Legislation to suspend US debt limit advances to full House of Representatives https://t.co/4TifQYKdHe
— Jonathan Landay (@JonathanLanday) May 31, 2023
Legislation brokered by President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to lift the $31.4 trillion U.S. debt ceiling and achieve new federal spending cuts passed an important hurdle late on Tuesday, advancing to the full House of Representatives for debate and an expected vote on passage on Wednesday.
The House Rules Committee voted 7-6 to approve the rules allowing debate by the full chamber. Two committee Republicans, Representatives Chip Roy and Ralph Norman, bucked their leadership by opposing the bill.
That vote underscored the need for Democrats to help pass the measure in the House, which is controlled by Republicans with a narrow 222-213 majority…
All four Democrats on the Rules Committee voted against the bill, as they typically do on Republican-backed legislation. It was unclear whether that might influence other Democrats to do the same on Wednesday, even as Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries said his party would provide the support McCarthy needs.
Many Democrats in Congress did not want Biden to engage in budget-cutting negotiations with Republicans until they lifted their hold on enacting a debt limit bill…
White House Budget Director Shalanda Young, who was one of Biden’s lead negotiators, urged Congress to pass the bill.
“I want to be clear: This agreement represents a compromise, which means no one gets everything that they want and hard choices had to be made,” Young told a news conference.
A Senate vote could possibly stretch into the weekend if lawmakers in that chamber try to slow its passage.
At least one senator, Republican Mike Lee, has said he may try to do so, and other Republicans have also expressed discomfort with some aspects of the deal…
Everyone trying their best to channel their high school theatre acting days pic.twitter.com/8plVHNQNPA
— vocational politics appreciation account (@Convolutedname) May 31, 2023
big sad https://t.co/QnXWtiRvBB
— world famous art thief (@famousartthief) May 30, 2023
At @freedomcaucus presser, @ChipRoyTX trashes the bipartisan debt limit agreement.
“The Republican conference right now has been torn asunder,” he says.
“Not one Republican should vote for this deal.”
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) May 30, 2023
you have 3 days to read it, bro pic.twitter.com/mnsXh2sKOv
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 30, 2023
Quiet part out loud:
Republicans admitting that they wanted crash the economy before the 2024 election so Biden would lose.
I mean, we all knew that was true, but nice of them to say it at a press conference… pic.twitter.com/NNqKwXxYrK
— Nick Knudsen ???? (@NickKnudsenUS) May 30, 2023
It's very important that these guys find microphones and TV cameras to loudly express this point prior to voting for it to… uhh, consolidate their caucus https://t.co/3VQ13Trhsp
— The Mall Krampus (@cakotz) May 31, 2023
Elsewhere in the GOP carcass caucus… Massie is evil, but not dumb; and MTG is at least crafty enough to know when she’s not cutting ads for her next campaign:
Rep. Massie, speaking at the Rules Committee meeting on the debt limit legislation: "When people want to express their ideology, the floor of the House on the actual final passage of the bill is the place to do that."
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) May 30, 2023
MTG told us she’s undecided on whether to vote for debt ceiling bill. Asked by @Olivia_Beavers about the tone from the Freedom Caucus in the aftermath of the deal, she said: “Don’t sink the ship, there’s no reason to.”
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) May 30, 2023
"we absolutely suck at our jobs and should have just given up" is the exact kind of spirit i *want* house republicans to come into work with, every single day
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) May 30, 2023
a thing i *would not* have predicted is that house republicans who demanded a sword of damocles for kevin mccarthy would be too impotent and feckless to actually use it. https://t.co/5zJd8BKuW4
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) May 30, 2023
McCarthy's leverage was not as strong as he claimed (w/help from gullible reporters) which is why this isn't a punishing "deal." He got some minor concessions the next, D-led Congress can ignore, and weeks of glowing coverage from the MSM. Biden got a good deal & shitty coverage https://t.co/HXpjJ5Y7Z5
— scary lawyerguy (@scarylawyerguy) May 28, 2023
as everyone knows, the best thing to do when facing down a bull is to wave a red flag and yell at it https://t.co/L03MlXvDP9
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) May 31, 2023
Well, Kevin McCarthy is about to find out what happens when you make a Faustian bargain… https://t.co/NH2DT8Rfzu
— Jeff Mayers (@TimeLordJeff) May 30, 2023
rikyrah
Morning AL :)
Good to see you posting :)
H.E.Wolf
Today’s Electoral-Vote blog has a rumination on how the Freedom Caucus is all hat and no cattle.
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2023/Items/May31-1.html
Another Scott
GQP Mustardmind: [checks the news] Hmm… Our debt ceiling fake crisis hasn’t crashed the stock market or the economy yet. Mortgage interest rates went up a bit, but are now falling from the peak. OMG! Biden may survive this! Quick – what new crisis can we create to grab attention and keep Biden from claiming a win by looking steady and competent?
Minion: Well, we can kneecap our House leadership by threatening not to pass what he claims is a great victory for controlling spending.
GQP Mustardmind: Brilliant! Get the talking points out to the usual suspects and get them on the TV – STAT!!
Cheers,
Scott.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
At first I was skeptical of the negotiation process, we shouldn’t be negotiating with terrorists.
I haven’t looked to closely at the terms of the deal yet, but people I trust seem to be supporting it. It even sounds like the Republicans got rolled.
And if this deal is tearing R-Qaeda asunder, it may well be the greatest piece of legislation put forward by any American Congress. Failing a succesful reform effort, the Republican party should be sundered until you can drown each individual piece in a bathtub.
Mowgli
Cue the usual circus of talking heads yammering about how bad our debt problem truly is (which they never talk about under GOP presidents, of course), and standard horse race narratives of who _appears_ to have won or lost here, independent of any actual impact on human beings. I’m soooo tired of this ride, how do I get off?
Baud
The problem is that they have good reason to believe that blowing up the economy would hurt Biden. That’s not on them, but on everyone else.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
Of course, debt in service of accruing money and power to the wealthy and powerful is good for everyone and a sign of National Greatness(TM).
schrodingers_cat
Chip Roy looks a lot like many of the T minions who were there on Jan 6 damaging property and worse.
rikyrah
There was a discussion in Cole’s thread about how ‘fast’ it seems that the right-wing had turned on ‘ the gays’.
I completely disagree. They had never turned AWAY from ‘ the gays’.
Their hatred of them has always been there.
And, they have been enraged that the rest of country has passed them by with acceptance of our LGBTQIA+ brothers and sisters.
They have been simmering about it all along, and despise gay marriage. And that children like my Peanut understand all about proper pronouns and the RESPECT that should be given with regards to them. This is her life at 15. And, she’s not about to listen to some right-winger trying to tell her that the LGBTQIA+ community isn’t deserving of respect.
I look at Secretary Pete and Chasten and their two crumb snatchers and they make me smile. I see a cute family. The right is enraged that Secretary Pete can live his best life, and be a respected Cabinet member. That we aren’t trying to ostracize him.
The trans attacks were ALWAYS about going after the larger LGBTQIA+ community. ALWAYS.
They were a means to an end. Kay brought up yesterday about the anti-gay marriage bills that the right-wing popped up in all those states in 2004. That was their high-water mark, because it’s gone downhill for them since then. And, they resent the shyt out of it.
We stand with the trans community because the other side means genocide against them.
And, either you are anti-genocide or you are evil.
Period.
We stand with the trans community because we have two brain cells and know that it will never STOP at the trans community.
So, it’s best to cut this shyt off before it begins.
rikyrah
@Mowgli:
One of of every FOUR dollars of the deficit they care so much about is a result of Dolt45’s GOP Tax SCAM.
But, they never bring that up, do they?
rikyrah
@Mowgli:
They also never bring up how much 46 has cut the deficit in his two years in office.
Never ever.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
There was a brief moment of about two years between the Obergeffel decision and the ascension of Chris Rufo where the Republicans went quiet on the issue because, regardless of their hatred, they didn’t have a viable plan to win elections on homophobia.
Jeffro
I’m dying at the thought of the Freedumb Caucus members realizing that 1) the only leverage they had over Joe Biden was to destroy the American/global economy, and 2) the only way they’ll be able to manage even feeble resistance to the Biden/Harris agenda is…to stick with Kevin McCarthy.
MTG, as dumb as she is, isn’t stupid. Letting more than a handful of malcontents pitch a fit means the whole krazy klown kar they’ve got going over there will go right off the cliff.
Anyway, Bob Good is pissed, so I’m happy!
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
It gets discussed in the media, just never in the context of these negotiations. Democrats’ continued successful deficit reduction during every Presidency they held in my lifetime is treated as a curiosity.
It happened, but it isn’t connected to any of the relevant policy decisions that have or will be made and won’t do anything to change our cultural attitude that Ds are reckless spenders.
Lapassionara
@Mowgli: Ditto. This is just exhausting. Ever since the Newt Gingrich era, when Republicans have the majority, there is always a chance, in fact a probability, that they will screw things up.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: Totally. This is their MO. They go after what they think is the soft target
They hate all immigrants but they first went after the undocumented
They hate LGBT folks but go after trans people.
