Biden pays tribute to MLK at Ebenezer Baptist Church pic.twitter.com/RmkWUtqDO9
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 15, 2023
Raphael Warnock on MLK: "When you go to DC today and you go to the mall, you see the monuments to presidents. And among those presidents is a Black man who grew up in the segregated south … what it shows is that anyone of us, if we're deeply committed … we can have an impact" pic.twitter.com/NnzHshm3k9
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 15, 2023
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. called on our nation to join together to fight for a future of equity, justice, and opportunity.
On his 94th birthday, let us answer that enduring call — not just with words, but with action. pic.twitter.com/7lT6GmLGj6
— Vice President Kamala Harris (@VP) January 15, 2023
"Whenever the government provides opportunities and privileges for white people and rich people, they call it 'subsidies.' When they do it for Negro and poor people they call it 'welfare'…socialism for the rich and rugged free enterprise capitalism for the poor." — Dr. MLK, Jr. pic.twitter.com/M0cyYaCKzr
— Fifty Shades of Whey (@davenewworld_2) January 15, 2023
Just two months after her husband's death, Coretta Scott King delivered a 30-minute address at @Harvard's Class Day in 1968. She speaks powerfully to the values of love, justice, mercy and peace.
Filmed by @GBH, the full speech is streaming here: https://t.co/XtwQIinVbl pic.twitter.com/OjZHrqLxhF
— GBH (@GBH) January 12, 2023
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone😊😊😊
NotMax
Not to in any way, shape or form belittle the man by not exclusively singling him out, a musical interlude.
Abraham, Martin and John
Steeplejack
@rikyrah:
Good morning! 🙏
p.a.
Good morning!
For you-know-who’s, it’s Very Selective Quotation Day 😡
HeartlandLiberal
Our beloved 16 year old cat yellow tom cat Spenser passed away. I came downstairs to find him in his last bed on the floor, under the cover, on top of the cover a note from our middle aged son who lives with us and already departed to go to work, a note which read:
Our son, knowing the end was near, as Spenser had quite eating and drinking two days ago, had gotten up at 2:00 am, and come down and sat with Spenser in his last hours on this earth.
He was a temperamental cat, who never forgave me for forcing medicine down his throat, and always growled at me, but he absolutely doted on my wife, and followed her around like a puppy, wanting to always be near her or in her lap.
He will be missed.
Steeplejack
@HeartlandLiberal:
🌈 🐾
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Baud
@HeartlandLiberal: My condolences. Your son is a good egg.
OzarkHillbilly
@HeartlandLiberal: You have a good son, one that is worthy of a cat like Spenser.
Steeplejack
Or, you know, work with what you’ve got.
kalakal
@HeartlandLiberal: My condolences. Your son is a very good person
JPL
@HeartlandLiberal:😢 RIP Spenser
JPL
@Steeplejack:We are going to have a rough time in the future. White washing is all they know.
Joey Maloney
@HeartlandLiberal: I’m sorry for your loss.
moonbat
@Steeplejack: If they keep up the selective editing future history students are going to wonder why MLK marched at all. “Sounds like everything was fine!”
Dorothy A. Winsor
@JPL: @moonbat: There’s a piece at LGM today about how history departments (like other liberal arts depts) are dwindling, meaning there are fewer professional historians while politicians deliberately distort history.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Yesterday, we got together with our secret cabal of Democrats. We were talking about Santos and lying on resumes and how common it was. Two of our friends there had worked at a bank and one of them said “there were a lot of crooks at the bank.” That’s an anecdote I know, but I wonder if some professions attract crooked people. Politics, because it’s where visible power is, and banking, because it’s where the money is?
gene108
@moonbat:
From what I recall about U.S. history, a large number of people prominent people felt everything was fine and MLK was causing trouble for no good reason.
Geminid
This morning Politico put up an article about April’s Wisconsin Supreme Court election titled, ” ‘The most important election nobody’s heard of’.”
The reporter gives a rundown of the Republican and Democratic candidates, and also the issues coming up that the court will decide. These include a challenge to a 19th century law banning abortions.
citizen dave
@HeartlandLiberal: Thanks for sharing; so great that your son did that. I read that male cats live on average 14 years so Spenser had a good long life. (We have a 10.5 year old male cat).
Amir Khalid
@HeartlandLiberal:
So sorry for your loss. Your son is a good man. I know you will remember Spenser’s orneriness fondly. After all, he wouldn’t be Spenser otherwise. Peace.
Joey Maloney
Today I learned our lemon tree isn’t really a lemon tree. We wondered what kind of lemons they were because when ripe the skin turned sort of yellow-orangey. And they are very sour. Turns out they’re some kind of bitter orange and not lemons at all. The Hebrew name for them is חושחש, hoosh-hash, with the initial h’s being that getting-ready-to-spit fricative. Scientific name Citrus aurantium.
Did I mention they’re very sour? I’ve made lemon meringue with them and it did require some extra sugar. But they work fine in cocktails and tea. I’m not sure how the preserved lemons I put up with them will turn out, but it’ll be another month before they’re ready.
Amir Khalid
@Steeplejack:
What is even the point of censoring such a famous speech, whose transcript is in every library and easily found on the internet? The “controversial” bits cut by the Bangor Daily News are particularly important: they called out specific injustices that prevailed when Dr King spoke, and to this day still need to be called out.
MomSense
@Steeplejack:
That’s horrible.
sab
@HeartlandLiberal: So sorry for your loss and condolences to your wife. We lost our little guy onNew Year’s morning. Also age 14.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Joey Maloney: The preserved lemons sound interesting. What do you do with them?
Barbara
@Steeplejack: Almost like MLK was just making fancy speeches for the heck of it, not because, you know, there was anything wrong with the way African-Americans were being treated. He was actually doing it to make white people feel better about themselves. Grrr.
Gin & Tonic
@Amir Khalid: Let’s take a wild guess at the demographics of who reads a hard-copy daily newspaper in Bangor, Maine.
Barbara
@HeartlandLiberal: Condolences. It’s always sad and hard but you know he had a great time on earth with you.
HeartlandLiberal
@kalakal: I texted him, he had already left for work, and said it was kind and noble of him to sit with Spenser while he died. He answered and told me he kept his hand on him the whole time, one and and half hours. I texted him back telling him what a good man he is.
sdhays
I hope you all are sitting down: New details link George Santos to cousin of sanctioned Russian oligarch
HeartlandLiberal
@citizen dave: We were spoiled by earlier male cats, Frodo lived to 19, and Buckey lived to 18. We remember them all.
Princess
Did you read the story in TPM about how Santos and another campaign were defrauding donors by running credit card donations more times than authorized through WinRed? It’s a great story for us. Making GOP donors feel WinRed is untrustworthy would be fabulous.
Steeplejack
@Gin & Tonic:
👻 👻 👻 👻 👻
Starfish
Today, on social media, someone shared this political cartoon illustrating the selective amnesia we have developed around how MLK, Jr. was treated in his lifetime. I had never seen it before.
