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You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

America is going up in flames. The NYTimes fawns over MAGA celebrities. No longer a real newspaper.

Fear or fury? The choice is ours.

If rights aren’t universal, they are privilege, not rights.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

Mediocre white men think RFK Jr’s pathetic midlife crisis is inspirational. The bar is set so low for them, it’s subterranean.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

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Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Liberals, That’s Who

Liberals, That’s Who

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Liberal, and proud of it!

We have done pretty much every good thing that’s been done.

I missed this season of West Wing because back in the day, Tivo could only record two shows at once, and there were three shows I liked, all on at the same time.  This is a good reminder that I have always meant to go back and watch that one.

Am I allowed to mention that Jimmy Smitts is one fine looking man?

Open thread.

Reader Interactions

137Comments

  1. 1.

    Old Dan and Little Ann

    I lived in Annapolis and worked in PG County when The West Wing was popular around the turn of the century.  I never watched it because I was in my mid 20s and just was not into politics or political shows.   D’oh!

  2. 2.

    zhena gogolia

    Don’t read the tweet replies!

    SMITS

    I loved him on LA Law and NYPD Blue. Never watched The West Wing.

  3. 3.

    Gravenstone

    And the MAGAts are using that as a roadmap of everything they want reversed. Just terrible, terrible excuses for people.

  4. 4.

    Tom Levenson

    West Wing is a glorious fantasy. I watched it all…twice. Made me aspirational.  It now sometimes makes me sad–the distance between its vision of smart and (mostly) prinicipled politics is so far from what we’ve got. (That is: Biden’s administration seems to me to have some of the characteristics of Bartlet’s, but while the WW got some sense of the wretchedness of Republican politicking, what we have now is so far from even their most villainous opponents it seems naive. That’s hindsight speaking, of course. Even though all the signs were there, no one that I recall was putting together the map of what was to come.

    Also too: Toby’s analysis of what “New York sense of humor” means is so spot on right now. That’s what Trump and Rubio and the rest are talking about when they talk about New York justice.

  5. 5.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    Am I allowed to mention that Jimmy Smitts is one fine looking man?

    We’ve had a few memorable New York theater experiences. One of them was seeing Jimmy Smits at Shakespeare in the Park in a production that also featured Christopher Lloyd and starred Julia Stiles.

  7. 7.

    Virginia

    This is the thing that angers me most.  Liberals have been right about just about everything through the years.  The Vietnam war was shit; segregation was shit; women need equal rights; abortion is health care; pay should be equal; education should be free; employers should be better; the Iraq war was shit; the rich should pay their taxes; pretty much everything over the last hundred years and more that liberals have stood up for have been good for people.

    And yet, here we are with R’s losing their god damned minds for tRump.

    I will never understand.

  9. 9.

    Eolirin

    That last season was really bad imo, some of the performances aside. The show really jumped the shark the season where Zoey gets kidnapped and goes progressively downhill from there. Any pretense of being remotely connected to the real world is completely gone by the end.

  12. 12.

    eclare

    I prefer the term Democrats over liberals. That is my answer when anyone asks.

    Interesting how things shake out. I remember talking to WaterGirl about it, and I never watched The West Wing, but I always watched Sex and The City (I was looking for shows that overlapped).  She was the exact opposite.

  13. 13.

    James E Powell

    Right-wingers will never forgive liberals for the first two things Matthew Santos mentions.

  14. 14.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Virginia: I don’t know who first pointed out that Nixon made Reagan possible, but one thing we (not us here, but even the actual liberal media) don’t talk about enough is how trump is a result of the Bush administration and Republican policies, from Iraq to trickle-down economics to….

  16. 16.

    RaflW

    @Virginia: This is the thing that angers me most.  Liberals have been right about just about everything through the years.

    And here we are with the press treating liberalism as if it has cooties. Endlessly. The most effective judo the right ever played was to accuse the media of a liberal bias. Dammit.

  17. 17.

    Edmund dantes

    West Wing tried really damn hard to hang onto the principled Republican opposition but for way past its date.

  18. 18.

    JoyceH

    @Edmund dantes: Just the other day I told someone “the last time I watched a presidential election thinking that even if the Republican won, we’d probably be okay was when Alan Alda ran against Jimmy Smits”. Even then a nice guy getting the GOP nomination was a bit of a fantasy.

  20. 20.

    Ruckus

    @Tom Levenson:

    Watched through twice my own self. And have the entire DVD set.

