Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

White supremacy is terrorism.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

FFS people, this was a good thing. take the win.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

People are complicated. Love is not.

No one could have predicted…

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

“woke” is the new caravan.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

He imagines himself as The Big Bad, Who Is Universally Feared… instead of The Big Jagoff, Who Is Universally Mocked.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

A lot of Dems talk about what the media tells them to talk about. Not helpful.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Area Legislator Shocked by Predictable Outcome of Actions

Area Legislator Shocked by Predictable Outcome of Actions

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South Carolina legislator discovers the “fetal heartbeat” abortion ban bill he voted for “is affecting PEOPLE!” (Actual quote!)

Maybe on some level this guy deserves credit for acknowledging that the decision he made had a terrible outcome for a constituent. If so, it won’t be me who extends it to him; I’m all out of fucking grace.

If Collins and the rest of the forced-pregnancy caucus had listened to the women and medical professionals who told them this is exactly what would happen if they passed the abortion ban, his 19-year-old constituent wouldn’t have endured needless trauma and risk to her life.

So, fuck that guy. Reproductive healthcare is healthcare.

Also, I officially stopped believing in the sisterhood on November 8, 2016, but this chart on the gender gap in new voter registration is interesting: (source on Twitter)

Area Legislator Shocked by Predictable Outcome of Actions

May the Collinses of America reap the fucking whirlwind.

Open thread.

Reader Interactions

155Comments

  4. 4.

    mrmoshpotato

    South Carolina legislator discovers the “fetal heartbeat” abortion ban bill he voted for “is affecting PEOPLE!” (Actual quote!)

    And affecting soylent green too!

    (My brain just immediately went there.  Blame it.)

    Seriously, to hell with these women-hating bastards!

  8. 8.

    Brit in Chicago

    @Betty Cracker: What matters is not what happens in the reddest states, which are out of reach for some time to come, but in the closely contested states. So I’m noting WI and PA—and, dare I hope, OH.

  9. 9.

    Mike in NC

    Saw the story about America’s Most Backward State (AKA South Carolina) getting close to banning abortions with no exceptions for rape or incest in the paper this morning. Also, too, Vladimir Putin is bringing back an old Soviet award for women who have ten or more children (AKA cannon fodder). Nazi Germany had a Mother’s Cross award (bronze for 5 kids, silver for 10, etc.). There’s just something about fascists and white babies. Can’t get enough of them!

  10. 10.

    Lacuna Synecdoche

    via Baud:

    Louisiana hospital denies abortion for fetus without a skull

    In honor of the famous headline “Headless Body Found In Topless Bar,” perhaps this headline should be:

    Brainless Republicans Force Birth Of Headless Baby

  11. 11.

    Scout211

    But will they change the law after the “meeting” he mentioned?

    My guess, not until after the midterms. They may not care about pregnant people, but voters are precious. 😡

  12. 12.

    rikyrah

    Senator Joe Biden literally took the train home every damn night. He’s going HOME.

    Not to a FOR-PROFIT BUSINESS. They know that they didn’t say SHYT about that with Dolt45, but, think they’re going to get all big and bad with a man going to visit his grandchildren?

     

    FOH!

     

    PittSimple10 (@PittSimple10) tweeted at 5:13 AM on Thu, Aug 18, 2022: The “trips to Delaware” thing is the weakest, most desperate attempt at a swipe I’ve ever heard in DC politics. It’s literally the next state over. People drive there for a few hours of beach time & then home the same day. Buy a map, people!!! (https://twitter.com/PittSimple10/status/1560208302843256834?t=dF76gtKZWd7GzfGy6MYYeg&s=03)

  13. 13.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    I will wish upon this person the same fate I wish upon the six inquisitors on the Supreme Court:

    May he contract a disease which delivers to him every bit of the pain which will be felt for the next generation by all the people who will suffer as a result of his decision.

    May he never get any respite from it for the nine months that disease takes to kill him.

  15. 15.

    Betty Cracker

    @Brit in Chicago: Right, but I hope it matters on a human level to the people who live in those states. Sometimes political realignments, like bankruptcies, happen gradually and then all at once.

  23. 23.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @rikyrah: Marcy Wheeler is taking a victory lap today. She’s a sharp reader and analyst, I just wish she were better at communicating her conclusions.

    We don’t know what steps DOJ took before May (aside from those that have shown in cases like Straka’s). We do know that at that point, DOJ started taking overt steps that would build on previous covert ones. We also know that we keep learning about steps that DOJ took months ago, when people were wailing that they would know if DOJ had taken such steps.

  24. 24.

    Bupalos

    Oh man those OH, PA, and WI numbers….damn that looks juicy.

    It really does look like Republicans catching the car on Dobbs might bite them in the butt.

  25. 25.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @rikyrah: You have the opposite take-away that I (and apparently TPM) have. May is late in the game for DOJ to have just started.

    But, doesn’t really matter now. We can only go forward.

     

    ETA: Agreed with JFL that, of course, there’s other things that DOJ may have done prior to May with regards to the ringleaders.

  26. 26.

    eachother

    Judicial and legislative healthcare harm is  done and being done.
    Harm has never stopped being done to the health and well-being of constituents. It didn’t require a extreme court decision to start.
    Quality Healthcare is rare and now pretty spare. Add to this less fair.

