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Second rate reporter says what?

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

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

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Welcome to day five of every-bit-as-bad-as-you-thought-it-would-be.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Innocent people do not delay justice.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

“Perhaps I should have considered other options.” (head-desk)

Republicans in disarray!

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you do not.

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

I desperately hope that, yet again, i am wrong.

If you don’t believe freedom is for everybody, then the thing you love isn’t freedom, it is privilege.

This is dead girl, live boy, a goat, two wetsuits and a dildo territory.  oh, and pink furry handcuffs.

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We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

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You are here: Home / Elections 2024 / Monday Morning Open Thread: Moving Forward, Regardless

Monday Morning Open Thread: Moving Forward, Regardless

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Field trip!


 
A mantra for our times:

We of the GOP will invent a newer, better, stronger wheel!…

Per Politico, “GOP states quit the program that fights voter fraud. Now they’re scrambling”:

Over the past year and a half, eight Republican-led states quit a nonpartisan program designed to keep voter rolls accurate and up to date.

Top Republican election officials in those states publicly argued the program was mismanaged. The conspiracy theorists who cheered them on falsely insisted it was a front for liberals to take control of elections.

But experts say the program, known as the Electronic Registration Information Center, was among the best nationwide tool states had to catch people trying to vote twice in the same election. Now, those Republican-led states who left — and other states who lost access to their data — are scrambling to police so-called “double voters” ahead of the presidential election in 2024…

… The scramble by states to fill a security gap left open by exiting ERIC comes at a critical time. Elections officials face ongoing scrutiny about the accuracy of voter rolls after extensive — and untrue — accusations of widespread fraud in the past two election cycles. The 2024 elections are getting closer.

Grandjean said 27 states have expressed interest in the effort, with varying degrees of commitment.

But actually getting it off the ground is a different matter…

Reader Interactions

156Comments

  2. 2.

    Chris T.

    @Baud: Exactly – Republicans didn’t like it because it caught all the multi-house-owning Republicans voting in each of their districts.

  5. 5.

    Soprano2

    I think the conspiracy theorists realized they had to come up with a reason not to trust ERIC because they saw it was going to torpedo some of their most fervently-held beliefs about fraud in voting, and they didn’t want to lose the issue. My stupid totally Republican run state of MO pulled out of ERIC this year.

  6. 6.

    Baud

    Chyron on Today show on Biden’s trip

    “High Stakes Tour”

    C’mon, man. Stop trying to dramatize everything.

  8. 8.

    Rusty

    I live in New Hampshire,  one of the states that left ERIC.  It was definitely based on pandering to the conspiracy raving, right wing nuts.  It’s particularly dumb given the large number of second homes which invite double voting.  The only thing that helps is the same conspiracy nuts made it harder to vote absentee, so you need to individually request for each election.

  9. 9.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Soprano2:

    I think the conspiracy theorists realized they had to come up with a reason not to trust ERIC because they saw it was going to torpedo some of their most fervently-held beliefs about fraud in voting, and they didn’t want to lose the issue.

    I think it’s a little more direct.  To conspiracy theorists, anything that would stop the conspiracy is actually part of the conspiracy.  For that matter, pretty much everything is part of the conspiracy.

  11. 11.

    Kathleen

    WE KNOW THE MOST IMPORTANT POINT OF THE DAY IS WILL JOE BIDEN WEAR SOCKS AT THE MEETING?

    Put in all caps to more accurately reflect media angst. ETA: Voting, schmoting. Sniff.

  12. 12.

    NotMax

    As the pre-trial hearing for the Mar-a-lago case is scheduled for Friday, expect the media to be rife with expanding speculation all week long. 99.9% of which will be trite or worthless.

    Better to bypass the chaff and wait for the wheat to be served in real time.

  13. 13.

    p.a.

    1) We KNOW  there’s massive corruption/vote fraud.

    2) We attack organizations looking for vote fraud.

    3) We can’t find/prove vote fraud on our own but NOT because it’s so rare.

    4) We can’t/won’t organize with others to: *see 3 above*.

    5) Vote for us to run the whole gubmint!

  14. 14.

    sab

    In NE Ohio this summer I am noticing a lot of big cars and pickup trucks driving around with Florida plates. Mostly at normal places, like grocery stores and hardware stores, not at restaurants and malls where I’d expect out of towners. Snowbirds back for the summer.

  15. 15.

    Balconesfault

    @Baud: still jonesing for that toilet-tweet am fix that got their juices going for 4 years and gave meaning to their lives

  17. 17.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    The hell with Sunak, hopefully Biden will get to meet the real power at  No. 10,  Larry

  18. 18.

    Geminid

    There is a big meeting today in Vilnius, Lithuania. NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg is bringing Turkish President Recip Erdogan and Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson together, in order to see if Turkiye’s reservations about Sweden’s NATO membership can be resolved in time for the NATO summit, which I believe starts tomorrow.

