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We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you don’t.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

This really is a full service blog.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

“That’s what the insurrection act is for!”

Chutkan laughs. Lauro sits back down.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Republicans in disarray!

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

“Cheese and Kraken paired together for the appetizer trial.”

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

You are here: Home / 2024 Elections / Cheap Knock-Offs (Open Thread)

Cheap Knock-Offs (Open Thread)

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Daily Beast editor Katie Baker wrote a snarky take-down of Ron DeSantis’s so-called “secret weapon,” his wife Casey, whom Baker calls “Walmart Melania.” That’s not really fair to Walmart. Casey DeSantis is a grubby flea market trinket angling for a Dollar General distribution deal at best.

The First Lady of Florida showed up on the campaign trail in Iowa this weekend wearing a ghastly black leather jacket—American flag on front, an alligator and the silhouette of her state on the back, with the sneering words, “Where Woke Goes to Die”—that brought to mind nothing so much as the racks of a Red State big-bin store where it would be retailing for $24.99.

Okay, that sounds about right. This part rings true too:

Jackie and JFK symbolized the opposite of vulgar pettiness—they embodied youth, energy, a commitment to moral progress in the struggle for Civil Rights, a country fresh with idealism. Not an America that was obsessed with banning books about male seahorses and rainbows, or nuking the latest Disney movie.

The smug sanctimony of Ron and Casey DeSantis reminds me of a semi-famous evangelical street preacher husband-and-wife team from back in the day: Brother Jed and Sister Cindy.

They practiced “confrontational evangelism,” haranguing university students on campuses nationwide, including at the University of Florida, where back in the late 1980s, Sister Cindy directed a jeering crowd’s attention to me as I innocently strolled past with a cigarette dangling from my lips. “I wonder what else she puts in her mouth,” she said. So rude! ;-)

Students would stop and listen to the pair because they said offensive things at high volume, really leaning into slut shaming and gay bashing. I doubt they had many converts to show for it. Basically, they were performative assholes for their knock-off Westboro Baptist deity and merch stream. Ron and Casey are performative assholes for political power and money.

While Mrs. DeSantis is failing at humanizing her grumpy lump of a husband on the campaign trail, so far, she lets her tacky outerwear and Twitter intern do the shit-talking part of the job. In that sense, she does seem Melania-like.

The third Mrs. Trump is undoubtedly a terrible person, but the few times she endorsed her horrid husband’s specific policies or hideous remarks publicly, the performances contained an element of duress, as if they were compelled via a contractual obligation to fulfill the terms of the latest pre-nup iteration.

So far, Mrs. DeSantis sticks to cloying descriptions of life with three small children in spoken remarks. She seems to lack Sister Cindy’s true-believer moxie, so I’m not sure what she’ll have left to peddle after Pudd’n Boots flames out (please FSM). Maybe she can take a turn as the designated wingnut on “The View.”

Open thread.

Reader Interactions

224Comments

  1. 1.

    JPL

    OT

    BREAKING: Trump’s lawyers just spotted by @CBSNews entering the Justice Department, per @RobLegare who is on site… comes as sources tell me the special counsel is moving toward a charging decision in the classified documents case

    this was posted by Robert Costa thirty minutes ago

  3. 3.

    Baud

    Via Reddit.

    DeSantis signs into law industry-backed bill allowing Florida landlords to charge ‘junk fees’ instead of security deposits

  5. 5.

    Scout211

    BC, thanks for the news about the local woman doing cosplay on the campaign trail. It’s so jarring for her to wear the southern belle gowns in public appearances and then quickly switch to a biker-girl getup.

    None of her outfits seem authentic. It always looks like she’s playing a role in costumes designed for other people. Hmmm. This dressing up in over-the-top costumes designed for other people . . . sounds vaguely familiar.  Isn’t that against the law in Florida?

  8. 8.

    JPL

    Robert Costa posted this

    Sources tell
    @CBSNews
    that Trump’s lawyers are expected to raise concerns about how prosecutors have handled atty-client questions during the grand jury but there is no sign the special counsel is going to waver from how he and his team have handled the crime-fraud exception…

     

    So how long will it take to indict trump after justice says thanks for coming in .. by

  9. 9.

    Betty Cracker

    @Baud: I had the same reaction when I read that. Jesus Fucking Christ, dudes!

    @raven: LOL, good for you! He died last year, but Sister Cindy is carrying on the tradition on TikTok, apparently. What a world, huh?

  12. 12.

    Tony Jay

    @raven:

    I read that as “offered to kick JEB’s ass” and frankly didn’t doubt the intention or the ability for one solitary second.

  14. 14.

    Alison Rose

    “I wonder what else she puts in her mouth,” she said.

    You should’ve responded, “Ask Brother Jed!”

    Also, Walmart Melania is good but nothing will top Tacky O for me, especially after seeing that hideous jacket.

  15. 15.

    Omnes Omnibus

    We had our version of those kooks. They used to pitch up in front of the main dining hall. They drew hecklers not converts.

  16. 16.

    Butch

    I think DeSantis and wife are going to join the ranks of “rising stars” such as Scott Walker, Tim Pawlenty, and Bobby Jindahl because those human costumes are going to become unbearably itchy.

  17. 17.

    sdhays

    Not directed at you, BC, because I know you get it, but one of the annoying (but far from the worst) things about the Trump era was how desperate people were to humanize the piece of shit that married him.

    Yes, the former Third Lady doesn’t particularly like Donnie boy, but that’s because she’s as much of a narcissistic shitbird as he is, and he can contractually (or whatever) “make” her do things she doesn’t want to do like give speeches. It isn’t because she disagrees with anything he says or does. At best, she doesn’t care. She never wanted to be the wife of a President. She wanted to be rich, admired, and left alone.

  19. 19.

    Jerzy Russian

    I saw Brother Jed sometime in the late 1980s while on grad school.  My initial thought was “Christ, what an asshole!”.  I had no idea he was something of a national “celebrity”.

  22. 22.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    Very sad story out of DC, which popped up in my YouTube feed.

    It starts with a plane flying through restricted airspace and not responding to air traffic control. So they scrambled the fighters, which caused a sonic boom over DC.

    It ended with the plane crashing in Staunton VA, which I believe is on the far side of the Shenandoah Forest. And they never did get a response from the pilot. There was an entire family aboard as passengers. Speculation is that the plane lost oxygen and pilot and passengers were all unconscious or already dead.

  23. 23.

    sdhays

    @Butch:

    “Our human children write on the walls with crayons, haha.”

    “Our three-year old human child is really the boss of the house, haha.”

