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You are here: Home / Open Threads / A-Hole Move (Open Thread)

A-Hole Move (Open Thread)

by Betty Cracker|  July 14, 202311:41 am| 144 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Politics, Republican Stupidity, The War On Women

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Rep. Nancy Mace seems to grasp how dangerous her party’s stance on reproductive rights is to its general electoral prospects. From Politico:

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) had sharp words for her party on Thursday about its latest divisive move on abortion access – only to wind up voting yes in the end.

“We should not be taking this fucking vote, man. Fuck,” a visibly frustrated Mace was overheard venting to her staff in an elevator, apparently referring to Thursday’s vote to reverse Biden administration policy on reimbursing travel costs for service members seeking abortions. “It’s an asshole move, an asshole amendment.”

But Mace wound up backing it anyway – as clear an indication you can get of the pressure Republicans face to support restrictions on abortion access. That’s not to mention her status as one of her party’s most unpredictable members.

Of course she voted for it anyway, then complained to a Politico staffer about the optics.

“What are we going to do for women?” she asked, pointing to a string of issues that she sees the House GOP majority as ignoring, from rape test backlogs to the foster care system to child care costs. “We have touched none of that this year. That’s my frustration.”

Welp, that’s what happens when your party spends 40-plus years catering to fanatics. Repubs got themselves into the same jam by kowtowing to Trump after it became clear he was a toxic loser. If Trump drops dead of excessive Big Macs on a golf course this afternoon, the anti-choice loons will still be a millstone around Repubs’ necks.

Speaking of fanatics (and people who hope Trump drops dead soon), Ron DeSantis is betting that he can revive his flailing campaign by consolidating Iowa evangelicals behind his candidacy, according to TPM:

While DeSantis may not have a personality, he is not plagued by the same breed of personality problems as Trump, which include his various alleged sexual assaults and sacrilege. Plus — while Trump may have paved the way for the Supreme Court to overturn Roe, DeSantis capitalized on that anti-abortion momentum to pass a six-week abortion ban in his state (a move that, so far, he rarely touts outside of certain circles).

Like all the Republican 2024ers besides Trump, DeSantis has been spending a considerable amount of time in Iowa this month. Tomorrow he plans to address The Family Leader, a large Christian organization that is made up of pastors who lean uber-conservative. The CEO of the group, Bob Vander Plaats, has faith in DeSantis’ appeal to the group, telling Politico that “America wants to turn the page” and “if you’re looking for an alternative to Trump, I think Gov. DeSantis is the frontrunner right now.”

Trump leads the field by double digits and is skipping the preacher confab. Tucker Carlson will be interviewing candidates, including DeSantis, presumably airing it on his shitty Twitter account that only fanatics watch. It’s assholes, all the way down. What could possibly go wrong?

Open thread.

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Reader Interactions

144Comments

  1. 1.

    WaterGirl

    July 14, 2023 at 11:46 am

    What could possibly go wrong for them with these tactics?  Hopefully, everything!

  2. 2.

    Chief Oshkosh

    July 14, 2023 at 11:47 am

    Absolutely no indication of any self-reflection on the part of Mace — the perfect Republican.

    Fuck ‘er, I hope she continues to be miserable. That said, I also hope that she figures out how to stick it to her party a la Cheney.

  3. 3.

    schrodingers_cat

    July 14, 2023 at 11:48 am

    Mace gets fluffy coverage from the MSM because she is a good looking white woman even though she is as vile as any Gosar or Gaetz.

  4. 4.

    hells littlest angel

    July 14, 2023 at 11:51 am

    “It’s an asshole move, an asshole amendment.”

    “And,” Mace added, “I support it 100%.”

  5. 5.

    jimmiraybob

    July 14, 2023 at 11:54 am

    “It’s assholes, all the way down. What could possibly go wrong?”

    If by “assholes” you mean fascists then I’m thinking that history has some answers.  There’s a good article at Salon (Chauncey Devega) dealing with “Agenda 47.”  Personally, I think there needs to be more direct attention to the looming threat.  “Assholes” is too much a whitewash.  “It’s the Agenda Stupid, and not the players” is what I keep telling myself these days.

  6. 6.

    MattF

    July 14, 2023 at 11:54 am

    So, who would be worse for Republicans, Trump or DeSantis? I say DeSantis— Trump has his hard-core supporters, but DeSantis support has no floor. And, just sayin’, DeSantis’ positions aren’t actually popular, even with Trump supporters. And, by the way, Trump isn’t likely to go down, um, gracefully.

  7. 7.

    Almost Retired

    July 14, 2023 at 11:54 am

    @schrodingers_cat:  This!  Exactly.  She gets positive coverage because she’s not completely, irredeemably bat shit crazy on reproductive rights (only), but she is supremely awful on everything else.  Her schtick is wearing thin.

  8. 8.

    p.a.

    July 14, 2023 at 11:56 am

    As the man said, “if conservatives can’t win democratically, they won’t abandon conservatism, they’ll abandon democracy.”

    Since Dobbs & state laws enrage most women…
    Coming soon, conservative women deciding women shouldn’t vote.

  9. 9.

    Nettoyeur

    July 14, 2023 at 11:57 am

    The only way to change GOP misogyny is for women to adopt a targeted Lysistrata strategy: no sex with GOPers,

  10. 10.

    JPL

    July 14, 2023 at 12:01 pm

    Bless his heart  poor guy is scared
    BREAKING: Trump asks Georgia’s top court to quash grand jury report, disqualify Fulton DA
    Former President Donald Trump on Friday returned to Georgia’s courts in his effort to disqualify Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis from investigating him for election interference and to quash the final report of a special purpose grand jury that recommends people be indicted.

  11. 11.

    Redshift

    July 14, 2023 at 12:01 pm

    @p.a.:

    Coming soon, conservative women deciding women shouldn’t vote.

    The idea has certainly been tossed around enough by conservative men…

  12. 12.

    dmsilev

    July 14, 2023 at 12:02 pm

    She could have voted “no” on the performative-assholes amendments. It would have only taken a few such Republicans to defeat them. But now she’s on record as a being a member of the performative-asshole caucus.

