I didn’t name my dog Pete after Secretary Buttigieg. But if the canine Pete were more informed about domestic politics, I have a feeling he’d be proud to share a first name with Secretary Pete, who is so damn good at responding to Repub cruelty and associated media credulity.
In an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union” this weekend, Sec Pete addressed the bizarre, incel-themed, explicitly anti-Pride video* that the DeSantis campaign released to attack Trump. I believe Buttigieg’s response is a model for how to push back against this sort of rancid Repub garbage.
The whole video is about 8 minutes long, addresses several topics and is worth watching in full. I cued this clip to start at the bit about the DeSantis video. Sec Pete ethers Team DeSantis and pivots toward what’s really important inside two minutes, which includes a short clip of the infamous DeSantis video:
I don’t think doubling-down on LGBTQ hate will be a winning message for Repubs in general elections, but it’s a way for the flailing DeSantis campaign to attack Trump from the right. The gross GOP base’s enthusiasm for anti-LGBTQ messaging has prompted Orangmandias to embrace that aspect of the culture wars, maybe because he’s too dumb to recognize that it’s not broadly popular, I dunno.
The DeSantis attack vid also cut the “Chickens for Colonel Sanders” caucus to the core:
It always was, you dumb-ass dingus. It always was.
Anyhoo, kudos to Sec Pete for focusing on what’s important, which I emphatically believe does not include extremely online Repubs’ rage hard-on about losing their dominant status in American culture. I also choose to believe a fuzzy Florida Frenchton is glad to share a name with Sec Pete.
Open thread!
*You may be able to see the creepy DeSantis video in its entirety at the Advocate’s site here, but no guarantees because it’s a Twitter embed and therefore subject to the whims of a pasty oligarch who, for all we know, may be literally writing internal company memos in his own poop right now. Also, I can’t find the DeSantis video on YouTube, which is another platform owned by a frog-faced oligarch.** Hmmm! Notice a pattern?
**Correction: YouTube is owned in part by Google’s parent company, not the Facebook oligarch as I thought when I wrote the above asterisked content. I have no idea if YouTube’s controllers are frog-faced or have oligarchical aspirations, and I regret the error. Thanks to valued commenter Barney for the clarification.
Price rank instability in the ACA
Baud
I bet Sec. Pete is pleased to share a name with such a cutie.
MattF
Republicans are now, consistently, stuck with issues that are deeply unpopular with a majority of voters. Bottom of a fucking hole, and continuing to dig.
The Moar You Know
I saw that video and DeSantis is straight out gunning for the Hitler-adjacent voters.
He can’t win a general election that way so I’m more than a bit curious as to what his actual game is here.
Suzanne
@The Moar You Know: I feel like everyone forgets that, to win anything, you have to get a majority (or at least a plurality). That’s so much harder to do when you actively drive people away.
Aside from being morally reprehensible, it’s also just bad strategy.
Alison Rose
Yeah, I really love how Buttigieg approaches these sorts of responses, by basically saying “Pardon me, my good bitch, but what seems to be the fuck” but in a very kind and civil and TV-friendly way.
Baud
@The Moar You Know:
Win the nomination through hate and cruelty.
Win the general election by talking about youth and fighting big corporations.
rikyrah
North Dakota whining about progressive policies put in place by the current Minnesota legislature.
Oh well…sucks to be you, North Dakota
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZT8eqFwEM/
Cacti
@The Moar You Know: Do you think that the far right would have any problem shoving gays, Latinos, or slutty sluts who have abortions into gas chambers? I don’t for even a moment.
I used to wonder how someone like Hitler could have come to power, because the evil just seemed so obvious.
I don’t wonder anymore.
Jay C
@MattF:
Hate to be the downer here, but if these issues are so unpopular (and, as far as the “general public” is concerned, they are), why do the Republicans seem to be able to consistently get enough votes to maintain their national status as the Second Party – i.e., the dependable stumbling block to stymie any and all attempts to institute any sort of progressive or beneficial policy.
I realize we are all victims of our Federal system (and the persistence of backward cultural traits in all too much of the country), and a dysfunctional media, besides, but popularity of policy seems to be a virtual irrelevance these days.
bbleh
Concur on all counts, plus above comments. As to LGBTQ-bashing, to me it feels a bit like a tired rerun. Anti-trans is a new twist, mostly since most people really have no knowledge or experience of Trans people, and there are particular ways to demonize Trans people, but even there it kinda reeks of flop-sweat. Like they’re running out of culture-war issues and they know it. And as to LGBTQ folk generally, I think the tide’s against them, and they know that too. Most straight normies I know are like, yeah whatever, actually my gay neighbors / co-workers are ok, and, ahem, I have a nephew who’s gay.
It always bears mentioning, though, that it’s primary season, and the rule in primary season is run to the extremes, because primary voters skew extreme. And DeSantis is just looking to keep his brand afloat in case the Big Orange Ship SFB goes under. Lots of time ’til election season
@Alison Rose: agree re Mayo Pete, plus (1) he is smart as a whip and deploys it very effectively — doesn’t surprise me he was a star as a consultant — and (2) he’s got that wholesome, how-can-you-hate-it Alfred E Neuman face. The guy has a future.
trollhattan
Somebody in comments brought up DeSantis giving the green light (heh) to adding radioactive waste to concrete used for highway construction–which sounded really odd but now that I’ve found an article all I can say is “yikes!”
Trump’s EPA had allowed it, Biden’s reversed it, but with this SCOTUS I suppose it’s “Fuck you, federal government” 24/7 now.
Three things come to mind: rainfall runoff will accumulate and transport some fraction of radionuclide contamination. I understand it rains in Florida–where does street and highway runoff end up today? What is left behind when puddles dry?
Concrete isn’t forever and slowly grinds off from traffic, creating dust. Where does this dust end up?
Concrete roads all eventually fail and require replacement. What happens to the radioactive debris from the old surface?
Surely, no rich people will live next to Radiation Road but what of the people who have no say in where this stuff is used, as it’s poured just past their front yards?
Suzanne
@Jay C:
There are a lot of people who don’t love culture war shit but loathe Democrats.
Anoniminous
Realistically DeSantis has already lost. There’s not enough votes in enough states to the right of Trump to get the nomination and by ‘Going There’ he has blown the Not-Trump GOP vote.
BR
I’ve been thinking about how to talk about supreme court corruption to apolitical folks.
Let’s say you have a small business. You run into laws, regulations, whatever that you don’t like and some you do like. Maybe some are better for your competition and some that are better for you. What if your competition could sue you, slip the judge a $500, and win the case against you. Or get a rule or law thrown out that your business depends on. We’d never stand for that kind of corruption. But if you’re rich enough you can buy the highest court and get laws that affect millions of dollars to go your way.
MattF
@Suzanne: Hating Democrats is foreign to me and leaves me feeling disoriented. My dad thought Stevenson would beat Eisenhower because everyone he knew was voting for Stevenson.
Betty Cracker
@Jay C: My theory is the structural disadvantages you cite degrade the connection between votes and outcomes, which in turn degrades the level of civic engagement by (falsely) making it seem pointless. That said, overreach (in the form of draconian policies and batshit lunacy) can break this dysfunctional cycle, and I’m hoping we’re at that point with the modern GOP.
JML
@Jay C: some of it is about concentration of votes, some of it is about Democrats not voting as consistently as the GOP does. (younger voters don’t turn out as well in non-presidential years, don’t turn out as well in municipal elections either) This is also where gerrymandering has helped them enormously to retain power: they don’t care about losing big city votes in Chicago, so long as they can slice up enough districts in southern illinois to get an extra rep through.
and they retain power through the Senate, which gives a lot more power to states with big landmasses and few voters, which are predominantly older, whiter, and have been suckered on economics by the GOP. (ND, SD, NE, KS, WY, ID, MT…)
RaflW
I don’t know who this leatherwood twit is, but good lord is he ignorant. The Log
ClosetCabin Republicans have basically been ejected from the GOP – it happened several years ago, but he’s just now noticing?F**king over-entitled, able-to-exist-openly-because-liberals-organized and drag-queens-kicked-cop’s-butts jerk.
bbleh
@Jay C: @Suzanne: there’s a good deal of daylight between “not broadly popular” and so “unpopular” as to make a party completely negligible. I don’t think the bigotry is majority-popular by any stretch, but there’s at least 1/4 to 1/3 of the population who are either perfectly comfortable with it or actively enthusiastic about it. And when you combine that with (1) a general anti-government, low-tax image, which appeals to a lot of people who are agnostic on most cultural issues, and (2) the relentless propaganda of the right-wing media system, which a lot of people just kinda get swallowed up by, you have a very viable national party indeed. (And that’s leaving aside the state-level differences.)