  27. 27.

    opiejeanne

    @Scout211: It affects people. Who the fuck did he think it would affect? Did he just now realize that women are people when confronted with the reality of what they’ve done?

    I mean, I’ve heard them argue that these laws would only affect a few emergencies, reduced it to a mere number, a tiny statistic, but people are not numbers, women and girls are your daughters, your wives, your mothers, your friends, your neighbors.

    Women are not statistics, except that we are a little more than half of the population, and we still have the vote. May the wrath of that half overwhelm them, and soon.  They should have listened to us, God willing, may they hear us now.

  28. 28.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Chief Oshkosh: It doesn’t say that the DOJ only started doing things in May.  It says that the DOJ was able to begin overt steps building on prior covert steps in May.

  29. 29.

    Kent

    Maybe on some level this guy deserves credit for acknowledging that the decision he made had a terrible outcome for a constituent. If so, it won’t be me who extends it to him; I’m all out of fucking grace.

    You do not EVER have to “hand it to them”

  30. 30.

    lowtechcyclist

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    “Wow, who knew women were actual live, breathing, thinking, feeling people?”

    It’s the flip side that’s key. The conceit that the entire “pro-life” movement is based on is that the fetus is a person, same as you or me, hence its life deserves the same protection yours or mine does.

    Maybe it’s finally gotten through to this bozo that that conceit is bullshit, that the 19 year old girl is PEOPLE, and the fetus…well, not really.

  31. 31.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: The “fundamentals”, the early polling, and the established patterns of US politics were all pushing for a Red Wave on at least the 1994 or 2010 level, maybe worse. Anything better than that is a Democratic win and we should not let people forget it.

  32. 32.

    kindness

    There was a reason when we started this country that one group did not force it’s religious burdens on other groups that didn’t agree.  Republicans latched on to the rising white evangelical movement for purposes of dependable votes and tossed that portion of American values in the trash bin and set it on fire.  I wouldn’t be so horrified if evangelicals actually practiced what Jesus said, but it seems to me they live in opposite world so they have turned their religion into a cult.  Cults always need enemies for misdirection purposes to keep the flock’s minds off what is really going down.

  33. 33.

    Sister Golden Bear

    In other utterly unshocking and predictable outcomes, sore loser sports parents force Utah official to investigate a child’s gender.

    After one competitor “outclassed” the rest of the field in a girls’ state-level competition last year, the parents of the competitors who placed second and third lodged a complaint with the Utah High School Activities Association calling into question the winner’s gender.

    David Spatafore, the UHSAA’s legislative representative, addressing the Utah Legislature’s Education Interim Committee on Wednesday, said the association — without informing the student or family members about the inquiry — asked the student’s school to investigate.

    “The school went back to kindergarten and she’d always been a female,” he said.

    Utah’s legislature passed the law, over the governor’s veto, to ban exactly one trans girl from competing in sports.

  34. 34.

    Tazj

    Finally dawned on this guy that he might not know everything. That maybe women with the advice of their doctors should decide what happens with their bodies.

    I give him credit for having remorse and pointing out how dangerous and cruel these laws are in public but it shouldn’t have come to this. They just don’t trust and respect women.

  35. 35.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Matt McIrvin: Even pre-Dobbs, but especially since then, a good number of us have been saying that this is not a normal year and simply applying normal expectations to it will not work.  Jan. 6, that actual legislative progress, the increasing insanity of the GOP, and then Dobbs….  It’s bound to be noticed.

  36. 36.

    Capri

    Saw a clip of Joe Rogan, yes that Joe Rogan, arguing with a forced birther and pushing back on the notion that a 14-year-old rape victim would be compelled to carry her rapist’s baby to term.

    Seems some line has been crossed when it comes to the general population understanding what abortion bans really mean.

  37. 37.

    JanieM

    @lowtechcyclist:

    hence its life deserves the same protection yours or mine does.

    It’s much worse than that. They have given the fetus (whatever it is) all the protection and the living breathing woman none at all

    ETA: That is, there isn’t even a fake attempt to pretend that there’s a balancing going on between competing rights and protections.

  39. 39.

    WaterGirl

    I say good on this guy Collins for being willing to speak up and own up to what a stupid fucking irresponsible thing they did.

    The Republican politicians who are passing these abhorrent bills do not listen to us and do not listen to the medical profession.  But they might just listen to this guy and to others if they have the balls to stand up as this guy did.

    Maybe if more people like him speak up, fewer of these abhorrent bills will be passed.

    That said, I totally agree, Betty, that they didn’t listen to women and medical professionals BEFORE they voted, when this could have been prevented.

    I feel terrible for that 19-year-old girl who had to live with an all-but-dead fetus in her body for 2 weeks.

    Question:  If fetuses are babies and people from the moment of conception, then why is it okay for that “baby” to have suffered for 2 weeks – that seems like cruel and unusual punishment.

  40. 40.

    Mike E

    @mrmoshpotato: he held a POC at gunpoint in Bradford a few years back ostensibly on suspicion of area assaults… it’s kinda like s_c holding a grudge IMO but ymmv. My hope is he remains healthy and continues to be our ally in the senate against the rise of American Nazis

  42. 42.