    It was a creative concept of the WH and power. The story line was reasonable. Now one thing that used to be visible to me was that politics was different, even liberal/conservative was different. Sure the conservative side was against anything that gave anyone besides themselves a break/benefit/notice was voted against but the big difference was that the coverage was nothing like today. No one carried a phone/computer with them because they didn’t really exist. TV commercials were expensive, possibly a higher rate against the value of the dollar than today because there wasn’t as many stations/places to show them nor the ease of making them. Today one could actually make one with that phone that one carries in a pocket/purse. Might not be as cinematic as possible but it could be done. I’ve worked in the past on campaigns – not in any way in charge, just as a citizen helping out, doing what needed to be done to get better humans elected. It took a lot of people to help because technology was minimal compared to today. And I lived in CA, where the democratic party was strong. And the concept of conservatism was not as much about MONEY as it is today. It was more about maintaining the status quo, not making changes no matter the reason. Today the conservative party has/is losing some level of reality because it is all about the money to be made off of constituents rather than actually better governing and change for the better. That doesn’t mean it is weak, money can purchase a lot of power. And liberalism requires effort and the actual concept of government, not the concept of a portion of the wealthy that they are owed more and more money for mostly crapy ideals and stuff.

  21. 21.

    Maxim

    @Eolirin: Yeah, I tried to re-watch the show not long ago, and I just couldn’t. If they had stuck to the brilliant political insights without the lurid tv-movie-thriller subplots … but they didn’t. All the relationship subplots were fine and part of what made the show compelling, but spare me the “woman in peril, oh noes” crap.

  22. 22.

    Mustang Bobby

    I have all seven seasons of The West Wing on DVD, and when one of the cable channels (HLN did it last winter) runs a marathon, I’m there.

    Jimmy Smits played Othello at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival in Boulder in the early 1980’s, a few years before we got Val Kilmer to do Hamlet (which I worked on).

    Thanks to that turd on Long Island, I had to take my SANTOS/McGARRY bumper sticker off my car lest people think I was supporting the wrong Santos.

  26. 26.

    James E Powell

    @RaflW:

    And here we are with the press treating liberalism as if it has cooties.

    Because it liberalism stands up to the owners of America & presents them with a bill for services rendered.

  27. 27.

    Alison Rose

    Am I allowed to mention that Jimmy Smitts is one fine looking man?

    You could definitely mention it to my mother. She loved NYPD Blue when it was on, and I think at least once every 2-3 episodes, she would mention how handsome he was.

  28. 28.

    Miss Bianca

    @Mustang Bobby: *waves at Mustang Bobby* You worked at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival? Was that a cool gig? I keep meaning to get up there to see what they do with Shakespeare.

  29. 29.

    trollhattan

    I watched “West Wing” as a perfect blending of cast and Aaron Sorkin script–few teevee shows really hit that mark, then or now.

    It happened to be set in the White House.

  30. 30.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    Never watched The West Wing but there’s a really excellent 1996 comedy called “My Fellow Americans” with Jack Lemmon and James Garner as two ex-presidents. One of them, I forget which, is the mythological honest and decent Republican that no writer has ever actually met.

  31. 31.

    Amir Khalid

    @Tom Levenson:

    I used to to tell my American friends to be grateful for the wise and thoughtful leadership of President Bartlet. To this day, he remains my Platonic ideal of a POTUS.

  32. 32.

    Bex

    What’s with the FBI raid on some Trump-owned condos or houses in Miami this morning?  I saw a tweet from Rick Wilson about it, but the tweet he reposted was deleted.  Sorry, don’t know how to link.

  33. 33.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @cope: Pretty sure Nixonland, or maybe an essay of Perlstein’s, was the first time I saw that formulation and thought, damn, that’s true, but I didn’t know if it started with RP

  34. 34.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Tom Levenson: I recall The West Wing functioning as a GWBush-era fantasy for liberals of what good national politics could be like.

    Aaron Sorkin’s take on everything kind of feels old and naive now–he genuinely believes it’s possible to co-opt the hearts of right-wingers by being respectful to them and making stirring statements of moral principle, and increasingly, I think that’s just not true. But it’s what we would like to be true.

  37. 37.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Bex: trump-built, or branded, Russian (company) owned, looks like

    The trio of Trump Towers on Sunny Isles Beach draws its share of gawkers, thanks to Donald Trump’s licensing deal that plastered his name on the oceanfront development. But on Thursday, the luxury high-rise complex drew the attention of law enforcement, namely the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

    A squad of FBI special agents, assisted by local police, descended on Trump Tower III at 15811 Collins Ave. to carry out a search of unit 4102. It’s owned by a shell company, MIC-USA LLC, that is controlled by two Russian businessmen, Oleg Sergeyevich Patsulya and Agunda Konstantinovna Makeeva, according to state corporation records.

    Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/article275358451.html#storylink=cpy

    not many details

  39. 39.

    raven

    We’re experiencing some real issues with “unhoused” folks in our neighborhood. The city/county has been trying to address it by providing services and building a tent camp. In the last couple of weeks there are two guys who have been walking around with compound crossbows (one with a full face mask) and they are scaring the shit out of people. As I understand it there is basically no solution to the general problem (here and elsewhere) and the more services offered the more folks come. There is a good deal of “dumping” of folks from the surrounding area and people are getting fed up. With our brilliant “open carry” laws there is nothing the cops can do and I worry that, if something violent happens, some might take the law into their own hands.

  41. 41.

    narya

    @trollhattan: I loved “Sports Night,” but I think I was one of maybe two dozen people who watched it. I liked “West Wing,” but it did kinda jump the shark eventually.

  42. 42.

    Citizen Alan

    @eclare: To be perfectly fair, until the 1960s, the Democratic coalition included southern white supremacist democrats. Nearly all of the positive achievements of liberalism prior to that were the result of temporary alliances between liberal republicans and liberal democrats over the objection of their conservative counterparts. It was not until after the realignment that lasted from 1968 through the end of the Reagan era that Democrat and liberal became synonymous. Which was around the time that the republicans started working to make liberal a dirty word.

  43. 43.

    S cerevisiae

    @raven: That’s why open carry is insane and I’m so glad we don’t have that here in MN. I grew up hunting and if you transported a gun in had to be unloaded in a locked or zippered case until you got to the field/range. I don’t think that has changed and so we don’t have yahoos packing Bushmasters at the local Target.

  44. 44.

    Eolirin

    @raven: There absolutely are solutions. We’re just not going to do the things that work, like changing zoning, subsidizing construction, and, most importantly, providing access to housing, without conditions, to the people who need it.

  45. 45.

    Geminid

    Ukrainian President Zelenskyy is visiting Italy today. I saw a nice picture of him shaking hands with the Pope, in Noel Reports (@NOELreports). Zelenskyy had his left hand over his heart as a sign of respect.

  47. 47.

    Ruckus

    @Matt McIrvin:

    It was mostly true at one time, here in CA. It required actual work to make a lot of money at one time in this here country. Now one can make money selling crappy pillows on TV.

  48. 48.

    Virginia

    @RaflW: Exactly!  We are demonized, laughed at, and diminished in every way because the only thing conservatives care about is money and power.

  49. 49.

    raven

    @Eolirin: Yea, the neighborhood list is getting scolded for that. I’m sure that’s really going to help. Here’s a fun post that is related

     

    If balaklava crossbow guy had a housing situation where he could secure his crossbow all this could be avoided. But since this community doesn’t take housing seriously here we are. Unhoused people having to carry all their possessions with them everywhere they go.

  51. 51.

    raven

    @raven: IMHO this is a total crock of shit that does zero to address the situation. The dude with the bow may have his reasons but it’s not that he doesn’t have proper storage for his shit.

  52. 52.

    Jay

    Shooting down your own Mi-8 around 50km from the Ukrainian border only because of the fear of Storm Shadow missiles and in an area where no hostile action is ongoing is even for friendly fire accidents remarkable. And next to it “crashes” a Su-34? Are you serious?Yesterday,… pic.twitter.com/rDc2AVpLwr— (((Tendar))) (@Tendar) May 13, 2023

  53. 53.

    Steeplejack

    @raven:

    Yeah, I’m not sure a crossbow is near the top of the “must have” list for a homeless an unhoused person. 🤔

  54. 54.

    Another Scott

    On the KyivIndependent news feed right now:

    Zelensky holds 40-minute talk with Pope Francis. During President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to the Vatican, Pope Francis gifted him a small olive branch sculpture that symbolizes peace. Zelensky gifted the Pope an icon of the Virgin Mary painted onto a piece of body armor.

    He’s relentlessly on-message, isn’t he? And rightfully so.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  55. 55.

    RaflW

    @Eolirin: One of the things some cities have done, and others are looking at, is to reduce or eliminate parking minimums for multi-family housing construction. That won’t fix the unhoused problem, but it has been shown to increase affordable housing supply.

    I mean, imagine if Manhattan had been saddled with parking minimums when it grew from tenements to high rises.