    “Especially when its eyes glow red and it speaks in a voice directly from the depths of hell, haha.”

    “This only happens when our totally normal human family messes up the weekly virgin blood sacrifice, haha.”

  24. 24.

    Tenar Arha

    Maybe she can take a turn as the designated wingnut on “The View.”

    The funniest part of is if she did, she’d definitely have a better stylist, but they could maybe end up doing a Meghan McCain to her hair & it’d be just as ridiculous as the outfits.

  25. 25.

    trollhattan

    @JPL: ​How did they know it was Trump’s lawyers? Huge shoes and noses that beep when squeezed? Or wifebeaters and camo cargo pants?

  27. 27.

    TheOtherHank

    Brother Jed and Sister Cindy used to harangue people outside the UCSB library back in the 80s. They were an entertaining break from studying. I always got the impression that they really got off on public humiliation. I guess if you can get people to foot the bill so you can indulge your kink, you’ve found the perfect job.

  28. 28.

    EthylEster

    Maybe I encountered this guy on the Plaza of the Americas decades ago at UF. There used to be a regular youngish haranguer there like this but I left in 1978 so maybe it was someone else.

  30. 30.

    Frankensteinbeck

    When you see Ron and Casey together, and especially when you hear her talk, it is abundantly clear that she is the completely dominant partner in their relationship, and she is running for president under his name.  That is neither a partnership, nor a happy marriage.  Conservatives are deeply repelled by women who make decisions for men.

    “I wonder what else she puts in her mouth,” she said. So rude! ;-)

    I suddenly remember some print comedian saying that he never understood why a certain slur was an insult, when he would never marry someone who wasn’t one.

    @sdhays:

    the former Third Lady doesn’t particularly like Donnie boy, but that’s because she’s as much of a narcissistic shitbird as he is

    Yeah, seriously.  I entirely support sex work.  There are many, many people who do jobs a Hell of a lot worse than sleeping with someone nightly for way less than one percent of what a trophy wife makes.  Good for anyone who can get that job.

    Melania is vile because she decided that once she had the job she was free to be as entitled an asshole as her husband and spit on everyone below her.  The woman is slime.

  31. 31.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Omnes Omnibus: I remember once being at a downtown bus stop when some street corner preacher started haranguing the captive audience. His volume was deafening, no artificial amplification, causing me to murmur to the guy next to me, “I wonder how he can keep going so loudly?”

    At which point that guy said, “GAWD GRANTS HIM THE POWER!” and also started haranguing me.

    I decided I’d go to another bus stop that day.

    That was also the era when people were handing out Chick Tracts at bus stops. I’ll bet older jackals remember those.

  33. 33.

    Math Guy

    My gosh,you remember Brother Jed and Disco Cindy! I first encountered them as an undergraduate, then saw them again as a graduate student getting my M.Sc., and – after working for a few years – saw them again when I went back to school for my Ph.D.. I think Jed was getting ready to retire by then. After my initial outrage, I realized that creating outrage was their schtick; Jed was trolling in the 70’s before trolling was cool.

  34. 34.

    NotMax

    @Omnes Omnibus

    Well, they’re no Tachmonites. (Extended blockquote but no link because the Westboro adherents vigorously scrub the web of past citations.)

    ”’WBC Epics”’ are a series of stories and poems written by members of Westboro Baptist Church as a loose “gospel” to document their activities and opinions. Their rationale is that they believe their leader, Fred Phelps, is the last Prophet, and that they, as members of the group and follows of Phelps, are the last group of “chosen people” to go to Heaven. The stories and poems (which portray the members of the cult as superheroes) are descriptions of members of Westboro stalking, harassing, assaulting, ridiculing, and mocking various public officials, celebrities, and above all, murder victims and funeral mourners (whom they describe themselves laughing at and condemning to Hell). ”

    ‘WBC Letters to Heretics”’ (meant to emulate Paul of Tarsus’ letters to the Corinthians), are “hate letters,” in which members of Westboro mock, insult, and declare their superiority to assorted anonymous individuals to whom the letters are addressed. There is no one author of these writings; they have been written by Phelps’ grandchildren, children, in-laws, and other members of the group; nor are the works of the various authors grouped in any kind of order. Rather, the poems and prose are arranged chronologically according to what the group refers to as “Epics.”

    The Epics consist of specific incidents of church members publicly picketing, harassing groups of people, etc. The Letters to Heretics are all written anonymously and also grouped according to date. Even though the church explicitly states that only members of Westboro “have any chance” of entering Heaven, and that everyone else is “irreversibly bound for Hell,” the gospel is still intended for “the entire world.” Members of Westboro claim two reasons for this: 1) They believe, “foolishly,” that they might “turn” someone to their cause 2) They want to cause the world to hate them, thereby “worsening” the world’s damnation.

    Though these are Westboro’s stated motives, it is widely held that their actual motives are: 1) To preserve their own history and bolster themselves as being on par with the Biblical prophets and original gospel scribes 2) Cause the reader to experience feelings of pain, suffering, anger, and hatred, thereby validating the Westboro crusade

    In the prose and poetry work, the members of Westboro portray themselves as superheroes called “The Tachmonites,” named after a servant of King David. (In her slang-filled “Epic” entry, Abigal Phelps referred to herself as a “Tishbite.” The Tachmonites “powers” are:
    * They are always right about matters or theology
    * They are incapable of committing sin
    * They possess superior intellect to everyone else in the world *
    They are directly supported in their adventures by God
    * No one can ever win an argument with them, make them look foolish, prove them wrong about anything, or defeat them in any way.
    .
    Most of the prose works begin as short stories. Invariably, the narrative is interrupted with non-sequitur insults to various groups or individuals, lists of Biblical quotes and recitations of scripture, and boasting about the greatness of the author and/or Westboro. An example of a typical paragraph from a prose epic: ”The Lutherans were the first to learn of their damnation. The quiet, tree-lined street came alive with the sounds of beautiful hymnal music … and preaching. Charles cried against the alter [sic] of Baal, reminding them that “Martin Luther had 95 theses … not a bucket of feces”… Abi, Luci, Kay, and Lizz turned from their singing and tattooed the Jezebellian bitches until they retreated to lick their wounds. Many of the whores, it turned out, were catholic rentals who came to stand in solidarity with the Lutherans. No surprise there – we told them – since the Lutherans are in second place (behind the Catholics) in the money being paid for molesting little boys.”

