Yesterday, the Florida legislature came back into session. That hasn’t been a good thing at any point in this century, but it’s especially bad this year. After winning reelection by a hefty margin, Gov. Ron DeSantis was in Triumph of the Will mode as he paraded through the Giant Twig & Two Berries Capitol.*
Florida’s part-time GOP legislators/full-time grifters mostly function as rubber stamps to codify DeSantis’s 2024 campaign wish-list these days instead of proposing legislation independently. They submitted a flurry of bills yesterday designed to maximize signing ceremony photo-ops.
If passed and signed, as most of this garbage will be, the proposed legislation will further dictate what teachers can teach, decree which funds state investors can choose and restrict how doctors practice medicine. There are yet more measures to oppress people who are LGBQ and especially T, restrict education about our racist past and present, defund public schools and loosen gun laws.
Since statehouse activities are now a wholly political operation focused on an upcoming presidential run, I was wondering how DeSantis and the Republican legislator-minions would handle the abortion rights hot potato, given that backlash to Dobbs almost certainly contributed to Republicans’ anemic results in the 2022 midterms outside of Florida. Now we know — they’re going full Mississippi anyway.
The same religious fanatic who sponsored an earlier bill imposing a ban on abortion after 15 weeks submitted a new bill to outlaw access after six weeks in this session. We know how this will play out. The 15-week ban has already forced women to leave the state to access medically necessary care, and restricting access to six weeks will make it that much worse.
I’m not sure DeSantis welcomes this development because it could complicate his presidential bid if there’s newsworthy backlash to draconian restrictions in the state. Or maybe that’s not something Florida Republicans worry about these days?
I don’t feel like I know the state anymore; it’s entirely possible the majority of Florida voters don’t give a shit if women lose their bodily autonomy and receive substandard medical care. The most recent data point — the 2022 election results — suggests they don’t.
But I don’t think DeSantis knows either. He has focused on imaginary problems like eradicating “wokeness” and tried to have it both ways on genuine hot button issues like abortion and open carry. Here’s how The Tampa Bay Times covered his response to the proposed six-week ban:
At a news conference after his speech, DeSantis said he supports further restrictions on abortion. But he pointed to the legal challenge against Florida’s 15-week abortion limitations and said that any further abortion restrictions would be in legal limbo.
When asked specifically about the six-week ban, and whether there’s a concern that it could restrict abortions before a woman may know she’s pregnant, DeSantis said he thinks “the issue is less [about the] week than the fact that there’s a detectable heartbeat.”
As the dissembler and liar well knows, “legal limbo” is merely an opportunity to funnel taxpayer money to out-of-state wingnut law firms, where outfits staffed by DeSantis cronies like Adam Laxalt make bank defending indefensible laws in court. The “detectable heartbeat” thing is 100% bullshit too since at six weeks, an embryo does not yet qualify as a fetus (much less a baby), resembles a tadpole more than a human being and hasn’t yet developed an organ that can accurately be described as a “heart.”
Still, I don’t figure Florida’s Squintiest Snowflake will have to use the “legal limbo” mumbo-jumbo to avoid signing the bill. If he finds the timing inconvenient, he’ll direct his statehouse minions to hold it up so it doesn’t reach his desk.
Ditto any proposed “open carry” bills. The expressed intent now is to pass legislation that allows anyone to carry concealed weapons without the previously required mandatory training or permits. DeSantis is hoping that will placate gun nuts, but one of them secretly recorded him at a book tour event saying he supports open carry but doesn’t know if the legislature would pass that provision.
The response was an expression of contempt for his gun kook questioner because the idea that the wingnut supermajority Florida statehouse operates independently of DeSantis is absurd. The real question is whether the image of people openly carrying AR-15s on the streets of violent Republican-run Florida cities helps or hurts the 2024 campaign.
The other real question is will stories about pregnant women being in danger of dying of sepsis or having to flee to blue states to receive proper medical care help or hurt the campaign, especially since the media doesn’t cover it like an issue that affects half the population. I don’t know the answer, and I don’t think DeSantis does either, but it looks like we’re both going to find out.
Open thread.
*Search Google images for Florida’s capitol complex. It’s a giant concrete dick and scrotum, which is an appropriate villain’s lair for the many GOP dickheads and flaccid ball-sacks who work there.
trnc
Ugh! Not that this would necessarily make much difference, but do you ever see any indication that bands or other touring acts are skipping Florida like they did in NC when we had the stupid bathroom bill?
trollhattan
Did anyone see John Oliver’s latest episode and the deep dive on DeSantis? Does his usual thorough job both summarizing and detailing who and what he is, and how and why he’s dangerous (and not just to Florida)
Highlights his love of being the bully better than I’ve ever seen.
Nelle
Way OT but I’m watching the webcast of the House meeting on the fall of Kabul. It is enough to make me scream to watch R’s banging on about accountability for the chaos of that day, but don’t want to deal with accountability about what came before that day. They just want to talk about the narrow definition of that day.
And accountability for January 6? Or anything else? Whoops…let’s slide on by that.
Steeplejack
@Nelle:
Call me crazy, but I thought the final withdrawal from Afghanistan went pretty well, given the possibility of chaos and (further) violence and given the deadline constraints previously determined by . . . 🧐 . . . oh, yeah, Donald Trump.
trnc
I always feel like I’m pissing in the punch bowl when I say this, but I had hoped that Dobbs would have beaten back republicans more. I felt like the constant reporting on the expected red wave was just lazy journalism, so a thin republican majority still felt like a pretty big loss to me when factoring in Dobbs and that majority which gives them all of the power, idiotic committees, etc in that branch have emboldened them.
cain
@Nelle: I’m not sure it’s going to get much traction – you had an assault on the nation’s capitol where people smeared shit on the walls, put legislators in danger – an insurrection. I don’t think Kabul which is also long gone and not anyone’s heads. I suppose they have their Russian friends helping – but the average voter is not going to care. I don’t think the white house press cares either.