Baud
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the anti-wokeness of their character.” — Bangor Daily News
Nicole
A few years back I stumbled on the excellent 1965 interview Alex Haley did with Dr. King for Playboy, it’s a great read:
https://scrapsfromtheloft.com/politics/martin-luther-king-jr-playboy-interview-1965/
For some music, how about Dr. King’s good friend, Harry Belafonte, doing “When the Saints Go Marching In”? (Or “The Marching Saints,” as it’s listed on the album) From his Live at Carnegie Hall album, and he opens with a pretty funny take on what the song would have sounded like if it had come from white Europe instead of black America. I grew up listening to this album, but didn’t appreciate how much social commentary Belafonte included in it until I was much older.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ2r0tNTexk
Starfish
@Nicole: I am listening to the Harry Belafonte piece.
I just found the first video in this piece, where Gayle King is interviewing Julia Roberts about why MLK, Jr. and Coretta Scott King paid the hospital bill when she was born.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I have almost no respect for Gloomis over at LGM (he’s not well respected by actual labor activists and he and the other front page clown do their best to hide their neoliberal, Reaganomic preferences on housing) but good on him for highlighting it.
I didn’t go full PhD in either history or geography (my undergrad is in both, my MA is geography, specifically historical geography) in the mid-80s for the same reasons described in the piece. It was a tough sell then and 20-30 years later it’s impossible.
It’s sad how the corporatization of universities as Gloomis outlines is killing liberal arts. And it’s not just in ‘Murka. I have friends in various universities scattered throughout Yurop who say the same thing.
Rusty
For MLK Day, “Letter from the Birmingham Jail” is a better read. Less flowery, more pointed. Changing things is going to require us to be uncomfortable and make sacrifices. It’s a good reminder.
danielx
@HeartlandLiberal:
Deepest sympathy.
zhena gogolia
@Rusty: It’s great.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
It seems small and silly compared to the other marks he left on the world, but I’ve always loved the story of how MLK convinced Nichelle Nichole not to quit Star Trek.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
It seems small and silly compared to the other marks he left on the world, but I’ve always loved the story of how MLK convinced Nichelle Nichole not to quit Star Trek.
Joey Maloney
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Traditionally you’d put them in a tagine but they make a good addition to just about any savory dish. You discard the fruit’s pulp and just use the rind, usually diced fine. I put up 2 jars this year, one with black peppercorns and bay leaves and the other with cinnamon and allspice berries.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Ok that’s weird. I know I only hit Post once, but I got a simultaneous duplicate comment that I can’t edit.
lowtechcyclist
And the article points out WinRed’s general lack of assistance to the donor in resolving this problem. So yeah, there’s a hook here to investigate WinRed’s trustworthiness or lack thereof. I’d bet serious money that the donor in the TPM story is far from the only one that’s had problems with WinRed.
The one time I had an issue with ActBlue (with a donation showing up in my account that I hadn’t intended to make) in nearly 20 years of giving to Dems through ActBlue, they took care of the issue right away, and the money was credited back to me within a day or two.
sab
My Congressperson sends MLK day cards to her supporters instead of Christmas cards. I love that.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Princess: Was reading that this morning. I don’t know if Santos himself can be busted for credit card fraud or if that’s WinRed’s own grift. Being a Republican means you have to have a grift.
The one lady who donated $25 but got billed for $5800 was so upset she says she’ll never donate again. So that was nice to read.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Joey Maloney: That sounds tasty
Princess
Daily Mail so take it for what it’s worth but still:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5575395/Saudi-crown-prince-brags-Jared-Kushner-handed-U-S-intelligence.html
“
‘MBS was actually bragging about it in Saudi Arabia when it happened, that he and Jared sat up until 4am discussing things, and Jared brought him this list.’
The Riyadh source said: ‘They sat for several hours together. They literally laid out the future map of the entire region, that’s why they stayed up to the early hours of the morning from the afternoon before.’
The intelligence allegedly discussed during Kushner’s visit to the Middle East last October was said to have came from U.S. wiretaps on conversations between Arab royals in hotels in London, in major U.S. cities and even on yachts docked close to Monte Carlo, a favorite playground of the super-rich.”
I feel it would be wrong NOT to speculate. He’s eating the 2 billion they gave him.
Starfish
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Did we ever learn why you go so hard on your NIMBY nonsense?
Loomis lives where I live. The university almost has housing for its first year undergrads. They provide no housing for other students. A couple of large apartment management companies always steal people’s deposits. No one cares because this mostly affects the students, and the city council is easily cowed by the “business leaders” who run the management companies. No one does anything to reign that nonsense in. The students are always paying a lot in rent and living next to expensive local homes where the homeowners have organized to all call the police at the same time if someone is in violation of noise ordinances.
What happened to home prices where we live? I wonder.
It has been bananas.
All the politicians at all levels of government know that housing has become unaffordable all across Colorado. All the people who work the low paid hospitality jobs in the ski resort towns are being completely priced out of housing. These rural areas that were paying teachers peanuts can’t find teachers. It is a huge problem here.
Kathleen
@JPL: I call it white trashing
Kathleen
@HeartlandLiberal: My condolences. Your son is a wonderful person.
Miss Bianca
@Starfish: Loomis actually lives in RI. I think it’s Campos who lives in Boulder. Still, point taken.
(I can’t believe I actually know shit like this. I lurk at LGM occasionally, but usually only read Cheryl Rofer’s and Robert Farley’s posts.)
Kay
Just an astonishing betrayal of her running on protecting womens rights. I mean, Jesus Christ-she barely pulls out a win dependent on the votes of women and labor union members and she immediately screws them.
Women always come dead last. Something else is always a priority, politically. Women are worth so little they can be sacrificed for this ridiculous crony appointment/poltical payback or whatever it is. One judge has more political clout than the millions of women voters who just saved Hochul’s ass.
Infuriating.
I hope they don’t bring this into national Dem politics. The Party just ran on protecting womens freedom and won swing states on it. This kind of disgusting cynicism will kill us.
Kathleen
@Nicole: My mom loved him. When I was 9 or 10 she bought me 2 EP’s featuring folk songs and calypso music, and I wore the grooves down listening to them on my portable record player. The analog recording emphasized the rich clarity of his flawless renditions and the acoustic guitar which was his only accompaniment. The soft hissing from the vinyl added to the mood. I vividly recall that experience after almost 65 years. I highly recommend vinyl for his earlier releases, particularly the folk music.
rikyrah
@HeartlandLiberal:
Sorry for your loss🙏🏿😢
Starfish
@Miss Bianca: I read LGM occasionally but never comment there. It looks like I read Scott Lemieux most. I always get Campos and Loomis confused, but Loomis does the nice history of labor rights pieces, I think.
I once sent a friend to LGM, and they said, “this looks like a spam site” because the user interface is so cluttered. My friend was not wrong.
Kathleen
@moonbat: New Rethuglican anthem: “Everything Is Fine” to the tune of “We Shall Overcome”.
gwangung
From the late night thread:
@Cheryl from Maryland: This is creeping anti-Asian racism. It’s becoming a major part of Republican policy. And it’s something we should all be aware of on Martin Luther King’s birthday.
rikyrah
@Steeplejack:
😠😠😠😠😠
rikyrah
@sdhays:
Shock😒😒😒
EriktheRed
I just officially joined the Covid party as of yesterday.
Yay.
zhena gogolia
@EriktheRed: So sorry. I hope it’s mild.
Kathleen
@lowtechcyclist: Same here. I accidentally donated 800.00 to Nan Whaley (note to self do not tweet or donate at 3 am) but they responded immediately and money credited within 2 days.
James E Powell
@Geminid:
What can an old guy in California do to help out that Wisconsin race? Money? Postcards?
