There’s that one person in every circle…
“My favorite ex-husband….” @Janefonda
— Molly Jong-Fast (@MollyJongFast) January 15, 2023
(And if you don’t know who The Person in your circle is, well… )
"When I read that part in the script where it said, "Luke, I am your father", I thought, "He's lying. I have to see how they carry this lie out.""
Happy birthday to the voice of Darth Vader himself, James Earl Jones celebrates his 92nd birthday today. pic.twitter.com/ssQoSOtIym
— WeWatchFilms (@WeWatchFilmsUK) January 17, 2023
We need better male role models for our space telescopes or this kind of thing will keep happening to earth-sized exoplanets pic.twitter.com/HnJduMo7pd
— Hemry, Local Bartender (@BartenderHemry) January 15, 2023
And how’s this for intentional, Senator Lee?
Please (1) name any federal regulatory agency whose elimination would negatively impact your life, and then (2) specify whether that agency’s necessary functions couldn’t be performed at least as well at the state or local level, or by a non-governmental body.
— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) January 16, 2023
i will do you one better, i can name 49 republican senators whose immediate disappearance from the senate would markedly improve both my life and the federal government’s ability to service its constituents. https://t.co/H875mbZmeF
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) January 17, 2023
i don’t pay taxes to pay senators to shitpost on twitter about hating a government who pays their salary, i pay for (let’s get real) fairly meager services which could be vastly improved if it weren’t for republican congressmen who deliberately sabotage them.
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) January 17, 2023
furthermore, mike lee was part of a plot to overturn a free and fair election, if he wants to return to the good old days of insufficient regulation, he should probably ask himself what a federal government of the 1800s would have done with him for participating.
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) January 17, 2023
We Gambled on Nevada and Beat the Odds!
jackmac
Since this is an open thread, here’s a report from the Peoria (Ill.) Journal Star of terrorists striking a Planned Parenthood clinic on Sunday, just days after Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed sweeping abortion rights protections into law. No one was injured and no suspects are in custody.
BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️
So true!
But also true of most, if not all of them.
Mediocrity is the epitome of privilege.
Baud
I think it’d be cool if each state had their own monetary system.
Florida Francs!
Maryland Moolahs!
Rhode Island Rupees!
BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️
@jackmac: Domestic terrorists need to start getting treated as terrorists.
kindness
If Mike Lee were at the mercy of an 1800’s crowd after purposefully voting for treason, he’d have quickly tried to make rope illegal for fear of hearing ‘Git a rope!’.
The Thin Black Duke
@BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️: That only happens when they’re non-white.
Jeffro
Oh great, and now just like that, I want our federal government to be like it was in the 1800s. Excruciatingly so, in Lee’s case.
Some “progressive” I am.
Tony Jay
James Earl Jones’ Thulsa Doom doffing his helmet to reveal that silky, glam-rock wig at the start of Conan was as shocking as Jaye Davisson’s unexpected winkle in The Crying Game.
The costume director who had to tell Mr Vader Voice that he’d be playing the character as a sword wielding member of Spinal Tap is a personal hero of mine.
Cheryl from Maryland
Lee would have died young due to opiate-based quack medicines. Thank you, Orrin Hatch and Utah for preventing the FDA from regulating OTC herbals and vitamins.
BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️
@The Thin Black Duke: Don’t I know it!
Poptartacus
https://youtu.be/wgN1sLcAQnw
the riddle of steel
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Wasn’t that the case when there were 13 separate colonies. Or did they use British currency.
UncleEbeneezer
I’ve been really enjoying this modern, noir novel set in Los Angeles; These Women by Ivy Pachoda.