    President Biden has also been working on Erdogan. With Finland in NATO, Sweden’s accession is not time-critical; in many practical respects, Sweden is effectively a member of the alliance already. But Stoltenberg and Biden want to present an image of NATO solidarity, and will press the stubborn Erdogan to accept Sweden’s assurances as to clamping down on support for the PKK from Swedish soil.

    And while I know I shouldn’t make fun of people’s physical appearance, I still say the President of Turkey looks like an actual turkey!

  22. 22.

    Geminid

    @Baud: Yes, the theory is that Erdogan sat down behind the name-plate “Turkey” at some international conference and noticed the snickering.

  23. 23.

    sdhays

    OMG, I just can’t even…from the NPR article:

    In late 2021, Adams appeared on a conservative radio program and called ERIC “diabolical.”

    His voting advocacy law firm has sued a number of states for records related to ERIC. And he even wrote what’s believed to be the first article ever alleging a connection between Soros and ERIC, back in 2016. (The Soros-funded Open Society Foundations has given money previously to The Pew Charitable Trusts, which helped start ERIC, but Soros has never had any involvement in the organization.)

    wait for it…

    In an interview with NPR this year, Adams said he never intended his criticisms to lead to states actually leaving the organization.

    “My view is that it’s better to be in ERIC than not in ERIC,” Adams said, because without it, “it’s absolutely impossible to do cross-state checking to see who’s voting twice in federal elections.”

    “I went on a media rampage lying about ERIC being an evil Jew globalist conspiracy to steal our precious bodily fluids, but I NEVER INTENDED for states to actually leave the organization!”

    Fuck this fucking guy!

  24. 24.

    catclub

    @Rusty: ​
     

    It’s particularly dumb given the large number of second homes which invite double voting.

    I think dumb on purpose. those double voting with two houses?
    white people with summer homes? republicans.

  25. 25.

    mrmoshpotato

    GOP states quit the program that fights voter fraud. Now they’re scrambling.

    They should be punching themselves in their fat, orange, fascist, Dump-humping, shitstain faces instead.

    Much easier, and better, than ruining eggs.

  28. 28.

    TriassicSands

    You’ve got to hand it to Republicans, they take stupidity to an entirely new level.

    Budget deficits a critical problem? Solution — reduce revenues by cutting funding for auditing. Upside? The wealthy continue to get a pass and can maintain the same level of bribery to the GOP as in the past.

    Elections rigged? Solution — get rid of the best tool available to catch some forms of fraud. Upside? Republican voters will now be limited to no more than 3 votes in any one state and they will only be permitted to vote in 5 different states, thus ensuring the integrity of elections.

    A simpler way to ensure victory would simply be to bar Democrats from voting. I’m sure the SCOTUS SIX could find support for that in some ancient scrolls or cave paintings.

    One might almost think that Republicans aren’t entirely honest about their priorities, but we know that can’t be the case.

  29. 29.

    Brachiator

    President Joe Biden has left Winfield House in Regent’s Park, London to make his journey to 10 Downing Street ahead of his meeting with UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

    I will be curious to see what the reaction to this visit might be like. The popularity of Sunak and his Tories is crumbling as BREXIT looks like a total disaster and some Tory hardliners dislike Biden. I have read that Biden supports the current EU leader as the possible new UN Secretary General, and this infuriates the Tory nut jobs for whom the EU is evil.

    Also, some retired general was brutally honest in some interview, noting that the UK had lost most of its value to the US since leaving the EU and since it has downsized its military.

  30. 30.

    MomSense

    @Suzanne:
    I saw a video of a young woman gushing about her skirt that was also shorts as a cool new thing. It was a double screen video with a Gen X guy laughing that she was wearing skorts and ended with him saying he felt old.

  31. 31.

    TxTiger

    The state-to-state data sharing agreements will inevitably result in things like unencrypted voter registration databases being posted on state-run ftp servers, relying on security-by-obscurity to protect our information. I hope ProPublica or another investigatory organization keeps track of reported data breaches involving voter information for the states that bailed on ERIC.

  32. 32.

    WereBear

    I have never been more worried about my people in deep red states. The aware ones are feeling threatened by loud and public demands of fealty (or pressure to shut up)  from neighbors and coworkers,

    Like a fragile truce is being broken between thinking people and MAGA.

  34. 34.

    Anyway

    @Suzanne:

    Ok, you made me click on the Vox pasta salad article  and it is as you say — sooooo st0000pid. Those kinds of pasta salads have been a staple for what, 20 (?) 30 years. I think I lost a couple of brain cells reading it. There was nothing new there,

    To end on a positive note to a grumpy post – I made the chocolate biscuits from the King Arthur site. Not a huge fan of southern biscuits but the chocolate addition worked. It was a nice brunch dish served with whipped cream and strawberries.