Betty Cracker
@trnc: So far, I haven’t seen anything like that, and it’s disappointing.
@trollhattan: Haven’t seen that yet but will check it out (with a big glass of scotch).
cain
@Steeplejack: Yeah, I’m not sure they really want to hold hearings where Trump is back in the spotlight. Everyone is going to keep on deferring to thefact that the decision was made by Trump.
Trump will of course blame everyone else. But you know they are going to get him there to talk about it. :-)
Chris
@Nelle:
Same as Benghazi. The first and last terrorist attack on an embassy they ever gave a shit about in a “political” sense. All the other ones were just treated as acts of God, which no one in U.S. politics could possibly have responsibility for. Benghazi was the first and last one that couldn’t possibly be explained by anything other than cabinet-level complicity, or otherwise guilt.
trnc
You’re not crazy. DT timed it for the next administration because everyone told him it would be a shitshow. IIRC, Biden pushed back the timeline because Americans weren’t leaving as quickly as they should have and many STILL didn’t leave in that time, so that made the last days more chaotic than they might have been.
Alison Rose
@Betty Cracker: It’s a pretty good takedown, covers a wide range of DeSantis’ shit. There’s a clip where he interrupts a reporter before she can finish her question, and when she asks if she can, he goes full-bore dickhead at her. Also, I could not believe the petty douchebag “Thai food” anecdote. Christ, what an asshole.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
Heartbeat bills are fucking stupid.
I openly tell people in my own circle that heartbeats don’t equal sentience, and really amount to the imposition of religious dogma/bad biology into law.
UncleEbeneezer
Since this is OT, some exciting developments here. Finally found a group of local jazz musicians to jam with once a week, just down the street from me. Also, meeting up with a guitarist tomorrow to try and start assembling a project for some of my original tunes. Some of these songs have been waiting for years to finally get a full-band workout. Nice to finally have some music playing back in my life. It’s always been the most important thing for me, and it’s what I do best.
Additionally, just picked up an extra couple hours coaching tennis, once a week, at the high school only 10 minutes away. My usual coaching gigs are 30 minutes drive, so this is a welcome change. If all goes well, I might be able to transition to only working for this company/friend, making more $ with far less driving.
trollhattan
@Nelle: Special guest appearance by Trey Benghazi! Gowdy’s hair?
Alison Rose
I’m gonna put in another plug for folks to donate to abortion funds, so that pregnant people in Florida who don’t have the means to get themselves elsewhere can be helped out. You can go here to donate to the general fund of National Network of Abortion Funds, or you can check their list of local funds to donate directly. There are 11 in Florida, 5 of which are specific to Florida residents (the others are multi-state or national). Even a small donation helps people get money for the procedure itself or for travel or childcare expenses and such.
Fuck you, DeSantis.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@trnc:
Drawling white girls from the wrong side of the tracks in red states are conditioned and resigned to having babies that they won’t be able to support, love or raise very well, no matter how much of a loser fuckboy the sperm donor is. I see it all the time.
Betty Cracker
@trnc:
I hear you, and I agree we shouldn’t consider a thin Republican majority a “win” for Dems, but the margin was a major underperformance by historical standards, especially given the context, i.e., a POTUS with low approval numbers, economic uncertainty and rising inflation, filibuster-philes cock-blocking key parts of their own party’s agenda, etc.
Given all that, I don’t think lazy journalism was entirely responsible for red wave expectations. Repubs screwed the pooch, and there was a Dobbs backlash.
trollhattan
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
Every time I see one of these I’m reminded of placing individual heart muscle cells into a petri dish and watching them coordinate beats until they’re doing it in unison. Dump them and you’re under arrest!
Related, I can’t get past the firewall to this article, but the headline is a shocker. “Facebook and Google Are Handing Over User Data To Help Police Prosecute Abortion Seekers”
–Business Insider
delphinium
It may be that abortion is less on the radar there due to the high number of older/retired folks who are past the baby-making stage, but apparently they don’t think about their own kids/grandkids. And am wondering if folks in FL just figure pregnant women can just go elsewhere for their medical care, so it doesn’t concern them (though obviously it should). Also, I’ve noticed that some similar bills now state “cardiac activity” rather than a “heartbeat”, since it has been pointed out multiple times that the heart isn’t developed enough at 6 weeks to produce a beat, so that way they are covered.
As for the open carry law-will this be everywhere? Or will the Republicans make exceptions for their own events (much like the NRA did not allow guns at their meetings)?
Steeplejack
@UncleEbeneezer:
Congratulations on both fronts! Those are welcome developments.
Alison Rose
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: They also violate religious freedom for Jews, for whom abortion is basically required if needed to preserve the life, health, and well-being of the pregnant person. Also in Judaism, a fetus is not considered a person while it is still in the womb. Funny how these religious zealots suddenly don’t care when it’s the “wrong” religion.
Nelle
@Chris: I’m watching because I’m hoping for some movement on putting Afghan refugees on a path for citizenship. They are in limbo. But once again, the grandstanding overwhelms any action.