My current hope is that the fundamental fissure in the party, between the plutocrat/Country-Club wing and the ethnographic-religio-nationalist wing (not that there’s not overlap) is becoming wider and deeper, because the Amero-Nazis have the bit between their teeth and a cult leader to swear allegiance to, and it’s gonna really hamper the effectiveness of the Republicans in the long run. Indeed, it’s already happening, notably in the House (which they barely won btw), but also in places like the DeSantis-Disney feud. They’re not gonna crack up completely, but they’re doing a lot of getting in their own way, and that does Democrats nothing but good.
trollhattan
@Anoniminous:
Think he knows the arithmetic but is playing the short game in case Trump is convicted of something or drops dead, and the long game presenting himself as the presumptive frontrunner in 2028. i.e., establishing the brand.
Now, it’s a little like branding dogshit “Ron’s Finest” but his party seems very fond of the stuff.
The Moar You Know
@Anoniminous: I have said from the get-go that he will not be president and this is why.
I thought he actually wanted the job but that ad – which screams “sadistic personality disorder” (no longer a DSM diagnosis) – just is a discharge of id that I think would make anyone squirm a little on the inside save for the types who share his dysfunction. I’m just grateful that there’s not that many of those kind of fucked up people out there. Not a majority, anyway.
trollhattan
@Suzanne: Yep, hate is a good motivator on election day.
Cameron
@MattF: Wasn’t it Stevenson who responded to the person who told him all the intelligent people were voting for him by saying, “Thank you, ma’am, but I need a majority?”
smith
They say they don’t love culture war, and may even think they don’t love culture war, but they loathe Democrats mostly because Democrats give stuff using their tax money to Those People. Racism, to me, is still culture war.
RaflW
@MattF: & @The Moar You Know:
The game here is an authoritarian takeover. They know they can’t win a national general election. Maybe they can sometimes squeak one because of our retrograde Electoral College makeup, but they can’t win on issues with any consistency, since Republican’s “issues” are billionaire-coddling, god-bothering, and huge military budgets. And that’s it.
So the end-game is the destruction of democratic pathways to power. Will it work? We don’t know yet. But the risk is frankly quite high, and we liberals should not rely on the unpopularity of GOP policies to save us in ’24 or beyond.
Cameron
@Cacti: Here, here, what’s all this Hitler talk? Surely you can’t be referring to these guys? https://floridapolitics.com/archives/621551-florida-state-guard-graduates-first-troops/
Jes’ good ol’ boys gettin’ their Sturmabteilung thang on.
Cameron
And to naysayers like Mayor Pete who think Ron DeSantis is nothing but Nazi-talk and sassy boots, here’s some of that Florida policy that Prince Puddinghands wants to give to the whole country: https://www.mynews13.com/fl/orlando/news/2023/07/01/new-immigration-law-kicks-off–fl-leaders-speak-impact
Suzanne
@bbleh:
There’s also a significant chunk of the population who really aren’t “comfortable” with it, but lie to themselves. All those people who said, “Trump isn’t really racist or homophobic, he worked in New York forever, he’s just trying to appeal to conservatives” fell into this trap.
ETA: And they lie to themselves for the tax cuts, and because they hate liberals.
Betty Cracker
Below is an example of the overreach I referred to at #16. Even in this Repub state, something like 70% of voters opposed making it legal for randos to walk around in public with a gun stuffed down their pants. In an increasingly crowded place where horrific mass shootings occur regularly, is it really a good idea to associate your political brand with a graphic that depicts the state as a gun? No. It’s not.
It can work for a while — an intolerably long while — but I think it’s the type of thing that unravels gradually and then all at once. At least that is my hope.
trollhattan
Twitter may not be fixing any of Melon’s misdeeds but they’re busy killing workarounds. In addition to borking Nitter, they have killed this workaround, which had delivered a screencap of any poster’s front page.
https://syndication.twitter.com/srv/timeline-profile/screen-name/**addname***
Still can’t view inside a browser, of course.
Twitter dead by August at this rate.
trollhattan
@Betty Cracker:
They think that looks positive? Lord help us all.
Another Scott
@trollhattan:
???
Cheers,
Scott.
RaflW
@bbleh: I wish this were true. But the GOP is driving public opinion rapidly backwards on basic gay and lesbian rights. Not to erase BTQIs, but rather to say that what Leatherwood, etc, seem to just now be discovering has been predicted by queer organizers for years. It’s showing up in Gallup surveys and such, where support for same-sex marriage dipped for the first time in many years.
Repub hate-spewing shifted 15% of their voters over to hate in a single goddamned year. Propaganda works, as @Cacti noticed above. FFS look what it’s done to Democrats. Six percent have followed the panic stampede to the wrong side here. In one year.
Anoniminous
@trollhattan:
When a voter decides against a candidate it’s almost impossible to change their mind. Any further information is either ignored or is grounds to confirm their decision.
@The Moar You Know:
If DeSantis hadn’t been fluffed by our Infotainment Mediums desperate to accumulate eyeballs to sell to advertisers he wouldn’t be garnering national attention. Country Club, White Suburban Women, and loosely attached Republicans want their racism and bigotry soft-boiled.
WARNING — ‘N’-word
“You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites … “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”
Lee Atwater – Republican political operation for and of the Southern Strategy
Suzanne
@smith:
I agree with this, but I also think you underestimate how much upper- and upper-middle-class white people don’t like working-class or poor white people. They don’t want to give them money, either.
different-church-lady
@Cacti: CNN might make a game show out of it.
Another Scott
Good for Pete. Good for Pete, too.
Meanwhile, … FreightWaves.com:
I assume that even if it is effective that it will get little press.
Did anyone notice a difference on Saturday?
Eyes on the prizes – don’t let the monsters drive the narrative.
Cheers,
Scott.
Kathleen
@Alison Rose: Master Class in How To Handle Media Rodent Copulation 101. The interviewer looked like she wanted to cry.
Alison Rose
@Betty Cracker: JFC that graphic.
Cameron
@Betty Cracker: Permitless concealed carry, but you gotta check those children’s books at the door.
Baud
@Suzanne:
And that’s just the Democrats!
Eolirin
@Baud: 🤦
Betty Cracker
@RaflW: FWIW, I agree that the outcome of the Repub attempt to kill democracy and replace it with a Hungarian-style autocracy is very much up in the air. We can’t rely on overreach, but I do think showing their extremist cards before they’ve got a lock on power can hurt Repubs.
mali muso
@trollhattan: Yeah, the syndication work around was borked for me late last night, was back again this morning for a few hours and is now down again. womp womp.
oatler
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2023/jul/03/rishi-sunak-new-conservatives-tory-suella-braverman-migration-nhs-latest-updates
different-church-lady
@Cameron: Yeah, when you think a book is more dangerous to your kids than a gun, then your brain worms have broken in to the cockpit.
Ruckus
@MattF:
Republicans have political and life concepts that are so far outdated that they now only appeal to old farts and people that think we should go back in time, they’d like over 150 yrs but at least 75. But I’ve never seen a clock that goes backwards, I see only one direction for this country and old farts of my generation, and those that want to go back to a time before they were born to when they would be in any way relevant due to the lack of color of their skin. And time never goes backwards. This country, this world is a better place than it was 75 yrs ago, I’ve seen it, experienced it, getting better. It still has a way to go.
Kathleen
@smith: I agree 100%. Also they loathe the fact that Black people wield a lot of power as voters and elected officials. Also, that attitude is not limited to “The Right”.
trollhattan
@Another Scott:
It reads like something from Star Trek. I have no idea.
Betty Cracker
Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky has a guest essay in the WSJ: “Happy Birthday, America: Ukraine is grateful to the U.S. for providing both support for and an example of liberty.” Gift link here.
Ugh, the comments are so depressing! WSJ Repubs are credited to be less feral than those who hang out on other Murdoch properties, but Putinists rule the comment sections there too.
randy khan
I watched the video all the way through when it first came out and it was physically hard to watch because it’s visually a mess. And the music really doesn’t help. I’m actually perfectly content for him to waste his money on things like that, which will reach only the people who already are hopeless.
Mike in NC
Hey, Florida GOP: nobody in my family will ever set foot in your backward Confederate state ever again, thank you very much.
Ken
@Cameron: You have to
admiregape at the hypocrisy in the bill: “the mandate does not apply to past hires or existing employees”.See, Florida businesses that have been using undocumented workers for years, this won’t affect you. So keep voting Republican!
Geminid
I caught a 1 minute, 14 second piece of DeSantis’s anti-Trump, anti-LGBTQ ad.
I’m not sure if it was an excerpt or the whole thing, but it was weird. Weirdly weird.