  13. 13.

    JPL

    July 14, 2023 at 12:04 pm

    @dmsilev:  I’m not sure who the biggest phony is, Nancy or Christie?

  14. 14.

    trollhattan

    July 14, 2023 at 12:07 pm

    Perhaps Mace should mace herself for having a backbone of boiled vermicelli. Chemical or medieval, her choice. Because I’m pro-choice and all.

  15. 15.

    sdhays

    July 14, 2023 at 12:10 pm

    While DeSantis may not have a personality

    Is this true? DeSantis isn’t boring – he’s repulsive. People who like him sense that he hates them when he walks into a room. That’s an actual presence, although not one you’d expect in a successful politician.

  16. 16.

    Josie

    July 14, 2023 at 12:10 pm

    @Nettoyeur: ​
     I’m pretty sure many of us have already put this into practice.

  17. 17.

    Baud

    July 14, 2023 at 12:10 pm

    That’s not to mention her status as one of her party’s most unpredictable members.

    What has she done that makes her unpredictable?

  18. 18.

    different-church-lady

    July 14, 2023 at 12:10 pm

    Since when is being a horrible angry weirdo who can’t have normal human interactions count as “not having a personality?”

  19. 19.

    trollhattan

    July 14, 2023 at 12:11 pm

    @Redshift: ​I’ve seen women’s suffrage, non-property owners voting, “young” people voting (age of cutoff not stated), non-parent voting all highlighted for elimination, and that’s just in the last year. I won’t know what to think until Jamie Dimon chimes in with his decision.

  20. 20.

    Ruckus

    July 14, 2023 at 12:12 pm

    The rethuglican party is about 50-75 yrs behind the times. Now this is nothing new, they have been behind the times for well over 50 yrs. Their goal is always to take us back to the good old days. Except the good old days – weren’t. And one of the things they weren’t good at was gender equality. Or even gender recognition. In reality shit for brains is the perfect leader for them. Pompous, arrogant, dumb as a 77 yr old saltine, who wants to go back in time to when he would be the normal in that party whose sole goal is to be the power party when men were men had all the power and women served them. Whatever they wanted. It’s all bullshit and it always was. Equality is far, far, far better. It takes work on both sides, something that shit for brains has no desire, skill, concept of. He is their perfect leader because they want a world that is as stupid and ignorant as he is.

    Equality is hard because it is actually rather new in this country. Remember it’s all MEN are created equal. Of course making that about gender is wrong, incorrect, asinine, stupid, but then we are talking about the republican party, whose only gear is reverse.

  21. 21.

    VOR

    July 14, 2023 at 12:12 pm

    At this point, the entire GOP brand is asshole moves. Their leading candidate for President is a world-class asshole. But he’s their asshole, he hates the same people they hate. The members of Congress with the highest visibility like MTG, Gym Jordan, and Gaetz are all assholes. It’s all performative vice signaling where they accomplish nothing substantial but display their asshole behavior. Which seems to be what their voters want.

  22. 22.

    sdhays

    July 14, 2023 at 12:12 pm

    @dmsilev: If a few of them had done this earlier, demonstrating that the Freedumb Carcass can’t just assume a majority for whatever shit they can get McQarthy to bring to the floor, maybe their caucus strategy would be more coherent.

    Probably not, though. Blood on the floor of the House, maybe.

  23. 23.

    RaflW

    July 14, 2023 at 12:13 pm

    Just seeing that the House indeed passed the defense budget bill that of course is total horseshit. The diversity removal I mentioned last night is included, so that will be one of many clash-points in the conference committee.

    Meanwhile, Tuberville is still blocking 100s of military promotions.

    We should be beating the GOP all about their (metaphorical) head and shoulders over this garbage. Newsers should be right up in the faces of people like Romney and Graham about what Tommy is doing to weaken and demoralize our troops!

  24. 24.

    different-church-lady

    July 14, 2023 at 12:13 pm

    @Baud: Bingo: she’s going to make a lot of contrarian noise and then cave. No different from Collins or Manchin. Every episode follows the same arc.

  25. 25.

    Hoodie

    July 14, 2023 at 12:13 pm

    “What are we going to do for women?” she asked, pointing to a string of issues that she sees the House GOP majority as ignoring, from rape test backlogs to the foster care system to child care costs. “We have touched none of that this year. That’s my frustration.”

    Nancy, honey, what a fucking stupid question.  Feature, not bug. The GOP will never do anything for women.  It’s not just religious zealotry; all those things reinforce white male hegemony.  Keep ’em barefoot and pregnant.

  26. 26.

    trollhattan

    July 14, 2023 at 12:13 pm

    @JPL: Wonder what it would be like having him in charge of a car manufacturer? “This model will drive you automatically to a hamberder store.”

  27. 27.

    Kent

    July 14, 2023 at 12:13 pm

    @Nettoyeur: The only way to change GOP misogyny is for women to adopt a targeted Lysistrata strategy: no sex with GOPers,

    I thought that was what the whole INCEL thing was about.

  28. 28.

    Suzanne

    July 14, 2023 at 12:14 pm

    Welp, that’s what happens when your party spends 40-plus years catering to fanatics.

    Need to point this out again.
    They attempted to make a durable coalition of various types of bad people. There’s a cost to that.

  29. 29.

    sdhays

    July 14, 2023 at 12:15 pm

    @sdhays: Exactly! Scott Walker…makes you fall asleep before you finish the sentence. Ron DeSantis creates such strong emotions in people he’s destroying his state’s tourism industry.

  30. 30.

    TriassicSands

    July 14, 2023 at 12:15 pm

    Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) had sharp words for her party on Thursday about its latest divisive move on abortion access – only to wind up voting yes in the end.

    Of course Mace voted yes. She has no personal integrity at all. She blathers on and on and then votes like a loyal fascist. Integrity means nothing to her. Neither do women’s rights. She’ll do anything to avoid being primaried and losing her seat in the House.