    Ken

    @Sister Golden Bear: My rational side doesn’t want to get into “three wrongs don’t make a right” territory, but my gut reaction is that the parents of the wronged child should demand the same investigation of the other two. Or get the fourth-place finisher to file the complaint.

  44. 44.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Omnes Omnibus: I wouldn’t be so surprised if the election turns out to be, as I saw someone characterize it over on LGM, a “push” in which the Congressional situation stays close to status quo, with maybe small Democratic losses in the House but we keep the chamber. If that happens it’s a good year (even if we lose control of the Senate!), we shouldn’t let anyone tell us otherwise. If we actually gain Senate seats it’s an excellent year.

  45. 45.

    oatler

    @rikyrah:Biden’s been golfing nonstop since the election. DemocratIc presidents are all lazy letches. This is GOP Canon, which is why newborns come preloaded with Jimmy Carter hate even if their parents   weren’t born until 1990.

  46. 46.

    Matt McIrvin

    @oatler: And Republicans are somehow better for national defense and “the economy” no matter how many times they fuck it up.

  47. 47.

    Another Scott

    @JanieM: +1

    I think it’s also important that Biden’s administration is pushing the fact that hospitals have a duty under federal law to protect the lives of their patients. MsMagazine (from July 27):

    In response to this crisis, one of the measures taken by the Biden administration was to highlight the role of the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA). This law, passed by the Reagan administration, states that any hospital that received Medicare funds must screen and stabilize patients for emergency medical conditions regardless of whether or not a patient could pay. The law was enacted, at least in part, to prevent “patient dumping”—leaving patients without care at the door of the hospital.

    EMTALA has implications for the current abortion landscape because patients who have attempted abortion or who are facing a life or health threatening problem with regard to their pregnancy may show up at an emergency room. Following Dobbs, Health and Human Services (HHS) clarified that if a physician believes a pregnant patient has an emergency medical condition, as defined by EMTALA and that an abortion is necessary, the physician should provide that treatment even where state law contravenes. For example, if a pregnant person goes to a hospital emergency room with an ectopic pregnancy, they will likely need an immediate abortion. But if a state law does not allow abortions even when the mother’s health or life are at risk, HHS suggests that the physician act to give the person the care they need and the physician would be protected by EMTALA.

    Dobbs doesn’t wipe out all the rest of federal law. We still have tools available to protect women, and it’s good that Biden is trying to use them.

    We have to vote the monsters out.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  48. 48.

    Kosh III

    ” What matters is not what happens in the reddest states, which are out of reach for some time to come,”

    It matters very much to those of us in red territory; t’s irksome( to say the least) to be deliberately ignored.  In Tn there is a decent chance to take back the governorship but instead the national party and various Pacs, etc wasted 41 million to try to frak up the R primaries and gives us the finger.

  49. 49.

    RaflW

    The pundit class of course has their own very selfish motivations to preserve, but I find it instructive and damning that the Kansas abortion constitutional vote which allegedly caused ‘shockwaves’ has just vanished, nationally, from the commentariat.

     

    OTOH, people in Kansas are still digging thru the data:
    Nobody predicted an 18-point landslide for ‘Vote No’ on Aug. 2. Here are other surprising numbers.
    Bob Beatty, Special to The Topeka Capital-Journal
    Aug 18, 2022

    It’s not hyperbole to say Kansas’ Aug. 2 vote on the abortion question shocked the world. Almost everybody thought “Yes” would win, a few thought “No” could squeak out a narrow victory, and nobody thought “No” would win by an 18-point landslide.

    Several of the party primaries also brought results that raised eyebrows. A few fascinating numbers follow:

    57%-53.5%-33%: This is my calculated approximate turnout of all registered Democrats, Republicans and unaffiliateds who voted. Yes, a higher percentage of Democrats turned out than their Republican brethren.

    What about a party breakdown of those citizens who voted on the abortion amendment question? We don’t know exactly, but a good estimate is that 49% Republicans, 31% Democrats and 20% unaffiliated comprised the electorate that day.

    The only public poll released before the election estimated that 62% of the voters would be Republican and as few as 7% unaffiliated.

    33%: The number of Republicans who may have voted no on the abortion amendment. It could be even higher since that number is based on the estimate that 90% of Democrats and 70% of unaffiliateds voted no. And it wasn’t just in Johnson or Douglas County that a fair number of Republicans voted no.

    In Franklin County, where 68% voted for Donald Trump in 2020, 63% voted no on Aug. 2. In Miami County, it was Trump 69%, no 52%; in Osage County, Trump 71%, no 56%.

    —  —  —

    That 33% of Republicans voting No is still very much something to watch this fall. Now many will dare to cross party lines on candidates rather than a ballot question is the sticky wicket. Few, probably. But maybe enough to lose some key races around the nation!

  51. 51.

    Betty Cracker

    @Matt McIrvin: From what I read, the (shifting) CW is that it will be all but impossible for Dems to hold the House but they might make gains in the Senate. If it shakes out that way, at least Biden can keep on appointing judges. Maybe Clarence Thomas will take a dirt nap.

  52. 52.

    The Moar You Know

    May the Collinses of America reap the fucking whirlwind.