Ruckus
@The Moar You Know:
His game is to go backwards to when someone like him, a racist fuck, would be relevant. Right now that is the only republican direction. His sole governing issue is whiteness. The fact that he’s an idiot really doesn’t help him. The fact that there are a way too large number like him does. And the difference between him and SFB is that SFB has been more successful at being a backwards, racist, asshole, because he has more experience at it. DeStupid is ShitForBrains II.
Cameron
@different-church-lady: But books spew such vile groomer woke lies to THE CHILDREN! If parents aren’t careful, their kids will come home and try to tell them that Rosa Parks was Black or some other CRTMarxist Liberal Democrat Sexualamalizerized shit.
edited to fix the margin break on phones. WG
Ruckus
@Cacti:
Hate is a powerful drug, especially to people who feel that their hate is all they have left. And from the looks of their political gatherings, it is.
MomSense
@Suzanne:
Too many people just don’t bother voting.
Citizen Alan
@MattF: To be fair, I have greater
sympathyunderstanding for that attitude now that I have reached the conclusion that anyone who still calls themselves a Republican is irredeemably evil and functionally non-human.Alison Rose
@Betty Cracker: Thanks for the link and the comment warning. I do my best to avoid reading comments on Ukraine pieces almost anywhere except here, because the tankies make me wanna Hulk out.
MomSense
@trollhattan:
There you go again with those pesky questions!!!
Apparently DeSantis went to a pizza joint in NYC the other day with some Fox Bot and they ate slices of pizza made in a coal fired oven. The fox bot asked him why do Democrats what to take these things away from us? Oh we just don’t like anyone to enjoy freedoms!
Seriously. That was his answer.
Ruckus
@Jay C:
What the haters want is not popular to the entire country but the shear numbers of humans who fall/live in the haters group is not close to approaching zero. Humans need two things to change, ability and desire. Haters may have the ability but they really do not have desire. And if they do have the ability, they really, really aren’t looking for it.
Ken
I’m sure it was outsourced to a low bidder, possibly one with a .ru domain. You’d think people would have learned the danger of doing that after The Giant Claw.
Baud
@MomSense:
Democrats:Coal fired ovens::Republicans: Reproductive freedom
Almost Retired
Jeebus, what must it be like to be these people — to get so frothed up with hatred about non-existing threats like drag queens and gender non-conformity? And when that plays out, to have your bile triggered anew by a new group of people you didn’t previously know you were supposed to hate until they were targeted by the GOP/FOX? It must be exhausting. Over time it has to warp their personalities and contaminate their relationships.
It would be different if Democrats were in favor of mandatory drag queen story hours as a prerequisite to promotion to Middle School. With DQ’s reading books like “Danny’s Doctor Cuts Off His Dick” and free condom distribution at nap time.
But I don’t think that’s happening. Nor are their hordes of 15 year old trans women forcing their way onto girls wrestling teams in the Dakotas. Good Lord Trumpies — I know the non-binary Starbucks barista frightens you when you have to go the big city for your hip replacement, but you’ll be fine. I promise.
Cameron
https://www.bradenton.com/article276966783.html
Ken
@MomSense: A coal fired oven? I assume the business model is to appeal to “rolling coal” advocates. Or possibly people who like that hint of coal ash chock-full of arsenic, cadmium, and mercury on their pizza.
Baud
@Ken:
Better than pineapple.
Another Scott
On topic – I ass-u-me that this video is designed to “win the cycle” and keep puddin-fingers in the news and keep TIFG out of the news for a few hours.
“Yeah, I saw that. Ronda really showed those liberals, didn’t he? Now hold my beer…”
A few days ago he tried the “normal guy walking on the beach with his loving wife” thing and that didn’t help make him seem human and likeable, so he’s going back to the “tough guy who makes the libs cry” shtick.
BusinessInsider.com:
Of course, Toyota is still a giant corporation that sells millions of cars and trucks every year.
I think this is another reason for the traditional “tack to the middle after winning the nomination” stuff – humans generally forget the bad stuff – especially when they’re not really paying attention (like months before a primary) – and return to their tribal identity (unless they’re forced to confront contradictions).
There’s a lot of data behind these efforts to manipulate public opinion.
Eyes on the prizes.
Cheers,
Scott.
Geminid
@Ken: It might have been a charcoal fired oven. Seems more likely.
FelonyGovt
@Betty Cracker: That graphic is absolutely chilling. I think and hope that these folks are so cocooned in their own little bubble that they don’t realize how horrifying they are.
And I have been upset and disappointed at the increasing anti-gay hate I’ve seen, even locally, where my daughter and her girlfriend had to walk through an ugly gauntlet on the way to Pride Night at Dodger Stadium.
Good for Mayor Pete. He is looking more grown-up and even more confident and poised these days. He’s a valuable member of our young bench.
Redshift
I’m not sure TFG ever thinks strategically, he’s only interested in what gets him adoring crowds (and maybe what keeps him out of prison, if it doesn’t conflict with the top priority.)
Cheryl from Maryland
I found DeSantis’ video via Google and watched it on YouTube. The thought that contained going through my head was “How Tom of Finland!”
Redshift
@Geminid:
Nope, coal-fired pizza ovens are a thing in NY (and Connecticut, which is where I know them from.)
The particularly asinine thing about this “culture war” attack is that it’s not an anti-coal or climate change “liberal” thing, it’s a city regulation being phased in requiring all commercial ovens (not just coal) to have scrubbers to protect neighbors from participate emissions. It’s a bog-standard business whine about “they’re making it more expensive to run my business when I used to be able to be cheaper at the expense of people around me!”
Sure Lurkalot
@Betty Cracker: I feel so bad for you, Betty Cracker, because you beautifully express in words and photos how much you love your home state.
I can’t even with this image. It’s horrific.
Another Scott
One for Geminid – Reuters:
I understand the benefits (especially political benefits) of “all of the above” energy production efforts, but hydrogen (especially “green hydrogen”) seems to me to be too much of a niche for major emphasis now. We need to be smart about this stuff, while spreading the political benefits to speed the transition off of burning fossil fuels.
Cheers,
Scott.
Lyrebird
@Cameron:
Hi, I agree with your urgency, but maybe see Secy Pete’s response differently… he wasn’t on that interview as Secretary of Gay People, but his identity is why they gave him the obligation of watching the Nazi propaganda ad and commenting on it.
Sorry my sentences are a mess.
Tony G
Whatever else DeSantis is, he (unlike Trump) is not dumb. He knows that since 1992 (29 years ago!) the Republican candidate for president has lost the popular vote in every election except 2004 — and that nevertheless the anti-democratic Electoral College allowed Republican candidates to win in 2000 and in 2016. Nevertheless, he also has to know that this kinds of obsessive anti-gay propaganda is way out of step with the national culture of the past few decades. It’s 2023, not 1953 or even 1973. So, I don’t know. Maybe he lives in such impermeable bubble that he really thinks that the rest of the country is full of weirdoes like him
Jay
@Ken:
Dry heat. High Heat, No woodsmoke flavour.
Properly engineered, fairly clean burning.
JaySinWA
@Betty Cracker: Or possibly DeSantis is counting on not having to worry about votes, using the “it’s not the votes that count, it’s who counts the votes” theory.
trollhattan
@Redshift: Grew up in a neighborhood built in the 1910s to 20s. Nearly every house had an oil furnace but our neighbors to the back had a coal furnace. That sucker put out midnight black smoke when running. Hard to imagine today, but it was simply a builder’s choice then. The gas company came around and convinced some to switch to that, no recollection of how many did.
Problem with oil was the in-ground tanks eventually rusted through, creating a big headache. Smart folks bought tank insurance that covered the replacement.
PG&E has an ongoing environmental cleanup along the river here. It’s a plot that once hosted a coal gassification plant, which is where PG&E got gas before there was commercial natural gas production and distribution. Used to commute past the site and holy hell, some days when they were excavating vapors from the chemical stew were overwhelming. Must be an interesting mix of contaminants.
I assume waste just got tossed into the river. Easy peasy.
Hoodie
@Betty Cracker: DeSantis seems to be squarely aimed at being the “trigger the libs” candidate, as indicated by that image and the anti-LGBYTQ+ ad. However, the imagery seems to be pretty deeply ensconced in the cesspool of the on-line right, which may repel a lot of people simply because it’s too fucking weird for prime time. So much that I wonder if even the typical Trump voter will be moved by it. That video is pure online right weirdness, tinged with the kind of juvenile homoerotic “300” type references often seen in that nasty little corner of the online world. He’s had similarly weird video output before, such as that piece of Elon Musk worship that was trying to make some kind of link between DeSantis and Musk.
