losing it ???? pic.twitter.com/yYEgMFMRSy
— brooke foster, 2023 edition (@lonesometoast) March 25, 2023
I have the feeling it’s gonna be another week of pushing slippery boulders up a steep incline, so let’s take a moment to appreciate Eagle Murphy’s hormone-addled dedication to living his dream.
important Murph update from our friends at @WBSSTL ! https://t.co/kKrusaatWU
— brooke foster, 2023 edition (@lonesometoast) March 26, 2023
Speaking of males wholeheartedly dedicated to their misguided endeavors, Jen Psaki has a wonderful takedown of Gym Jordan’s latest Bigly Media Flex:
“I wouldn't freak out about what they are up to because so far, it doesn’t sound like they have the legal ground or the competency to deliver.”@jrpsaki weighs in on House Republicans going after Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg.#DontFreakOut pic.twitter.com/RvodPQ8VyZ
— Inside with Jen Psaki (@InsideWithPsaki) March 26, 2023
(I’ve got a bunch of stories about Mr. Bragg set aside, which I plan to post separately later today — assuming no breaking news to make them less relevant or crowd out our attention.)
On The Road – Albatrossity – Ngorongoro Crater 4
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone😊😊😊
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
BlueGuitarist
Good morning, juicers.
shoulders to the wheel.
Last postcard writing thread for Wisconsin elections tonight.
We can help flip the majority on the WI Supreme Court.
Postcards effectively get out the vote, and matter more in low turnout elections such as odd numbered years.
In 2019 WI Supreme Court election
D 600 thousand votes
R 606 thousand votes
That’s half a percentage point difference, and a million votes not mobilized for each side.
State senate district 8 is like a super swing district
each voter can cast 2 votes to replace Rs with Democrats
WaterGirl’s how to postcard post:
balloon-juice.com/postcards-for-wisconsin/
Jay
@rikyrah:
whaaaa,….no frist,
do our traditions mean nothing to you,
Good Morning,……. I said Good Day,…….
raven
@Jay: nobody cares
Baud
I LOVE MY ROCK MONSTER BABY!
Jay
@raven:
not in the mood to goof, I see.
When are you going fishing again?
Baud
Should probably have an Isreal thread at some point. Bibi seems to be trying to be a successful Trump.
raven
@Jay: We’re going in May but the The Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt has me a little worried!
Frankensteinbeck
@Baud:
Archen or Aerodactyl?
BlueGuitarist
@raven:
Thanks for bringing John Prine to the postcard thread Saturday night.
I meant to post Bonnie Raitt and Ruthie Foster singing Angel from Montgomery. previously posted Jorma and Ruthie Foster covering Long Time Gone.
Jay
@raven:
should be okay, as long as you arn’t beach fishing. Charters will take you outside.
What are the plans for the pupper?
Going with?
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
Yeah, we could use an Israel thread. It looks like most of the country has risen up in opposition to Netanhayu, including a good deal of Likud. It’s basically a general strike, everything from airports to universities to shopping malls shutting down.
OzarkHillbilly
Blech.
Dr. Jakyll and Miss Deride
Good morning all.
Per WaterGirl’s request (cf. “Walter’s Fund” post, 3/26/23, @ comments 38, 42, & 58), herewith installment #1 of the “St. Bees Saga”:
There was an old man of St. Bees
Who was plagued by obstreperous fleas.
He denounced them in verse–
It just made matters worse;
But they left when he said “Pretty please.”
JWR
Looks like a bad day to be Fox. From NBC:
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Not going so well for him at the current moment
Mousebumples
@BlueGuitarist: Speaking of music & postcards, tonight is the last pre-Spring Election (Wisconsin) music & postcarding thread since the last day to mail for most states is tomorrow!**
I believe WaterGirl is putting up the thread at 745pm eastern (blog time) or 645pm central. Hope to see you there. 😊
After tonight, I think we’re planning on another post next week Tuesday (April 4) for more music and election results. Time to GOTV!
**If you’re in Wisconsin or an adjacent state (IL, IA, MN, MI), you could drop postcards off at the post office for mailing on Wednesday. Just cutting it close with USPS delivery time.
BlueGuitarist
@Mousebumples: yes. (See comment 3)
one more cup of coffee, day job, postcards tonight,
OzarkHillbilly
Thanx Anne, for giving the World Bird Sanctuary a shout out. They do good work.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
Right wingers abuse power the way water flows downhill. I hope I live to see the day when voters are sick of it.
Anyway
Hmm what’s this about? From WaPo:
Baud
@Anyway:
The guy is black, but other than that I don’t know.
Mousebumples
@BlueGuitarist: haha, thanks. I haven’t had my coffee yet. ☕☕☕
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Me too.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: I read somewhere that Cruz put up “evidence” the nominee was under criminal investigation. I have questions… #1 being where did this “evidence” come from?
Off to pick up the grandbabies, a good day to all.
Lapassionara
We’ve been to the World Bird Sanctuary. It is an interesting place, but I don’t remember seeing Murphy. Also to Lone Elk Park, but saw more than one elk.
raven
@Jay: Oh yea, we have been renting the same funky beach house for 15 years or so. The lot next door went for $1million so our friends/owners are not happy but it was bound to happen. I do mostly surf fish so we’re shooting for early May and hope to avoid the worst of it. Artie will go but they have resumed being vigilant about no dogs on the beach so she be limited there. When we were there at Thanksgiving I was fishing and my wife was reading and she didn’t have Artie’s leash tied to her chair. I’ve never seen this in all these years but, for some reason, a Blackhawk helicopter came right down on the deck right in front of us. As this happened Artie took off and I turned and a beach patrol person had parked her buggy right behind us and walked up. Artie wen at her and actually had both paw on the woman’s chest. We were lucky because Artie didn’t bite her and the cop was cool about it but it was close.
