The Times really tore it up this weekend. First, they published an opinion piece by Bret Stephens’ ex-wife Pamela Paul, who was the editor of the Books section for ten years, explaining how both the far-left and far-right have agreed that “women don’t count”. Her evidence for the far-left includes her statement that noted far-left organization Planned Parenthood doesn’t have the word “women” on the front page of their website. (It’s all over their site, just missing from the front page.)
Not to be outdone comparing the use of gender pronouns to making 10 year-old rape victims carry their babies to term, the Times also published a guest opinion piece comparing regular doctors to “pro-life” doctors in their approach to “delivering” an ectopic pregnancy: “When a mother’s life is threatened by the course of her pregnancy, there is a wide gulf between a culture that assumes she and her baby are pitted against each other and one in which both are valued.” I sure hope when both the baby and the mother are valued, that the pro-life doctor is able to excise the completely non-viable set of cells (a.k.a. “her baby”) before the mother exsanguinates. (Ectopic pregnancies are horrible, and it’s too bad the author had to experience one, but there’s no reason for the Times to give this kind of nonsense a platform.)
Speaking of young people seeking abortions, the Times went all the way to Texas to find a young person who is “life affirming” (the new “pro-life”) to show that, yes, there are young women who are against abortion. This young woman works at a “crisis pregnancy center” which means that’s she’s a known and frequent liar working for a lying bunch of fucking liars, but still, she’s definitely one young person opposed to abortion. The 12th graph of the piece does acknowledge that just 21% of women 18-29 were opposed to abortion in the latest Pew survey, so I guess it’s “journalism” after all.
Also, though it wasn’t published this week, Emily Bazelon’s earlier Times piece about transgender kids used Genspect, an organization that supports “100% desistance and a ban on transition up to age 25” as the “other side.” Now it appears that her piece has been entered into evidence by the state of Texas in a hearing to justify their investigation of trans kids.
I’m not generally an “ignore it and it will go away” person, but the Times’ editors clearly thrive on criticism from Democrats — they think they’re “doing it right” when we’re pissed, because the sacred “both sides” are being represented. So, and I know this is a long term project, in addition to unsubscribing, I think we need to concentrate on media that does represent our issues, and isn’t afraid to report on those who are immiserated by Republicans, because the Times sure as hell isn’t getting the job done.
(Funny side note to the Pamela Paul story: here’s Jon Lovett’s tweet about it, and here’s thirsty as fuck Jon Chait responding by saying that if you invite me onto your podcast, Lovett, I’ll explain why it makes sense. The notion that Chait has some grand insight that is so super-secret that he must be invited onto Lovett or Leave It just to share his wisdom is a real knee slapper.)
Tuesday Morning Open Thread: And Yet, We Go On
Baud
It’s called engagement. The NYT editors are Facebook algorithmms in human form.
kindness
The NY Times carrying on the tradition of electing Republicans, same as it’s always been. They elected Trump by pumping Hillary’s e-mails & Benghazi and that was on purpose. I won’t give them a dime, no matter how much I like Krugman.
raven
Four Medal of Honor recipients today. Two Asian Americans and a Native American.
Baud
@raven:
Alison Rose
If only the NYT were the flaming liberal rag the right wing thinks it is.
Also, this post title should be a rotating tag.
Betty Cracker
Lovett:
Exactly right.
I don’t know Lovett’s views about cancel-culture panic purveyors like Chait, but I wish someone would host a debate with those media maven shitheads who still claim to be left of center and accuse them to their faces of making in-kind contributions to the Ron DeSantis for President campaign.
Emerald
The loss of Eric Boelert is deeply felt.
MisterForkbeard
You know what’s really sad? Read the Jon Lovett tweet and then see replies from (putative) women screaming that he’s a white man trying to take over their movement and/or ‘stopping women from having their liberating moment’.
I’m just going to assume that most of them are trolls, because I’m not sure how you get so far around the bend that it makes sense to you.
different-church-lady
Fixation on “correct” pronouns = ridiculous.
Fascist control of women’s bodies = terrifying.
Yeah, clearly these are the same thing from different sides.
Jeffro
God, if only they led with the 21% figure…can you imagine the kind of world we’d live in if our snooze media started with actual *facts * and stuff when reporting?
SiubhanDuinne
@raven:
Thanks.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/05/politics/biden-medal-of-honor-vietnam/index.html
(From the CNN story):
different-church-lady
@MisterForkbeard: Give anyone 100 liberals and we can find at least three that are going to act like cartoon versions of liberals.
Give mainstream media 100 liberals and they will edit out the other 97.
Baud
@different-church-lady:
The true lesson of The Handmaid’s Tale: everyone used the correct pronouns.
@different-church-lady:
Word.
feebog
My wife went from mild discomfort to stomach cramps to excruciating pain to emergency surgery in less than four hours. There was no choice, end the pregnancy or die.
mattdf
I, too, felt compelled to look. Every picture on the front page of Planned Parenthood is of a woman. They don’t need to use the word because they know who their audience is!
rikyrah
@Jeffro:
21% is BELOW THE CRAZYFICATION FACTOR
DFH
I get WaPo online version, bought it when Mueller was going to save the country and WaPo’s coverage seemed important. I don’t even click on NYT links, not wanting to participate.
Jen Rubin tries, and I like her (part of the reason for going to WaPo, actually) but her expectations are unrealistic. Today:
“Let’s be blunt: A great many Republican candidates are bonkers. Or they are pretending to be.”
“They are either hopelessly gullible or infinitely cynical.”
I don’t think we can understand, fully. I think evolution is at play and moving fast. More:
On Kristi Noem insisting a 10-year-old girl must carry to term, “Fellow Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) looked on aghast. “I’m blown away,” he said. “It’s like ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers.’ This is not the Kristi Noem I served with.””
Evolution, I think, has removed large sections of brain in Republicans and conservatives. Judgment is impaired, compassion and empathy are no longer accessible. Invasion of the Body Snatchers is a reasonable conclusion.
But even Jennifer Rubin doesn’t fully grasp the change. For power, Republicans sacrifice all else.
different-church-lady
@DFH:
That was the previous editor.
bcw
After “supporting journalism” for far too long with a paid delivery subscription, I finally had enough. My New York Times has been on “vacation hold” renewed every six months for the last five years. Leaves me with online access while paying them nothing.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@DFH:
Ron Howard: “It was, in fact, the Kristi Noem he served with”
Tony G
I suppose that this is an obvious observation, but I’ve noticed that whenever the Times publishes an article about or written-by the forced-birth zealots, they do not allow online comments on that article. This is not even both-sides-ism. They are deliberately shutting down pushback against the forced-birth side. The Times is often worse than useless at this point.
Baud
There was a Berry Cracker post a while back talking about how Friedman(?) had a both sides article that I think equated the insurrection with cancel culture and define the police.
Scout211
I keep bringing this up, but more Democrats need to do what Newsom has been doing. He’s in a very safe run for re-election and is looking for a national audience, so he can be blunt, but messaging is important right now to define the Republican Party. Like this:
https://mobile.twitter.com/GavinNewsom/status/1543293755188359169?cxt=HHwWgsCl4cvf8OoqAAAA
Jeffro
@rikyrah: that’s a great point!
NYT should feel free to report it either way:
RUN ON THIS, Dems!
It will be truly, wonderfully weird if and when the Ds expand their House and Senate majorities in the midterms due to running loudly and proudly on… gun safety and abortion rights.
Jinchi
@DFH: Jennifer Rubin is the extremely rare right winger who was legitimately horrified by the election of Trump. Even Cheney and Kitzinger played along for most of his presidency.
Doug R
What’s the betting odds on these “random” people turning out to be Republican operatives?
Steeplejack
Dropping this about the weekend shooting here to spare the somewhat sunny morning thread (which appears to be taking a dark turn now).
@Zeddary:
“Chan” = 4chan and 8chan, notorious shitposting sites.
“Chuds” = dreadful incels and dudebros, from the 1984 movie CHUD, about sewer-lurking “cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers.”
TriassicSands
This Times garbage is a sure sign that the new editor is a worthy successor to Dean Baquet, the Emperor of Bothsiderism. When they announced that Baquet was retiring, I was ecstatic. His replacement, Joe Kahn, has assured readers that there will be no big changes under his “leadersip.”
Now, I’m just disgusted.
DFH
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Exactly.
When will Kinzinger & Co FINALLY get it? The walking dead zombie getting within five feet of you is in fact not the same person. Run, or split its head open.
zhena gogolia
@TriassicSands: I think it’s still Baquet at this point.