    Of course, the biggest thing I think we need is far, far more funding for mental health care & outreach. But we’ve been on a 40 year project to coddle the rich with low taxes, and starve the beast has meant millions of vulnerable people have very limited access to needed services and supportive housing.

  56. 56.

    Another Scott

    @dr. luba:

    One of the worst days ever for the Russian Air Force: Today, at least 4 aircraft- an Su-34 strike jet, an Su-35 fighter and two Mi-8 helicopters, were shot down by anti-air missiles over Bryansk Oblast within Russia.

    So far it is unclear what kind of missiles were used. pic.twitter.com/LjipZShRWC— 🇺🇦 Ukraine Weapons Tracker (@UAWeapons) May 13, 2023

    (via Oryx)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  58. 58.

    gene108

    @WaterGirl:

    I almost never read them. Is it ugly?

    Not really.

    Just a bunch of butthurt Republicans saying the Democrats founded the KKK and Republicans ended slavery. A bunch of people futilely trying to explain party realignment and the quote was about liberal versus conservative and not Democrat versus Republican.

  61. 61.

    Ruckus

    @Eolirin:

    Actually there are efforts in various parts of the country to at least mitigate the issues of the homeless. In Los Angeles there is one area that I know of that mini apartments have been built are for the homeless and while it wouldn’t be housing for anyone that can afford more it isn’t sleeping on the street. There are also tents being provided in certain areas rather than have people just sleeping on the sidewalks. It may not be the ideal solution but it is far better than nothing. Now on the Metro commuter train system there are sometimes people obviously homeless riding/sleeping but enforcement does remove them on occasion. A couple weeks ago I sat at a stop and 3 cops boarded and announced if one doesn’t have a Tap card (how transit is paid for – not having one means you can’t have paid, the card is free) they must leave. About 1/3 of the passengers got off. They’d just get on another train when it came along in 10-12 minutes. If they had a card and hadn’t paid they could have stayed on. I ride the LA transit system quite a bit, it’s far cheaper and easier than driving across town and sometimes/often faster.

  62. 62.

    trollhattan

    @narya: @Steeplejack:

    My first encounter with Sorkin, as well. It just sparkled and then quickly poof!

    Never been a fan of sports shows comprising people talking about sports, rather than broadcasting actual sports, and it was a nice peek behind the curtains.

  63. 63.

    Eolirin

    @RaflW: Mental health services, as necessary as they are, aren’t going to do shit if there’s isn’t adequate housing for people to be placed in. Most of the unhoused didn’t end up that way because of a mental health crisis, even if that’s a cause for some of them; loss of employment, rising housing costs, medical issues, family member deaths, being kicked out of your house as a teen for being gay. A lot of people will develop mental health issues as a result of being on the streets too, rather than that being why they ended up there in the first place. And mental health treatment modalities are not terribly effective without stable essentials like food and shelter. And once you’re on the street you face a significant increase in barriers to getting back off of it; minimal access to showers, no clothes for job interviews, active discrimination on the part of landlords who will use eviction as a basis to deny further renting, no sense of security, being surrounded by people who treat you extremely poorly, food insecurity, lack of adequate healthcare.

    Getting people back into housing quickly fixes so much of the problem. Pilot programs have demonstrated this over and over. But you have to invest in those things massively to handle the scale of what we’re dealing with now. This isn’t a city level problem, it’s a nationwide thing. It won’t be solved without federal involvement, the scope of it is too big, and the incentives of everyone involved in decision making at the local levels run in exactly the wrong directions.

    So we’re not going to address it.

  64. 64.

    trollhattan

    @Jay: ​The missile body tumbling to earth several seconds after the plane crashes is quite an unexpected palette cleanser.

  65. 65.

    Eolirin

    @Ruckus: Yeah, and those are harm reduction strategies, which while important, only help so much. We need those mini-apartments being built at scale and we need the programs being run at scale, and that requires a lot of capital investment that we’re not going to get anytime soon.

    We have the space and the resources as a country to establish housing as a guarantee, even if it’s not great housing, and we’re not doing it.

  67. 67.

    Ruckus

    @Virginia:

    SFB is the loser’s mascot. He’s the guy that turned 400 million, a good portion of which he stole from his siblings, into less than 1/4 of the money he could have made from investing in any number of mutual funds by attempting to be a big cheese. And he turned that attempt at big cheese into moldy crap that only people that started with very little and still have same could appreciate.

  68. 68.

    Eolirin

    @raven: It’s not the neighborhood’s job to fix this, especially not by themselves. It is the country’s as a whole though.