Lapassionara
@OzarkHillbilly: So now Cruz thinks being under criminal investigation is a disqualification for public office?
Frankensteinbeck
@lowtechcyclist:
As a country with little overland shipping and the majority of its population having family overseas, Israel is very serious about its air and sea ports. Shutting them down is a huge political pressure.
Princess
@Baud: We should all be paying attention to what’s going on in Israel for when we ourselves have a government that wants to pass legislation that will subvert democracy. News this morning suggests the protestors are winning and Netanyahu will withdraw the legislation.
lowtechcyclist
@raven:
Something similar has happened to us – we’ve been renting the same funky beach house on Anna Maria Island each year since 2009, except that we had to miss 2020 on account of the pandemic, and 2022 due to other complications.
Meanwhile, AMI has been Discovered with a capital D, houses are selling for ridiculous amounts, and ‘our’ house that rented for a little over $2000 for a week has now had a massive remodeling and is now over $5K for the week. Ouch.
We’re going there one last time this year to say goodbye.
My bet is that the island will not be reliably dry land 20 years from now, so that makes the way the prices are going even more insane to me.
Geminid
@Princess: The question is, will Netanyahu withdraw the the legislation outright or just suspend the process of passing it?
A problem here is that no Israeli politician, even among his own Likud party or its three coalition partners, believes that Netanyahu means what he says about anything
JWR
@Princess:
Excellent news, indeed! I’ve been wondering how the U.S. would treat with a newly formed authoritarian Israeli state.
raven
@lowtechcyclist: Looks like it was a great place. My buddy moved to Ft Meyers from Tucson about 5 years ago. He’s a big yak fisherman and mostly went to Pine Isle. His house avoided damage in the hurricane because it was built two inches higher than the rest of his block. He bought a house in Brevard and is selling the Florida place. Have you read ”
Cameron
I hope Murph realizes how lucky he is – in Florida he’d be charged with a felony.
raven
@lowtechcyclist: Ooo, I’d love to fish Bean Point!
Benw
@OzarkHillbilly: I’m stoked to learn about the sanctuary! There’s a similar place out here on Long Island: quoguewildliferefuge.org/
Baud
@Geminid:
He is consistent in his duplicity.
Betty
@OzarkHillbilly: I read that it was a politically motivated investigation by a notorious LA Sheriff. Bogus, in other words. I guess he decided it wasn’t worth fighting with the Sinema defection.
Baud
@Princess:
Experience suggests that people will blame the “two-party system” and use that as an excuse not to do anything productive.
Suzanne
Incubating a rock feels like a metaphor for my career.
Anyway
@Princess:
Now there are rumblings that Bibi’s called off the withdrawal under pressure from the ultra-nationalist and far-right religious groups.
WaterGirl
@BlueGuitarist: Did you see the other John Prine song, too? It was the first one on brendan’s singer/songwriter playlist? :-)
WaterGirl
@Dr. Jakyll and Miss Deride: Good one!
Maybe you should have posted something mediocre for your first one, so there’s not such a high bar? :-)
edit: love your nym! Curious… are you one person, or two?
sdhays
@Baud: I was stuck last night about how no one campaigned on reforming the judiciary in the last election. My first reaction was “and you morons didn’t know that’s what he wanted to do?” and then the second was “wow, it sounds a bit like W’s attempt to privatize Social Security in 2005”.
Bait and switch on something people care about is pretty risky. W and Netanyahu both overestimated the power of their victory and held/hold voters in such contempt that they thought they could get away with doing whatever they wanted with first selling it.
Tony Jay
Brief UK News –
After another set of polls showing that, while the British people aren’t enthused by the alternatives, there are truly sick and tired of perpetual Tory Party drama taking precedence over the country’s many, many, many problems, the hand-carved mannequin petit Rishi ‘Rich Boi’ Sunak masquerading as our unelected Prime Minister has had a footman reach into the depthless depths of the kulturkrieg barrel to drag out some mouldering old down-punch policies from the early 2000s for a blitzkrieg against Alti-social behaviour. Not all kinds, of course, pumping megatons of sewage into our rivers and dragging thousands of kids as young as nine into lock-ups to be strip-searched by our uniformed protectors are still A-OK in the UK of today, since they respectively make enormous profits for Tory Party donors and provide raw, sexual pleasure to the Tory Party electorate (“Good Lord, Hyacinth, that’s jolly hot. Toss me off over the gardenia bush, would you? There’s a good girl.”) Graffiti and canisters of laughing gas, though, those habits of the urban poor are threats to the very fabric of civilised society that must – and shall – be expunged from the eyeline of Middle-Class Brexitania…. maybe… but don’t hold us to that.
The Opposition Labour Party are, of course, flooding TV studios and radio booths up and down the country to brutally pound the Tories over their transparent nonsense by pointing the finger very forcefully at decades of underinvestment in the infrastructure of British society and the cynical austerity policies that continue to immiserate most of the country while shoving hundreds of billions of pounds of our money into the pockets of corporations and hedge-funds.