They wanted to get rid of Roe. but first went after late term abortions.
And so on.
The people who are surprised are not paying attention.
Ohio Mom
Good morning Anne Laurie! You are certainly entitled to sleep in but I must let you know that when I didn’t see anything from you when I first woke up, I was worried — were you all right? What could be wrong?
Never doubt what you mean to us Juicers!
Peale
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: They went off and stewed in 4Chan and 8Chan during that time and came back yelling about “Tranny semen” being put into Bud Lite and Chic-fil-A sauces. Not sure what to do about them. They are gross people, spewing gross and ridiculous things, but still find an easier job getting invited to access the MSM opinion pages than the ever nameless “woke mob” that the press really fears.
MattF
I’m a bit surprised that the jackasses have held their fire against McCarthy. Their logic escapes me, but that’s always been true.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Peale: Wingers are Real Americans while the far more numerous members of the woke mob are special interests and malcontents. Not worth listening to.
Or we’re ordinary, kind people.
mrmoshpotato
Speaking of Gaetz, reposting this:
Matt McIrvin
@rikyrah: There’s a small group of deeply stupid conservative gay transphobes who can be convinced that they’ll be fine if they turn against the smaller and more powerless minority, and establish their bona fides as “good ones”. I guess that’s a tale as old as time.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@mrmoshpotato: That’s funny; though when I see Matt Gaetz, I’m always going to see Flat Top from Dick Tracy.
mrmoshpotato
@rikyrah:
Good ol’ GOP tax SCAM!
I still am amazed by that video of Elizabeth Warren trying to figure out cut off words on the actual bill.
jonas
@rikyrah: They see it purely in terms of electoral optics. They couldn’t care less about economics or policy. That would require them to have principles and values.
I recall a couple of years ago Ted Cruz was being interviewed on some news program right around the time the debt limit was being raised for Trump (which of course Cruz said he supported) and the reporter asked if the senator would be a little less sanguine about the debt if a Democrat were president. “Well, yeah,” Cruz replied. Asked if this were not slightly hypocritical, Cruz just kind of shrugged and demured, iirc. These fuckers give spinelessness a bad name.
Roger Moore
@Jeffro:
I think they understood the basic leverage was to destroy the economy. The thing that makes them dangerous is their willingness to hurt the country and the world in order to win. It doesn’t really even matter whether they’re right that crashing the economy would help them politically; as long as they think that they’re dangerous.
I’m also not sure that sticking with McCarthy is very important to their plans. The Republicans in the House really can’t achieve very much, since their power is strictly limited by the need to get stuff through the Senate and a possible veto from President Biden. Most of what they can accomplish is negative, in the form of failing to do the important stuff they’re supposed to do, like passing spending bills and raising the debt limit. Plain obstruction like that doesn’t really require any leadership, so McCarthy is mostly secondary. If they think they can obstruct more by throwing the House into chaos by trying to get rid of him, that’s what they’ll do.
mrmoshpotato
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: I can see that.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
Closest to honesty a nationally visibile elected Republican has come in my lifetime.
The Moar You Know
@rikyrah: it was a scam and it raised my taxes by 6k a year.
My wife’s a teacher, and that shitty scam bill disallowed every single expense for classroom supplies and activities. Since those are things that need to be done, we pay for them anyway, but now we get to eat the taxes on that as well.
It raised taxes on every teacher in the United States, and that surely was not an accident.
Jeffro
Brace yourselves, peeps: Ezra Klein has four questions about the Biden-McCarthy debt ceiling deal
Do we actually have a deal? (ok, that’s a fair question…looks like it, but we’ll see later today, right?)
What do Republicans actually want? (c’mon, Ez!! they just want to stick it to the libs however they can. We already knew that.)
When will Democrats wise up on the debt ceiling? (also a fair question but we know the answer: when we have enough real Democrats to either raise it to eleventy gazillion dollars or do away with it legislatively)
Are bipartisan debt deals dead? (well it depends, Ezra: is a D or an R currently president? =)
Actually that last one is the silliest to ask or even muse about, and here’s why:
The best time to raise taxes, get rid of the debt ceiling, and…perhaps…make some adjustments that put the budget on a sounder footing (along with pushing for DC and Puerto Rico statehood, expanding SCOTUS and the House, etc) would be in the aftermath of a Biden/Harris 2024 landslide. Until then, I don’t blame Biden one bit for getting the best deal he can with this group of goons.
mrmoshpotato
@jonas:
New Bon Jovi?
SFAW
Hey, Chipper, ya know what would fix that? Declare a not-very-large auditorium a “Stand Your Ground” zone. Then put all the GQP Caucus in that auditorium, and lock them in.
Ooops, I almost forgot: just before locking them in, throw in a couple hundred AR-15s (or similar) and 10,000 rounds (in clips/magazines, of course).
Pretty sure that would fix the problem, you fucking anti-American asshole.
oldgold
DC is making sausage.
Given the dearth of principled talent in the Potomac Basin’s Butcher’s Shop, a condition this Republic has endured, with damn few exceptions, for 230 some years, the process will be unsightly, with the end product being nutrient free and bad tasting bologna. Same old.
Edmund dantes
@Matt McIrvin: I have some misogynistic women, some anti-Jew Jews, some not white white supremacist, et al to introduce you to in the American conservative movement.
There’s always a nice pack of ones that want to be the “good” ones thinking it will do anything other than move themselves a little further back in the line for getting beaten down by the stuff the conservatives are planning to do to their cohort.
Matt McIrvin
@Jeffro: If we don’t find some way to tighten the screws on this, eventually they are going to be using the periodic debt-ceiling crises to rule outright from the minority. I could see them using this as leverage for a coup, say–demanding the simultaneous resignation of the President and VP to make the House Speaker President, or they drop the bomb.
Roger Moore
@Peale:
I think you’re misunderstanding how they work. The bomb throwers who talk about putting “tranny semen” in food aren’t getting invited on talk shows, except maybe ones run by freaks like Alex Jones. What those people do is to define what the crazy fringe looks like, so people couching eliminationist rhetoric in more polite language look reasonable enough to invite onto talk shows.
This latter point is really critical, IMO. If you wear the right kind of clothes and use a calm tone of voice, the media is willing to treat you as respectable, no matter how disgusting the points you’re making. Having crazies who get lots of attention makes the media interested in their point of view and willing to put the superficially more respectable people who believe the same stuff on the air.
narya
@rikyrah: I really want Joe to make this a centerpiece of his campaign. It’s a kitchen-table issue; it’s the economy; it’s understandable. When the Rs are in power, they cut taxes for the rich, and they cut the IRS so that rich folks pay even less of their share; when Dems are in power, they try to level the playing field and ensure that we protect the poorest and ensure that everyone pays their fair share. Oddly enough, even the odious work requirements feed that narrative.
Reboot
@mrmoshpotato: This seems to have just happened overnight: Twitter doesn’t let you see these anymore unless you have an account–could you indulge my curiosity and say what this is about?
kindness
I can’t understand why Rep Nancy Mace keeps getting billed as a moderate. Sure, she isn’t MTG but she says the same things the Freedom Caucus says. Our MSM seems to need a ‘nice’ white lady to pin their hopes and dreams on.
NotMax
After the billl is signed it will be time for the talking heads to switch back to bemoaning how the economy is precariously teetering on the brink and will plunge into deep recession any day now?
So much tedious drumbeating noise. efgoldman ’em.
Roger Moore
@Reboot:
It’s weird, because Twitter seems to let some people see stuff and others not. It seems to be totally random. In any case the image in question is comparing Matt Gaetz and Jim Jordan to Beavis and Butthead.
ARoomWithAMoose
@Matt McIrvin: I heard enough “section 4 of 14th amendment mentions” from administration adjacent mouthpieces this go around, the debt ceiling may be dead as a MIGHTY THUMP STICK. Congress needs to give explicit default instructions in legislation, absent that, business as normal.
I think that may be a real victory that Biden and the Dem house minority crew isn’t being given credit for (despite some bad reviews by the normally very cogent LGM commentariat).
The house can still cause budget issues, but last go around was them failing to pass a budget leading to sequester as the previous budget stayed in affect.
Jackie
@rikyrah: You must not watch MSNBC. They bring up TFG’s tax cuts for the top 2% regularly. And how that was his only achievement. And how much TFG’s administration blew up the debt to the highest in history by far.
Peale
@Matt McIrvin: I used to think that. With the older mainstreamy gay conservatives that might be the case. They hate the changes that the youth are bringing into who is in and out of the community. But the right also has this weird ability to turn up everywhere. So you get Femboy fascists. And racist Bronies. And anti-queer yaoi and anime fanatics, who get wrapped up in Japanese cultural production because its “not woke”. I think there’s just a lot of people who like being angry about something all the time and think the most awesome thing is being anti-social.
Geminid
@kindness: Mace made moperate-conservative noises from time to time, and that qualifies her as “moderate” in some reporters’ eyes. Plus, she beat a tea party crank in her primary.
Now, Mace has stopped making moderate-conservative noises. I attribute that to ambition: Lindsey Graham may well retire in 2026, and Mace can grab the inside track to replace him if she can position herself as a staunch conservative.