    Easily fixed, ban women from voting.  The first of those bills will hit the statehouses in 2024.

  53. 53.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Matt McIrvin: I don’t see a loss of the Senate on the cards.  I think we at least hold the House and gain at least one in the Senate.  That’s my conservative take.  I am hoping for more like modest gains in the House and 54 Dems in the Senate.  It’s doable.

  54. 54.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @rikyrah: Funny how we keep finding out that DOJ has been doing stuff behind the scenes while everyone was assuming they were sitting idle.  The base assumption that nothing was happening at DOJ simply based on the fact that nobody had been indicted or perp-walked yet, was always a completely ridiculous assumption.  There have been numerous court filings reported on by people like Marcy Wheeler, Allison Gill, Elizabeth DeLaVega, Barb McQuade etc. showing that DOJ was clearly moving up the chain from the easiest cases (people who stormed the Capitol) to the people who conspired to get them there and stop the vote certification via other means, just as Garland told us they would and former DOJ people assured us was SOP for building big, complex cases.

  55. 55.

    RaflW

    @Mike in NC: I guess the war has been going on for eight years, but it’s remarkable to see Vlad planning for troop refreshment in the 2039 time-frame.

  60. 60.

    Ken

    @UncleEbeneezer: The base assumption that nothing was happening at DOJ simply based on the fact that nobody had been indicted or perp-walked yet

    I wonder if some of it might be because there were no leaks from DOJ?  People had four years to get used to the lower quality hires. Plus what they were working on was always obvious from TFG’s tweets about “smiting my ENEMIES”. (Not a quote but might as well be.)

  63. 63.

    gvg

    @Ken: The other kids are innocent. Its the complaining Parents that should be investigated. But I am sure it wouldn’t do any good to investigate their gender. How about investigating them for abusive behavior?

  64. 64.

    Betty Cracker

    We’re having a fierce rainstorm here, and it’s dark. Something that I thought was a leaf landed on our wet porch screen, and then I noticed it moving and realized it was a little bat! I was just about to take a picture, and the dogs scared it off. Dang! Poor little bat. I hope he finds a dry spot.

  66. 66.

    RaflW

    @opiejeanne: Something like 1.3 pregnancies per 100 (and the rate is rising in the US) are ectopic.

    Many of these insane, evil legislators don’t even want to carve out an exception to save these mothers. From a common and very treatable risk!

    I rarely just plainly call people evil. But that one just pushes me right over the edge.

  67. 67.

    Ken

    @Omnes Omnibus: “The Court finds 5-4 that ‘sex’ as used in the 19th Amendment means that the States may not restrict voting based on the prospective voter’s time of last heterosexual intercourse. Restriction by gender is allowed. The Court leaves open (hint, hint) the question of whether restrictions based on non-heterosexual intercourse are permissible.”

  68. 68.

    lowtechcyclist

    @UncleEbeneezer:

    The base assumption that nothing was happening at DOJ simply based on the fact that nobody had been indicted or perp-walked yet, was always a completely ridiculous assumption.

    No, it was based more on subpoenas: the theory was that if anyone of significance in the Administration had been subpoenaed as a witness, they’d have shown up for their interview at a Federal courthouse somewhere, and they’d have been seen there by someone.  And if nobody like that had been subpoenaed, the DOJ was still just working on the people who physically broke into the Capitol on 1/6.

    That doesn’t seem like such a ridiculous assumption, but in retrospect it was clearly off base.

  69. 69.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @WaterGirl: March 2021 for Garland, April 2021 for Lisa Monaco Deputy AG.  It’s also worth noting that DOJ and US Attorney’s offices are short-staffed (they keep having to hire more attorneys) and still dealing with significant backlog of work/cases due to Covid.

  70. 70.

    RaflW

    @lowtechcyclist: To me, it’s weirder that that. They’re obsessed with the ‘personhood’ of fetuses.

    But they do everything possible to immiserate or even endanger all persons once born (and given the GOP views on prenatal care & nutrition funding, they’d let the ‘personhood’ be malnourished and underweight, as long as it isn’t aborted).

    GW Bush’s “culture of life” thing was pure political bullshit. But he did do things like PEPFAR that at least suggest that he believed in some of it for persons who successfully passed out of the birth canal.

  73. 73.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    @The Moar You Know: There is an amendment to the Constitution that directly prevents that.

    One would think their decisions on the Voting Rights Act directly contradict the Fourteenth Amendment.  And the Fourth has been looking like a Swiss cheese for decades.  If they decide they want to invalidate the Nineteenth Amendment, they’ll yell, “Catch-22! Catch-22!” and just do it.

  74. 74.

    Baud

    @Ken:

    The Court finds 5-4 that ‘sex’ as used in the 19th Amendment means that the States may not restrict voting based on the prospective voter’s time of last heterosexual intercourse.

     
    Thank God.

  75. 75.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @lowtechcyclist: What bothered me is the absolutely certainty that Garland critics had that because they had not seen what they wanted to see that nothing was happening or would happen.  Again, despite the fact that many knowledgeable people told them that what they wanted to see could not happen in the time frame they were expecting.

  76. 76.

    Ken

    @Omnes Omnibus: You’re right, they’ll have struck down homosexual rights long before that point.