(Ed – What? Really?)
Hah! No. As if. The immediate response from Sir Plastic Panderer and his ugly little nest of focus-group fanatics was that Sunak’s nasty little lunge into tabloid-friendly othering was far weaker and less vicious than the policies his Nu-Lab Corporate Opportunity Franchise would be offering the public. Inequality? Poverty? A criminal drug-culture fuelled by despair and lack of opportunity? Wat Doze? That’s not the kind of language the tone police at the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph want to see from a ‘serious, sensible’ Opposition. The only voters of interest to the incestuous scumbags mismanaging the former Labour Party are the ones who want to be told that all of the problems afflicting their communities are the fault of ‘benefit leeches’, ‘illegal immigrants’ and ‘Woke do-gooders’, and they’re going to be spoon-fed all of the congealed bile they can stomach if that’s what it takes to convince them to switch brands from Tory-label white supremacy and jingoist nationalism to the Nu-Lab alternative; just as toxic, but even more abrasive.
That’s a damned big assumption Nu-Lab Central are making, but they’re not leaving themselves any option now that their war against the Party’s Left wing is going into panicked overdrive. It says something very uncomplimentary about the political instincts of the Nu-Lab Right that just as the pro-Tory Media make it clear to even the most boneheaded ‘centrist’ spite-merchant that they’re definitely going to use the findings of the Forde Report and the testimonies of bullied left-wingers to drive a wedge between Nu-Lab and its centre-left, black, Asian and female core vote, they not only underline the Right’s serious problems with ‘the wrong kind of ethnic’ by banning 19 sitting Labour councillors of Asian descent from standing as Labour candidates in Leicester (with zero reason given other than “those elected councillors aren’t electable!”) they then order Sir Plastic Panderer to announce for the eleventy-billionth that Jeremy ‘The Red Hitler’ Corbyn won’t be allowed to stand as a Labour candidate in the Islington seat he’s held for decades.
It’s obvious what’s going on here, which is why I’ve been saying it forever. Leaving aside the matter of Jeremy Corbyn living rent-free in the cork-dense heads of the Labour Right for proving that the Party (and millions of voters) don’t want centre-right policies with a pinkish tinge, They want to bully and humiliate Corbyn, not just to punish him for daring to offer the Party and its voters something better than right-leaning cynicism, but in order to flush out all of the members and MPs who still possess at least some level of spine and conscience so they can expel them from the Party before the next election. While his fluffers all over the Media are repeating the multiply discredited line that Corbyn is being forced out because he’s a nasty antisemite who won’t apologise for his evil ways, Sir Pee-Pee is a lawyer, and he knows that putting that lie in writing would give Corbyn all of the evidence he’d need to sue the Party (and Sir Pee-Pee himself) into penury for libel. Instead, the backstabbing little turd is going to have his majority on the Party’s National Executive Committee push through a ruling that will allow the Leader’s Office to deselect any MP it wants to, regardless of what their constituency thinks or voted for, on the grounds that the Leader’s Office considers them ‘unelectable’.
Yes, you read that right, the crime that the NEC are being asked to write into the Party rulebook is that Leaders who lose general elections can’t stand again as an MP… unless you’re Ed Miliband, Labour Leader from 2010 to 2015, who is sitting in Sir Pee-Pee’s Shadow-Cabinet right now, but the method that will enforce that new rule is one that gives the Leader’s Office dictatorial control over the Party’s elected representatives. While the cowardly Sir Pee-Pee himself disgraces the office he holds by falsely equating disgust with how he’s treating Corbyn with support for antisemitism, and the Media looks the other way (for now, they can’t swing fully into ‘ZOMG! When did Labour turn into a right-wing authoritarian cult?!?’ Mode until after Corbyn is safely removed from the table), the stage is being set for a pre-Election purge that will remove any trace of the centre-left from what will probably be the next Government.
I say probably, because it’s still a year until the next Election, and that’s plenty of time for the short-sighted vandalism being committed against a once great political Party to be turned into a reason for millions of voters who would otherwise have crawled over broken glass in order to get rid of the Tories to get Nu-Lab’s message loud and clear. We don’t want your votes, we want their votes, but give us your votes anyway or else. I’ll tell you one thing right now, if (when) they purge my MP despite him recently winning a reselection battle against a hand-picked Nu-Lab wanker (and some truly despicable underhanded cheating) then they can go fuck themselves.
Such is the state of Britain today. No wonder the Scots want out of it, the place is a shithole.
Jeffro
@raven: thank you for the book recommendation – looks awesome!
Geminid
@Anyway: Israel’s two ultra-Orthodox parties, United Torah and Shas, are not exactly “far right.” Their biggest motivation to back Netanyahu is protecting their favored position regarding subsidies and other concessions that Netanyahu promises to guarantee.
These two parties were left out of the last government, which instead had two parties,Yes Atid and Israel Beitanu, that are opposed to privileges for the Haredim (as the ultra-Orthodox are called). So the Haredi parties turned out their voters last November, and Shas and its additional two Knesset members accounted for part of the new government’s 64-56 majority.
Two anti-Netanyahu parties, Meretz and Balad, finished with 3.16% and 2.86%. They fell below the 3.25% threshold for representation and their votes, and what might have been a 60-60 tie or even a 61MK anti-Netanyahu majority was instead a 64-56 majority for Likud and his three coalition partners.
geg6
@lowtechcyclist:
I saw video of the philharmonic orchestra marching with their instruments. And the wide angle shots of how many people were in the streets were awe inspiring.
