Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

The words do not have to be perfect.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

Why did Dr. Oz lose? well, according to the exit polls, it’s because Fetterman won.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

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

After roe, women are no longer free.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

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Saturday Morning Open Thread: Holiday Countdown

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New budget deadline is Friday the 23rd — for a true ‘airing of the grievances’ Festivus!

Saturday Morning Open Thread 16

(Mike Luckovich via GoComics.com)

Speaking of grievances…

Big Biden wins!

Reader Interactions

130Comments

  1. 1.

    Geminid

    From the estimable Magdi Jacobs, aka Mangy Jay:

    Hi everyone, I am trying out Post. My handle is @ Mangy_Jay and my name is Magdi Jacobs. postnews/Mangy_Jay

     

  3. 3.

    UncleEbeneezer

    A federal judge revealed Friday that earlier this year she granted Justice Department investigators access to emails between three Trump-connected attorneys and Rep. Scott Perry as part of the federal investigation into election subversion efforts by the former president and others.

    At the request of DOJ, U.S. District Court Chief Judge Beryl Howell unsealed a June opinion in which she determined that 37 emails sent among Trump-era Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark, his aide Ken Klukowski and conservative attorney John Eastman and Perry (R-Pa.) — another top Donald Trump ally who chairs the House Freedom Caucus — were not protected by attorney-client privilege.

  5. 5.

    Geminid

    @Geminid: Mangy Jay specializes in dispassionate analyses of social and political questions. She typically is, on balance, a cheerful person with a positive attitude.

    Ms. Jay was in a bit of a mood the other evening, though:

       There has never been anything that makes me want to bite a man more than when a man says, “I won’t bite you.”

    ****

    Men say this to me and I wanna be like, “That’s nice. I will bite you, though. I see the weak spot in your neck, below your ear, where the skin starts to get more translucent. I’ll bite you right there. And then I will use the entire force of my body to rip it out.

    ****

    Sorry, a man just told me he wouldn’t bite me….

    @Magi_Jay Dec.13

  6. 6.

    Betty Cracker

    Still enjoying the fallout from Trump’s NFT con:

    Multiple current and former advisers to Trump said that the seemingly random business venture was a mistake and beneath the 45th president.

    Excuse me, did multiple advisors suggest something — anything! — is beneath Donald J. Trump? Not even the molten core of the planet is beneath that motherfucker!

    “I know this will anger some in Trump world but come on! Can we all just admit this is not great for Donald Trump’s first major announcement since announcing he’s running again?” tweeted Michael Biundo, a New Hampshire-based GOP strategist and former senior adviser to Trump’s 2016 campaign.

    “I kind of feel like we’re being punked,” Biundo added.

    A person who has been associated with Trump since 2016 is just now realizing he’s been punked? These people are irretrievably stupid and should STFU forever.

  7. 7.

    OzarkHillbilly

    The company recently announced that it will pay $168m to settle 364 claims that were brought against it. According to Hertz, the settlement will bring resolution to “more than 95% of it pending theft reporting claims.”

    “My intention is to lead a company that puts the customer first. In resolving these claims, we are holding ourselves to that objective,” the Hertz CEO, Stephen Scherr, said in a statement.

    I thought that’s what they were already doing, putting the customer first in jail, then in court, then…

    Numerous lawsuits filed against Hertz in recent years accuse the company of knowingly and falsely reporting its customers to authorities. They accuse Hertz of not investigating alleged thefts before filing theft reports, as well as reporting cars stolen without any verification that they are stolen.

    In addition, the lawsuits allege that the company rents “stolen” cars to unsuspecting customers and supplies false information in theft reports by secretly deleting customer rental extensions and backdating rental due dates.

    Now that’s what I call first class customer treatment. What I wonder is why? Where’s the money?

    “As a direct and proximate result of Hertz’s conduct, Ms Reece-Williams was falsely arrested, jailed for two weeks, prosecuted on criminal charges for theft, made homeless, almost lost her child to child services, had her personal and family relationships damaged, had her reputation destroyed, lost her possessions in the car, and has suffered severe mental and emotional harm, including anxiety, depression and sleeplessness,” the lawsuit states.

    Another customer, Shontrell Higgs, also filed a claim against Hertz after she was falsely arrested in April 2019 in Broward county, Florida, for auto theft, despite extending and paying for her vehicle from Hertz. Higgs, a nurse, ended up spending 37 days in jail and says that she lost her job, missed her nursing school graduation and also suffered a miscarriage while incarcerated.

    “Sitting in a cell, not knowing what’s next, and I’m telling them, like, ‘I have proof. I have the proof in my phone, it’s in my phone. All the evidence is in my phone,’” Higgs told WSVN.

    Similarly, Pennsylvania resident Kelly Grady was arrested in 2017 after Hertz falsely accused her of stealing an SUV in 2013. Grady subsequently spent 12 days in jail. “It was humiliating. It was scary. It was horrible. It was degrading. I was sexually assaulted and gang beaten,” she told 6ABC.
    …………………………
    In another instance, customer Nicholas Wright rented a car from Hertz with his family while on vacation in Savannah, Georgia in October 2021 and was falsely accused of theft. According to a lawsuit, 30 minutes after renting the car, 10 police cars surrounded the vehicle and held Wright and his 13-year old daughter at gunpoint for auto theft. “He learned the car had been reported stolen before he rented it,” the lawsuit said.

    $168 million is no where near enough. They should have gotten the Alex Jones treatment. This at the end caught my eye:

    “It’s wrong primarily to the customer, who is a valid paying customer or has a business relationship. It’s wrong to the police, who were basically acting as strong arms for a private corporation. And it’s wrong to the taxpayers, who are basically having their funds diverted away from stopping crime or resolving issues in the community, by putting it towards a global corporation’s security and finding their own cars because they’re not doing it themselves,” Francis Malofiy, an attorney representing several customers in one of the many lawsuits against Hertz, told Atlanta Black Star.

