HOW IT STARTED:
This spring, when Republican Governor of Florida Ron DeSantis was pushing the “Parental Rights in Education” bill, he got super-offended when people called it the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Here’s a clip of DeSantis going all Hulk-SMASH on a reporter for noting what the bill’s critics call it, as DeSantis’s customary brace of flying monkeys clap on cue:
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) attacks a reporter who asks about Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill.
“People don’t trust people like you because you peddle false narratives,” DeSantis says before the room breaks into applause. pic.twitter.com/5dKa1p6dZr
— The Recount (@therecount) March 7, 2022
HOW IT’S GOING:
And here’s a report this week from Orlando’s local ABC affiliate about alarm in Orange County’s K-12 education community after public school principals met to discuss how to comply with the new law:
According to representatives of the county’s teacher association, teachers and staff members will be disallowed from wearing rainbow articles of clothing, including lanyards distributed by the district last year. Elementary-level teachers reported being discouraged from putting pictures of their same-sex spouse on their desk or talking about them to students.
“Safe Space” stickers aimed at LGBTQ students may have to be removed from doors, teachers will have to report to parents if a student “comes out” to them and they must use pronouns assigned at birth, regardless of what the parents allow, the CTA reported…
In a separate conversation, an OCPS official said the district needed to err on the side of caution until state officials provided more clarity. The strict interpretations, they said, were necessary to protect both students and teachers. The latter could have their teaching licenses revoked if they run afoul of the law, the official said.
Since DeSantis has appointed religious fanatics and QAnon nuts to the state’s education board, my guess is public school administrators will be waiting a very long time for “more clarity.”
My queer kid went to Florida public schools, and I remember finding a measure of comfort in the rainbow “safe space” stickers I spotted during parent-teacher conferences. It told me the school staff were aware LGBTQ kids were bullied and took it seriously enough to make a statement, even if they couldn’t shield kids from all abuse. It represented awareness and hinted at progress.
Hard-right Republican governors were in charge in Florida throughout my kid’s K-12 years — first Jeb Bush, then Rick Scott. But as awful as they and their administrations were (and my God they were awful, especially on education, which they transformed into a right-wing grift racket), as far as I know, no education authorities suggested scraping the rainbow “safe space” stickers off public school doors.
I’m sympathetic to the view that the modern Republican Party has always been terrible. I know it firsthand; Reagan was elected when I was in high school. Back then, gay kids were bullied with impunity, “Moral Majority” asshole preachers who hobnobbed with Republican politicians went on TV to tell us HIV/AIDS was their petty little god’s judgment on gay people, and the GOP president ignored a deadly pandemic because he didn’t give a shit about its victims. (Literary alert, kids: this is called foreshadowing!)
So, yeah, I’m aware modern Republicans were always awful; this latest crop of authoritarian thugs in ill-fitting suits is just a logical extension of their consistent putridity.
That said, the country moved forward in important ways over the past few decades, notably on LGBTQ rights, despite the progress-impeding millstone around our necks that is the Republican Party. We made progress on that front thanks in part to Democrats like Nancy Pelosi but thanks most of all to the courage of LGBTQ people who refused to accept second-class citizenship.
But now school administrators are scraping the “safe space” stickers off doors — if they’re talking about it in Orlando, I guaran-damn-tee you the putty knives are already out in rural counties. Now the highest court in the land, in announcing that women are second-class citizens, also hinted that gay people have no marriage equality rights this court is bound to respect.
Conclusion: today’s Republicans are worse that their forebearers. Shitbag governors like DeSantis and Abbott are in a race to the bottom to curry favor with religious fanatics, and they’re measuring the Oval Office drapes. And if we don’t stop them, they’ll drag us all straight down to hell with them. The end.
Thursday Morning Open Thread: When, Oh When, Will the Weekend Begin?!?
BellyCat
I can’t even…
ETA: The only hope here is that today’s kids will unleash their fury when old enough to vote.
schrodingers_cat
Joe Rogan whose endorsement the Vt senator eagerly sought is endorsing DeSantis .
Here is my surprised face. (not)
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
As people in urban centers realize how worthless votes and peaceful protests are, it’ll be interesting to start watching what happens as insurgent violence against the wealthy and powerful starts.
”You could have kept most of your wealth and privilege by at least acting like you’re sharing power. Instead, you chose to be greedy. Have you never heard the adage pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered?
lollipopguild
Just imagine if desantis was an evil liberal Democrat, the but hurt screams from the right wing would be heard on the moon.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
Agreed. Joe Rogan is Fox News for the early middle aged white man demo. That there was ever any doubt that Rogan is a standard, conventional Right winger in the Sanders camp does not speak well for Bernie Sanders. I’ve listened to the show. It isn’t hard to figure out.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: I think of Rogan as Limbaugh for the Millennial set who wrongly think they’re edgier than Boomer dittoheads. Same shit, different generation.
Betty Cracker
According to my phone alerts, POTUS said SCOTUS was wrong to overturn Roe and that he would back ending the filibuster to codify abortion rights. Good for him!
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
UncleEbeneezer
I know you fear DeSatan being a tougher GOP candidate than Trump, but I really struggle to see this shit playing well with swing voters in PA, WI, MI, NC, AZ etc., that he would need to beat Biden in 2024. Sadly, it will do great damage to FL kids and teachers before that (assuming this law doesn’t get stricken down by SCOTUS which even with this awful Court is a possibility, though I certainly wouldn’t count on it). My understanding is that this bill is extremely unpopular, even among Republican voters. Probably not enough to tank his reelection, but definitely enough to be a major problem if he runs for President.
cope
I retired from teaching in Florida public school five years ago. I thought I was good for a few more years but my wife needed help with major medical issues. I’m really, REALLY glad I got out when I did. The dismantling of public education began long before DeSantis but he’s hell bent on finishing the job.
A week from tomorrow my grandson and I are headed to western Colorado to visit all my kin and, I am hopeful, lay the ground work for moving back there.
Baud
I don’t think teachers will get guidance until they sue.
Yutsano
Disney must be having a conniption right now. They know so many of their creative staff (and others in the organisation) are LGBTQIA+ and a lot of those staff have other options for work outside Florida. I really wonder how HR is trying to keep them from leaving. If I was in that situation in Florida I’d be gone as quickly as I could.
gene108
The truly dangerous part of Republican ideology is they truly believe America must always be “the greatest, best country God has ever given man on the face of the earth” (to quote Sean Hannity), while unable to realize everything they support is a race to the bottom that will lead the USA to be more isolated and ignored than anyone can remember.
The Republican Party is totally out of touch with reality and the direction the world has been heading for decades ranging from issues like family planning to voting rights to gun control to environmental policy and to trade policy.
When this happens Republicans will be looking for scapegoats to pin the blame for their failures on. This is when things will get truly terrible.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
My middle son used to listen to him – he’s 25- but he no longer does. He’s not very political but is a really reliable D voter I suspect because his IBEW local is very active in Ohio D politics. He says the show is “boring” now. They lost him with the endless COVID speculation, theorizing and ranting. He, like a lot of people, I suspect, just went and got vaccinated and didn’t think much about it past that. He didn’t see any big mystery there.
Jinchi
@Betty Cracker: That’s great news. The defense of the filibuster by senior Democratic politicians has given Republicans a green light to hobble Biden’s agenda and for the court to strip Americans of fundamental rights without any fear of consequences.
I’d really love to hear a similar commitment from my own senior Senator, Diane Feinstein.
raven
Bye bye EPA!
Betty Cracker
Well, breathing was nice while it lasted…
raven
The Court holds that the Biden administration’s decision to terminate the Migrant Protection Protocol, also known as the Remain in Mexico policy, did not violate federal immigration law, and the October memorandum was a final agency action.
Baud
@raven: That’s a good decision.
The EPA decision sucks when it comes to climate change, but it doesn’t get rid of the EPA. Things are bad enough without overplaying the horror.
Betty Cracker
@UncleEbeneezer: Hope you’re right!
@Kay: Good for him!
My brother is a Rogan fan, which disappoints me. Even if you find his shtick amusing, I don’t understand why anyone takes medical advice from such an obvious meathead!
Almost Retired
Ugh on the EPA decision, which I just woke up to here in much-less-smoggy-than-it-used-to-be Los Angeles.
Can’t tell yet if it’s based on just the conclusion that the EPA exceeded the authority granted it to Congress, which is (with a Dem. majority) fixable, or if it goes beyond that and can potentially be used to invalidate any assertion of executive authority by an agency not explicitly authorized by Congress. Or maybe worse, and attacks most regulatory authority. I need more caffeine, and then I’ll try and rage-read it. I’ll assume the worst.
It’s been years since local radio did morning smog reports, along with the surf reports. They’re coming back.
raven
@Baud: well excuuuusssse me!
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Betty Cracker: As usual for this term, all three Justices dissented.
Baud
@Almost Retired:
From what I can tell, it’s purely statutory, so it can be fixed by legislation. Haven’t read it in detail yet.
Jinchi
@Jinchi: And on closer look, it seems like Biden just wants a one-off change to the filibuster.
Baud
@Jinchi:
Or he knows that’s all he can reasonably hope to get.
Suzanne
@Betty Cracker: I recently saw a photo of Rogan from prolly early 2000s next to a photo of him today, and the amount of human growth hormone and steroids he must be taking is staggering. Almost unrecognizable. I bet he has a large incel listenership.
gene108
@UncleEbeneezer:
Trump won those states in 2016.