Cameron
@Lyrebird: I know that’s why they gave him the spot, and I’m sure that they were a bit disconcerted that his response was basically, “We build things. What, exactly, has this guy built?”
Anonymous At Work
Gay/Lesbian Republicans: Why are they allowed to cut their own meat? At this rate, this will be them in a few years:
https://media.tenor.com/LWM6dMjQ0kAAAAAC/stevemartin-cork.gif
Geminid
@Redshift: Huh. I wonder what edge coal gives. Hotter? Maybe it’s cheaper, or at least cheaper than charcoal.
trollhattan
@Geminid:
Guessing higher temp. Coal gets hotter than wood and charcoal (e.g., for steel making), allowing as to there also being a lot of coal types.
Steeplejack
@Another Scott:
It’s a byproduct of smelting unobtainium.
trollhattan
They’re now crowd-sourcing amusement park safety inspections. Winning!
“Should we tell anybody?”
“Fuck it, let’s get some ribs.”
Geminid
@Another Scott: You should talk to your Congressman and Senators, not me. They’re the ones who voted for the IRA.
catclub
@Tony G:
I thought the Log Cabin Republicans’ spokesman (on NPR this AM) is in a more impermeable bubble. He thinks the GOP has moved on from gay bashing and opposing gay marriage.
SiubhanDuinne
@Betty Cracker:
That is … just OBSCENE.
Martin
@trollhattan: These really aren’t problems *provided* that the concentrates the state allows is low enough, *and* contractors actually follow the law (given Florida, I’m particularly suspicious of the latter).
But you have radioactive material in pretty much all building material to some degree. Granite itself is more radioactive than you’d think, and so most regal federal and state buildings – capitals, etc. are somewhat, measurably radioactive. Not dangerously radioactive, but your pocket geiger counter will be doing a bit of work in there.
The issue here is that this is no longer ‘some rock we pulled out of a quarry’ of an unknown level of radiation but an identified substance with a known level of radiation (that might be lower than the stuff you pull out of the quarry). That shifts it from ‘probably fine’ to ‘probably not fine’ classification. And if you are shifting from its use as a large aggregate (solid) to a component of the small aggregate (dusty), then those concrete plants get a lot spicier for the workers there. There is a WORLD of difference between being near a radioactive material and inhaling a radioactive material. Understand that gypsum itself is slightly radioactive, so every goddamn house being built in the US is having its interior lined with the stuff.
But once it’s in the concrete and the concrete sets, then there’s really no difference in terms of safety to the public. And phosphogypusm that can be used in fertilizer is not terribly radioactive to begin with – about that of granite kg for kg. But I wonder if the stuff being stored in Florida is being stored because it’s too radioactive to be used in fertilizer. If so, it’s probably not going to be economical to use in road construction because it’ll require a lot of specialized handling relative to what you can offset by using it. Unless the company responsible for the piles was subsidizing its use simply as a means to get rid of the stuff, because it’s probably more dangerous in piles than it would be in roads.
I’m not really taking a side on this one other than less radioactive stuff is better, but it’s unlikely that this stuff is substantially more radioactive than the stuff we already use in roads without even bothering to check. And the typical home of drywall and granite countertops (that homeowners often covet) is already radioactive and nobody gives a shit. I’m certain there is a safe way to use this stuff, but safe and economical is a different matter entirely, and safe and well regulated is as well – especially in a state like Florida that some really good regulation and a lot of really terrible regulation.
Jay
@Geminid:
Charcoal and wood fired adds wood flavours, coal does not add any flavour.
The key to coal, charcoal or wood fired ovens is that they create a extremely hot, dry cooking space that gas ovens and electric ovens can’t match.
If you are cooking a traditional thin crust pizza, the oven needs to be at 700 degrees and dry, otherwise the pizza crust becomes soggy from the moisture of the toppings, and even properly cooked, isn’t really a take out meal because it quickly becomes soggy.
There is a lot of stuff that goes up a few notches in a charcoal, wood fired or coal fired oven.
Properly built and engineered they are as clean or cleaner than a gas oven. Unfortunately a lot of the older ones are not.
Cameron
….and not a moment too soon!
https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/elections/presidential/caucus/2023/06/30/casey-desantis-to-hit-the-iowa-campaign-trail-for-first-solo-event/70373746007/
Brachiator
The CNN State of the Union clip really bothered me. It is really bad journalism masquerading as inquiry.
These are three separate questions and do not represent any kind of meaningful journalism.
The low approval number includes Republicans who would dismiss whatever Biden might do. Nor is this rating an endorsement of Republicans. Lastly, this rating says nothing about possible voter intent. The general principle, which is very hard for many people to understand, is that a numerical measurement is not necessarily significant or meaningful in any way. It’s just a number, not even a data point.
The pundit also falsely implies that the “seven in ten” who say economic conditions are poor are the same near 70 percent who presumably disapprove of Biden’s handling of the economy. But this is an entirely separate issue, at least as put forward.
The last question is valid, but the answer would require actual reporting by journalists and active survey efforts by Democrats. People may feel that Biden is not doing enough. They may think that the economy is beyond anything that the government can do. And Secretary Mayor Pete’s answer was about the best that he could offer.
Mai Naem mobileI
@trollhattan: those people won’t care because drag queens, LGBTQ folks and those pesky librarians won’t be able to travel down those roads and live in those areas. Never mind that they won’t be able to travel down those roads or live in the areas either.
Bupalos
@Geminid:
I don’t think it gives any advantage in terms of the kind of heat it provides, but it does provide an advantage in the ease of providing that kind of heat. Wood and charcoal can definitely do the same thing, but being less dense would require more careful tending. And you could surely design gas to do the same thing, but you’d have to really design the oven to specifically mimic the characteristics.
I’ve seen a lot of claims like “it gets hotter” and that’s really just nonsense. No one is cooking pizza in a way that requires 2500f. They’re probably looking for a dry convective 750, and that is absolutely doable a lot of different ways. I’m pretty sure 90% of this is just another “go back in time” kind of thing. Which stuff gets marketed on all the time.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, … Phys.org:
Interesting. But probably shouldn’t be surprising. Our brains have evolved in an environment where trust in our family and in our nearest neighbors and clan helped us to survive. In something like the last 30-40 years we’ve started interacting daily (or hourly) with people we have never seen and will never see and building relationships with them. Our brain wiring doesn’t have experience with that…
Website at Northeastern.edu.
Cheers,
Scott.
Barney
YouTube is part of Alphabet, ie Google – they bought it a long time ago. Larry Page and Sergei Brin still have just over 50% of voting power, but they’re not known as hands-on controllers in a political or social sense. Are you thinking of Facebook?
trollhattan
Whee!
Bupalos
@Jay: Charcoal doesn’t have to add any flavor. Charcoal can be perfectly neutral.
Betty Cracker
@Barney: I was — my bad! — and thanks for the correction.
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
$44 billion to prove how much of a dumbass he is.
Seems that paying twice the asking price should have been enough to prove that.
Martin
@trollhattan: Yeah, one for liberals to keep an eye on is ‘metallurgical coal’. This is not the stuff you burn in power plants but the stuff you need to make steel. It’s the kind of coal mining we want and need to keep going and should be supporting, along with the miners that dig it out.
Coal fired pizza ovens are still around because they burn really hot, so if you want a foo-foo pizza, they can keep up a pretty high rate of production for a restaurant compared to a wood fired. Gas is the most common of course, and works as well as coal. So a wood fired place might need more ovens to maintain a given level of business compared to coal.
The loss of coal-fired ovens would in no way be a culinary loss. They’re pretty rare because of how hard it is to buy and have delivered that quantity of coal, a problem that won’t get better with time.
Jay
@Bupalos:
Nobody makes an electric or gas oven that mimic’s the conditions of a coal, woodfired or charcoal oven.
It’s like bbq,…………
Mai Naem mobileI
@BR: i don’t think you have to go into any big explanations. Most people understand simple bribes and that’s all it is. I was surprised at a few people who I deal with who brought up Dobbs on their own. The consequences of Dobbs need to be kept fresh in people’s minds for 2024.
Jay
@Bupalos:
Charcoal adds flavour based on the wood that it was made from. Not as much as dry wood, but it still adds flavour.
Luckily, a lot of the charcoal made these days, uses the off gassing of the process to create bio gas fuels.
Martin
@Another Scott: My take away is that when communication is expensive, it tends to be communicated by authorities that invest some effort to check its accuracy because the communication bandwidth is limited and has value.
When communication bandwidth becomes infinite, the value of it drops to zero, so the only benefit to check it is the value of the audiences trust in you. And that has to compete with the goals of advertising.