DFH
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I love the ‘announcer’ responses.
JaySinWA
@different-church-lady: Dog bites man doesn’t sell newspapers.
JMG
@feebog: Absolutely the same thing happened to my wife almost 40 years ago. Thank goodness we lived very close to a (now closed) hospital.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
Found this interesting piece on Facebook. It isn’t mine, but is a great tool for thought.
danielx
The fuck it wasn’t Kristi Noem. It was, Kinzinger just didn’t get – and still doesn’t – that the cruelty is the point.
sab
@kindness: I feel the same. It’s why I don’t read Connie Schultz any more, because every other day she links to the Times article and expects to pay to get through that paywall. There are other news sources out there.
TriassicSands
@DFH:
it is important to remember who Jennifer Rubin is – – a devout neocon. She seems to worship Liz Cheney and it’s not just because Cheney supports the Constitution. Max Boot is similar to Rubin. You can take the Republican out of both columnists, but you can’t take them out of neo-conservatism, which brought us, among other things the Iraq War.
i’m glad Rubin and Boot both relentlessly attack Trump and the dominant GOP, but as with Cheney I wouldn’t want them in power.
Jeffro
@DFH:
They’re so incapable of letting go of their extreme positions that it leads them to even worse horrors in order to remain ‘consistent’
“ABORTION BAD” And it’s sooo bad that in order to remain ‘consistent’, not only are we going to keep restricting it to earlier and earlier in pregnancies (until we restrict/ban it completely), we’re not even going to entertain exceptions for rape, incest, or health of the mother. So yes…this means even 10 year olds have to bear their rapist’s child…and yes, this means we can only abort ectopic pregnancies once the mom is coding in the ER. In-sane.
I think this mindset is why some of the GQP now want to end all vaccine mandates, not just Covid-19 vaccines. They know it looks weird to oppose just one safe vaccine in particular, so instead of studying on that a bit and coming to the realization that they’re wrong, they just keep on going and insist on the most extreme option. You know, to be ‘consistent’
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@danielx:
I said this downstairs on the dying thread:
sab
Why does no one talk about Mike DeWine when they talk about that pregnant 10 year old. He is the governor who actually signed that vile ant-abortion law.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Jeffro:
“Killing in the Name of Consistence of Policy in Accordance With Fundamentalist Christian Belief Structures”
Its all OK, because Jesus will fix any mistakes in the afterlife.
JaySinWA
@DFH: I seem to remember stories about COVID complications doing brain damage. Republicans think they can walk it off. We may be living in yet another bad remake of “the last man on earth” Vincent Price movie.
Anyway
@TriassicSands:
FTFNYT goes beyond “both-siderism” — it’s actively anti-Dem. They are reflexively against the mainstream Democratic party – party of Gore, Kerry, Pelosi, Biden, HRC, Harris et al.
Matt McIrvin
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: I’ve been thinking a lot about Lennart Nilsson, the Swedish photographer who introduced the world to fantastically detailed color images of fetuses. Writers like Saletan often talk about ultrasound as raising uncomfortable questions for abortion advocates about the humanity of fetuses but I suspect he was really thinking of Nilsson’s photography.
And from what I understand, some of those may have been taken with endoscopes in the womb as claimed, but at least some of them were probably staged with aborted fetuses, with manipulations like putting the thumb in the fetus’s mouth. (Nilsson did do some photos of very early embryos that he acknowledged came from the aftermath of ectopic pregnancies.)
Nilsson was an amazing technical pioneer and the images work wonderfully as art. But I think his early work gave huge ammunition to the anti-abortion movement just by focusing attention on the latest, most baby-like stages of pregnancy and visually emphasizing the humanity of the fetus.
I don’t think he intended it, but it’s had horrible political effects, because to this day, anti-abortion activists are clearly thinking about those images even when they speak of a just-fertilized egg. It’s not a single-celled organism, it’s one of Nilsson’s photogenic fetuses just smaller.
Rugosa
If Ms Sargeant gets comfort from thinking of a life-threatening blob of cells as a baby, fine for her. It must be tough to lose 4 wanted pregnancies. But it doesn’t change reality – the “baby” was a blob of cells that had been reabsorbed by her body while the still-growing placenta threatened her life. What difference does it make if the surgeon worked “tenderly”? There was no baby to put in a tiny coffin. Pregnancy and childbearing is not risk- or cost-free for women. Women have the right to weigh these costs against their own life, health, and autonymy.
Nicole
On a flight home a couple of weeks ago I watched Three Days of the Condor, which I’d never seen before. It was entertaining enough (Faye Dunaway was really good!), but I laughed at the last scene, when Robert Redford dramatically reveals he just told the whole story of corruption to the New York Times and we, the audience, are expected to believe they would do the right thing.
(Well, some fiction writers were already on to the Times. Stephen King had Charlie in Firestarter go to Rolling Stone when she wanted to tell her story of government malfeasance.)
feebog
@JMG: My wife was a letter carrier. Her supervisor had the good sense to insist on driving her to the ER when she returned from her route instead of letting her drive home.
Matt McIrvin
@Nicole: Boots Riley got that one right in Sorry To Bother You–the giant horrifying conspiracy is fully revealed in the media and it doesn’t change a damn thing. People just decide they’re OK with it.
Betty Cracker
@sab: Can’t speak for anyone else, but I didn’t mention DeWine because he already signed onto that cruel policy, and now I want to hang it around other wingnut governor’s neck.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@DFH:
Someone was talking this weekend and reflected that Liz Cheney has the healthy attitude that power should be wielded toward goals (which is where I think Rubin is), but that McConnell, McCarthy, Trump et al. view power as the goal in and of itself.
jl
An ectopic pregnancy that results in a live birth are so extremely rare, and the signs and symptoms that it can’t produce viable birth are so clear, long before the pregnant woman’s vital signs start to crash, that what these anti-reproductive health nuts are doing is forcing murderous medical negligence, perhaps murder itself, under color of law.
pacem appellant
Sic nunc et semper, NTY delenda sunt.
jl
BTW, I’m not using the terms pro-abortion or anti-abortion anymore. This is really a struggle for reproductive health and human rights. And the idea that the US has abortion on demand for clearly viable fetuses is just a damned lie. And threatening criminal charges for women and their doctors so early in pregnancy that there is something like a 20 percent chance the fetus isn’t viable anyway, will miscarry, is clearly a human rights issues.
We need to be more aggressive and accurate in calling this enormity what it is.
Edit: the idea that in something like 99.99 percent of ectopic pregnancies that anybody’s life is being ‘pitted’ against anybody else’s is just a lie.
Madame Bupkis
@mattdf: Planned Parenthood is not just for women.
frosty
@Jinchi: Cheney and Kitzinger are White Christians. Jen Rubin is not.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@jl:
It can’t result in a live birth.
Rugosa
@Matt McIrvin:
Absolutely. The ancient Greeks supposedly believed that the man injected a fully-formed but very tiny homunculus into the woman during intercourse, and the woman was literally just an incubator for it. Pro-lifers act on this assumption, hence the “heartbeat” at 6 weeks when there is actually no heart, just cells producing electrical activity.
Dorothy A. Winsor
jl
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: I’m not an expert, and I am not a doctor, just repeating what clinicians tell me.
But in a sense, you are correct. If the woman has symptoms of ectopic pregnancy and doctor knows it’s an ectopic pregnancy early on, the fetus is not viable 100 percent of the time. Earlier the problem is taken care of the better.
Steeplejack
.
Betty Cracker
@Dorothy A. Winsor: DeSantis has also threatened to withhold funding from state universities that don’t have “viewpoint diversity,” i.e., a sufficient number of potential DeSantis voters.
jl
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: From what I’ve been told, the very very rare cases where an ectopic pregnancy is viable, there won’t be any symptoms and hard to detect. So, makes no practical difference. I’m curious now and will ask about it.
Edit: any BJ medical people know, I’ll come back and get corrected if I misunderstood. Maybe it depends if the fetus is half in the uterus and half in the tube or something?
Betty Cracker
@Betty Cracker: Where all this is going…
Ben Cisco
@feebog: Mrs. Cisco came VERY close to checking out 20 years before she actually did. It was the worst day of our lives until…
JeffH
@TriassicSands: The key principle of the neocons was that any potential threat to the US needs to be attacked. Many of them recognized that Trumpism is a threat and reacted accordingly.
Villago Delenda Est
Nuke the Vichy Times from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
DFH
@jl:
It’s interesting to me how the impact of word “abortion” is changing. Previously something that we may not enjoy thinking about or discussing unless necessary, it’s now changing into a place where it belongs, among the talk about “healthcare”.