DeSantis will be 45 or so in 2024. President Biden will be close to 80 years old.
The MSM is already drafting articles about how Biden is old and out of touch, while DeSantis is the young exciting new brand of politics Americans crave. The MSM is just waiting for this year’s election results and presidential primary season to start before publishing these stories they’ve already written.
The MSM hates Democrats with the fury of one million white hot suns. Democratic presidents are boring. They don’t do exciting things the MSM can build careers off of like invading Iraq or rage Tweet ten times a day or plot a coup to maintain power.
President Biden isn’t popular. I like the job he’s doing, but his poll numbers have been weak since the Afghanistan withdrawal. I doubt high inflation or high gas prices will reduce unless we enter a recession and demand drops, in which case President Biden will be blamed for a recession.
Very few Democratic politicians are in a strong position, because our voters are erratic and fickle, unlike Republican voters who should now be overjoyed their vision of a Christian theocracy is on the verge of being fulfilled.
cope
@Betty Cracker: Anne Gorsuch would be so proud of her little boy, all growed up.
Baud
Roberts wrote both opinions today.
Baud
@gene108:
You think the current economic situation will go on through 2024?
Bruce K in ATH-GR
So … I’m gathering that in the West Virginia case, the
InquisitionCourt didn’t blow the brains out of the administrative state, just kneecapped it?FelonyGovt
As the mom of a gay daughter who had a really rough time in middle school and even high school, reading about Florida going backwards on that front saddens me greatly. What horrible people they are.
MisterDancer
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: kneecapped, it looks like from reactions elsewhere online.
Baud
@MisterDancer:
That’s reliable.
gene108
@Baud:
The House under Democratic control can pass laws to fix things. How will Democratic Senators convince 10 Republican Senators to end the inevitable filibuster on even starting debate on the House bill?
Republicans broke the Senate, so all the laws can be decided by judges with lifetime appointments and no elected Congressional Republican can be held accountable for their unpopular positions, since nothing can get past a Senate filibuster for them to vote on.
The SCOTUS makes the laws now, which is what Republicans want, as well as my wild guess is something Manchin and Sinema are okay with as they don’t have to take votes on anything.
sixthdoctor
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: That’s the impression I got from reading the quick opinions of people like Elie Mystal, Leah Litman, and MJS: a terrible, horrible opinion which could have been far worse and probably the best we could’ve hoped for from these anarchists in robes.
Geminid
@cope: Will you visit Alamosa? I stayed in that town on two different trips. It’s a nice place to walk with wide sidewalks and a park along the Rio Grande, right next to downtown.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I think my son has no interest in “medical advice” as a subject :)
He was probably “WTF- why are these people going on and on about this?”
But then he’s a little younger than the Rogan “desperately hip although now early middle aged” demo.
Layer8Problem
@gene108: Not exactly a call aux barricades! you got there.
Baud
@gene108:
I agree completely. The filibuster transfers legislative power to the Supreme Court. But the decision itself is statutory, not constitutional, which means a hypothetical Congress could fix it.
MisterDancer
@Baud: Like the lawyers/environmental folx I follow on Twitter, alright?
Baud
@MisterDancer:
Believe who you want to believe. I stopped fighting those battles.
UncleEbeneezer
@gene108: We have 2+ years to go until the 2024 election. Polling has been shit for over a decade. I’m skeptical of any predictions based on this current moment.
Jinchi
He doesn’t have to start by opening with the best he thinks Joe Manchin will give him. And Joe Manchin isn’t going to pitch the filibuster for abortion rights any more than he did for voting rights or saving kids from getting murdered at school.
The only way Democrats can succeed in the near term is ditching the filibuster entirely. It’s not going to happen this term. It could happen next, if the Democratic leadership commits to it.
‘Just give us two more Senate votes’ is probably the best campaign strategy for the Democrats in what is supposed to be a difficult year. If you want people to come out and vote, you have to prove you’re committed to getting things done.
Pelosi clearly knows this, as do the newer class of Senate Democrats. Biden needs to get in the lead on this.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud:
IANAL. Isn’t it also, even more, that the six Radical Clerics are all more ideological and more willing to be activists, to act as super-legislators, than O’Connor and Kennedy?
Chris Hayes had a great turn of phrase about the USSC becoming an unaccountable super-legislature. I wish I could remember it
Kay
Glenn Greenwald is now promoting Christopher Rufo. The anti-cancel culture crowd must be getting nervous on the growth end of the business. That market seems saturated to me.
Anyone who sincerely believed “cancel culture” was a serious problem given all the other problems this country faces should never be taken seriously again IMO. They vanquished the 20 year old social workers and kindergarten teachers! CRUSHED them. Such a brave, brave battle. But how to sell subscriptions now that the battle has been won?
Lacuna Synecdoche
Betty Cracker @ Top:
I gotta say, arguing that “the Don’t Say Gay bill isn’t a Don’t Say Bill because it doesn’t say Gay” is not the killer argument everyone on the right seems to think it is.
E.
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: Wellllll. . . . It completely took out the confidence any federal agency has to make regulations governing their assigned purview. It opened the field dramatically for industry to challenge any regulation they don’t like. It’s not about global warming and the EPA. So we still have executive agencies but their expertise is less important than what Congress wants to do. If you think Congress is the right place to argue about and decide how much logging should happen in elk habitat, or how much open space should surround an airstrip, or what sanitation procedures a hospital must follow, then Baud is right and no big deal.
Baud
@Jinchi:
If you want to criticize his negotiating posture, fine. I don’t care. But that’s a different criticism from saying that his proposal is what he “wants.” Maybe it is! But not necessarily.
Geminid
The title of this post, “Accelerating in Reverse,” brought to mind those demolition derbies they showed on tv when I was a kid. Drivers would run their cars in reverse so as to save their radiators. I can just picture DeSantis’s beady eyes in his side mirror as he tries to ram a school bus.
gene108
@Baud:
As long as COVID is around, there will be issues with the global supply chain as new variants drive seasonal spikes in cases which drives different parts of the world into various forms of lockdown.
I don’t think OPEC will increase oil production, and neither will U.S. oil companies. They can make profits off of what they are doing now.
Maybe COVID goes away and we never end up with a new variant that causes seasonal spikes, but so far that hasn’t happened.
Or we go into a recession because the Fed too aggressively raises interest rates or demand declines in the face of rising prices.
I just don’t think things will smooth out by themselves with COVID still being around to create less inflation and a strong labor market.
MisterDancer
I’m heartened by the precise language President Biden used, just now.
He didn’t say he wanted to bypass the Filibuster for Abortion Rights — or just Abortion Rights, I should say.
He said he wanted to bypass the Filibuster for Abortion and other Privacy Rights.
That sounds a LOT like drawing a Federal legislative line, if we can get it, against rolling back LBGTQIA+ rights any further.
The Moar You Know
@Jinchi: i don’t think her staff is allowing her to speak in public anymore.
It’s an article of faith with the idiots that Biden has cognitive issues. This is obvious bullshit (and the Trumpers in my office were stunned to find out that Dems had been saying the same thing about Trump for four years straight). Shit, if they want to find a Democratic politician with a lot of power who genuinely has severe cognitive issues, it’s Feinstein.
Baud
@E.:
The industry was already doing that because they understand who is on the Supreme Court.
MisterDancer
I….have no idea what this is about. You yourself said that that a “hypothetical Congress could fix it,” which is the point of “kneecapped” as opposed to “blow the brains out” to @Bruce K’s original question.
Could I maybe get a bit of benefit of the doubt here? I mean, this is feeling personal and I’m not certain why?
Suzanne
@Baud:
The broad trend of wages stagnating, affordability crises, and concentration of wealth in the hands of of the few? I absolutely think that will be going on in 2024.
Brachiator
The Extreme Court hobbles the EPA.
Can this damage be undone with new legislation?
I guess the Extreme Court now gets ready for a summer break.
TheTruffle
@Betty Cracker: Just yesterday, Twitter was in meltdown mode over a Reuters article saying Biden wasn’t bold enough. I hope they are melting down over something else today.
Baud
@MisterDancer:
I’m sorry, I misread the thread. I read “kneecapped” as equivalent to “blow the brains out” in the original comment. Kneecapped is correct. “Blow the brains out” is not.
The Moar You Know
@Baud: We will be in a recession by Q1 of 2023 at the latest. I think probably sooner.
I suggest next time anyone sees New Deal Democrat post here, click on the link in his name. He’s frequently in the COVID threads.
I’ve been reading that guy since he was posting at Kos (we left about the same time) and he, without realizing it, saved my 401k. Dead bang on the timing and everything else. Not everything he predicts is accurate (he’d be the first to admit it) but truly I have yet to see him make a mistake on the fundamentals. He understands the US economy like few people.
(Bill McBride at Calculated Risk is my other must-read and should be yours too if you are so fortunate as to own a house).
Jinchi
It’d be a lot easier to believe Biden wants to get rid of the filibuster if he hadn’t repeatedly defended it in the past.
This was a statement from just last year:
Baud
@gene108:
@Suzanne:
Ok. Thanks.
Baud
@The Moar You Know: How long will the predicted recession last?
MisterDancer
@Baud: No worries, I figured there was a disconnect!