    When reporting incidents in which the Tachmonites are physically attacked, the tone abruptly shifts, depicting the powerful Tachmonites as having suddenly become weak and defenseless, incapable of protecting themselves against attackers who are invariably referred to as “faggots.” They must rely upon police officers or “Good Samaritans” to help protect them from their aggressors. The aggressors are summarily condemned to Hell, whilst any police officers or intervening civilians are automatically deemed to be “eligible” to receive a reward from God in the future (though this is in direct contradiction to their stance that only they are in God’s favor). Those who ignore the Tachmonites’ cries for help are irreversibly damned to Hell without hope of ever redeeming themselves. The Tachmonites frequently voice their negative views on a variety of social topics ranging from popular culture to current events (one author likens listening to Elton John music to literally having human feces rubbed in one’s ears, because John is a homosexual). These insights are presented as having greater intellectual validity than alternate opinions, as well as possessing superior wit. Each view stated inevitably paraphrases the exact same WBC principle: “God hates fags and fag enablers.”

    The authors portray themselves as in perpetually good spirits, especially when mocking funeral mourners, stalking their enemies around a city, ridiculing the dead, and condemning others to Hell. The Writings repeatedly state that WBC members are incapable of ever experiencing negative emotions. According to their Writings, the “leisure activities” of members include miming physical assaults, engaging in name-calling, and screaming obscenities.

    The Letters to Heretics are supposedly letters written in response to people who have written into the website [link redacted] The tone of the letters is decidedly passive aggressive; the original letter writer is always reduced to an anonymous, insulting pseudonym such as “Vulgar Suzy” or “Dumb Dick.” (The author of one letter maintains that Suzy is a “stupid name.” Whereas the author always begins by thanking the author of the original letter for taking the time to write and uses proper salutation, the letters quickly degenerate into extended insults, condemning the original author, pronouncing the infallibility of members of Westboro, and further solidifying the group’s positions. Several letters end with the admonition, “You’re going to Hell. Have a nice day.”

    The letters are all written anonymously, save for a handful signed “Magormisabib.” While in the Old Testament this is what God renames a king as a symbol of his damnation, the authors of the letters use it as a Curse. Some are letters under the heading “Dear Margie” (Margie Phelps, Fred’s daughter) and others under the title “Dear Shirley” (Shirley Phelps-Roper).

  35. 35.

    scav

    Poorly animated, cheap knock-off script and cut-rate costuming & design. Direct to video campaigning.  Presumably it brings in enough to pay the bills for the on-screen “talent” but it’s depressing to observe how little the big money backers think will capture the American voting public’s attention and how right they seem to be, certainly from the closely allied media’s curated perspective.  Proofs in the voting booth.

  36. 36.

    Dr. Jakyll and Miss Deride

    @Jerzy Russian: We have some local versions of those creeps.  One used to march around downtown blaring his hate through a bullhorn.  (I never understood how he wasn’t in violation of the noise ordinance.). Another liked to post himself alongside the course of the local marathon, because what could make struggling runners 15 miles along happier than to have somebody bellowing in their ears about how they’re all going to hell?  But I never knew this was called “confrontational evangelism.”

  37. 37.

    MattF

    One of these days we’re going to see the Donny and Melania pre-fucktual agreement. It will be ugly, I predict.

  38. 38.

    trollhattan

    @Frankensteinbeck: She didn’t correct him on the “Thigh food” test so winner, winner, chickenshit dinner!

    Camera likes her better than Meatball, and in 2023 that’s most of what matters.

    I’ll give my attention to this weird pair only with Trump in prison. He’s just an asshole stuck in Florida, ruining one state only, in the meantime. Sideshow Bob without a show.

  39. 39.

    Michael Bersin

    After weeks of needless distractions, after all of the whining bigots, and after all of the meetings the Warrensburg Pride Festival took place without incident on Saturday.

    I took over 800 frames of stills. Some with a full frame camera with a 70-200 mm lens and a 2X extender, some taken with a smaller camera with an 18-55 mm lens. Both setups get the big picture. They also capture details which add to the story.

    Interestingly, with details it’s easy enough to tell who is who.

    The Devil is in the details

  41. 41.

    marklar

    @Alison Rose: “Sister Cindy directed a jeering crowd’s attention to me as I innocently strolled past with a cigarette dangling from my lips. “I wonder what else she puts in her mouth,” she said. ”

    Alison, you beat me to it, but I’d have been more vulgar….”Your husband’s dick left me a bit disappointed last night.”  And since I’m gendered male, that ups the ante on her hate.

  44. 44.

    Michael Bersin

    @Math Guy:

    In the 70s or 80s a local bar owner showed up in a black limo on the Mall at the University of Arizona to troll Jed. It was epic and drew a very large crowd. If I remember correctly, the goateed bar owner, with his golden topped (with his own bust) walking stick, stated in his opening salvo, “I am the devil.” The crowd howled and it was downhill from there.

    I found it interesting that Jed spent his winters on campuses in the Southwest.

  47. 47.

    Ruckus

    @Scout211:

    It does sound death santa ish though. His entire premise is that you should vote for him because argle, bargle, whatever. IOW he’s all costume and bullshit. His wife plays the same role. There’s no one home is the way we used to say it, the entire persona is made up and has all the substance of dog shit on the front lawn from one of the neighbor’s pets that got out and left them a message.

  48. 48.

    different-church-lady

    @Baud: Of course it fuckin does. This isn’t about children, it’s about boots stomping on human faces forever.

  49. 49.

    AliceBlue

    Years ago, there was a street preacher in midtown Atlanta who only yelled at women wearing pants.  If you were wearing pants and had short hair the volume of the screeching went up considerably.

  50. 50.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Walmart Melania is trending, and you know she knows that, and it makes her mad

    I too prefer Tacky O, the suggestion that Melanie wasn’t tacky and crass is off

  51. 51.

    different-church-lady

    “Where woke goes to die” is all but admitting you’ll be bringing back lynching at the first opportunity.

  52. 52.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @JPL: I’m kind of impressed / amused at how secretive all of these (and I guess all other) legal proceedings have been, and how reporting is pieced together from the few tiny clues available, like what appears in the public court docket and who enters the courthouse.

    It’s like the old Kremlinology game of trying to figure out the power dynamics inside the Kremlin based on who appeared in photographs.

    I’ve had various levels of security clearance at times in my career, but by far the most secretive thing I ever did was unclassified, but was secret for legal reasons. I was on the selection board for a major defense contract. We met in a tightly-controlled area inside a military base, a base within a base, and I wasn’t allowed to tell any of my colleagues where I was working or on what. “How would you like to be called as a witness in a lawsuit” was enough to keep my mouth shut if I wasn’t already sufficiently respectful of secrecy rules.

  53. 53.