Hoodie
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: Nobody got rolled. Biden got as good a deal as could be expected, but there is some malodorous shit in there. One way to look at is that Biden was able to get a ton of good stuff during his first two years, particularly the IRA and infrastructure stuff that is fueling economic activity (my son is in alternative energy development and they were really sweating the outcome of the debt ceiling negotiations). The mode we’re in now is protecting those gains, which this deal appears to do in large part.
Part of the reason for that is that the “Red Wave” never happened and McCarthy’s slim majority depends on GOPers from Biden districts as much as it does on the Freedom Caucus. Because they don’t hold the Senate or the WH, the only leverage they have now involves hostage taking, e.g., tanking the economy, shutting down the government, and that puts the Biden-district GOPers at risk. This bill largely destroys the first and may diminish the second (don’t know enough about how the snapback provisions work), which may help sideline the radicals who want to blow everything up. From McCarthy’s point of view, he got about as much as could be expected given he really didn’t have that much leverage, and he may have found a way sideline the nutjobs, assuming they are not able to eject him from the speaker’s chair, which doesn’t look to be happening. I’d have to give him credit for that if it works out. Maybe his play all along was to bullshit the Freedom Caucus guys and then shove them back in their lockers when the opportunity arose.
Jackie
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: Me, too.
I’ve never watched Beavis and Butthead – not my cuppa tea.
Geminid
I like how President Biden is flying out of Washington this afternoon, and leaving the debt bill in the capable hands of Jeffries, Clark and Aguilar.
After all, Biden has his own job to do. In this case, he’s flying to Colorado Springs to speak at tomorrow’s Air Force Academy Commencement exercises.
Ken
@ARoomWithAMoose: In one of the threads last night, someone noted that back in the 1970s (or maybe 80s) Rep. Dick Gephart established a parliamentary rule, that when Congress passed a bill, it was “deemed” to also authorize increasing the debt limit to cover any spending required by the bill. This was removed during the Gingrich era.
I can’t see the current Congress returning to that rule, but it seems marginally more plausible than eliminating the debt limit.
Jackie
@Geminid: Mace is ultra conservative EXCEPT regarding abortion and women’s healthcare.
Joey Maloney
@mrmoshpotato: Throwback shoutout to this absolute hero of a middle-schooler.
Geminid
@Ken: One of many reasons for Democrats to retake the House next year, amd hold on to it in subsequent cycles. Despite gerrymandering, I don’t see that as so big a lift.
Geminid
@Jackie: In action, yes. I think some journalists make too much of the occasional times Mace sounds reasonable, and see what they want to see.
mrmoshpotato
@Joey Maloney: Yup! Classic!
ETA – that girl is now probably too old for Gaetz (autocorrected to Farts) to consider dating her.
Ocotillo
Ugh, I am loathe to admit that that skinhead Chip Roy represents the contorted district I live in the Lone Star asylum.
Kay
More bad news for SCOTUS. Even for unpopular policies or laws no one wants SCOTUS to decide.
They should take this as a warning that people think they’re out of control, but they won’t. I can’t imagine gutting all the environmental laws will make them any more trusted, either.
Kay
Mace is anti woke and gets invited onto “liberal” anti woke platforms like Bill Mahr.
Wokeness is medias absolute favorite subject (they’re opposed) so of course they love her.
It isn’t just conservatives who promote these horrible people.
Chief Oshkosh
@The Moar You Know:
Yep. Raised my taxes by A LOT, also. Odd that I never see an MSM story about this, or about the impact of the Trump tax change that essentially wiped out charitable deductions.
matt
Hot take: McCarthy would welcome being removed as Speaker.
rikyrah
@Roger Moore:
Yep. they pretend that they are ‘moderates’.
catclub
@Baud:
The American people are not ALWAYS stupid on this. Up to about 2011, polling showed that they blamed Bush the Lesser for the crappy economy that happened on his watch, not Obama. I was amazed.
cain
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
Isn’t that interesting? No matter how many times the Dems have shown they have reduced the deficit and cut spending that the press still likes to cling to the old wisdoms. They still will coach everything in GOP talking points. We’re still ‘tax and spend’ liberals but it’s the GOP that spends like water and not even on us – but on rich people.
Rightfully, the student debt crises, the trump tax cuts – the higher taxes all come from one party. We aren’t paying the bills that they rack up.
twbrandt
How’s my morning going, you ask?
I just got back from an emergency dental appointment. That’s how my fucking morning is going.
rikyrah
@kindness:
Absolutely absurd. She wants to take away all the rights from others that the rest of us do. She just wants to use Frank Luntz-Approved language.
Stacy
Looking Nancy Mace’s voting record on vote smart, she’s voted against every pro choice bill and for every anti choice bill. She does say she would graciously allow victims of SA to have a choice. /
narya
@Kay: I was listening to “Strict Scrutiny” this morning, and they were discussing the gutting of the EPA with this latest decision. I’m pretty hardy, but I eventually had to switch to something else because it was just too depressing. And the manner in which they did it is staggering–basically, because we said so. Shockingly, Kavanaugh was with the Righteous Three in his written opinion. As far as I can tell, Congress is going to have to have very explicit text in all of its legislation, else the Scrotus are going to say, for any D law, “Nah, bro. We don’t like it.”
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
A moderate Republican is one who wipes the foam off their mouth before doing interviews.
catclub
@Roger Moore:
Dick Cheney was the deep voiced sensible guy after 9/11 who pushed the crazy 1% doctrine. Curiously, said doctrine has not been applied to white christian terrorists.
Roger Moore
@Geminid:
Seeing what they want to see is a major problem with the media. If it becomes a choice between the facts and the narrative, the narrative wins. They find it easier to select facts to fit the narrative than to change the narrative to fit all the available facts.
NotMax
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation
Bomb fondlers versus bomb throwers.
//
ian
I don’t really understand this line. It seems like it is meant to be an insult. Politics is theatre. This twitter handle doesn’t seem to get that.
Now, that isn’t to say the theater can’t be done poorly. The senior senator from Arizona is a good example of that.
Jackie
From Politico Playbook:
WHAT TO WATCH TODAY: Not everything is hunky-dory in the House. A CBO score on the deal released last night threw a last-minute curveball into Republican messaging, finding that new work requirement changes would actually expand spending on federal nutrition programs.
Leadership allies rejected the CBO’s analysis, but it opened a new front for critics to attack the deal: “The gang can’t shoot straight, folks,” tweeted former Trump OMB director RUSS VOUGHT. “Work requirements are supposed to save money.”
The GQPers refuse to look at the CBO score – which is fine by me!
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
Maybe a good thing? The wealthy get to write off these large sums they donate while charity continues to be far, FAR insufficient to meet the needs of our society.
It’s all good PR and fake solutions. Hell, in some of these cases they form giant charities that influence policy and put themselves or their people in charge.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
Much as people want to pretend otherwise, whether colleges should consider ethnicity in admissions and whether they should be allowed to consider ethnicity in admissions are different questions. Someone might reasonably think colleges shouldn’t do it but still think the government should butt out and let them make their own policies.
As an example of the same principle, I think parents should set reasonable bedtimes for their small children, but I don’t think this rule should be enforced by government mandate. The right bedtime varies from child to child, and it makes more sense for the parents to decide. Similarly, I may think that colleges in general shouldn’t consider race or ethnicity in admissions but accept that, say, a HBCU might reasonably give preference to minorities.
Mike in NC
Say it ain’t so! Surely Lindsey has yet another presidential exploratory committee ready to go. He’s already run, what, four times?
Suzanne
LAWL.
:::insert Michael Jackson eating popcorn gif:::
James E Powell
@rikyrah:
I agree with you. Back in 2015, when I was still on facebook discovering that everyone I went to high school with was a raging bigot, I was surprised at how many were howling about gay marriage. At least as much howling as there was about immigrants.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
Tangential point, Universities have good reason to want a tudent body with a diversity of lived experiences. Race covers a lot of that.
Also, progress toward any sort of admission standard that doesn’t incentivize parents to shackle little Timmy to a calculus book is a good thing.
Old School
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: @Chief Oshkosh:
The wealthy can still do that. I assume Chief Oshkosh is talking about the raising the standard deduction so that most filers no longer need to list gifts to charity.
I was talking to someone from a large local charity after it went into effect and he said the impact in the first year was to mid-size gifts. The individuals who give $50 or $100 are people who believe in the cause and weren’t doing their giving for tax purposes. The large donors of donors of $25,000 and up were still making their usual gifts. It was the middle area of $1,000 – $5,000 where it had dropped.
His hope was donors were going be donating every other year. Instead of those donors giving $10,000 to various charities every year, they’d be giving $20,000 to charities every other year.
That was five years ago or so, so I’ve no idea if that’s what ended up happening.
Reboot
@Roger Moore: Late reply, so I don’t know if you’ll see this, but thanks, Roger Moore! That image seems totally à propos.
RaflW
Sahil Kapur of NBC quoting Kevin McFlaily thusly: “To govern is not easy. But I don’t want to be on the wrong side of history.”