    (“Have struck”? “Have stricken”? “Have striked”? “Have crapped all over the Constitution”?)

  77. 77.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: Remember, Kansas was specifically Thomas Frank’s object case for cultural issues being a loss for Democrats, who should pivot to all pocketbook messaging all the time and just shut up on the gonadal stuff.

  78. 78.

    lowtechcyclist

    @RaflW: Who, even on their side, said they gave a damn about the quality of life?  But they also didn’t give a damn while millions died of Covid, so they can’t bullshit anyone anymore that they believe they care about life itself even.

  79. 79.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    What bothered me is the absolutely certainty that Garland critics

    Well put. It’s that “absolute certainty”, on this and so many other issues, on the part of the knee-jerk “Dems are doing it wrong!” crowd that is so grating.

  82. 82.

    Betty Cracker

    @stinger: I’m gonna wait to see if any of the suit-wearing criminals who orchestrated the attempted coup are charged before drawing firm conclusions on that, but news of movement is a welcome development, and the Disgraceland raid demonstrates that Garland isn’t afraid of upsetting the applecart!

  83. 83.

    Baud

    @Matt McIrvin:

    String theory is an amazingly elegant theory of everything that physics recognizes has no empirical evidence to back it up.

    And that is the difference between real scientists and political scientists.

  85. 85.

    WaterGirl

    @UncleEbeneezer: Thanks for sharing the actual information.

    And thank you for helping to make my point, which was that even if the “they didn’t do anything important until May” crap was correct, Garland and his key people were barely on board by May.

  86. 86.

    Matt McIrvin

    @RaflW: I suspect that at least for many of them, the personhood of the fetus is a proxy for the father, or at least the desire not to nullify the father’s ability to procreate. (Of course, in many of these cases the father doesn’t even want to procreate, but they want to remove all possibility.)

    You can see it in the complaints of “men’s rights activists” that women have (had) the right to abortion but they don’t have the right to “male abortion”, which would be the ability to sever all responsibility for child support on demand. They see this as an unacceptable asymmetry of control.

  87. 87.

    opiejeanne

    @RaflW: I had a hysterectomy in 1984 and had a roommate because the hospital was FULL. She was admitted for observation, the doctors initially thought she had appendicitis but wanted to run more tests. That night it became clear that her “appendicitis” was an ectopic pregnancy and they rushed her to surgery to deal with it.

    I’m struck by how “rare” it is and yet I’ve encountered it completely by chance.  How many people do we meet in our lives? Hundreds? Maybe a couple of thousand? So, statistically we might know between 13 and 26 real women, not statistics, who have had ectopic pregnancies. Put them in one room and that starts to feel like a lot of people.

  89. 89.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @WaterGirl: When I look at the size, scope and complexity of investigating and then moving towards indictments of everything related to January 6th, I see EASILY a year and a half’s worth of work.  Subpoenas are not the first step.  First they have to interview all the underlings, review their docs, get cooperation etc., just to establish enough evidence to justify proceeding to the higher ups.

    I don’t think an 18 month timeline to get to where we are at now (with Grand Jury investigations and likely indictments of Eastman, Clark, Powell, Meadows, Stone and possibly Trump too) is unreasonable at all.  Very early on, former DOJ people warned us that it was gonna take time and most of it wasn’t gonna be in public view.  I accepted that from the get go, so the pace of investigations isn’t disappointing to me at all.  It’s a process with many hurdles/steps.  So I celebrate each one I see as it confirms that the process is moving steadily in the direction of justice.

  90. 90.

    Bupalos

    @Sister Golden Bear: I’m really worried about controlling myself if this happens to the team I coach here in Ohio. Like really worried I’ll do something that ends my opportunity to coach, or worse.

    Anyone in softball (and probably most women’s sport) knows we’ve got a lot of athletes that however they identify in a binary sense are at the “wrong” end of the cis spectrum as far as these fucking yahoos are concerned. And some of them already walk the line of trauma without it. You could hear this kind of shit in the stands before it became a political sport.

    This is absolutely psychosexual abuse sanctioned by the state. I sit here and think about it and find myself doing a Taxi Driver routine… “just try it, you fucking psycho…try it…try it…”

    And I really don’t know what I’ll do when they try it.

  91. 91.

    FastEdD

    @Betty Cracker: CW that we lose the House and gain a couple in the Senate is what I see based on my local district (I know it is just an anecdote.) We had an R for years, worked to get rid of her and replaced her with the wonderful Katie Porter. Then redistricting happened, we lost Porter and we are now underdogs in an R+4 district. It doesn’t mean we stop working, but man, it is frustrating.

  94. 94.

    Bupalos

    I think a lot of folks make the mistake of thinking the Republican abortion position is either more convoluted and conflicted or rational than it is.

    It’s quite simple and clear. Their position on abortion is simply part of the overall agenda. They want to go back in time to an imaginary past. They want to solve what they see as social and moral and economic problems with one weird trick that has the benefit of being so impossible that it will never be tried and thus never be disproven. They can’t bear to look ahead, so they cover their eyes and dream.

    The reason this guy didn’t think about the real world consequences of his vote is that he had a prior commitment to not living in the real world, where we are all here in the present and time is moving forward. Conservatives long ago gave up on slowing the movement of time and upped the ante to reversing it.