    @p.a.:

    Democracy is so far in the rear view mirror for Republicans, it no longer makes sense to even refer to it in the context of the GOP. That is similar to the continued use of the word “conservative” to describe Republicans in the House, Senate, and on the SCOTUS. Conservatism doesn’t look anything like what these radicals are doing.

  31. 31.

    trollhattan

    July 14, 2023 at 12:16 pm

    @RaflW: Meanwhile, Tuberville is still blocking 100s of military promotions.

    Do you suppose this will affect, even a little, the kneejerk preference for Republicans among the military? This is not the same as benching a promising QB to “teach him a lesson.”

  32. 32.

    different-church-lady

    July 14, 2023 at 12:17 pm

    @Hoodie: But they are interested in doing things to women.

  33. 33.

    mrmoshpotato

    July 14, 2023 at 12:17 pm

    Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) had sharp words for her party on Thursday about its latest divisive move on abortion access – only to wind up voting yes in the end.

    “It’s an asshole move, an asshole amendment.”

    I can only conclude that Nancy Mace is an asshole!

  34. 34.

    satby

    July 14, 2023 at 12:17 pm

    @Hoodie: I’m betting none of those frustrate Mace. She’s a vile POS who helps stab women in the back every time she casts a vote. She’s frustrated that she can’t use any of those issues as distraction.

  35. 35.

    Burnspbesq

    July 14, 2023 at 12:18 pm

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Mace gets fluffy coverage from the MSM because she is a good looking white woman even though she is as vile as any Gosar or Gaetz.

    Mace is arguably worse, because she gives occasional signs of knowing better.

  36. 36.

    Steeplejack

    July 14, 2023 at 12:19 pm

    @jimmiraybob:

    Chauncey DeVega on Agenda 47. Slightly breathless tone, but perhaps warranted. At first you want to laugh, but then, as with all thinks Trump, you start to think, “Oh, shit . . .”

  37. 37.

    sdhays

    July 14, 2023 at 12:19 pm

    @RaflW: Blaming this on Tuberville lets too many people off the hook. The Republican Senate caucus is letting Tuberville block military promotions. Without their support, this privilege would be gone.

    And, frankly, Sinanchin are to blame here too. The majority could just say “we don’t care about this hold anymore” if a majority chose to.

  38. 38.

    different-church-lady

    July 14, 2023 at 12:19 pm

    @schrodingers_cat: And she’s a “plot twist”.

  39. 39.

    satby

    July 14, 2023 at 12:20 pm

    @trollhattan: Most Republican voters don’t know about it, even now. And the ones that do probably approve, because saving the zygotes is job one.

  40. 40.

    JPL

    July 14, 2023 at 12:22 pm

    @trollhattan:  This is the winning argument

    “Stranded between the supervising judge’s protracted passivity and the district attorney’s looming indictment, (Trump) has no meaningful option other than to seek this court’s intervention,” the motion said.

     

    Everybody is mean to me.

  41. 41.

    Steeplejack

    July 14, 2023 at 12:22 pm

    @Almost Retired:

    Mace is bat-shit crazy on reproductive rights, too! She votes in favor of all the asshole policies that she decries. Actions speak  louder than words, to coin a phrase.

  42. 42.

    patrick II

    July 14, 2023 at 12:23 pm

    @Chief Oshkosh:

    This.

    Is opposing abortion choice good or bad for the country or for the lives of individual women? Does it trample on the now-deceased right to privacy? Not a moment’s thought for any of that.  Just, will it hurt my chances for re-election?

  43. 43.

    Brachiator

    July 14, 2023 at 12:23 pm

    While DeSantis may not have a personality, he is not plagued by the same breed of personality problems as Trump, which include his various alleged sexual assaults and sacrilege.

    Jesus Christ on a Shingle. The press keep trying to push the fantasy that the GOP was ever looking for an alternative to Trump. Conservatives may make noises about this, but they have never disavowed Trump, and former chief Trump butt kisser Chris Christie is the only Republican who publicly rebukes Trump.

    And Trump’s base either endorse everything that he has done or just don’t care.

    DeSantis is a placeholder. If something happened to Trump that prevented him from running, I wonder whether DeSantis would move up in the polls. He is a dreadful candidate, but most other challengers are far behind him.

    Plus — while Trump may have paved the way for the Supreme Court to overturn Roe, DeSantis capitalized on that anti-abortion momentum to pass a six-week abortion ban in his state (a move that, so far, he rarely touts outside of certain circles).

    Red states have been chipping away at abortion rights for years. DeSantis may keep quiet on the issue, but he is representative of the new conservative extreme when it comes to reproductive rights. Now that the Supreme Court has overturned Roe, the GOP will only seek more restrictions on reproductive rights, no matter what they put out for public consumption.

     

    ETA. DeSantis does not have a personality. Does he even show a reflection if he looks in a mirror?

  44. 44.

    Ruckus

    July 14, 2023 at 12:24 pm

    @sdhays:

    I believe you misunderstand republicans.

    Their hate is real, their desire to go back in time is real, their pompous arrogance is real. What they want is the politics that we had, in the lifetime of humans alive now. They never wanted change from a segregated, hateful, male dominated world. Even the woman with any power, such as this congresswoman believe they want to go backwards, to a better time. And it was simpler, it was easier, but it was in no way better. Equality takes work, effort – going backwards takes cowardliness and greed.

  45. 45.

    TriassicSands

    July 14, 2023 at 12:24 pm

    @sdhays: … a successful politician.

    Republican voters aren’t looking for someone they want to have a beer with — they are attracted to politicians who will work tirelessly to impose right-wing (increasingly neo-fascist) ideology on everyone possible. DeSantis fares badly when there is an alternative, even one as  repulsive as Trump, but his huge win in Florida didn’t happen because he needs a great personality. He won because — voters are stupid, ignorant, racist, and have a long list of people they hate and whose lives they want to control. Being stupid and ignorant means you can be easily misled and manipulated. I hate to even think about the number of Florida voters who voted for DeSantis without having an accurate idea of who and what he is. Racism and Biblical bigotry make choosing a candidate simple.