Betty Cracker
The political gossip rag Axios wrote the following about the DeSantis campaign’s current predicament:
I realize Axios exists to peddle contractor white papers to DC powerbrokers, but come on, man! The whole fucking party is beholden to the angry yahoos Trump turned out. The Ryan-style “conservatives” with whom DeSantis allegedly has “deep credibility” can’t win without the so-cons in patriot drag.
Ken
@Baud: Murphy and his rock does remind me of the legendary origins of the basilisk.
Geminid
@Anyway:
@Geminid: There is a far right religious party, National Religious, that strongly backs Netanyahu’s judiciary legislation. They increased their Knesset representation by 6 MKs, to 14. One of the reasons these MKs back Netanyahu is that no other party leaders will have anything to do with them.
Shas and UTJ are not so committed to the legislation. They have problems with the current courts, mainly over issues like marriage and whether leavened bread can be banned from hospitals during Passover. The top rabbis that control the Haredi parties are essentially conservative, not radical, and it is thought that these parties are inclined to back a compromise like the one President Herzog presented that was immediately rejected by Netanyahu.
Brachiator
Breaking news from Scotland:
Geminid
@Geminid: This should read, “their votes were essentially lost,” speaking of the votes for Meretz and Balad.
sdhays
@Brachiator: Wow!
Betty Cracker
@Tony Jay: Ugh, what a hideous situation.
Jeffro
Two quick notes for those of you who read That Paper:
There’s a “build your own college rankings” calculator that is really excellent. (There’s also a good article about how it was created/what info went into making the calculator).
There’s also a good profile on Hakeem Jeffries.
Tony Jay
@Betty Cracker:
Yup. And it’s always delightful seeing the very same media outlets that spent 2016-19 SCREAMING about poor little Blairite MPs being horrifically bullied by… uh…. well, by their constituents asking them why the hell they were spending all of their time lying about the leadership and helping the Tories more or less completely ignore the out and out authoritarianism of Sir Pee-Pee’s regime.
It’s almost as though they’re in on it. Fuckers.
rikyrah
Thomas Kennedy (@tomaskenn) tweeted at 3:07 PM on Sun, Mar 26, 2023:
Florida Legislature is pushing extreme bigoted legislation that would:
– Ban discussions of LGBTQ topics in classrooms
– Ban gender affirming care
– Ban pride flags in public buildings
– Ban university majors and minors like Gender Studies, Critical Race Theory and more.
(https://twitter.com/tomaskenn/status/1640082982315622403?t=SxAvrWN-_qBcDwyAQWzM6A&s=03)
Jeffro
Also good (if not exactly news to BJers): EJ Dionne on why Rs can’t bring themselves to criticize trumpov, even as he devolves into J6-hymn-singing insanity
rikyrah
Anna (@Anna__with_an_A) tweeted at 5:04 AM on Mon, Mar 27, 2023:
The British media were not going to report on the case. The daily mail asked for reporting restrictions. Prince Harry turning up ensures the world talks about it.
The Brit media are reporting it as a privacy case rather than what it is, UNLAWFUL information gathering t.co/idP4my8QHr
(https://twitter.com/Anna__with_an_A/status/1640293678215315460?t=CN9FN0f2K05se_C7vszeTg&s=03)
rikyrah
Tell that truth![]()
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Isaiah Martin (@isaiahrmartin) tweeted at 3:11 PM on Sun, Mar 26, 2023:
The “Parental Bill of Rights” isn’t a serious piece of legislation. t.co/qtEPX5BHg4
(https://twitter.com/isaiahrmartin/status/1640084022201131011?t=BPZfFGHlrTkEigNgcdTQag&s=03)
rikyrah
Stefan Smith (@TheStefanSmith) tweeted at 7:41 PM on Sun, Mar 26, 2023:
I don’t care if the Chinese have my data if it means I can watch—for free—a TEN minute deep dive in the Prince William cheating scandal. Like, take all my data! t.co/sWezPpvyLk
(https://twitter.com/TheStefanSmith/status/1640152071663128576?t=coxK7Nf7BwAJgQX0qnG6pg&s=03)
rikyrah
Whyte people doing this. If it had been the immigrant population, they would have been called it RIOTS AND IT WOULD HAVE BEEN ALL OVER AMERICAN NEWS CHANNELS. But, Whyte people protesting about the changes to France’s Social Safety Net? Haven’t seen it on American TV YET!![]()
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Ashok Swain (@ashoswai) tweeted at 5:58 PM on Thu, Mar 23, 2023:
This is not Syria or Libya -This is France. Protests against Macron’s pension reform have become widespread and violent. t.co/N2BimteeSP
(https://twitter.com/ashoswai/status/1639038983496933376?t=mWDWEsZts7N2WY47fqx09g&s=03)
rikyrah
When I first saw it…I was like..”Oh no, another Gordon Gartrell”.![]()
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But, little man did a great job. Dad isn’t small, and his son made it comfortable for him
Gojo’s baby mama (@aprettyPR) tweeted at 4:37 PM on Sun, Mar 26, 2023:![]()
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t.co/rNOLDhMUGD
The way he was standing there so proud
(https://twitter.com/aprettyPR/status/1640105750763585540?t=bhfhKHbeVFAWkaBc9GgbyQ&s=03)
rikyrah
R.S. Locke / Royal Suitor (@royal_suitor) tweeted at 4:36 AM on Mon, Mar 27, 2023:
Daily Mail publisher ANL has worked hard to keep the full scale of the unlawful information gathering allegations from being made public, but Prince Harry and his 6 co-claimants are ready for their day in court. Clearly catching much of the UK media flat-footed. #PrinceHarryVsANL t.co/fzWwcFNi1w
(https://twitter.com/royal_suitor/status/1640286724365619200?t=Jr7oC02w4N7wgoSwpzMQXA&s=03)
UncleEbeneezer
@Jeffro:
“the energy in the party over recent years has shifted from the small-government arguments that drove the GOP in the Reagan era toward the unremitting culture-war focus”
But they are one in the same. “Small government” and “local control” and other variations were just race-neutral slogans for peddling the culture war under the guise of some sort of deeper, libertarian principles. It’s not a coincidence that these phrases arose in reaction to Brown vs. Board of Education and the Civil Rights Movement. It was always White Supremacy, all along. The only debate on the Right is over how to sell it.