Ohh, buddy, have we got news for you. You’ll barely be a footnote for a few years, and then to the dustbin of history go you. Though maybe your 14 failed ballots before finally grasping the gavel you flop around with could be memorable for bit.
James E Powell
@kindness:
Is she wearing a fleece vest?
RaflW
@Mike in NC: In Greatest Retreads news, Chris “vacant stare Trump flunkie” Christie is being reported as readying a run.
Must need to refill some slush fund coffers, I suspect.
skerry
I am very upset that the deal allows the Mountain Valley Pipeline to proceed with few/no restrictions or debate. I understand that Manchin wants it and pushed for this, but other states don’t. Tim Kaine (VA) is going to put up an amendment to remove the pipeline language. The Inflation Reduction Act does so much for climate and this bill reduces that efficiency. We don’t need to invest that kind of money in fossil fuel, in this case methane gas, infrastructure.
Borrowing from Charlie Pierce:
NotMax
@Mike in NC
Was in line for a NYC museum on free entry Friday several years back and struck up a conversation with a couple from South Carolina.
Conversation turned to Graham and his prez ambitions. Their take was “Yes, we love him as our senator* but agree with you he has no business running and would make a terrible president.”
*Rising gorge unobtrusively swallowed at that.
Jeffro
@Matt McIrvin: Yes to the first part. For the second (the dual resignations), at that point, the prez and VP would have to say no and we’d see if enough semi-sane Rs would join the Ds to just raise the debt limit.
I think we were lucky that the Klown Kaucus had no real idea of what it wanted. It made them look like the inept but still dangerous domestic terrorists that they are
James E Powell
@matt:
Nah, he’s Kendall Roy. It would kill him.
Suzanne
@rikyrah:
Yes. You are right.
Hell, many of them have never really turned away from no-fault divorce.
It is really worth climbing into the evangelical social conservative mind (and trying not to vomit while you’re in there). They are deeply, deeply aware that their numbers are dwindling and that they cannot keep their kids in the faith. With the decline in religiosity comes a significant decline of influence. They see losing on gay marriage, and the fact that so many people support it, as an undeniable sign that the country is hostile to religious values.
Read this, from First Things:
TheOtherHank
Since this is an open thread, I notice that there hasn’t been an On The Road post since the 26th. Should I go through my photo library and submit some pictures?
Geminid
@Geminid: Nancy Mace’s 1st Congressional District was flipped by Democrat Joe Cunningham in the 2018 Blue Wave. The incumbent, Mark Sanford, might have beaten Cunningham but he was knocked out in the primary by a tea party crank. Sanford had a conservative voting record, but he criticized Trump and Trump Backes the challenger. Cunningham was the first Democrat to hold the 1st CD in decades.
Mace took the seat back in 2020. I did not follow that race, but she may have trimmed towards the center in her campaign in order to win what seemed like a purple district. So maybe journalists rested on their first impressions. They can be lazy that way.
In any event, Republican redistricters shored up the Republican base in the district, so now all Mace has to worry about is fending off primary challenges from the right. And if she intends to win a statewide primary for Senator in 2026, Mace will need to take a very conservative line.
As for what Mace actually believes, I expect she believes what she needs to believe to get ahead.
RaflW
@rikyrah: “We stand with the trans community because we have two brain cells and know that it will never STOP at the trans community.”
Thank you.
As a run of the mill cis-white gay man, hearing WI public radio talk about the latest Marquette poll that has the Short Fingered Vulgarian 5 points ahead of President Biden got me into a bit of a freakout.
Yes, I know. It’s 17 months till the election. A lot can & will change. But I’m squidged out big time thinking that over half of respondents (or over half after some possibly suspect weighting gets worked in) are fine with a guy who would put a bunch of us in the gulag. DeSepsis also polls +4, and he’d have worse than a gulag in mind.
Thankfully BJers get what’s at stake, but I think a lot of GOPers who may even have LGBTQ people in their families don’t understand how dark the years after 2024 can get if an ‘R’ wins.
Chief Oshkosh
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: That’s a “throw the baby out with the bath water” argument.
Butter Emails
@Jackie:
RaflW
@Suzanne: Good lord. The victim status coursing through that First Things column.
Implicit in all of it is that how American Christians behaved didn’t change across those years, it was only the godless who rose up out of viciousness. It couldn’t possibly be that average person recoiled at the vitriol of the performatively pious.
But then, I see that First Things seems to think they have the corner on “The Truth” and one can surmise so much from that Christianist arrogance.
Chief Oshkosh
@Old School:
Yes, that’s what I was talking about, though I agree with TKI has a point.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Chief Oshkosh: I have serious concerns that the whole notion of charity, regardless of implementation, is doing more harm than good. It makes us feel like we’re addressing problems when we certainly are not.
Then when you get into implementation, too many are directing too much of their money to administration and staffing. There are so many and they’re hard to evaluate whether they’re actually doing useful work, especially considering most solicitations tend to happen at cash registers of random major retailers.
RaflW
@Butter Emails: From what (little) I read yesterday, it sounded like the reason that ‘welfare’ spending goes up under the agreement is that it makes it easier for our military veterans to qualify.
Republicans always hate our actual troops. They use them as props, but they have no interest in caring for them after they’re used up.
RaflW
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: IMO one of the biggest problems is that so damn much ‘charity’ money is flooding into elite universities, and not to ameliorating conditions for those in need.
And even if collegiate donations were somehow capped (can you imagine the lobbying against that!), directing more of the 3 to 5% of some people’s income to aid organizations would never ever make up for the decades of cuts to government services to lower income folx.
lowtechcyclist
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
This. The Democratic Party has an unbroken record since Jimmy Carter of being the more fiscally responsible party. The GOP borrows and spends, and the Dems clean up after the elephants. Always.
cain
@mrmoshpotato: You know AI stable diffusion is a thing – I bet we could come up with an image. Just saying ;)
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
Elected Republicans only care about anything human to the extent it provides a useful political argument. Actually helping or protecting anyone is a foreign concept to them. See also: fetuses.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
So even before my lifetime.
mrmoshpotato
@TheOtherHank:
I’m sure it would be welcome.
RaflW
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: Totally agree. What infuriates is that it is utterly verboten for anyone in the press (except a handful of obscure pundits & maybe Paul Krugman) to ever notice this grossly obvious morality defect.
rikyrah
Review bombing The Little Mermaid 😡😡😡
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRoBbkoH/?t=1
AWOL
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: Does he come grovin’ up slowly?
Peale
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: Veterans are useful because they attract a lot of right wing patriotic donations to charities that enrich a few but don’t actually do anything. That and they can be trotted out to prevent any other social spending. “As long as there is 1 homeless veteran, we don’t have to provide school lunches to poor children.”
Chief Oshkosh
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: Depends on the charity and depends on the donor.
Some of my European colleagues marvel at the amount of charity in the US, and from their perspective, overall consider it effective compared to governmental solutions in their country. They consider that this comes from Americans’ “can-do” spirit while understanding that our lack of social programs often contribute to or create the circumstances that require “can-do” charitable solutions. It’s circular.
The Thin Black Duke
@RaflW: The GOP prefers dead soldiers to live veterans.
Frankensteinbeck
McCarthy: “For awhile there Biden was talking about expanding the budget, but don’t worry, I wrangled him back down to a clean increase!”
@Jeffro:
Thank you, Ezra, for reminding us that you were one of the dipsticks who were sure Obama wanted to gut social security. I see you still expect him to announce it any day now.
@Peale:
The bizarre reception that the most girl empowering show I’ve ever seen got… is a topic too big for a comment. Just, SO much missing the point.
Kelly
https://twitter.com/GeorgeTakei/status/1662638014856589315
Kevin: We’re holding the economy hostage!
Joe: You won’t pull the trigger.
Kevin: I really don’t want to.
Joe: Sit down. We’ll do the budget like we normally do, just earlier.
Kevin: No new taxes!
Joe: You control the House. There would have been no new taxes anyway.
Kevin: Spending freeze! Joe: There would have been a spending freeze anyway.
Kevin: Okay.
Joe: Here’s a budget. It looks like what we’d arrive at later anyway, right?
Kevin: Right.
Joe: We good?
Kevin: Uh, yes? I may need help getting it passed. My people hate me.
Joe: We understand. Hey, Hakeem, can you help Kevin out?
rikyrah
@Suzanne:
They are going back to that. Connect all the dots, which you have done. They want to remove women from the public sphere, as you so aptly nailed it.
Citizen Alan
@Kay: I’ve come to the conclusion that “woke” means any policy or rule that does not clearly favored white straight Christian males over everyone else.
Frankensteinbeck
@Suzanne:
I have said this before: In 1980 if you said God told you to do something, mainstream society would praise you. If you say it now, mainstream society questions your sanity. Evangelicals are furious about this. They will never accept that they did it to themselves by saying God told them to be assholes.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Citizen Alan: Not precisely, but in the context of modern America, sure.
Baud
@Frankensteinbeck:
1989: God told me to do it.
2023: Baud told me to do it!
Progress!