    JCJ

    Brother Jed sure got around.  I remember him at Purdue (’79 – ’84) and Indiana (’85 – ’87)

  54. 54.

    peter

    @Betty Cracker: I have a Jed story from the UW-Madison, ca. 1980. Jed was preaching on the Library Mall and began railing against the evils of weed (the aroma of which couldn’t be missed). One of the crowd yelled, “What’s wrong with it, Jed? God created it, didn’t he?” Without missing a beat, Jed shot back, “Yeah, and he made poison ivy too, sinner. Do you roll in it?”

  55. 55.

    Ruckus

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:

    This is not directed at you, just a story about modern life. Your link to a Y Tube video brings up a modern bit of life that really, really rubs me the wrong way.

    Every Y Tube now shows on my computer with an ad in front of the actual video. When this started you could clear it, now you can’t. So Y Tube is now far worse than useless, it is fucked up. If I wanted to see ads I’d watch commercial TV.

  56. 56.

    Joey Maloney

    @raven: Brother Jed had a partner in crime, Brother Max. One fine fall afternoon, high as a kite and armed with supplies pinched from my work-study job in the student union cafeteria, I gave Max a lovely whipped cream pie in the kisser, stopping him mid-rant.

  57. 57.

    trollhattan

    @NotMax: Anybody watching “Shiny, Happy People”?

    The inside scoop on the Duggars is predictably deeply disturbing (mom and Mother Pence, basically the same person except one is a guppy) but just an entree into their horrifying chosen cult: Institute of Basic Life Principles and its Ron Hubbard: Bill Gothard, who would like your chaste daughter to come “work” for him.

    Just, wow. And screw TLC for normalizing these lunatics like NBC did Trump.

  61. 61.

    dmsilev

    At a previous employer, we once had the Westboro Baptist loons protesting something, I forget what. They marched right past Fraternity Row, and were greeted by a whole bunch of frat boys wearing drag and songs like “It’s Raining Men” blaring from the stereos. Caused me to take back at least a little bit of the nasty opinions I have of the frat system.

  62. 62.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Ruckus: Weird. I usually get a “skip ad” link after 5 seconds.

    I’m kind of fascinated that so many content creators are like television from the 50s and early 60s, with the TV hosts also doing the advertising. I find those long spiels much more annoying that the ads that I can skip, so I use the arrow keys (right arrow on my Mac keyboard skips 5 seconds at a time).

    I had this clear memory from my childhood of Jethro Clampett from the Beverly Hillbillies regularly eating a huge bowl of Corn Flakes. I only realized on finding a video of that fairly recently that that was actually an advertisement that aired during the show, not part of the show itself.

  63. 63.

    Betty Cracker

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Also Team Tacky O. Trending you say? Hmm, seems like that would catch the attention of The Beast. Maybe we’ll get an early chance to see if DeSantis fails the Ted Cruz test…

  66. 66.

    Alison Rose

    @Ruckus: Sometimes it’s more than one ad in a row. I’ve also gotten annoyed that you can’t even watch a short video, like 2-3 minutes, without a damn ad. I’d rather have more ads on the page and not have the videos interrupted.

  67. 67.

    siddhartha

    OMG! I think this is the same Brother Jed who harangued my students on our campus in Indiana. I think he passed away. (Unless they’re ALL called Brother Jed ha ha.)

  68. 68.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @FelonyGovt:

    Too weak to fight back against Trump, with his numbers plunging DeSantis is going to punch down harder to try to win the base – and because he’s a mean, twisted fuck who is enjoying it.  I wince saying that, because people are already hurting and he has a lot of time to keep upping the ante.

  70. 70.

    Betty Cracker

    @FelonyGovt: I don’t understand how it’s legal for Florida officials to use state tax dollars to lure migrants in other states onto planes under false pretenses to dump them in a third state. 

  71. 71.

    OverTwistWillie

    Those GOP pols at ride events look like dorks on rent-a-dressers with the full H-D merch experience.

    Casey would never shop Walmart, she’s more like self as off-brand fashion doll. I suspect the issue is she fancies herself crafty with the patterns and sewing machines and such, and she is just not.

  73. 73.

    Roger Moore

    @TheOtherHank:

    They were an entertaining break from studying. I always got the impression that they really got off on public humiliation.

    Not humiliation per se, but public opposition.  It really gets back to what Jesus said in the homilies (Matthew 5:10-11):

    10 Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

    11 Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.

    They desperately want to be persecuted because it proves to them they’re doing as Jesus commanded.  If they aren’t being genuinely persecuted, they’ll keep acting more and more outrageous until someone starts complaining and then claim they’re being persecuted.

  76. 76.

    Amir Khalid

    @different-church-lady:

    Does Casey DeSantis have the shoe collection to match? Incidentally, Imelda’s son is the current President of the Philippines — Ferdinand “Bong Bong” Marcos Jr. (Yes, that really is his nickname.)

  77. 77.

    Quinerly

    Tax breaks for embryos.

    From Rolling Stone:

    LRB-2486 would allow parents to claim an exemption on their tax returns for “unborn children for whom a fetal heartbeat has been detected.” Co-sponsor Rep. Donna Rozar made the proposal’s intent crystal clear: The bill, she said, “recognizes an unborn child as a distinct human being prior to birth by allowing the child to be claimed as a dependent.” The point isn’t to support Wisconsin families — the point is to change the definition of when life begins as part of an effort to enshrine in Wisconsin law the dangerous and dehumanizing concept of “fetal personhood.”
    It’s all part of an effort to extend Constitutional rights to fertilized eggs — a legal theory that simultaneously revokes the rights of the individuals carrying those pregnancies.
    https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/abortion-rights-embryos-tax-breaks-wisconsin-1234747167/

  81. 81.

    Steeplejack

    Someone please refresh my memory, but I can’t ever remember hearing a governor’s wife referred to as the “First Lady” of a state. Not even Lurleen Wallace. (There’s a name I haven’t thought of in decades!)

  82. 82.

    JaySinWA

    @different-church-lady:

    “Where woke goes to die” is all but admitting you’ll be bringing back lynching at the first opportunity.

    Seems more like a “we will let the gators get ’em” form of the leopard eating faces fallacy. With some local assistance, naturally. With lynching, you have evidence with the physical body to instill terror. The mythical leopards presumably leave the faceless victim. I thought that gators hid their kils.

  84. 84.

    Betsy

    Just google “candidate wife secret weapon” for dozens of news pieces with this same disappointingly archaic characterization of women.