Also: Grumpy Baud make me not Dance :(
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@TheTruffle: was that the headline about how Biden was “unlikely to adopt bold proposals”, rather than, “Biden sees no point in adopting slogans that pretend the Hyde Amendment and other branches of government don’t exist”
Kay
I don’t have an imperative for Biden right now on abortion. I’m reading a lot on the state level pregnancy regulations and it’s just overwhelming. I don’t think people understand how many and varied legal issues there are going to be. Just the surveillance piece- the measures they must and will take to enforce some these laws is huge.
Anti-abortion activists are truly the dog that caught the car. That they considered NONE of the complexity or interlocking issues that come with brand new pregnancy regulation schemes is fucking mind boggling to me. We are just getting started. Anyone who says they have their arms around this and “knows” what will “fix it” is either stupid or lying.
I;m for strong rhetoric from our people – political advocacy- but this is complex.
Baud
@Jinchi: He’s correct, we will regret not having it if the GOP takes over. But given the way things are going, I don’t see any other choice. At some point, Biden’s views may evolve, but he might not reveal that right way.
Another Scott
Agreed that they’re worse. Goldwater didn’t lead an insurrection.
One of the big questions is – what do we do about it?
Ipsos (from June 16):
This strikes me as correct and unsurprising and a variation of “all politics is local” and “it’s the economy stupid”. Most people don’t have the mental bandwidth to be deeply thinking about politics all the time. They’re trying to live their lives and maybe be a little ahead by the end of the month.
We need to remind people of how government policies affect them besides when their tax bill is due. Normal people actually don’t spend 30% of their time thinking about black helicopters and fluoride in the water and classes at elite law schools. They wonder when that big pothole is going to be fixed, and if the high schools is going to get a new air conditioner, and what’s going to replace the industrial park that closed 15 years ago. Reminding them that their ability to choose their leaders is being directly and overtly threatened is important.
It’s really hard to fight all the lizard-brain memes that the media push on people every day because it generates “engagement”. Kittens and puppies and ducks help a lot… The January 6 committee is helping a lot, I think.
We know it’s not going to be easy – it never is. But we have to keep pushing forward.
Hang in there.
Cheers,
Scott.
RinaX
@gene108:
Agree with your takes, especially the part about the media salivating at the chance to whitewash DeSantis at the expense of Biden. I simply don’t have faith that the electorate will see past the bullshit.
Yes, he barely won in 2018, but he’s spent four years build a culture of his own. That and an apathetic midterm turnout will be all he needs to win again and become the GOPs newest champion. It’s going to be laughable how quickly the Trump diehards get on board.
MisterDancer
Yet that’s never been Biden’s position.
“Bypass” is not the same as “eliminated;” he’s for the former in specific circumstances (Voting and now Privacy rights), but not across the board.
Now, one can have a debate on if this piecemeal approach is wise. But that’s different than mis-understanding his oft-stated, including today, approach on the Filibuster.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: The deficits are low as is the unemployment. Biden doesn’t get the credit for this not just from RWNJs but even those ostensibly on our side.
US has done better than most other large economies post COVID. Things have been improving gradually and will continue to do so. What happens two years from now is anybody’s guess. I remain optimistic about the economic outlook.
E.
@Baud: it lowered the bar far enough that you don’t have to be a big industry with money and clout and time for a Supreme Court challenge. You can be a logging company, a landowner with a wetland issue, a guy who wants to put up a billboard next to a highway. It’s a brand new tool in an already well-stocked arsenal. Remember we were already losing the fight to collectively solve our numerous environmental challenges/crises.
Mike in NC
The people of Florida went from their governor being Rick ‘Batboy’ Scott (now senator for life) to rubber-faced bigot Ron DeSatan. Who will the good citizens of the Gunshine State puke up next?
I think we’re pretty much finished with ever going back to Florida. Bugs Bunny had the right idea.
Baud
The really bad thing today is that the Supreme Court will decide to eliminate the role of state courts in redistricting cases next term.
Bupalos
@BellyCat: personally I think the only hope is for people to decide they aren’t going to obey this theocratic garbage without being literally forced to.
There is no way this stuff could be enforced without all the principals and teachers getting together and deciding to err on the side of the theocrats in advance. Just keep doing as you are, make them bring police into the rooms and arrest all the teachers. Make the few committed theocrat parents tuen themselves and their kids into pariahs.
They can’t do what they are trying to do without lots and lots of help from us. We’re giving them a power they don’t have by obeying in advance. We’re doing enforcement on ourselves on their behalf.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: also, Biden’s opinion and rhetoric matter less than that of the hypothetical 50th Democratic Senator. There are a whole lot of recent converts to “changing the filibuster” who are/were very specific with that language. Off the top of my head: Mark Kelly, Angus King, Maggie Hassan, John Hickenlooper.
Alison Rose
This is fucking chilling. It’s eliminationist. Queer people aren’t allowed to exist in public. And what scares me more than DeSantis doing this is all the people who support him for it. I hate this planet.
Betty Cracker
@Jinchi: I read something earlier about Pelosi saying help us hold the House and add two more Dem senators. Maybe that’s our best pitch. It’s specific. It emphasizes why a lot of stuff Biden ran on didn’t get done (insufficient Senate support despite bare majority with VP as tie-breaker). The piece I read (can’t remember where) noted that Pelosi almost never comments on the workings of the Senate, so that was significant — that she said that.
Jinchi
Name me three things the Democrats successfully filibustered.
Majority rule is the only way to govern in a nation where one party literally requires a 60-40 vote for even the most trivial legislation to pass.
Brachiator
I don’t see how this could possibly be legal.
How can this law override the parents’ decision?
Also, I looked at my birth certificate. I did not see any pronouns assigned.
I keep trying to understand. Is DeSantis popular in the state? Do these laws pass with large majorities?
J.
@Betty Cracker: If everyone dies, is it still owning the libs?
Soprano2
@The Moar You Know: She should retire, really. It’s irresponsible of them to let her stay in office if they know she has severe cognitive problems.
Jinchi
That is the Democrats best pitch. ‘Do this and we will get things done’ is the only sales pitch that will rally their voters after a year of taking repeated blows.
I think the article you read was this one.
Baud
@Jinchi:
I’d have to go back to 2017-18 to do that, and I don’t have the time. There were a few things, but nothing major, since the GOP doesn’t have much of an agenda and really doesn’t “force votes” on bills like we do because they don’t have voters who need reassurances on where the GOP stands
ETA: Or 2005-06.
jonas
@Baud: Right, but the ruling appears to imply that the EPA can really only regulate emissions or pollutants that were known to be harmful in 1970 because otherwise we’d just be “speculating” about Congress’s intentions. That’s real helpful.
cope
@Geminid: We’ll be on the Western Slope, Grand Junction to be exact.
Baud
@jonas:
I haven’t read it line-by-line, but I don’t see what you say in the opinion.
Soprano2
@Kay: Here in MO, the attorney general already had to clarify that their trigger law doesn’t ban hospitals from giving Plan B to rape victims, and some hospitals are now saying that they’ll have to monitor the health of women with ectopic pregnancies until they are sick enough for intervention because they are afraid of being prosecuted for performing an illegal abortion. In some states women are being denied medications because they might impact a fetus if the woman gets pregnant. There are lots of medications that do this – will all of them be denied to women of childbearing age now? Obviously they didn’t think about ANY of this when they were passing their “heartbeat” “life begins at fertilization” laws. As you say, sloppy, terrible work on their part.
Jinchi
@Baud:
Why will you miss the filibuster if Democrats have never used it for anything major, and nothing you can remember?
kindness
One would think that if a straight teacher could put a picture of their spouse up that a gay teacher should be able to as well. I mean, gay marriage is legal (for this moment). So I can’t see how telling gay teachers they can’t discus their spouse is remotely legal. Of course with our current Supreme Court the law isn’t the baseline, politics is so…..
Baud
@Jinchi:
I support getting rid of the filibuster altogether. But I acknowledge that means the GOP agenda can’t be stopped by the filibuster. I never disputed that it disproportionately hurts us.
Soprano2
@Betty Cracker: Josh Marshall has been hollering that they should do this for at least a month now. He says it needs to be specific, not the weasely “we’ll still fight for you”. I think he’s right, I just hope enough Democrats agree.
Alison Rose
@Brachiator: Well, you know how they think. If the birth certificate says male, that’s he/him. If it says female, that’s she/her. They will not accept anything different.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jinchi: Biden was a Senator for years. He probably has a good Idea just how far any president can push before members of a co-equal branch will dig their feet in.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Open Thread? Alyssa Farrah sheds some light on Cassidy Hutchison, and possibly other witnesses. “Trump world” has been paying for the lawyers for some of their alumni. Hutchison’s first lawyer had been part of trump’s WH Counsel office.
I wonder how many witnesses are wondering whose best interest their lawyer has been working for
CaseyL
@Soprano2:
GOPers are completely ignorant about sex and pregnancy. Cf that state legislator numbnuts who thought ectopic pregnancies could be moved to the uterus.
But – and here’s the thing – they don’t care. They don’t care that a whole swath of women will be unable to get effective medical care, and will likely die as a result. They just don’t give a fine feathered fart about that.
The “naming and shaming” tactic only works if the target has a conscience. GOPers don’t.
E.