“In West Adams, a rapidly changing part of South Los Angeles, they’re referred to as “these women.” These women on the corner … These women in the club … These women who won’t stop asking questions … These women who got what they deserved …
Ivy Pochoda creates a kaleidoscope of loss, power, and hope featuring five very different women whose lives are steeped in danger and anguish. They’re connected by one man and his deadly obsession, though not all of them know that yet. There’s Dorian, still adrift after her daughter’s murder remains unsolved; Julianna, a young dancer nicknamed Jujubee, who lives hard and fast, resisting anyone trying to slow her down; Essie, a brilliant vice cop who sees a crime pattern emerging where no one else does; Marella, a daring performance artist whose work has long pushed boundaries but now puts her in peril; and Anneke, a quiet woman who has turned a willfully blind eye to those around her for far too long. The careful existence they have built for themselves starts to crumble when two murders rock their neighborhood.”
schrodingers_cat
2024 will be the general elections in India. If the BJP wins again it will be the beginning of the end of India as a pluralistic democracy. The world is not paying attention to that ticking time bomb.
Hoodie
Notice how Lee just assumes it would be better to have a multiplicity of different state or local regulatory agencies performing essentially the same functions, thus requiring massive amounts of duplicative bureaucracy, making it more difficult to formulate uniform standards, etc. Thus, for example, I guess he’d rather have 50 FDAs, 50 USDAs, 50 NHTSAs, etc., than national agencies that ensure that all Americans are treated substantially equally irrespective of where they happen to live. It’s just a religion with these morons.
Roger Moore
@Cheryl from Maryland:
The FDA was the first federal regulatory agency I thought of as one that I wouldn’t want to do without. I neither want to go back to the days of unregulated quack medicines nor do I want drug companies forced to deal with 50 separate state regulatory systems. You’d think people who don’t like out of control regulation would like the idea of a single regulatory system that covers the whole country rather than a patchwork of 50 of them.
StringOnAStick
Sen. Mike Lee: completely ignorant of the concept of Economy of Scale. Stupid prick.
Nora
@Hoodie: No, he’s probably assuming that republican-led states wouldn’t have those agencies or any organizations providing those services at all.
Eolirin
@Roger Moore: They’re not concerned with if regulation is out of control or not, they’re concerned with whether someone is telling them or their donors what they can and can’t do.
Only they get to do that.
rikyrah
What a flex.
Kent
@Cheryl from Maryland: Well, to be fair, if you banned herbal supplement MLM schemes, that would consign half the Mormon wives in Utah to unemployment.
rikyrah
The FDA
OSHA
FDIC
FAA
Roger Moore
@schrodingers_cat:
As a practical matter, they tended to use Spanish money rather than British. One of the complaints that led to the revolution was that they were required to pay taxes in silver, but the British monetary system was completely screwed up and wasn’t able to provide much specie. The Spanish owned the big silver mines, so it was Spanish dollars that became the de facto currency in the colonies and the de jure currency in the USA rather than the pound.
Kent
@rikyrah: NOAA, EPA, DOT, DOE, Treasury, CDC, etc. etc.
prostratedragon
@Poptartacus: He’s great even with the sound down.
rikyrah
@Roger Moore:
But, the thing is, we know that the FDA of California or Massachusetts would be far better than the FDA of Utah or Mississippi.
But, just like the rights of WOMEN shouldn’t depend upon what state you live in, neither should basic regulatory protections. I care for my fellow citizens.
Hoodie
@Nora: No, he specifically proposes replacing federal agencies that perform regulatory functions with local government or other institutions. I think it’s mostly because he’s an idiot, but I guess it could be a bit of rhetorical sleight of hand to justify gutting agencies while keeping people from understanding that they won’t be getting Medicare from their local alderman under this wonderful new regime.
schrodingers_cat
@Roger Moore: Interesting. I did not know that.
Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.)
Do these fuckhead Republicans have any clue how the world works? Shit. I’m not an economist, but even I can understand how, say, FEMA is a really big deal, and if we didn’t have it, we’d all be worse off.
Now, yeah, he’s right that we don’t strictly need a federal FEMA. We could have 50 state versions of FEMA, each one looking after its own constituency. But do these assholes understand how dumb and wasteful that would be? Each fucking state would have to have its own fully staffed and outfitted FEMA, ready to go, every day of the year. Whether they have a natural disaster or not. Oregon gets to pay for its FEMA, and if nothing much happens, it’s money wasted. But they can’t just scrap it, because they don’t know that they won’t have some disaster the next year. Same thing for Oklahoma, and for Vermont, and for Pennsylvania, and for Illinois, and on and on and on, all paying for an agency they’re more likely than not to not need most years.