I have a conservative R rep. Mostly I don’t engage with him much, but I’m pushing on this one issue pretty hard. It was his staffer that alerted me to the hearing and sent me the link.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@UncleEbeneezer:
I have an unusual problem. I bought a VoyageAir foldable travel acoustic guitar last year, and dinged it once last fall. As a result, the locking screw stripped a few threads at the end. Problem is, it was pretty short and a pain in the ass to begin with – which I saw as a design flaw.
The manufacturer makes what appears to be a replacement kit for the whole locking assembly for $50, but it has been out of stock for six months. I went to Home Depot in search of an equivalent replacement, but this screw is some kind of idiosyncratic size in the vicinity of a #10, but neither 10-24 nor 10-32 work – I can’t get a good bite with the 10-24, and the 10-32 stops dead.
Took it to a luthier today just to see if he had a solution (it sounds great when it plays); he said my best bet is to take the screw to a machine shop and ask them to fabricate me one with about a half inch of extra length.
And yes, stopping by the shop with the luthier had me in a potential spending bind – I really, really want a hollowbody and nicer amp.
Scout211
My sister and BIL in Florida will never move. My sister would love to live nearer to me, but California is so much more expensive than Florida and they don’t think they could afford it. Plus, they would have to start over with their life, which they can’t see happening. They really love the lifestyle there and he has lived there all of his life.
I think that so many of the seniors there are like my family. They don’t like what is happening in the state but love living there so much that they just try to ignore DeSantis and his legislature and live their lives. Sigh.
I guess the push-back is going to have to come from the younger generations. They are the ones most affected by these laws so I hope they get active and start filing lawsuits and loudly start pushing back. I just don’t see it coming from the retired Floridians, even if they hate what is happening. It’s just so sad to see.
waspuppet
I assume you mean in the general, because in the primaries, of course it helps. All violence is the fault of Those People, and the sight of white people carrying guns is always comforting to Republicans.
The abortion question is another matter, since these laws essentially make it impossible to be a doctor — at least one who sees female patients of ages roughly between 13 and 50.
Chris
@Nelle:
Afghans are one of the rare refugee issues on which a few conservatives can show some humanity, mostly thanks to old-boy-network connections through the military to a few people who actually care. So it’s definitely worth pushing.
Geminid
@trnc: Republicans would have suffered more blowback from Dobbs had it not been for gerrymandering. The struggle over abortion rights will be ongoing though, and I think this issue will cost Republicans more House seats in 2024, maybe a lot more.
Omnes Omnibus
@trnc: I would say that the
20202022 election was essentially a draw. Given historical precedent, a draw in an off year election is a pretty good result. Also, some of it is how you choose to look at it. I think focusing on the the positive and trying to build on it is the way to go. Others obviously disagree, but they are wrong.edited to correct typo in the year.
delphinium
Me too! And honestly I think if NY hadn’t screwed up the gerrymandering and Dems had been less complacent in some of the races, we might have kept the house. But for any number of reasons, getting our side out to vote is always an issue that even Dobbs can’t overcome.
UncleEbeneezer
@Steeplejack: Definitely. I’m pretty loyal, so I’ve been sticking with my current (tennis) company for awhile. But if things go well with the new one, and she ends up being interested in taking me on as her main assistant coach, I could make more money and drive way less!
Dorothy A. Winsor
Re abortion rights, we’ve been driven back to the point where we’re talking about saving the life and health of the mother. Obviously, we need to do that! But that’s quite the retreat from what existed before Dobbs
Kent
It was not essentially a draw. It was the second biggest margin of defeat of a presidential incumbent since, I think, Herbert Hoover. Only Reagan over Carter in 1980 was bigger. It was only the huge GOP advantage poised by the electoral college that made it remotely close.
glory b
Anyone know the reason for so many people moving to Florida? I heard that DeSantis touted this during his speech, saying to ignore the chattering, people were voting with their feet, or some such stuff.
I’m interested because my father was born in FL and moved to PA a while after college. He did so because my mother was from here and teachers were being paid so much more here. They came up during a summer vacation, he applied for a job here & got accepted. I’ve visited of course, but other than the beaches, didn’t really see the appeal.
Fun fact, because black people weren’t allowed to use the beach or public swimming pools, my father was born in FL but never learned to swim.
Ohio Mom
I think there are websites that are collecting the stories of women jeopardized, harmed and killed by abortion bans — I am thinking Jessica Valenti is one who is doing this — and there might be other sites that are tracking gun deaths. But how to get them better known in the hugeness of the internet?
In my dreams, the NYT would have a separate section for each, similar to the Covid section they maintain, with a combination of maps, graphs and stories.
Kent
Does it feel to everyone else that we are racing at light speed in this country towards a level of division not seen since the 1950s? It certainly feels like that to me.
I’m 59 so I’ve been around and I’ve been at least somewhat politically aware since the early 1970s during Watergate and the very tail end of the Vietnam War. And I don’t remember any other point in time when vast stretches of the US were essentially becoming “no-go” zones. If not “no-go” zones for visiting, then at least “no-go” zones in terms of places that you could possibly ever live, go to school, or raise a family.
I don’t know where this all ends. No place good until one side is completely defeated to the point of irrelevancy.
glory b
@Chris: I think it’s primarily a topic they can use to beat up Biden about, to be honest.
Chris
@Kent:
I assume you meant the 1850s.
Ohio Mom
@glory b: The baby boom is retirement age?
Omnes Omnibus
@Kent: I mistyped and missed the edit window. That should have been 2022.
Omnes Omnibus
@Omnes Omnibus: 2022 not 2020.
Doc Sardonic
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: The screw could possibly be a metric screw, they are close enough in size where a standard SAE screw won’t quite do it. I think an M5 might do it, I doubt they custom made the screws, but anything is possible with a really unique guitar design.