    It really shouldn’t be controversial in the slightest, and it’s backed with good data from people running pilot programs, that the fastest way to reduce homelessness is to put people in no-condition housing (services are still important, they just tend to not be nearly as effective without the housing), just like the most cost effective way to reduce poverty is to give people money. In both cases the vast majority of people end up not needing the programs anymore after a while. They get jobs eventually, move into paying for their own housing. Most people want to and can work, they just need a way to get back into the system. It helps if those jobs can then support market rents of course, which is another part of the problem.

    There’s the supply side too, right? Better medical leave laws, higher minimum wage, more renter protections, basically, more supports for the things that cause people to lose their homes, better mental health services too, though that’s a smaller part of the problem, would go a long way in preventing people from ending up there. We’re also not likely to do anything to help there, nationally, unless we have a trifecta again.

    The collective action problems around implementing this stuff is where all the complexity actually is, not the solutions themselves.

  69. 69.

    narya

    The FYNYT had a magazine article (I think) about what Houston is doing, successfully, providing support to people experiencing homelessness. The thing is, there is no one solution (except actual housing). Some folks are also living with mental illness and/or substance abuse disorders (often used to medicate the mental illness). Some folks, especially teens, have been thrown out of their homes, often for being LGBTQ. Some folks are experiencing intimate partner violence. Some folks were living on the very edge of solvency and then something broke. Some are couch-surfing and don’t recognize themselves as experiencing homelessness, per se. And, of course, there are multiple variations and combinations of these. Another challenge is that some (or many) housing programs require abstinence rather than harm reduction, which is simply not possible as a first step for folks who are using substances. My point is that all of these folks need housing first–but they need a variety of supports or services after that, and not everyone needs the same thing.

    Housing first, though

    ETA: or, what several others have said above.

  73. 73.

    Redshift

    @narya: i loved Sports Night, too! I never got into the West Wing. I grew up in the DC area, so I was familiar enough with the nuts and bolts of the federal government that it didn’t appeal to me (though there were plenty of people here who loved it.)

  76. 76.

    Redshift

    @Eolirin: I think “Housing First” is actually the commonly used term for that approach. Or at least it was when advocates got my county to switch to doing that.

  78. 78.

    Steeplejack

    A Popehat-worthy courtroom story with a happy ending:

    I’ve had represented parties lose at trial against self-represented litigants, always because they lied to their lawyers. My favorite was an old divorce case where the husband had a lawyer and the wife didn’t.
    He brought a lawyer.
    She brought receipts.
    (A fun story 🧵.)

    — Judge Roy Ferguson (@JudgeFergusonTX) May 13, 2023

  80. 80.

    cmorenc

    @zhena gogolia:

    Don’t read the tweet replies!

    A big problem with presenting the list of “liberal accomplishments” is that the respective parties currently identified with liberal vs conservative are vastly different than they were when many of  these accomplishments took place.  Congressional members of the  GOP who supported these measures would be primaried and crushed today for such radical departure from the RW extremes now dominant.  Also, on racial matters, the respective polarities of dominant factions within the GOP and Democratic parties has flipped 100% – it took a century following the Civil War for this to finally happen when Lyndon Johnson finally strong-arm negotiated with racist southern D chairs of critical committees to permit Civil Rights laws to pass, and Nixon shortly thereafter seized the opportunity to harvest white resentment thereof with his “southern strategy”.  And other than on racial matters, Nixon was indeed surprisingly supportive of many progressive measures, and the Nixon of the early 1970s would be vastly out of step with the GOP of today on a wide range of domestic issues.

  81. 81.

    StringOnAStick

    @raven: Are the guys with compound bows from the camp or local vigilantes?  If from the camp they are probably responding to the “kill the homeless” rhetoric that’s getting louder from people who don’t want to see them in their neighbourhoods, so they are the camp protectors.  If they are local vigilantes maybe they think arrows are less traceable than bullets?

    Seriously, the anger over the homeless is growing faster than the solutions and I’m hearing even self identified liberals getting irritable.  One thing I learned being an HOA President (never again!) is people get crazy when their biggest asset value is threatened, and the RW is going to seize even harder on this issue this comic g election.

  83. 83.

    StringOnAStick

    @Eolirin: Exactly.  And the R’s are going to exploit this in the media because the most visible homeless are also the most damaged and mentally unwell.  More than half of the homeless are single mom’s with kids and young families who don’t make enough to afford housing, but those aren’t the people scaring suburbanites.