Now multiply that by 50, and look at the waste.
We have a Federal Emergency Management Agency because we know that something is going to happen somewhere each year. We don’t know which state’s going to get hit though, so we pool everything.
But these guys would have us get rid of every fucking agency so all 50 states would have to duplicate them all. I really don’t get it. Do they think any of this through at all? Is it all just buzzwords they say to keep that Koch money flowing in? Do they believe this shit?
RepubAnon
@schrodingers_cat: As I recall, each state issued its own currency.
RepubAnon
@Hoodie: How about the FAA? Different flight rules for each state overflown. Fun times!
prostratedragon
@Hoodie: He no doubt has heard tales of the good old days: “Purity Squad,” 1945.
eclare
@UncleEbeneezer: That sounds really good! Bookmarked to see if my library has it. Thanks!
eclare
@Hoodie: Easier to hire more relatives that way. There is a reason GA has a disproportionate number of counties.
eclare
@Roger Moore: I also thought of the FDA first.
Regarding your last sentence about people supposedly not wanting to deal with multiple bureaucracies, regulations, etc., one word: Brexit. Now instead of dealing with a single market, Brits get to deal with 27 different markets.
Another Scott
@Roger Moore:
We don’t even need to look back that far to see the implications. NPR (from October 2022):
:-(
Unfettered capitalism (actually, any unfettered business activity under any system) has horrible consequences. Regulation is required for the system, and society, to be self-sustaining.
Grr…,
Scott.
Frankensteinbeck
@Eolirin:
I mean, that’s definitely on the list, but they and their voters think of the federal government as the power that stops them from abusing minorities as much as they feel like. As such, all federal regulations are at best useless nagging by n-loving control freaks.
Reagan’s statement about “I’m from the government and I’m here to help” being scary was about forced desegregation, and they still have not forgotten it.
stacib
@UncleEbeneezer: Rats!!! I just found out my library card has expired. Going to update and then get the e-book of this. It sounds like an interesting read.
Roger Moore
@rikyrah:
The key thing is that the FDA of California or Massachusetts would be far better for both consumers and the drug industry than the FDA of Utah or Mississippi. Strong regulation is necessary to keep the market from being a race to the bottom, which is bad for consumers, and scared consumers mean a lack of customers for businesses. Only businesses who care only about making a quick buck, or ones who are so badly run they can’t comply with sensible regulations, want the completely unregulated situation Republicans favor.
JaySinWA
I just recently installed the DuckDuckGo chrome extension to eliminate tracking across websites. When turned on it stops the rendering of Twitter embeds here by front pagers. I get the text from the tweet but not the images or linked tweets.
I thought something was broken in the Twitter links today, but it was just the extension doing its thing. When I toggle it off the Tweets render. With it on I can use the link to go to Twitter and see them just fine.
UncleEbeneezer
@eclare: It’s very dark, but really good. Gets very much into the way our society ignores women, sex workers, and especially ones that Black/Brown. Also, as a 20-year Angeleno, it really captures the feel of that part of the city.
Another Scott
@Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.): Also too, the federal government can run a deficit and states cannot. So when $150B hurricanes (or several) run roughshod over the states, LA-MS-AL-FL EMA isn’t going to have the resources to do anything meaningful to address the disaster. So, they’d be stuck with broken infrastructure and hurting people for years, and maybe decades. Kinda like Puerto Rico. :-(
Lee’s “idea” is stupid.
Cheers,
Scott.
Roger Moore
@Another Scott:
You don’t have to go to India to find this kind of problem. About a decade ago, there was a major meningitis outbreak that was traced back to a compounding pharmacy. Compounding pharmacies are supposed to be local businesses that make custom drug doses one at a time to meet prescriptions that can’t be met by mass-produced medicines. Because they are intended to serve only local needs, they are regulated by state-level regulators.