  46. 46.

    Brachiator

    July 14, 2023 at 12:28 pm

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Mace gets fluffy coverage from the MSM because she is a good looking white woman even though she is as vile as any Gosar or Gaetz.

    I barely know who Mace is. And I think that Nikki Hayley is better looking, if I cared about that kind of thing.

  47. 47.

    RaflW

    July 14, 2023 at 12:30 pm

    @Hoodie: Indeed Mace gets it totally wrong. “What are we going to do to women?” is always the thing.

    I remember my grandpa, born just before the turn of the last century, complaining in the 70s about all these “women’s libbers”.

    The party hasn’t changed a whit since then. They just had a period where they tolerated Susan Collins’ pro-choice pantomime, mostly because she could fundraise a lot of that grift.

    Mace is just mad that the moderate game is over, so the pool of marks is reduced. So sad!

  48. 48.

    rikyrah

    July 14, 2023 at 12:30 pm

    Mace is a phony of the Susan Collins kind.

    She is NO MODERATE.

    She is as Republican as the rest of them.

  49. 49.

    Mike in NC

    July 14, 2023 at 12:32 pm

    Switched on MSNBC this morning about 9 AM and Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post was discussing the “Ron DeSantis Train Wreck Candidacy”. Gotta love it.

  50. 50.

    TriassicSands

    July 14, 2023 at 12:34 pm

    @Baud: What has she done that makes her unpredictable?

    Well, she’s really unpredictable if you listen to anything she says and believe that will control her vote. But you have to be really stupid to do that. So, yes, you are right — she’s very predictable. She will say one thing and then fall in line to vote for something very different. And she does that over and over and over. She cares more about getting the nomination and being re-elected than she does about something like women’s rights and autonomy.

  51. 51.

    Betty Cracker

    July 14, 2023 at 12:35 pm

    @VOR: I think “vice signaling” should be more widely used. It’s a real phenomenon — more common than virtue signaling for sure.

  52. 52.

    Geminid

    July 14, 2023 at 12:35 pm

    Nancy Mace represents the district that Msrk Sanford represented until 2018. Sanford voted very conservatively, but he crossed Trump and a tea party crank took him out in the primary.

    That November, Democrat Joe Cunningham won and became the first Democrat to represent South Carolina’s 1st CD* since the party realignment of the 1970s.

    Mace took reclaimed the seat in 2020, and it has since been made redder through redistricting.  So now Mace only has to worry about a challenge from the right like the one that took out Sanford, and she votes accordingly.

    I think Mace may also have her eye on Lindsay Graham’s Senate seat. That may open up in 2026.

    * Fun 1st South Carolina CD fact: in the 1820s, the district was represented by diplomat and amateur botanist Joel Poinsett. He found a red flowering plant in Mexico that he sent back home and had propagated. This garish flower was named after him, and unfortunately has become a Christmas tradition.

  53. 53.

    Redshift

    July 14, 2023 at 12:37 pm

    The CEO of the group, Bob Vander Plaats, has faith in DeSantis’ appeal to the group, telling Politico that “America wants to turn the page”

    America does, MAGA and evangelicals don’t.

    and “if you’re looking for an alternative to Trump, I think Gov. DeSantis is the frontrunner right now.”

    Spoiler alert: they aren’t.

    This may be DeSaster’s dumbest desperation move yet. He’s an aspiring authoritarian leader and doesn’t get that the most fundamental tenet of authoritarianism is the Leader gets to break any rules, and he hasn’t learned from everything since 2016 that evangelicals are fine with TFG’s violation of everything they claim to believe in.

    Flop sweat.

  54. 54.

    FelonyGovt

    July 14, 2023 at 12:38 pm

    Speaking of assholes, this morning I heard an ad on our KNX News Radio for Fox News’ new prime time lineup, for the first time ever. I sincerely hope that their sudden need to advertise on a mainstream media broadcast means that they are floundering badly.

  55. 55.

    Brachiator

    July 14, 2023 at 12:39 pm

    @TriassicSands:

    Republican voters aren’t looking for someone they want to have a beer with —

    Truly a meaningless way of judging a candidate. I suppose this expresses a belief that the ideal politician might be like you, and could be a buddy. But I want effective leaders, not somebody to pal around with. And I don’t drink beer.

    I hate to even think about the number of Florida voters who voted for DeSantis without having an accurate idea of who and what he is. Racism and Biblical bigotry make choosing a candidate simple.

    I don’t know that Florida voters are dumb. And from what I gather, Florida media covered DeSantis well. People there know what they want. And they are getting it. And a problem may be that for now, the state Democratic Party is very weak.

  56. 56.

    TriassicSands

    July 14, 2023 at 12:40 pm

    @rikyrah: Mace is a phony of the Susan Collins kind.

    Actually, Mace’s voting record is much worse than that of Susan Collins.

  57. 57.

    UncleEbeneezer

    July 14, 2023 at 12:41 pm

    @Ruckus:

    Their hate is real, their desire to go back in time is real, their pompous arrogance is real.

    Bingo. Punishing the sluts Women is absolutely a core principle for Republicans.  And being a Republican means they have to go along with it.  Even the ones who are women themselves.

  58. 58.

    Shalimar

    July 14, 2023 at 12:45 pm

    @Nettoyeur: If only the castrata strategy weren’t illegal.

  59. 59.

    Chris

    July 14, 2023 at 12:45 pm

    While DeSantis may not have a personality, he is not plagued by the same breed of personality problems as Trump, which include his various alleged sexual assaults and sacrilege.

    They keep describing these things as a problem.  It may be one in the general, but in the Republican primary, it’s an asset.  The average Republican voter doesn’t give a shit what the preachers say except insofar as it lines up with his politics of “wimminz, gays, and blacks bad,” and on the whole, finds them just as tedious as the rest of us.  They love the fact that Trump’s sex life is so awful, whether it’s the adultery or the sexual assault.  It means they can trust him to give them all the “identity politics” they want, without having to worry that he’s going to go on some puritanical crusade against porn or masturbation that might actually ruin their fun.