    Same as it ever was.

  8. 8.

    WaterGirl

    @Betty Cracker: I was on team “this NFT thing from is laughable and ridiculous.”

    But I have moved to team “4,500 x $100 = $4.5 million so the apparent purchase of the 4,500 stupid trading cards is covering a payoff from someone/s, possibly in exchange for classified information.”

  10. 10.

    Freemark

    How is the settlement only 168 million?! Those people should now own Hertz and there should have been criminal liability.

  13. 13.

    Geminid

    @Betty Cracker: It’s not that Mr. Biundo hasn’t known he’s being punked for a while. He’s saying it now because he’s not afraid to and/or this NFT scam really is discreditable beyond the discredit with which Trump has already tarred himself and his supporters.

    I suspect that this coming year will see a lot of Republicans who, like Biundo suddenly find the “courage of their convictions” regarding the Orange Churl.

  14. 14.

    danielx

    @Betty Cracker:

    But hey, there is that $4.5 million in return for…nothing, basically. I’m only surprised he hasn’t come up with something like this before now.

    Now if someone will just come out with some variations – Trump in a clown suit, Trump in a straitjacket, the possibilities are endless.

  15. 15.

    JWR

    @Scout211: From the same article, there’s this bit supposedly explaining why he imposed the gag on Free Speech in the first place:

    He tweeted Wednesday that a car one of his children was in was followed and blocked from moving by a driver, who Musk said got on top of the hood of the car with his child in it.

    The Los Angeles Police Department said Thursday that no police reports had been filed. Other law enforcement departments also cover parts of the Los Angeles metropolitan area.

    […]

    Flight data includes where a plane lands, but it does not track a plane’s occupants outside the plane itself, so it could not be used to trace the real-time location of Musk or his children if they were not onboard or near the plane.

  16. 16.

    Scout211

    This  was disappointing. Rules and laws are only for people not named Trump. Sigh.

    Former President Donald Trump has requested — and received — a 45-day extension on filing a mandatory personal financial disclosure that would offer new details about his wealth now that he’s again a presidential candidate.

    “Due to the complexity of his finances and the need to obtain additional information from third parties, President Trump needs additional time to gather the necessary information and complete the report,” Compass Legal Group senior counsel Derek H. Ross wrote to the Federal Election Commission on Thursday.

    “I have granted your request for a 45-day extension of time until January 29, 2023,” FEC Acting General Counsel Lisa Stevenson replied on Friday.

  17. 17.

    Kay

    Anti abortion activists lie easily and constantly:

    You already know that Ohio Republicans are working to change the standards around ballot measures in the state—raising the threshold of votes needed to change the state constitution from 50% to 60%. The move is clearly meant to stop voters from making their voices heard on abortion, but conservative lawmakers have continually insisted that this is about stopping ‘special interests’ from coming into the state, spending lots of money, and ‘tricking’ voters. Once such legislator is state Rep. Brian Stewart, who said explicitly that Republican efforts to change the rules had nothing to do with concern over 2023 ballot measures, but was “looking ahead decades” to “curtail the ability of special interests to buy amendments.” He even said that criticisms suggesting Republicans were trying to stop pro-choice voters was a “conspiracy theory.”
    But in a letter obtained by an Ohio political reporter, Stewart gives away the game: In the letter, Stewart pushes his Republican colleagues to pass the measure requiring 60% of the vote by explicitly citing abortion!
    “After decades of work to make Ohio a pro-life state, the Left intends to write abortion on demand into Ohio’s Constitution. If they succeed, all the work accomplished by multiple Republican majorities will be undone, and we will return to 19,000+ babies being aborted each and every year.”

    Also, if you’re looking for coverage of abortion and finding that national media have a black out on the subject, you can subscribe to Jessica Valenti’s work covering womens health and autonomy at the link.
    One has to cobble together local media + bloggers to find any coverage of the new pregnancy regulations at all. Apparently the issue has been deemed unimportant by the people who own national media outlets.

  18. 18.

    Betty Cracker

    @Geminid: I understand exactly where she’s coming from. I’m not sure how universal it is, but I know it’s a widespread feeling among women that one of the most enraging things in life is that sort of casual, patronizing bullshit.

    As a poverty-sticken student who could only afford to live in squalid apartments that were either too hot or too cold, I used to hang out in pubs by myself to read a lot, and strange men thought nothing of interrupting my reading and ordering me to smile and assuring me they wouldn’t bite.

    It probably doesn’t seem like it, but I’m more charitable now than I was then, so in retrospect, I assume they didn’t mean it that way — as a directive — but at the time, that’s how I took it. I’ve seethingly composed retorts in my head as ghoulish as Ms. Jay’s, but alas, there was no social media then to share them on.

    One of the few appealing aspects of getting older is that strange men don’t aggressively assert ownership over my attention and appearance anymore. It’s a mercy and a consolation.

  19. 19.

    PAM Dirac

    @Betty Cracker:

    These people are irretrievably stupid and should STFU forever.

    This is very true, but I also think they are assholes. I think is goes something like this:

    drumpf does something mind boggling stupid that causes pain, suffering, and death -> Ha, Ha. look how mad the libs are. Suck it libs.

    drumpf does something mind boggling stupid that is pointless and weird, but relatively harmless -> the libs are laughing at us. I’m sad. Maybe you shouldn’t do that.

    It has been pointed out many times that you can’t shame these people, but you can make them feel uncomfortable by mocking and laughing at them and that tool should be used as often as possible.