It turned out there was a compounding pharmacy in Massachusetts that was effectively functioning as a small-scale factory and selling across state lines. They really should have been under the purview of the FDA rather than the state agency, but they slipped through the cracks. They could have gotten away with it, except they really weren’t up to the task. They broke all kinds of basic safety rules, and because they were selling en masse rather than just locally, they managed to infect nearly a thousand patients and kill over a hundred before they were shut down.
UncleEbeneezer
@stacib: I asked my FB friends for some fiction written by pref. Non-White, Non-Men and one of them shared this list of LA Noir novels by women.
JaySinWA
@JaySinWA: I turns out this blocking of embedding is a documented feature https://help.duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/privacy/embedded-content-protection/
Although they only mention Facebook by name and talk about adding others. Too bad that they can’t strip out the tracking without allowing the rendering.
eclare
@UncleEbeneezer: My library has it, but I need to renew my card before I put a hold on it. Will do, looking forward to it.
Not the same, but also set in LA, love the Harry Bosch books.
BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️
@Nora: This. EXACTLY.
Alabama would nuke any and all standards less than 30 seconds after the feds no longer had control of it.
danielx
They had a different slant on treason in those days….
“I have said that any man who attempted by force or unparliamentary disorder to obstruct or interfere with the lawful count of the electoral vote should be lashed to the muzzle of a twelve-pounder gun and fired out of a window of the Capitol. I would manure the hills of Arlington with fragments of his body, were he a Senator or a chief magistrate of my native state! It is my duty to suppress insurrection–my duty!”
Winfield Scott
JaySinWA
@JaySinWA: For those reading with slow loading Android or IOS devices the DuckDuckGo browser might help in speeding up loading Tweet heavy posts, by not rendering embedded links.
Derelict
@Hoodie:
The FAA is a great example of a federal regulatory agency that simply cannot be turned into 50 state-based agencies. FAA certifies airliners meet a host of safety requirements before airlines are allowed to buy them and fly them. Make that a 50-state function and no airliners would be built (because you’d have to go through 50 different certification standards) or airliners would be built in South Dakota because that state has NO standards.
FAA also runs air traffic control. Imagine Ron Desantis deciding that Florida’s ATC will no longer allow flights from California to land in Florida. Or, in the REAL spirit of the Free Market, there is no ATC at all and the airlines simply duke it out to see who gets to land at Orlando at 5PM on a Friday.
Baud
Much like the tax code, a lot of the complexity of the regulatory state is due to an attempt to maximize business flexibility.
Bill Arnold
@Derelict:
Games of Chicken, with airplanes full of passengers headed towards each other at a relative 1000 mph!
Michael Bersin
@Baud:
Missouri cowpie.
Call it a “Rush Limbaugh” for short.
Roger Moore
@Derelict:
The key thing to understand is that right wing opposition to regulation is ideolocial not rational. They don’t have some clever idea for how they’re going to achieve the ends of regulation better. They just want it gone because they believe in an anti-government, anti-regulation ideology.
apocalipstick
@BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️: And still be days behind Mississippi.
J R in WV
@RepubAnon:
At least for some period of time every bank could issue it’s own currency. You get to bet which bank in town will actually be able to pay on it’s currency in silver or gold. Good luck !!!
WaterGirl
@rikyrah: Why don’t we come at this from the other direction?
What would you not miss?
I’ll go first.
ICE
Baud
@danielx:
So uncivil.
JaySinWA
@WaterGirl:
That’s not cool /s
schrodingers_cat
@WaterGirl: You do need ICE to monitor immigration fraud. I would change the enforcement focus to employers from employees.
eclare
@schrodingers_cat: This.
brendancalling
@The Thin Black Duke: Tim McVeigh, a rare exception.
schrodingers_cat
@eclare: Yep there are a lot of unscrupulous employers that exploit international workers. Its not just outright fraud but employers from universities to sweatshops that crank out code to big agribusinesses exploit international/non-citizen workforce. And I am talking about people with valid visas here. The reign of the Orange tyrant showed how vulnerable even GC holders are when he put that Muslim ban in place the weekend after he was inaugurated.