Kathleen
@EriktheRed: I hope your symptoms are mild and you quickly recover.
Steeplejack
@Kay:
The infection may be spreading already. @petersterne:
Not a good look for Jeffries, I think. Sterne’s whole thread is a pretty good guide for anyone who’s interested in this.
Steeplejack
@EriktheRed:
Bummer. Get well soon!
J R in WV
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Some time ago, as in 30 years or so, a prominent banker was killed in a professional hit job outside a steak house in downtown CRW. There was no evidence, shot in the back of his head with a .22 pistol of some sort, not an automatic so no shells lying on the ground.
After some time with no arrest, the truth began to leak out. . . Prominent banker (senior VP of the biggest bank in the state) was a rapist at work, and used his power to control many people in his sex ring. There were so many suspects the cops couldn’t pick one. Husbands of all the rapist victims, friends of victims, etc, etc.
Tenar Arha
@Kay: Too late. Hakeem Jeffries was at a Bronx rally for the judge yesterday
There was a Twitter thread yesterday (I can’t find it rn) by someone more familiar with NY politics which was going down the list of how many times Hochul has doubled down, it was a lot.
ETA it was that Peter Sterne thread linked above by @Steeplejack:
Kay
@Steeplejack:
I have no idea why he would bring the national party into this stupid ego battle among hippie-punching Democrats in NY, particularly given NY’s piss-poor showing in 2022.
Boy, this one state judge getting his promotion must be pretty important. It trumps the entire national, winning, message for Democrats in swing states in 2022.
He’s already on the bench! This is a promotion. For this one guy we’re willing to contradict what we just ran on in WI, MI, PA, GA and AZ?
rikyrah
@EriktheRed:
Sorry🙏🏿🙏🏿🙏🏿
rikyrah
Carlos Guillermo Smith (@CarlosGSmith) tweeted at 3:28 PM on Sat, Jan 14, 2023:
The GOP Florida legislature is now compiling a list of names and titles of university educators and staff who do work related to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.
Ron DeSantis wants them rooted out of higher education.
That’s how things are going in “free” Florida. 👇🏼 https://t.co/aVlcJWi5nv
(https://twitter.com/CarlosGSmith/status/1614373827596664834?s=02)
J R in WV
@HeartlandLiberal:
We had a giant orange tom named Ralph, for the noise he made to people. Friendly with people, ruthless with rats and predators around the barnyard.
One night I heard him cough at the foot of the stairs to our bedroom, in the wee hours. I knew he was on the verge, nothing we could have done.
A few months later on a half-grown white tom with red spots came up to me in the nearest service station / hardware store and rubbed my ankle when I stopped for fuel on the way to work. I stopped and went back to get him and take him home.
He had the same attitude as Ralph we named him Rufus for the red spot on his head. nearly 20 pounds, sat at the dinner table with us every evening, was more polite than most people. Talkative also too, chatted with everyone.
Your son deserved his great cat, what a nice thing to do.
Kristine
@HeartlandLiberal: So, so sorry.
Anyway
@Kay:
Exactly. Jeffries should have sat this out — even though he’s a NY House member. It’s a horrible mess (worse than the Myorl primary?!).
I blame Hochul.
Steeplejack
@Kay:
I’m by no means an expert on the subject, but it looks like a weird internecine battle in state machine politics. On a somewhat related topic a month or so ago, one observer said that the New York Democrats have a case of “long Cuomo” that will take a while to work out.
Geminid
@James E Powell: I think this race will be featured on this site, either fundraising or informational posts. Wisconsin jackals will probably have suggestiondms well. There will be an open primary and then a runoff, I believe.
pieceofpeace
@HeartlandLiberal: Condolences, what a gentle, loving gesture by your son.
Scout211
Woke up this morning at 3:30 am with strong winds and heavy rain. Again. It lasted for four hours (!) this time. It has now moved east to the mountains and is coming down as heavy snow.
Wednesday is the final atmospheric river day in this long and endless series of atmospheric rivers here in NorCal.
I will be celebrating on Thursday.
Steeplejack
@Steeplejack:
In case the “long Cuomo” context wasn’t clear, I took the observer’s point to be that it was about holding and wielding power for its own sake, not necessarily aligned with any principles or practical goals. Can’t remember who the observer was now, alas.
Jeffro
THIS >(
Also: “What’s the big deal with this guy? One famous quote and he gets a monument AND a national holiday??”
It’s ridiculous.
MomSense
@HeartlandLiberal:
I’m really sorry, HL.
WaterGirl
@sdhays: Do you by any chance have a link that doesn’t require apple news?
MomSense
@EriktheRed:
Damn. Hope you feel better soonest.
MomSense
@Starfish:
The housing crisis is tough because it is a perfect storm of all the worst attributes of federal, state, municipal, developer, NIMBY, lenders, and on and fucking on. Try going to a town meeting to talk about zoning and housing and you will fucking want to tear your ears off. I’m loathe to both sides it but my fucking super liberal town becomes lord of the goddamned flies.
CaseyL
@HeartlandLiberal:
I am so sorry for your loss; and your son sounds like a very good egg.
I’ve had three boy cats (and three girl cats), and none of the boys made it out of their mid-teens
Copper made it to 14 before a heart condition killed him. Jazz died at 14 of cancer. Oscar, who will turn 15 in a few months, is still going strong – but he has a heart condition, caused (the vet tells me) by a thyroid condition that requires daily medication.
They were all fixed. I don’t know why boy cats are, apparently, more prone to die at a relatively younger age.
zhena gogolia
Gina Lollobrigida, RIP.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
Aw, man. She had the best name.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@WaterGirl:
WaPo gift link (George Santos / Andrew Intrater)
WaterGirl
@James E Powell: @Geminid:
Yes, we will be all over this election in Wisconsin.
Steeplejack
@WaterGirl:
The Apple News link resolves to a Washington Post story.
WaterGirl
@Mr. Bemused Senior: Thank you!
Nicole
@Kathleen: My dad had the Live at Carnegie Hall on vinyl, and yeah, I think it’s how it sounds best, too. I read an article somewhere saying it’s still one of the best live albums ever recorded; the balance between him, the orchestra and the audience is just perfect.
Geminid
@Steeplejack: Tom Watson has been following this nomination closely on Twitter.. He himself opposes LaSalle but is still a fairly objective observer.
Some members of New York City’s Congressional delegation supported the nomination when it was announced. They included Grace Meng, Nydia Velasquez, Gerald Nadler and Richie Torres. I guess Jeffries came in afterwards because he felt Governor Hochul needed the support.
Why would these good Representatives support such a horrible nominee? Because he is not a horrible one, and his supporters make a good case that his record has been both cherry picked and distorted.
This does not mean he is a good nominee though, and New York labor union leaders feel ill used after supporting Hochul last fall. As the Iron Workers president put it at an anti-LaSalle rally in Albany: “We were promised a seat at the table. We’re on the menu. That’s not right.”
There is plenty of good reporting on the LaSalle nomination in NewYork City newspapers. City and State-New York Magazine is also a good source. It’s worth reading up on this nomination, I think.
From what I’ve read, I agree with Tom Watson that this is not a good nomination. Evidently Hochul shared a seven-judge short list with New York’s Democratic Senate leaders, and they warned Hochul that LaSalle was the only one that might be tough to confirm.
becca
@Steeplejack: and it’s a doozy. Santos will be radioactive before the week is out.
BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️
Pay no mind to Republicans selectively (or PARTIALLY) quoting Dr. King today. If he were alive today, they’d hate him; they abuse his words and legacy precisely because he is dead.
Kay
@Geminid:
Jeffries role is different now though. He’s not just a member of the NY congressional delegation. He speaks on behalf of the national Democratic Party.
I know the Democratic message bombed in NY or there was some intraParty machine dysfunction. . Where it didn’t bomb is swing states that Democrats need. Need.
We have enough dysfunction and competing messages in the national Party. We don’t need NY’s problems, just like we don’t need Ohio’s problems or Florida’s problems. National.
Geminid
@WaterGirl: It’s a Washington Post story. It may be paywalled, though. There is a ton of reporting on Santos that is not paywalled, and plenty more on Andrew Intrater, his Columbus Nova investment firm, and his cousin Viktor Vekselberg, the Russian oligarch.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Geminid: Interesting. NYS politics, and especially in NYC, make my head spin as outsider. All the different parties and “lines” and factions, the different power bases in the city boroughs and the counties around them. Like you I trust Tom Watson, and he’s quoting enough labor people to suggest to me, as does the presence of Richie Torres and Nydia Velasquez among the judge’s (one time?) supporters that this doesn’t break down along the preferred battle lines of that ooky old “establishment” vs the young and valiant “progressives”.
Errol Louis, whose name is familiar to me but not much more, argues that La Salle is getting a bad rap. The court rulings aren’t clear to my non-lawyer’s eyes. Louis’s piece leans pretty heavily on the older, more conservative Hispanic, specifically Puerto Rican Democrats in NYC, which includes– I did not know this until I saw it on twitter– Luis Miranda, father of Lin Manuel.
Somebody on twitter said that fact that LMM’s father is a rich right wing Democrat explains a lot!, which I guess means that Hamilton has become cringe, and therefore Neo-liberal. Or something. I was pretty immune to hype, myself.
Kay
@Geminid:
I’m sick of womens freedom and basic bodily autonomy being treated as just another demand from a constituency, like “promote our state judge”. These are bedrock rights. They should not be put second to some blue state governor’s political games – whatever promises she made to this guy she can’t put him above the millions of women who supported her based on womens rights and freedom.
We are more important than a judge’s promotion. We are more important than Hochul showing her centrist bona fides by punching labor. Women will die because of these anti choice laws. We can no longer acommodate anti-choice judges. It’s a life and liberty interest for us.
Geminid
@Kay: I think that Jeffries is participating in this fight as a New York Democratic politician. That does not mean he’s nationalizing this fight. It’s a New York fight. You are the one trying to nationalize it.
Jeffro
I know the NYT isn’t everyone’s cup of tea (mine included, most times) but Ezra Klein has a good ‘splainer up describing why the GQP is in chaos.
Three Reasons Why The Republican Party Keeps Coming Apart At The Seams :
(it’s my first time ‘gifting’ an article – hopefully it works!)
Ya think??
Kay
@Geminid:
What am I supposed to take from it? The Democratic Party JUST RAN a successful national campaign (successful outside NY and FL and OH) on womens rights. Now NY is going to contradict that because they’re having some stupid pissing match over a judge?
Did they ever fire their state party chair or is this more of his political genuis?
Baud
@Jeffro:
How old is Cleek’s law now?
Mike in NC
Does anybody remember the moving tribute Donald Trump once gave to the Reverend Martin Luther King? Of course not! The only person the Orange Apeman ever paid tribute to was himself, for doing absolutely nothing.
MomSense
@Jeffro:
So basically Cleek’s Law.
Geminid
@Kay: LaSalle’s critics claim he is anti-choice. They base this on one case, a unanimous decision by a three judge panel he was part of.
The case involved the State Attorney General’s subpoena for records of a group sponsoring “pregnancy crisis centers.” LaSalle and the other two judges ruled that the subpoena was overly broad.
Kay
@Geminid:
You know what? Forget it. We’ll just take the hit. It’s obviously much more important that the Democratic Party promote this state court judge than the Democratic Party promote a consistent (and winning) message that they protect womens basic human rights.
I’ll wait. Once his promotion is secure maybe we can return to my right to basic bodily autonomy and privacy. Priorities!
Jeffro
@Baud:
@MomSense:
yet BUT…the article covers more than that, pinkie-swear! =)
Geminid
@Kay: Well, at least you are no longer concerned about Kathy Hochul being scapegoated for the poor showing by New York Democrats in the midterms. As I recall, you were mad then at Hakeem Jeffries. Maybe you just don’t like Hakeem Jeffries.
Geminid
@Kay: Personally, I want Governor Hochul to withdraw this nomination, and I’ve said that here before.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: The reason that women’s bodily autonomy is at stake is because majority white women vote Republican. Only exception in the past 30 or so years has been one of Bill Clinton’s runs IIRC
That said not knowing much of NY politics this looks like a bad decision by Hochul.
Geminid
@Kay: Jay Jacobs has not been fired. I think Governor Hochul made this decision on her own, though.
Anyway
Mind boggles at the idea of an anti-abortion rights justice being nominated in a BLUE state!!!!
gwangung
Consider me gob-smacked. Thought I was being scammed, but apparently that letter really WAS from Who’s Who.
Anyway
@schrodingers_cat:
OT — I saw a strange billboard on the Noo Joisey turnpike on Saturday and wanted your take on it.
“Stop Bigotry against Hindu-Americans”
“StopDemocratsBigotry.com”
Do you know what this is about? Are Indian-Americans abandoning the Democratic party?
Starfish
@MomSense: We have numerous vacant things that need to be redeveloped, and the process is extremely slow.
We have an old hospital. Instead of redeveloping this, we are going to dismantle it in some environmentally sound way (or let it decay.) People are concerned about “the traffic.” When it was a hospital, there was daytime traffic. When it is something else, it will probably have more traffic than a decaying and abandoned building but less traffic than a hospital.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
That’s exactly what I was thinking.
Baud
@Anyway:
Sponsored by Dinesh D’Souza?
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
Oh, sorry. I’ll shut up. After all, the AP/WSJ exit poll said a “majority” of white women in 11 states voted GOP. Women carried swing states in 2022. They didn’t carry Arkansas and Florida and Ohio, but those are not swing states- those are Right wing states. Every tine I raise this issue you pop up to shut it down with this statistic. This is (supposedly) a basic bedrock rights issue for the Democratic Party. If it is NOT, if it is INSTEAD dependent on the WSJ analysis of an AP exit poll of 11 states than Democrats should say that.
The national leaders of theDemocratic Party should notbe promoting anti-choice judges. I don’t care if it’s they’re involved in some political bullshit in their home state, or warring with the progressives in their delegation, or returning some gross crony favor. Pissing matches over NY state judges should not be a factor in national Democratic politics regarding womens basic boldy autonomy and lives and I would say the same thing if Jeffries from OH or CA or Idaho.
What is the point of your raising this constantly? The white wome who vote for Democrats should NOT have basic rights of bodily autonomy until 100% of white women vote for Democrats? Why doesn’t this 100% rule apply to white men?
Citizen Alan
@Anyway:
Is he, in fact, anti-choice? There was an earlier comment indicating that this accusation is based solely on him joining a unanimous opinion regarding an overbroad subpoena in a case involving pregnancy crisis centers. Do you have any further basis for calling him anto-choice?