I’m also in favor of turning “pro-life” into its proper phrase, “forced birther”. I guess I can thank the radicals (from elected officials to SCOTUS to average voters) who are pushing forced birth so publicly and openly.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Rugosa:
The fetal heartbeat bullshit always drove me fucking nuts. It’s so goddamned primitively, superstitiously unscientific – the heart isn’t what you are at all.
For fuck’s sake, was that guy they implanted an artificial heart into less of a person?
Villago Delenda Est
@Anyway: They hate the Clintons with the unbounded fire of 1000 suns.
Villago Delenda Est
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: Well, they placed a transplanted heart in Dick Cheney, which did not change his status as a reactionary zombie, so there’s that.
Steeplejack
(Previous comment farkled.)
@Nicole:
Well, Three Days of the Condor was almost 50 years ago (1975), when “take it to the Times” was a (more) believable trope. (Cf. Pentagon Papers, Watergate.) I saw it a week or so ago (TCM?), and it holds up pretty well. The opening sequence—the first 20 minutes at the institute—is a gem.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Betty Cracker: I have friends who teach at USF. I can’t imagine what that’s like at the moment. They’ve been quiet in public for obvious reasons
Gin & Tonic
Yuri Voronov, a very wealthy russian businessman with significant links to Gazprom, was found floating in his swimming pool with a gunshot wound to the head. I guess the advice here is don’t go swimming right after eating, or after shooting yourself in the head.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Betty Cracker:
I have a solution to the problem of Chris Rufo, but cannot express it aloud. It’s about the only solution there is….
Sure Lurkalot
The Pro-Life Generation article says at the beginning “many, but not all of them, are Christian conservatives.”
The women profiled:
Over 80% of the writer’s sources for the article are “the many, but not all.” Why does she feel the need to downplay the religious connection to anti-abortion views for her hardly both sides argument? See below….
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-study/views-about-abortion/
Villago Delenda Est
@Rugosa:
Not according to five fascist shits on the Supreme Court.
grumbles
A certain kind of liberal loves to yell at me about this, but I refuse to pay the NYT a fucking dime, and avoid their articles when I can.
You don’t get to troll me and have me pay for the privilege. I don’t think I need to recite the arguments, but it isn’t about my bubble (I read plenty of rightwing media, thanks, I don’t want or need Joey to filter it for me). And bullshit about how we have to defend the good ones assume I agree that the NYT, in fact, falls in that category. I increasingly have my doubts.
It is about not paying assholes who think they’re smart enough to play a double game in public that demands I play dumb and accept being insulted.
Fuck that. And fuck the paper of record. Not one dime from me, Pinch.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Villago Delenda Est:
Looking at fetal heartbeat bills, I assume that Dick Cheney ceased to exist when receiving the transplanted heart, and became the person the heart belonged to. You know, consistency….
Steeplejack
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
Does it involve going swimming right after eating?
DFH
@Jeffro:
It’s been difficult to understand for a long time, for me. But my current thinking is that they seek approval for conformity, without the ability to discern nuance.
Many confederates, forced birthers and republicans do not think beyond what the bible says, and because it IS the bible, there is no further thought actually necessary. Easy, done.
Once they’re on the path of allowing the voice in the sky (through Earth-bound intermediaries) to control whatever other impulses arise (like having a conscience and doubts) I guess they give up on what we would call simple humanity. Not doing exactly what the bible says? Then you oppose the voice in the sky, and now you don’t count. You are Eliminated in some way.
I have a dear, dear aunt who has put the fucking crosses in her yard. I’ve wanted to call and congratulate her on ensuring that if any of her granddaughters or great-granddaughters are raped and get pregnant, they will have to carry to term and ensure jeebus isn’t disappointed.
But I don’t think the message will get through, and I don’t think I can be that way with her.
Alison Rose
@DFH: Yeah, as my governor has stated many times, they are not in any way, shape, or form “pro-life” and we definitely need to do what we can to take that term away from them.
Redshift
It’s even more dishonest than that. It’s not missing, it’s that the whole front page is addressed to the reader as “you” – “your health,” “your body, “your questions.” Three reason it doesn’t include “woman” because it’s not written in third person.
NutmegAgain
I wonder–are these new cutesy/horror stories about teen moms who in a sane world, would have had abortions, well–are they the new, “we interviewed 5 customers hunched over the counter at a diner in X town in the upper midwest. Used to be a thriving downtown, now there are just 300 residents, the diner and a gas station.”
Villago Delenda Est
@Sure Lurkalot:
Because standard Vichy Times disinformation at work.
DFH
@JaySinWA:
Yeah, they do think it won’t happen to ME. But if it does, it’s a cold, it’s a flu, I can walk it off. Denial, etc. We all have things we avoid or deny, but most of us here have broken through those barriers and let the light in.
VOR
Re: Kristi Noem and other Republicans who “have changed”. It’s really quite simple. I think of the Upton Sinclair quote “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” Kristi Noem wants to be TFG’s vice president in 2024. In order to do that, she must appeal to the Republican base. Her career depends on not understanding certain things, therefore she doesn’t understand them.
Josie
@DFH:
“Many confederates, forced birthers and republicans do not think beyond what the bible says, and because it IS the bible, there is no further thought actually necessary. Easy, done.”
Ironically, it’s not even what the Bible really says. It’s what their lying leaders tell them the Bible says.
Kropacetic
I could starve on a media diet like that.
Baud
@Sure Lurkalot:
What reason is there to oppose abortion other than religion? Is there a secular justification for ending abortion rights?
Nicole
@Steeplejack: I found Condor entertaining. I did it on a double bill during the flight with The Best Years of Our Lives, which I think, for all it’s 1940’s-ness, I liked better than Three Days of the Condor.
realbtl
I keep coming back to Karl Rove’s “we create our own reality.” I think living in an unreal world aka delusions like the current Rs is called a psychotic break.
Kropacetic
Two I can think of; the “ick” factor and Republican partisan affiliation.
Villago Delenda Est
@Josie: This this this. Atheists know more about the Bible than your standard fundigelical. For one thing, if they’ve read Matthew 6:5, they ignore it.
Redshift
@Betty Cracker:
Youngkin here in Virginia (who the Post’s Karen Tumulty tells is the sort of nice moderate Republican we should all want to be nominated in 2024) is also doing his best to pressure state universities to have more conservatives, including threatening to fire the entire board overseeing community colleges unless they let administration officials be part of formerly non-political processes.
The Moar You Know
@Gin & Tonic: Huh, weird place to kill yourself. Oh well. No need to investigate any further, I am sure, open and shut suicide.
Villago Delenda Est
@Steeplejack: Simon Farkle or Gar Farkle?
Nelle
OT – as of 70 minutes ago, I have my first (and likely only) grandson! A 9 pounder over 20 inches long and already busy feeding away. We’re about to go meet him.
We’ll be watching his older sisters (3 and 4) for two days. Plus I’m having a Meet and Greet for a school board candidate here tonight – about 60 invited. We were going to have it on the porch and lawn but the heat index is supposed to be around 107 then. Maybe no one will show and I’ll eat all the cookies.
I’ll rest tomorrow.
Anyway
@grumbles:
Yes, I don’t care about the FTFNYT’s Science reporting, their cooking section, the crossword puzzles, Arts and Leisure bla bla bla – I was a regular/daily reader for years but their role in the Iraq war and their inability to fess up to it means no clicks for them evah. I’ll never forget what they did to the Clintons, both of them – laundering that execrable Clinton Cash through their front pages. <puke>
Sorry I’ll stop. Guess this is my version of being a Purity Pony…
DFH
@Nicole:
Condor is one of my all-time favorites. Max von Sydow was amazing. And of course there’s the Body Snatcher-like ending, leaving one in the seat wondering if the truth (anywhere) is safe.
Villago Delenda Est
@Anyway: In this case it’s fully justified.
Ohio Mom
@Nelle: Whay an exciting day you are having! Both the birth and the meet and greet are all about the future.
Many congrats!
Mnemosyne
@Steeplejack:
I still doubt it was a coincidence that he chose heavily Jewish Highland Park for his murder spree. Anti-Semitism is quite fashionable in those online circles.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Nelle: Wow, big boy! Congratulations to all
Ben Cisco
@Villago Delenda Est: It’s all about power – who they want to have it, who they want to keep it away from. They will tell ANY lie, including lies of omission, sacrifice anything and anyone, including their own children, in service of power. They no more think of morals and norms than labradoodles* think of nuclear fission.