A lot of work visa related exploitation would cease if workers could self-petition for their visas, like they do in Canada.
JPL
Jane and Ted had a house near me, but I still don’t know where it was. Sure google could help me out now, but it no longer matters. During stressful times decades ago, my friend and I might call each other to search for their house. We never found it but that wasn’t the point of the search. Jane is so right about gal friends. Thank you, Jane.
WaterGirl
@schrodingers_cat: @eclare:
ICE should go away and be replaced by something not driven by hate or racism. Leaving it with the name ICE would be a bad idea.
What needs to be done with employers could happen under a different agency, perhaps one that already regulates businesses.
buggrit
@WaterGirl: I would not miss Department of Homeland Security one bit. The name itself makes me cringe.
Kent
@WaterGirl:
Selective Service.
It has been a useless and pointless agency since the 1970s when Carter resurrected draft registration as a way of trying to flash a big dick at the Russians when they invaded Afghanistan. The last year we actually had a draft and the agency did something was during the Vietnam war over 50 years ago.
Today it is where you park your most useless political appointees so they can do no damage. Since the agency doesn’t actually do anything.
ICE still actually serves a purpose and every country has the equivalent. It isn’t the existence of the agency that is problematic. It is the management and current staff.
BenCisco 🇺🇸🎖️🖥️♦️
@WaterGirl: The entirety of DHS should be broken; all personnel re-vetted, and those that remain parceled out to the orgs that preceeded/were folded into DHS.
Bill Arnold
DHS should be broken up for parts, and all the Stephen Miller(/Trump) embeds reassigned to jobs counting centipedes in subbasements.
ETA Hah, BenCisco did it better.
eclare
@buggrit: Agree. “Homeland” ugh. Very Nazi overtones.
Feathers
The problem with state level EPAs and FDAs is that you would run into the incorporation and credit card problem. Whoever creates the worst system becomes the de facto level of regulation for the country. They
Eyeroller
@schrodingers_cat: Nobody uses coins anymore, but an old slang term for a US quarter was “two bits” because the Spanish dollar of the 18th century or so was worth 8 reales. People cut the dollar coin into 8 pieces (the “pieces of 8” of pirate lore, and not illegal then to cut coins), each worth 1/8 of a dollar or a “bit.” Apparently there was also a gold doubloon worth 32 reales. (Singular “real”)
Gwangung
@eclare: Feature, not a bug.
patrick II
I wish I would have heard Jane Fonda’s advice about sixty years ago.
schrodingers_cat
Immigration enforcement is its own thing. ICE+USCIS was the old INS. Immigration enforcement became ICE and everything else became USCIS. Changing the name didn’t make INS enforcement more scary or USCIS more cuddly.
Dealing with the immigration bureaucratic thicket that was USCIS or its predecessor INS is harrowing, ask any immigrant and they will recount horror stories. I have some of my own.
What the agency calls itself is the least of your worries when you are an immigrant.
Outside the US its the State Dept that handles the visas. Getting even a tourist visa is a nightmare when you come from a country like India (or China).
Most Americans unless they have recent immigrants in the family have no clue how the immigration apparatus operates but everyone has an opinion.
Immigration enforcement became racist because the chief executive of ICE, the President enabled that.
mrmoshpotato
@Derelict:
Or O’Hare or Midway for that matter – while coming east over the lake. Yikes!
oklahomo
@brendancalling: Tim McVeigh was well and truly fucked after the newspapers ran the picture of the firefighter carrying the dead little girl from the rubble of the on-site daycare center that was obliterated.
NotMax
@brendancalling
“What am I, chopped liver?”
– Unabomber
//
dave319
@Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.): No, yes, and yes.
evodevo
@RepubAnon:
Heck…each BANK issued its own currency…talk about chaos…
Paul in KY
@kindness: In medieval times they’d have just grabbed him from his horse and ripped him limb from limb. All this while his guards stood around and watched.
Paul in KY
@eclare: Kentucky has 120. We probably should have 40.