RSA
Whenever I see a bill relaxing gun laws, I check the rules for visiting the legislators who want to see more guns in public places. From the Florida Capitol visitors’ guide:
glory b
@Ohio Mom: That’s what I thought, but DeSantis & his crew insist that’s not the case. Of course, I take everything they say with a large grain of salt.
JMS
@Ohio Mom: Like the conspicuously white and middle class women filing the law suit in Texas? Calling attention to the fact that alleged exceptions for mothers life or health have don’t actually work. Is it still possible to file a malpractice suit if a woman needed an abortion and was refused and then died?
delphinium
@glory b: While a lot of it is probably due to nice weather and beaches, would guess the abundance of retirement communities is another plus; along with no state income taxes. Not sure if there is a huge number of younger folks moving to FL as opposed to other states, so would be interesting to see the age breakdowns.
UncleEbeneezer
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: Ugh. Nothing worse than gear problems where the solution/replacement piece is hard to find. Sorry to hear that. I recently lost a tiny screw that connects the connecting arm to my double-bass pedal. DW has lots of screws you can buy but not this particular one, and it’s not a standard size. I ended up spending $40 for a whole other connecter arm. Hollow-bodies are great but they can cause a lot of feedback if you use distortion. That said, one of my fave guitarists is Bobby Lee Rodgers, who plays an old hollow-body through a Leslie cabinet and a little delay and gets an incredible tone and can get delightfully spacey. He used to have an amazing rock/funk/blue-grass jam band called The Codetalkers with Col. Bruce Hampton, RIP.
Kent
@Omnes Omnibus: Got it. 2022 was weird. Democrats outperformed largely due to Trump who probably cost the GOP 2% across the nation. So he’s the gift that keeps on giving.
In war when you base your strategy on a lie (or lies) it usually doesn’t end well as the US found out in Vietnam and Iraq, the Germans found out in WW2, and the Russians are finding out today in Ukraine.
The same seems to be true in politics as the GOP found out in 2020 and 2022.
Kent
@Chris: Right, prelude to the Civil War. What did I type? 1950s?
delphinium
@RSA: Thanks for this, kind of what I expected: security for me but not for thee.
cain
@Scout211:
It has to be all generations – because that legislature is almost surely going to not only go full tilt on these issues, but they are going to be racist and homo and transphobic – they will try to get away as much as they can. At some point, it’s going to affect all of you because to enforce those laws means more law enforcement which means more money. Fascism is expensive.
Life is going to get hard for Floridians and DeSantis and the legislature is going to flame out eventually
ETA: Woot! 25*2!
waysel
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: Is the screw perhaps a metric size?
Chris
@Kent:
Yeah. Which also works (in that thanks to Jim Crow there was in fact still a large part of the country where you frankly wouldn’t want to raise anybody), but the 1850s feels more like the present time.
Brachiator
Some smart business type may set up stalls renting guns at airports and outside of theme parks, since it looks like the only people without guns in Florida will be tourists.
The crime rate in Florida must be low, and the presence of more guns will reduce it to zero, right? And so prove that Republican run states with gun packing patriots are the safest place to live, right?
There is currently good coverage of the pregnant women suing Texas because their lives are at risk because of complications, but whose doctors fear offering abortion.
piratedan
seeing stuff being filtered in from the birdsite that says a FOIA request on DeSantis has been completed and it allegedly states that DeSantis was not actually a Navy pilot (as some of his ads have implied) but actually an assistant urinalysis coordinator, will let other fill in their own punch lines……
unsure exactly how this will be spun, but it sure will be fun to watch it happen.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Chris:
@Kent:
Why are corporations still funding this bullshit? They can’t be so stupid to not see where this could all be heading. Civil war is bad business, obviously. And these numbnut Republicans all have investments I’m sure that would be hurt
Kent
@Chris: Yes, I mean the Deep South has never in history been any place that you ever really wanted to live. Not during slavery, not during Jim Crow. And not today.
What is different now is the disease has spread to so many other places that used to be relatively civilized like Iowa and Idaho. Idaho used to elect progressive Democrats like Frank Church. Now????
Even Texas was not so bad a decade or two ago. When we moved there in 2003, Waco had a Democratic mayor and a very decent Democratic Congressman. And the legislature did things like decently fund education. We had people like Molly Ivins and Ann Richards. Now? It is a complete and utter shit show.
trollhattan
@glory b: With the caution I do not know what to make of a company calling itself “MoveBuddha”
Top destination city in the US: The Villages. #2, Portland, Maine.
Go figure.
Ohio Mom
@JMS: Yes, of course this lawsuit is beyond important and will get some press. And then it will be settled one way or another and fade from view.
I am thinking about the tragic stories I read here and there as I bounce around the internet. My wish is there there would a clearinghouse that documented and listed all these stories. So the absolute scope of this attack on women could be plain to see. And I want DATA.
The Moar You Know
There’s no downside for the GOP to double down on everything, as the more they lose, the more money the rubes send their way.
My phone doesn’t know “rubes” is a word. Get cracking, phone. You’re gonna be using it a lot.
Lyrebird
@trnc: I came to the comments section with a similar question. I asked my professional association if they would boycott Fla last year for their annual meeting, they did not.
Some other members donated to Rebekah Jones or to the NAACP. The meeting is held in blue-ish Tampa, so I don’t know, and I hope to hear more about what Betty C and other folks here think.
The Lodger
@piratedan: Assistant urinalysis coordinator, indeed. I’ve been looking for an excuse to start calling him Pissantis.