Geminid
@Anyway: Governor Hochul would not have nominated LaSalle if he were an an “anti-abortion rights justice,” and Representatives Meng and Velasquez would not have endorsed him either.
That said, I do not think Hochul should have nominated him, but for other reasons.
Kay
@Geminid:
No one got fired. They all got promoted. Even fucking Florida fired their chair. Michigan Republicans did a real post mortem, with NAMES of people who were at fault. Republicans!
Oh, well, Maybe they can blame the 11 activists who once said “defund the police” for 7 or 8 more losing cycles.
Womens rights are a 65% + issue and labor unions have not been more popular since the 1950s. NY Dems see this as a great time to go Right wing contrarianon these two issues? Idiots. They deserve Eric Adams. How they ended up with an anti-immigration NYC MAYOR is a question for the ages. Another genuis move.
Immanentize
Greetings All!
My present to my students on this day:
“I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the White moderate who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice.”
The Real Dr. King, 1963.
Baud
@Immanentize:
He said “almost.”
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: Its not just the WSJ poll.
White women which are the largest demographic in this country voted against their own bodily autonomy in election after election. This has helped elect Republicans who appointed judges who overturned Roe.
This is a fact.
Bernie Sanders and his supporters poohed poohed the concern about judges when HRC was running. This has never been a big issue for these so called progressives
Jeffries and Hochul promoting a anti-choice judge is problematic. I have not followed this issue and would like to find more about it.
SiubhanDuinne
Gina Lollobrigida has died, age 95.
I remember as a young girl being fascinated by her — not because of her celebrity or acting chops or status as a sex symbol, but because I read an article in Life or Look or one of those magazines, showing how she photographed and catalogued every dress, purse, shoe, and jewelry she owned, so she could plan every detail of her wardrobe weeks in advance. I don’t know why that appealed to me so powerfully, but it did.
I think it was Jack Paar who couldn’t (or pretended he couldn’t) pronounce her name and always called her Lulu Brigadiga.
R.I.P.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Citizen Alan: with the caveat that I am not a lawyer much less a student of LaSalle’s tenure as a judge, and the author of this piece seems at the very least sympathetic to him and maybe to Hochul (Errol Louis is a longtime NY Dem and Wiki tells me ran for office at least once), this is the only case I’ve seen cited to back up the anti-choice accusation
Bill Arnold
@Immanentize:
EriK Loomis has a piece up at LGM on the Palmer Raids era:
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2023/01/this-day-in-labor-history-january-16-1920
Immanentize
@Kay:
I agree completely. I have no idea what Hochul is doing. Did you see she did the classic I am going to a black church on MLK Day ritual, spoke mostly about Lasalle (not King), complained how she was being wronged, and then had cops — many cops — throw out a young black/latina woman who was speaking up at her (about evictions — a true MLK point)?
Geminid
@schrodingers_cat: There is plenty of good reporting on this nomination in NYC newspapers, also City and State magazine. It’s worth researching since it is an important story, and a good one to form your own conclusions about.
Tom Watson has covered it a lot on Twitter. He opposes the nomination, but is still fairly objective about it.
Anyway
@Baud:
Ha, ratfuckery by Rethugs? irresponsible not to speculate …
Immanentize
@Bill Arnold: Thanks for pointing me to that — I usually only go there when directed by a trusted source 👍
Kay
@Geminid:
Their defense of his pro choice beliefs is weak. I don’t believe them. First Hochul came out and (ridiculously) said she doesn’t use “a litmus test” and now they’re pointing to that one opinion as a smear job.
His supporters could come out and say he’s pro choice. Odd that they haven’t What is this stupidgame playing? “He’s NOT pro life”. Oh, okay. That’s believable.
Just be straight with the women who supported them. Is he yet another male judge who uses a religious test for womens basic bodily autonomy and health care access?
I’m sick of it. I’ve compromised enough with anti abortion people. I was so busy compromsing and so many people told me to get to the back of the line I woke up one day and I had lost FIFTY YEARS of progress. Lost. Rights I had are now gone. Going backward.
MomSense
@Jeffro:
I think he misses the extent to which the Republican Party embraced what used to be fringe Christian evangelism, especially the TV wing. It was all culture wars all the time from the Republicans. And they pushed it into policy with referenda questions and legislation against same sex marriage. Robertson and Falwell joined forces to create a “think tank” to push their bullshit revisionist Christian nation history.
schrodingers_cat
@Geminid: Thanks for the info.
@Kay:
I am pointing out cold hard facts. If 51% white women voted for Ds the politics of this country will change.
I bring up white women because a majority of them seem to vote for Rs even though the Rs when they are in power do things that hurt women.
gene108
@Anyway:
Albany politics are a cesspool of corruption. Hochul is getting into a pissing match with state senate Democrats to burnish centrist bona fides? Who knows. The bullshit out of Albany has never spilled over to the national party before.
@Anyway:
I saw the billboard. I decided not to give them the clicks. There isn’t much overt anti-Hindu bigotry in NJ or more broadly anti-South Asian bigotry that I’ve noticed in the 26 years I’ve lived in the state.
I don’t know who’s behind it or why they want to set their money on fire. I don’t think it’s a big deal.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: Also, I point out to this fact because you can’t solve a problem if you don’t acknowledge it.
I think this demographic is gettable for Ds compared to white men (as a demographic who are out of reach).
Joey Maloney
@Baud: Second best, after Isabella Rossellini.
delphinium
@Geminid:
From the Peter Sterne twitter feed:
Yeah, Hochul’s continued push for LaSalle makes no sense to me. There were 2 other judges who were rated as exceptional by the Bar Association and most would have been fine with either of those. Don’t know why Hochul is fighting so hard for this and in the process, damaging NY Dems and labor. If it is for “centrist cred”, then that is a bs reason. It doesn’t benefit Dems or NY state in this instance.
lowtechcyclist
@schrodingers_cat:
That axe of yours must be awfully dull by now.
gene108
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The whole issue would be moot if LaSalle just came out and said he’s pro-choice.
He could reassure Democrats he’s not a conservative, who’d curtail abortion rights
Geminid
@delphinium: I think one reason Governor Hochul picked LaSalle was that he would be the first Peuto Rican American on New York’s highest court. And he does seem to be a respected appellate judge. He’s not a liberal judge, though and one concern expressed by critics is that the court is unbalanced to the conservative side and Hochul should have picked a liberal judge to balance it.
This has been a controversial pick since even before it was announced (I think) four Fridays ago. It’s been a big story in New York, and there has been plenty of good coverage in NYC and state newspapers.
delphinium
@gene108:
Personally, I wouldn’t trust him even if he said that. We’ve already been down that road with folks saying 1 thing but doing another. Houchul should just put on her big girl pants and choose a compromise candidate that the majority agrees on. There is no reason to react so strongly and push for this particular judge when there are several other less controversial judges to choose from.
Starfish
@Kay: Oh, this is interesting because I get annoyed by Schrodinger’s Cat being more conservative than I am on most issues, but I agree with her here.
After various election losses, the losses are usually blamed on some small constituency that does not have a lot of political power. Anyone remember some of the losses of various LGBTQ issues being blamed on church going Black folks?