  60. 60.

    Will

    July 14, 2023 at 12:47 pm

    I have strong fears about even if Alito and Thomas were to drop dead tomorrow and Biden replaced them, whether if the new “Progressive” court would reinstate Dobbs. If anything I bet we’d get a ban somewhere in the teens as some sort of compromise ruling.

    Why? The Democratic bench to pick from is starting to worry me with their rulings. We’ve had two in the past couple of weeks by an Obama judge and by a Biden judge that were downright horrible.

    First we had Judge Corley side with Microsoft in a merger that is both anti consumer and anti labor. Her son being an employee at Microsoft evidently didn’t seem to be a reason in her mind to recuse herself. Thank god MAGAshits don’t care enough to pay attention to use this as whataboutisms.

    Second we had Judge Torres that really tied herself into knots with this crypto is or isn’t a security ruling. I guess the ruling was great if you are an institutional investor as it seems crypto should be regulated for them… but the mass mobs of the little guy, hahaha big F U. Who is more likely to get burned and not tossed a life raft thanks to this ruling?

    These were horrible rulings and it just makes me worried for the future progressive courts.

  61. 61.

    Ruckus

    July 14, 2023 at 12:50 pm

    @Brachiator:

    I believe that they like shitforbrains because he is the genuine thing. He is what they think a leader is, male, wealthy, shameless, arrogant. And he has other not as good “qualities.” They are conservatives, they want to go back to a “better,” simpler time, when someone else did the work and they had minimal to no responsibility. If they could they’d go back a couple thousand years, but with modern conveniences, like grocery stores and indoor plumbing. Except life wasn’t like that. Hell, life was harder in the time of many alive today, many right here on this blog. When I was born, we had a vaccine for one horrible disease, not all that we have today. I have a neighbor my age who is a polio victim. I went to school for 12 yrs with a woman with polio, I had 2 friends who lost their mothers to polio. We all got sick with all the diseases that we didn’t have vaccines for. And everyone close to my age or older did as well. This is better, this world today. And it’s not just health care. The world now is better than the one I was born into. Far, far better. It still has a ways to go and some diseases that medicine cannot yet fix, one is a disease of thinking that the world was better, 70+ yrs ago. Take it from an observer, it wasn’t.

  62. 62.

    jimmiraybob

    July 14, 2023 at 12:50 pm

    @Steeplejack:

    “Oh, shit . . .”

    I think that we are at a proper “Oh, Shit” moment.  A few years back I read Erik Larson’s “In the Garden of the Beasts” and there was, at least early on, a lot of “oh, he’s just a clown” and “sure, they’re all a bunch of assholes” going around in 1930s Germany.

    By the time they got to the “Oh, shit” moment it was too late.

  63. 63.

    Brachiator

    July 14, 2023 at 12:52 pm

    @UncleEbeneezer:

    Punishing the sluts Women is absolutely a core principle for Republicans.  And being a Republican means they have to go along with it.  Even the ones who are women themselves.

    Republicans see themselves as saving women, saving children (at least, heterosexual white children) and saving America. That is, their vision of a 1950s America.

    A good chunk of white women happily endorse these values. Even the hypocrites who may lead very different lives in private.

  64. 64.

    gene108

    July 14, 2023 at 12:52 pm

    @rikyrah:

    Mace is a phony of the Susan Collins kind.

    She is NO MODERATE.

    She is as Republican as the rest of them.

    The difference between a moderate Republican and a conservative Republican is how well they present on TV, and how much attention seeking behavior is on display.

    Talk like a person would in a professional setting and don’t go off about “Jewish space lasers” on social media is all it takes to be labeled a moderate Republican.

    Also, her looks do help her present well on TV.

  65. 65.

    bbleh

    July 14, 2023 at 12:54 pm

    Trump leads the field by double digits and is skipping the preacher confab.

    He’ll attend only events where he can get considerably more attention than if he doesn’t attend.  That’s certainly not the case here, and it may be the case for at least one “debate.”  He’ll do something else, and get almost as much or more coverage.

    And even if he does attend a “debate,” it will be a Trump-and-the-x-number-of-dwarves spectacle.  When it’s his turn to talk, he’ll spout the usual code-word salad, and when it’s other people’s turns to talk, he’ll stand there and smirk at them.  I’d love to see one of them break through and get him mad, but I’d give that almost no chance.  If they’re talking about him, he’s happy no matter what they say, and if they’re not, he’s bored and he’ll look off elsewhere.  It’ll be a rout.

  66. 66.

    WaterGirl

    July 14, 2023 at 12:55 pm

    @Josie: As surely as night follows day.

  67. 67.

    Villago Delenda Est

    July 14, 2023 at 12:57 pm

    A-hole partei makes a-hole move.  Film at 11.

  68. 68.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    July 14, 2023 at 12:57 pm

    as I recall, in the days immediately after 1/6 Mace made some noise about supporting impeachment, which sentiment didn’t last. She voted against the articles and about a year later made a pilgrimage to NYC to stand outside trump tower and beg The Beast not to support a primary against her. It was a remarkable act of debasement, and it seems to have worked.

    As Geminid says above I think she wants to move up to the Senate, either Graham’s seat or, in her world, Tim Scott’s.

  69. 69.

    WaterGirl

    July 14, 2023 at 12:57 pm

    @Steeplejack: Thank you!  I wanted to type that but I got a phone call!

  70. 70.

    Villago Delenda Est

    July 14, 2023 at 12:58 pm

    @JPL: He should be shitting his pants ala Ted Nugent.  The walls are closing in on you, criminal traitor.

  71. 71.

    Jackie

    July 14, 2023 at 1:02 pm

    @Almost Retired: Mace may mouth pro abortion, but she votes against it EVERY TIME.

    She needs to be voted out.

  72. 72.