    It isn’t “hate” or “controlling women” and he never wanted to actually hurt real women. Hes quite genuine. He wanted to help imaginary women, in a made up land of yesteryear. Unfortunately he got a real phone call in the real world that intruded on that delusion and made him cwy and feaw vewy bad. He’ll deal with that intrusion and get back to the delusion shortly.

  95. 95.

    Betty Cracker

    @Bupalos: As a former softball mom, I’ll just say I’m grateful to coaches like you who care enough about kids to get angry when assholes abuse them. You’re absolutely correct — it’s psychosexual abuse, and the people who engage in it are either twisted fucks who enjoy tormenting children or sociopaths who are using twisted fucks who enjoy tormenting children for political gain. Both sets of cruel jerks can roast in hell.

  96. 96.

    Bupalos

    @Gin & Tonic: Man, you’d think now that Russia has “installed it’s information space” there they could get up some PSA’s on properly discarding those cigarettes, away from massive ammo dumps.

  98. 98.

    Kent

    @The Moar You Know:Easily fixed, ban women from voting.  The first of those bills will hit the statehouses in 2024.

    Oh no, it won’t be that.  The CONSISTENT GOP approach to women voting would be to assign their votes to the males in charge of their lives.  So the husband in the case of married women and the father in the case of unmarried women.  That would be the proper Biblical way to do it.

    That way they would still have their constitutional right to vote, but it would just be transferred for save keeping to the men in their lives.

  101. 101.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Bupalos: We really need to start turning the narrative around and calling these assholes pedophiles or something for their obsession with kids’ genitals.  I’m so glad I coach in CA in a pretty liberal, LGBTQ-friendly area.  I can’t even imagine having to try and deal with OH parents…ugh…I would definitely end up losing it on them.

  102. 102.

    Kent

    @Bupalos:I think a lot of folks make the mistake of thinking the Republican abortion position is either more convoluted and conflicted or rational than it is.

    It’s quite simple and clear. Their position on abortion is simply part of the overall agenda. They want to go back in time to an imaginary past. They want to solve what they see as social and moral and economic problems with one weird trick that has the benefit of being so impossible that it will never be tried and thus never be disproven. They can’t bear to look ahead, so they cover their eyes and dream.

    I think it is simpler than that.  I think abortion was simply a culture war issue that Republicans could use to cement their fundie base and mobilize large numbers of shock troops to go door to door during elections.  The pro-life wackos are more or less the GOP equivalent of the unions that provide foot soldiers for the Democrats.

    As long as Roe was in place they could stir up their rabid base of fundie foot soldiers by demagoguing on abortion because it didn’t really affect anyone else.  Because Republicans are absolute masters at demagoguing to their base.

    But with Dobbs they are now the dog that caught the car and they don’t quite know what the fuck to do.   Suddenly their positions and laws are not simply performative nonsense that doesn’t actually affect anyone.  Suddenly it affects EVERYONE and not in good ways.

    Anyway, fuck them.  They are now caught in a trap of their own making.  The only way to deal with it is to flush them down the toilet via the ballot box.

  104. 104.

    Bupalos

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Senate races are different… in that YOU CAN’T gerrymander them.

    People (and I definitely include people here) are going to need to reexamine their counterproductive definitions when “red-state” Ohio sends 2 blue senators to DC

  106. 106.

    RaflW

    @Matt McIrvin: “Asymmetry of control” could be pretty much the capstone headline of American politics, 1776-present. Where of course it’s the women, the brown & black people, the gays etc gaining some scintilla of symmetry/equity that drives our nation to this or that brink.

  108. 108.

    RaflW

    @UncleEbeneezer: I agree with all of this. The risky political question (which should not tip DoJ’s hand) is that functionally we have a pretty hard stop after the election if either chamber falls to the GOP.

    They will go apeshit. Quevin McCarthy directly threatening the independence of the A.G. (which media should have reported as a beyond-the-pale threat to our system of governance) was for real

    It’s a very difficult bind.

  110. 110.

    Roger Moore

    @Sister Golden Bear:

    The one thing that makes this a little less horrible than it could have been is that the school district was able to conduct its investigation just by checking her school records.  It’s still disgusting that the investigation took place, but I’m glad the poor girl didn’t have to get a doctor’s note or be subject to an invasive physical exam.

  111. 111.

    RaflW

    @UncleEbeneezer: The point of accusing ‘libs’ of being pedos first was as a sort of grotesque political inoculation. Accuse the other side of what you are, and the incurious, incapable press just resorts to “each side calls the other criminal, it’s ‘too partisan’ for us media to say which accusation is true.”

    And the press continues to willingly get played for this – all the time. No matter how much we push back.

  112. 112.

    Soprano2

    @mrmoshpotato: So who did that fucking idiot think it was going to affect? Perhaps he thought only sluts who fuck without being married would be affected? I swear, that’s what these people believe.

  113. 113.

    Bupalos

    I keep trying to think about what I’m going to do if/when this comes up, and I literally can’t keep my brain on it long enough to work it out. It’s painful to think about.

    I do think I’m going to have a talk with our AD before this year begins about what he’ll support as far as us coaches having a little chat with spectators. Whether bear spray counts as free speech for him. That kind of thing.