*Nothing against labradoodles, it was just the most ridiculously-named breed I could think of off the top of my head
DFH
@Josie:
I wouldn’t know, having never paid attention except for our English class in HS, which called it a “Great Book”. But right, no surprise that the interlocutors lie. After all, they’re in the religion business.
Ben Cisco
@Nelle: Congratulations!
Steeplejack
@Nicole:
No comparison. The Best Years of Our Lives is almost a masterpiece. Another great set piece: Dana Andrews climbing into the nose of the decommissioned bomber (1:30 in this clip).
CaseyL
Cheney is an ally the same way the USSR was an ally during WWII: united against a common threat, but by no means in alignment on anything else.
I wonder, actually, if her fury at Trump’s insurrection is because it made public a RW election-stealing plan she probably supports: have SCOTUS rule that state legislatures, and ONLY state legislatures, have control over elections in their state. That is a prescription for GOP-ruled states to throw out actual vote results and substitute their own electors. John Eastman advocated for it, and now the case is before SCOTUS – and you know which way they’re going to rule.
I think that was, honestly, the silver bullet the GOP has been working toward and counting on. No more worries about elections not going the way they want, if the state legislature can name the GOP candidate the winner no matter what!
But they would probably have preferred the case to fly under the radar. Thanks to Trump, it’s not.
Villago Delenda Est
@Nelle: Future NBA star if he keeps up that length thing! Congratulations to Gramps and Memaw, as well as to new mom (recover soon!) and dad.
Another Scott
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: +1
Great piece. Even moreso for being true.
Thanks for the pointer.
Cheers,
Scott.
Old Man Shadow
And if the worst comes to pass and the fascist theocracy comes about, these cowardly, despicable lickspittles will happily pass along whatever sort of propaganda the regime hands them.
These fucks wouldn’t know real journalism if it kicked them repeatedly in the balls.
jonas
Yes, I remember millions pouring into this street and marching in outrage when they found out about this…
Sure Lurkalot
@Baud: Here is the “not connected to religious belief” woman, part of a “small but boisterous niche” in the article.
Ben Cisco
@Old Man Shadow:
I say we experiment with that approach in order to either prove or disprove efficacy.
different-church-lady
@Betty Cracker: Rufo appears to be wearing a mask that looks exactly like his real face.
Nicole
@DFH: I laughed out loud at Faye Dunaway’s angry, “The night is young!” to Robert Redford. She was really good, with a role that could have been not much of anything.
Villago Delenda Est
@Ben Cisco: In being that way, they are anything BUT “Christian”. Jesus wept.
sab
@Mnemosyne: Isn’t he a local? The mayor said he was in hercub scout troop (I just saw the interview on MSNBC.)
different-church-lady
I think I just figured out why shit op/eds like this are so infuriating. It’s like, “You put a lot of thought into this, and you still came down on the side of being an asshole?”
MisterForkbeard
@Sure Lurkalot: She seems nice
ETA: Also, “Abortion Industrial Complex”? Wow. I’m trying to decide if she’s a right-wing loon or a left-wing loon, but this looks like an extremely online person with no self-awareness.
Steeplejack
@Villago Delenda Est:
It’s the whole Farkel family!
Citizen Alan
@Nicole:
Actually, as I recall, 3 days of the Condor ends with one of the bad guys meeting Redford outside The Times building and telling him to his face they would never publish the truth. The last shot is Redford’s face as hes walking away and then it frees frames on his pensive expression.
Steeplejack
@Nelle:
Congratulations to you and the parents!
Matt McIrvin
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
I remember some people worrying about that. Also about whether people conceived via IVF (called “test-tube babies” in the sensational media of the time) had souls.
Been thinking about related issues lately. My left knee joint is artificial, made of metal and plastic. I see these described technically as prostheses and it seems very strange to me because I instantly accepted it as part of myself. Part of me is just metal and plastic. But I wonder if everyone can make that leap. Seems to me nearly everyone who gets it done can.
different-church-lady
@Dorothy A. Winsor: That was probably entirely unconstitutional until about 10 days ago.
Nicole
@Steeplejack: Yeah, that was really moving. I rewound that segment and watched it again.
Fun fact I learned afterwards- Harold Russell was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for it, but, as it was his first acting role, he was a longshot to win, so the Academy gave him a special Honorary Oscar for “bringing hope and courage” to fellow veterans. Then… he won Best Supporting, making him the only actor to ever get 2 Oscars for the same role.
Steeplejack
@Mnemosyne:
No argument here. It’s a big part of the chan/chud matrix.
Old Man Shadow
@Ben Cisco: I’ll pitch in to buy the steel toed boots.
Redshift
@Baud:
I mean, it’s possible to construct one, but it will sound monstrous because, you know, it is.
Abortion exists as an “issue” to be addressed by law/government because there a conflict between rights that needs to be resolved. So a person could say without a religious justification that they believe that a fetus is a person with full rights from conception and any rights the woman has must be subordinated to those of the fetus/person. But again, no one says that because it sounds monstrous unless you claim “it’s God who says that, not me.”
(You’d think you could also find an answer in Rand Paul’s reasoning, since he claims to be a libertarian and is anti-abortion, but I doubt he’s ever tried to explain it.)
VOR
@Nicole: I loved “3 Days of the Condor”. I recently watched the 1974 Warren Beatty film “The Parallax View” which had a corporation hiring assassins to kill inconvenient politicians and like-minded individuals in the government covering up afterwards.
Citizen Alan
@NutmegAgain:
I’m still furious about those disgusting pregnant at 16 reality shows on MTV the were they literally glamorize unwed teenage mothers.
Steeplejack
@Sure Lurkalot:
She sounds like a complete hypocrite or a complete nutter—possibly both.
Alison Rose
@Gin & Tonic: Oh. Gee. I am so sad.
From the Daily Mail:
Mayhap he should’ve chosen better business partners. Lie down with dogs, and wake up with fleas. Or floating in the pool with a hole in your head.
Matt McIrvin
@Redshift: I think some atheist bro libertarians actually do talk exactly that way, but instead of “God says so” it’s “FACTS AND LOGIC compel you.”
Ben Cisco
@Villago Delenda Est: Indeed. But here we are.
Villago Delenda Est
@Redshift:
Glibertarians like Paul are inherent fuckhaids. It’s all about THEIR liberty, and the serfs can get back to totin’ dem bales.
different-church-lady
@Alison Rose : I’m sure Putin has a lot of business partners.
frosty
@Steeplejack: That field of warbirds going to the scrapyard!!! To be melted down for aluminum foil and Coke cans.
Old Man Shadow
@Redshift: That was pretty much my justification for being pro-forced birth when I was still an Evangelical and I was trying to square that with the fact that we live in a secular republic with a constitution that forbid the establishment of a religion.
The cognitive dissonance between my religious beliefs and my knowledge of politics eventually became too great to ignore. And I gave up the former and all of the harmful shit I thought government should force people to do because of it.
Fuck the religious hacks on the Supreme Court and in Congress and state government.
Nicole
@VOR: I’ll have to check that one out. I like 1970s Warren Beatty.
Another Scott
@Josie: Plus, there’s the continuing issue of “which Bible” and “which translation”??
Outlook at the WaPo (from October 2021):
Similarly, Joshua didn’t actually make the Sun stand still…
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Redshift
@MisterForkbeard:
I don’t know about that term specifically, but a big part of forced birth propaganda is talking about “the abortion industry,” as if clinics are some kind of profit-making enterprise that only wants to keep it legal for their own benefit. It’s really twisted.
Paul in KY
@Nelle: Congrats to you & of course, the mother!
Ben Cisco
@Ben Cisco: In my state, this happens all the time, in real time. Case in point – Katie Britt, now officially the GOP nominee for Senate. Graduate of UA Law, standard GOPer until the Flaming Cheeto Asshole rose to power. I have it on good authority from someone who knew her back then that she is a COMPLETELY different person now. Intelligent enough to know better but…
She might as well be the monster from “The Thing” – whatever she was before is GONE. She ran ads touting Herr Lump’s endorsement – AFTER 1/6. She’s attached to him, remora-like. It bodes ill for my state…
Villago Delenda Est
@Redshift: It’s just more of the endless projection that keeps the IMAX patent litigation team very busy.
ArchTeryx
@Ben Cisco: Considering that Things are essentially ambush predators looking to make their prey into more of them, that’s not an inapt analogy. Particularly for the evangelicals.