This is part of the grand theory of why Google’s ad network struggles to grow without market manipulation. The infinite ad opportunities means that the value of each ad drives to zero, so Google needs to artificially constrain the market in any number of ways which has been getting them into a bit of trouble and is catching the attention of large regulators over antitrust as Facebook had the same problem and so the two of them collude as a cartel to limit the market.
Kent
To the contrary. Trump has a feral political genius that DeSantis completely lacks. Trump may be a dipshit in conventional terms, but he has a talent for politics that DeSantis is missing. Trump is more of an opportunist. He would march in a pride parade wearing leathers and a rainbow flag if he thought it would win him votes.
DeSantis is basically the Scott Walker of 2024. He’s an asshole Republican governor who has made a name for himself by being an extreme asshole and has gotten various deep pocketed dark money supporters all thrilled. But asshole-ness only gets you so far. Most ordinary people have a fairly well tuned asshole detector and people like DeSantis and Walker just set it off. Chris Christie is the same. People get 10 seconds of him and see asshole.
Brachiator
@catclub:
But bashing trans people is okay? And this person doesn’t see that DeSantis and other Republicans are going after gay people as well?
Jay
@Martin:
Worked for a chain up here that tried to bring “real thin crust pizza to the masses”. (Restaurant construction, consulting). Their goal was Il Mercado quality but with gas ovens. They are still around, but arn’t Il Mercado quality.
It isn’t the crust, the ingredients, the staff or anything else.
Nobody makes a gas or electric oven that burns hot enough or dry enough. The closest to mimicking a wood fired, charcoal or coal fired oven, would be to take a pottery kiln, and turn it sideways. It would not do for production, because the firebrick would become moisture saturated quickly.
Il Mercado has a wood oven, fired with oak, hickory and maple, harvested on the East Coast, and trucked all the way out here.
bbleh
@RaflW: maybe the difference here is the time horizon. I certainly don’t think progress on LGBTQ equality is going to be a straight (heh) line. There have been and will be setbacks, and there will be profound differences between different parts of the country (and even more so once the current SCOTUS gets around to overturning Obergefell).
BUT, I maintain the long-term progress is both substantial and almost irreversible. Consider where we are compared to even 30 years ago (Clinton), much less 60 (Nixon). And think about how many people have come of age and even are approaching middle-age since, say, Pride parades became the norm. Short of a full-on truck-em-to-the-camps neo-Nazi takeover, we ain’t goin’ back.
I think there’s a strong parallel to reproductive rights: it’s an issue heavily or entirely to do with sex, there has been an open activist community for a couple generations, the Christianists have long been the strongest and most organized hostile community, Obergefell was a watershed moment like Roe, it’s a hot-button issue for rightist Republican politicians, and we’re presently in the middle of a backlash. And I think the parallel will continue: once Obergefell goes down, there will be a patchwork of laws varying from state to state, political activity will begin to focus at the state level rather than exclusively at the Federal level and in the Federal courts, and the battle will continue at that level for probably the next few decades, until there is finally enough of a consensus at the Federal level to address it legislatively, which I think there will be precisely because I think an increasingly large majority will support it.
Now that sucks if you’re LGBTQ in a red state. But even the worst of those will be no worse than the situation nationally 30 or 40 years ago, and things will be a whole lot better in the blue states, and there will be a LOT more information and support available to people struggling with their identity or their environment. LGBTQ young people in red states, take note.
Kent
No, it’s not like BBQ.
Pizza gets heat-blasted for 2-4 minutes and is done. Not remotely enough time for any flavors to be imparted to the pizza dough. It is simply intense heat combined with whatever convection currents are created by the oven design. There may be technological issues with getting an oven that hot using gas which combusts at lower temperatures than coal, but it isn’t about the smoke. And I suspect the technological issues can get sorted out. Crematoriums use natural gas and burn at 1800 degrees.
BBQ like brisket gets slow cooked with smoke under low heat for 8+ hours. So not only is the meat exposed to smoke 150+ times longer than pizza, but under lower heat conditions such that the complex flavor oils in wood smoke like syringol and guaiacol do not combust in the 250 degree heat of a BBQ pit like they will in the 1,000 degree heat of a coal fired pizza oven. Plus the process is different. With BBQ you are slowly denaturing proteins and connective tissue in the meat to make them tender. With pizza dough you are vaporizing the water in the dough at high heat to make it rise quickly and then charring it.
Put another way, pizza ovens are so hot that even the smoke gets burned.
trollhattan
@Jay:
Places here doing “proper” Neapolitan thin crust use oak, readily available. As important as the oven and fuel is two-day dough, giving it the slightly sweet chewiness.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
OT – always slow on a trend, I finally started Star Trek: Discovery (after first starting Strange New Worlds and realizing that there is a critical backstory that provides context).
And Holy Shit, this is good.
Ruckus
@Suzanne:
Yep.
It’s hate but it uses money as it’s selling point.
Outright selling the hate is too obvious.
cope
@Cameron: I didn’t even know there was such a thing as Dukes of Hazzard cosplay.
twbrandt
BJ: Come for the anti-DeSantis snark, stay for a detailed discussion of pizza dough baking.
Jay
@Brachiator:
what’s that old saying about “when your paycheck depends on it”?
Birb channel has been pretty good today.
The juvenile Golden Eagle came by again, trying to learn how to fly around tall buildings.
Later, a Bald Eagle was circling at altitude about 2 blocks east, and I wondered when the “fighter squadron” would deploy. Shortly after I spotted him, (3 big glide circles later), 15 of the crows deployed from the parking lot, climbed to altitude, and very quickly drove him off north.
They came back a few minutes later, landed on the Safeway roof, (it’s a living roof) and did crow equivalent of giving each other high fives.
Betty Cracker
@Kent: Chris Christie is definitely an asshole, but this year at least, it may be a good thing that the Trump people will make it impossible for him to win the GOP nomination because he’d have a much better chance of winning the general than DeSantis does, IMO.*
Christie did a town hall a few weeks back, and in the context of the post-2016 GOP, he came across as a reasonable guy, at least from the normie point of view. My husband is a normie — he votes for Dems 100% of the time but doesn’t follow politics closely. He liked Christie! To be fair, Christie bashed Trump the whole time, so there was plenty to like about that.
I don’t like Christie, but I find the prospect of a Christie presidency exponentially less scary than a DeSantis presidency. Christie is a bully but does not seem like a fanatical hater.
*It should be noted that I have the political instincts of a concussed garden snail, but that’s my assessment.
Alison Rose
@Betty Cracker:
My thoughts exactly. He’s a Republican so I would disagree with probably 99.9% of what he would do as president, but he doesn’t come across as a vicious culture-warmonger. And I could imagine him being a bit more willing to compromise with Dems to get shit done than Ronnie.
mrmoshpotato
Hello hooman! My treat receptical is open! And this couch is comfy!
MattF
@Betty Cracker: Yeah, look up ‘Christie’ and ‘Fort Lee’. And… why is a town in New Jersey named after Lee? Doesn’t seem right.
mrmoshpotato
@Alison Rose:
LMAO!
Geminid
@MattF: Maybe the town and fort were named after the Revolutionary War General Lee.
Manyakitty
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: I also found Discovery highly entertaining. Enjoy!
Ruckus
@Almost Retired:
I don’t believe that it is that they feel they will not be safe or fine.
I believe that it is that they can’t/don’t/won’t believe that a world that allows actual freedom to be something different than they are is possible. They
needhave to have only that reenforcement that their hate and limited views are proper and fitting. Otherwise the world does not make sense to them. We see that that the world needs the possibility to be different to be normal. Women in charge, people with skin darker than the color of the area I’m typing on upsets their very limited concepts of right and proper, even as they are not even close to right, proper, reasonable or good. Their minds are limited, cannot think outside more than a tiny box because that scares them – because their minds are tiny, closed boxes.MattF
@Geminid: Google agrees. General Charles Lee.
piratedan
@Ruckus: I look at it another way, how much would a RW propagandist pay to eliminate an information hub that allowed liberals to track RW perfidy and allow communities that they wish to marginalize to have their communication infrastructure placed under their control?
Paul in KY
@Betty Cracker: I can’t believe that’s a non-parody ad. I just can’t….
Jeezus Fucking Christ!
Suzanne
@Ruckus:
I think disregard is a better way to describe the emotional state than hate. The manifestation is exactly the same, so functionally I suppose it doesn’t matter. Hate requires passion, anger, arousal of feeling. Disregard just requires apathy.
trollhattan
@Betty Cracker:
I wonder, though, whether Christie ultimately is bluffing, because he seems to acquiesce when the heat is on, e.g., being part of the Trump debate prep team. He’s a bully from way back and bullies tend to have a point at which they fold.