    Women as the emotional caretakers and supporters of inarticulate, low-EQ men

    Women as props

    Women as backfill for men’s shortcomings

    Women as men’s auxiliaries

    Women as compensators

    Women, as we all know, are there to “humanize” men and make them “relatable”

    Men are allowed to be emotionally incompetent and awkward

    Men are allowed to be dull and insensitive

    Men get helpers – wives, secretaries, housekeepers, administrators, assistants, deputies

    Women get to be their helpers

    (corollary: the obligatory shot of the male candidate apologizing publicly for his adulterous behavior, as his wife stands barely grimacing and miserably “supporting” him on the stage) (honey if mine ever did such a thing he’d better believe he’d be up there apologizing by his alone damn self)

     

    This just sucks.  And every decade that goes by where I see dozens more  news pieces presenting this awkward, archaic, and clichéd “secret weapon” stupidity makes me more depressed about women’s rights and roles than ever.

  86. 86.

    smith

    @Betty Cracker: FL officials have been doing a lot of things that on the face of it appear to me ( a non-lawyer) to be wildly illegal. It’s almost as if the only part of the Bill of Rights that’s operative down there is a small part of the Second Amendment. I am hoping and assuming there is a tsunami of lawsuits bearing down on Puddin Boots.

  88. 88.

    Geminid

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: Reports are that the jet crashed a couple of ridges north of the Blue Ridge Parkway, about 15 miles east of Staunton and about 25 miles west of Charlottesville. Kind of a fortunate place, totally unpopulated.

  89. 89.

    Alison Rose

    @FelonyGovt: Doesn’t surprise me in the least. And of course they think sending them to Newsom’s front door is some kind of gotcha, like all of us in CA are gonna freak out and be like ACK DEPORT!!! No, he’s going to help them because he’s a human being with a soul, as are most of us here, unlike Puddin’ Pop and Greg Asshat.

  92. 92.

    cain

    As usual, the right likes to take the symbols of liberalism and turn them into their symbols. They do the same to MLK Jr. Project the shit out of everything. They have no ideas, there is no shining figure that they can hold up – except of course, Reagan. Who as far as I can tell is not a great man.

  97. 97.

    Jeffro

    Btw Pence has officially filed his 2024 paperwork – HE’S IN, PEOPLE!!!

    This is like if Carter decided to run again in ’84 AND Mondale was like, “Carter sucks, I’m your guy!”

    Or…it’s like if Bush Sr. decided to run again in ’96 AND Quayle was like, “Bush sucks, I’m your guy!”

    I’m sure our national snooze media will take the time to point out to their viewers/readers how extremely unusual this is.  And that’s even before we get to the “hang Pence!/hang Mondale!/hang Quayle!” comparisons.

  98. 98.

    Mike in NC

    One the one hand some pundits are claiming DeSaster is quickly starting to overtake Fat Bastard among Florida Republicans, but he’s still going to step onto the national stage as just another Sweaty Dixie Redneck.

  102. 102.

    Jeffro

    @Baud: LOL

    I get that name recognition is a thing, but in what universe do trump and DeSantis supporters (what’s that, a combined 80%+ of the GOP primary electorate?) suddenly go, “you know…that Pence guy…he just sorta…moves me?  You know what I mean?  Really moves me to choose him instead.”

    I mean you could believe in an infinite number of possible universes, and it’s still just about impossible to picture that one.

    ETA: to include a universe where trumpov’s many indictments include one for inciting insurrection on J6 and render him ineligible for federal office AND Rhonda’s plane also goes down in the Gulf.  Pence STILL wouldn’t be GOP primary voters’ #1 choice.

  103. 103.

    Amir Khalid

    @Steeplejack:

    We had a Prime Minister’s wife (Najib’s wife Rosmah, of course) here who claimed the unheard-of title of First Lady of Malaysia. Silly me, I always thought the First Lady of Malaysia was Her Majesty the Permaisuri Agong, the Agong’s consort.

  109. 109.

    Jeffro

    Also – BREAKING NEWS (gong! thanks Fox!):

    • Chris Sununu: not running
    • Cornel West: running

    Standards, people – we need higher standards and requirements for federal offices, I’m tellin’ ya…

  111. 111.

    Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg

    Sister Cindy, the self-described “Disco Queen”, shouting about the “Lake. Of. FIIIIIIIIRRRRRRE!” while we jingled keys at her.

    And how Jed Smock would get worked up to the point where his lip would tremble. There was some trigger where we’d throw pennies at him. I missed many a class just to go heckle the prick.

    Glad to see that many of us had the same experiences with those assholes.

  112. 112.

    sdhays

    @Amir Khalid: Mike Dense is delusional if he aspires to Jeb! levels of relevance.

    I wonder if he’ll achieve the Lindsey Graham threshold of support this round.

  116. 116.

    Quinerly

    @Steeplejack:

    I’m so old that I can remember when Lurleen was actually governor. All this Wallace talk has made me now Google Cornelia. I was trying to remember what tourist attraction her first husband had owned….Cypress Gardens!

    And Angelina Jolie played her in a movie…totally forgot this.

  117. 117.

    Roger Moore

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:

    The weird thing about Imelda and the shoes is that shoe collections are now a thing.  You read about people who have hundreds or even thousands of pairs of collectable sneakers and need whole closets devoted to nothing but their collection.  What seemed like unimaginable excess in the 1980s is now just a weird hobby.

    Of course the shoes were just the most visible form of excess.  The Marcos family stole tens or hundreds of billions of dollars from the Philippines, and they had numerous mansions, jewels, and other obviously ill-gotten gains.  I have no idea why the shoes became such a flashpoint when there were so many worse things.

  120. 120.

    Binky

    Jed and Cindy are still going, alas. Word around Gainesville was he converted her at the Krystal burger.

  122. 122.

    Alison Rose

    @raven: One of my faves, even if I never want to set a queer foot in Tennessee in reality.

    (Although when I sing along, even I cringe at my painful attempts to hit the high note in the chorus. But as John said once, even Jerry couldn’t hit it half the time.)

  125. 125.

    A Man for All Seaonings (formerly Geeno)

    So far, “Tacky O” is my favorite nickname for Mrs. DeSantis.

  127. 127.

    ARoomWithAMoose

    @smith: One issue with class actions as a response has been the state courts here have leaned pretty heavily on dismissing those types of civil cases on basis of standing (no apparent harm, investigation of the complaint is the responsibility of an existing gov’t agency).  The state level machinery has been pretty thoroughly subverted by the GOP holding the Gov office since ’98 and most statewide elective positions for about as long.  The federal courts have refused hearing the same cases based on jurisdictional limits.