MisterForkbeard
@Redshift: Yep. I’ve heard of it. They swear that it’s all about profit (it’s not), that people are getting rich off abortion (they’re not) and that the Left really wants people to rush out and get abortions (they don’t).
Mnemosyne
@Matt McIrvin:
There was concern about artificial insemination as well. There’s an old German novel and feature film called Alraune that posits that a girl who was conceived through artificial insemination would be soulless.
Having read the book (in translation), it seems way more equivocal than that, since having your guardians treat you as soulless and probably morally corrupt from the day you’re born would probably have the same effect.
James E Powell
It turns out that there was nothing banal about Adolf Eichmann’s evil.
Baud
@Redshift:
That would mean that there are no rights because anything can be turned into a conflict of rights for the government to resolve, and would make any governmental resolution of the issue a valid one.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud:
A lot of the religious arguments could probably be translated into secular terms: argue, say, that the only unambiguous definition of a person is one that begins when a zygote with a complete set of DNA is assembled and one must therefore acknowledge full human rights in the zygote. Or a slippery-slope argument that if we allow abortion, it would lead to allowing infanticide and then the murder of children under 12, like in the story Philip K. Dick wrote that made Joanna Russ want to punch him.
All of these things require making some poorly-supported assumptions but it’s not like that’s different from the religious case.
Gin & Tonic
@VOR: A few good movies in that vein around that time. My personal favorite is Coppola’s The Conversation, maybe Hackman’s best role.
Redshift
@Matt McIrvin:
I would ask if they include facts and logic when they say that, but I think I already know the answer…
Gin & Tonic
@different-church-lady: Some of them are even still alive.
Ben Cisco
@ArchTeryx: Thank you!
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
I think this is the real story.
As far as the slippery slope argument, there are slippery slopes in both directions, and like most slippery slope arguments, they tend to be weak. IMHO.
James E Powell
@Alison Rose :
Liberal subscribers to the FTNYT could have fixed this in the 90s, when they completely fabricated the Whitewater faux-scandal, or in the early 00s, when their war on Gore gave us Bush II and all the evils he brought with him. Or for the love of God why not after 2016 when their 20 year smear campaign against Hillary Clinton put Trump in the White House.
But no (John Belushi voice). I like the recipes, I like their coverage of the arts, blah blah blah. All we needed to happen was for them lose like 20-30% of their subscribers in a one month period to send a message.
Most often, when people say we should do what the right-wingers do, I say no because they are evil. But one thing we should do that they do is stop giving our money and support to people who work against us and regard us with scorn.
artem1s
@Old Man Shadow:
I supposed there could be a secular reason for opposing abortion when it’s used as a tool of eugenics. But a reasonable person would also oppose termination as a tool of eugenics (sex determination) and would say so – that’s what makes the Choice part so important – it’s not just pro-abortion. Forced termination is something vehemently PP opposes. They are very clear about the Choice part of reproductive healthcare.
Lyrebird
Fixed that for ya.
Sounds like writers like Saletan want to keep on perpetuating this myth that people who seek abortions haven’t thought about the seriousness of the situation. Sorry if I sound testy. Testy is an understatement.
Please provide a link to credible evidence against the photographs.
Suzanne
@Redshift:
I could even argue with a straight face the following:
1) A fetus is a human being from conception
2) FACT: No humans have the right to compel bodily support from a individual against their consent. Even people who are physically dependent on others have no right to compel specific people to their care. Doctors and nurses are under no legal obligation to care for a specific person and are free to quit their jobs, even if that means that the patient under their care could die.
3) As such, a fetus can have all the legal rights of a born person from the moment of conception AND abortion can be legal.
Now, if technology ever advances to create artificial uteri, this could change this logic.
Villago Delenda Est
@ArchTeryx: Also, their obsession with “grooming” is just more projection of their own way of perpetuating the flock. Gays aren’t looking to make more gays. Fundigelicals are looking to make more fundigelicals. Gotta keep those offering plates brimming.
Cmorenc
The anti-abortionists are also against any non-barrier form of birth control, because they believe they all rely (at least in part) on preventing successful attachment of a fertilized egg to the uterus, thus aborting the embryo. Barrier methods ate notoriously the most prone to failure.
If you read or hear any anti-abortionists claim that Dobbs did not take away use of contraceptives, understand it with the above in mind – only methods they think don’t potentially work by causing miscarriage of a fertilized egg ill be kosher. That’s about all of them except barrier methods.
Kristine
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
It just hit me how this is the ultimate in irresponsibility. Not caring if mistakes are made or if any steps are taken to repair what’s broken because this world is nothing but a rest stop bathroom.
No wonder they’re so good at flinging shit.
Feathers
The problem with that terrible FTFNYT “Planned Parenthood doesn’t say women” article is that it is part of a sad, sad cycle. Someone on our side comes up with what they feel is inclusive language, to be used where appropriate. Foul and malevolent creature writes screed stating that using the word “woman” is now forbidden, you are only allowed to use awkward inclusive language in any and all situations. Then two things happen. 1) Leader on our side loudly says “this is ridiculous, no one is saying you can’t say ‘woman,’ just that you should use inclusive language where appropriate.” 2) Purported “allies” on our side start flooding comment sections and take to twitter to jump into conversations where women are using the word woman to discuss women among themselves and start loudly demanding that only “awkward inclusive language” is permitted, if there is any pushback, start declaring that the people involved are T*RFs.
It’s a two step that I’ve been watching on the left since the 80s. Part of the problem is that the #1s never call out the #2s. So the #2s push people who are ideologically allies, but not to the point of using activist language, out of the coalition.
“But we don’t need those people!” say the activists. There was a very interesting thread, which I don’t seem to have flagged about how ACT-UP was successful because it had two factions, the angry on the street fighters and the gay bankers and lawyers who got real with the C-Suite types about what needed to happen to be considered an ally in the fight against AIDS. There was some co-ordination between the two, but both worked independently of each other. The civil rights movement was the Black leaders on the front lines, but also Nelson Rockefeller secretly delivering suitcases full of cash for bail money. Doesn’t Nelson Rockefeller deserve credit for the civil rights movement? Of course not, but what he did wasn’t nothing and probably necessary.
Social media means that these two threads of the movement are interacting and not in positive ways. I don’t know what to do about all this, but I can see anti-trans attacks from the right being accepted as what the pro-trans movement is on the left and it spiraling into truly ugly shit that doesn’t need to be happening.
A reminder that we probably still have a democracy because the activists managed to completely away from DC on January 6th. We need to recognize when we are being baited and cut that shit out.
Mnemosyne
@Sure Lurkalot:
I would not be surprised to find out that she comes from evangelical parents that she has consciously rejected, but she still can’t let go of the anti-abortion propaganda she was taught.
sab
@Betty Cracker: Thanks. That wasn’t meant as a criticism of you, but still your point is valid.
James E Powell
@Nicole:
I’m not so sure about that. Cliff Robertson’s character asks, “How do you know they’ll print it?” Redford says they will, but the last line of the movie is “How do you know?”
I hazily recall in 2004 that the FTFNYT had some negative story about Bush but decided to hold back on publishing it because they didn’t want to affect the election.
James E Powell
@Villago Delenda Est:
Exactly. And I have never seen any attempt to explain this. Not even from former staff.
And considering the people they love and the ones they leave along, their anti-Clinton animus really stands out.
Geminid
@Kristine: I heard a radio ad for some church a couple days ago, on the Harrisonburg, Virginia radio station. The guy complained that “some churches care more about the temperature on Earth than they do about the thermostat in Hell!”
He ostensibly was trying to attract members of liberal churches to his, but I think those are slim pickings in the Shenandoah Valley. He may intead have been trying to attract the unchurched using the dynamic of negative partisanship..
Villago Delenda Est
@James E Powell: If they had a negative story on Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, or Joe Biden, they’d run it in a heartbeat.
Which is more than enough justification for nuking them from orbit.
Steeplejack
@Nicole:
Wrenching scenes, probably more so at the time. (We’ve had 75 more years to process stuff like that.) And a good acting job by Cathy O’Donnell, in a role that could have gone awry several different ways. Great cast in general.
Brachiator
I am curious. Did the op-ed piece include examples of a situation where the mother is allowed to die?
I am tired of the phony both sides nonsense. Hell, there are often more than just two sides to an issue.
But I come out on the side of a woman’s right to decide. And that’s the only side I care about and want to see protected.
Kristine
@Dorothy A. Winsor: USF is my alma mater. It wasn’t the research powerhouse back then that it is now–I can only imagine the chilling effect this may have on the work done there.