Soprano2
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: They see D’s as “reckless spenders” because they spend money on people who are in need rather than shoveling even more to the top 1%.
rikyrah
@Peale:
Takes me back to the fake story in NY a couple of weeks ago about Homeless Veterans being kicked out of hotels to make room for migrants.
Citizen Alan
@narya: Yes, yes, the supreme court is going to gut all environmental law to the point that our rivers catch fire again. But what about her emails!?!
rikyrah
@Kelly:
BWA HA HA AH AHA HA HA HAH A
rikyrah
@Citizen Alan:
Absolutely
Citizen Alan
@RaflW: Based on my personal reading of the words of Jesus Christ himself, I firmly believe that the overwhelming majority of evangelical christians will burn in hell for their pride and hypocrisy. The evangelical response to donald trump proved to me conclusively that most evangelicals would happily take the mark of the beast if the anti christ promised to hurt and punish whichever demographic group they hate the most.
Soprano2
@Kay: Yep, I’ve heard her on his show before where she acted like she was a “moderate”. I think at this point Maher won’t have anyone on his show who isn’t with him about the “woke” panic.
Paul in KY
@Matt McIrvin: There were some Cathars who thought that. Weren’t worried when the pope’s army came over the horizon….
Soprano2
@cain: Last night Alisa Chang talked to Rep. Greg Casar, who I don’t know but is a progressive. She tried every which way but Sunday to get him to criticize Biden and Democrats, baiting him more than once with leading questions about how the deal wasn’t that good for them, and so on. He mostly didn’t take the bait, even though he’s not happy about a lot of the provisions in the deal, but to me it was blatantly obvious that she was trying to generate a sound bite with him saying bad things about Biden. The press mostly just don’t like Democrats or what they do, period.
The Lodger
@Reboot: Today I learned Butt-head was:
oatler
There’s a great Garfunkel & Oates video out now called “Save The Rich”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ej7dfPL7Kho
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
What about Simon and Hall?
Ken
I have wondered about some of the ads I see, where “for just 19 dollars a month I can provide support to our wounded warriors” and get a free blanket to show I care.
One thing that bothers me is that for the same 19 dollars a month, I can support elephant (or tiger) preservation, help rescue abused pets, support Shriners’ hospitals, or provide food for Russian Jews — and get a free blanket to show I care. Is there some service out there that provides standard charity packages?
schrodingers_cat
@cain: Did you see the Modi drama about the new Parliament? One school of thought is that it was too woo Tamil voters. Do you think it was effective. Husband kitteh had never heard of either the scepter nor the denomination that handed it to Modi.
narya
@Citizen Alan: Based on this decision, I have a strong desire to buy up the property around the RW judges’ homes and families’ homes–especially any vacation properties–and poison the fuck out of that land and water, preferably in a way that leaches into every single aspect of their lives and their grandchildren’s lives. Yeah, I know I can’t, and it would be absolutely morally wrong of me to do it even if I could, and I’m mortified even at my desire to do it. Their smug self-satisfaction drives me around the bend.
Baud
Haha. Your move, Republicans.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Baud: Their elected officials are very anti-weed anyway. Another wedge that can be shoved between R politicians and their voters.
Barbara
@narya: Well, Congress has the power to remove or significantly limit judicial review. They do it all the time for HHS.
Matt McIrvin
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: There was a time during the Obama years when some libertarian-leaning Republicans were pushing for pot legalization and I genuinely thought that was a move they could make to outflank the Democrats and get a whole new voter base. But they missed that train.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Matt McIrvin: Reminds me of the time George W Bush wanted immigration reform.
When you have a coalition formed around an agreement to support each other’s toxic beliefs, no more than a small segment can be mobilized at one time to do something good for people.
Matt McIrvin
@Citizen Alan: I’m an atheist but modern evangelicalism makes me angry on behalf of Jesus. This guy was a genuinely interesting, challenging moral thinker and they’re just smearing his name by association.
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: We cannabis users always seem kind of apathetic about these drug laws. I’m not sure why.
Matt McIrvin
@Geminid: I suspect they were selectively enforced enough to make a lot of white cannabis users with money figure they hardly mattered anyway.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
It’s ok, because they’re spending billions on ads portraying Jesus as a lib who “gets us.”
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
I’m guessing that was a subtle joke.
Suzanne
@Frankensteinbeck: Yeah, agreed. But don’t miss the important note about “Positive World”, which is that being Christian is a status-enhancer. It’s super-important to realize that this is what they believe they have lost. And they will do anything to get that back.
strange visitor (from another planet)
imo, evangelists and evangelism are pretty fucking evil and it’s an asshole move any way you slice it.
you’re basically telling a person that their society and culture suck, their “god.. is a… LIE” as captain kirk might put it, and you know better because YOUR god told you so.
it’s so wrong. so arrogant. it’s such vile, dismissive, disrespectful behavior.
as a secular red-sea pedestrian, i’ve seen that shit all my life.
my people and countless other cultures have seen that shit for just about two thousand years at this point.
you christians don’t even like each other.
not only does the pope shit in the woods, but i hear to some of you guys, he’s the antichrist.
Geminid
@Baud: Huh?
Baud
@Geminid:
I guessed wrong.
Josie
@Matt McIrvin: I tend to agree with you. I follow most of what Jesus actually taught as best I can. The only thing that troubles me is the “turn the other cheek” teaching. I struggle with that one.
ETA: Especially lately
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: That’s certainly part of it. When the Virginia General Assembly passed Cannabis legislation in the January, 2021 session, it set up a long, deliberate process that will open up dispensaries for recreational cannabis this fall. Black Democrats raised hell, saying that Black kids would be busted for possession every day until then. Governor Northam and Democratic leaders then called a special session in April and legalized simple possession and growing up to 4 plants.
Jackie
@Baud: 😂🤣😂
They’re such law abiding folks, I’m sure there’s no worry🤔
Omnes Omnibus
@RaflW: Wikler isn’t panicking. Neither should you.
trollhattan
@Baud: Oooh, libertarians feel a disturbance in the Force.
Frankensteinbeck
@Suzanne:
Yup. Their religion tells them that saying “God” makes them better than everyone else. Society used to agree. Now it doesn’t. They lost an absolutely gigantic unearned privilege and they’re throwing a screaming tantrum about it. Ironically, it’s hard to notice that change because they were already dedicated to using that privilege to hurt others.
JWR
@strange visitor (from another planet):
Back when I was a whipper-snapper, the “Christianity is better than the rest” argument I remember hearing a lot was that the Christian God gave us his only begotten son.
IOW, He gave us a “thing”, something we could actually “touch”, so to speak.
Matt McIrvin
@RaflW: The head-to-head polls are all over the place to the point that all they’re basically telling you is the pollster’s house bias. The ones where Trump wins by a lot tend to get massive media coverage. And a lot of more Trumpster-leaning ones are going to be intentionally flooding the zone.
karensky
@mrmoshpotato: wow. Thanks for that!!
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
In CCD they taught us that, at the time, it was only acceptable to strike a certain cheek and was shameful to strike the other.
Likewise if someone steals your cloak, give them your shirt. It wasn’t a crime to be naked, it was a crime to cause someone to be naked.
According to this reading, Jesus was saying help them become the victims of their own misdeeds.
Ruckus
@H.E.Wolf:
Maybe all hat and no cattle but they have been spreading a lot of bull+shit
Sorry, I’ve been away, walking to the store.
Matt McIrvin
@JWR: Ah yes: He allowed his only begotten son, an Incarnation of his own self, to be tortured to death just so that event could function as a magical talisman, so that, according to evangelicals, we could avoid infinite torture at the hands of that selfsame God. You’d think he could just not torture us, but apparently we all deserve infinite torture, but torturing Jesus instead somehow… makes that OK? But only for people who make the right mental gesture of acceptance? And all this is a sign that this God is good and just?
Gee, thanks. While trying to convert me they’d explain this mechanism as if it were as straightforward as basic arithmetic.
Fortunately there seem to be a lot of Christian soteriologies that don’t go this route, but these are the folks who will try hardest to get your attention.
C Stars
@twbrandt: Ew god. Wishing you good drugs and/or fast healing.
Ruckus
@Frankensteinbeck:
God told them to be assholes.
And I thought they got there all on their own. Stupid me.
It does make sense though…..
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Ruckus: Someone told them when they were young that God told them to be assholes.
Someone told that person and that person and so on and so on until you find an asshole zero who just made it all up.
Eta: Problem comes when the arguments to be an asshole become more strained and people start noticing.
Soprano2
@Frankensteinbeck: They cannot understand that becoming as political as they did turned off a lot of people. From what I’ve read belief in God or some kind of higher power hasn’t changed that much; it’s only participation in churches that has gone down. You wouldn’t know it from living around here, but I’m sure that even in Springfield, MO churchgoing isn’t what it used to be.
Soprano2
@rikyrah: They don’t like it when you say “Why can’t we do both?”. It’s such a dumb idea, that until we fix all of problem “x” we can’t address any other problems at all.
catothedog
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
This is the feature of politics. You can’t just pretend. If you pretend to believe in something (eg “taxation is theft; makers work and takers leech”) what you are doing is motivating and organizing all the people who actually believe that.