    The shell game with funding the “Texas” deportations to “blue cities” is it not only gets DeRon’s name out there nationally as a bully who hates the same people you do, it allows them to get around the Sunshine Laws, the entire trail of electronic communications (for the contractors too) and money xfers would be public record if it was local to Florida.

  129. 129.

    AnnaN

    Ah yes.  Crossing the Quad at the U of MN with my head stuck in a book.  Suddenly aware of someone yelling at me “Yes, you!  You are going to HELL!”  I couldn’t stop laughing and thought it was theater students.  Learned later it was Brother Jed.  I didn’t come in contact with Sister Cindy as she was off to the side accosting a couple of male students.

  131. 131.

    The Thin Black Duke

    @Alison Rose: Those checks coming in to support his campaign aren’t going to cash themselves. If it fucks over Biden, that’s a bonus.

  132. 132.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @Baud: The headline is a bit misleading, since I doubt too many trans people in Florida were unaware that the effective ban on adult trans healthcare was coming, they just hoping against hope that it wouldn’t. But otherwise the article is good — and finally the MSM seems to be catching on DeSantis’ trans genocide.

    In addition to the other anti-trans laws, this one clearly is intended for forcibly de-transition trans people, drive them out of the state, or drive them to suicide because life is so unbearable. I doubt DeSantis gives a shit about which one, but many of the Christofascists are definitely hoping for the last.

  133. 133.

    Amir Khalid

    My YouTube home page is now littered with videos of the couple from the 1990s TV show Bones, which starred Zoe Deschanel’s big sister Emily and David Boreanaz, the big lunk from Buffy The Vampire Slayer, as a blatant imitation of Scully and Mulder from The X-Files. I watched some of it, and it was painfully mediocre. The writing is clichéd, the lead couple have negligible chemistry, and I’m amazed that it was popular back in the day.

    There, I’ve finished venting.

  134. 134.

    Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg

    @AnnaN: I did notice a couple of times that Bro Jed came within a hair of getting his teeth knocked down his throat by large 19-21 year old jocks angry about their girlfriends being insulted for walking by.

    In retrospect, someone probably should have beaten him into a coma,  pour encourager les autres.

  136. 136.

    Stacy

    @trollhattan: Yep. People Magazine and The Today show did a lot to help Jim Bob and whatshername normalize the Quiverfull movement. People Mag still promotes the Bates family, which also had a show, and some of them were J6 participants. Many are social media influencers now and according to People are an all-American family.

  138. 138.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @Betty Cracker:

    I don’t understand how it’s legal for Florida officials to use state tax dollars to lure migrants in other states onto planes under false pretenses to dump them in a third state. 

    I don’t either. But CA governor and our AG have made it clear they don’t play. Investigations have already started, and they’ve made it clear there will be changes if there’s provable criminal activity, e.g. human trafficking.

  140. 140.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @Quinerly: Sadly not far from the truth. I poked my head into my local Target (in the SF Bay Area), and there was a single shelf/rack display at the front of the store. If there were any other items, I sure as hell couldn’t find them.

  145. 145.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @trollhattan:

    Anybody watching “Shiny, Happy People”?

    That title gives me pleasant flashbacks to the 90s, when me and REM and Kate Pierson and the world were all younger, shinier and at least in my case, happier. I hate that the gave it to the fukcing Duggars

  146. 146.

    Ksmiami

    @trollhattan: it’s like all those billboards in the Bible Belt reminding men that their daughters aren’t their wives…. I just wish the thumpers could mind their own fucking business. Such sick, dumb, unhappy and angry ppl

  147. 147.

    JoyceH

    When someone is ranting against ‘wokeism’, I do wish someone would ask them, “Show me a specific person who’s been harmed by wokeism, explain what the harm is, and how many people experience this harm.” Geez, with gun violence, a gun control advocate can bring the receipts! Number one cause of death of children! Hundreds of pictures of cherubic victims, now moldering in the grave. So for woke warriors – WHERE IS THE HARM?

  148. 148.

    Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony

    @Roger Moore: That makes a lot of sense. I found nothing unhinged aggressive Evangelicals like polite indifference. They really lose it if you say something like, ‘No thanks. I’ve heard all that before. I’m not interested.’

  149. 149.

    Scout211

    @Amir Khalid: The writing is clichéd, the lead couple have negligible chemistry, and I’m amazed that it was popular back in the day.

    The TV series was based on the book series by Kathy Reichs, so it already had a following when it was first aired.  The main character, Dr. Temperance Brennan was on the autism spectrum (formerly Asperger’s) and the way that Emily Deschanel played the character may have contributed to the lack of chemistry between the eventual love interest with the detective character played by Boreanaz.

    I watched a few episodes in re-runs and found it to be occasionally watchable, but the last couple of seasons were very, very strange so I get your reference to the X-files.

    I did not know that Emily and Zooey Deschanel were sisters.  I learned something new today. Cool.

  152. 152.

    Jay

    @Scout211:

    like many shows of the day, and still today, they mixed single episodes with serials, and the “squints” over time, became major roles.

    It was never “serious”, reminds me of “Eureka”,…..

    It’s one of those shows, like “Northern Exposure”, you kinda half to watch start to finish.

  153. 153.

    tokyokie

    We didn’t have Brother Jed, but we had our own street preachers during the early ’70s at the University of Oklahoma. Then one day, a guy who called himself “the Left Rev. Anal Roberts” and a couple of sidekicks, including a woman dubbed “Mother Inferior” started performing skits ridiculing the street preachers alongside them. And Anal started drawing progressively larger crowds, and though the street preachers railed against the performers and the audience, the audience literally turned their backs to the preachers. And then one day, the street preachers moved on. They thrived on feelings of persecution when people disagreed with them, but they couldn’t abide being irrelevant, so they slinked off, no doubt to annoy students elsewhere.

  156. 156.

    Geminid

    @Sister Golden Bear: There is also a lawsuit on behalf of the Martha’s Vineyard migrants and against DeSantis and other Florida officials. It’s filed in Massachusett, I think in federal court. DeSantis is trying to get it moved from Massachusetts to Florida. His lawyers says defending himself 1300 miles from home would be an undue burden.

    And last I read, the Bexar County,  Texas DA is considering criminal charges in the matter. DeSantis is not a target, just the people who helped hoodwink the migrants in San Antonio. That would include DeSantis’s head of public safety. A county deputy saw the guy at the airport, helping load the migrants.

  157. 157.

    Roger Moore

    @Jeffro:

    With Republican candidates, it’s always good to consider grift as a possible explanation.  Sure, Pence has negligible chance to win the nomination and not much chance of winning the election if he is nominated, but he can still probably get people to donate a bunch of money to his campaign just in case.  A fair bit of that money can presumably wind up in his and his friends’ pockets, and no Republican in good standing can pass up an opportunity like that!