  36. 36.

    oatler

    I used to think “skorts” were the loose baggy shorts men wore that looked like skirts.

  37. 37.

    Anyway

    @sdhays:

    I went on a media rampage lying about ERIC being an evil Jew globalist conspiracy to steal our precious bodily fluids, but I NEVER INTENDED for states to actually leave the organization!”

    Fuck this fucking guy!

    Aaargh, totally. All the Rs do these days is break things that work and then go “waaaaah”. Can they do a walk-back? Building systems up from scratch is no laughing matter… Also I don’t understand how states can just unilaterally stop sharing data, pull out of federal registers etc… our institutions are so hollow.

  38. 38.

    Anyway

    @Amir Khalid:

    “Skorts”? I’m so old, I can remember when people called them culottes.

    Eeeeent – two totally  different things. skort is what you’d wear to play tennis, culotte is a wide legged calf-length pant.

  39. 39.

    Kay

    It’s good to have accurate voter rolls but the number of “double voters” is minuscule and not really what ERIC was about.
    Media should stop depicting voting administration as efforts to stop malicious, cheating voters.
    People show up on voting rolls in two states because almost no one cancels their registration in one state when they register in another.
    Conservatives have turned this into some plot by voters to “double vote” – it’s nonsense and normal people shouldn’t play along with their paranoid delusions.

    ERIC is just good housekeeping – it isn’t a police agency because voters aren’t presumptive criminals.

  42. 42.

    Suzanne

    @Anyway: The pasta salad thing blew my mind. Like, BIH, some of us have been making non-mayo-y pasta salad for decades.

  43. 43.

    Ken

    “oh it’ll be totally different, see the data…it’ll be shared, not centralized.”

    The blockchain to the rescue!

    And by rescue, I mean to my bank account, as I contract with the states to create the application. Problem is, there’s undoubtedly a long line of scammers in front of me with the same idea. Probably each state will end up with their own system, and it won’t be possible to exchange data between them.

  45. 45.

    Ken

    @Suzanne: Like, BIH, some of us have been making non-mayo-y pasta salad for decades.

    You can buy box mixes at Aldi. Or Menards, for that matter.

  46. 46.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kay: The rare cases of people actually double-voting are almost always Republicans, leveraging their possession of second homes in another state. Sometimes they seem to be doing it specifically to make a point about “voter fraud”.

  49. 49.

    Ken

    @TxTiger: things like unencrypted voter registration databases being posted on state-run ftp servers

    Missouri leads the way! Both with posting unencrypted personal information online, and suing people who report they did it.

  50. 50.

    WereBear

    @Anyway:

    Not a huge fan of southern biscuits

    How is this possible? I am forced to contend you might never had real ones? Because they are of supernatural origin when done right.

  52. 52.

    Ken

    @MattF: I like your innovative thinking! Let’s take it a step further, and move all voting to the blockchain. We issue voters with an NFT they must use to vote, and a voting app they run on their Android 15 smartphone (everyone has one of those, right?). It’s as completely immune to fraud as everything else in the crypto world!

  54. 54.

    Betty Cracker

    @sab: There’s not much to love about Florida summers, but the absence of snowbirds and afternoon storms are two benefits. (I don’t dislike snowbirds — lots of them are lovely people — but less traffic, fewer people occupying barstools, etc., is nice.)

    @MattF: “The rugs just pull themselves!” First laugh of the day — thank you! ;-)

  55. 55.

    Kirk

    @WereBear: I’ve met other non-fans. I’ve decided over the years that tastes vary and I will never tell someone else their taste buds are wrong. Different from mine, certainly. Wrong, no.

  58. 58.

    Geminid

    @Geminid: More NATO developments, from Turkish journalist Ragip Soylu (@ragip soylu):

       BREAKING: Erdogan says the EU needs to open its door for Ankara’s membership to the Union and in return Turkiye may open the door for Sweden’s [NATO] bid.

    “If they do that we will ratify Sweden’s membership to NATO as we approved Finland’s.”

    Then the NATO chief chimes in:

       NATO’s Stoltenberg: “I support Turkiye’s ambition of joining the EU.”

    …and Germany PM Scholz throws cold water:

        Germany’s Scholz: “There is no relationship between Turkey’s EU membership and Sweden’s NATO bid.”

    Turkiye’s bid to join the EU stalled some years ago. The reasons given by EU members was Turkish policies that undermined political rights and democratic values, and those were real concerns. But besides political principles, EU leaders like Scholz are also wary of the practical effects of adding Turkiye’s 85 million citizens to the Union.

  59. 59.

    Kay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    It protects voters as much as it “catches them red handed” or whatever

    We used to be normal about voting in this country – it was a wholesome civic duty and voters were treated decently

    Conservatives have turned it into this nasty, suspicious process and media have gone right along with them – they literally ruin everything

  60. 60.