Kent
@trollhattan: Florida will eventually reach a demographic cliff when all those millions of MAGA white retirees find there is no one there willing to wipe their butts, mow their lawns, work in their buffets, and staff their nursing homes. Because no one under 40 will be able to afford to live there or want to do those jobs.
zhena gogolia
Big doings in Tblilsi.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
Good or bad?
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: According to the podcasts I listen to, the right was also flooding the zone with bullshit polls, which then made it appear that the polling was all in the direction of the giant red wave.
But I though Nate Silver was supposed to be smarter than that. When I last looked at his stuff a few years ago, he was rating polls according to reputation, etc.
There’s no excuse for the polling peeps not to have seen what was going on and adjusting their polling summaries, etc.
It was all very intentional, and at the very least legitimate pollsters either allowed themselves to be duped or they deliberately played along with the narrative.
I totally agree, though, the despite polling, all the old “standard” predictors would have pointed to big losses for the Dems in the midterms.
But everyone could see that these are not normal times and that there were half a dozen wildcards which made all the normal predictive factors go out the window.
Betty Cracker
@glory b: If you love nature, boating and being outdoors, Florida is pretty awesome. The birdwatching is world-class! The fascists suck though, so I can certainly understand why people flee/stay away
@WaterGirl: Great point about these not being normal times. We would all do well to remember that in the future. We may not ever see normal times again.
lowtechcyclist
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
AFAIAC, any law restricting abortions before the point of viability outside the womb is nothing but an establishment of religion. There’s obviously no other reason these laws are being agitated for.
Kent
@Baud: Protests against the Russian-friendly government are growing fast. Whether it ends in massive bloodshed or some sort of “spring” is yet to be seen.
Baud
@Kent:
Thanks.
lowtechcyclist
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
Well, as long as they’re white babies, that’s the important thing to certain kinds of people. Can’t be outnumbered by folks with darker hues of skin, you know.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@zhena gogolia:
@Baud:
Protesters being attacked by police for protesting a draconian foreign agents registration law that’s like the Russian one that’s been used to crack down on dissent. Georgian president on visit to US has vowed to veto
Chris
@Kent:
Yeah, that’s what makes it feel 1850s rather than 1950s to me.
The 1950s had that “one country, two systems” shit, but as horrific as Jim Crow was (and as bad as the rest of the country still was), it was still quarantined to 1/4 or 1/3 of the country. There was no fear of it taking over the federal government and imposing itself on the entire country.
Whereas in the 1850s, and again today, that was/is very much a realistic fear. They were hard at work trying to tear down the very concept of free states, and entrenching slavery as the ruling system of the entire nation. And their descendants are trying for the same thing again now.
Kent
@lowtechcyclist: This heartbeat nonsense is utterly unscientific. Any biologist will tell you that life does not actually BEGIN. It is a constant cycle going back to the dawn of time. Every cell in your body can be traced, cycle after cycle, back in an unbroken chain to the dawn of life on earth billions of years ago. The human lifecycle happens to have two stages. Some organisms like insects have three. Some, like jellyfish have four. But life never begins, it just cycles endlessly through various stages.
It is also un-Biblical. To the extent that the topic is addressed in the Bible it suggests that the soul enters the body and becomes human at the moment of first breath, not first heartbeat. In the Old Testament, God had no problem whatsoever with destroying fetuses in the womb.
Kent
@Baud: It is all over twitter if you happen to be a twit.
WaterGirl
@glory b:
That makes my blood boil.
Baud
@Kent:
I am not.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: Good if the protestors win. Not clear yet.
lowtechcyclist
@Ohio Mom:
“We visited an Ohio womb…”
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: Since the year was a key part of your point, I corrected 2020 to 2022 and made a note that it was edited.
If you don’t want that, I can easily undo my edit.
Baud
Via Reddit, Blade Runner is coming.
https://v.redd.it/89op066yblma1
zhena gogolia
@Baud:
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
🤞
Chris
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
In no particular order;
AliceBlue
@WaterGirl Two high school kids from some fancy prep school were doing “polling” and Silver was including their results in his analysis. Unbelievable.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@zhena gogolia:
I know the Prime Minister has reiterated their support for the bill, so we’ll see but I hope it’s defeated
gvg
@glory b: I don’t really know what he is talking about NOW. People used to move to Florida but the growth slowed some time ago. About a decade ago really. There is no special increase going on right now.
Yes, when air conditioning got affordable, people in general moved south wherever the economy was good enough. Lots of people hate the cold (others hate the heat) and I would say plenty have Seasonal affect disorder like J Cole and just get really depressed when there isn’t much sun in the winter. Florida did have a rather decent economy and was cheaper for a long while. We also had better government than currently and our education was improving. Our roads were too, until about 2000. We have fallen behind though. North Carolina also used to be better and hasn’t been lately so not sure why but it seems hard to substain forever.
DeSantis is lying basically. Surprise.
WaterGirl
@AliceBlue: Is that for real? Or snark? If it’s for really, Nate Silver has sunk lower than I thought, which is already pretty damn low.
We all hoped he wouldn’t turn to shit when he moved to the NYT, but our hopes were in vain.
JaneE
I think it was The Guardian that did a picture spread on the tissue removed during an abortion from 1 to 9 weeks. For most weeks you were looking at a white blob. If you put the pictures on a billboard people would think they were looking at clouds. That is what they are protecting and willing to put women and doctors in jail because of.
Brachiator
@Kent:
Or even children outside the womb, depending on what was desired.
raven
@Betty Cracker: I have been informed on the Georgia football blog that the fascists are progressives and Biden.
Baud
@raven:
Always projection.