I wonder if you could flood the zone with piffle? Political Beliefs: neo-naturist/born-again phlebotomist/secular botanist etc etc
CaseyL
@Kristine: The same way they regard Jesus entirely as a Get Out of Jail Free card, and give no thought to anything he said. Like preaching was just something he did to fill the time until he could go into business with his Dad.
Steeplejack
Redacted.
Miss Bianca
@Sure Lurkalot: Jesus, that sounds like DougJ’s NYT Pitchbot has started writing actual articles. I mean…for realz?
Feathers
@Sure Lurkalot: It’s the same sentiment that drives “anti-traffickers” to demand that websites used by sex workers to do their work safely be shut down because a small number of abuse of underage minors slips by the existing controls. Meanwhile, they ignore that the vast majority of sex abuse of minors content is on Facebook, because they use Facebook.
pacem appellant
@CaseyL: Same as it ever was.
Steeplejack
@frosty:
Or sent to Japan to return as “Made in Japan” toys in the ’50s.
The most amazing thing about that sequence to me is that it showed the gigantic scale of the industrial output it took to win the war—the U.S. as the “arsenal of democracy.”
The Truffle
@Betty Cracker: That is frightening. There is something very Pol Pot about it.
trollhattan
From Redding, CA? Does not compute. Redding produces one Megan Rapinoe per generation.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Kristine: That occurred to me too. I suppose it depends on the details.
I messaged one of my friends and he let loose with a rant that he needed to vent. He and his partner have decided to retire next year, and give that they have a daughter starting college this year, that must have been a hard decision
Steeplejack
@Nicole:
The Parallax View also holds up fairly well. It would be a good bookend to Three Days of the Condor.
Nicole
@James E Powell:
I laughed because to me it was a rhetorical question- of COURSE the NYT wasn’t going to print it.
I don’t want to come across as not liking the movie- I did, quite a bit. Especially the bit about how once Americans can’t get their oil, they won’t care how the gov’t goes about getting it for them; they’ll just expect the gov’t to go in and get it. In that respect, we haven’t changed one bit.
Old Man Shadow
@artem1s: A government that can force you to carry to term is a government that can force you to have an abortion or be sterilized.
trollhattan
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
Have long wondered at how the fundies would respond to the demonstrations of putting live heart cells into a petri dish to watch them begin to “communicate” and beat in unison. Let us now save this proto-human from the indignity of the lab drain!
Gravenstone
@Steeplejack: So, this is going to be a fun one where everyone gets to lick and choose their own personal interpretation of what passed for “motive”? Meanwhile nearly three dozen people had their lives turned inside out or simply ended. All for shits and giggles.
trollhattan
@Kristine: I sure get confused by some of the conversations about USF. (The kid competes against them routinely.)
The Truffle
@Dorothy A. Winsor: This shit has to be unconstitutional. You know what?
More professors should call his bluff. Go work elsewhere. They will be better off. Ditto businesses like Disney. Get out of Florida. Another state would love to have them. If Ronnie D. does not want them, another state will.
FelonyGovt
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: That’s a fascinating read. And yes, being pregnant does feel like your body is being invaded.
The Truffle
@CaseyL: If I had to guess, Dobbs was a Pyrrhic victory for the GOP. As of now, the public perception of the GOP is shifting big time. They lost their wedge issue, the Supreme Court destroyed their credibility, and I’m calling—the GOP apparatchiks are turning on each other.
They are handing the Dems sooooooo many things to run on.
Am I weird to believe this?
Ben Cisco
@James E Powell:
I just wanted to see this again.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@The Truffle: Both these people are nationally known in their fields. This cannot be good the university.
As for people leaving, it takes time, because good academic jobs are hard to find. But over time, the people who can leave (ie the best known) do leave. Then you have the people who can’t move, maybe because a partner works in the area, or because they’re not desirable enough for other places to coax away
ETA: The same dynamic works for hiring new PhDs too. The people who have choices make them.
MrSnrub
UK Twitter says that Boris Johnson is in possible hot water right now.
Apparently someone in his cabinet/administration has been accused of sexual misconduct. 10 Downing has insisted that Johnson didn’t know, now that’s in doubt.
The Health Secretary has resigned, plus the Chancellor, and there are renewed calls for a vote of no confidence.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-62054067
debbie
@Gin & Tonic:
At what point do they turn on him?
Another Scott
@James E Powell: They did the same thing with Carter – perpetual investigations and breathless reporting about his peanut business.
It’s trite, but I think a lot of it is the swamp of connections and access that these folks marinade in for decades. From an Atlantic article (from 2018):
It explains a lot about why TFG and all the Nice Polite Republicans and all the rest were treated one way, and outsiders like Carter, Clinton, Dukakis, Kerry, etc., were treated another.
Support ProPublica if you want hard-hitting, factual news reporting that attempts to protect the public interest by exposing actions of the powerful. FTFNYT and WaPo and the TeeVee news outfits that depend on access and revolving doors will not do it – that’s been clear for decades and more.
Cheers,
Scott.
zhena gogolia
@debbie: Never, I’m afraid. Something else has to happen.
Ben Cisco
@The Truffle: No. No you are not. We just need the numbers.
Old Man Shadow
@The Truffle: Leaving Florida is not an option for Disney at this point. It would cost them billions.
Kristine
@trollhattan: As long as they don’t try to join the AAC and really confuse matters.
debbie
@zhena gogolia:
If Khadaffi can meet his end, so can Putin.
zhena gogolia
@debbie: And unfortunately, then we get somebody potentially worse. The decent people have mostly left or been murdered or imprisoned.
Another Scott
@trollhattan:
Obligatory (1:01)
It’s like the geniuses who use a bunch of statistics to prove that life is impossible because the probabilities at each step are so small (while ignoring things like potential wells and chemical bonds (e.g. if hydrogen and oxygen molecules are close enough together under the right temperature and pressure, they will react and water will form – it’s chemistry) and all the rest), therefore science is obviously bunk. (groucho-roll-eyes.gif)
Heart cells do what heart cells do – there’s no larger philosophical or religious message there.
Cheers,
Scott.
The Lodger
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: Well, Dick Cheney was one of those people with artificial hearts. How fair do you want to be to him? I’ll accept any answer
ETA: Late to the game, I see. Still, Dick Cheney deserves whatever agita he gets.
Brachiator
@Steeplejack:
This has always been one of my favorite spy/suspense thrillers. Solid cast. I always liked that Redford was a plausible hero, but not an impossibly skilled super spy. He also reminds me of the analyst hero of The Hunt For Red October and later films. Jack Ryan?
I agree that the opening sequence is great.
However, the brief romance between Redford and Faye Dunaway does not hold up, and comes across as non-consensual.
trollhattan
@Kristine: Right?
There otta be a law. I’ll begin with “an integer contained in a conference name shall necessarily also be the count of schools comprising said conference.”
And don’t get me started on violations of geography.
Mnemosyne
@The Truffle:
There’s a reason DeSantis waited until Disney was past the point of no return in their big move of a bunch of departments to Florida to announce all of his anti-gay and anti-trans initiatives. He’s assuming that it will be too costly for them to back out and that he has them over a barrel. And he may be right — we’ll have to see.
Gravenstone
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I’m seeing a lot of “fuck you” for political party on whatever form they put forth.
MisterForkbeard
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Politifact is rating this as “false”, by the way.
Their reasoning is that the bill so broadly written that it COULD mean “students and professors have to register their orientation and political affiliation with the state”, but this is what’s in the bill:
1) Schools are REQUIRED to issue a “survey” asking those questions or they’re heavily penalized.
2) The surveys might be anonymous, might not be.
3) I can’t find anything on what happens to students or staff that refuse to answer
4) The state doesn’t say that it’s going to keep the results or put the kids on a register, but they also won’t say that they won’t or how the data will be used.
So basically, politifact’s opinion is that the law could totally do those things, but it’s a “lie” because it doesn’t explicitly say it’ll do those things. And we’re supposed to believe the Republicans are models of moderation and won’t abuse this at all.
prostratedragon
@Steeplejack: I like the comparison of Black men in uniform that we see in the opening scenes, where Fred Derry arrives at the airfield. (I also like <em>Condor</em>, but agree that it’s not the same class.)
Gin & Tonic
@debbie: Zhena is right. Never.
C Stars
Thank you for mentioning this. ProPublica is serious about journalism and an incredible resource.
Gin & Tonic
Ukrainian mathematician Maryna Viazovska has been awarded the Fields Medal, becoming only the second woman in history to receive that award.
The Fields Medal is a Very Big Deal.