rikyrah
Believe all women..I think not.
I have said it before…
The pages of history of THIS COUNTRY are littered with the Blood of Black Men at the end of some White Woman’s False Accusation.
Don Salmon (@dijoni) tweeted at 11:58 AM on Sun, Mar 26, 2023:
Karen accuse a black man who is doing his job sexually assault, she claimed he was trying to fuck her. This brother is lucky that other people was watching. He could’ve been another Emmett Till. t.co/0gcbkI101u
(twitter.com/dijoni/status/1640035543898800128?s=02)
rikyrah
The Associated Press (@AP) tweeted at 3:30 PM on Sun, Mar 26, 2023:
Medicaid has historically only been used to pay for medical expenses, but that’s changing as officials acknowledge the link between housing and health care. Now California is looking to join Arizona and Oregon in using Medicaid money for housing. t.co/fGePiRFbkU
(twitter.com/AP/status/1640088751094263810?s=02)
rikyrah
Brandon Johnson is running for Mayor of Chicago.
His opponent, Paul Vallas, has been endorsed by the Fraternal Order of Police, which automatically disqualifies him for me.
David Weigel (@daveweigel) tweeted at 5:47 PM on Sun, Mar 26, 2023:
Johnson rallying with Al Sharpton. “This is not about defund the police! We’re gonna DEFINE policing! You can’t hire more police, untrained, without having incidents.” t.co/0M8DAylxWH
(twitter.com/daveweigel/status/1640123254869196803?s=02)
Brachiator
@Tony Jay:
Corbyn has been demonized even more effectively than was Hillary Clinton over here. It’s sad, but the UK media has succeeded in branding him as unelectable. Strangely, he doesn’t appear to be all that great at evading easily avoidable political traps.
Either way, Corbyn appears to be done. Who else do you have, if Starmer is not acceptable?
Kathleen
@UncleEbeneezer: Brilliant succinct analysis. Thank you.
The Thin Black Duke
@rikyrah: Police the Police.
Dr. Jakyll and Miss Deride
@WaterGirl: Thanks! Just one, like Dr. Jekyll (and Mr. Hyde).
Ken
@The Thin Black Duke: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
(Which is an ancient and still unsolved societal problem, not a crack about DeSantis eating custard with his fingers.)
BarcaChicago
@rikyrah: I just don’t get why high profile Dems are backing right wing Vallas. Durbin just endorsed him. What the hell is going on? It’s like a repeat of NYC. The idea of Vallas as mayor makes my head explode. Pritzker and Duckworth better stay on the right side of this. Vallas would be a destructive nightmare for Chicago.
Betty Cracker
@UncleEbeneezer: I think our opponents’ goals and motivations are far more complex than you describe, but I agree 100% about the cynical bait-and-switch on “local control,” a principle they drop the instant it doesn’t help them achieve whatever they’re up to in any given moment. The DeSantis regime in Florida overrules local officials all the time on all sorts of issues, has already unlawfully removed a local elected official and may be targeting another.
UncleEbeneezer
@Kathleen: Thanks. I just read a great book all about Conservative activism in the 20’s, 50’s-70’s (Mothers of Massive Resistance) and this tactic of using slogans with more plausible deniability when overt racism/sexism etc., isn’t working, is commonplace and is pretty well documented. Sometimes we even catch Conservatives admitting that this is exactly what they are doing, in records of their own discussions. It’s just States Rights™ over and over again.
UncleEbeneezer
@Betty Cracker: White Supremacy isn’t simple. It’s sprawling, complex and encompasses just about everything in our society. Housing, Policing, Land Use, Environmental Policy, Education, Healthcare, Gun Laws, Voting Laws, Taxes etc. Show me one of those, ANY of those where Conservatives actions don’t actively try to perpetuate White (Christian, Cis/Het, Male) Supremacy. Everything they do always works in favor of perpetuating the existing Racial/Gender/Class hierarchies, which are all intertwined. They may claim other motivations and focus (and those claims can be 100% sincere), but at the end of the day they are always pushing for policies to keep those people in their rightful place. Even when they don’t consciously know their caping for White Supremacy, they are always caping for White Supremacy, because keeping the status quo is precisely that.