  20. 20.

    OzarkHillbilly

    I got my MRI yesterday (6:15 AM, first in, first out!). When we finally finished up (25 mins in the machine, with all that noise)(and a fan blowing cool air thru it! a nice touch that, first time I ever got it) the tech asked me if I wanted the pictures.

    Huh? Nobody ever offered me that before (the analyses of my last 2 colonoscopies came with full color pictures tho). So I said, “Sure.” full in the knowledge that I would never be able to interpret them. I have no idea what a tear looks like but it would be kind of cool to see my shoulder that way.

    And it was. It was very interesting to see the insides of my shoulder in layers. A couple things I saw might be tears, or just as well might not. The sawbones will give me the lowdown on Monday.

  22. 22.

    WaterGirl

    @Freemark: I wrote my comment before seeing yours. Yes!

    I did the math, and it looks like $350k or so per person after the attorneys take a standard 30% off the top.

    Not. Nearly. Enough.  Some poor person steals food to eat and spends years in jail.  People at Hertz – and you know it couldn’t just be one person – ruin the lives of hundreds of people and the company gets a big fine?

    That’s fucked up.

  24. 24.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @WaterGirl: Whole heartedly agree. You know if some black man falsely reported an assault on himself by white supremacists, he’d be going to jail for….

    Wait a minute, that happened just recently.

    OK, how about a pretty white girl falsely accusing a black ma….

    Never mind

  31. 31.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Betty Cracker: We have to do a much better job as a society in teaching boys/men the importance of asking themselves “what makes you think that girl/woman WANTS to talk to you?”  And to make that a crucial factor in whether or not to proceed.  IE- just having some respect for women’s agency and how to “read the room” with regards to their interest/non-interest in any sort of engagement.

  33. 33.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @OzarkHillbilly: Rod and Karen of TheBlackGuyWhoTips podcast talked about this story a week or two ago and specifically about how dangerous this shit is for Black People.  It’s infuriating that Hertz was doing this.

  35. 35.

    Kay

    Jessica Valenti
    @JessicaValenti
    ·20h
    An Idaho woman who is miscarrying and been denied an abortion because of state law has been documenting herself getting sicker and sicker over the last two days

    Documenting herself. Because national media cant be bothered to cover the fact that women in 25 states in the United States in 2022 are being deliberately denied emergency medical care by religious fanatics.
    Women get substandard medical care in Right wing states now. There should be a humanitarian effort to fly them out of Right wing states and get them to states where they will get proper, modern medical care.

  39. 39.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: Maybe a humanitarian effort of that type is needed, not only to help the women who are being denied medical care but to attract the attention of indifferent media outlets. Because you’re right; there are stories here and there, but religious fanatics are enacting laws that put half the population at risk, and you hardly ever hear about it. It’s mind-boggling. You’d think the dysfunctional Beltway media could find a political horserace angle as justification for coverage!

  40. 40.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    All they do is lie, Kay. Can’t have the will of the people be followed. They were angered by Kansas, and how everywhere abortion is directly on the ballot, their side loses, so, of course, they want to rig the playing field.

  41. 41.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @UncleEbeneezer: I have no idea. I’ve had 2 surgeries on this shoulder: One to repair a bicep tendon tear and another to reattach the subscapularis muscle. This time is different from either of those. The pain* is worse (and in 4 different places) but I still have pretty good freedom of movement* there. I think that means I have no complete tears, just partial ones, but another part of me thinks I really fucked it up this time.

    Elephino.

    * when the doc was doing my range of motion tests, I was able to do all of them with little if any impingement, but when it came to the strength tests… Just no f’n way. The pain would go from “I can tolerate this” to “somebody please shoot me” and beyond in 0.00003 seconds

  43. 43.

    Kay

    @rikyrah:

    If religious fanatics in government had stopped one man, anywhere, from getting an appendectomy it would be national news. There are now thousands of women in the United States who have been denied emergency medical care – they bleed out for days– when miscarrying due to the Right wing’s adherence to  religious dogma. It isn’t covered by national media AT ALL.

    It has nothing to do with market demand either- voters just came out in droves and showed media that they are interested in the aftermath of Dobbs. STILL, they ignore the issue. Management has decided this will not be covered.

  44. 44.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @OzarkHillbilly: Yikes.  Sorry to hear that.  My labral tears were both just mild-to-medium pain.  Enough to go see doctor but manageable by strengthening other surrounding muscles and resting when they act up (which is good because there’s really no surgery possible until I get to “replacement” level damage).  The worst part of the MRI’s for me was the claustrophobia.  Hated every moment of them.

  45. 45.

    Anne Laurie

    @JWR: There have been ‘mischievous’ suggestions that this My son was almost kidnapped!!! plaint is about an old-fashioned custody dispute:  Musk was supposed to pick up or drop off young ‘X’ at a specific time & place, but he couldn’t be arsed to do so.  Because ninja kidnappers sounds better, in very-divorced-dad terms, than ‘I was too busy overseeing my minions’ attempts to doxx the Lie-brals to be restrained by petty social-worker timekeeping’.

    (It would be cruel and unseemly to joke about potential danger to a small child, if there were any chance that Musk could pick his bio-legacy out of a lineup… )

  46. 46.

    Scout211

    @Kay: Yes.  Voters were definitely motivated to vote for reproductive freedom. The media should definitely be paying more attention

    California certified the November election yesterday. 11 million people voted, which is only 50% of registered voters, but so many more Californians are now registered voters that the number of voters was still high for a mid-term election.

    “We have exploded the number of people who have registered to vote in this state,” said Paul Mitchell of Political Data Inc. Mitchell noted this election had the second most ballots cast for any gubernatorial election in state history, the first being the 2018 election.