Brachiator
@TriassicSands:
Baquet and Kahn both had done outstanding work as reporters for other newspapers. Baquet had shown some independence at the Los Angeles Times, and got fired for it. But both men seemed eager to become part of the institutional establishment of the NY Times.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@MisterForkbeard: My friend brought up the Don’t Say Gay bill, and the anti-CRT one, and the one saying they can’t make students uncomfortable over race. I don’t know whether he just worried about them or sees them affecting him now
ETA: Also, giving the devil its due, he said De Santis is good on the environment
Mnemosyne
@MisterForkbeard:
So, basically, the law is so loosely written that they’ll be able to use it to harass specific people they don’t like. Yay. That’s not like living in a police state with arbitrary enforcement of laws based on ideology at all.
zhena gogolia
@Gin & Tonic: Cool!
Anyway
@Gin & Tonic:
Yay! Yes, Fields medal is a very big deal. Congrats to her and the other awardees.
CaseyL
Some fun news today:
Boris Johnson’s support within the Tories collapsing
Fulton County GA has issued subpoenas for Giuliani, Graham, Ellis, Eastman, and FSM knows who else, to answer questions regarding election interference. And I think (resident legal eagles can correct me if I’m wrong) these are actual, court-ordered subpoenas that the subjects can’t just blow off.
debbie
@zhena gogolia:
@Gin & Tonic:
Horrifying to think that there’s even worse.
Gravenstone
@Old Man Shadow: Keep telling you people, don’t kick toe on with steel toes. You’ll just hurt yourselves. Now, if you get a pair that include a plate over the top of your foot, then you’re in business.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Betty Cracker:
I don’t like Twitter threads like that because there’s always this unspoken assumption in them, in how the subject is framed, that people like Rufo are currently successful and always will be. That it’s a fait accompli. No solutions ever seem to be offered. No calls to action.
realbtl
I’d like to see Joe Biden say fuck it and order flags to be flown at half mast for the rest of his term and hopefully the next until something meaningful is done.
zhena gogolia
@debbie: Oh, yeah, there certainly is.
Tenar Arha
@Nelle: Oh wow, congratulations!
zhena gogolia
@Nelle: Congratulations!
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@MisterForkbeard:
@Mnemosyne:
I don’t know how those surveys are structured, but what’s to stop students and faculty from just lying on those surveys? How would the state government know the difference?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Nelle:
Congratulations!
CaseyL
@Nelle: Congratulations on the new grandchild!
And: OMG, 60 people? For a SB meeting? That sounds like a lot; is your district among those being targeted by the GOP? Is your house big enough, and air conditioned enough, to have everyone inside?
Feathers
FYI – Tony Jay ranted about Boris and the Tories at Comment #21 on the previous post
frosty
@Steeplejack: Yes, and that was just the industrial output of some of the aircraft. Tanks, Studebaker trucks, landing craft, warships, Liberty ships; the scale is incomprehensible to us now.
CaseyL
@Feathers: I can’t wait to hear what he has to say about today’s news.
Immanentize
@DFH: I liked the movie, but I liked it’s precursor in print: Six Days of the Condor. Way more suspenseful and so many more fascinating twists and details. One of my favorites was how the analyst turned himself into a returning vet with a crewcut and some army surplus clothes (stolen). Of course, Redford was NOT going to shave his head for a role!
Another Scott
@Feathers:
FT as of about an hour ago:
Oooh. They should show how loyal they are by chaining themselves to the mast of the RMS dePfeffel. And take Rees-Mogg with them, also too.
Cheers,
Scott.
trollhattan
@CaseyL: Read at the time he survived the no-confidence vote that a typical PM only survives another six months. Fingers crossed.
Baud
@Another Scott:
Huh?
Kropacetic
@Baud: Secretary of his own personal advancement, perhaps?
Ben Cisco
@Baud:
Gin & Tonic
@CaseyL: BoJo may be an asshole, and the object of Tony Jay’s unending (and I mean unending) scorn, but he is admired in Kyiv, which is not sanguine about the prospects of his defenestration.
Warren Lorente
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: Well, one of them was Dick Cheney…
Alison Rose
@Baud: Apparently it’s to do with housing and such, but I was hoping it meant he was the Secretary of Gaming.
Immanentize
@Gin & Tonic: Best movie ever.
The O’Henry twist still makes me shiver. That and ol’ Gene at the end, playing his sax.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Gin & Tonic:
Why? Are his potential replacements considered worse from their POV, I’m guessing
Another Scott
@Ben Cisco: (Your link may say this, but my $0.02 – )
As I understand it, a huge problem in the UK for decades has been over-investment in London and greater London and neglect of the rest of the country/countries of the UK. So the “Leveling-Up” portfolio is supposed to address that by “spreading the wealth” to more of the country. But, you know BoJo and his cronies don’t actually believe in that, so it’s probably being run as a grifting/lie-to-the-rubes program. And Gove being in charge of that would seem to be confirmation. I would expect that the LU Secretary to stick around to the bitter end.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ben Cisco
@Another Scott: I expect you’re right – in a “let’s call it this but totally mean the exact opposite” way.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Baud:
From the Wiki:
I see Another Scott ninja’d me. *Shakes fist* ; D
Gin & Tonic
Hey, who remembers Marina Ovsyannikova, who was lionized for her “spontaneous” “anti-war” “protest” on russia’s Channel One? Who left, to great fanfare, to take a position on Germany’s Die Welt? To the surprise of approximately zero Ukrainians, she’s back in Moscow.
different-church-lady
@Feathers: We saw first-hand what you are describing play out over the “defund the police” slogan:
NORMIE: “I don’t like the way it sounds like eliminate the police.”
LIB 1: “Actually, it doesn’t mean that exactly, let me explain in excruciating detail why you have that misconception and…”
LIB 2: “YOU’RE GODDAMNED RIGHT IT MEANS ELIMINATE THE POLICE!”
Immanentize
@The Truffle: If I was asked/forced to share my political views, I would just link them to the Buzzcock’s I Believe.
After all, there is no love in this world anymore.
Gin & Tonic
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): BoJo’s Great Britain has provided and is providing very significant material support to Ukraine’s military, and BoJo himself went to Kyiv to meet with Zelensky. Yes, it may have been a stunt, but Ukrainians really appreciated it.
Dan B
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Full Handmaid’s Tale. When do public executions commence?
different-church-lady
@James E Powell:
Well, that was certainly one mistake they didn’t repeat.
Immanentize
@Dan B: Where have you been? They started years ago. Street executions.
Steve in the ATL
@zhena gogolia: what was the Russian toast about the czar—something like “death to the czar, long live the czar!” because as bad as the current one was they knew the next one could be much worse?
@CaseyL: [high fives fellow Fulton County resident JPL]
Steve in the ATL
@Immanentize: you are clearly keen to get over your musical probation. Good work!
Villago Delenda Est
@The Truffle:
Disney has HUGE sunk costs in Floriduh, so it’s unlikely they’ll shut down. They’ll just reassess any additions to Disney World.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Gin & Tonic:
What’s her deal? Why would she put her life in danger like she did (supposedly), leave Russia, and then return? More importantly why was she allowed to return without consequence? Further, why wasn’t she prosecuted under that new law that criminalized calling the Ukraine War, well, a war and sentenced to prison, instead of simply fined?
Bill Arnold
@TriassicSands:
I was willing to give Joe Kahn a short while to visibly nudge the NYTimes at least a little bit towards journalistic integrity. The evidence so far is that he’s nudging the Times towards fascism. Not sure whether it’s being done enthusiastically, yet, though.
Bill Arnold
@Bill Arnold:
Was going by the public bios of Kahn that say he’s editor since June. If he’s not yet actually in the role, then sorry, Joe.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Gin & Tonic:
Interesting. I can see that from their point of view re BoJo. What’s your read on Kyiv’s opinion on Biden?
By the way, I remember reading that Ukraine and the PRC cultivated good diplomatic relations with each other prior to war. Given China’s support for Russia’s imperial aims, does Kyiv and more broadly the Ukrainian people feel betrayed by China?
Immanentize
@Steve in the ATL: Are you a Del Byzantines fan?
Tony Jay
@Gin & Tonic:
ISWYDT
He’s not wrong, you know. Far from it. When the cheaply thatched steamdump finally gets cut loose I am going to revel at obscenely great length. I’ve got a title and everything.
There will be chapters.
Ruckus
@DFH:
They are rethuglicans. Just to get into the front door of that church they have to be anti – real life and anti personal freedom, believe that women are less human than men, guns and bullets insure life, and that they would rather live in hell than have zero risk ending up there without being able to breath.