@jonas: That isn’t stated in the opinion but it is one result of it. Agencies cannot be granted the leeway to use old statutory authority’s clear intent (“Keep the air from killing us”) to address new threats Congress could not have known about when the authority was granted.
Kay
@Soprano2:
I say it all the time but Roe was a fence. Outside the Casey limits the state could intervene but inside Casey they could not.
There’s a lot inside Casey and now that they are in there – right up inside womens bodies to conception– they are going to need reams of regulations and code sections and administrative rules and judge-made law.
When I was in law school it was fashionable for conservative law students to sneer at Roe. So fucking smart they all thought they were. They’re about to find out how difficult this issue is. Hubris. Pure arrogance.
Another Scott
@Jinchi: What’s insidious about the filibuster is that it doesn’t have to be “used”, it just has to be threatened to be used to keep legislation from moving forward. It’s yet another procedural hurdle that leaves almost no fingerprints these days. There are only so many legislative days in Congress. A leader is only rarely going to spend time on things that have no hope of passage – that’s the whole point.
When there are no consequences, nothing changes.
People are policy.
A lot of good will come from senators actually having to vote on bills, even if/when we don’t always win the votes (and we won’t). Voters need to see what their Representatives and Senators are doing in their name, and not let them hide.
The way to fix the Senate is to elect better senators (and add DC as a state, etc., etc.). That’s our job this November. In the meantime, if we can’t have 60+ good Democrats as senators, then chipping away at the filibuster rules until we get there is a sensible way forward.
Cheers,
Scott.
Geminid
@cope: I am unfamiliar with that area. My western trips tend to be New Mexico-centric so I only get to southern Colorado. But I bet it’s nice up there.
Jinchi
@Brachiator:
Yeah that one’s gonna be tough. Now they have to keep track of which students were born in Cuba, or Italy or China. And what about countries where they don’t even have gender specific pronouns?
catclub
also worse, SC allows courts to limit power of a democratic president and executive but give a Republican admin free reign. This is what many of their recent rulings look like as the Biden admin replaced the Trump admin.
gene108
@Bupalos:
Who is going to post bail for the arrested teachers? Pay for their lawyers? Cover the lost income from losing their job? Cover the lost future income from possible loss of pension benefits or ability to work in education again?
The power of the State is enormous. It’s very hard to stand against it, unless there are dedicated groups with funds to keep people in the fight.
Baud
@Brachiator:
They only care about parents’ rights when parents complain about CRT.
gene108
@J.:
Yes. That’s the ultimate ownage.
cope
@Geminid: Very nice. Desert and canyon Utah to the west, Grand Mesa to the east, San Juan Mountains to the south and the Colorado River running through town. Access to all things outdoors and fun.
catclub
@Brachiator:
The GOP guy won the Governorship in VA going all in on culture war and protecting our children from hearing about CRT. That is the present model they are running on until it does not work.
Eunicecycle
@Soprano2: I think we should say 4 senators myself. 2 is the bare minimum and allows no defectors besides Sinema and Manchin.
Mike in NC
Waiting to read that Moscow Mitch McConnell’s Extreme Court declares that all of the monuments and statues dedicated to Confederate traitors must be reinstalled.
gene108
@Kay:
ETA:
ETA2: I wonder how many of those prescription drugs (and there a lot of them) that have warnings to the effect of “consult your doctor or pharmacist if you are pregnant or could become pregnant”, are no longer going to be prescribed to women because of fear of leading to something that could be considered abortion?
Eunicecycle
@Kay: Hasn’t there already been a case in Dayton, where a woman needed an abortion to start chemotherapy. Ohio has a “heartbeat” bill so she has to go to INDIANA for God’s sake to get the abortion.
Betty Cracker
@Brachiator: Republicans dominate the gerrymandered statehouse. I don’t know if “Don’t Say Gay” and the other hard-right bullshit bills will hurt DeSantis or not. The people who analyze this stuff for a living think he’ll be reelected. This is a weird state though. I don’t pretend to understand it.
The Moar You Know
@Baud: As Bloody Hands Rumsfeld said once, that’s one of those “unknown unknowns”.
scav
They’ve really gone all in on the “Whatever hurts, harms or kills the most, updated daily” guiding star or jurisprudence. Need to start issuing them scythes along with those black robes.
schrodingers_cat
Self proclaimed allies whose first instinct is to attack you when you are down are not really allies. I see a lot of self-anointed progressive handles and media people attacking Ds for the havoc Rs are causing.
Women’s rights were nowhere on their radar, it was all m4A and GND and forgive my student loans before Roe went down.
Open abortion clinics in National Parks is not a plan, it is posturing.
We see you
Baud
@gene108:
No worries. Men can still get it!
Ken
@gene108: I remember ads a few years ago for a drug to treat baldness, where the warnings included “Women who are pregnant or planning to become pregnant should not handle the pills.” I wonder if those will be banned, or if — unlike treating women for mere cancer or lupus — they will be deemed medically necessary?
Lapassionara
@Betty Cracker: When I was actively practicing law, I had a case involving homes in Florida. What I learned, from reviewing deposition testimony, was that many people from northern states “relocate” to Florida and establish residency there, to escape their state’s income tax. I don’t think these people live in Florida year-round, but I think they vote there, because registering to vote is one way to establish residency. Just a hunch, but I think this helps keep the Florida electorate leaning R.
Matt McIrvin
@Another Scott: The worry is that electing good Senators is, itself, increasingly impossible–as the demographic Big Sort proceeds and swing-state Republican governments pass obnoxious laws that drive liberals and minorities out, even if the US has a Democratic-leaning majority it may be crammed into a minority of states that simply cannot dominate the Senate. The West Coast plus most of the Northeast simply isn’t enough states.
Jinchi
@Omnes Omnibus:
People spend a lot of time on this blog cursing anyone who didn’t bother to vote in past elections. Usually the targets are those with the least power, poor people, young people, and anyone who thinks voting doesn’t make a difference.
Then we start making excuses for the people who actually write the law.
Nobody cares what Joe Biden knows deep down after his decades in the Senate. He’s asking people to vote for his party and his agenda. Why?
‘Give us two more Senators and we’ll reverse the Court’s attack on Roe’, is a message people can get behind, a reason to vote.
But that only works if the filibuster is gone, and everyone knows that. So unless Democrats are willing to publicly commit to it they’re signaling that, majority or not, they won’t do whatever it takes to protect our rights. And a lot of people just won’t bother.
The Moar You Know
@Jinchi: Not to worry. Those folks will be stripped of citizenship and all property and then be deported.
Esay-peasy
ETA: Don’t think that this rather extreme step is not on the GOP agenda. It most certainly already is.
Another Scott
@Matt McIrvin: Yeah, it’s a legitimate problem. That’s why Democrats need to do as much as they can when they have power. We know that the GQP will tilt the playing field however they can so that the majority will not win. DC statehood is within our grasp, as is the ERA (Virginia ratified it, making 38).
I’m old enough to remember that the Senate flipping when Reagan won in 1980 was a big surprise. Politics can change quickly and in surprising ways. Given the lack of polling these days, and the poor quality of a lot of it (push polling), we could be in for more surprises. They are more likely to be pleasant ones if we work for it.
Cheers,
Scott.
Omnes Omnibus
@Jinchi: With the two more senators, we should be able to at least carve out an exception to the filibuster for Roe and voting rights. I don’t care if we kill it outright or exception it to death.
Mike in NC
Am watching a TV ad for some pillow called “MyNuzzle” and can’t help but think if it isn’t a spinoff from the MyPillow cretin that Trump wanted to put in charge of the Pentagon or State Department. God help us.
Baud
@Jinchi:
Which Democrats are you waiting to hear from? I agree that they should state they will end the filibuster to enact abortion rights.
Ksmiami
@The Moar You Know: Biden could actually start using /threatening to use the enormous power of his office on intrastate commerce and military funding as a lever to come at the out of control GOP
scav
@Baud: That could be a cash crop for drug dealers. Set up a lot of local male taps into the legal drug trade and then distribute as needed. Horrors! They might need to set up multiple barriers between males and needed medication! Midnight no-knock raids to make sure the males have taken all their pills and not made a little cash on the side.
Suzanne
@Lapassionara: The entire Sun Belt is structured along that premise. Cheap and plentiful development (that must continue, or the whole proposition falls apart), and low taxes after you’re done consuming the public services. You can decide to be a primary resident of the new state and yet maintain your original residence and snowbird it if you want.
FYI, this is part of why I believe one really good policy change that would help housing affordability as well as correct the generational wealth gap would be to raise property taxes on second (and third, etc) properties dramatically. Probably also raise taxes on rents paid so that they’re taxed more heavily than income. Get people out of landlording single-family homes and condos.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
The Russians just announced they are withdrawing from Snake Island.
Betty Cracker
@Lapassionara: You’re right — retirees are definitely a big part of the state’s red heel turn (notably, The Villages). But retirees of another era also pulled FL out of its Dixiecrat habits a couple of generations ago and at least made actual Dems competitive statewide and dominant in South FL.
One theory for the more recent troubles is that fewer people from the Northeast are retiring here and more from the Midwest are. That tracks with my anecdotal experience.
As everyone here knows, the state-level party has been a basket case for decades. Obama narrowly won FL twice, partly because he set up his own GOTV organization.
The current state party chair announced a program to open a lot of local offices, plow money into registration, GOTV, etc., several weeks ago. I was surprised tbh because I had him pegged as yet another consulting class stooge. We’ll see if anything changes.