    Anonymous At Work

    July 14, 2023 at 1:04 pm

    DeSantis is once again misreading the Iowa electorate.  Iowa evangelicals WANT an asshole that caters to them like Trump and don’t care that he is everything they profess to hate.  They want him BECAUSE he’ll be an asshole for their causes on demand.  They want a candidate that is rude and transgressive of governance and norms because they believe that they are losing when they back true believers.  The true believers among them will dismiss “flawed” messengers and “rude” methods.  The more hypocritic members just embrace the “wins” and consider the hypocrisy as a “flex” of “We can be openly hypocritical and still win.”

    And of course, by “losing” and “winning,” they refer to absolute dominance in Mammon’s terms.

  73. 73.

    The Pale Scot

    July 14, 2023 at 1:05 pm

    Tuberville?

    Really simple, close all the military bases in Alabama, post haste. I remember a MASH episode when Frank Burns is temporary in command, he realizes that the “M” in MASH stands for Mobile, and makes the unit pack up and move across the road.

  74. 74.

    Roger Moore

    July 14, 2023 at 1:06 pm

    @Kent:

    I thought that was what the whole INCEL thing was about.

    Right now, Incels are only one small part of the Republican coalition; the goal is to do it to them all.  Unfortunately, this is not going to work, since there are plenty of Republican women who won’t adopt the Lysistrata policy.  If we can actually get those women on-board, it will be unnecessary because the Republicans can’t win without a substantial number of women voting for them.

  75. 75.

    Paul in KY

    July 14, 2023 at 1:11 pm

    @trollhattan: Any GQP supporting officer not getting their promotion right now, I would laugh my ass off at them.

    Sorry for the enlisted people not getting their promotions.

  76. 76.

    Villago Delenda Est

    July 14, 2023 at 1:13 pm

    @The Pale Scot: Closing a base is far from simple.  It takes years to pull off.

  77. 77.

    rikyrah

    July 14, 2023 at 1:15 pm

    @Ruckus:

    Their hate is real, their desire to go back in time is real, their pompous arrogance is real. What they want is the politics that we had, in the lifetime of humans alive now. They never wanted change from a segregated, hateful, male dominated world.

     

    No lie told

  78. 78.

    Ruckus

    July 14, 2023 at 1:16 pm

    @RaflW:

    The party hasn’t changed a whit since then.

    That is their entire point. They think they want to go backwards to a better, simpler time. And it was neither. Sure, it was different, but life isn’t a fairy story, it’s real, it takes a bit of effort, especially if one desires freedom. They think they want a world like being in the military, a world where everything is controlled, a world where you just follow the rules. And yes there will always be rules/laws that we have to live with, it is a society – a group of similar animals. But animals have always had a pecking order – always. We have taken a bold step in this country and taken the position that the concept of a pecking order is wrong. Yes we have leaders, but we vote for them, they very often have a time limit to their job, and we move on. This is relatively new in humanity, this self determination thing and it obviously doesn’t give everyone the warm and fuzzies.

  79. 79.

    rikyrah

    July 14, 2023 at 1:17 pm

    @TriassicSands:

    Of course Mace voted yes. She has no personal integrity at all. She blathers on and on and then votes like a loyal fascist. Integrity means nothing to her. Neither do women’s rights. She’ll do anything to avoid being primaried and losing her seat in the House.

    Absolutely none at all.

    Which is why the MSM needs to stop trotting her out and calling her a Moderate Republican. She is NO SUCH THING.

  80. 80.

    The Moar You Know

    July 14, 2023 at 1:19 pm

    Do you suppose this will affect, even a little, the kneejerk preference for Republicans among the military?

    @trollhattan: be precise.  Enlisted military runs about the same as the country at large.

    it’s the officer corps that runs Republican – about 25-1.  And it’s really only flag officers that would be affected by Senator Coach’s temper tantrum.

    Net effect on military:  unmeasurably small.

  81. 81.

    Roger Moore

    July 14, 2023 at 1:24 pm

    @sdhays:

    Getting rid of holds of the type Tuberville is using would require completely revising Senate procedures.  This isn’t some special rule that can be eliminated easily.  The underlying problem is that a huge amount of stuff in the Senate nominally requires a vote, which can be skipped with unanimous consent.  If even one senator refuses to go along, they can gum up the works and make every tiny thing take hours.  In theory they can push the issue through by sitting through all the votes, but in practice they’ll only do that if the issue is considered to be top priority.  For anything less than top priority, they’ll back-burner it and hope they can talk the complaining senator out of their refusal.

    Solving this kind of thing would require a detailed streamlining of Senate procedures to eliminate the points at which a single senator can blockade the process.  I think that’s a totally worthwhile thing to do, but it would be a major project, not a simple change.

  82. 82.

    The Moar You Know

    July 14, 2023 at 1:27 pm

    this morning I heard an ad on our KNX News Radio 

    @FelonyGovt: That used to be such a great radio station.  Then they finally got rid of their general manager in the mid 00s and they went to shit.  I should start listening to them again now that they’ve got rid of that nascent fascist, Dick Helton, and see if they got any better.

  83. 83.

    Dangerman

    July 14, 2023 at 1:30 pm

    Eventually, assuming fair elections (I know, I know), the Republicans are going to have to tell the MAGAts to get fucked; I have no idea how that plays out.

  84. 84.

    Sister Golden Bear

    July 14, 2023 at 1:32 pm

    @Ruckus:

    The rethuglican party is about 50-75 150-175 250-275yrs behind the times

    Fixed it for you.

  85. 85.

    Chris

    July 14, 2023 at 1:44 pm

    @The Moar You Know:

    Trump did interesting things to military politics.

    Traditionally, the Army and Navy lean Republican but not by much, whereas the Air Force and Marine Corps are much more lopsidedly Republican.  Also traditionally, as you say, the officer corps is very lopsidedly Republican, while the enlisted tends to be pretty close to the nation’s demographics.

    Whereas IIRC from the one time I looked at this in the Trump era…  There was a sharp drop in support for Republicans, or at least for their president, among officers, and if anything a slight uptick among enlisted men.  While among the services, the Air Force became the most lopsidedly anti-Trump, and the Marine Corps the most lopsidedly pro-Trump.