  114. 114.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Sister Golden Bear:  A good thread on this disgusting story, by Zinnia Jones:

    “What’s next for transphobia in schools? This anti-trans group wants schools to make sure your child’s “crotch bulge of the penis” is visible enough, just to make sure they’re not trying to transition”

  115. 115.

    Kent

    @Ken:@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I like “candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome”.  I’d love to see his list, though I bet I can guess several of them.

    I rather doubt that Hershel Walker was the turtle’s top pick for the GA Senate.

  116. 116.

    Roger Moore

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    There is an amendment to the Constitution that directly prevents that.

    The constitution means no more and no less than what the Supreme Court says. I thought the 15th Amendment gave Congress the power to write voting rights legislation, but the Supreme Court decided they could throw out whatever they felt like for dumb reasons never mentioned in the Constitution.

  117. 117.

    Soprano2

    @JanieM: They have given the fetus (whatever it is) all the protection and the living breathing woman none at all

    They will choose the fetus every single time over the woman. EVERY.SINGLE.TIME.

  119. 119.

    Geminid

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: When McConnell cites the factor of  “candidate quality, there is an implicit dig at trump.

    J.D. Vance and Mehmet Oz are mediocre candidates who squeaked by their primary opponents with trump’s endorsement, both winning less than 33% of the vote. trump foisted Herschel Walker on an unwilling Georgia Republican party that was unwilling to cross trump after his supporters sandbagged Loeffler annd Perdue in the January 5, 2021 Senate runoffs.

    I’m not sure Fetterman could be beaten by anyone, but McCormick had a better chance than Oz. Vance and Walker are inferior candidates, and Blake Masters in Arizona probably is too.

  120. 120.

    Soprano2

    @Kosh III: In MO there’s going to be a constitutional amendment to make recreational pot legal, plus it would forgive most past weed crimes. If it passes, it would be the first time this was done by a state’s voters. Here’s hoping it does pass. The bonus is that since it’s a constitutional amendment, the R’s in the state legislature won’t be able to mess with it, although that doesn’t mean they won’t try anyway (see the Medicaid expansion). MO is weird that way – this may very well pass while R’s keep a supermajority in the state legislature and control all state government positions.

  121. 121.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Roger Moore: Okay, yes.  I get the the legal realist argument, but I still say that if things have actually gone that far then we are already completely fucked.  I don’t believe that is the case though.

  122. 122.

    cmorenc

    @Capri:

    Saw a clip of Joe Rogan, yes that Joe Rogan, arguing with a forced birther and pushing back on the notion that a 14-year-old rape victim would be compelled to carry her rapist’s baby to term.

    Joe Rogan is the kind of RW glibertarian who too-often fails to understand that many of the folks he has aligned himself with to resist alleged forms of left-wing oppression are hard-core authoritarians intent on imposing their own religious or oligarchical order on people.  Yeah, Joe so you did find dot A wrt the 14 yo rape victim, but you failed to connect it to dots B, C, D….

  123. 123.

    Roger Moore

    @Baud:

    String theory is an amazingly elegant theory of everything that physics recognizes has no empirical evidence to back it up.

    It’s actually worse than that.  “String Theory” isn’t really even a single theory.  It’s a whole family of theories that make different as yet untestable predictions.  So even if we manage to come up with a test, it won’t be able to disprove “String Theory”, since the theorists can just switch to a different variant of the theory that makes a different prediction.

  124. 124.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:  Other than the part about candidate quality, the rest of it seemed to be Mitch saying, “those House districts, man, you can use computer software to cram a Democratic majority into one-third of the districts, and the Supreme Court will say it’s fine and dandy.  But dammit, we can’t gerrymander the Senate any more than it’s already gerrymandered by making Wyoming and Montana and Idaho and each Dakota into its own state, and that might not be enough.”

  125. 125.

    Geoduck

    @Mike in NC: In the original World War Z novel, the post-zombie apocalypse Russia has women who are explicitly kept around to crank out babies and rebuild the population. And it’s strongly implied that Putin is still in charge, openly ruling as a Czar.

  126. 126.

    Geminid

    @Kent: When trump first pushed Walker as a Senate candidate, McConnell was dismissive. Ten days later he said Walker might not be so bad after all. He was following the lead of Georgia Republican leaders who did not want to cross trump. They’re afraid of Stacey Abrams, and of the prospect of trump undercutting Brian Kemp’s reelection. He still might undercut Kemp anyway.

  127. 127.

    Ramona

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’ve been reading emptywheel.net since Fitzgerald’s investigation into Valerie Plame’s outing. I think all Wheeler needs to be clearer is a patient proofreader or at the least better use of commas.

    But, her ability to piece together what is transpiring from legal publications spread across time is starkly genius. Take, for example, Barr’s DOJ lawyers’ attempts to alter dates on FBI field reports using Post-its!

  128. 128.

    Roger Moore

    @Kent:

    I think you’re missing an important point.  Yes, the R position on abortion started out as a cynical ploy to recruit foot soldiers for the cause, but that was 40-50 years ago.  The people who developed that cynical ploy are retired or dead, replaced by the foot soldiers they recruited.  To them, abortion isn’t a cynical political ploy used to convince the rubes; it’s evil and the defining issue of our time.  It’s a real shock to people who have believed in abortion as an issue for their whole political lives to discover it’s more complicated than they realized.