Anyway, highlighting that white women are more in solidarity with their race than gender is a thing that people of color have been doing to bring accountability to some of the larger constituencies.
White men, as you pointed out, make up a big part of everyone who votes and are never accountable for anything. This is just an observation of how things are and not how things should be.
White women finally saw what could be lost only after they lost it. When it was a theoretical loss, as a constituency, white women were still thinking about their pocketbooks more than they were thinking about their fundamental rights as people.
I think when it comes to abortion, Republican politicians are going to continue doing stupid things, and white women are going to wake up and identify with their gender more than they have in the past.
The Thin Black Duke
@lowtechcyclist: She’s not lying, though.
Kathleen
@Nicole: Oh wow! How cool.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
In my experience, no judges/nominees like to weigh in that explicitly on any issue. And pretty much every POTUS says they don’t have a litmus test.
so old I remember when it was an article of faith at Eschaton that Sonia Sotomayor was an anti-choice sleeper nominee, based on a ruling she made because, as I recall, of a precedent. It was all part of Barack Obama’s fiendish crypto-Republica
ETA: one objection that hasn’t been mentioned here, La Salle is a former prosecutor, which a lot of people are tired of
Geminid
@gene108: LaSalle will have a chance to speak on this and other questions soon enough, at a N.Y. committee hearing. That’s assuming Governor Hochul does not withdraw his nomination.
Matt McIrvin
@Anyway: I saw similar troll activity on the Facebook comments of various Massachusetts Democratic politicians leading up to the midterm election. Indian-Americans are not abandoning the Democratic Party but there are people trying very hard to make them do so, by appealing to right-wing Hinduist sentiments and stirring up animus against other immigrant groups.
The Facebook trolls were apparently from various city Republican organizations, and were very keen on insisting that kindness toward undocumented immigrants equaled anti-Indian bigotry (because Indians were model minorities who followed the rules). I don’t think many people are buying it.
delphinium
@Geminid: Yes, I saw that but to me, that is not a reason alone to pick someone, especially given there are 2 other candidates who are deemed exceptional and who are far less controversial. In addition, as you said, it makes far more sense to pick someone more liberal leaning for the NY court.
gene108
@delphinium:
I agree. She should’ve dropped the nomination weeks ago. There are other candidates that check off a “first for (group)” she could’ve picked that wouldn’t be this problematic.
I have no idea why she’s so dug in on this nominee. Seems like a waste of energy.
Starfish
@Citizen Alan: The question really should not be “Is he anti-choice?”
The question should be “Is he a person who will see women as having rights to bodily autonomy when threats to that autonomy are real?”
The positions on this issue have shifted. The Democratic Party is getting rid of most of its anti-choice Democrats (except maybe that one dude in Texas.)
People who are trying to be middle of the road on this issue are getting rightfully run over by the bus of “Positions have shifted, suddenly!” due to the Supreme Court’s very real attack on women’s bodily autonomy.
“Are you going to stand up for my bodily autonomy?” is the new litmus test, and it is not here for any of this “Safe. Legal. Rare.” nonsense in the environment where safeguards for women’s health and for rape and incest victims have been stripped away.
Baud
@gene108:
A lot of this seems to be internecine state party shit. But I’m not really following it except when people bring it up here.
Baud
@Starfish:
The problem is people are describing him as anti abortion rights. Hard to move from that question if that’s how his opponents are describing him.
Bill Arnold
@Baud:
12 years. It’s in response to a challenge by DougJ to define conservatism.
cleek
JULY 17, 2010 AT 1:31 PM
i can do it in one word: ~liberal
or, for those of you who don’t grok the boolean: today’s conservatism is the opposite of what liberals want today: updated daily.
or: cowardly authoritarians pretending to be individualists.
or: the cynical leading the stupid.
or: I Got Mine
or: who said we weren’t tolerant? we tolerate racists just fine!
gene108
@Matt McIrvin:
They don’t appreciate how stacked the immigration rules are against Indian nationals immigrating to the USA, and how many skated close to deportation before getting an employer to sponsor a visa or a relative to sponsor them.
Some of had to leave back to India, while a new visa was processed, in order to not run afoul of rules causing them to get into more trouble for overstaying a visa.
jeffreyw
trollhattan
Donny, the gift who keeps giving.
Geminid
@delphinium: I agree. I mentioned this because a lot of people are only now getting caught up on this matter and Hochul’s motives are a matter of speculation. And like I said, it is only one possible motivation.
Personally I think this was a poor choice, especially after a contentious election year and a poor showing by New York Democrats. Governor Hochul has four years to appoint judges, and even if LaSalle is as good a judge as his supporters say, Hochul would better to have appointed a more liberal judge.
Then, confirmation would have been routine and Kathy Hochul would not be starting her first full term as Governor with a big intra-party fight. New York Democrats are a feuding enough bunch already.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Starfish:
It would seem you’re a yimby. I’ve adopted the late Steve Gilliard’s ‘doctrine’ in that regard:
I’m not writing to make yimbys happy. I want them to hate my opinions. I’m not interested in debating them. I want to stop them.
Starfish
I was surprised to see GovTrack.us say that a US Representative was running good explainers on Instagram, and they were not talking about AOC.
Here is a Representative from North Carolina explaining what happened when that one Republican accused Democrats of drinking on the house floor. It is very good.
delphinium
@Geminid: Yes, I agree with all of this : ).
Just a really dumb move that doesn’t provide any benefit to her or NY (that I can see at this moment).
Starfish
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Well, technically, we could not afford a house with a yard at the time that we bought, so it is more like “Yes, please make my neighborhood more walkable.”
I can walk to the library, the dentist, a park, and about three restaurants.
If that ugly building that hosts an office doing massage and reflexology could be turned into something more useful, I would not be sad about it.
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: I got Steven Miller’s racist mailer. I voted straight D.
BTW Indian-Americans vote for Ds in greater numbers than almost any other Asian group. I have found more pro-Trump Indians in India (because they thought he was allied with Modi’s objectives) than here.
Rs get about 30% of the Indian American vote (near the crazification factor)
Immanentize
@Geminid: Seriously, from my perspective, LaSalle signing onto an appellate court opinion that explicitly said “skin color” alone did not trigger a Batson violation — an opinion unanimously overruled by the NY Court of Appeals (the one he is now appointed to by Hochul) is enough for me to conclude he shouldn’t be anywhere near that State’s highest court, let alone as it’s Chief Judge.
But that’s the constitutional law/criminal procedure me.
satby
@lowtechcyclist: And yet, she’s correct.
Kay
@Baud:
Well, why don’t his supporters put up a real defense? “This is a smear job” and “this prestigious judge is being denied due process!” is NOT A DEFENSE.
On the merits. What does he believe? And drop the bullshit about a litmus test. Anti-rights Republicans use a litmus test for judges. I don’t know why we’re so fucking fancy and full of ourselves that we have to pretend we’re all editors on a law review and refuse to pin these people down.
These EGO DRIVEN ACTIONS will be the death of us. I now understand how NY gifted us all with the loathsome authoritarian (and crazy person) Rudolph Guiliani. It was the kind of ultra savvy amd smarts that allowed them for fall for a fucking obvious con man like Santos. Ohio had a con man GOP-er running against Marcy Kaptur. Even the godammned dopes in Ohio could figure that out. They trounced him.