Another Scott
@Gin & Tonic: Interesting. But not really surprising, is it?
I don’t know enough about the situation; there are indeed many things that seem incongruous. But life doesn’t always make obvious sense when politics and propaganda are involved.
This (Warning!) Politico Magazine piece from May 1 seems to be sympathetic while noting the various weirdnesses about the incident. It says that she had no intention of staying in the West and asking for asylum.
FWIW.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Steve in the ATL
@Immanentize: no wave FTW!
Feathers
@different-church-lady: This is a big one where it will take both activists being rowdy and calmer heads in the back room to get things done.
When I got normies complaining about Defund, I’d take what I knew about them and pivot to either 1) the balance of the percentage of town funding spent on the police vs the schools and everyone else. How come the cops get everything they want despite their being very little crime while everyone else is begging for funds? or 2) Civil asset forfeiture – the cops are allowed to say that anything somebody owns was gained through illegal activities and you have to sue to get it back. They also get to keep the money. People hate this. Tying defunding the police to this gets people thinking about why do cops get everything they want, even if it means stealing it.
I’ve actually moved on from defund myself to talking about civilian control. The fact that so many jurisdictions, even in blue states, essentially do not control the activities of their police departments is an incredibly dangerous fact as we head into a time when abortion is illegal, and we are heading into a future that where birth control and gay sex may not be legal. Our federal democracy survived because the military remained under civilian control. That local and state police forces have contempt for the governments they allegedly serve is extremely dangerous.
zhena gogolia
@Steve in the ATL: I never heard that one!
terraformer
@Kropacetic:
Indeed.
Who are these media outlets? I’d like to know
The Moar You Know
@Feathers: great advice, too late.
different-church-lady
@Feathers:
Absolutely, no question.
Feathers
@Villago Delenda Est: It’s not just the park there anymore. They have been moving a lot of high end creative jobs from Los Angeles to Orlando. Full departments. De Santis waited until the moves were complete to roll out his worst. The entire Walt Disney Imagineering unit was supposed to move this year, finishing up next year. They’ve pushed it back to 2026 after an employee revolt. That was just with the don’t say gay bill, before the Roe reversal. We’ll see what happens.
Brachiator
@Another Scott:
More complicated than that. The Southeast of England has areas of long time prosperity. More landed gentry, etc. Country homes. The north has many of the cities which were great and massively productive during the Industrial Revolution, but which are now part of a British Rust Belt.
You could oversimplify a bit to say that affluent semi-rural Conservative communities are even more parochial than rural conservatives in the US. They don’t care that the cities that once added to their wealth are now failing.
The City of London, which is the financial center of the UK, and a separate entity from Greater London, has always attracted wealthy investors, as has London and surrounding areas. Few Russian oligarchs want to live in Manchester.
Nelle
@CaseyL: Sixty invited. With this heat, who knows if anyone turns up. But we can do outside in the shade or in here. And I expect people will come and go. We have a left over sofa and can seat at least 10 in the living room and more all around the table (open floor plan). I’m not fussy about decorating and joked that some neighbors might even see how furniture that they discarded looks in my house. What happens, happens.
Miss Bianca
@Feathers: you make some excellent points here.
James E Powell
@Gin & Tonic:
I admit that the only reason I know that is because of Good Will Hunting.
Brachiator
@Feathers:
Great post.
There is also a racist and sexist element to this. Some police departments openly defy mayor’s and district attorneys who are people of color or women.
Geminid
@Brachiator: I imagine cops will turn on white male politicians too. I don’t have a sufficient base of knowledge to say where this has happened, but I think it has. The San Francisco police are said to have conducted a strike against SF DA Chesa Boudin, but that could be special case.
Brachiator
@Another Scott:
Javid had earlier served as Chancellor, but resigned when Johnson’s chief adviser Dominic Cummings essentially demanded control over Javid’s office. Javid and Sunak are right wing snots, but competent.
Raab and Truss are morons. They also see themselves as potential candidates to become leader of the Conservative Party should Boris Johnson get ousted.
Gove is a strange political animal, a Conservative Party Prince of Darkness. Competent, a combination of Mitch McConnell and Darth Vader.
Brachiator
@Geminid:
Chesa Boudin’s parents were members of the Weather Underground. He was a very progressive district attorney, but his political enemies painted him as a left-wing radical, in part because of his parents. He was supposedly too soft on crime, something the police and right wing hate.
Boudin was recalled during the June California primary.
Similarly, in Los Angeles, voters dumped District Attorney Jackie Lacey because she was a scary black woman, and installed George Gascón. He was an assistant chief of LAPD and former chief of police of San Francisco. Ironically he has turned out to be more radical and pro-defendent than Lacey ever was, and the police department hate him. To be fair, other district attorneys also think he has gone too far.
Steeplejack
@Brachiator:
Yeah, the “romance” was problematic, especially seen through today’s eyes.
J R in WV
@SiubhanDuinne:
Woody kept Quarter horses back when we kept livestock. I bought an elderly Bay mare workhorse from neighbors and had to search out old horse drawn equipment from all around these parts. And so while running around searching one time, P_ another neighbor and I ran across Woody’s Quarter horse farm out in Ona.
He was kind to these young hippies, back to the landers, and showed us some of his horsey stuff. I don’t recall buying anything, but it was nice to meet an older guy who didn’t care that we had long hair and beards. P_ has become a successful banjo picker and instrument rebuilder. I’m just a lazy retiree. And Woody was a nice guy, and stayed active all his life. Of course when we met him we had no idea he was semi-famous…
RIP, Woody! Thanks for all you did!!
Brachiator
@J R in WV:
A very cool anecdote. Thank you for sharing it.
TriassicSands
@zhena gogolia:
His successor was interviewed recently and said to expect no significant changes. He and Baquet are on the same page.
june 14 was supposed to be Baquet’s last day.
AWOL
@Nicole:
The end of the movie is not the end. It’s based on the novel “Six Days of the Condor.” They planned to do two films, each covering three days. Redford’s price went up for the second part, so they scrapped the finale. The ambiguity is not the end.
JR
NYT are like the remnants of European nobility hoping the fascists will boost them back to power and prestige
Gravenstone
@Tony Jay: Imagine one or more of the myriad authors in house can hook you up with a publisher, if you want to go legit.
Geminid
@Brachiator: The “reform” prosecutors who get in trouble receive the most publicity, but there are others who do not. Voters near me, in Charlottesille and Albemarle County, elected reform prosecutors in the last few years who have been successful in changing the City’s and the County’s approach to prosecutions, and with little if any blowback. They have not lightened up much on the violent offenders, though and that’s who the public really cares about.
In 2001 (I believe), San Francisco citizens voted out DA Terence Hallinan in part because they thought he was too easy on violent offenders, in particular perpetrators of domestic violence. The prosecutor elected in Hallinan’s place was Kamala Harris.
karen marie
That’s Bret’s ex-wife? Was moving her from books to opinion part of their divorce settlement?
FTNYT with prejudice.
TheTruffle
@Mnemosyne: They are Disney. They have the money. Also, Floridans’ taxes will go up due to his little vendetta.
More businesses should leave. Just go. This is a bad state to do business in. And other companies should avoid Florida.
TheTruffle
@Immanentize:
Understood.
Mine can be summed up by Leonard Pitts. “I do not believe unity is possible. But I’m glad Joe Biden does.”
From this link:
https://www.orlandosentinel.com/opinion/guest-commentary/os-op-leonard-pitts-unity-myth-20210222-kr6qk5oxz5dejjybv6267o6ape-story.html
TriassicSands
@Anyway:
If that is true, then why does the Times back all those same people for office? My problem with the Times’ political coverage is that it actively works against the same candidates it endorses. I believe that’s because they have an absurd idea of how to appear unbiased — by actively being biased against Democrats. This is where bothsiderism and false equivalence come in. Baquet thinks, apparently, that they can’t report something negative about the Republicans unless they balance it with something negative about Democrats. But their assertions that both sides do it are generally bizarrely unbalanced. They’ll counter insurrection with something like sporadic BLM protest violence that isn’t being done by elected officials, but by random private citizens. Or they’ll deal with Trump’s endless lying about truly consequential things by pointing out that Biden has a history of making verbal gaffes and sometimes exaggerating and distorting his own history and accomplishments. It may all be true, but it serves to diminish the seriousness of Trump’s words and actions. The Times has done this for decades with the GOP. In the end, they enable and effectively reward the worst instincts of Republicans, while hurting the Democrats.