  129. 129.

    Eunicecycle

    @Soprano2: I had a friend who had eclampsia with her second pregnancy. The parish priest told her husband he had to choose the life of the child over his wife, who already had another child at home. Luckily they both lived, but it was horrific for my friend and her husband. This happened in the 1980s.

  131. 131.

    Three-nineteen

    Did someone say “Your bill probably killed some other woman in those six weeks – you just don’t know about it”?

  132. 132.

    Ken

    @Eunicecycle: The parish priest told her husband he had to choose the life of the child over his wife

    Every now and then, the ethos of the killer in the Saw movies suddenly makes sense.

  133. 133.

    Roger Moore

    @Soprano2:

    I think this really gets to the core of some of our political problems.  Liberal policies are far more popular than liberals are.  If you present people with a series of yes/no votes on the issues, they’ll lean far more liberal than they do when voting on candidates.

  135. 135.

    The Lodger

    @Bupalos: There were plenty of abortions in the pre-Roe past, and there always were. It’s just that many of them weren’t legally done in licensed medical facilities. Pretending they never occurred is the imaginary part of the past according to Rep. Collins and his fellow fabulists.

  136. 136.

    Geminid

    These extreme abortion laws result from gerrymandering, I think. Once Republicans created so many safe red districts, they started a race to the bottom won by the radical component of the party, an alliance of the tea party cranks and bible thumpers.

    The permitless concealed carry laws that have cropped up in red states show a similar dynamic. When one was proposed for Texas, the Texas Tribune published a poll showing that 58% of Texans opposed it, but it sailed through the gerrymandered legislature. Same with Ohio.

  138. 138.

    Citizen Alan

    @Bupalos:  Which is why they are now pushing to repeal the constitutional amendment calling for direct election of senators. They want senators to be chosen by the redstate legislatures that they have already gerrymandered to hell and back.

  139. 139.

    Ksmiami

    @UncleEbeneezer: I’d say their grotesque obsession with childhood sexuality shows their pedo cards… And no, I don’t want to be nice to the GOP, I want the party destroyed, buried, salted – a sad, dangerous blip in history.

  140. 140.

    Gretchen

    The forced birthers are doing a recount of the abortion vote in KS. The gop governor and house candidates are furious, because they are on the record as no exceptions forced birthers, and after the landslide no vote are realizing this will work against them and hoping the issue would fade.  Their ridiculous allies are keeping it in the news.  Hahaha.

  143. 143.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Geminid:

    I’m not sure Fetterman could be beaten by anyone, but McCormick had a better chance than Oz.

    I didn’t pay that close attention, but I never heard of outright buffoonery from McCormick, and he was I believe at least born in the state. And a West Point graduate and Iraq vet. I think he was definitely a stronger candidate than Oz. I think trump wanted to spite his wife– Dina Powell– for insufficient groveling, and I’m sure there were some long phone calls when Oz groveled with the strength of ten Kevin McCarthys.

  144. 144.

    Ramona

    @EarthWindFire: Exactly! We Republicans, implies McConnell, have uniformly unpopular candidates but our gerrymandering has a chance of delivering the House to us.

  145. 145.

    Geminid

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: McCormick had very little public record, a blank canvas so to speak, that he could have used his money to paint. That that’s what Youngkin did in Virginia.

    Fetterman is a formidable candidate and McCormick might not have beaten him, but he would have had a chance. I think Oz is destined to be Yellow Brick Road-kill.

  151. 151.

    Geminid

    @Roger Moore: Pay for play is endemic within trump’s circle. Various trump confidantes worked for a lot of different primary candidates (in some cases several at once). Kimberly Guilfoyle, for instance, held a (nominally) high position in Missouri Senate candidate Eric Greitens’s campaign, and Steven Miller worked for Pennsylvania Senate hopeful McCormick.

    There were others, including Kellyanne Conway, Hope Hicks and Cory Lewandowski. trump knew this, but probably enjoyed the rivalry. And as some have suggested, he may well have gotten his own piece of the action.

  152. 152.

    Dan B

    @lowtechcyclist: The Christianist view seems based upon purity, not life.  A fetus has no sin but a child is found guilty of sin almost immediately.  Therefore Christianists must protect the pure and punish (love) the sinner.

  154. 154.

    misterpuff

    @Bupalos:

    Oh man those OH, PA, and WI numbers….damn that looks juicy.

    It really does look like Republicans catching the car on Dobbs might bite them in the butt.

    Yeah, the GOP pols have been in the driver’s seat appealing to the forced birther crowd in their reddish states but that was fine because Roe still breathed. They could raise fucktons of money and get the plaudits of passing laws that would never be enforced AS LONG AS ROE WAS STILL IN FORCE. I think the smart pols knew The Game but somewhere along the way they forgot, and Moscow Mitch decided to pack the Court with Trump/Federalist appointees that were True Believers. Sure they will get the Business supporting decisions they crave but underestimated that the Dobb decision would blow Roe out of the water. The chickens are coming home to roost.

    And that chicken shack is starting to rock!

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