J R in WV
@Baud:
I seem to recall that the nominee isn’t a pilot, and so is not qualified to administer an agency that regulates many non-pilot things about aviation. If also black, totally disqualified, am I rite? Ask Gym Jordan…
Tony Jay
@Brachiator:
Nothing strange about it. Old Jezza could have turned out for his beloved Arsenal and scored a hat-trick in a Cup Final and the Media narrative would still have been “Corbyn accused of tolerating anti-goalkeeperism”. I simply don’t give a shit what the glorious British Press says about the guy because they’ve proven time and again that they just lie. Zero credibility, zero interest.
I’d have Rayner, for all her faults. Burnham if he can ever get the Party to allow him to stand for a seat (absolutely no chance).
But Starmer can go and fuck himself. He’s openly told me and millions like me not to vote for him. Not in code, not hinting, but openly, clearly and unmistakably. If and when Nu-Lab fail to get a majority that’s on him and his handlers.
Dr. Jakyll and Miss Deride
@Brachiator: Excellent question, and one I’ve tried to ask Tony Jay before but never actually felt as though I’d gotten an answer.
To put it another way: If Labour under Corbyn suffered an electoral disaster (whomever you want to blame that on), and Labour under Starmer appears to have turned those numbers around (including Starmer’s personal standing versus Sunak as the preferred future leader of the country), why shouldn’t anyone who isn’t a committed left activist think Starmer’s way looks more promising for Labour at this moment? If Tony Jay is correct that any left-wing Labour leader will get buried under the propaganda wall that crushed Corbyn, what choice is there but to go in a different direction?
NutmegAgain
If anyone still needs more cat & dog tales (not tails!), there’s a piece in the Guardian today about the damage our pets do… Header says, “My dog showed no remorse” heh heh, no kidding.
Quinerly
@rikyrah:
I watched it once. Very hard to watch. Tried to get thru it a second time. Had to stop. WTF precipitated it? I realize nothing serious. Plus, the cops were pretty close by. Did she just light up crazy out of the blue?
WaterGirl
@rikyrah: I have no clue what this is about. Can you share a short summary?
Betty Cracker
@UncleEbeneezer: Stipulated: intersectionality is a thing. I think most people around here get that. But if you redefine “white supremacy” in such a way that it encompasses every social pathology, IMO, you’re in danger of occupying the other side of the Bernie-bro coin, which defines every social pathology as a function of “economic inequality,” at least rhetorically.
Dr. Jakyll and Miss Deride
@Dr. Jakyll and Miss Deride: I see Tony Jay answered Brachiator’s question while I was typing. Isn’t Rayner currently working amicably (at least in public) with Starmer now?
Quinerly
One parent complained.
tampabay.com/news/education/2023/03/27/removal-ruby-bridges-film-pinellas-school-sparks-outrage/
WaterGirl
@Dr. Jakyll and Miss Deride: Yes, I caught the reference. But we have an Old Dan and something Anne, who are two people. Just wanting to be sure! :-)
Quinerly
Claremont Think-tank jumps ship to DeSantis
vice.com/en/article/y3wz9b/claremont-institute-desantis
sab
@Tony Jay: Reminds me of Tony Blair, a Labourite in name only. Fionna Hill mentionned in her last book that Clinton introduced them, and Blair was shocked by her Geordie accent. Both from the same county, but she was working class and thus beneath his notice. And how had she managed to get into Harvard grad school.
UncleEbeneezer
@Betty Cracker: Yeah, I get what you’re saying. All-encompassing language does run the risk of becoming meaningless. It’s something I think about all the time. But I also think it’s true/accurate and that it’s important to point out how everything connects to White Supremacy because the other side’s playbook has always been to diminish and deny the role that WS plays in our society and in everything they do. Especially when they are doing so, in such a gross and dangerous manner right now with their attempts to strip schools and libraries of anything that helps kids/students put two and two together about the truth of the history of this country, and doing so under the guise of “parents rights.” And as I mentioned above, the whole “parents rights” framing has a long history of being directly tied to the fight against desegregation of schools, bussing etc., which is something that a lot of people like my normie-Liberal sister in Colorado probably have no idea about. That’s why I think it’s extra-important right now to help educate people that this stuff is right out of the White Supremacy playbook, when the other side feverishly trying to pretend that it’s not.
UncleEbeneezer
Tony Jay
@Dr. Jakyll and Miss Deride:
I’m sorry I haven’t been able to perform a satisfactory service. Hopefully my very clear answer above meets some of your demands.
But a few points.
There’s zero debate over who and what has responsibility for the terrible result in 2019. That would be 1) the impossible situation of Brexit, where ‘socially conservative’ (read racist) voters in Leave voting seats abandoned Labour because the Tories told them Corbyn was going to take their Brexit away, and ‘centrist’ voters in Remain voting seats abandoned Labour because the Labour Right told them Corbyn was a Lexiter who was going to sabotage their hopes for a second referendum, and 2) the vile smears about Corbyn introducing and protecting antisemitism within the Labour Party that the electorate were bombarded with non-stop for years, with the full support and co=operation of the people Sir Starmer has promoted and rewarded since seizing power. That destroyed Corbyn’s well-earned reputation for honesty and integrity and created a general narrative where ‘people of good conscience’ couldn’t bring themselves to vote for him or his Party.
Put those two bullshit narrative together and you’ve got the difference between 2017 and 2019. They didn’t come out of nowhere, the hatchet-job deliberately crafted, but it wouldn’t have worked if the Labour Right hadn’t thrown everything they had into popularising and promoting the various smears.
I don’t like people who work to get Tories elected. Simple as that.