    Ken

    This has been an informative morning. I was laboring under the vague impression that culottes were a kind of French soldier. Or perhaps a zucchini.

  61. 61.

    bbleh

    And let’s not forget to give a special shout-out to all the Good Germans Republicans who sit by and either nod approvingly or look studiously the other way as their party and its leaders cater to the craziest of the crazy.

    The problem ain’t just the crazies and the politicians; it’s the broad mass of the Republican Party.

  63. 63.

    prostratedragon

    @Gin & Tonic:  They actually are different; I wore both back in the day. Skorts are shorts with either a front panel or full skirt attached. Women’s culottes are a regular skirt of whatever length, divided. I just found out that the men’s culottes of which Revolutionary Frenchmen were sans are just good ol’ knee breeches.

  65. 65.

    Ken

    @Omnes Omnibus: Yes, but if you have to explain the joke….

    However it’s not completely a joke. I think in my early reading, I must have come across sans-culottes first, and that created the association with soldiers. I do recall I first saw “culottes” in an Agatha Christie book, and thought it odd that the wealthy socialite was in the military.

  66. 66.

    John S.

    @Betty Cracker:

    I think the same thing applies to sunbirds.

    I didn’t even know there was such a thing until I rented a cabin in the mountains of western North Carolina and saw how many cars had Florida plates. Apparently they get a massive influx every summer from people looking to escape the heat.

  67. 67.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Ken:

    Let’s take it a step further, and move all voting to the blockchain.

    Crypto bros actually promote this.  It’s one of the things they say blockchain will revolutionize.

  69. 69.

    Kay

    @Matt McIrvin:

    part of ERIC’s mission is to increase access to voter registration but for some reason we all must adopt Right wing framing when discussing anything

    “voter fraud” is bullshit – conservatives invented a problem and perhaps unsurprisingly they are now unable to solve the problem they invented

    how is it possible they claim MORE voter fraud than they did 20 years ago when they have passed hundreds of laws “fighting fraud”? How can they never solve this problem? Because it’s imaginary.

  70. 70.

    Shalimar

    @Betty Cracker: I dislike them enough for both of us.  The Canadians are fine, but the American snowbirds tend to be even more MAGA than the locals here.  Which is saying a hell of a lot for a district that elects Matt Gaetz.

  73. 73.

    Ken

    @Frankensteinbeck: It helps if you remember that by  “revolutionize”, techbros mean “monetize”.

    While there are any number of values of X where “People want to do X, so we can make money from that” is OK*, “vote” should not be such an X.

    * “OK” being different from “works”, as recent attempts to monetize posting to twitter and reddit have shown.

  75. 75.

    Spanky

    @Ken:

     I was laboring under the vague impression that culottes were a kind of French soldier.

    Those were Sans Culottes. Like Baud.

  76. 76.

    MattF

    Pretty interesting NYT item about Carlson promoting a J6 conspiracy theory and, incidentally, libeling someone (gift link). News to me, since I’ve never watched Fox.

  77. 77.

    Anyway

    @Kay:

    “voter fraud” is bullshit – conservatives invented a problem and perhaps unsurprisingly they are now unable to solve the problem they invented

    The goal was to intimidate and harass POC at the voting booth – mission accomplished!

    Centrist and left-leaning journalists are hesitant to call bullshit on allegations of voter fraud. As usual RW thugs and their many signal-boosters are successful in silencing the law-abiding majority.

  78. 78.

    Geminid

    Finally! From Politico Playbook:

    The Senate will meet today to resume consideration of Xochitl Torres Small’s nomination for deputy agriculture secretary with a closure vote at 5:30pm.

    The Agriculture Committee advanced Torres Small’s nomination 4 weeks ago by a vote of 23-0. At age 38, the former New Mexico Representative will likely be the youngest Deputy Agriculture Secretary ever.

  79. 79.

    lowtechcyclist

    @John S.:

    I think the same thing applies to sunbirds.

    I didn’t even know there was such a thing until I rented a cabin in the mountains of western North Carolina and saw how many cars had Florida plates. Apparently they get a massive influx every summer from people looking to escape the heat.

    Yeah, my (Floridian) wife’s cousins are in Maggie Valley right now.  And her parents often took her up that way during summer vacations.

  80. 80.

    RepubAnon

    Reminds me of an old New Yorker cartoon, where the defendant in on the stand and says “Oh, I knew the gun was loaded – but I never DREAMED that it would go off!”

  83. 83.

    Jinchi

    Republicans want a system that purges Democratic voter fraud, without the downside of catching so many Republican voters in the process.

  85. 85.

    John S.

    @Geminid:

    Linville is really nice. I rented a place in Beech Mountain, which is a stones throw away. We enjoyed the falls, some caving and a nice winery there.