Once those people are organized you only have two choices:
1. Give them the things that the narrative suggests (cut taxes and government spending, kneecap social and racial justice )
OR
2. You get replaced by someone else who promises the same thing. Then that person gets to make the same choice.
When you dog whistle, pretend, scapegoat, all roads lead to someone enacting the ideal. The only difference between pretending and truly believing in something, is that it takes longer to get to the end result when you pretend. But there’s no real difference.
This is how Qanon politicians got power in America.
Republican politicians talked the talk, but refused to walk the walk. So the very people the pretenders organized by dogwhistling and pretensions – Qanon and racists and so on – replaced the pretenders with those who would actually walk the walk.
And now the Qanon talk is getting implemented for real, by people who believe in Jewish space lasers.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Soprano2: We can’t improve our legal immigration process until we’ve stopped every unauthorized border crossing because…
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: I think most of them don’t really know what’s in the New Testament; they love the Old Testament with all its punishment and wrath of God. It’s my contention that Christianity should only be based on the New Testament, because when Jesus came to Earth he brought a new philosophy with him, so the Old Testament philosophy and rules should be discarded. They can’t do that, though, because most of the stuff they base their hatred on is in the Old Testament.
Soprano2
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: Yeah, it’s a dumb argument for pretty much everything. It’s a way to stop things from happening.
Soprano2
@Suzanne: That’s true, it used to make me uncomfortable when people asked what church I went to and I had to say I didn’t go to church, because the vast majority of people here used to go to church, and you were seen as a filthy heathen if you didn’t. Now I don’t care at all because lots of people don’t go to church.
M31
they don’t know what’s in that either, just some spoon-fed cherry-picked out-of-context bits that support their bigotry
I love that there’re guys out there with tattoos of the Leviticus condemnation of ‘sodomy’ but like two lines later there is a prohibition of tattoos
yer goin’ to hell, mofo
Ramona
@RaflW: Indeed, the author of that First Things article emphasized towards the end of the piece that evangelicals should continue in their effort to exert political influence. The author ignores completely the possibility that the current mainstream negative view of right-wing Christianity stems from their obnoxious imposition of their political view on everybody else.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: The thing is, Judaism is literally based on the “Old Testament” and they’ve got centuries of rabbinic arguments against the kinds of horrific interpretations the Christian fundies come up with.
Ruckus
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
So even before my lifetime.
Yes and even before mine. And Truman was president when I was born.
Bill Arnold
@Matt McIrvin:
That would start a civil war. Maybe not immediately a hot war (there are non-violent tools to be tried first), but in the terms of their own eliminationist rhetoric, they should realize, for example, that even the very thick bone of their skulls won’t stop a sniper’s bullet.
Suzanne
@Soprano2: The fact that right-wing Christians are mourning the loss of their social status tells us everything we need to know about them.
Matt McIrvin
(Some of the Jewish interpretation of the Hebrew Bible is kind of mind-blowing if you mostly know Christian takes on it: for instance, there’s a whole thread of argument that when Abraham tried to obey God’s order to sacrifice Isaac, he was failing a test.)
M31
@Matt McIrvin: and the Christian commentary on the Song of Songs “this shows Christ’s love of the Church”
uh, dude, that part is about lusting after boobs
(not that there’s anything wrong with that)
Bill Arnold
@Chief Oshkosh:
Mine too. Lost about 11K in deductions; my state income tax payments are now also taxed by the Feds. Also, charitable donations are no longer tax deductable for me and most others in New York State.
For large swaths of middle-middle/lower-upper-middle class Americans, the Trump Tax Cuts were a lie; were only cuts if you count negative cuts as cuts.
Josie
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
That’s an interesting interpretation, but I’m not buying it. Jesus followed it up by saying to love your enemies, to do good to those who hate you. He’s pretty much saying in those verses to return hate with love and kindness. That is the thing that is the hardest.
Ruckus
@Soprano2:
There are 3 large churches on the 1/2 mile block I live on. On normal Sundays there are maybe 10-12 cars at most in any of their 50-75 car parking lots. It’s been like this in SoCal for most of my adult life.
Citizen Alan
@Suzanne: A lot of these assholes, if circumstances forced them to move to a predominantly Islamic country, would convert within 6 months. And within 2 years, they would all have beards down to their waists and would be screaming that America is the great satan. The sole purpose of religion for them Is to obtain social status.
Gravenstone
Which do you think the markets (foreign and domestic) will freak out more over, a first time default on the debt or an actual coup d’etat?
Ken
Though if you polled them, you’d probably find that there’s a specific church (or denomination) that they don’t go to — except maybe on Christmas and Easter, and definitely when they need someone baptized, married, or buried.
It reminds me a bit of that scene in Catch-22 where the atheists Yossarian and Mrs. Scheisskopf are arguing about what kind of god they don’t believe in.
Gravenstone
@matt: He can always resign and go join john Boehner and Paul Ryan, wherever the hell they’ve slouched off to out of the mainstream.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Matt McIrvin:
That lines up with a lot of modern, secular ethics. Any modern story that has those elements (omnipotent godlike being) typically portrays that character as evil. The hero (Abraham) would refuse to sacrifice their son out of a father’s love
catclub
Itemize deductions every other year, about what I am doing.
strange visitor (from another planet)
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): i dunno if you call that a display of love.
refusing to kill your child because a voice, a plant or a talking dog called goliath told you to isn’t necessarily because you love your child but because you’re not a fucking madman (or madperson).
also amazing is how much so many christians are so into the old testament and hate the jews SO so much.
saying their monstrous beliefs comes out of a judeo-christian ethos when they’re doing the best to ignore our protestations that they’re getting our ethos and ethics all wrong all the while hating on us and our jew york city, our (((globalism))) and our fiendish grasp on hollywood and culture in general is pretty fucking amazing.
cognition meet dissonance.
Suzanne
@Citizen Alan:
Tyler Cowan says that all of our politics these days are about relative social status. I think he’s correct about this.
I know that I go on and on about how there is a large-scale push to drive women out of public life and back into the home, and other commenters are fantastic about pointing out that trans and LGB people are at terrible risk right now, and we all see the the use of force against Black and undocumented people. I just want to point out that all of this is part of a grander strategy, it is one narrative arc. It is an attempt to restore straight white men, ostensibly practicing Christians but who knows what’s in anyone’s heart, to a position of social and familial control and high status, to make society’s tastemakers and influencers reflect back their needs and desires.
Baud
@Suzanne:
I refuse to dance the polka.
Ruckus
@mrmoshpotato:
It’s hard to see which came first, the chicken or the shithead.
cain
@Matt McIrvin:
What is even more curious – apparently the entire planet has been damned except for this small part of modern day Israel. Hindus, Muslims, natives, asians across the globes have all been condemned to hellfire and brimstone this entire time.
Bill Arnold
@Josie:
Love thy neighbor as thyself – No exceptions.
Many Christians seem to be “learning” (and teaching) in their religious schools/indoctrination that it is “hate thy neighbor as thyself”.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Geminid: White privilege? (Depends on who you mean by “we”)
cain
Which is so weird because didn’t Jesus say that only through him salvation lies? Why the hell are you going back to that other book?
cain
@Matt McIrvin: You mean ‘woke Old Testament’ – that’s why they hate the Jews. They made it all woke now.
I’m generally a fan of Judaism and it’s general teachings.
lowtechcyclist
@cain:
Well, maybe salvation is only through Jesus, but for guidance on everything else, they go to Paul or the Old Testament. None of that hippy-dippy Jesus stuff. Too much paradox. “He who humbles himself will be exalted, and he who exalts himself will be humbled.” Sounds like Buddhism or something. Forget that crap!
cain
Anti-evangelism thread and no eversor? huh.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gravenstone: Exactly. Also, at that point, the coin or the 14th Amendment solutions move much higher on the options list. People need to take a few deep breaths.
The Moar You Know
@Bill Arnold: erm, that isn’t going to be how it goes, because one side has largely voluntarily disarmed and the other has all the latest and greatest small arms weaponry that can be bought anywhere on the planet.
They are perfectly safe and know it.
Old School
Taken4Granite
@Josie: I am roughly in this camp as well.
My late uncle, who could hardly be called politically enlightened (his views were pretty hard right), had no use for evangelicals even as early as the 1970s. He observed that the people who seemed to know all of the little rules for getting into heaven were the people least likely to go there.
Miss Bianca
@Old School: OMG. That’s all that this weary old world needs right now.
FEEL THE PENCE-MENTUM!
Not.
Baud
@Old School:
Lord of the Flies.
Geminid
@Gravenstone: Boehner is now a cannabis industry lobbyist. Ryan is laying low for now. I think he still has political ambitions, maybe intends a Prisidential run.
lowtechcyclist
@Ken:
Ah yes! “The God I don’t believe in is a good God, a just God, a merciful God. He’s not the mean and stupid God you make Him out to be.” – Lt. Scheisskopf’s wife
Taken4Granite
@lowtechcyclist: This is why I consider most of the self-declared Christians to not be Christian at all. Honest Christians do exist, but most of them don’t go out of their way to tell people that they are Christian; they prefer to let other people come to that conclusion. Fred Clark of Slacktivist is an example of somebody I would consider an honest Christian.