  84. 84.

    trollhattan

    @StringOnAStick: ​It’s a very hard issue to tease apart because it’s the collision of a LOT of factors and affecting a diverse swath of population. Many advocates, at least in my area, are hugely unhelpful through ironically lumping the population together and deciding it is an effect=cause phenomenon. e.g., “they’re addicted because they’re homeless.”
    Uh, okay?

  88. 88.

    Raven

    @StringOnAStick: “anger over the homeless is growing faster than the solutions and I’m hearing even self identified liberals getting irritable. “

    The point of my post

  89. 89.

    Jay

    @trollhattan:

    the 2022 survey of the unhoused in the Lower Mainland, found that 42% were full time employed, 12% were part time employed, and 17% were self employed.

    A living wage here is $24.08 as of 2022, before this years inflation.

    Minimum wage here is $16.25.

    I worked at Orange for $17, Raider for $20, because those jobs covered rent and utilities. T’s job paid for food, until she had to take disability leave, so for almost 2 years, it was butt clench every month end and a diet of peanut butter on whole wheat.

    She finally got her disability, ( 2 years wages, 2 years after she had to stop working), and is now back at gradual reentry to work. And that’s with a powerful union backing her and a kick ass contract.

    If the “hit” had come a year earlier, we would both be dead, just another statistic.

  90. 90.

    StringOnAStick

    @trollhattan: Indeed.  The visible and “scary to normies” homeless is what is driving the anger and hate about the homeless.  Sure, there’s addicted people and mentally unwell in that subpopulation of the entirety of people who are homeless.  They aren’t the majority but their visibility and behaviour is what gets all the attention, not the single mom living in their barely running car because her fast food job isn’t enough to afford housing much less scrape together the first and last month’s rent plus deposit.  Once someone falls out of housing, it gets harder and harder to get back in.

    I agree this needs to be tackled in a federal level; it gets pushed far down the list because of all the other fires the tRump administration lit and the ones the Congressional R continue to light.  Flooding the zone with shit was Bannon’s plan, and it isn’t just politics he wants flooded, it’s every aspect of life, including housing.

  91. 91.

    Quinerly

    An insiders’ piece on Feinstein.. Clearly, dementia, imo.

    “One person who did not want to be named recounted Feinstein asking a staffer for a memo, then responding with bewilderment when the memo was turned in the next day. These issues are longstanding: last summer, almost a year ago, one person who had worked with her and asked not to be named said ‘her days are all bad days now.’ Feinstein’s acuity gets worse as the day goes on, multiple people told Rolling Stone, and staff have long tried to avoid her having any engagements after mid-afternoon.”

    https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/dianne-feinstein-health-crisis-senate-resign-1234734590/

  92. 92.

    StringOnAStick

    @Raven: i know that’s what you meant.  It’s getting warm enough here to more easily survive outdoors so the issue is heating up in our area and I’m seeing some unfortunate responses.

  94. 94.

    Quinerly

    “Just weeks ago, Ron DeSantis made it legal in Florida to conceal carry a gun without a permit, training, or even a background check.
    And on Friday, he signed a bill to prevent credit card companies from tracking the sale of firearms and ammunition. The bill stops companies from helping track suspicious weapons purchases—an increasing concern while the United States is flooded with random shootings and mass shootings essentially every few hours.”
    https://newrepublic.com/post/172712/ron-desantis-bans-credit-card-companies-track-gun-criminals

  95. 95.

    gene108

    @Eolirin:

    But you have to invest in those things massively to handle the scale of what we’re dealing with now. This isn’t a city level problem, it’s a nationwide thing. It won’t be solved without federal involvement, the scope of it is too big, and the incentives of everyone involved in decision making at the local levels run in exactly the wrong directions.

    Part of the issue is homeless/unhoused people need essentially free housing. We rely on private entities to build housing. Cities, states, HUD, etc. and other agencies put some money towards landlords providing affordable or free housing, but it might not be enough for a private entity to break even every year, let alone make up the initial investment.

    @Eolirin:

    Yeah, and those are harm reduction strategies, which while important, only help so much. We need those mini-apartments being built at scale and we need the programs being run at scale, and that requires a lot of capital investment that we’re not going to get anytime soon.

    It’s not just capital and housing permits. Homeless/unhoused people also need support services to apply for government assistance, for example, to have money to support themselves even a little bit. Let alone assistance for transportation, finding a job, etc.

    The pay for positions that provide assistance is usually pretty low, relative to what could be made elsewhere by these professionals. We’d need more people working in social services and support them better.