    ETA: And of course Grandfather Mountain, which is right next door.

  86. 86.

    Ken

    @Spanky: Those were Sans Culottes. Like Baud.

    Baud is French, and was a soldier during their revolution? This could put a crimp in his presidential election campaign.

    There might be a workaround of the “natural-born citizen” issue — after all, none of the first seven presidents were born in the United States, since it didn’t exist — but the age thing….

  87. 87.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Geminid:

    Man, I wish I were in Maggie Valley right now. The North Carolina Highlands are really special. Have you been to Linville Falls?

    Yes, I have, but it’s been awhile.  I remember fondly a trip my then-girlfriend and I made down there back in 1982.

  88. 88.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Ken:

    It helps if you remember that by “revolutionize”, techbros mean “monetize”.

    Usually, but not for this one.  Their argument is that it is tamper proof, because the vote is right there to be checked on the blockchain!  Yes, this argument is stupid and incorrect, they’re crypto bros.  This is one of the few cases where their argument isn’t ‘You can make money off of it!’ though.

    EDIT – @prostratedragon:

    I mean are helots.

    Spartan slaves, hunted for sport by their cruel masters?  And who, with their also-slaves wives, amounted to 90% of the population?

    (Ancient Greece was a slave economy that made the Antebellum American South look like pikers, and were raiders to make the Vikings look like honest seafaring merchants.  Which, admittedly, Vikings mostly were.)

  91. 91.

    Geminid

    @John S.: I’ve yet to visit Grandfather Mountain. I’ve stayed at Blowing Rock, and camped at nearby Julian Price Park. You can walk out of a park in Blowing Rock and hike to Julian Price through a rhododendron forest.

    One of my favorite things about Blowing Rock is getting there. The Blue Ridge Parkway can be twisty in parts, but the run south from Roanoke into North Carolina is easy driving, with long straight stretches and (mostly) gentle curves. About 40 miles into North Carolina I’ll start seeing rhododendrons, and then I know I am entering the Highlands. Blowing Rock is about 40 miles further on

    If I could, I’d go tomorrow.

  92. 92.

    Elizabelle

    Good morning, jackals.  This was fun.  LA Times: Inspired at the Getty, L.A. teen’s duct tape dress among scholarship contest’s finalist

    Her Marie Antoinette-style dress is elegant and intricate, with detailed lace along the edges, an angular corset and different white, pink and gold layers filling out the hoop skirt.

    Lifelike pink florals adorn her matching purse, fan and hairpiece, and detached sleeves cascade from her elbows, almost majestically. A complex, white lace choker completes the regal look.

    And it’s all made out of duct tape.

    Karla Torres, a recent graduate of Francisco Bravo Medical Magnet High School in Boyle Heights, designed and created the 18th-century-inspired ensemble herself — with the support of her crafty mom — for the yearly “Stuck at Prom” scholarship contest, sponsored by Duck Tape, a trademarked brand of duct tape. The Los Angeles teen was named a finalist last week, and is now vying for votes to win the grand prize: a $10,000 scholarship.

    VOTE! You can vote, daily, through July 12th. Some very creative young people here. Duck Tape’s Stuck at Prom.

    I promise you, not affiliated in any way with Duck Tape! But the Marie Antoinette dress is incredible. And then, there turn out to be more. A samurai style tuxedo …

  93. 93.

    Another Scott

    @Kay: +1

    Way back in college, I was registered to vote in about 4 places in Chicago.  Because we moved.  And the BoE didn’t bother to remove names from the lists (for whatever reason – probably mostly because of lack of funding to pay someone to clear the names).  That doesn’t mean that I (or anyone else with 10% of a normal human brain) would ever think of trying to vote 4 times.  A single vote almost never matters in the outcome, and who has the time to mess around like that?  Plus, it’s illegal and very easy to detect.

    It’s just stupid, all around.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  94. 94.

    Geminid

    @Omnes Omnibus: Another tweet today from Turkish journalist Ragip Soylu:

        Wow. The Kremlin says Putin met with Wagner Group Chief Prigozhin on June 29, five days after the group headed to Moscow in a short-lived rebellion.

  96. 96.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Frankensteinbeck: I visited an old Viking settlement in Aalborg northern Denmark. As I was reading on the history, I kept waiting for the part where they pulled up stakes and went back home. It finally dawned on me that in this place the Vikings weren’t the invaders, they were grandma and grandpa.

    My other takeaway, based on the many murals in the museum, is that while Vikings went through the day doing ordinary village kinds of things, they never, ever smiled. Not even the kids.

    Or maybe the grim expressions I was looking at were how you smile in Danish.

  97. 97.