    . . .

    Proposition 1, the measure that codified the right to an abortion and contraception in the state’s constitution, drove voter turnout in some parts of the state. More people voted Yes on Proposition 1, than they did Gov. Gavin Newsom.

    ”If Prop 1 had not been on the ballot, we might have seen turnout even lower,” Mitchell said.

  47. 47.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @UncleEbeneezer: A lot of people have that problem, but I was a caver for almost 30 years and if claustrophobia had ever been a problem for me I wouldn’t have been one.

  48. 48.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    I finished what is close to a final draft of a book and sent it off to a beta reader. I was happy, but now I’m at loose ends. Despite the occasional pain of the effort, I feel better when I’m writing something.

  49. 49.

    Ken

    @OzarkHillbilly: I will be the first to buy the trump Behind Bars nft.

    Easy enough.

    1. Start with a URL that points to the image, or images in this case: https://www.google.com/search?q=trump+behind+bars
    2. Burn half a ton of coal while chanting “smash it, mash it, hash it, it is now and forever on the blockchain” to get some hexadecimal string: 0xf023d8e557a01a99dc02.
    3. Record the hexadecimal string somewhere where anyone can reference it: This comment, preserved on the Balloon Juice servers for all time (knock wood).

    Violà, you have an NFT every bit as good as the ones everyone else is selling.

    Now for the last, truly magical step, we all have to pinky-swear that the thing is worth half a million dollars, and it becomes worth that.  We can help nudge it along if I sell the NFT to you for half a million, then you immediately sell it back to me for half a million. This is called “market price discovery.”

  50. 50.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    I knew it would happen when it (supposedly- another lie) “went to the states”. They simply stopped covering it at all.

    If a slew of new laws had resulted in thousands of men being denied medical care – instead of being treated under a modern “best practices” protocol, they were sent home to bleed for 3 days and risk a life threatening infection, the care standard of a hundred years ago – it would be national news and a national outrage. It isn’t even covered. The women are documenting their own descent into avoidable illness themselves, on Tik Tok.

  51. 51.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Ken: Hmmmm…. You seem to have put a lot more thought into this than I ever would have. Scary f’n dude, you are. ;-)

  53. 53.

    WaterGirl

    @Betty Cracker: @Kay:  I may be remembering wrong, but I think there is already a group that is flying women out of red states for medical care.

    And California is already providing options for women from red states.

    But obviously it doesn’t help if people aren’t aware of the options.

  55. 55.

    lowtechcyclist

    @WaterGirl: ​
     

    Hertz should be out of business for that. Permanently. People who pulled that shit at Hertz should be in jail.

    Agreed. Surely there must be some law that gets broken by getting people arrested under false pretenses. And if there is, the people who did it should be facing criminal charges.

    And at the very minimum, the people whose lives were ruined by being falsely arrested should be awarded ‘never have to work again’-level money. A couple million each, after the lawyers’ cut, not a measly few hundred thousand.

  56. 56.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    The hollow feeling after finishing a book is maddening.  A big part of your thoughts have centered around this one issue for months, and then it’s gone.  I probably leap into a new book faster than I should.

    On the other hand, bills to pay, and the last release was an utter disaster. Such is the life of an author.

  57. 57.

    Ken

    @OzarkHillbilly: Simply a précis of the actual mechanics of NFTs.  Including the bogus “market price discovery” that doesn’t actually result in a transfer of anything. Although, that is more often done with a series of trades at gradually-increasing prices, to make the rubes think the price is going up-up-up! and they better buy now.

    I also skipped the step where we “mint” a million of these coins and only release ten thousand to the “market”, so that when the market decides they’re worth (say) a thousand bucks each, we can “mark to market” our reserve of 990,000 and say we have 990 million dollars in assets.

  58. 58.

    Scout211

    @Kay: Agree with all you have written.

    I have more anger and frustration with the AMA and all the medical societies in those states that now outlaw or severely restrict abortions than I do the media. Where is the outrage at how their doctors are not allowed to treat their patients!? Where is the outrage at politicians interfering in patient care? Why aren’t they filing lawsuits and emergency stay requests? Why aren’t their representatives going on local and national news?

    The privacy issue is definitely a major issue with these organizations and the media.  The patients who are being affected by these laws do have a right to privacy and many or most do not want their specific case being written about in the media.  But these medical organizations should be supporting the medical professionals, clinics and hospitals right now.  They should be the ones who are out there in the media and in every court in their state filing lawsuits.

  61. 61.

    Kay

    @WaterGirl:

    They’re flying them out for scheduled abortions. The issue is a miscarriage, which by definition is unplanned. They’re already bleeding when they go the emergency room.

    I think they should be taken out of red states and taken to states where they can get proper medical care, just as “best practices” for the medical profession. Providers in red states are barred by law from delivering “standard of care” to women in red states. The solution to that is for them to refer them out of state and help get them there. The “send them home to bleed out alone” should not be an option. It’s barbaric.

  62. 62.

    Kay

    @Scout211:

    I have more anger and frustration with the AMA and all the medical societies in those states that now outlaw or severely restrict abortions than I do the media

    I think providers work really hard and want nothing more than to be left alone by politicians. I don’t think it is their job to change US law to allow women access to medical care. This should not have been dumped on their plate.
    I would really like to hear the justification for not covering this issue. Is it political? They were all expecting a “red wave” so decided not to anger conservatives? Why are women doing their own reporting from a gurney in the hall of the emergency room?

  64. 64.