“Better” than a Trump or a DeSantis or a Pompeo? Doubtlessly true, but like picking measles over cholera.
Jay
@Kent:
I was talking about the difference between an electric or gas BBQ vs charcoal, not slow cooked BBQ. There is a reason there are still Hibachi’s, other larger grills and even Eggs.
Il Mercado uses hardwoods, and yes, you can taste the smoke.
Nobody makes a gas or electric pizza/bread oven that matches a wood fired, charcoal or coal fired oven. I got the Chain job because I am the last guy left who built the Il Mercado oven, 40 years ago. Permitting was a pain, inspections were a pain, because it’s Vancouver, who was already banning fireplaces and wood stoves in new construction.
So we built it with reburn tubes and a reburn chamber, and catalytic converters in the chimney. Lower PPM than a gas oven.
The whole thing came out at 17 tons, with 4 ovens and one pizza oven. Firing it up, (curing the mortar, brickwork and clay) took 2 weeks. Part of the thing that made it difficult, was minimizing the heat exchange to the interior of the dining area.
And of course, when they shut down at night, the fire keeps burning, for a few hours, basically, a self cleaning, self drying feature.
I cooked on gas bbq’s for decades, but the last time I had to replace one, went over to charcoal, and everything really went up a huge notch.
Jay
@trollhattan:
and hard, Durham wheat flour.
Steeplejack
@MattF:
Fort Lee is named after Charles Lee, a Revolutionary War general
ETA: Late again.
Geminid
@MattF: Yes, General Charles Lee. Because of his prior service in the British Army, Lee hoped to get the top general’s job in the Continental Army, but Virginia Militia Colonel George Washington got the job instead.
Lee later got a cussing from Washington during the Battle of Monmouth Courthouse, and a Court Martial afterwards. But his name lives on!
Alison Rose
@trollhattan:
The Oregon Trail of presidential primary seasons.
trollhattan
So help me god, the two most-punchable senators are supplying more reasons for that battering.
Deliver us from our careerist manbabies.
trollhattan
@Jay: Never heard of an Il Mercado, sounds cool, okay, wrong adjective.
Can attest at least one of our places needed seismic permitting, so massive was their oven. Masonry doesn’t play well with liquifying soil.
Another Scott
@Alison Rose: Before BridgeGate, my recollection is that Christie was infamous for beating up on teachers.
He’s still an authoritarian monster.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ruckus
@Suzanne:
Hate requires passion, anger, arousal of feeling.
Seems like they have that in an over abundance. Or at least that someone is telling them that they should have it. I may be thinking of those that always seem like someone just stabbed them with red hot fireplace poker.
Suburban Mom
@MattF: I suspect he’s counting on the short memory of the American public.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@bbleh: They are shooting ultimately for Lawrence and Griswold.
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
Deliver us from our careerist
mancrybabies.FIXITFY
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Steeplejack:
Instead of me, he promotes Charles Lee
Makes him second-in-command:
[LEE]
I’m a General. Whee!!!!
[HAMILTON]
Yeah. He’s not the choice I would have gone with
[HAMILTON/LAURENS/LAFAYETTE]
He shits the bed at the Battle of Monmouth
Kent
@Jay: Coal and wood fired pizzerias in Italy have been using filtration systems for decades. I’m sure the NYC pizzerias can do the same if they want to stick with coal or wood.
In terms of actual combustion, anthracite coal does have lower hydrogen content than natural gas so it will produce less water vapor as part of the combustion process. But electrical radiant heat is drier still because the heat is all radiant and not combustion-driven. So an electric oven would be the driest heat of all.
Cutting emissions is a good thing. I’m sure they can figure it out one way or the other without DeSantis’ help.
trollhattan
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: ”No more slut pills!”
–Supremes, sans Diana Ross
...now I try to be amused
@bbleh:
Every new class the culture warriors designate to shit upon is smaller than the last. I wish they’d take the final step and target a totally imaginary class with no actual people in it.
Geminid
I don’t think Christie can win the Republican nomination,* for the reasons given by Ms. Cracker. But I’m glad he’s in the race and I look forward to him trashing Trump and DeSantis.
* I could see Christie winning a plurality vote in my state’s primary, because Virginia has open primaries and he might attract a lot of independents. Outside the Northeast and Mid Atlantic though, he won’t do well with the bible thumpers and their more secular, radical allies. They’ll call him a RINO. And Christie actually resembles a rhino!.
bbleh
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if they took out Loving too, and Thomas wrote the opinion.
It’s gonna be a long slog to get all the sex stuff addressed legislatively, and now it appears most of it’s gonna have to start at the state level. (Interracial marriage and at least some aspects of Griswold might be a quick win at the Federal level cuz they get at straight sex.) And I wouldn’t count on it all being done in less than 20-30 years.
Some red-state business communities are already taking notice of the talent drain. I wonder if/when that’s really gonna start to matter
@…now I try to be amused: “It’s time to put a STOP to the WEAK policies of the Biden administration and FACE UP to the THREAT TO AMERICA from the ANT-PEOPLE FROM THE MOONS OF JUPITER!!”
Kent
@trollhattan: This only happens because Democrats allow it to happen. Blame the Senate Democrats who grant Vance and Paul the power to do this.
gwangung
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: You know that fanboys are gonna ask, “What’s the matter with you?!?!”
(Seriously, though, I really liked Season 3 and 4, and SNW is really primo material. )
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
Christie is a bully but does not seem like a fanatical hater.
Bully is the first listing on his resume, so that may be why he’s such an ass.
Geminid
@bbleh: I have long suspected that striking down Loving is Thomas’s endgame. He’s a devout Catholic, so divorce is out of the question. The only way he can get free of Ginni is if interracial marriages are outlawed again.
Kent
He was EXACTLY the same sort of asshole that DeSantis is. As governor he ran the state more like an alpha male mob boss than culture warrior but that is mostly because New Jersey is a completely different demographic than Florida
His most famous stunt was vacationing with his family on a closed beach when beaches in the rest of the state were closed to the public because of some pointless budget fight government shut down. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/03/nyregion/chris-christie-beach-new-jersey-budget.html
Betty Cracker
@Another Scott: Christie absolutely sucks, but he’s not in the same category as aspiring Christo-fascist dictator like DeSantis or a personality-disordered mob boss wannabe like Trump. He’s a garden-variety shitty Repub.
JML
@Kent: Yes, every shitty political trick and stunt the GOP pulls is the fault of the Democrats who “allow” it to happen. That’s just ridiculous.
One of the reasons these scumbags never get held to account for their own jackassery is when they’re let off the hook like this. They are responsible for their own assholery. the Founders are responsible for the arcane and anti-majoritarian Senate rules. Manchin and Simena are responsible for having loyalty to themselves over party and country.
JaySinWA
Be careful what you wish for, Imaginary classes still get associated with real people. Witches in Salem, Satan worshiping day care center staff, Pizza joints with imaginary basements for imaginary children to be molested in. Adrenochrome harvesters.
The more imaginary the class the harder to disprove.
Kent
And how do you propose holding them accountable other than taking their power away?
By giving them a good tongue lashing on twitter? You think that will do the trick?
And no, the founders aren’t responsible for any of this. All these arcane Senate customs and norms are found nowhere in the Constitution. It is just stuff that the Senate has made up for itself over time in order to empower individual Senators at the expense of the whole. Most of it needs to be flushed down the toilet.
Ruckus
@piratedan:
That sounds right but look who we are talking about. Do you really think that he can make any decision that sounds like that description, that his thought process uses anything like that level of complexity?
Delk
Mamas for DeSantis… Ugh
Suzanne
@Ruckus: Eh. There’s a lot of conservatives who aren’t actively seething with hatred. They are just self-absorbed to the exclusion of all else. Their bank accounts, their property values, their businesses. They’re the Main Characters, all the time! They don’t want to pay any more than they have to. They don’t want to build a social safety net they believe they’ll never need. (This, of course, runs along axes of race and class.)
So they’ll make common cause with the people who do actively seethe with anger and resentment and racism, because TAX CUTS, BAYBEE! Deregulation! Mo money!
Suzanne
@Betty Cracker: Agreed. Christie is Lawful Evil. DeSantis is Neutral Evil. Trump is Chaotic Evil.
Jay
@trollhattan:
Il Mercaudo is a mall at the corner of 1st and Commercial in Vancouver. The area used to be Little Italy. It’s now a “Free Republic”.
It’s also the restaurant in the mall, which was built because the City, wouldn’t just let the owner build a restaurant on one corner of the property, so he built the whole mall.