    Wish I could remember where I’d seen the numbers, though.  If anyone has better info, please share.

  86. 86.

    jimmiraybob

    July 14, 2023 at 1:46 pm

    @Sister Golden Bear: ​

    @Sister Golden Bear: ​
     

    I’d go back another 100 to get to more entrenched Puritan (Reformed-Calvinist) control.

  87. 87.

    Kay

    July 14, 2023 at 1:47 pm

    So Sound of Freedom is a winger movie where brave Right wingers break up a child trafficking ring. Libs of Tic Toc and the rest of Elon’s low quality army are pushing it.

    My youngest is spending the summer working at a Lake Michigan resort town. He was approached by people he says “are Mormons” (he dated a Mormon in high school so I feel like he’s solid on that) with a free ticket. He said they were chatting up people and handing out free tix.

    Imagine for a moment if liberals did this – pushed this propoganda movie so hard that they are artificially inflating ticket sales. You could hear the screams of Right wingers for miles.

    They are all such complete fucking hypocrites on every issue. It is literally true- whatever they are accusing liberals of they are doing. In this case it’s not just pushing propoganda on young people though- the movie is about sex trafficking and one of their heroes was just charged with that.

  88. 88.

    Gretchen

    July 14, 2023 at 1:52 pm

    Mace has been on tv claiming that Dems are in favor of aborting healthy full term babies, so f her.

  89. 89.

    artem1s

    July 14, 2023 at 1:52 pm

    “What are we going to do for women?” she asked, pointing to a string of issues that she sees the House GOP majority as ignoring

    Surely someone told her the GQP motto is ‘Fuck you, I got mine?’ Leopard Eating Face Party strikes again, I guess.

  90. 90.

    Kay

    July 14, 2023 at 1:54 pm

    @Gretchen:

    The entire anti abortion movement just lie blatantly about that constantly and no one in media ever corrects them. It is a lie. I don’t know why it’s so hard to call them out on these lies.

  91. 91.

    Mr. Bemused Senior

    July 14, 2023 at 1:55 pm

    @Kay:

    It is literally true- whatever they are accusing liberals of they are doing.

    It’s not simply projection. The reason they believe the worst of liberals is they know that’s how they themselves behave.

  92. 92.

    Kay

    July 14, 2023 at 1:58 pm

    @Mr. Bemused Senior:

    That theme was always too blanket for me but with this “groomers” bullshit smear I’m a convert.

    The fact is it is the RIGHT that has a groomers problem. I don’t know about you but I see an awful lot of Right wing male authority figures getting hauled in for child abuse. This can be measured. Maybe someone on our side should do that.

  93. 93.

    Villago Delenda Est

    July 14, 2023 at 2:00 pm

    @Sister Golden Bear: The Federalist Society aims to take us back to before the Battle of Hastings.

  94. 94.

    Chris

    July 14, 2023 at 2:00 pm

    @Kay:

    So Sound of Freedom is a winger movie where brave Right wingers break up a child trafficking ring. Libs of Tic Toc and the rest of Elon’s low quality army are pushing it.

    Somebody on the weekly call at work was pushing it as the most amazing and heavy movie he’d seen since Schindler’s List and how we should all go see it.  I googled it, saw Jim Caviezel and human trafficking in the description, and was like “nope.”

  95. 95.

    Villago Delenda Est

    July 14, 2023 at 2:00 pm

    @Kay: Accusation is confession with these clowns.  Always.

  96. 96.

    Brachiator

    July 14, 2023 at 2:01 pm

    @Ruckus:

    I believe that they like shitforbrains because he is the genuine thing. He is what they think a leader is, male, wealthy, shameless, arrogant.

    You nailed it. Also, Trump is a “rich” guy who promised to take on other rich and powerful people, to give his base what they kept asking for, even if what they wanted was simplistic and self-defeating.

    And he has other not as good “qualities.” They are conservatives, they want to go back to a “better,” simpler time, when someone else did the work and they had minimal to no responsibility.

    I don’t think you have this quite right. Trump’s base wanted the good old days when America dominated the world and supposedly had all the manufacturing jobs. They wanted a paradox where America was supposedly so strong that they could either tell every other nation what to do or could ignore the rest of the world.

    Trump’s base believe that they work harder than anybody else.

    If they could they’d go back a couple thousand years, but with modern conveniences, like grocery stores and indoor plumbing.

    There are always people who cry about the good old days. The theme song for the old Archie Bunker TV show had the lines, “those were the days.”

    But Trump’s people also believe that while they deserve what they have, other people shouldn’t have anything. They are afraid and selfish, and Trump feeds their fear.

    One crazy thing is that even though these people saw the pandemic with their own eyes, some of them don’t believe that vaccines and public health measures work. If we had to do it all over again, some of them might actually reject a polio vaccine.

  97. 97.

    Chris

    July 14, 2023 at 2:03 pm

    @Mr. Bemused Senior:

    It’s more than that, it’s also that it gives them a license to behave the way they do.

    If your enemies are doing this thing, then clearly you should do this thing too, otherwise you’ll be outgunned.  It’s their fault, really.  They pushed you into it.

  98. 98.

    schrodingers_cat

    July 14, 2023 at 2:03 pm

    @Burnspbesq: Agreed.

  99. 99.

    bbleh

    July 14, 2023 at 2:04 pm

    @Dangerman: I would guess more like they will proclaim loudly they are continuing to fight the Good Fight for all things Right and True and American, but y’know they gotta get a few bills passed for The Troops and The Children and American Jobs and so on, and the eeeeevil Democrats have forced the Right and True things off the bills, but Republicans will stay in the fight as long as it takes, yada yada yada and so on.

    The MAGAts are dependable cannon fodder, aka useful idiots.  The Republicans will hang on to them, and the MAGAts will stay.  They may walk away from one or another candidate, but I doubt they’ll ever do what the evangelicals did (before Robertson roped them back in) and just walk away from politics entirely.

  100. 100.