If they’re backing a judge who is wobbly on basic autonomy for women they should say so and explain why, especially if Jeffries is going to jump in and make it national. If the answer is “it’s his turn to be chief judge” then fuck them. They chose the judge over millions of women. That’s their priority.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Starfish: thanks for the link.
Baud
@Kay:
I’m not following it, so I can’t defend him. I can only comment on that one court case, which is pretty weak tea.
satby
Ronan Farrow, where the fuck are you?
Geminid
@Immanentize: Well, then you’re really gonna love Hochul’s next controversy!
She wants the Assembly to revise the bail law they passed two years ago, so judges would have more discretion to require bail for repeat offenders
Might be some good class material there, on the interface between crimnal law and politics.
JoyceH
Saw something weird re Santos the other day. Seems he spoke at a Stop The Steal rally in late 2020 – he’d also lost his first congressional run, and golly, turns out it was stolen too. Anyway, he showed up on the news and a former roommate saw the clip and noted the fact that he was wearing the Burberry scarf he’d stolen from the roommate back in the day. Sounded like petty larceny until they referred to the “$520 Burberry scarf” – I had to google sale items because I couldn’t believe people spent that much for a scarf, but it seems that they do.
Immanentize
@satby: 🙂
schrodingers_cat
@Starfish: I am not conservative, I am pragmatic and don’t worship at the altar of BS of Vt and the Squad. I agree with many of their goals but don’t like their my way or no way tactics. YMMV
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@JoyceH: Chris Hayes was laughing out loud about the Burberry scarf the other night. It’s yet another “HOW IS THIS REAL LIFE?” moment in our modern politics
and in general on Burberry: If you thought Ralph Lauren’s stuff was ludicrously overpriced status marketing, hold my $500 scarf!
and this story will probably boost their sales!
Immanentize
@Geminid: I know. I was a big Hochul fan at first. She seemed like such a good antidote to Cuomo. Upstater, too! Now I think she is trying to destroy the center-left in NY just like Cuomo did. I predict one termer, primarily because she won’t have the cash necessary for her next run.
ETA It is like she and Adams in NYC decided they have the keys to the kingdom. Police get it all, people get well, meh. I think he is a one-termer too. But we shall see what a Dinkens-esque (stirred by Giuliani) blue riot can accomplish in NYC these days.
Geminid
@Immanentize: I don’t think Hochul is trying to destroy the center left in New York Democratic politics. She may be trying to suppress the left side of the party though. But she ended up picking a fight not just with the three DSA-affiliated State Senators elected as Democrats, but with most of the caucus.
Hochul may still climb down though, and withdraw the nomination. I hope she does.
Starfish
@schrodingers_cat: Does anyone really care about Bernie Sanders and his politics right now? I don’t think people do.
Do people have opinions on The Squad? Are they to the left of The Squad? This is a thing that is actually happening. I am not exactly sure what is going to come of it, but it is happening in cities frustrated with the fact that homelessness has increased and the street sweeps and ticketing of homeless meth heads is not actually working out. The homelessness still exists. It just moves over a block or two.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Immanentize: I heard on NPR that Adams went to “the Border” the other day and called on Joe Biden to get serious about a solution (or some such platitude). I suspect he’s got larger ambitions, I just wonder if a) he’s thinking statewide or national and b) if he thinks he can do it as a third party candidate. If I were a Dem with larger ambitions in his situation, I’d’ve used that moment to challenge the new House members from my region to work with us (Democrats), et cetera et cetera to find a bipartisan solution. I wonder if he sees himself as the next above-it-all politician like Bloomberg (if so, somebody should explain to him about the money, and Bloomberg’s national face plant (edited))
Citizen Alan
@Starfish:
I agree with all that. But you can be 100% pro choice and still think an AG shouldn’t have unlimited subpoena powers. I’m just asking–what, other than one opinion, paints him as unacceptable on abortion?
delphinium
@Immanentize:
Yeah, I voted for her and am less than thrilled with how she is starting out her term.
Ruckus
@Amir Khalid:
As it should be obvious the reason is racism.
It’s always racism. In all it’s forms.
I have no idea if humanity will ever get over/past racism but I’m willing to bet good money that it won’t happen in my lifetime.
I don’t get it, it makes no sense whatsoever but it is prevalent as humans, so I suspect that it will take a lot of humans to reject it.
And while there are a lot that do reject it I’m pretty sure that a lot isn’t enough.
Geminid
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I think Adams has to get reelected before he goes for higher office. That is not a certainty, especially with ranked-choice voting. In the mayoral election, he led by a lot in first choices with about 33%. But once all but two candidates were eliminated, Adams’ lead over former Sanitation Commissioner Kathy Garcia was very narrow, 8,000 votes (I think). It was a low turnout primary.
MomSense
@Starfish:
He’s awesome. I’ve been following him on Insta for some time, now. Tracks more conservative than I’d like, but he’s doing well in NC! Always ties policy to values which I think is smart and effective.
Betty Cracker
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’m super unimpressed with Adams, but he doesn’t sound like the type to go third party. Didn’t he declare himself the “new face of the Democratic Party” after he won the NYC mayor gig? That would be hard to walk back as a No Labels stalking horse! I predict Adams will follow the de Blasio trajectory and try to parlay his unpopularity as mayor into a presidential nomination the next time there’s an open primary.
delphinium
@Starfish:
I think one of the issues Dems have is that there aren’t easy answers to address a lot of problems, and then our voters get angry/frustrated when problems aren’t solved quickly or to their satisfaction. Whereas, voters expect far less from their Republican reps. Homelessness is caused by a myriad of issues (mental illness, drug addiction, housing costs, unemployment) and so is incredibly difficult to solve. Arresting people, street sweeps, etc are short-term ‘solutions’ that do not address the underlying problems and so are not really solutions at all.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: New York City residents don’t seem that impressed with Adams either. He had very positive approval ratings two weeks into his term, but they’re well below 50% now and have been for a while.
Matt McIrvin
@delphinium: If you do the “get tough” thing that makes the voters feel like the people they are mad at are getting hurt, it doesn’t actually matter that much whether it works or not. But if you try something that seems counterintuitive or like it’s rewarding “bad” people, then it had better work well and fast or you won’t convince anyone.
It’s kind of the political equivalent of “nobody ever got fired for buying IBM/Microsoft”. Is it the best choice? Will it work? We don’t know, but if it doesn’t work, it’s still the choice that nobody will fault you for making, because it matches conventional prejudice. Anything else is going out on a limb.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Geminid: Adams doesn’t strike me as the type of politician (even for a politician) overburdened by self-doubt and far-sightedness, and one of irritating effects of the trump phenomenon is pols who think the old rules don’t apply. Look at the cluster of backbench congressmen (used advisedly) who thought they could be POTUS in 2020 cause they got a lot of MSNBC hits and fawning podcast interviews (I’ll say this for him, Seth Moulton seems to have faded back into the woodwork). And now that I think of it, there is again in NYC the Bloomberg model. Adams has already jumped back and forth between D and R.
Went to his wiki to see if Adams had followed Bloomberg from D to R and back to D. He did not.
Hard to picture the Adams of today defending Farrakhan. I had to read that three times.
Good Christ, I’d completely forgotten DeBlasio ran too!
delphinium
@Matt McIrvin: Yes, I know people just want someone in charge to DO SOMETHING so they don’t have to think about it or see it. But in the end, many of these policies only worsen the problems since they aren’t fixes, and then people become even angrier and exasperated down the road.