Jinchi
Agreed. But I don’t understand the whole ‘carve out’ idea Biden is suggesting. Once you establish the precedent, the filibuster is effectively dead. After that you’re just signaling what you ‘really’ care about versus what you pretend to care about.
Ken
@Jinchi: Hence the filibuster carve-outs when the Republicans controlled the Senate, for judicial appointments and tax cuts.
gene108
@Baud:
My recent thinking on the filibuster is to get rid of it.
Democrats go wild and pass laws making childcare more affordable, have supplemental federal payments for unemployment benefits, make the EIC payments monthly and fully refundable, make women’s reproductive rights enshrined into law, pass updated voting rights laws, raise taxes on the rich fuckwads to pay for shit, and whatever else is in the progressive wishlist.
Then dare Republicans to repeal those.
The Republican attempt to repeal Obamacare led to a massive turnout favoring Democrats in 2018.
People are scared of change, but once they have a tangible benefit, they do not want to lose it.
***********************
The New York gun law that got overturned the day before Roe scares me. The conservative fanatics aren’t going to stop until they get this SCOTUS, which is entirely on their side, to overturn every state law they object to. Conservative fanatics aren’t going to rest until they can order every part of this country to their liking.
Unless the composition of the court changes even Democratic states that try to preserve abortion rights or gay marriage will have their laws challenged and probably overturned by this SCOTUS.
Matt McIrvin
@Another Scott: The possible saving grace for the scenario I just outlined is that on the level of state-to-state migration, the trend has been in the opposite direction. Republicans crow about blue states in the Northeast and CA losing population, but not all of that is Republicans moving to make red states redder, some of it is Democrats moving to where land is cheaper.
And there’s been a reverse Great Migration of African-Americans into the South, which has produced effects like Georgia’s vote in 2020. The West has been getting bluer for decades and I’ve been thinking that the next frontier is the Southeast.
But things like Roe going away or Don’t Say Gay make it harder to contemplate that trend continuing–a Republican state government can make things intolerable or physically dangerous for people who aren’t on the team, even if they live in some cool blue area with a local majority that doesn’t approve.
Betty Cracker
@Jinchi: I agree there. I mean, voting rights are pretty damn important, right?
Baud
@Jinchi:
I agree. An exception for voting rights was risky enough. Two exceptions and the filibuster is pretty much dead. That’s why I think this is about getting reluctant Senators on board for abortion for purposes of the election.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
Thanks for this. It’s odd that DeSantis is eager to alienate corporations like Disney, that bring money to his state and attack families of gay and transgender children.
I know that Florida is a large, diverse state. It is hard to understand the power dynamics. I didn’t think it was strongly evangelical.
DeSantis seems to be as angry and as crazy as Trump. I can’t tell if he is as deep into grift as Trump.
hueyplong
@Betty Cracker: When you know and they know that we’ll have them pretty well outnumbered for the foreseeable future, it could be argued that nothing approaches voting rights as the top priority.
Jinchi
Personally, Feinstein. I’m happy that Biden is (slowly) warming to the idea of ending the filibuster, but I really wish he’d get to the obvious end point faster.
And I’d like to see more of them follow Pelosi’s lead and aggressively campaign on it.
Baud
@gene108:
That was the theory behind BBB. Sinemanchin hurt us badly.
WereBear
@gene108: I predicted this the other day when I said no fertile woman would go to a red state on vacation if it meant she would be mistreated, or even die, from all the complications this puts into her medical care.
Pregnant, or not.
Paul in KY
@UncleEbeneezer: He may not have that ‘star power’ that Cheetolini had over his idiots, but if he can capture them somehow (probably via TFG’s death or a huge payment to him), he’s much more dangerous than Trump if he gets to be Pres. as he’s not crazy with the attention span of a squirrel on crack. He’s very calculating & nasty & methodical. Think of Steven Miller (spit) as President.
Baud
@Jinchi:
She was with us on voting rights. Hopefully, she will make her position clear. But I doubt she’d be the holdout when it came to abortion.
Sister Golden Bear
Aaannnd here comes the inevitable gaslighting: Florida Moves To Dismiss Challenge To “Don’t Say Gay” Law As Showing No “Animus Against LGBTQ Individuals”
As I’ve said too many times before, this is part of an effect to eradicate LGBTQ+ from public life.
cmorenc
@Baud:
WVA v EPA was decided exclusively on statutory interpretation grounds (albeit taking a very stingy approach to interpreting the scope of the Clean Air Act as written), and not on constitutional grounds e.g. by taking a stingily narrow interpretation of the commerce clause etc. that would have meant congress inherently lacks any power to ever enact legislation regulating CO2.
That’s not to say the decision didn’t put a huge speed-bump in the way of the federal government’s regulatory authority, and not only because it’s difficult to get anything through congress in the current political environment, but because it turns interpreting any authorizing piece of legislation into a very rigid version of “Simon Says” where statutory wording of any regulatory legislation will be read as stingily narrow as possible.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Is MomSense around? or other Mainers? I’d like to hear a local’s perspective on how much Angus King has been radicalized by recent events. I believe he endorsed Susan Collins in 2020, and even if he didn’t, he didn’t endorse Gideon, which IMHO he should have.
Also, if you haven’t heard, Pat Leahy fell and broke his hip, so I imagine he’ll be out for at least a couple of weeks? He’s already announced his retirement. As someone noted here yesterday we don’t hear much about that race, I don’t know if that’s because Welch is considered a safe bet. I looked up “Vermont Senate race” and found this wiki page. The most interesting things is how many local pols passed on the race, which I guess (?) is further evidence that people think Welch has it sewn up. Welch is 75. Maybe those up and comers are biding their time
Baud
@cmorenc:
Kagan’s dissent observes that the conservatives have abandoned textualism because it doesn’t suit their agenda. Libs are the textualists now.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I didn’t know about Leahy.
Alison Rose
As a reminder, Judge Jackson’s swearing-in should be on soon. I’ve got ABC News on now and it just has a “coming up” graphic for it, so not sure exactly when.
Matt McIrvin
@Brachiator: Florida has a constant influx of old people who are on balance socially conservative and, even if they are not evangelicals, are easily baited on hot-button issues about S-E-X.
That said, I know for a fact that not all of the seniors attracted to the place are socially conservative or even straight. Maybe DeSantis doesn’t care as long as he can filter the inflow to make it more Republican.
Baud
@Alison Rose :
They’re running late.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: historically, hasn’t abortion been one of Feinstein’s stronger left positions? She voted for the Iraq War, Bush’s first round of tax cuts, a bunch of un-lovely Bush nominees at DoD and DoJ, but women’s rights have always been one of her strong suits.
OTOH, she was an opponent of even filibuster reform back in the day, when people still talked about “Cardinals”. In the Bush years (IIRC) Feinstein, Leahy, Levin, Byrd and Biden were cited as the institutionalists/traditionalists who opposed any change. Pretty sure Leahy has shifted.
Betty Cracker
Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has been sworn in. Finally, something good comes out of Florida! :-)
Baud
OT. Has anyone seen Frankensteinbeck recently?
Betty Cracker
@Jinchi: We have to get all of them on the record to make it meaningful. If we campaign on “give us two more Democratic senators” and voters deliver, then someone flakes out on the filibuster, that would be beyond disastrous.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I think so. She put down a marker when it came to voting rights, so she’s shifted to that extent.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Alison Rose
Um….except I guess it already happened, according to Twitter, and for some reason no one showed it live? WTF
Baud
@Alison Rose :
You can watch it here.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/media/live.aspx
ETA: Never mind. Looks like it was a live feed only. No recording.
NotMax
‘@Baud
Ditto regarding Quinerly.
Betty Cracker
@Alison Rose : I was hoping for a report on what socks Dr. Jackson was wearing
Paul in KY
@Mike in NC: I do enjoy Anna Maria Island though….sigh.
Matt McIrvin
@Brachiator: Florida’s voter base gets more and more elderly as more old people go there to retire. These people aren’t necessarily evangelicals, but on balance they are going to be more conservative than the national average on sex-and-gender topics, so you can bait them that way.
That said… I know from personal experience that not everyone attracted to the place as a retirement destination is conservative or even straight. So becoming a scary place for gay people is, indeed, going to dissuade some fraction of them. But if it makes things better for DeSantis getting reelected, he probably doesn’t care. If it specifically becomes the go-to destination just for conservative retirees, that’s probably to his benefit.
Alison Rose
@Baud: Yeah, none of the news channels apparently showed it live. NYT had it I guess but TV didn’t, and now I can’t even seem to find a video. Damn it >:(
Okay, found a video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXDy5JAHtQ8
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
What I don’t get is, if FL is getting older, which states are getting younger and presumably more blue?
Another Scott
@Betty Cracker: Looks like no socks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ui0U0RIQhXQ
Smartwatch and beige bootlets? And a navy blue dress.
Go Navy!
Cheers,
Scott.
brantl
@Jinchi: THIS, EXACTLY THIS. They have to be willing to go all-out, nothing else is going to cut it, with the current Senate.
gvg
@CaseyL: Naming and shaming in this case is trying to ruin the reelection chances of specific politicians who voted for certain unpopular things and said things that are clear enough to scare some low information voters. It is also about ruining the brand for young not yet committed voters. It is true that the young tend not to vote enough to serve their own self interest, but that is something that changes over time. The current almost always vote older citizens were once rarely bothered to young voters. Get proper democratic party habits established young, and it will help prevent another pendulum swing after we get a larger majority.
gene108
@Ksmiami:
Conservatives have for decades felt the use of the interstate commerce provision of the Constitution has been abused by the Federal government to force businesses and states to comply with federal laws going back to the Teddy Roosevelt administration.