  96. 96.

    Citizen Alan

    @gene108: Hearing “Republicans ended slavery” from people who would own slaves today if it were legal to do so is nauseating to me. Just like the people who constantly quote MLK for talking about judging people by their conduct and character rather the color of their skin like it is the only thing he ever said!

  98. 98.

    raven

    I am glad I made this post. I’m learning a great deal from a bunch of folks was smarter than me.

  99. 99.

    MomSense

    Ugh.  I wanted to like West Wing, but it is a fantasy that was disrespectful to the people who actually do the organizing and working for change.

  100. 100.

    gene108

    @cmorenc:

    A big problem with presenting the list of “liberal accomplishments” is that the respective parties currently identified with liberal vs conservative are vastly different than they were when many of these accomplishments took place.

    Have the 1920’s as a starting point. Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover weren’t doing much to provide a better social safety net or improve civil rights.

    FDR radically transformed this country with policies liberals identified with and conservatives fought against.

    Democrats made civil rights part of their party platform back in 1948 and made breakthroughs, when they retook the White House, in the 1960’s.

    The trend for Republicans to be the party of business and Democrats to be the party of labor was set 90 to 100 years ago. The divergence is really stark right now.

  101. 101.

    Alison Rose

    @Quinerly: Yeah, it’s starting to get absurd that many elected Dems are having to dance around the obvious here. Yesterday, Newsom did his May budget revise press conference, and during the Q&A afterward, someone brough up DiFi and asked how it was seeing her go back to DC, and of course he was just like “It was great, I’m happy to see it, I’m glad she’s back, etc etc”. I understand he’s not gonna stand there and say “Good Lord, retire already, woman” but it makes me frustrated with her people that no one wants to have a come-to-Jesus chat with her about things. (Well…come-to-Moses, in her case, perhaps.)

  102. 102.

    Fair Economist

    The absolute #1 cause of homelessness is not enough and too expensive housing. West Virginia has more mental illness and drug use than California but only one – TENTH the homelessness, because housing is cheap there and expensive in California.

  103. 103.

    gene108

    @Alison Rose:

    Given the small Senate majority, I think from a purely political perspective it’s better she stays in the Senate. Republicans blocked judicial appointments when she was gone.

    It seems to take a few weeks to replace a sitting Senator who retires or dies in office. Republicans will gum up the works. They also may block her replacement from being on the Judiciary Committee.

  104. 104.

    trollhattan

    @Alison Rose: ​It is absolutely not the governor’s job to openly go after a seated senator of his party. What occurs between he and the national and state Democratic parties necessarily remains there. I guarantee these conversations have taken place.

    DiFi and her staff, Chuck Schumer, they’re the only ones who can do anything at this point at least until the next, more critical health crisis. From what I know of her staff, they’re not playing nice (a friend deals with them fairly regularly).

  105. 105.

    What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?

    I can’t say I miss TWW but I would like to see its near contemporary Northern Exposure again at some point. Unfortunately it never seems to hit streaming services (I’ve heard this is due to the fact that they can’t get the music rights streaming permission worked out but plenty of other shows have managed that issue). It’s even hard to find on disc with the original soundtrack In tact  Not sure why it’s such a barrier. E.g. Scrubs  faced the same issue and managed to work it out.

  106. 106.

    What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?

    @gene108: In theory the biggest advantage of having her back is I think now with a full majority the judiciary committee can subpoena Roberts and Thomas to testify on ethics.

  109. 109.

    Jay

    @Fair Economist:

    Yurp. Cheapest 1 bedroom I can find on this side of the river, is $1800 plus utilities, and they are pits.

    We lucked out. Covid, offshore owner, offshore owners tax, (10% of property value if it’s empty). It’s small, but it’s affordable because our rent pays the mortgage and taxes for the owner.

  114. 114.

    Geminid

    @trollhattan: I think that besides Chuck Schumer, Senator Feinstein’s other Democratic colleagues could help persuade her to retire. In the short term, they need her there now to help move pending judicial nominations through committee. Once the backlog is processed (and maybe a few more) I hope she can be persuaded to retire. She’s barely functional now, and has nowhere to go but down.

    If Republicans won’t allow a Judiciary Committee replacement, Democrats will just have to proceed on the same basis as in the last Congress.

    Maybe Senator Murray can persuade Feinstein, ideally with the assistance of a few other Senators she trusts. I don’t think her staff can. I don’t know about her immediate family members, but they might help too..

  117. 117.