  158. 158.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Baud: this Cornel West? (WSJ paywall no link)

    DeSantis’s Revolutionary Defense of the Classics

    Promoting the Western canon shouldn’t only be a Republican talking point.

    By Cornel West and Jeremy Wayne Tate

    May 12, 2023 at 5:38 pm ET

     cause that’s what De Santis is doing

  160. 160.

    Spanky

    @Stacy:

    People Mag still promotes the Bates family, which also had a show, and some of them were J6 participants.

    Bates family? Norman? IIRC, his Mother wasn’t much of a talker.

  161. 161.

    sdhays

    @Geminid: If sending planes to Texas to send people to Martha’s Vineyard wasn’t an “undue burden”, then DeSantis can defend himself in Massachusetts. And he’s planning to be in New Hampshire a lot anyway, so “1300 miles” is ridiculous.

  162. 162.

    john (not mccain)

    I had to miss Lily Tomlin doing a trial of Search for Signs in Lexington KY because of Brother Jed, Sister SINdy, and a guy I wanted to blow.

  163. 163.

    HumboldtBlue

    No Deal! is trending after Trump’s lawyers met with the DOJ. Trump soon sent out an all-caps mishmash of grievances.

  165. 165.

    Gretchen

    @trollhattan: Yes, I watched the whole Shiny Happy People this weekend. All of it was disturbing, but the description of « blanket training » was horrifying to me. I have 9 month old twin grandchildren and have spent time holding toys just out of reach to encourage them to crawl to them. The Duggars put babies on a blanket and hit their chubby little hands with a wooden spoon if they reach for a toy off the blanket to teach them obedience or « break their will » or some evil. Not sure how they learn to crawl. Ugly.

  166. 166.

    Betty Cracker

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: West and Tate shilled for DeSantis because part of the latter’s push to roll back the 21st century involves opening state Bright Futures scholarships to students who’ve taken the Classic Learning Test instead of or in addition to the SAT. Tate is founder and CEO of the CLT outfit, and West is on the board.

  168. 168.

    Gretchen

    @Betsy: Connie Schultz, wife of Sherrod Brown, wrote a book called And His Lovely Wife because that’s how she was often introduced.

  169. 169.

    JCJ

    @Roger Moore:  LaMarcus Aldridge (Portland TrailBlazers, San Antonio Spurs, Brooklyn Nets) once stated he was planning to build a separate house for his shoe collection.  No idea if he ever did.  I came across a video of a guy in the San Diego area who modifies shoes.  He made four pairs for Giannis Antetokounmpo.

  170. 170.

    Ruckus

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:

    @Alison Rose:

    I’d bet money that there is a cost either of the ads or there is a fee to have the skip option show up before a certain amount of time is part of the deal with posting videos on there, because often the skip function either never comes on or takes some time to show up.

    Now I can understand this, you tube has got to be expensive to operate, given the size/number of videos that now exist. But it really is annoying to get an ad shoved in your face. I mean I don’t watch TV and haven’t for years because of ads. I have Netflix and really have not missed commercial TV in a very, very long time. In this century I’ve watched actual TV once, I bought an indoor antenna (because I’m line of sight of Mt Wilson, here in SoCal) hooked it up to my new TV that was a gift, took it down and threw it away before 15 minutes, during which I saw more commercials than in at least 10 yrs prior. What in the hell was I thinking? OK I wasn’t. And now I’m back to ads.

    I have a plan. Show me an ad more than once in 48 hrs and I refuse to purchase the product – ever. Because if you have to advertise it that much, it must not be worth a damn.

  171. 171.

    Eunicecycle

    @Gretchen: I have read about “blanket training” before and it is horrific. I can’t imagine doing that to an infant, or any child for that matter. And it is explicitly explained it is to “break the child’s will.”

  172. 172.

    JPL

    Sad, trump can’t understand how he could be indicted…    The latest tweet was after his attorneys met with DOJ      link

  173. 173.

    mrmoshpotato

    @JPL:

    She imagines that she’s Jackie Kennedy. When I look at her, I see someone named Cruella. 

    Cruella DeTrash

  175. 175.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Roger Moore:

    They desperately want to be persecuted because it proves to them they’re doing as Jesus commanded.  If they aren’t being genuinely persecuted, they’ll keep acting more and more outrageous until someone starts complaining and then claim they’re being persecuted.

    “Help, help, I’m being repressed, come see the violence inherent in the system!”

    -Dennis the Peasant

  176. 176.

    Ruckus

    @cain:

    Who as far as I can tell is not a great man.

    Only in his own mind. Oh and the minds he seemed to own…..

  177. 177.

    Binky

    @Betty Cracker:  oooh! I hadn’t heard. I saw a video recently of Cindy still doing her thing and I assumed he was somewhere around. I was more of a “eat with the Krishnas” type on the Plaza anyway

  178. 178.

    Roger Moore

    @Betty Cracker:

    West and Tate shilled for DeSantis because part of the latter’s push to roll back the 21st century involves opening state Bright Futures scholarships to students who’ve taken the Classic Learning Test instead of or in addition to the SAT.

    Always Be Closing.

  179. 179.

    Ruckus

    @Jeffro:

    Higher standards?

    We have standards for candidates for office?

    We have minimums, such as age and breathing, but really what else is there as a standard?

    I mean I was born in the first half of the last century and in just that bit of time there have been way, way too many people that questionably didn’t seem to even meet the minimum of actually human. And quite a few of them ended up in high office.

  181. 181.

    Amir Khalid

    @Scout211:

    Actually, I meant that Bones and Booth were presented as a knockoff of Mulder and Scully. As were the lead couple from J.A.G., now that I think of it. The latter two even used his&hers flashlights on occasion. I guess Mulder and Scully were the screen couple everyone copied back then.

  183. 183.

    Redshift

    @Mike in NC:

    One the one hand some pundits are claiming DeSaster is quickly starting to overtake Fat Bastard among Florida Republicans

    Talk about faint praise. If you’re running as a governor, winning the support of voters in your own party in your own state should be the bare minimum you have to show to he considered a serious candidate.

  185. 185.

    Ruckus

    @Roger Moore:

    The shoes are an affordable thing that almost all of us can all relate to. OK sure, likely a lot of the shoe collections have some rather expensive shoes in them that most could not afford, but it is rarely obvious that shoes are in any way worth more than what most people pay for them, without diamonds attached. My parents bought a house that a single woman lived in, normal price range for the neighborhood – IOW affordable, and upon walk through one bedroom was row upon row of shoes, lined up in pairs. Weird human she was.