He knew Archie, as they were both part of the same immigration wave from Italy to Vancouver in the early 1950’s. Archie learned his trades in post war Italy and I was part of Archie’s crew back in the day, (hod and mortar carrier, mixer, etc). We did all the brick facing for the mall, and of course, the oven.
Old School
@…now I try to be amused:
School kids who use litter boxes?
Baud
@JML:
@Kent:
It’s how the game is played. You can hate the reason for a particular hold, but don’t expect Senators to give up their powers.
Jim Appleton
@Delk: Triple ugh that the Des Moines Register terms the group “grassroots” right before noting, without irony, it’s being launched by the FL Governor’s wife and the fucking Governor of Iowa.
Another Scott
@JML: They do get held to account, but it’s a slow process and they do lots of damage in the meantime.
E.g. Amanda Chase :
Cheers,
Scott.
frosty
@twbrandt: Really! Pizza? Full Service Blog!
May I assume all this started because of a chain called Coal Fired Pizza? To which I immediately thought Yuck! So now I find it won’t taste like sulfur. Still not going there though.
Baud
@Jim Appleton:
It’s pretty amazing how whipped our media is.
HumboldtBlue
@frosty:
Oh, come on, Frosty. IT WAS RIGHT THERE!
COLE fired pizza
Frankensteinbeck
@Almost Retired:
On the contrary. Republicans have hated men who behave in a feminine manner for all of living memory, hatred to the point of ubiquitous violence and occasional murder. Gay men, drag queens, trans women, the merely nonconformist, they don’t see a difference. A new label is letting them dig out the old homophobia again.
@piratedan:
But Musk isn’t acting like that. He could have just shut it down. He could have kept it working but put in place systems to make those liberal actions harder. Instead he shouted “Everybody gets to use hate speech WOOB WOOB WOOB” and tried a bunch of random shit while the system slowly breaks down. In the process he’s destroying an unearned reputation for genius that he obsessively cultivated. Arrogant incompetence is also in line with results in his other companies, where anything that becomes his personal project turns into a trash fire.
Kent
@Baud: Oh, I agree. That is why it is pointless to whine about Vance and Paul and Tuberville.
One solution is to put far more partisan firebrands into those positions as “acting” until the Senate moves. That is what Trump would have done.
That doesn’t solve the problem of judges and military promotions. But it does solve the problem of executive branch appointments.
Jay
@Kent:
Like many things, the issue is tear down or retrofit. It’s not just an issue of adding a filter in the chimney, so you get into costs, which these days, off Covid, for many restaurants, is a big issue.
Geminid
@Jim Appleton: I read that DeSantis’s super-PAC is his main campaign engine, and its organizers had trained well over a thousand paid canvassers as of 4 months ago. A story even had a picture of a mocked up door in the middle of an open room. A trainee would knock on the door, the trainer open it, and the two act out an encounter with a real voter. Afterwards, the trainer schools the trainee on technique. Then another hire knocks on the door and the process is repeated.
Besides canvassing, the SuperPAC employees would have time to staff various astro-turf groups like the one you describe.
Exporting so much activity from the campaign to the PAC is an innovation that would be a little scary if DeSantis was a more capable politician. As it is, it makes me glad I live at the end of a long driveway.
Cameron
@Betty Cracker: Ms. Cracker, I was still living in Philly when Christie was governor of NJ, and I agree with your assessment. Bully? Yes. Asshole? Yes. Right-wing MAGA loonie-tune? Not so much.
Cameron
@Delk: Mamas, don’t let your sons show up for DeSantis….forget it, I suck at musical parody.
laura
@Another Scott: let’s not overlook Christie’s refusal to make the annual required contribution to the public employees and teachers’ pension systems during his terms in office. Years and years of refusing to fund- that’s absolutely worth bringing up anytime his fitness for office is discussed.
trollhattan
Since I’m headed out now is the time to curse this pizza-themed thread: brick oven Bill.
Drink!
brendancalling
As many of you know, I live in Philadelphia. I skipped the Moms for Fliberty-floo debacle at the Museum of the American Revolution, but today I am serving the Philadelphia community by making good trouble.
As has been noted about previous hate events, you have a right to free speech—but not a platform. The Nazi Moms, much like the Black Israelites, are more than welcome to stand on the street corner or the park and say whatever they want. That’s free speech. But the Museum of the American Revolution, which tried to hide the event from their staff and then ignored a petition signed by 50% of said staff to cancel the event, was under no obligation to let this go forward. BTW, a large percentage of their staff is LGBTQ+, and expressed their outrage and fear to the museum’s leadership to no avail. As you’d expect, the Motherfuckers for Lies hurled homphobic slurs at protestors and engaged in all sorts of nasty behavior. A restaurant I go to, owned by a lesbian couple, reported on Instagram that in ten years of business they never received the harassment and abuse they received this weekend.
SO.
I tracked down my state reps and senators and called them, to tell them about these incidents, and to tell them that when the museum comes calling for state and federal grants to tell them no.
Then I called my councilpeople with the same message.
Then I went to the museum’s website and found their annual report. I used to work as a grant writer, and know the importance of reputation and mission to both corporate and private foundations. I started calling them with the same message, adding “there are so many worthy organizations in Philadelphia that truly need your money—please don’t give it to a museum that completely turned its back on everything you value.”
Then I put up a public video on IG, describing my activities and how “you too can make good trouble.”
At the very least, I want to see resignations and a formal public apology. And if they go under, fuck it. Philly IS a museum of the American Revolution, and has PLENTY of other institutions that illustrate and illuminate that history—but which don’t invite hate groups to a city that’s nearly 50% Black, has a huge gay population, and is the home to immigrants from all over the world.
Another Scott
@Cameron: The first rule of politics is to win elections. He’s a Republican. He’ll do what he thinks is necessary to win and preserve his political power.
CFR.org:
Nobody forced him to endorse TIFG. (His endorsement was a pack of lies, but got him him that cushy job – for a little while, anyway.) That was his choice, and illustrated how he does political calculus. I agree with Kent, and laura, above – Christie is no better than Ronda, and may have even been Ronda’s inspiration (with him having the benefit of a compliant legislature, also too).
Don’t mistake what a politician says or does for what they “really believe”. They want to win elections – that matters above all. Having GQPers in office these days is dangerous (as we all agree), no matter who their temporary enemies are at the moment. If they need MAGAs to win, they’ll play MAGA.
Cheers,
Scott.
RaflW
@Betty Cracker: For sure. They are handing us the means to defeat them. We just have to be prepared to fight in ways that may not be familiar or comfortable. Relying on rules and impartial umpires isn’t going to save us.
Mass turnout, well documented, so that efforts to steal the ’24 election can be thwarted. Kind of like how Biden kept pushing out info head of the Russian invasion of Ukraine to wrong-foot them.
Betty Cracker
@Delk: & @Jim Appleton: I know nothing about Iowa politics or the state’s governor, but my impression from limited exposure is that Gov. Reynolds is not too bright. Is that accurate?
@Geminid: Speaking of DeSantis’s Super PAC (Politico)
It almost sounds like Cortes is sucking up to Trump a little in case he needs a lifeboat.
Stuart Frasier
@Martin: We use metallurgical coal to make steel. We don’t need met coal to make steel. Steel made using coal is responsible for 8% of global carbon emissions. There are several methods of making steel entirely without coal and they are scaling up. The Hybrit process is pretty far along, with a working pilot plant and plans to deliver fossil-free steel in quantity in 2026. We have to stop using coal for steelmaking fairly quickly to meet climate goals.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, …
Keep your wits about you while looking around…
Cheers,
Scott.
Jim Appleton
@Geminid: Thx, delk at 161 noted the group itself, my point is that media coverage gave blatant liars a humjob.
Redshift
@frosty:
Nah, it goes back to the days before there were chains. The places in New Haven, where I first had it, have some claim to having invented American-style pizza.
One of those, Frank Pepe, is a chain now (though not a franchise, they own all of them.) So I can get Pepe’s pizza without going to New Haven now, yum! I can’t imagine what kind of scrubbers they needed to get a permit to build a coal-fired oven in Northern Virginia.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@brendancalling: You are my hero
Dan B
@Brachiator: Log Cabin types seem to feel that liberals don’t fear black, brown, poor, and trans. I’ve yet to see a black Log Cabin Republican.
MattF
@Betty Cracker: DeSantis is doing everything he can to make the libs yelp, but Trump is the protagonist and is setting the narrative.
Nelle
@Betty Cracker: Kim Reynolds has the zeal of a self-righteous, uniformed dimwit, but the determination to wield power like an angry queen. She campaigned against Republicans who, in the last term, voted against her school voucher program. She got most, if not all, knocked out and replaced by acolytes. The Iowa lege breathes to serve her.