They will be eager to take a new test case to Federal courts and this friendly to them SCOTUS to upend the past 120 years of precedent.
Kent
This is mostly about coal. And since there is no such thing as “clean coal” the EPA still has the authority to further reign in coal burning by regulating particulate matter emissions which is SQUARELY within their jurisdiction to do so. And there is pretty universal scientific support for the notion that current particulate emissions standards for coal plans are way too lax.
The Obama administration didn’t want to go there so they went in the CO2 direction instead and tried to do a trading thing. But back to square one. We can heavily restrict smokestack emissions on particulate and other pollutant grounds. It will just be a bigger and longer regulatory process.
Matt McIrvin
@Bupalos: The number of people who are willing to risk losing their livelihoods, permanently, being branded as a sex offender, or going to jail for a moral stand is limited.
Baud
@Kent:
The EPA had already made clear that it was not going to implement the plan that was being challenged as is. It even argued that the case was moot because of that. Kagan notes that the court shouldn’t have even bothered taking up the case because of that.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: The whole country is getting older. States that attract old people are just doing it faster.
But the whole West Coast and adjacent areas have been getting bluer for decades, and portions of the Southeast are too–it’s just hard to see because a lot of the action is not in swing states.
Suzanne
@Baud:
The country as a whole is aging. Birth rate has been declining for a while.
Kent
It is about winning the GOP presidential primary not local Florida politics. And GOP primary voters are indeed as angry and crazy as Trump.
Paul in KY
@jonas: If that is the correct interpretation, then that’s just crazy!
Paul in KY
@Baud: I just wish they’d return the filibuster to the Senator having to get up there and just blather on and on and on. The way it was back in the old days. I think our side would come out much better that way.
Kent
It isn’t about young vs old. It is about urban vs rural. The more urban the state the bluer it tends to be.
States that are urbanizing like VA and GA are turning blue. States that are mainly rural or that don’t have fast-growing big cities, like NE, WY and IA are turning more red.
If Milwaukee were the size of Minneapolis then Wisconsin would be more blue like Minnesota. Just like if Boise were the size of Portland then Idaho’s politics would look more like Oregon.
Steeplejack
My open tab count in Firefox is metastasizing as I trawl through legal Twitter. Not usually a good sign. But it’s a bit of a buffer zone: “open in new tab” to read later, but if I get overwhelmed <click> <click> <click> close those unread tabs.
scuffletuffle
@Suzanne: Great ideas!
Matt McIrvin
@Kent: But FL is a very special case because of phenomena like The Villages. Also the Republican loyalty of Miami-area Cuban-Americans.
Baud
@Kent: Does that explain Florida? Is it getting more rural?
Kent
Yes, and Florida’s urban areas tend not to be job centers like in other states. They tend to be retirement/vacation centers. They just have the retirement homes squished closer together and stacked on top of each other.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: My hope is the opposite happens due to fast-growing cities like Orlando, Tampa, etc.
@Matt McIrvin: Add to that many of the people who fled Chavez’s Venezuela. They also seem susceptible to the bullshit slogans about Biden (or any Democrat) being a socialist.
gvg
@Matt McIrvin: Florida isn’t getting older. That is conventional wisdom from decades ago. Some elderly still retire here, but there is much more age spread and work related immigration to mitigate the elderly. Also we are no longer so cheap to move to. I had relatives that were snowbirds starting in the 60’s to come here and they lived in a vast mobile home park. Since the hurricanes picked up in the 90’s, those have become much less popular which means moving here costs a lot more. The villages is actually kind of upscale. It’s not cheap housing at all which is part of why it trends more republican conservative (richer population).
About the 80’s the population was balanced enough that school funding actually won sometimes on ballots. The legislature usually finds ways not to do what the voters say, but the voters largely don’t catch on. Attention span issue. Anyway, its complicated.
Kent
A lot of Florida cities aren’t normal cities. They are more densely packed retirement villages. I think Florida is a special case in a lot of ways that doesn’t match the rest of the US.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: I think Florida needs to be treated very specially in any such analysis–it has the usual urban vs. rural party divide but I don’t think that’s what drives the trends. It’s got colossal Republican retirement communities that are not rural, and also an unusual bloc of immigrants who are Republican loyalists and can be retained by portraying your opponent as a Commie.
Ken
@Paul in KY: I think part of the problem is that people still think the filibuster is done that way; Jimmy Stewart speaking passionately for hours. I seem to recall a survey that found people’s support for the filibuster dropped considerably when they found it didn’t require that.
gvg
@Baud: No. More urban.
I don’t know why we are voting more republican.
Paul in KY
@Another Scott: Would looooove to see DC statehood, but not unless Idaho is split in two or something like that would I ever expect it to pass (under current circumstances).
Brachiator
@gene108:
This is insane, but I guess I can see some drug companies doing this to avoid liability issues. I can also see religious zealots seeking to ban any drug that might cause abortion. They seem willing to sacrifice women and the babies they supposedly love in order to maintain an absolutist position.
zhena gogolia
@Suzanne: I agree completely with these ideas.
Matt McIrvin
@gvg:
From all the data I’ve been able to find, it is. I may be wrong about it outstripping the national aging trend (though it has a big head start).
Paul in KY
@Betty Cracker: It seemed the whole state Democratic apparatus collapsed when Gov Chiles left the scene.
Nicole
@Baud:
I’m so old I remember California voters passing Proposition 8. And the Governator.
FelonyGovt
@gene108: Wow. I wonder if a woman like me (68 years old, haven’t been fertile for 23 years) would need to so certify to get meds in some of these trigger states?
Jackie
@Alison Rose : I watched it live on CNN.
Ken
Sorry for being tasteless, but this reminded me of the Surfside condo collapse. Google tells me that was just over a year ago, there’s been a settlement of nearly a billion dollars, and Florida is requiring re-certification of all condos over three stories tall.
Matt McIrvin
@Nicole: Yes, I think we underestimate how intense and rapid the West Coast swing to the Democrats has been.
Of course the Republican line is that this has made California an uninhabitable hellhole. But I get the impression that the slowdown in CA’s population growth has been largely driven by unaffordable real estate. I mean, I’d be wary to move there just for that reason.
louc
@Betty Cracker:
I miss the old “Boca Del Vista” crowd that was solidly Dem in South Florida.
A friend of mine in Miami, who is of Puerto Rican heritage, tells me Republicans successfully ran Spanish language ads in South Florida that painted the Dems as communists and that they were going to make US into Venezuela. Democrats had no effective Spanish language campaign going two years ago. I don’t know if they’ve learned their lessons or not.
different-church-lady
@Betty Cracker: Our dearly missed Cheryl Rofer waves a receipt:
gene108
@Suzanne:
Birth rates across the planet have been declining for decades.
If demographic trends hold, human population will start to decline in a few decades. It’s my one long term hope for us as a species. Fewer people consume fewer resources, need less land for housing and agriculture, etc. mitigating the environmental problems that are happening now and will get worse soon.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
And we can’t challenge that because so many of our young voters like the idea of being “socialist” (although almost no one in this country uses that term correctly)
different-church-lady
@Sister Golden Bear: What is that, the fuckin’ “I’m-not-touching-you!” doctrine they’re trying to invoke? [grrrr-face]
Baud
@gene108:
I plan to do my part in due course.
different-church-lady
@gene108:
Oh, finally some good news.
CaseyL
@Kent:
Do you know of any organized effort to get people to move to those areas?
I keep going back and forth about relocating after retirement, and pretty well decided I would not move to a Red state. But I’m an Old, and most of the misogynistic, homophobic, White Nationalist policies won’t directly affect me – so I’d be relatively safe in a Red state, just miserable on a personal/cultural level. (I lived in Florida for many years, and the political culture was unbearable even before the latest shift to full-on fascism.)
I’d still contemplate doing so – but only if there was a cohort doing the same thing.
Matt McIrvin
@gene108: Of course there are people painting this same trend as the crack of doom. Humanity is about to go extinct!
There are real problems with the entire human population collectively aging. And then there are non-real problems that turn into real problems because people are bigots. In the near term, countries whose population is declining can offset that by importing immigrants from countries that still have exploding populations. But the supply of those is declining, and most of the ones that are left are in Africa. So it also means your population will get blacker, and I know that is going to be a dealbreaker for many countries, not just in America.
Paul in KY
@Ken: Good point. To me, it is incumbent on us who want to reform or eliminate it to edumicate the peoples on how convenient it is for a senator that wants to gum things up to just basically say ‘Yeah, I’d filibuster that. For sure…’ without having to actually DO anything!
Back in the old days, I would have thought SNL could have done a good skit on the stupidity of it all.
different-church-lady
I mean, at this point we’re gonna decline ourselves out of existence just because some asshole was determined to mine the last Bitcoin…
Anyway
I wish Biden would quit using “MAGA/Ultra-MAGA”. Blame Republicans — call them out for their treatment of women and LGBT+
Kropacetic
As he resumes peddling a false narrative.