  186. 186.

    Miss Bianca

    @Amir Khalid: Not only popular, it ran for – or is it still running? – for something like 20 seasons!

    I watched the first season or two because David B, but even he couldn’t induce me to keep going with it.

    (Unlike Nathan Fillion in Castle, another not-so-hot procedural, who kept me going through all eight (?!) seasons.)

  187. 187.

    Jay

    @Amir Khalid:

    there are only so many plot lines, story arcs out there, so they get recycled,

    eg. “It’s a Western, but in Space”,…….

  190. 190.

    Betty Cracker

    @Binky: Me too! I wasn’t crazy about the Krishnas’ food, but the price was right, and the juice they served was really good.

  191. 191.

    Miss Bianca

    @Betty Cracker: Damn girl, I happened to be sipping my frappe when I saw this and damned if I didn’t almost do a spit take.

    That’ll learn me not to eat and/or drink while reading a BJ thread!

  192. 192.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Baud: Running (one devoutly hopes) for the border of a nation that has no extradition treaty with the USA…

    The Vile, Vile West.

  193. 193.

    artem1s

    @Geminid: ​
     
    I keep wondering what Mother has to say about all of this. She hated being linked to TFG and was furious when he actually won in 2016. I find it hard to believe she is on board with motorcycle rallies and all the other tacky campaign crap again. I can’t imagine her filing for a dee-vorce. Or Mikey getting wrapped up in some John Edwards style affair with a campaign staffer (yuck).

  194. 194.

    JaySinWA

    @Ruckus:

    We have minimums, such as age and breathing,

    I don’t recall seeing breathing as a requirement in the constitution. I think we have elected dead people in the past.

  195. 195.

    Citizen Alan

    @Betsy:

    corollary: the obligatory shot of the male candidate apologizing publicly for his adulterous behavior, as his wife stands barely grimacing and miserably “supporting” him on the stage) (honey if mine ever did such a thing he’d better believe he’d be up there apologizing by his alone damn self

    Who is the senator from louisiana whose wife smugly said in an interview that if her husband ever cheated on her like bill did to hillary, she would castrate him? Vitter, I think? And yet, there she was ten years later on the stage next to him Is all supportive and shit as he gave a press conference about all the time he spent with DC prostitutes. Oh, and something about a diaper fetish, as I recall.

  196. 196.

    Paul in KY

    ‘Brother’ Jed Smock & his nutwad minion used to harangue us outside the student center at UK. I have seen his ass handed to him rhetorically more than a few times. What a loser he was.

  197. 197.

    Citizen Alan

    @cain:

    Reagan. Who as far as I can tell is not a great man.

    He wasn’t, but he would also be unelectable in today’s republican party because he was too liberal. Is chew on that for a while.

  198. 198.

    Jim Appleton

    I’ll just note that the Daily Beast photo is credited to Thomas Levinson.

  205. 205.

    Citizen Alan

    @Scout211: I didn’t mind the fact that the two leads had no chemistry, and in fact I lost interest in the show as they became more of a couple. Much as I completely lost interest in X files after Mulder and Skully became a couple. Is it absolutely impossible to have a drama of any kind with a male and female lead who are simply professional coworkers and close friends?

  207. 207.

    Ruckus

    @JaySinWA:

    I think we have elected dead people in the past.

    They weren’t really dead, it’s just that there was a question if they had ever been alive on this planet in the first place.

  208. 208.

    Citizen Alan

    @Amir Khalid:

    If you’re going to view every hour long mystery/action series with a male and female lead as just a knock off of the x files, then isn’t it fair to say that the X files itself was just a rip off of Moonlighting, only less funny and with more aliens?

  213. 213.

    Betty Cracker

    @Paul in KY: I suppose that’s possible, but it’s far more likely she was a 3rd-rate Eastern European underwear model who managed to marry a big-mouthed, rich American idiot who was subsequently elected president of a country that routinely gives big-mouthed, rich idiots far more credit for wisdom and cunning than they deserve.

  216. 216.

    Jeffro

    @Roger Moore: yeah, you’re right – the various possibilities to keep the grift/wingnut welfare going have to be a major factor.

    Pence: “I have to stay relevant to keep the dollars rolling in!”

     

     

    @Ruckus: maybe ‘requirements’ (same as your ‘minimums’, really) would have been a better choice of words.

    I want these clowns to have to have held state office for X number of years before they’re even allowed to file to run for federal office.

  219. 219.

    Subsole

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    If you had to cook up an explanation for how being the most inflamed type of galloping rectal prolapse on earth actually meant you were a good and righteous exemplar of all Crhistian virtues, your logic would probably get mighty damned baroque, too…

    Also, if you needed to roll one, they weren’t the worst paper you could use. Or so I am told.

  221. 221.

    Subsole

    @Ruckus:

    Hey now, all you have to do is pay the monthly fee and all the ads go away.

    It’s the Libertarian way – make the absolute shittiest product you can, then make people pay you NOT to be forced to use it.

  222. 222.

    Subsole

    @cain:

    Reagan was true dogshit.

    You can watch him getting his seven goddamn chuckles at an actual, no-shit blackface minstrel show during his first inauguration. He was a nasty, vicious little bastard. Nixon without the brains.

    The media sold him as Andy Griffith, but he was actually Lonesome Rhodes.

  223. 223.

    sab

    @Citizen Alan:  @Amir Khalid:  Bones was on the autism spectrum and came up through foster care, the plot thus explaining the lack of chemistry while besmirching not one but two groups of kids coming up.

    I kind of liked the series, because my dad was a pathologist and I like that they were just curious science guys, not ghouls. And Emily  DesChanel’s character seemed like an actual person with feelings, not a caricature of a spectrum person.

  224. 224.

    Rudi666

    @Betty Cracker: ​
     
    It was put into the state budget to the tune of $12,000,000. But is supposed to be used ib Florida, not other states as a political stunt.
    https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/19/desantis-immigrants-marthas-vineyard-venezuela-00057673

    Much of the focus is on budget language that state lawmakers wrote to authorize the flights. Specifically, state Democrats and others are questioning whether the flights were legal since they originated in Texas and not Florida. According to the budget language, the $12 million DeSantis is using was specifically earmarked to “facilitate the transport of unauthorized aliens from this state consistent with federal law.”

    The law also specified that the flights should be used to transport “unauthorized aliens” — but lawyers speaking on behalf of the migrants say many who were flown to Martha’s Vineyard are seeking asylum, which puts them in a different category legally.

    What is even more wrong is the charter company has ties to DeathSanta.

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