    Mike in NC

    This was an AP story I didn’t expect to see in today’s newspaper: “Meteorologists Face Harassment”. Their offense being reporting on climate change, which upset a lot of wingnuts who still call it all a Red Chinese hoax.

  98. 98.

    Geminid

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: The Vikings had a route across Central Europe that utilized the rivers to get to the Black Sea. For a while, there was even a Viking community in Constantinople. I read that what we call Swedish meatballs were actually brought north by Vikings who encountered the good food there.

  99. 99.

    Mai Naem mobileI

    @TriassicSands: SCOTUS doesn’t have to go as far as cave drawings. Just go back a couple of hundred years to when only land owners were allowed to vote.

  101. 101.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Geminid: Read the chronicles of ibn Fadlan, a traveler from Damascus who went up the Volga in the early 10th C and described the practices and rituals of the Vikings.

  104. 104.

    Geminid

    @Baud: The new Democratic Congressman from northwest Illinois was a weatherman for a Moline, “Quad Cities” TV station The Quad Cities are Moline and Rock Island, Illinois, and Davenport and Bettendorf across the Mississippi in Iowa.

    Rep. Sorenson is one of a handful Democratic members of the Class of 2022 with no previous experience in elective office. Fellow Illinois Reps. Jesse Jackson Jr. and Nikki Budzinski are two more.

    Washington Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez is another, unless you count her service on a local Soil and Water Conservation Board.

  105. 105.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:

    Denmark was fully integrated into Norse culture.  The Gesta Danorum is pretty plain about it.  Denmark, Sweden, and Norway were feuding sibling countries more than anything else, constantly trading territories in war and inheritance.

    The Prose Edda also hilariously starts with the legend of the creation of Denmark.  The goddess of virgins disguised herself as a beautiful merely human woman and sleeps with the Swedish king.  He pays her with as much land as an ox can pull a plow around in one day.  She uses her divine super-ox to mark off a huge chunk of land, and then drags it into the sea where it becomes Denmark’s central island.

    @Geminid:

    The Vikings had a route across Central Europe that utilized the rivers to get to the Black Sea.

    They also took the long way around.  They picked up where the Phoenicians left off in the North-Sea-to-Middle-East maritime trade.  Really amazing to think that the tin used in the Greek and Middle Eastern Bronze Age came from England.  Iron didn’t take over because it was better, it took over because it was everywhere, as soon as the tech to properly smelt and smith it was developed.

    Yes, I love history, especially it’s obscure, counterintuitive corners.

  106. 106.

    Another Scott

    @Suzanne: I wouldn’t have known that I was still registered to vote in multiple places there, except the last time I voted when I checked in I saw the list they were checking and I was listed 4 times.  I guess the BoE printed one list for all the precincts.  (Which makes sense even if it might have used more paper – “You’re registered at Precinct X – it’s over on Halsted…”)

    I had just assumed that when I re-registered on moving that they would take the previous registration off the list.  It apparently didn’t work that way.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  107. 107.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Is that the guy who was disgusted by how dirty the Vikings were because they bathed in bathtubs rather than flowing water?  Meanwhile Western European Christian monks were horrified by how clean the Vikings were.  They took so many baths!

  108. 108.

    Elizabelle

    @Frankensteinbeck:  Love to see what these young people (high school students) came up with.

    And:  Duck Tape runs clean elections.  Tried to vote, but was reminded it had not been a full 24 hours since last vote. (This time voting for two different candidates.)

    Each finalist already won $500.  Here’s a gallery of previous winners, back to 2018.    In many years, they reflect the zeitgeist.  Pandemic masks.  The RE Lee monument, covered with grafitti during the George Floyd protests.

    All these designers are winners!

  109. 109.

    Nelle

    @Mike in NC: He was good.  Just thr facts and he used context.  I think some Iowans were scared because he was effective.

    Iowa’s hard right turn since we got here, four years ago, is stunning.  We moved for grandchildren, so we stay.

    • Tomorrow, Kim Reynolds has called the legislature back for a special session to pass an abortion ban.  Her Supreme Court (yes, hers because she appointed most of them) didn’t give her what she wanted.  So now, her legislature (yes, her legislature because she campaigned against and ousted Republicans whose votes displeased her) has to pass a law she wants.
  110. 110.

    Shalimar

    @Geminid: Sounds like bullshit propaganda to restore Putin’s image.  “See, he’s not really a coward who fled when Moscow was threatened and didn’t appear in public for days.  He’s a gutsy leader who met with Prigozhin personally just days after the coup attempt.”

  111. 111.

    Kay

    @Another Scott:

    there’s a form in Ohio to cancel your registration but almost no one knows about it or uses it

    Ask people when they move

    theyll tell you they registered in the new state – no one dergisters in the old

  112. 112.

    oatler

    @Baud:

    Are you suggesting sexy South American meteorologists are wingnuts? Chicago is where you got The John Coleman Weather Experience and Harry Volkman.