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: Thanks. It will avoid further confusion.
trollhattan
@Betty Cracker:
#1. The Villages: “I’m never shoveling another sidewalk!”
#2. Portland, ME: “I wonder what snow is like?”
Americans are a restless bunch.
zhena gogolia
I’m addicted to these LP videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fi42JA4M5mo
Highlight in this one: Kari Lake.
Chris
@gvg:
What’s really tragic with Florida is that for a long time it felt like it was at least on the right track. It helps that it’s not until about a hundred years ago that it really started going through the process of economic development and large-scale immigration that a lot of Northeastern and Midwestern states had already gone through in the nineteenth century. So it felt like a state that was on the way to where most blue states are now, and, well, the road’s bumpy as hell, but we’ll get there eventually.
As late as a decade ago when I was still living there, that was still the vibe I had. Helps that they’d voted for Obama twice and that there were promising signs in the younger generations of Cubans that that demographic was finally turning the corner from their “always vote Joe McCarthy” politics. Nowadays… I’m viewing it from five states away, but what I see isn’t promising. When I was there it felt like it was at a crossroads, now it looks like it’s resolutely taken the wrong road and is speeding away as fast as it’ll go.
Jeffro
OT but reporting in mid-week from Sun Valley, ID: skiing here is much more challenging than in some of the other places the Fro family has visited! It’s pretty here but I’l be ready to go home Friday, weather permitting (fingers crossed and knock on wood).
I have been having a field day with all the Fox and Tucker “revelations”. No response (except ‘whataboutisms’) from my RWNJ relatives.
I can’t decide which topic to beat them about the (virtual) head with next:
– Oil companies making a record $200B in profits last year (I assume that’s Biden’s fault, somehow)
– Companies and investment firms pushing back on Republicans’ anti-ESG efforts.
Maybe both?
whatsleft
I, the native Floridian great-granddaughter of official Florida pioneers (see the Shaw family in Davie and the Johns family in White Springs), do hereby proclaim that I now live in Ofbanistan. I will fight to the last breath to reclaim my beloved state for myself and my next two generations (representing at least 6 Florida generations). My Florida-born granddaughter is due next month.
J R in WV
@Kent:
Way back in 1972 Wife and I were moved to Pascagoula Mississippi when my ship went there for a major overhaul — she was built in the early 1940s and served in the South Pacific during the final months of WW II.
It was like time travel back to 1870. Racism was not only tolerated, it was required. Wife got a job with the library as a reference librarian, answering questions from the public, before Google could do that.
A friend, our parents age came to town to visit his elderly mother, stopped by the library to see Wife, who he had known since she was a little girl, as he lived near her grandmother. He also worked at my family’s business, had a BS EE degree.
She wife saw Herb she ran up to him and hugged him, she was so homesick and he was from home. We’re big huggers anyway. They wanted to fire her for hugging a black man. White haired, her father’s age.
The more she explained the worse it got — “He lived near your grandmother?” Horror — not allowed in Misissippi! “He worked at the same place you worked?” Worse yet!!
And from all the news from deep south, it is as bad today as it was in 1972, and back in 1872… i don’t even like to travel through on the way to elsewhere.
Baud
@J R in WV:
You must have had one of the very first robot wives.
Chris
@J R in WV:
My mom’s first trip to the Deep South, also some time in the 1970s, she was once told “you’re dressed like you’re going to a hanging!” Which, apparently, was a folksy Southernism that might be translated as “madam, what a very pretty dress you’re wearing!”
That kind of says it all right there.
Raoul Paste
Let’s hope someone forwards the “assistant urinalysis coordinator“ job title to The Former Guy. He will probably use that one at the first debate.
Baud
@Raoul Paste:
DeSantis is qualified to evaluate the pee tape.
Raoul Paste
@Baud: brilliant
AliceBlue
@WaterGirl: I think it was a real thing.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Chris:
All of that’s true. It’s still super frustrating tho.
whatsleft
@UncleEbeneezer: 🎉👍
Spanky
@Jeffro:
And yet the Fed is still chasing inflation, instead of going after price gouging.
sab
@glory b: I remember those days. I am 69 now. We lived in Daytona from 1960 to 1966 when I was in elementary school.
That whole period black people were not allowed on any beach in Volusia County (probably in the whole state of Florida.)
And now Daytona is a hot spot for HBCU kids on Spring Break.
Bill Hicks
So are turgid ball-sacks better than flaccid? What should we be looking for in ball-sacks?
Spanky
Why does a Urinalysis Coordinator need an Assistant?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Spanky:
That’s outside of the Fed’s purview; that’s up to Congress and the executive branch
Steeplejack
Must-see video:
piratedan
@Spanky: when your pay grade warrants not having to handle the pee, you get an assistant. Pissant DeSantis.
Eyeroller
@JaneE: I saw that and perhaps unfortunately, the “white cloudy thing” is the chorion, which envelopes the embryo and later becomes part of the placenta. What was depicted was the “conceptus,” which is what is removed in an abortion. The actual embryo was not visible. The Mayo Clinic (among other sites) has a nice series of illustrations https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/pregnancy-week-by-week/in-depth/prenatal-care/art-20045302
Up until about week 4 of human gestation (from actual conception, not medical “conception”), it looks about the same as any other vertebrate embryo.
whatsleft
@The Lodger: 🤣🤣🤣
Geminid
Mayo clinic doctors played a role in the Roe opinion. Writer Harry Blackmun had done work for the Clinic back when he was in private practice. Chief Justice Burger knew that Blackmun would consult the docs over at the Mayo to help him write a medically sound opinion.