It seriously chaps my ass how Republicans will accuse you of lying if you paraphrase or repeat their argument in a rhetorically different way to highlight the absurdity or fail in any way to quote them absolutely verbatim (sometimes even if you quote them verbatim). They then proceed to say Democrats want to protect pedophiles and other things so far removed from the truth the Hubble telescope couldn’t find them.
I recall learning in Logic 101 about something I believe was called the proposition; effectively “the meaning of a statement, regardless of the words chosen.” It’s a pretty intuitive concept. I don’t understand why more people don’t pick up on this when discerning who is telling the truth.
different-church-lady
@Matt McIrvin:
But in terms of politics, that’s like saying any team can win the Stanley Cup if they just take players from all the other teams. This ain’t about survival, it’s about nationalism.
Suzanne
@gvg: Here’s a pretty recent piece from WaPo about Florida and what changes are making it more Republican.
Old people.
Leto
@louc: There were some ultra rich Republicans who bought Spanish language radio stations and essentially turned them into Faux News outlets. Not sure how Dems counter that, but yeah.
Another Scott
@Kent: I remember the first time we drove from Marietta, GA to Jacksonville, FL. LONG drive. I remember being excited when we finally crossed into Jacksonville – hey, we’re almost there!!1 – until I understood that it was huge (largest lower-48 city by area, and would be called a “county” in sensible places)…
Cheers,
Scott.
Matt McIrvin
@different-church-lady: The strategy has been a boon for the US in the past. Of course not everyone sees it that way.
The turn of the Republicans to hardline xenophobia is still a little weird to me because Reagan-era conservatism was so keen on welcoming immigrants from Communist countries, attracted by Reagan’s hardline anti-Communism, as a way to expand their voting base.
Suzanne
@gene108: Agreed.
The trouble is, of course, that our economy is losing if it isn’t growing. We have to figure out a more sustainable way to live together.
different-church-lady
@Kropacetic: Ron learned well from Trump. The attack itself is more important than anything supporting the attack. Power by triggering the lizard brain.
Paul in KY
@Another Scott: I remember the first time I drove I-10 into ‘Jacksonville’ and didn’t see any sign of man for about 15 mins. I was thinking ‘What the Hell…’
different-church-lady
@Matt McIrvin:
It worked in the past as long as we treated the imports as something sub-human.
gene108
@louc:
I wonder if Republicans are getting the same benefit from Facebook and other social media companies Trump got in 2016, along with information on how to best target digital media to audiences via work Cambridge Analytica did for Trump.
This promo for a BBC documentary on this issue is very interesting on how the Trump campaign effectively used digital media thanks to help from Cambridge Analytica and Facebook.
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/magazine-40852227
Matt McIrvin
@different-church-lady: I mean actual, voluntary immigrants, not kidnap victims. Though, granted, immigrants were often treated as subhuman too.
different-church-lady
@Matt McIrvin: In the 19th century the distinction could be razor thin.
rikyrah
all of it’s ridiculous, but THIS:
TOTALLY ENRAGES ME
Calouste
@jonas:
So no weapons are legal unless they were known at the time of the 2nd amendement, otherwise we’re just “speculating” about the founders’ intentions, right?
Brachiator
@gene108:
Yep. According to a number of reports, global fertility is falling.
But is this really a good thing?
You don’t just want to decrease the population. You want to encourage healthy replacement levels.
Kent
It would be futile. Economic trends are hard to buck.
If cities like Des Moines and Omaha become popular and fast-growing and start to attract the young people from those regions from moving even farther away to larger cities then there might be hope. But we are talking about long-term trends.
Kropacetic
Isn’t that pretty much how aports teams work?
Pretty much this, unless said immigrants fully embrace Republican unAmerican culture.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@louc: Bill Nelson was, according to what I read, a remarkably complacent candidate. There was a commenter here from FL who has vanished (Holocene human?) who said they were constantly frustrated in their efforts to volunteer for the state party, saying IIRC there was no plan, no coordination
Paul in KY
@gene108: And Russia!
different-church-lady
@Brachiator:
This planet is going to be an arid cinder in 30 years if we continue to use the same system that has taxes, so I really think this question is kinda moot. It’s absolutely silly to think that by the year 2050 everything is the same except there’s tons more olds than youngs.
Kropacetic
This is where it crosses the line from malicious and discriminatory into child endangerment.
Paul in KY
@rikyrah: That is so sad and fucked up! I’m so sorry for any LGBT students in Florida right now. The stress on them must be terrible.
gene108
@Matt McIrvin:
I think the biggest problem will be for the global economy to adjust. The idea that every generation there will be more people to sell goods to will breakdown eventually. The idea to measure business success by things like year-over-year sales growth will not be feasible.
I don’t see the adjustment to this reality going smoothly.
The latter point about the only explosive population growth being in Africa is true, but even birth rates in Africa are declining. They just have not declined as fast as the rest of the world.
I think it’s going to really depend on a willingness for businesses and governments to change the incentives for what constitutes economic success.
different-church-lady
@Kropacetic:
Not quite: the rosters have a fixed number of players. You can’t just sign 150 players and stick 75 on the ice at a time.
Betty Cracker
@different-church-lady: Huh? Not sure what this is supposed to mean.
Paul in KY
@Calouste: Careful now! They could go with no weapons not known of by the founders can be regulated…Bazookas for all!
different-church-lady
@Kropacetic: “We will adopt your confused, oppressed teenager.”
Betty Cracker
@louc: A bunch of those stations just got bought up by a group that’s allegedly sympathetic to Democrats, and Miami wingnuts are spitting mad, so perhaps so.
different-church-lady
@Betty Cracker: Cheryl is dunking on every Twitter genius who said Biden wouldn’t support ending the filibuster.
Kropacetic
@different-church-lady: Well, right, but Boston teams aren’t locked into just Massachusetts residents, they can recruit from anywhere.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
I’m not sure either, but it might have to do with the reaction to the story that Biden had cut some deal with McConnell on judicial nominees, which was taken to show that Biden wasn’t serious about being pro-choice.
Baud
@Betty Cracker: Good news. Hope it’s helpful.
Kropacetic
@different-church-lady: Better that they internalize decades of homophobia and become confused, depressed middle-aged folk. That’s what I learned growing up in the 90s…
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Betty Cracker: I’m guessing a viral story/tweet by Laura Bassett that Biden has made some kind of deal with McConnell about appointing an anti-aboriton judge to a seat in Kentucky when there is no vacancy in KY, and no one can figure out why Biden would be cutting a deal with McConnell at this moment. The source is a pay-walled article in a local KY paper.
Matt McIrvin
@Brachiator: Well, it depends on what you value. From a purely environmental, biosphere-survival perspective, human life basically has negative utility and anything that kills people is good. But presumably we want to balance that with some humanistic values (say we see survival of the biosphere as a means to a decent life for humans). Then it’s more complicated.
I personally do not care if/when the human species dies out in the long run but I would like to see a world in which the humans who do exist at any given time have some minimum decent standard of living. So we need to solve the problem of sustainably caring for an aging population. Places like Japan where the process is further advanced are already grappling with this.
Betty Cracker
Some good news out of Florida:
FL’s constitution has a privacy provision, and the state supreme court has explicitly ruled that it applies to abortion rights. That was like 40 years ago, and since all governors this century have been wingnuts, maybe the current state supreme court is radical enough to overturn that. We will see.
different-church-lady
@Kropacetic: OK, so in a complicated sign-and-trade deal we get physicists from Israel, and we sent them teenage opioid addicts from the outskirts of Gary, Indiana.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Betty Cracker: that’s a FL state judge? or federal?
Betty Cracker
@different-church-lady: Okay, got it! I’ve sort of tuned the intramural brickbats out as much as possible, so I was confused.
Matt McIrvin
@gene108:
That’s true, a bunch of countries in Africa have gone through the demographic transition already–it’s just some of them that still have high birth rates. So the supply of large numbers of people dries up everywhere eventually.
Betty Cracker
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: State circuit court judge, IIRC.
Kropacetic
@different-church-lady: Haha, well I was assuming some retirements.
Baud
I’m concerned the population decline will reduce the world’s supply of soylent green.
different-church-lady
@Baud: How is it you’re not president already?
Urban Suburbanite
@Betty Cracker: I wouldn’t call it susceptibility. I suspect the Venezeulan moving in are similar to the Batista loyalists – rich, insane, and hard right. A bunch of them were involved in that idiotic mercenary operation in Venezuela a while back.
Suzanne
@gene108:
Yes.
The other challenge is that of course needs and productivity are not perfectly distributed through life. We need a lot of care and resources early in life and then again at the end. So if a big cohort of people get old and the groups behind them are equal or smaller, supporting and caring for those old people becomes a very difficult task. Hence the “robot nurses” of Japan.
Geminid
@Paul in KY: Politico Magazine had a long piece about Charlie Crist a couple months ago. It focused on Crist’s current campaign, but the writer also delved into Florida’s politics over the last of decades. He quoted Democrats who said that Crist helped knock the props from under their party during his tenure as a Republican Governor. If he beats Fried for the nomination Crist will be have to overcome this damage to beat DeSantis. That may be ironic but it does not neccesarily mean that Crist is an unsuitable candidate.