  113. 113.

    Kay

    WG if you’re around I’d like to do a guest post on ohios referendum on august 8

  115. 115.

    Frankensteinbeck

    While I’m going on about Vikings, the Norse were hugely into personal grooming.  Bathing, body shaving, beard styling, and especially hair care.  Good hair was what they really went on about.  Men and women both were expected to take care of their looks.

    And it might be more accurate to say I know this stuff because I love fashion, I love folklore, and as an author I try to read the source material of our modern stories, such as the drug trip that was the original Pinocchio.  These hobbies have led me down some crazy rabbit holes.

  116. 116.

    jefft452

    “GOP states quit the program that fights voter fraud. Now they’re scrambling”

    BS

    Its a feature not a bug

    They expect Republicans to vote multiple times and want to make it harder for them to be caught

  118. 118.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    The first time I ever deregistered somewhere was 5 years ago when we moved from Iowa to Illinois. Iowa sent me a form asking me if I was changing my registration.

  120. 120.

    Geminid

    @Shalimar: Soylu is not a credulous reporter, and the news site he writes for, London-based Middle East Eye, has done a lot of good reporting on the Wagner Group and its activities in Africa and the Middle East. So maybe the core of this story- that Putin met with Prigozhin after the mutiny- is true.

    Middle East Eye is also covering  the ongoing conflict between rival military factions in Sudan. The news from there ranges from bad to horrible.

  121. 121.

    JaneE

    What they want is a system that works to keep all those non Republican from being able to vote.

    If the country had a dollar for every time the GOP has said they can do a better version of anything and couldn’t do spit, we could retire the national debt.

  122. 122.

    VOR

    re: dual residency. Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis Police officer convicted of killing George Floyd, was registered as a full time Florida resident. That’s a heck of a daily commute. He was charged with 9 counts of felony tax evasion in Minnesota and plead guilty, receiving a 13 month sentence. Wikipedia notes he was registered to vote in Florida as a Republican and did in fact vote in Florida in 2016 and 2018. It is unknown if he also voted in Minnesota in the same elections. IIRC his ex-wife also recently settled her similar tax evasion charges.

  123. 123.

    Geminid

    @Frankensteinbeck: I read that when the Vikings reached the Grand Banks, off of Newfoundland, they encountered Basque fisherman. These Phoenician descendents probably told the Norsemen, “Plenty of cod here for you and us- just don’t tell anyone else.”

  124. 124.

    Geminid

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    We are the Vile Varangians, we don’t need need no sissy showers.

    Our odor wafts all over Constantinople’s mighty towers.

    We win our toughest battles with a method tried and true.

    We attack from upwind, and our enemies all scream “Eeew!”

  125. 125.

    Kent

    @Suzanne:

    I read two pieces this week that absolutely filled me with loathing for rich people and influencers.

    1) Gen Z figures out that pasta salad is delicious and that you can make it bougie.

    2) Millennials figure out that cheese-and-crackers-and-meat can be made for one person and then rebranded as “girl dinner”.

    I swear to God, this has all the vibes of gawking at zoo animals.

    Do you have kids?

    I swear you just have to leave them be with this stuff.  They also think they invented sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

  126. 126.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: Just like a lot of other things, the degradation of the idea that voting is a benign civic duty tracks pretty well with the increase in the ability of non-white people to engage in it. As long as it was mostly white people voting, conservatives weren’t worried about it that much.

  128. 128.

    sdhays

    @VOR: I had a colleague working as a contractor for the government (DOJ, no less!) who listed as his primary residence as Florida (he was from there) even though he lived and worked in Virginia. He did this for tax purposes since Florida doesn’t have income tax.

    I wonder just how common that is.

  132. 132.

    WaterGirl

    @Kay: that’s great. I was planning on contacting you and some of the other Ohio peeps to see what’s going on and what we might want to do.

    send me an email so we can work out details’? I am at the hairdressers but steep tipped me off about your comment so I wanted to write a quick reply.

  136. 136.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kay: I actually was once caught by Massachusetts’ voter-roll cleanups: here it depends entirely on responding by paper mail to a town-census form that comes in the paper mail. If you miss that for, I think, two election cycles in a row, you end up on an inactive-voter list and have to show proof of address before you can vote with a non-provisional ballot.

    In my case, my driver’s license was enough, so it wasn’t a huge deal for me, but it did get me thinking about how this could trip people up. And I recall one election in which Tea Party organizations around Worcester got in some trouble for having their “poll observers” aggressively harass people on the inactive list about their proof of address.

  137. 137.

    Eyeroller

    If we’re still talking about skorts, they are a pair of shorts (nowadays maybe more like short leggings) with a completely separate skirt attached over them and covering them.  Somehow they seem to have come into fashion.  I was at Target over the past weekend and saw on a mannequin what appeared to be a frilly skirt in the women’s “activewear” department, which surprised me so I lifted it up and saw the attached shorts underneath.