Ixnay
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: have you checked if it’s metric? Where does it fold? I’ve played friends traveling guitars but they are mostly narrow and short scale. I’ll have to look it up.
Bill Arnold
@Steeplejack:
You mean the surrender negotiated by Trump and Pompeo, in return for no inconvenient Taliban military action vs American personnel in the lead-up to the 2020 election.
And yeah, it was a reasonably competent withdrawal in a chaotic situation.
US intelligence service information was very very flawed, at least the consensus information, but that was not in particular the fault of the Biden administration; 6 months after taking office, they were working with the previous administration’s work.
Citizen Alan
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
I’ve been saying for years that cows, pigs and chickens have heartbeats, and we slaughter them by the million every day because they taste delicious. And we’re happy to do that because THEY’RE NOT HUMAN BEINGS.
(Not that a fetus has a heartbeat at 6 weeks which is a damned lie.)
WaterGirl
@Bill Arnold:
That’s a significant understatement.
Citizen Alan
@Betty Cracker: More importantly, but for complacency and incompetence by the NY Democratic Party, we would have held the House! I still believe the GOP “majority” will fall apart before the end of the year.
Kay
“The findings” track the results of the 2022 election, where The War On Woke bombed with the public, but Republicans and antiwoke crusaders on the center-Right continue to ignore the fact that most people just aren’t as obsessed with the Oberlin student council and the behavior of Yale law students as they are.
The NYTimes has a full time antiwoke crusader on the payroll and antiwoke polls at 39%
Talk about out of touch.
sab
@Kay: I don’t know about you but I am beyond embarrassed to be an Ohioan. All of my nieces and nephews who could leave have left. House prices are good ( low) but that isn’t good. It means nobody on the planet wants to live here.
Chyron HR
@Spanky:
One guy to hold the cup, and another to shake your dick when you’re done.
trnc
Good points! That does make me feel a little better. Thanks!
Ohio Mom
@Eyeroller: I think the same tendency that lets us see puppies and turtles in cumulus clouds allows some of us to see little babies in very early embryos.
The Mayo illustrations are interesting but because they are much larger than life-sized, they just encourage those who see “babies” instead of embryos. Of course if the pictures were life-sized, they’d be tiny indistinguishable specks.
Citizen Alan
@Spanky: Does the Fed have any way to go after price gouging?
trnc
That brightened my evening!
Gvg
@Chris: as far as I can tell we went to pieces when Lawton Chiles died in 98. The Democratic Party fell apart or something and nobody seems to know how to organize or out politic the republicans. Chiles could out flolksy them and was just more fun then these sour pusses.
Kay
@sab:
I’m in Michigan right now because I’m meeting with a contractor to do some work on a property we own here- we’re selling the Ohio house and moving here in the next couple of years. We need a garage and another bathroom and the porch is falling off, so it has to be replaced.
The Michigan house is tiny – it’s a 1950s “lake cottage” – but I’m kind of looking forward to a small house and I can’t leave the Great Lakes- they are literally my favorite thing in the world. So Michigan it is. It’s kind of exciting. I didn’t plan on doing this but I just can’t accept living in a state where women have less than a full set of rights. I can’t do it. Hey, I didn’t leave Ohio. Ohio left me.
Ohio Mom
@sab: You must have missed the threads where Kay announces she’ll be moving to Michigan as soon as she retires. She’s way past the emotional state described as embarrassed.
I have begun to worry about Ohio Son’s long term prospects here. We have a lot of good disability supports in the Cincinnati area but most of them ultimately depend on money coming through Columbus. And those numbskulls in the Statehouse are not to be trusted
ETA: Kay herself beat me to it.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kay:
What would you do if Michigan went backwards again?
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Kent:
They’ll just eliminate all social services and remove child labor laws so the choice is wipe their wrinkled butts or starve.
glory b
@trollhattan: Thanks, but MoveBuddha? Lol
Bill Arnold
@Jeffro:
No, huge profits are good and they can thank their ideological buddy V. Putin.
WaterGirl
@Kay: Wow, I didn’t realize your move to Michigan was a 2-year plan. I sort of thought it was more like 5 or 10. Did the timetable get moved up with the Dobbs decision and everything hateful that has come after it?
WaterGirl
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Glass half empty!
sab
@Ohio Mom: I didn’t miss it. I knew she was going. I understand and agree but it is till wrenching to see good Ohioans leave.
I left thirty years ago but I came back. Not my best move, except I found my spouse.
My sisters’ kids have all left.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@WaterGirl:
Yeah, I know, it’s my curse lol. Michigan doesn’t have the solid track record that, say, California, though it does seem to be trending that way currently
Ruckus
@Alison Rose:
This should be on the side of the Goodyear blimp.
Ron DeSantas
Christ, what an asshole
Baud
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
Jackie
@Raoul Paste: I had that thought, too!
Then remembered the pee-pee tape rumors… TFG isn’t gonna want to remind anyone of that.
Dang it! Beat by Baud an hour ago. I just started reading this thread🤷🏼♀️
Kay
@WaterGirl:
Well, my husband is older than I am and wants to retire and all our children have left Ohio with the exception of my middle son – he lives in Toledo but that’s right over the border from Michigan :)
It’s beautiful here but man is it QUIET in March. I was mostly here in the summer when all the vacationers from Chicago are here. My husband skis and belongs to a tennis club here (and one in Ohio) so he’ll be occupied, anyway.
Jackie
@Kay: I read that article and laughed. Anyone dumb enough to call me Woke will get a “Thanks! I wear my wokeness with honor and pride!”
Steve in the ATL
@Kay:
LOL that was my family for decades! Go Cubs!