    Ken

    @Wapiti: One of the claims for crypto is that it allows private currencies*, so people can choose to buy their pizzas with Bitcoin or Dogecoin or BalloonJuiceCoin instead of dollars. But, that never really took off, since cryptocurrencies lack some all of the characteristics of currency.

    NFTs were in part motivated by this. By creating a digital asset that could be easily bought and sold using digital currency, some hoped there would finally be a use case for cryptocurrency.

    But it appears that most of the public switched smoothly from saying “and why do I want this digital currency?” to “and why do I want this… this… what the hell is an NFT again?”, and the NFT enthusiasm peaked about a year ago. Which makes Trump’s NFTs yet another example of his stunning business sense

     

    * Because private currencies worked out so well in the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries (the “age of panics”), when every bank could issue its own notes. As the bloggers over at cryptocriticscorner are fond of saying, crypto is speed-running the centuries-long development of the financial industry, and learning why we have all these regulations in place.

  65. 65.

    Kay

    @WaterGirl:

    So if a woman presents in a state where she will be denied modern medical care, the provider would notify her of that – that she will not be receiving the best care because it is barred by law, but instead wil be relegated to suffer and hope she gets thru it.

    Knowing that, if the women wants to be taken to a state that allows proper medical care for women, she should be transported, just like they would transport from one hospital that doesn’t offer an emergecny service to one that does. I don’t blame the providers, it is not their fault, but if they are providing substandard medical care to women it is definitely their problem.

    The ethical thing to do, IMO, is to get them to a provider that is permitted to offer care to women in another state.

  66. 66.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    Why?

    Because The obvious heinousness of this can’t be BOTH SIDED.

    Because, if you follow the trail of ugly, you find an obvious human story that can’t be glossed over with any kind of justification.

  67. 67.

    Matt McIrvin

    @PAM Dirac: I keep remembering Lindsay Ellis’s video about the ethics of jokes about Nazis–she pointed out that modern Nazis actually really like movies like “American History X” or “Pink Floyd The Wall” that portray them as terrifying menaces, but they hate comedies like “The Producers” and “The Blues Brothers” that portray them as ridiculous.

  68. 68.

    Kay

    @WaterGirl:

    What if a religious sect that bars emergency blood transfusions took over Idaho?

    You could not get a blood transfusion in Idaho because doing so would violate the religious dogma of the sect that was in power. National front page news, or not? Woudl we be flying people out of there to get blood transfusions? You bet your ass we would.

  69. 69.

    oldgold

    @Betty Cracker: “I used to hang out in pubs by myself to read a lot, and strange men thought nothing of interrupting my reading and ordering me to smile and assuring me they wouldn’t bite.”

    Back in the day when I was a young college student, I admit to interrupting women studying in college bars; however, I never said, “I won’t bite you.” My lame line was “Do you drink beer in the library?” Sometimes I got the “buzz off” and I did. Other times the response was friendlier.

  70. 70.

    WaterGirl

    @Kay:

    The “send them home to bleed out alone” should not be an option. It’s barbaric.

    It absolutely is.  Every doctor of any kind who is practicing in a red state should be raising holy hell.

  71. 71.

    Nelle

    @Ken: I’m on the not intended to make business sense bench.  It’s money laundering, payoff, whatever, with a smirk at those who think he us serious.  Well, he is serious about an avenue with serious money into his pocket with minimal investment or effort.  We laugh at him, but he’s got the millions.

  72. 72.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Ken: Simply a précis of the actual mechanics of NFTs. Including the bogus “market price discovery”

    I knew all about the last part and figured that’s where you got the first (my eyes glaze over when it comes to anything techie) but wanted to reply with you’re a “scary dude” because to me, all people who are this into the tech are a little bit scary.

    eta: not that I think you are out to get me or strip my bank accounts clean or anything (gets up to check all doors and windows, closes all bank accounts, and destroys computer)

  73. 73.

    Geminid

    “Perla,” the woman who helped traffick Venezualan migrants to Martha’s Vineyard last fall, seems to have dropped from sight. Perla Huerta was the subject of a flurry of articles in early October, when she was identified by the Miami Herald and others. I do not see any reports since then.

    Maybe Ms. Huerta will surface again if San Antonio, Texas Sheriff Salazar and local prosecutors can charge her with crimes committed when she tricked people into becoming props for Desantis’s callous stunt.

    A lawsuit against Huerta, Florida officials, and the aviation charter company involved, brought by a Boston civil rights outfit representing the migrants, may put her back in the news as well.

    Huerta was a staff sergeant attached to Central Command in Tampa, Florida when she retired from the Army this past August after 20 years service. She grew up in San Antonio and also pulled some duty at the Army medical center there.

  74. 74.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Kay:

    I would really like to hear the justification for not covering this issue.

    My best guess is one you’ve mentioned:  It is seen as a women’s issue.  The national news pundit class and social group is heavily dominated by older white men who MeToo proved are misogynists to the point of systematically propping up sexual abusers.  They don’t care.  Complete empathy failure.  They can’t imagine it being important to anyone.  When it’s forced to their attention as a political issue, they downplay it as ‘well, maybe it was a factor’ because, again, they don’t care.  The ones who do get leaned on by those who don’t.

    And Hell, throw in stuff like it being a clear demonstration that politics is not just a game.  All their biases say abortion rights is a fringe issue.

  75. 75.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Ken: Though a lot of the normie reactions are “I can’t understand this, I must be dumb“, when in this case they’re in fact correctly sensing that there’s nothing there worth learning.

  76. 76.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Kay: ​I think providers work really hard and want nothing more than to be left alone by politicians. I don’t think it is their job to change US law to allow women access to medical care. This should not have been dumped on their plate.