Also, please, the current poll-lead for Labour is purely a factor of how appallingly unpopular the post-Brexit, post-Johnson, post-Truss Tory Party has made itself. If Sir Pee-Pee’s operation were getting 1/100 of the all out hostility Corbyn’s Labour had to deal with the gap would be much narrower, but that will come once the date for an election gets closer. Right now the Nu-Lab pogrom against those ‘committed Left activists’ you mention (the people who actually do the work of getting the Party’s message out during elections) is pleasing enough to the people who own our media, but once that’s completed and the Party is crippled by the results of their factional purge, the attacks will come thick and fast. That poll lead won’t survive.
I also can’t quite believe you’re pimping Starmer’s crappy personal poll numbers as a plus. He’s narrowly preferred as leader of the country to the rich-boy muppet running the worst Government in 100 years? Wow. Amazing.
And I’ll just say this. What Nu-Lab offers isn’t ‘another direction’. It’s a complete reversal on every single policy the lying shitbag leading it promised in order to get elected. Every. Single. One. They are offering ‘not as bad as the Tories’ and dragging the centre-ground as far to the Right as they can.
All that will happen if they do get in, and you can quote me on this, is all of the people who manage to convince themselves that they don’t really mean it, that they’re just pandering to Tory voters in order to get in and once in Government will suddenly unleash the kind of radical change that Labour voters want and the country desperately needs, will be disappointed and turned off as they were under Blairism, while the Tory voters they win over won’t be satisfied with their product and will stream back to the Tories (or Reform) the first chance they get.
They’ll get one term. Do fuck all. And allow the Tories to take over the reins again with virtually no recovery in the country’s dire condition. And on the way out they’ll blame ‘The Left’ for not supporting them.
No thanks
ETA – Starmer’s scumbags spent much of 2020/21 trying to force Rayner out, even trying to put all of the blame for Peter Mandelson’s atrociously mishandled by-election campaign in Hartlepool on her. It’s a testament to how politically inept they are that she came out of that nonsense with her position enhanced. Since then they’ve kept their hate-campaign to social media, but there’s no love lost there whatsoever.
sdhays
@Dr. Jakyll and Miss Deride: I don’t follow British politics that closely, but, in general, successful politicians have some degree of affinity for, or at least some self-interested respect for, their base. Starmer apparently genuinely sees his base as “the problem”, and it’s hard for me to see how that’s a winning plan, just as politics.
Sure, there’s a theory that you need to kick hippies in the teeth to get anywhere close to power in British politics (I’m not going to opine on its validity), but I would think that talented politicians (i.e. those that will one day be Prime Minister) would find of a way of doing it while keeping the base clear that they don’t really mean it.
Starmer doesn’t sound…talented.
Tony Jay
@sab:
Starmer is, in some ways, far worse than Blair. That toothy megalomaniac was at least charismatic and smart as a whip, but Starmer? He’s Kristen Sinema with a suit and tie.
artem1s
The Cleveland Museum of Natural History https://www.cmnh.org/eaglebreedingprogram has a Bald Eagle breeding program that goes back to the 80’s. They had several eagles that had been injured who couldn’t be released into the wild.
“Martha laid her first fertile egg sometime during the night of March 20, 1984—the hatching of which is chronicled in the excerpt below. The healthy eaglet was placed into a wild Ohio nest to be adopted by the adult birds there, who eagerly took him under their wing.”
There were several wild mated pairs in NE OH who couldn’t produce fertile eggs. So the CMNH breeding program helped reestablish a healthy population to the Lake Erie area by putting healthy eaglets into their nests each spring.
sdhays
Now, that’s a devastating description. Ouch!
StringOnAStick
@sab: Accents are HUGE class signifiers in Britain, so much so that we would find it pretty nuts to have so many differences and social categories based on that.
Tony Jay
@sdhays:
Now imagine a scenario where that shameless sell-out was in charge of the Democratic Party being advised by Joe Lieberman on how to purge everyone to the left of Joe Manchin and steer clear of the extremist rhetoric on race, economics and identity that played well in liberal enclaves like Detroit, New York and San Francisco but turned off the vital Heartland voters of Misery’s Diner, Oklahoma.
Beautiful view from up on this cross. But that’s its only selling point.
Dr. Jakyll and Miss Deride
@Tony Jay: Sorry if you took offense at my comment. I would have addressed it to you directly if I could figure out how to reply to two people at once.
I would just add one or two things. First, it’s not that obvious to me that 2017 was a reliable clue to how 2019 should have gone. In 2017 Labour was lucky in its opponent (the inept and unlikable Theresa May) and in where the spotlight was focused (her inability to get even her own party behind her Brexit “deal”). Under the circumstances any strategic silence or vagueness on Brexit couldn’t hurt, and might even have looked like the smart play of sitting back and watching your opponents tear each other apart. In 2019, none of that applied.
Second, maybe you’ve seen different poll numbers from me, but the last ones I saw put Starmer something like 15 points up on Sunak, which I wouldn’t call a narrow lead.
Tony Jay
@Dr. Jakyll and Miss Deride:
That’s a rewriting of the circumstances around the 2017 election that I’ve seen before, usually promoted by Starmerite fluffers in the pages of the Guardian.
The facts of the matter are that May only called that election because she, her Party, the political media in the UK and the Right of the Labour Party believed that her Government was nailed on to crush the silly Socialists and gobble up a 100 seat majority. She was 20 points ahead, presented to the country as a New Thatcher, facing a divided Party led by a nobody with ideas Blairism had obviously discredited and a beard.