    Alison Rose

    @trollhattan: Okay, point me to where I said it was his job? I specifically said I understood why he said what he did, but that it frustrates me that her people can’t seem to get through. By “her people” I did not mean elected Dems, but like, her staffers and family and whatnot.

  121. 121.

    BellyCat

    On of the challenges contributing to a cycle of extreme poverty/homelessness oft overlooked is credit ratings. A cascading effect is created when a health/legal crisis or job loss causes one to rely more heavily on available credit. If one uses above 30% of their available credit, this triggers downgrades even when minimum payments are made. Credit downgrades translate into higher interest rates for credit options available. It’s a vicious cycle to break once entered — especially as variable rates climb, as has recently happened.

    One might be able to manage their debt load even under extreme circumstances when rates are low. When the rates go up, interest balloons and even minimum payments become out of reach. Debt consolidation loans without home ownership have interest rates roughly three times higher interest rates. The result: People with fixed or limited income suddenly find themselves unable to meet housing costs due to dramatic increases in minimum payments on variable credit they’ve previously used.

  122. 122.

    Geminid

    @schrodingers_cat: The nativist American (“Know Nothing”) Party dissolved itself in 1860 so its members could join the new Republican Party. They never left.

  123. 123.

    UncleEbeneezer

    Am I allowed to mention that Jimmy Smitts is one fine looking man?

    Late to the party but, imo, there’s nothing wrong with some thirst expression so long as it’s:

    • positive
    • respectful
    • doesn’t treat people as if they are only sex objects
    • doesn’t veer into Racial/Ethnic fetishizing or stereotypes
    • doesn’t diss other people for not meeting such unrealistic beauty standards

    Obviously we men need to be a bit careful to avoid being creepy about women, because of our history/culture, but in general, there are some super-fun Twitter threads where people do nothing but salivate over Idris Elba, Rhianna or whoever.  Actors, models, entertainers etc. are all pretty damn attractive as part of what they do and how they got to where they are. They know it. We know it. So in spaces where we’re all adults, I think it’s all good so long as you read the room. Janelle Monae practically broke Twitter yesterday with her new video and pics and people have been crushing on Pedro Pasquale for months. And frankly, for some people (Black People, Transgender People etc.) celebrating their beauty helps push back against bullshit Beauty Standards that usually exclude them.

  124. 124.

    NotMax

    @UncleEbeneezer

    Actors, models, entertainers etc. are all pretty damn attractive as part of what they do and how they got to where they are.

    George Arliss, Louis Wolheim, Edna May Oliver, Marie Dressler, Gabby Hayes, W.C. Fields, Charles Laughton, Margaret Rutherford, Karl Malden and Abe Vigoda collectively thank you for that.
    :)

  125. 125.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Ramalama: This line near the top of that article fascinates me, for the little peek into the political situation of ten years ago:

    Why two positions to right of center and only one to the left? Good question, given that I find the potential breach within the the Democratic coalition—between, you might say, Keynesians and austerians, Krugmanites and Obamaites—more profound and potentially more portentous than that between conservatives and libertarians within the Republican coalition, but that’s an issue for another post.

    Seems to me like what happened there was just that the Krugmanites won, or at least the center of the party moved toward them. The split that rocked the party in 2016 was not really that one at all–and even that is receding into the past.

  126. 126.

    AWOL

    @NotMax: I love Margaret Rutherford and her lack of conceit with the Marx Brothers. But I believe she was an incredibly popular  Broadway knockout at the turn of the 20th c.

  130. 130.

    Citizen Alan

    @Quinerly: Probably so, but what can be done about it? There is, to my knowledge, no legal mechanism to remove a sitting senator who does not wish to step down short of impeachment. Are they doing anything different with Feinstein than was done with Thad Cochran, Strom Thurmond, Jamie Whitten, John Stennis, and God knows how many others going back untold decades?

  131. 131.

    Citizen Alan

    @raven: Dead thread, I know, but I’m sitting here laughing at the mistaken Margaret Rutherford reference because of the implication of a Marx Brothers-Miss Marple crossover.

  132. 132.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @NotMax: Of course there are exceptions but I think they’d be the first to tell you that the field is heavily skewed towards stunningly attractive people.

  136. 136.

    Scout211

    @PaulWartenberg:

    Bluesky social is a thing.  Yes.

    Wired Has a review and some history.

    It’s still in beta but you can get on a list.

    Here  (app)

    or

    Here (web) 

    Some jackals have tried it.  It was discussed here a few days ago. I think it was MMMM who has joined. I guess the current beta users can invite new users.

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