    You’re right it shouldn’t have been dumped on their plate, but it has been. They get involved in changing US law on a plethora of other issues, usually having to do with making money, cutting back on taxes and/or regulations. I’m with Scout211 on this one. I think they can walk and chew gum at the same time. They should put some money where their Hippocratic oath is. Or just keep cashing the SNAFU insurance checks.

  77. 77.

    Elizabelle

    @ Kay and others:  Had you been discussing this blockbuster (to me, anyway) WaPost article by their national health reporter Akilah Johnson? I think this one deserves its own blogpost, very honestly.

    WaPost Gift link: Can politics kill you? Research says the answer increasingly is yes.

    [It’s long, but worth reading all of it.]

    As the coronavirus pandemic approaches its third full winter, two studies reveal an uncomfortable truth: The toxicity of partisan politics is fueling an overall increase in mortality rates for working-age Americans.

    …. The reasons are many, but, increasingly, it is state — and not just federal — policies that have begun to shape the economic, family, environmental and behavioral circumstances that affect people’s well-being. Some states have expanded their social safety nets, raising minimum wages and offering earned income tax credits while using excise taxes to discourage behaviors — such as smoking — that have deleterious health consequences. Other states have moved in the opposite direction.

    Researchers say the result of this growing polarization is clear: The nation’s overall health profile is going from bad to worse.

    … [One study] found that the more conservative the voting records of members of Congress and state legislators, the higher the age-adjusted covid mortality rates — even after taking into account the racial, education and income characteristics of each congressional district along with vaccination rates.

    …. Jake Gumbrach’s October report found that if all states implemented liberal policies on the environment, gun safety, criminal justice, health and welfare, labor, marijuana, and economic and tobacco taxes, more than 170,000 lives would have been saved in 2019. On the flip side, if states went with conservative versions of those policies, there would have been about 217,000 more deaths that year — “the equivalent of a 600-passenger airplane crashing every day of the year,” the study said.

    …. With abortion services no longer legal nationwide, university researchers have estimated that maternal deaths could increase by up to 25 to 30 percent, worsening the nation’s maternal mortality and morbidity crisis. Americans live shorter lives than people in peer nations, in part because it is the worst place among high-income countries to give birth.

  78. 78.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @WaterGirl:

    Yeah, there is no god damn way Mr. Trump Steaks sold all those NFTs to legitimate customers so fast.  He isn’t that good a salesman, and this is a fringe product.  It’s money laundering, he’s lying, or it’s the incredibly common practice of the NFT seller buying them himself and going “Look how popular my merchandise is!”

  79. 79.

    kalakal

    Hertz should be fined into the ground and those responsible jailed. It’s outrageous, people have had their lives ruined and even endangered. It’s pure luck no-one was killed and it went on for years. The compensation is an insult, it’s not nearly enough.

    The UK had a similar scandal involving the Post Office, where they installed an accounting system which couldn’t add up. The Post Office refused to accept the system was at fault and accused the sub postmasters ( who run the individual branches ) of theft. Over 700 were convicted, it took 20 years before justice started to be done ( the inquiries are still going on). So far no-one has been held accountable

    https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56718036

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal

  80. 80.

    Kay

    @Elizabelle:

    The national antiabortion lobby are tracking all these effects of Dobbs. They’re well paid professional lobbyists and they work all day tracking their laws.

    They’re well aware that women are being denied care after miscarriage, that pregnant women with cancer can’t get chemo in far Right states (like Ohio and soon to be Florida) – they have done nothing. They haven’t even attempted to fix the sloppy. garbage laws they drafted.

    Soon a woman will die because she didn’t get proper care after a miscarriage because giving her that care was barred by law. They will die. And we’ll get a “nobody could have predicted” from national media.

    There should be billboards in far Right states – “if you are pregnant you are at risk in this state- make arrangements to get to a state that still provides emergency medical care for women in case you are the ONE IN FIVE woman who miscarries.

    They’re fine with women suffering like this. In fact, they believe women should suffer.

  82. 82.

    Kay

    @Elizabelle:

    The US had one of the worst infant and maternal mortality rate among the upper income countries.

    So what did we do? We put in hundreds of new laws regulating women. Of course the infant and maternal mortality rate will go up. We did nothing to address it other than punishing women and insiting they suffer like it’s fucking 1860 and they have to bleed out.

    The antiabortion lobby gets a kick out of women suffering. Smugly satisfied that they’re bleeding out in bathtubs, alone. It’s in the Bible. Women are supposed to suffer. For every woman who suffers under their legal code an anti-abortion women gets her angel wings.

  84. 84.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: Did you see my post about my niece who miscarried last week? The ER took her vitals, then after several hours told her they couldn’t help her, she needed to see her doctor on Monday! It’s insane in MO now.

  86. 86.

    Elizabelle

    @Kay:   It’s horrendous.

    Proud to be a Democrat.  We don’t kill as many Americans, or force them to suffer because …. reasons.  Withdrawal of health care; prevalence of guns.

    From the article (and do read it):

    … while Grumbach’s recent study suggests “if you want people to live longer and more healthy you should implement policies that are associated with the Democratic Party but for marijuana,” [I didn’t understand the reefer madness aspect of this quote] O’Brien said she wonders “how would a libertarian or a real conservative read that?”

    A sense of liberty informed by a fatalistic acceptance that hardships happen in life is bedrock in many conservative areas, she said. “If liberty means you’ve got guns and that gun is accessible when you’re having a depressive episode, they’re not there to coddle other citizens,” O’Brien said.

    No coddling! Nasy, brutish and short! It’s virtuous.

    American Exceptionalism. Is killing Americans. Primarily in red states.  Let us be brutally honest about that.

  87. 87.