Redshift
@Another Scott: As I understand it, there are sectors like steel production where hydrogen may be the only workable green option. It really is important to get the ball rolling on a lot of things, even if things like hydrogen fueled cars are never going to happen.
Another Scott
Interesting interview with Amb. McFaul at RFERL.org:
Much more at the link.
Cheers,
Scott.
Redshift
@brendancalling: My hat’s off to you! Spectacular work!
Jim Appleton
@brendancalling: Nice! Thank you.
Jay
@Geminid:
with the new concealed carry laws, castle doctrine and stand your ground,…….
rooting for injuries.
Sister Golden Bear
@RaflW: Agreed. The moral panic propaganda war is working. I think people, including LGBTQ+ people, are underestimating just how fragile our rights are right now, and how easily they can — and likely will — all be taken away, and public opinion will likely support it, or at least not oppose it enough to prevent it.
MattF
@Another Scott: Interesting. Putin is accustomed to intimidating people who don’t want to lose their yachts and country homes. But faced with people who have nothing to lose, he’s ineffective.
Stuart Frasier
@Redshift: Green hydrogen will also be critical for synthetic fuels for sectors like aviation that can’t easily be electrified and synthetic hydrocarbons for various industrial uses. We may even use hydrogen for medium-long term stationary storage. Hydrogen cars are probably a dead-end, though. Batteries got better faster than anyone predicted and will only continue to do so.
MomSense
@Sister Golden Bear:
I’ve noticed a lot more negative comments on posts by LGBTQ accounts. These two dads who have infant twins posted a lovely video of their nursery and wow did the haters turn out. The dads ended up pulling the post. Same thing for several trans women I follow. I guess I shouldn’t be shocked at this point but somehow the casual hate is almost worse.
I need to learn how to be more effective at standing in the gap.
Matt McIrvin
@bbleh:
Not if the courts declare all of our civil-rights laws unconstitutional, and the federal authorities under Republican administrations get into it in a big way. Bringing the blue states to heel is part of the goal.
mrmoshpotato
@brendancalling: Thank you for using your free time to make good trouble.
Jay
@brendancalling:
thank you for your service, and that’s not an empty platitude. Thank you.
Matt McIrvin
@RaflW: I’m not sure I believe the Democratic shift in that poll– what kind of real effect would decrease support among both Republicans and Democrats, but increase it among Independents? I think that’s noise– it’s on the same scale as previous fluctuations in these poll numbers. The Republican drop is real though.
piratedan
@Another Scott: I was assured by MajorX4 that these guys would be different, so maybe he can shed some light on just what this means… although the idea that “your content becomes their content” doesn’t sound like a great thing.
NutmegAgain
Cute dog!!
Geminid
@Redshift: Plug Power just sold two 5MW hydrogen electolyser units to be used for steel production at an ArcelorMittels plant in Bremen, Germany. The units will produce 4.2 tons of hydrogen a day.
Plug Power (headquartered in Latham, NY) will also provide one each of these units to a glass factory in Gothenburg, Sweden and an aluminum recycling plant in Havinger, Norway.
This is a new and developing industry, but the EU plan is to produce 10 million tons of green hydrogen a year by 2030, for use in industry and heavy transport.
brendancalling
@Jay: it gives me pleasure to ruin a bad person’s day.
Steeplejack
@brendancalling:
Bravo! 👍
Geminid
@Stuart Frasier: Fuel cells probably will not be utilized much for personal vehicles, but heavy transport is a different story. Cummins Engines plans to produce a lot of heavy truck propulsion systems built around fuel cells. Hyundai already is.
There are a number of fuel cell powered railroad locomotives operating in Germany, with more to come from their French manufacturer. And fuel cell powered buses are entering fleets in California. Alameda County has operated them for 20 years.
Dan B
@Geminid: That sounds great. Boeing is still a big part of the Seattle economy so green fuel for aviation would be wonderful.
Geminid
@Dan B: Airbus has pictures of some really neat looking hydrogen powered airliners. They are not much beyond the concept stage, though. Airbus is planning to make one of their midsized jets into a flying testbed in order to try out different carbon-free propulsion systems.
Carbon-neutral jet fuel is already available but it costs 3 times as much as regular fuel right now. That cost differential may lessen. I read that when House Democrats were working out the climate provisions in the Build Back Better bill, a mandate to phase in carbon neutral fuel for air transport was considered, but shelved.
The mandate might make it into climate legislation later this decade. Carbon neutral liquid fuel has the advantages of an already existing airport infrastructure and fleets full of planes that can use it without modification.
We may see 20-25 passenger, fuel cell powered prop planes within 5 years.
Martin
@Jay: Man, there is no shortage of oak on the west coast.
WaterGirl
@brendancalling: You and laura are my heroes today!
WaterGirl
@brendancalling: John Lewis would be proud of you. Seriously.
Jay
@Martin:
Here, nope. Here we have Garry Oaks in a small area of the Southern Vancouver Island, and are a protected species. Cooking wood is red oak, or white oak offcuts. White oak of any quality is too valuable for boat building and neither of those grow here. We have broadleaf maple, which is just starting to be utilized for applications, (mostly live edge countertops) from a dearth of other hardwood.
For smoking and cooking fires, the traditional wood here is alder, ( a “trash” tree) but you have to split it when it’s green then cure it for 2 years.
Geminid
@Jay: Got larch? A friend in Cortland County, New York rebuilt a hay wagon with larch. It looked like good material. He bought it from some Mennonites who mill lumber.
Jay
@Martin:
In Eastern Canada, there is an entire industry built around oak, maple and other hardwoods for cooking with, where here, there is not.
So it’s cheaper to buy and ship, than try to local source.
Mai Naem mobileI
@brendancalling: i googled the Musuem to see if people had started writing negative reviews yet. It’s possible they aren’t posted yet because it’s a holiday weekend but the vast majority of negative reviews were older and from people whining about a liberal bias at the museum and the south being ignored.
Jay
@Geminid:
nope, no larch, other than in parks.
Alder is starting to be used in some furniture uses here, as it’s very hard, and the interlocking grain makes it brutally strong, plus, it’s white and takes stain well,
But it’s mostly guys with a portable mill cleaning up clear cuts or urban logging who have product. You need to “know a guy”, and the supply is irregular. It’s more craftsman than factory.
Mai Naem mobileI
@Geminid: i always learn stuff from you. The company that produces the carbon neutral jet fuel is Air Company and they also make vodka. https://www.aircompany.com/products/air-vodka/
Geminid
@Jay: Alder sounds like an attractive wood. Furniture making is a tough business economically but it can be very satisfying, especially if one has a distinctive local material to work with.
A couple times a week, I pass by a guy making outdoor furniture in his front yard. He has a source for Clear or No. 1 pressure treated pine, and the chairs, benches, tables etc. he makes look pretty good.
He’ll cut a lot of parts and rack them up. Then he assembles multiple pieces as needed. He must have a buyer who sells retail, because he’ll fill his yard up and then one day it will be almost empty.
This may be a vocational adaptation: the guy does not have a vehicle, which is a rarity in this area. I suspect he lost his driver’s license.
Brachiator
@brendancalling:
Very much in the spirit of the American Revolution.
Thank you very much for sharing this.
Geminid
@Mai Naem mobileI: Let’s drink a toast to carbon neutral fuel!
Jay
@Geminid:
furniture making, can be a good small business. Well built wood furniture isn’t cheap, even antiques. There is a small shop here that makes Danish Modern, they will even do custom, (shelving and bookcases to match your collection), but they have a hard time getting good teak or walnut,…….
and it costs.
Back in the day, I had a friend in North Sannich, who would buy old mills or fishpacking plants in remote areas. We would go in, cut the piers at low tide, wait until high tide lifted them up above the cut off piers, and tow them with an old fishboat across the Salish Sea to his mill site. Most of them were built post and beam, with 4′ old growth Douglas Fir, 2′ cedar planking and cedar shakes all in great shape. His guys would gradually diassemble them, re-mill them and resell the old growth wood.
I just helped with the cutting part and towing part.
But man, the wood was amazing.
Chris T.
@Cameron:
Look out! He’s got a book!
New slogan for Florida: Florida, where any undiagnosed nut can carry a gun around anywhere. Better get yours now so you can stand your ground! Tell all your friends to get one now in case you are the undiagnosed nut! Remember, an armed society is a peacefully dead society!
Chris T.
@Redshift:
Or, as I like to put it: Hey, no fair making me pay to hook up to the sewer system when I could just dump my sewage onto your lawn and driveway!
The Lodger
@brendancalling: 100% on that. I grew up in the Philly broadcast area and never heard of the Museum of the American Revolution. It sounds like something an out of towner made up.