If you actually read the gospels you will find that Jesus was quite the liberal. It’s just inconvenient for most evangelicals to admit this.
sab
@cain: Christianists tend to forget that Jesus led his life as an observant jew.
rikyrah
@Suzanne:
You keep on going on and on.
You are indeed correct and you have to tell it,
or like my Late Aunt would say..
” The rocks will cry out.”
Miss Bianca
@Geminid:
Really? Does he open his pitches with “Back when I was Speaker of the House, I was doing bong hits for breakfast”?
lowtechcyclist
@sab:
I recall a number of times in the Gospels where Jesus is getting flak on account of the failure of his observance to measure up to others’ standards.
Speaking of those times, I wonder how evangelicals can read the Gospels and not realize they’re the Pharisees. Of course, that may be one more reason why they avoid the Gospels in favor of Paul’s epistles and the Old Testament.
strange visitor (from another planet)
@cain: that’s not why they hate us.
for two thousand years or so, we’ve seen what they’re offering.
for two thousand years, jews have collectively shrugged their shoulders and said, “meh. no thanks., we’re good.”
…and they can’t STAND that.
as we can see with the behavior of the right today. EVERYONE must acknowledge their greatness, everyone must kneel before them. everyone must SUBMIT.
but we won’t and we don’t, and that enrages them.
we pedestrians may assimilate, but we’re never gonna join their borg collective
eta- the chasids and other orthodox are most emphatically not woke. still hated by the goose-stepping goyim.
Citizen Alan
@Kay: The word significant in that poll question it is doing a lot of heavy lifting, I think. I can see people thinking that race can be a consideration for purposes of redressing past discrimination and diversity without thinking that it should be a determining factor that privileges all minority above white applicant with substantially better credentials. Notice that I said substantially better credentiais. Is not becky with the bad grades or whatever her name was.
trollhattan
@Bill Arnold: It absolutely and by design hammered New York and California residents. And because they dicked with the withholding schedules to make it APPEAR as if you were getting a bigger paycheck, if you don’t add quarterly tax payments you’ll get kicked with an underpayment penalty come tax time, i.e., even putting single and 0 dependents on the W-4 isn’t enough.
Matt McIrvin
@lowtechcyclist: That’s the whole thing that bugs me–US evangelicals tend to care more about Jesus as a substitutionary redemption token who died to save them than as a person who said stuff.
trollhattan
In which Dinesh D’Souza Declares D’Self D’Racist while not understanding meaning of “D’Virtually.”
https://twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1663235307808997379?cxt=HHwWhoC-vejs_5QuAAAA
Matt McIrvin
@The Moar You Know:
Except that by and large they’re complete fuckups about using these weapons, and would probably start shooting their own dicks off in a major conflict. We joke about an organization of liberals being like herding cats, and we’re less likely to have shooting skills, but I could see us at least taking the whole thing seriously instead of everyone having to be Rambo.
The Moar You Know
@cain: look harder
trollhattan
“Corporations are people, my friend.” Except when they’re not because who needs that mess? PG&E again slithers out of criminal charges. Dead people, however, remain dead.
Kay
Had a signature gatherer last night for Ohio’s reproductive rights ballot initiative. I chatted with her a bit- she said it was tough, she was getting some ‘mean” people but “that’s expected because we’re targeting Republicans too”. Lol. I laughed, because: Republicans/mean.
She said my neighborhood was ‘good”, which is interesting. My neighborhood is college educated moderate Republican, 65%.
japa21
@Kay:
Your neighborhood is where there truly are some moderate Republicans, a truly vanishing species. And moderate Republicans tend to be more liberal on social issues.
And yes, even moderate Republicans voted for Trump and would, for the most part vote for him again.
Matt McIrvin
@cain: That’s where all sorts of weird constructions like Limbo and the Harrowing of Hell come from, to try to make all of this slightly less absurd. Though evangelicals probably regard all that stuff as way too Catholic. John Calvin was agin it.
Kay
@japa21:
Yup. They always support school and library levies too. We have amazing turnout in this neighborhood- consistently exceeds 80% – so hopefully they’ll come out for reproductive rights.
Matt McIrvin
@strange visitor (from another planet): Some of Jack Chick’s tracts got revised when they realized that directly portraying the Pope as the Antichrist was getting them too much friction.
Citizen Alan
@Bill Arnold: Fred Clark at Slacktiivist used to talk at length about the contortions Real True Christians ™ had to go through to ignore Jesus’s clear commandments about how they should behave. Frex, Tim LaHaye, the author of the Left Behind series, took the position that the Beatitudes had no relevance for contemporary Christians because they described what things would be like in Heaven after the Rapture. Consequently, anyone who worked for peace (“Blessed are the peace-makers”) in this world was actually an agent of the Antichrist.
Citizen Alan
@The Moar You Know: If that is their feeling on the matter, they seriously underestimate how easy they’ve made it for liberals to arm ourselves the second we feel the need. Had J6 gone in Trump’s favor, I would have purchased my first firearm the next day.
M31
hahaha now I’m hearing it like that Mitchell and Webb skit “are we the baddies?”
Matt McIrvin
@Citizen Alan: Clark is great on this stuff. That’s “dispensationalism”, the whole idea that God literally changes the absolute laws of morality from time to time, and the hippy dippy liberal stuff is all not applicable to our current “dispensation”. The complicated mythology about the Rapture and the detailed schedule of the End Times is all tied up with it.
And actually deriving any of this from the Bible involves taking a bunch of disconnected verses from wildly disparate books and filtering them heavily through some 19th-century cranks’ secret decoder ring. They managed to convince a lot of secular writers that they’re Biblical literalists, but really they’re not.
Frankensteinbeck
@The Moar You Know:
Good gravy, no. They’re fucking terrified, which is why they have all those guns. They also are the kind of gun-hoarders they are because they’re paranoid and antisocial and cannot work together for more than five minutes. Their attempts to do anything disintegrate fast. No, I’m not scared of the 3% at all.
Oh, and they’re lazy fantasists. The percentage of them with the guts to actually do anything other than huddle in their homes holding their guns while dreaming of mowing down the Brown Horde is infinitesimal.
If there is a civil war in the US, the results will depend on what the military decides to do, not on what the 3% decide.
Roberto el oso
@kindness: the MSM’s treatment of Rep. Mace seems to hinge on her superficial normality. She can be witty, she appears to be able to laugh at herself occasionally, and on a handful of occasions she has been mildly critical of her fellow GOPers. But in the end, and certainly when push comes to shove, she shares the insane worldview of her colleagues. Unlike Elise Stefanik, where the opportunism and conscience-free ability to role-play whichever extremes of character give her the best shot at slippering up that greasy pole to the top of MAGA-land seem to come off her in palpable waves, Mace’s ambition is subtler
I see others have already replied with better takes than mine :)
Wapiti
@M31: Yeah, I don’t think anyone besides Mel Brooks could pull off a skit where two Pharisees on one corner of the temple are asking that question.
Jim, Foolish Literlist
Reporters on story say trump was having aides record his meetings at this time, but what intrigues me is that two of Meadows’ ghost writers were in the room. My fan-fiction-y hope is that Meadows is quietly feeding information the DoJ
also at some point, trump apparently says he wishes he could show his audience the documents
cain
@The Moar You Know: I reckon you refer to ‘visitor from another planet’ although they seem to be more of the Jewish persuasion than a former Christian and now atheist.
Matt McIrvin
@Frankensteinbeck: I do worry about the fraction of the military who are members of this group. I know it’s far from everyone, but there are a fair number of General Flynns in there.
And then there are the cops. Don’t know what we do if, say, the big cop unions decide to overthrow the United States government. Though I’m guessing they might be almost as hard to nationally organize as any wingnuts.
M31
CNN has Trump on tape in 2021 talking about holding on to classified docs
I snorted when I saw emptywheel tweet out “Lordy, there are tapes”
hahahahaha ticktock motherfuckers
insert Jack Smith SOON meme here
Old School
House expected to vote at 8:30 tonight blog time.
M31
@Wapiti: hahahaha yes, Mel Brooks would nail that (sic)
Wapiti
@Matt McIrvin: Had a young christianist working with me once, in the Middle East.
He opened with “Some say Mohamed was the Antichrist.”
Me: “Really? He’s been dead for about 1200 years, so if he was the Antichrist, we’re living well past whatever Revelations was talking about.”
Him: “I don’t think he was, but some people say that.”
Me: “Do you tell them they’re stupid when they say it?”
It was quiet for a while.
strange visitor (from another planet)
@Matt McIrvin: yup.
@The Moar You Know: if you think i’m anything like genocide-promoting, myopic eversor, boy did you miss my fucking point.
also, i missed the part where i said (with apologies to bender), “hey babe, wanna help kill all christians?”
Matt McIrvin
@Citizen Alan: I know some armed liberals, though, honestly, I think they’ve armed themselves for bad reasons–they’ve absorbed the right’s idea that guns will somehow be useful for self-defense in a mass-shooter or home-invasion situation, and that this outweighs the risks.