    Scout211

    @Kay: I think providers work really hard and want nothing more than to be left alone by politicians. I don’t think it is their job to change US law to allow women access to medical care.

    My point is that the AMA, state medical societies, hospital associations (both local and national) should be lobbying the legislatures and also filing lawsuits on behalf of their providers, not the providers themselves.

  88. 88.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Nicholas Wright probably is white (I’ve never met a black man named Nicholas, It’s a name that just screams “white” to me, but I can’t rule it out that he is black). Of the other 3, 2 definitely were black and the 3rd could be either. The article did not give a racial breakdown of the litigants, so I certainly can’t say. But I think that is the first question that pops into the heads every commentor here. Certainly was in mine.

  89. 89.

    Geminid

    @Omnes Omnibus: I don’t know that much about Pearla Huerta’s Army career and I’m not sure I got her rank right. She served from April, 2002 until August, 2022. Reports are that she had dual specialties, combat medic and counterintelligence.

  90. 90.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Omnes Omnibus: I know a guy who did 30 years, I think, couple of tours in VN, Bronze Star, Purple Heart, retired as an O-4. That always seemed odd (i.e. underachieving) to me. but also not the sort of thing you ask about. Pretty sure he was also (or afterward)  CIA.

  91. 91.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Gin & Tonic: Retiring as an O-4 or an E-6 are quite similar.  Either you limped into retirement as mediocrity or there is a story there.  O-5 and E-7 aren’t that hard to make in 20 years if you are halfway competent.

    ETA:  If your guy was a fairly experienced NCO before he got commissioned, that might be reasonable.  But, as I said, that would be the story there.

  92. 92.

    Ella in New Mexico

    @Scout211:

    “The people have spoken,” Elon Musk tweeted.

    Oh fuck off you little tyrant with the Benevolent King “I made a capricious decision people disagree with so I’ll give them the illusion they have a say in any desire that farts out my ass” bullshit.

    If I was a billionaire I’d buy out that fucking site and turn it into a non-profit dedicated to the ideals of democracy, truth, science and information accuracy, promoting social good as a global town square.

    Unfortunately I’ve got to work to 70 before I retire a hundred thousandaire max and have my student loans paid off so if anyone knows a like minded person NOT eternally poor please pass my idea on…I mean, I’ve already written the mission statement for them

  95. 95.

    Betty

    @Kay: In at least one case I read about the woman started miscarrying while visiting Texas but was afraid to travel as that would have also been dangerous. This whole thing is a travesty.

  97. 97.

    Ella in New Mexico

    @Kay:

    Jessica Valenti
    @JessicaValenti
    ·20h
    An Idaho woman who is miscarrying and been denied an abortion because of state law has been documenting herself getting sicker and sicker over the last two days

    I’m sorry but the above is NOT the way to bring attention to the state of abortion in the US.

    If I were her I’d be documenting my plight while driving to one of the mulitple states nearby to get patient centered healthcare which would accomplish the same thing and NOT risk sepsis and death in the process. Isn’t anyone able to reach out to her and get her to safety?

    No matter the status quo in any given state, NO women should be risking her life to help prove a political point right now. We survive first, fight later.

  99. 99.

    WhatsMyNym

    @Ken:

    and only release ten thousand to the “market”, so that when the market decides they’re worth (say) a thousand bucks each, we can “mark to market” our reserve of 990,000 and say we have 990 million dollars in assets.

    Are talking about stock IPO’s in general? Or Tesla. /s

  100. 100.

    Ohio Mom

    @OzarkHillbilly: Legally, every scanned image is the patient’s property, all your medical records are. I agree though, they are undecipherable to we lay people.

    I remember looking at my sonograms of Ohio Fetus and thinking what I was doing wasn’t much different than laying on the grass and finding animals in the fluffy clouds.

    Anyway, good luck with getting your shoulder fixed.

  101. 101.

    Another Scott

    @Scout211: There was a RWNJ guy who started the whole abortion/not enough white babies/only men should be allowed in women’s health care/etc. panic.  He was with the AMA.

    Horatio Robinson Storer

    As we know, organizations are run by humans who often have agendas at odds with the high falutin words. People have to make organizations and societies change for the better.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  104. 104.

    kalakal

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: I’d set up a streaming service that was totally pick’n’mix where all the channels are provided at cost. That way if someone wanted Fox they’d be choosing to pay an extra $12 a month rather than the current set up where it’s hidden in a bundle and millions who never watch Fox are none the less paying them every month.

    a) it would cripple Fox’s income stream

    b) they’d have to depend on advertising and their current audience of 4 million goobers won’t bring in those sweet, sweet $ from major corporations.

    “The best way to hurt rich people is to turn them into poor people” would be my goal for the Murdochs

  105. 105.

    Ohio Mom

    @Kay: If you can bear to wade through the comments on that poor woman’s videos, they are full of forced northern claiming that isn’t what the Idaho law says, she can definitely get medical treatment for her miscarriage, the law allows for saving the life of the “mother.”

    They conveniently overlook that this fetus still has the all-important heartbeat they worship.

  109. 109.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    I assume most doctors wouldn’t expect to encounter patients in this situation. ER docs and OB/Gyns would. But the rest? Maybe they’re grateful to see it as someone else’s problem

  111. 111.

    prostratedragon

    @Matt McIrvin: Years ago a German friend was delighted to learn that we call that marching step the “goose step,” since the German term is much more boot-stamping-on-face-eternally.

  112. 112.

    Ohio Mom

    @Scout211: I think the doctors are watching what is happening to their colleague in Indianapolis.

    The doctor who mentioned in passing, while being interviewed for an article on the post-Dobbs landscape, that she had just performed an abortion on an Ohio ten year old, is being legally hounded and has had to hire an attorney.