Both Crist and Fried seem to be centering electability, not policy differences, in their primary contest. I’m not sure anyone can say with certainty who has the better chance against DeSantis. But the polls show Crist with a substantial lead among Democrats and unless Fried can make a major move he will be the nominee. Then we’ll see if the tortoise can run down the weasel.
CaseyL
@Kent: Can’t deny being relieved to hear that I won’t have to sacrifice my own peace of mind on a futile bid at demographic shifting.
As I think I mentioned earlier, some states are (or at least were) offering incentives to get young people, esp. “digital nomads,” relocate there. But the incentives weren’t much (maybe $10K for a down payment on a home) and I have no idea whether they’ve been successful.
Urban Suburbanite
@louc: The same thing happened with the incoming representative Flores in Texas (that she shares the GOP hatred of black people also helped).
I’ve heard one of the more insane Spanish-language stations in Florida was bought out by some liberal types, so maybe Democrats are slowwwwlllly catching up to the present decade.
Calouste
@Brachiator:
There will be a feedback loop (i.e. not enough people willing or able to work in geriatric care and medicine) which means that elderly people will just die earlier due to lack of care and treatment.
debbie
@Baud:
Will it kill the Paris Climate Accords?
Sister Golden Bear
Proud Boys menace a “rainbow storytime” at a library in Indiana.
Sooner or later one of these confrontations will result in violence.
Baud
@debbie: Not directly. I don’t know if it’ll make it harder to achieve them.
Suzanne
@Calouste:
There’s also a doctor shortage already (especially in rural areas), for a vicious-cycle reason…. it costs so much and takes so long to get through med school and to become a doctor that the AMA has put downward pressure on med school admissions in order to keep demand for doctors and salaries high. Which is part of why many rural areas have few to no doctors, they can’t make as much money.
debbie
@Kay:
They’re the same people complaining that “woke” people are aware people. How is that a bad thing???
Kropacetic
Reporters haven’t wanted to work for decades. They’d rather build a career on cheap, easy eyeballs than reliably informing people. So we get umpteen articles about how younger generations just don’t want to work, as an example…
Geminid
@gene108: I read that in 2020 the Republicans’ Spanish language social media campaign in Florida was intense and effective. The Biden team was warned of this, but they were not so well funded until that August and they had to play catch up. There there was a similar dynamic at play in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley, where Republicans made notable inroads in a formerly solid Democratic stronghold.
Kent
Also the failure of many red states to expand Medicaid under the ACA. Rural areas have tons of poor people and if they can’t pay for healthcare then hospitals close and doctors leave. No one wants to work for free.
Kent
Yes, and right-wingers own most of the Spanish language radio stations in those areas. Which honestly just play ALL DAY LONG in a lot of Latino businesses just like FOX news plays all day long in many retiree homes.
Suzanne
@Kent: Doctors often have upwards of a quarter-million in student loan debt. Grads literally cannot afford to go into primary care or work in rural areas.
We have to pay money now or pay with our lives later.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: I think Montana has a similar provision in their state constitution.
Betty Cracker
@Urban Suburbanite: I’m sure that’s true of some but by no means all. A sane, non-wealthy Venezuelan immigrant friend tells me it’s a real issue in her community. It’s understandable that people fleeing a country that rapidly became a hellhole thanks to a corrupt dictator would be vulnerable to political hucksters who speak their language and lie to them about a political landscape they don’t know well.
Betty Cracker
@Kent: Not so much anymore.
Paul in KY
@Geminid: I would think that Fried has the puncher’s chance, but Crist has won a statewide election, albeit as a Repub…
Back when I lived in FL in the early 80s, Dems ruled & ran everything….
Kropacetic
Reform adult education. Train more doctors (and various people for various things, not just university either). Make it more affordable
Say if later, more people were dying but I personally had enough money to get around the trend… /Republican
Gravenstone
@Jinchi: It’ll be up to that future Senate what the scope of any filibuster exception may cover. I doubt Biden will complain if a Dem majority chooses to slip a few more needed adjustments through under cover of an “exception”.
Geminid
@Paul in KY: Crist also flipped a red Congressional district and won reelection there at least two times. He seems to radiate blandness though. I think that is one of the reasons some people prefer Fried. She has pizazz, and Crist is pizazz-free.
Ksmiami
@gene108: we are going to have to test it anyway: might as well fight it now
Almost Retired
@different-church-lady: Exactly! The Baud! Presidency is long overdue. At the very least, there will be a better class of condiment running down the wall.
FelonyGovt
@Betty Cracker: That’s interesting. If there’s a privacy provision in the state’s constitution, maybe “Don’t Say Gay” and its disgusting effects could be challenged on that basis as well.
debbie
@Baud:
Thanks.
Suzanne
@Almost Retired: Dijon mustard and arugula?
Betty Cracker
@FelonyGovt: True. A friend was speculating about that earlier.
Ken
@different-church-lady: Or maybe Neil Gaiman’s “Virus” is right, and we’ll disappear because we all find more addictive things to do.
Glidwrith
@Brachiator: Grift. Someone tracked down that all those banned school books were to be replaced by the publishing house books run by the NC governor, I think.
Ken
IIRC, Montana also thought they had a provision banning bribery, until the Supreme Court struck it down because it violated free speech as construed post-Citizens United. Or maybe it was Wyoming.
Anastasio Beaverhausen
I think the teachers should continue on, as before. They might lose their licenses? In Florida? The below standard pay, uninformed regulatory overreach and general disrespect of educators are not outweighed by the so-called “sunshine bonus” you get working in Florida. As the husband of a teacher I can tell you, they are IN DEMAND! Come to DC/MD/VA/DE and you can be as out as you want and get better pay and be respected. Hubby’s middle school has a pride club!
J R in WV
@jonas:
But scientists were fully aware of how harmful CO2 discharges were long before the 1970s. The “justices” of the Theocratic Court turn out to be an uneducated as Trump and his minions. Know nothing, can’t tell what’s real and what’s not.
J R in WV
@Eunicecycle:
And another piece of this sick pie is that the “heartbeat” those bills isn’t really a heartbeat at all. it’s created by the ultrasound machine from tiny electrical pulses, and those pulses start weeks before there’s anything like an actual heart or the beginnings of a circulatory system.
It’s a fucking lie, intended to make prospective mothers smile when they have an ultrasound.
Geminid
@Ken: It was Montana. The state had a provision in their anti-bribery law that banned corporate contributions to political campaigns. Applying their ruling in Citizens United, the Supreme Court voided it.
I’m not sure how relates to Montana’s constitutional guaranty of privacy rights, except to illustrate a general observation that the Supreme Court has struck down state laws before in Montana as well as other states.
Bupalos
@gene108:
The point is they aren’t going to arrest all the teachers who don’t pre-obey, because they literally can’t. They don’t have anything like the manpower or enforcement mechanism outside our own irrational fear and lack of commitment, and spoiled desire for freedom to be free. They will try to arrest a few example cases because the only hope they have to enforce this is for people to voluntarily be cowed by “the power of the state.”
The cases will be ridiculous and show how ridiculous this garbage is, and the few teachers that get fired can easily be compensated by donations from our supporters. And probably get a new career in public speaking out of it. Any given teacher should be so lucky to get arrested for wearing a fucking rainbow and showing children kindness and understanding.
Let 1000 Scopes bloom.
J R in WV
@Suzanne:
One of my best friends went back to college/med school, and graduated with $350,000 in loans. It sounds terrible, but they were paid off in 3 or 4 years. He worked in a major trauma center as an ER doc. Retired now, he works on drug abuse issues and needle exchanges.
superdestroyer
Maybe the teachers should take the hint and find another line of work. It is obvious that they are not wanted in Florida. Maybe if there was a huge teacher shortage, the voters would have a better understanding.
James E Powell
@Geminid:
To me, Crist is the worst kind of politician, all about himself and no one else, but I would give him one of my paychecks if he could beat DeSantis. It’s going to take a sea change to make that happen. I’ve predicted a double digit win for DeSantis and I haven’t seen anything to make me reconsider.
James E Powell
@Betty Cracker:
How many recent arrivals are voting?
jonas
@Baud: See E.’s comment below
rikyrah
@Kay:
what pains me is the stories of preventable death that will soon come. That senseless loss of life and those they will leave behind. A lot of them will be mothers who will die.
Geminid
@James E Powell: The last three Florida Governor races were decided by 60,000, 65,000, and less than 40,000 votes. That last total was out of over 8 million votes cast in 2018.
Florida has shown a gradual Republican trend since Obama carried it in 2008 and 2012; Clinton lost by under a hundred thousand votes in 2016, while Biden lost by over 200,000 in 2020, I think. But what do you see that tells you the Republican vote has grown so dramatically since 2018 and 2020?
We’re talking a 900,000 vote win for DeSantis to hit a double digit margin. Now, that would really be a sea change!
anon
Stop. living. in florida!!!!!!
Brachiator
@Matt McIrvin:
Where do people get this stuff from? The biosphere doesn’t get a vote. Living entities, including humans, have a survival instinct. And I presume that other humans have as much of a right to live as I do.
So I guess we need to do the best we can.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Betty Cracker:
Rush Limpdick had his “dittoheads”. Your description of Rogan as a “meathead” can be extended to his viewers…
“Meatheads”!
Betty Cracker
@anon: Fuck off.
debbie
@Eunicecycle:
The Franklin Co. DA has said he won’t prosecute. Maybe there’ll be a sort of sanctuary county?