The idea that The Maybot was somehow doomed to shed votes in that election is a nonsense. Yes, she screwed up, but that’s because Tory policies are unpopular. And remember, Corbyn’s Labour was fractured by his election, Brexit, and the recent mutiny by Blairite MPs that had seen them deliberately force a leadership election that they humiliatingly lost.
But once Corbyn started campaigning, that 20 point lead evaporated. From a standing start, with a traitorous mob behind him always briefing against their own party, with a bureaucracy that Starmer’s own report shows was deliberately stealing funds from winnable seats to pad the majorities of ‘loyal’ centrist MPs, Corbyn came within a few more weeks of campaigning from pulling off the ultimate upset win.
Those votes he got weren’t Tory votes. May got them. She increased the Tory vote. But Corbyn mobilised millions who hadn’t voted Labour before. Could he have won without the Right sabotaging the campaign and making Labour start from so far back? Maybe.
But the point of 2019 was to make sure that that wasn’t possible. And I’d ask you this.if there really was a vote winning majority for remain out there that would have given a centrist, ‘sensible’ Labour Party power before Brexit, why hasn’t the centrist, ‘sensible’ Starmer Party made getting it to the polls after Brexit has been such a disaster?
Why, anyone would think they never thought one existed in the first place, wouldn’t they?
rikyrah
Conservatives are targeting suburban school boards. And the elections are becoming political battlegrounds. By Dan Petrella and Rick Pearson Chicago Tribune • Mar 26, 2023 at 5:00 am
………………..
The rise of those groups — many of which have ties to conservative megadonors and dark money organizations — during the COVID-19 pandemic has in turn stirred up Illinois Democrats and teachers unions. Backed by the bully pulpit and bank account of billionaire Gov. J.B. Pritzker, the state Democratic Party is wading into school and library board races in an unprecedented way this year, with a plan to spend nearly $300,000 supporting 84 candidates and opposing 74 across 17 counties. It’s a move that has raised concerns about injecting more money and partisanship into local elections for volunteer positions.
chicagotribune.com/politics/elections/ct-school-board-elections-conservative-movement-20230326-hjfir… Good. Glad that they are fighting back.
Good. Glad that they are fighting back.
Dr. Jakyll and Miss Deride
@Tony Jay: This thread is probably dead by now, and I don’t know how much more of this back and forth anybody wants to read anyhow. But I can’t help wondering — if May thought she was going to bury Labour and wound up doing the opposite, doesn’t that suggest ineptitude? And was it really clever to market her as the New Thatcher when everyone still remembered what happened to the old one?
In another post you suggested that 2019 saw a successful campaign to persuade both leavers and remainers that Corbyn couldn’t be trusted to have their backs. What did he ever say or do about Brexit that could have led anyone to think they knew what he would do about it once in power? In other words, maybe that campaign was successful in part because there was some truth to it.
Finally, I notice you appear to have conceded that my impression of Starmer’s polling numbers versus Sunak was accurate (though you politely call it “pimping”).
Tony Jay
@Dr. Jakyll and Miss Deride:
No, I haven’t conceded a damned thing. I answered your main question and left the minor one because, and this may astonish you, I don’t care to interrupt dinner time because “someone is being wrong on the internet”.
Starmer’s “who would you prefer to run the country, Tweedledum or Tweedledee” numbers don’t matter much when option A is Rishi bloody Sunak. His general popularity numbers are more relevant, and they’re garbage for someone who has ‘made the Labour Party electable’.
And lastly, sure Theresa May was inept, she was a Tory. That’s what they do. But that’s got bugger all to do with how far ahead she was in the polls, how she was presented to the British electorate by the Media, how completely wrong the pundits and their cocktail party chums were about the electability of the Left, or how utterly, disgracefully horrified the Labour Right was by how close Labour came to victory despite their sabotage.
These are simple historical facts. You could look them up.
And finally, very, very finally, if you expect me to revisit every single thing Corbyn said about Brexit in order to ‘convince’ you of, what, exactly? That he had a plan? That it would have been better than Johnson’s Hard Brexit? That ‘He’s a Brexiteer!’ and ‘He’s a Remainer!’ can’t actually both be true? Whatever.You don’t seem to know exactly what it is you want me to explain to you, so let’s just agree to disagree about whatever that is, eh?
RevRick
@UncleEbeneezer: There was a social-psych study done a number of years ago that involved asking participants to make a simple choice between two scenarios. Would they rather live in a neighborhood where:
A). They earned $50,000, but everybody else made $25,000;
Or
B). They earned $100,000, but everybody else made $200,000.
Half chose A.
That’s the price that many white people are willing to pay to receive the unearned psychological benefit of superiority that the fascist ideology of white supremacy confers.
J R in WV
@RevRick:
And along with that concept, imagine the difference between Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Cab Calloway and so many other great black musical acts in the era of Jim Crow that the black community rightfully adored, while the white audiences were watching “minstrel” acts in black face, none of whose names we remember today.
I actually saw both Louis Armstrong (with Pearl Baily IIRC) and later on Count Basie in live performance. Amazing musicianship and creativity. Eventually Benny Goodman hired some black guys, and that finally began to open the deluge of great black musicians performing for white audiences.
WaterGirl
@RevRick: Wow.
Status is more important to them than the day-to-day realities of life. Ugh.