    When I was in grade school girls were expected to wear skirts or dresses, so most of us wore shorts underneath so we could do things during recess and PE classes.  Do-it-yourself skorts.  In junior high (what we had back then) we solved that problem by being required to wear “gym suits” which were like short-sleeved and short-legged jumpsuits and were hideous.  Of course the boys were allowed to wear shorts and tee shirts for their gym classes.

  138. 138.

    Kent

    @sdhays:

    @VOR: I had a colleague working as a contractor for the government (DOJ, no less!) who listed as his primary residence as Florida (he was from there) even though he lived and worked in Virginia. He did this for tax purposes since Florida doesn’t have income tax.

    I wonder just how common that is.

    Massively common.  But only really works if you have business income rather than wage income.  If he is a 1099 employee he is liable to get caught depending on how vigilant Virginia is on enforcement.  Working from home has blurred a lot of lines.

  141. 141.

    Another Scott

    @Kay: Relatedly, …

    lolgop
    @[email protected]

    YOOOOOOOO, OHIO!

    Today is the day to register to vote for the most important election of this year.

    https://olvr.ohiosos.gov/

    Want to vote no on Issue 1 this August 8 against the GOP scam to change the rules and give the minority veto on abortion rights?

    Register by today.

    Replies mention being sure to check voting locations and verify registration status.

    Forward!!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  143. 143.

    Eyeroller

    @Burnspbesq: Some accounts say that an early version was for bicycling, then the more modern form appears around the 1920s and was especially popular for golfing and tennis.  And really just about any women’s activity, since of course anything resembling pants or shorts was immodest.

  144. 144.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Elizabelle:

    But, she’s an immigrant! And Messican to boot. Taking duct tape wins away from true blue Americans. Can’t have that. /

    ETA: I just clicked the link to the finalists. So many of them are…ethnic. ;) Wonderfully creative, another testament to the vibrancy of diverse cultures.

  146. 146.

    Old Man Shadow

    All of this sounds like a lot more fucking work than just staying in the original program and telling the morons to fuck off.

  147. 147.

    catclub

    @Anyway: ​
     

    The goal was to intimidate and harass POC at the voting booth – mission accomplished!.

    The pre Supreme Court careers of both Rehnquist and Roberts.
    Both got to be CJ.

  149. 149.

    Geminid

    @Geminid: So, the meeting between Stoltenberg, Erdogan and Kristersson is over. Erdogan is now meeting with the EU head, and reportedly will meet the Swedish PM later tonight.

    The video from the first meeting was interesting. I think Erdogan might have smiled once…well, maybe a little bit of a smile.

    Good for Sweden if true!

  150. 150.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kent: Yeah, I remember that for my first year or two of graduate school I was still officially filing as a Virginia resident, because I thought (maybe falsely) that it’d be a pain in the ass switching over before I renewed my driver’s license, which had not expired yet. At one point I was required to file in three states, because I had wage income from Colorado and Massachusetts, and Virginia definitely also wanted to know about that.

  151. 151.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Elizabelle: The thing they keep pointing out is that people seem to continue to stream out of liberal blue states and into Texas and Florida, and take that as a ratification of over-the-top right-wing policies. But Abbott and DeSantis’s most egregious behavior hasn’t really had time to bake into census data yet. And I rather suspect that the major thing driving people out of blue coastal states is rising cost of living.

  152. 152.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Eyeroller: I continue to find it bizarre that trousers on women were ever considered more “immodest” than even fairly short skirts, but this seems to be the case. I guess it was the violation of gender boundaries.

  153. 153.

    NotMax

    @Matt McIrvin

    Laura Petrie’s capri pants generated a lot of memos from network standards and practices back in the day.

    Also too,

    “They’re not pants, they’re slacks. Don’t be vulgar.”
    – Katharine Hepburn in Pat and Mike
    .

  154. 154.

    Matt McIrvin

    @NotMax: …My daughter really likes wearing dark man-style suits to semi-formal events. I was just remembering how freaked out people were at Annie Lennox dressing that way in music videos back in the 80s.

  155. 155.

    Geminid

    @Matt McIrvin: Companies like Texas because of it’s abundance of flat, buildable land for plants, headquarters, and residences. You just round up the cattle and bring in the bulldozers.

    Texas also has adequate rainfall- certainly more than the states west of it- plus a decent system of higher education that can supply an educated work force.

    I think political factors have been secondary as positive considerations. Now they may in fact be negative

  156. 156.

    Baud

    @Matt McIrvin:

    : I continue to find it bizarre that trousers on women were ever considered more “immodest” than even fairly short skirts, but this seems to be the case

     
    Skirts don’t have crotches.

Comments are closed.