides me remember Becky Bell? Wise ladies of BJ- any Indiana peeps? There’s going to be so many Becky Bells again, in my lifetime, I feel stabby af.

  212. 212.

    bluegirlfromwyo

    @laura: I remember Becky Bell. She was close to my age and her story scared me into being a perma-Dem. Count me among the stabby.

  213. 213.

    James E Powell

    @Another Scott:

    As long as it continues to win elections for them, that’s what they will do. Republicans win primaries by showing hatred & scorn for everyone & everything Democratic. They win general elections by keeping their base voters at fever pitch. They never talk about “reaching out” or “working across the aisle” – and the press never asks them about it.

  215. 215.

    schrodingers_cat

    Instead of fixating on nightmare scenarios that haven’t yet come to pass how about each one of us reach at least one another voter and convince them to vote D. What we do now will influence the outcome in November.

  217. 217.

    Ruckus ??

    @James E Powell:

    When a politician’s entire policy basket contains only two concepts, theft and hate, you really only have theft and hate to talk about.

    What else do you think they are trying to conserve?

  222. 222.

    H.E.Wolf

    @schrodingers_cat: Instead of fixating on nightmare scenarios that haven’t yet come to pass how about each one of us reach at least one another voter and convince them to vote D. What we do now will influence the outcome in November.

    @O. Felix Culpa: @schrodingers_cat: Agreed. I also like writing postcards to voters.

    Me too! 5 postcards to Democratic voters going out in today’s mail. I like the “5 postcards, with 3 days to write them, all info provided for you” option that Postcards To Voters offers its writers.

    Two ways to sign up with Postcards To Voters:

    email:  [email protected]

    Text JOIN to Abby The Address Bot at 484-275-2229‬

    If you do it once, and once only, you’ve reached out to 5 voters! That’s so much better than 0.​​​

  223. 223.

    Princess

    @Baud: It won’t work. They want cheap servants. They’d love a lot of desperate young black and brown people who will do anything for a job.

  225. 225.

    H.E.Wolf

    @O. Felix Culpa: Dynamic Duo – that’s us! ?

    I appreciate PTV’s long-running project to sign up FL Democrats for Vote By Mail. It’s paused occasionally when there’s a specific candidate to write for, but it’s active right now, and I’m having a blast.

    …I may have a map of FL with pins stuck in it, for every city I’ve written to. And by “may”, I mean “definitely”!

  226. 226.

    H.E.Wolf

    And a postscript to say that I’m writing postcards because of my strong support for reproductive choice. More Democratic voters means more Democratic legislators and governors/presidents, which is likelier to protect human rights of all kinds than electing Republicans….

  227. 227.

    J R in WV

    @Brantl:

    Gadsden flags make me want to throw dead snakes on their porches/doormats.

    Why “dead snakes” when you could leash a perfectly healthy snake to their porch rail..??   i mean think of the poor snekes?

  228. 228.

    Gravenstone

    @germy: I drive by a local business that has been flying the thin blue line flag under the American flag. Now they have added a Ukrainian flag between them. /facepalm

  231. 231.

    docNC

    @Kay: and don’t forget the no minimum age for “marriage” just passed in Tennessee.  Republicans want to codify statutory rape and open more doors for pedophiles.

  232. 232.

    Another Scott

    @NotMax: Huh.  So it does.  It looks like a Chrome issue.  (I don’t see the flag in MS Edge (their Chrome fork) either.)

    Thanks.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

Comments are closed.