Geminid
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: DeBlasio tried to make a comeback last year in the primary for the open 10th CD, the one that Dan Goldman won. DeBlasio sank like a stone, with hardly a ripple of notice.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Geminid: that I do remember. I thought, from a distance, that BDB had potential when he was first elected
in re Goldman, I like him, I’m glad he finally found an election he can win /snark tag/. MSNBC hits may not make a POTUS, but a guy who’s good at media, clearly has a lot of ambition, and a lot of money, might well have a future in this politics stuff. And if Adam Schiff hired him as chief counsel on impeachment, I think that speaks to something more than a talking head. I think he could be good foil for the nutjobs on this Gym Jordan Committee for Obstruction of Justice
Betty Cracker
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: NYC mayors tend to get delusions of grandeur. I guess I can see why. It is an impressive city! ;-)
JoyceH
@Betty Cracker:
Did anyone else watch the CNN thing “Giuliani: What Happened To America’s Mayor”? Man, I’d forgotten how venerated he was post-9/11! I feel very perceptive that I never fell for the hype.
Betty Cracker
@JoyceH: I didn’t see it, but I do remember being irritated in real time by the valorization of Giuliani. Even Jon Stewart fell for it!
JoyceH
@Betty Cracker:
As I recall, the world turned its lonely eyes to Giuliani because he was the highest ranking person VISIBLE that day! The entire Bush administration had bolted down hidey-holes, and the White House was being run by Karen Hughes. And Giuliani was only visible because he’d overruled his emergency response people and based the city’s emergency command post in the World Trade Center, a site that had already been attacked by terrorists who promised to do it again. He was out on the street because he had no place else to go!
trollhattan
@Betty Cracker: 9/11 Rudy knew how to read a room, I’ll give him that. (And didn’t Handsome Joe ever put a stake through that mess.) Rudy V. 3.0 really, really can’t. We should all be happy about that.
JoyceH
Plus, the Ukraine impeachment? That whole project was ALL Giuliani. Not saying Trump didn’t commit an impeachable offense, but he never even would have been in that position if Giuliani hadn’t laid the groundwork, running all around the country with Kremlin-backed goombahs, looking to torpedo Biden because he never forgave him for that “noun, verb, 9/11” crack.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@JoyceH: @Betty Cracker: so many ups and downs and lurches right to his career, I remember when he was seen as an alternative to the angry Republicans of the Newt Gingrich and Two Pats era. Guest starring on Seinfeld and hosting SNL. Even in real time I thought the America’s Mayor bullshit was just that
ETA: He was a joke all through the summer of 2001, people just waiting for him to go away, IIRC
Another Scott
@Betty Cracker: I never paid too much attention to NYC politics – it always seemed weird. Going way, way back to the 1970s and NYC’s (near?) bankruptcy and the infamous Ford to NYC – Drop Dead speech.
Giuliani was quite unpopular on 9/10/2001 and New Yorkers couldn’t wait to see the back of him. The press pumping him up was part of a transparent whitewashing of the GQP establishment and an attempt to stifle all dissent from Democrats.
DeBlasio seemed to have a compelling personal story (with his Black wife and two children with her) that could bring NYC together after Rudy’s and Bloomberg’s “stop and frisk” and all the rest. But he seemed to be incapable, or unwilling, to rein in the cops and build the coalitions necessary to get the job done. Then, there was his vanity run for president and all the rest.
NYC has oversized representation in our politics because important media is there, not necessarily because it actually affects the rest of us all that much. Unless we get taken in by the media-driven drama…
Cheers,
Scott.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Another Scott: Ah, New York City. Did I just read about some pol who has the famous New Yorker cover framed on his office wall?
Hah, now that I look carefully I notice that Utah is somewhat misplaced. I never noticed that before.
Another Scott
@Mr. Bemused Senior: Heh.
Of course the map is wrong in other ways, since everyone knows Magnolia, Delaware is the center of the universe.
(Insert Guy at Table with sign, … prove me wrong.jpg)
Cheers,
Scott.
Kay
OMFG. She’s a moron.
The governor says MLK Jr. says you can’t judge the judge. Rubber stamp her political hire or you’re offending Dr. King!
So slimy.
The defense to the allegation that he’s anti labor is NOT that he is pro labor, instead it is this sketchy dodge- “he grew up in a pro labor household”. She can’t say he’s pro labor for some reason. Hmmm. Wonder why. Instead he once lived in a “pro labor household”, 30 years ago.
trollhattan
@Kay: “One should not dismiss an orange, proud rapist, casino owner from Queens, out of hand. He may have some good things in store.”
I think I know how this mindset works. It disturbs me.
Steeplejack
@Steeplejack:
A late entry in the GQP asshole contest.
Baud
@JoyceH:
If only Rudy had gone to Four Seasons Total Landscaping on 9/11, we might have avoided two decades of trouble.
trollhattan
@Steeplejack:
Nice. Whenever DeSantis has the most-assholish governor award wrapped up, Abbott opens his vile yap. Meanwhile in Alabama, I’m late learning they celebrate both Dr. King and one Robert E. Lee on this very day.
https://i0.wp.com/substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F89db2f00-b224-41b3-b01b-ccde70c600cc_1386x970.png
Steeplejack
Broader criticism of LaSalle.
Steeplejack
@trollhattan:
And they’ve still got Confederate Memorial Day and Jefferson Davis’s birthday to look forward to!
Mike in NC
@trollhattan: Also Jefferson Davis’ birthday and Confederate Memorial Day!
Manyakitty
@HeartlandLiberal: So very sorry to hear this. How fortunate that Spencer spent his final hours surrounded by love. Peace.
lowtechcyclist
@The Thin Black Duke:
Tru dat. But what’s a reasonable expectation here: that their view of our politics is going to be completely, um, divorced from that of the white men they spend their lives with?
Back in a time when the GOP was less obviously crazy, I knew couples where the spouses canceled out each other’s votes. But they could vote for different parties while still having fundamentally compatible world views.
That’s not possible anymore, now that the gap between the parties has turned into a chasm. It’s also not very possible for a marriage to hold together if the participants have fundamentally incompatible world views. And of course, the vast majority of voting-age white women are married. And most of those that aren’t, probably spend a good deal of time around white men and envision marrying one.
Says here that white women voted 20 points more Democratic than white men did, in both 2018 and 2022. I’m going to say that it’s a fool’s errand to expect more of a divergence than that.
So if s_c or anyone else is going to blame any demographic group, ISTM that that blame should be aimed squarely at white men.
BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️
@trollhattan: Yes, when it became apparent that King would indeed be recognized, the semi-sentient Klan hoods in this state made what I’m sure they see as a bitter compromise. One more slap in the face to us, though.
Kay
@trollhattan:
“Trump is secretly pro choice and has promised to raise taxes on the rich because he is also secret maverick populist”
“Rudolph Guiliani is America’s foremost patriot and ‘Americas Mayor’
Matt McIrvin
@trollhattan: Virginia used to call it “Lee-Jackson-King Day”. They had a preexisting Lee-Jackson Day around this time and when MLK Day became a federal holiday, they just rolled him in there.
Jim Gilmore split Lee-Jackson Day back out into a separate holiday in 2000, and then it was eliminated in 2020. They replaced it with a state holiday on Election Day, which was a 100% great move.