    They have been “chilled” by that effect.”

  113. 113.

    CaseyL

    If you’re moving to Mastodon, or would like to, but find the white text on dark background format uncomfortable to read, I have great news: you can change the look.

    Go to Preferences, which is on the RH sidebar, possibly the last item there.

    In Preferences, go to Appearance, which is at the top of the Preferences page.

    In Appearance, go to Site Theme.  It is a drop down menu.

    Choose “Mastodon Light.”

    Your feed will now appear as black text on white bg, and so will your sidebars.  It will, in fact, look very much like the Twitter feed.

  114. 114.

    Kay

    @Ohio Mom:

     the law allows for saving the life of the “mother.”

    So in the 1 in 5 pregnancies that end in miscarriage women may not receive medical care until they are nearly dead? That’s the defense? Anti abortion activists will allow women to survive a miscarriage in some circumstances?
    Imagine this in any other context. It would be a national outrage.
    They want women to suffer because their religion dictates that women suffer. These women are being sacrificed so fundamentalist religious can claim adherence to a religion the women in question don’t share.
    They’re jamming their women-hating religion down the throats of every woman in the country. I would not belong to a church that treats women like incubators and slaves of men. They signed up for that- I did not.

  116. 116.

    brantl

    @Ohio Mom: Not in Michigan, they tried to bill my brother (I think the amount was $150) for some MRIs of his back, and threatened him with legal action, when he wasn’t willing to pay it, and wouldn’t return them. This was in Michigan. Of course, they could have been just blowing smoke.

  117. 117.

    Ohio Mom

    @Kay: Of course I agree with you. I’m just noting that everyday forced birthers are balls of cognitive dissonance.

    They are purposefully lying to themselves when they insist the law does not apply to women who are bleeding out from failed pregnancies.

    They live in la-la land, they are incorrigible, dishonest and thoroughly bad people.

  118. 118.

    cain

    @Kay: The national media is mostly comprised of older white males.

    You know, after watching Megan and Harry, I gained a lot of insight of how the press works. The British press put them in a box and allows a number kinds of stories that can be put there.

    I think it’s the same for Democrats, Women’s rights, and Civil Rights. We’re boxed and they only allow certain kinds of stories associated with us. We’re not making enough noise. We need to get louder.

  119. 119.

    Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony

    @Betty Cracker: The national press is dominated by men who honestly don’t want to think about what happens after they get laid. Its uncomfortable for them.

  121. 121.

    Damned as Random

    Late to the party, as usual, but I, for one would like to see the out-takes of the Willow video. Because my (4) cats would be all over those trees, leaving broken ornaments in the bogus snow. Not that there is anything wrong with that. As a wise friend told me, you can have nice things or you can have cats.

    Also, I suspect everyday was Festivus in the Trump White House.

  122. 122.

    James E Powell

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Did anyone get fired? Did any of the big shots at Hertz do time?

    Why did there have to be lawsuits that took years to resolve

    And Kelly Grady only got $100K in damages? Something isn’t right there.

    I agree with you that Hertz & the people who did this deserved an Alex Jones ending. This wasn’t “mistakes were made” this was corporate policy.

  124. 124.

    James E Powell

    @Geminid:

    What are the chances we ever see or hear from Perla again?

    She was working for people who can give her a new name & a new life if she cooperates and take it all away if she doesn’t.

  125. 125.

    J R in WV

    @WaterGirl: ​
     

     People at Hertz – and you know it couldn’t just be one person – ruin the lives of hundreds of people and the company gets a big fine? And the company gets a TINY fine?

    Fixed that for ya!!

    This fine is just the cost of doing shitty and illegal business to Hurtz rentals.

    We once traveled on a trip arranged via AAA – they work with Hurtz, it was the first time I encountered Hurtz, the woman at the counter would NOT RENT US the car we reserved and wanted. After much arguing we eventually got a shitty Range Rover for way more than the VW I had reserved should have cost.

    I have rented a ton of vehicles (expensive 4×4 trucks) from Enterprise in Tucson, and always was treated well and felt like a valued customer.

  127. 127.

    sab

    @Kay: Saving life not health or fertility of mother.

    My main takeaway from four years of Trump is 40% of America is quite racist, and a slightly different 40% of men really dislike all women.

    I made up the percentages but I think they are close.

    Makes me approach people differently. Odds are they are hostile.

  128. 128.

    J R in WV

    @J R in WV:

    Actually I should have called Enterprise and told them to pick us up at Hurtz rental, just half a mile down the road outside the Denver Airport, and told Hurtz to piss up a rope, I was never going to set foot in a Hurtz rental office for the rest of my life.

    And sat on the luggage outside waiting for the Enterprise pick up wagon.

    With a sign about shitty customer service at hurtz!!

    I guess we were lucky they didn’t rent us a “stolen” Mercedes, which is what the little bitch at the service counter really really wanted to rent to us.

  129. 129.

    buggrit

    @Damned as Random: Yes, that video was tightly edited, cutting away every time Willow started getting too close to the ornaments. I don’t have the patience to try anything similar with my two fiends.

  130. 130.

    Geminid

    @James E Powell: I  am not sure who you think Huerta was working for that can give her a new identity. The only people I know she’s worked for are the Army and DeSantis and his goons.

    A Florida watchdog group has already obtained texts between Mr. Keefe, Desantis’s chief of public safety, and other conspirators so I’m not sure if hiding Huerta will stop  any criminal case the Bexar County Sheriff might bring. And if Huerta was charged and convicted, I don’t know if the prospective sentence would justify going underground.

    But I must confess I don’t have more than general knowldge of applicable criminal law in this area.

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