Still, I guess they’re building some of the skills.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Frankensteinbeck:
I once got into an argument online with a gun person after a knife attack in Japan. One of the reasons she cited for having AR-15s was overthrowing a tyrannical government. I pointed out that people with small arms would probably not stand up very well to modern armies.
She then asked me if I’d ever heard of Vietnam, by which I assumed she meant the Vietnam War. Her argument went that the Vietnamese were able to successfully resist the US Army, a more technologically advanced and well-resourced adversary via guerrilla war tactics. She figured this would map well to armed US citizens vs the contemporary US armed forces
I can’t remember how it ended, but I think I pointed out to her flying death robots (aka drones) didn’t exist in the Vietnam era (at least not like what they are today)
Geminid
@Old School: Sounds like ~35 Democrats voted “Aye,” ~177 voted “Nay.”
Ken
I just heard William Tallman say “Goes to knowledge of the criminality of the act, your honor.”
rikyrah
The Frank Luntz-approved language.
Her votes make her just as rotten and any other Republican.
They are DESPERATE for non-appearing lunatic Republicans.
They want them so bad so that they can continue their farce that the GOP is something other than a White Supremacist Fascist Party.
eclare
@Taken4Granite:
There is at least one passage in the New Testament where Jesus tells people to pray in secret, don’t make a public display. Just looked it up, part of Matthew 6:5-8.
rikyrah
@Matt McIrvin:
I do wonder who they think they’re going to come after in these Urban areas?
Chicago can’t be the hellscape that they pretend it is, and yet, will let yahoos overrun it?
Pick a side.
bbleh
@Frankensteinbeck: thank you for some very sensible comments I was too busy at the time to post.
Matt McIrvin
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): The people who are keenest on overthrowing a tyrannical US government with their AR-15s always seem to be on the side of actual tyranny when it pops up here. They’re imagining they’ll be standing with a vast majority against the evil elite when the time comes. I’m not so sure.
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: Two of my friends own firearms. They both are lesbians from working class backgrounds. They like to shoot, but their basic motivation is defense of themselves and their families.
Along with their wives, Debbie and Stephanie both raised biracial children (the children are grown up now). They do not encourage their children to own firearms, but they taught the kids firearms safety and how to shoot.
And they both own pickup trucks. A niche demographic.
bbleh
@Old School: kind of a done deal for several days IMO, but it’ll be interesting to see what — if anything — the Krayzee Kidz Kaucus does to show their displeasure at the outcome.
Baud
@Geminid:
Sounds like only the GOP cares about expanding SNAP.
Old School
@Geminid:
Yes, Democrats initially voted “Nay” and then switched their votes to allow the bill to pass.
Baud
@Old School:
Really? That’s interesting.
ETA: They couldn’t rely on McCarthy’s ability to count.
Old School
@Baud: Yep. They whipped against the bill.
Frankensteinbeck
@Old School: and @Baud:
Kabuki in politics generally annoys me, but it’s clear everyone has to twist themselves in knots to to pretend this bill is a Republican and not a Democratic bill. Fine, whatever, help the Republicans swallow their spoon full of castor oil so we can get the hostage out of the building.
Baud
@Frankensteinbeck:
Exactly.
Matt McIrvin
@Geminid: In cases like this, I both completely understand the reasoning, and remain a bit skeptical that the statistics work out in favor of being armed, any more than they do for some right-winger who’s worried about robbers and spree shooters. But when you know people are out to get you it does alter some of the terms.
Baud
A purple cow.
lowtechcyclist
@Citizen Alan:
I wonder if anyone asked him if he ever says the Lord’s Prayer, because “Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven” seems pretty clear to me.
@Matt McIrvin:
For some reason, that terminology always makes me think of a Pez dispenser. (Remember them?) But yeah, essentially entirely a human invention, for all their talk of inerrancy.
Geminid
@Frankensteinbeck: Democrats aren’t tying themselves in knots. Chief Whip Katherine Clark has a plan and she’s executing it. Clark, Jeffries and Aguilar intend for this bill to pass and they also intend to come out of this affair with a unified caucus. Unlike the Republicans.
Jim, Foolish Literlist
@Baud: somebody on twitter said a veto would’ve been overridden. DIdn’t dig in to check, myself
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literlist:
Even so, I don’t think the Dems have a supermajority in NV, so they must have GOP help.
Geminid
@lowtechcyclist: There’s some dispensationalism coming your way. I heard on WTOP that Maryland will allow state residents to fish this Saturday without a license. June 10 and July 4 will also be free fishing days. So grab a pole and bike on down to your local river!
Matt McIrvin
…The thing is, using guns to defend your home or your person requires that you handle them in a way that makes them vastly more dangerous to you and yours. They’ve got to be in your house or on your body, readily accessible in an instant. If you’re imagining a super-fast response, they have to be loaded. Some people walk around with a round chambered at all times.
All that makes it more likely that the gun is gonna kill or maim you, or someone in your family. You can do things to minimize that but the tradeoff is always there.
If the safety benefit of using the gun in self-defense rationally outweighs all of that, I’d guess the risk to you has to be super-high in the first place. And you have to be pretty sure of the mental stability of yourself and everyone with access to the gun, too.
eclare
@Geminid:
That is a very impressive leadership group!
Citizen Alan
@eclare: “And when thou prayest, do not be as hypocrites are, as they love to be seen praying on the streets and in the synogogues by others. Verily, I say unto you: they have their reward.” I post that every time someone posts some nonsense about bringing back prayer in school.
Roger Moore
@Suzanne:
What they mean is that Christians ran everything, so being a Christian was more or less mandatory for anyone in a position of real authority. Yeah, the occasional Jew could sneak in, but Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, etc. were effectively frozen out. It’s not so much that being a Christian was socially favored as that non-Christians were suppressed. That’s what they want to have back.
Of course the world they wish for wasn’t quite the way they imagine it was. Yes, Christians were favored, but not just any Christian. The real favored status was reserved for mainline Protestants. Kennedy had to promise not to let the Pope tell him what to do in order to have a chance, and evangelical and charismatic Christians were sneered at as a bunch of wacko snake handlers.
Frankensteinbeck
@Geminid:
I agree, and I suspect we are only having a misunderstanding based on wording. There is a public game of pretend going on, where Democrats want this bill to pass and are making damned sure it passes, while providing only the minimum number of votes to make that happen. Similarly, gloating to the media about how the Republicans got rolled and look like dumbasses has been minimal. My best guess to explain this performance is that Republicans are having a hard time holding their noses and voting for this, so Democrats are yelling “No, please don’t throw me in the briar patch!” so the Republicans won’t rebel.
Omnes Omnibus
@Roger Moore: To be fair, there are a lot wacko snake handlers among the wacko snake handlers.
Geminid
@eclare: I know I am impressed. They are relatively young, too. I think Clark is 59 years old, Jeffries 52, and Aguilar 43.
I believe Pete Aguilar was the youngest Mayor ever of Redlands, California before he ran for Congress in 2014 and flipped a red seat. Another Mayor Pete. Speaker Pelosi saw Aguilar’s talent, and she put him on the J6 Committee.
Geminid
@Frankensteinbeck: As someone said, this is like a Kabuki play.
Another way of looking at this exercise is that it’s the opening act of a play whose climax will be on Election Day, 2024.
Roger Moore
@Soprano2:
I think you need to put that participation in scare quotes. In a lot of places, the church served at least as many social purposes as religious ones. It was the place you would meet other members of your community, potentially including your future spouse. It was the place you went for weddings, funerals, and other important life milestones. And so forth. Practically everyone would be affiliated with a church so they could take advantage of the social functions.
A big part of what’s happened to churches is that our society has created a whole separate set of non-religious social spaces that accommodate people who don’t really care about religion. Instead of meeting your spouse at a church social, you meet them through a club or a dating app. When you want to get married, there are plenty of non-religious wedding venues that don’t necessarily have a religious figure carry out the ceremony. And so forth. People who a generation or two ago would have joined a church because it was just the normal thing to do can now fulfill those needs elsewhere and have drifted away. They may feel spiritual, but they don’t feel a need to be affiliated with a formal religious institution for its ancillary benefits.
lowtechcyclist
@Geminid:
My local river is the Chesapeake Bay, less than a mile from my house. But I wouldn’t know what to do with any fish I caught, so I’ll take a pass.
Besides, I’m getting my bike back from the shop tomorrow, and if the weather’s nice enough for fishing in the Bay on Saturday, it’ll be nice enough for cycling along the Bay. The back roads of northern Calvert and southern Anne Arundel await!
Matt McIrvin
@Roger Moore:
Still true if you want to be President. One thing that’s changed is that the Catholic/Protestant distinction doesn’t matter as much–Biden is the second Catholic President and this didn’t really receive a lot of notice aside from the occasional story about how he was a bad Catholic for not signing onto some right-wing culture war thing or other.
Roger Moore
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
A better example of how worthless small arms are in preventing tyranny is Iraq under Saddam. The place was armed to the teeth, with a large fraction of the population owning AKs. It didn’t stop Saddam from being a ruthless dictator who kept the population under his thumb.