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kay:
Thanks for sharing that. It’ll be nice to show that to moron chuds
Geminid
Florida Republicans may have gone full Mississippi on abortion, but the Virginia Republicans controlling the House of Delegates 52-48 got cold feet on the issue. They decided not to bring Governor Youngkin’s abortion bill to a vote. It would have prohibited abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, but Republican House leaders said there was no point voting on a bill that the Democratic Senate would reject.
That excuse didn’t stop them from passing all kinds of other stupid legislation that bounced off Senator Lucas’s Brick Wall. Republicans are nervous about the upcoming legislative elections though, and know they are on the wrong side of majority opinion when it comes to women’s rights. They’re on the wrong side on a lot of issues, but this is one that could really hurt them in November.
kalakal
@UncleEbeneezer: Sounds good! It’s great to have a regular jam band. Hope the guitarist works out.
And more money from coaching 😀
WaterGirl
@Kay: Once you live there you’ll probably be thrilled when all the vacationers go back and you have the quiet. :-)
Uncle Cosmo
I can see it now, straight from the debate stage:
One of the vanishingly few imaginable quotes out of Trumplethinskin’s pie-hole I’d be happy to listen to…:^D
Kay
@Steve in the ATL:
When my daughter was a surly teen she refused to come for a couple of summers because it is full of “dentists and their wives“. OK, so it’s true to a certain extent but they’re NOT all dentists. Some are cardiologists.
Betty Cracker
@Chris: Sad but true.
@whatsleft: I’m right there with you! It’s worth fighting for.
kalakal
The piss bottle holder may find reality comes back to bite with this legislation.
Florida lives or dies by tourism, espescially foreign tourism. One tourist dying/very nearly dying/ getting charged with murder due to a court case because of a miscarriage will crater that.
Most of these tourists want a happy family holiday with the kids. Yahoos wandering around with AR-15s does not meet the spec for most foreign tourists.
PissSantis is also pandering to the antivax crowd. Let’s here it for a measles outbreak – that where you want to take the kiddies for a happy holiday? They also want to stop Polio vaccinations. Now that is not a good look. A few cases of Polio and Orlando Airport might as well shut down
Ksmiami
Ruckus
@Alison Rose:
To me, it seems that the “religions” that they seem to worship are less religion and far more “Thou shall do as you are told, not as you read.” More monetarily driven than any of the numerous religions I’ve studied. (And BTW I am not a religious person, I’ve read the books, listened to the proponents, and most of them contradict parts of the things they tell you are important and that the only humans that have actual standing are the ones who gives everything for the religion, become like a bot for the religion. That’s not how I see any of them should be and absolutely, I may be 1000% wrong, it wouldn’t be the first time, but that isn’t my take on a concept of be a better human.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: The Great Lakes are magnificent! My in-laws used to have a cottage on Lake Erie, and you could stand on these incredible slate shelves on the beach and fish. But the water was freezing even in July!
catclub
@cain:
But I think it IS conventional wisdom for them that it was chaotic, instead of incredibly well done, given any comparison with similar withdrawals under fire.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
Michigan and Erie warm up by September- really- especially Erie- it’s the shallowest and warmest Great Lake. They’re best in September.
Superior remains cold :)
Steve in the ATL
@Betty Cracker: our cottage was on a smaller lake but same situation—the water didn’t really warm up until August. And then it was cold again after Labor Day….
dww44
@Kent: respectfully you are wrong about no one wanting to live in the South. For several decades this part of the South has been growing more prosperous and attractive to people from all over the US. So much so that middle class blacks have been moving back in large numbers. Atlanta is the AA capital of America and that didn’t happen overnite. Please don’t paint a region with such a broad brush.
ExpatchadPutin has become Stalin, the destroyer of worlds
@Kent: Idaho also produced Church’s Prof, Dr.Boyd Martin (my uncle) who wrote the bulk of the UN Charter at its founding in 1945. Somewhat after 1961 when I graduated HS, with Loomis’ father, it toppled into the abyss.
Betsy
@glory b: there’s no state income tax. And your residential property is exempt from tax up to the first $50,000 or something like that. So you can basically retire to a nice glorified camper / new moho with a big screened sunroom and have hardly any other costs and very low taxes. This has been the Florida scam for like a century.
Jackie
@Steve in the ATL: The Columbia River is the same; it “warms up” just in time for the hydroplane boat races early August in eastern WA – IF the outdoor temps are at least upper 90’s – otherwise unless you’re shitfaced – it’s wading warm. Thankfully, more often than not, the air temps hover around 100+/-
Chris
@kalakal:
It occurs to me that that may actually be the point.
Look at it from the FLGOP’s point of view. A future in which the state’s biggest cash cows have been destroyed, economic development is cratered, and the state is slowly reverting to its pre-Henry-Flagler status as Lower Alabama, but they’ve been left with a stranglehold on politics… may be preferable to a future in which the state continues to become richer, more middle-class, more educated, and a magnet for outsiders, but in which they may either lose control of the political process, like on the West Coast, or at the very least fight an uphill battle to stay competitive, like in the Northeast.
Today’s Republicans are very, very prone to “better to rule in hell than to serve in heaven” thinking. And the South as a whole has a lot of experience with this: it’s how it worked during Jim Crow, really it’s how it worked even in the antebellum era, and in far too many places it’s still how it works today. Shockingly poor territory ruled over by an all-powerful despot or a handful of them who’ve managed to hoard all the money. Hazzard County with Boss Hogg was at best a slight exaggeration.
Steve in the ATL
@Chris:
#DeepCuts
Well played!
Steve in the ATL
@Jackie: being shitfaced is key!