    Splitting Image

    July 14, 2023 at 2:04 pm

    @Kay:

    They are all such complete fucking hypocrites on every issue. It is literally true- whatever they are accusing liberals of they are doing. In this case it’s not just pushing propoganda on young people though- the movie is about sex trafficking and one of their heroes was just charged with that.

    The dramatic increase in conservatives throwing around accusations of grooming in the past few years has been particularly creepy.

    I wonder how many of them have aborted healthy 9-month fetuses? It’s their standard lie and like you said, everything they say is projection.

  101. 101.

    Kay

    July 14, 2023 at 2:05 pm

    @Chris:

    My son is politically aware and a Lefty and he had that tragic experience of heartbreak with his Mormon gf in high school where her Right wing family was mean to him, so he was on to them. Enough to tell me it as a funny story. But most people won’t be on to it.

  102. 102.

    TriassicSands

    July 14, 2023 at 2:08 pm

    @rikyrah:

    The MSM desperately need Republicans like Mace. They can focus on her words and ignore her votes. In doing that, they can cling to the fantasy that the Republican Party is a responsible governing partner and not an increasingly authoritarian mob of lunatics who threaten the foundations of this country.

    The media have never figured out how to report on Trump or the descent of the GOP into authoritarianism. Bothsiderism and false equivalence are at the heart of their political coverage, because, to report accurately on the Republican Party, the media will appear to be biased. What they’ve never come to grips with is that their allegiance has to be to the truth and not to some imaginary notion of “fairness.”

  103. 103.

    Subsole

    July 14, 2023 at 2:11 pm

    What gets me about it all is that they have razor thin margins. It would take, what, five of them standing up and saying no. This is not in any wise inevitable. Fascism, indeed most any extremism, tends to run out of runway very fast when it has no one to hide behind. She could stand tall and say no. Any of them, on any level of the ladder, could.

    But they don’t, and won’t. Why would they stand up to the bigots and wignuts? They have us to do that for them.

     

    It’s not just that they’re selfish, arrogant, judgmental, hypocritical, shameless, cowardly, bigoted asswipes.

    They’re lazy on top of it.

  104. 104.

    Juju

    July 14, 2023 at 2:11 pm

    @RaflW: The media and others should also call out Mitch McConnell on this as well. If he didn’t want this to happen it wouldn’t happen.  That repugnant turtle gets away with an awful lot of garbage. It’s obvious, Mitch McConnell hates the military.

  105. 105.

    Roger Moore

    July 14, 2023 at 2:11 pm

    @Mr. Bemused Senior:

    The reason they believe the worst of liberals is they know that’s how they themselves behave.

    QAnon believers are willing to accept that the world is run by a cabal of child molesters, because that’s what they see in the smaller institutions (church, Boy Scouts, etc.) they’re involved with.

  106. 106.

    Ruckus

    July 14, 2023 at 2:14 pm

    @jimmiraybob:

    “Oh Shit!” is the universal human response to “It’s Too Late!”

  107. 107.

    Chris

    July 14, 2023 at 2:16 pm

    @TriassicSands:

    The MSM desperately need Republicans like Mace. They can focus on her words and ignore her votes. In doing that, they can cling to the fantasy that the Republican Party is a responsible governing partner and not an increasingly authoritarian mob of lunatics who threaten the foundations of this country.

    It also feeds the notion that their politicians deeply want to do the right thing, but just can’t because they’re shackled by a populist mob, which then gives them license to talk about how things like the electoral college or the Senate or the Supreme Court are so important because they put checks on the power of the mob.

  108. 108.

    Geminid

    July 14, 2023 at 2:20 pm

    @The Moar You Know: Do you have a source for this assertion that US military officers are 25-1 Republican? That seems awfully high, and does not accord with what I have read.

  109. 109.

    Brachiator

    July 14, 2023 at 2:21 pm

    @Ruckus:

    But animals have always had a pecking order – always.

    The animal kingdom is more varied than you suggest. Even among our chimp cousins, so called alpha males don’t entirely run a group. Others can rise up and determine where the group will go next to feed and to sleep. There is not just hierarchy, but also an ability to bargain and seek consensus. The supposed leader has to go along with the group or be abandoned. It is amazing to see this dynamic at work.

    But I note your larger point.

    We have taken a bold step in this country and taken the position that the concept of a pecking order is wrong. Yes we have leaders, but we vote for them, they very often have a time limit to their job, and we move on. This is relatively new in humanity, this self determination thing and it obviously doesn’t give everyone the warm and fuzzies.

    Aristocracy and hierarchy are very old. But so too are attempts at democracy and other forms of representative government. The Founders didn’t invent something entirely new when they threw off the monarchy. They looked at ancient Greek democracy (where the word democracy originated) and the Roman republic. They looked at federations of Native American societies.

    This is why it is so sad and dangerous that the GOP no longer believe in “we the people,” but only in “we, the right kind of people who are the only ones who deserve anything…”

  110. 110.

    Gretchen

    July 14, 2023 at 2:27 pm

    @Kay: Yes. It’s maddening when they pull out that late-term abortion lie on TV and the moderators never, ever call them on it. My daughter was talking to her Ohio MIL about the Ohio vote, and MIL was like, oh, doesn’t late-term abortion bother you? I’d like to say, you had 4 kids. Did you ever think of getting a 35 week abortion? Did anyone you know? Does this idea make the slightest bit of sense? Of course not. But she’ll endanger her daughters-in-law who will be having babies there because she wants to prevent this fantasy situation.

  111. 111.

    Ruckus

    July 14, 2023 at 2:27 pm

    @trollhattan:

    I was discharged 50 yrs and 6 days ago (yes, you remember) and considering that military pay is not all it’s cracked up to be, when you don’t get it, you will notice if you can’t move up to make more, because that’s the only way to make more. Move up.

  112. 112.

    Ruckus

    July 14, 2023 at 2:33 pm

    Are we now being censored?

    My comment can’t be seen?

  113. 113.

    bbleh

    July 14, 2023 at 2:37 pm

    @Chris: @TriassicSands: @rikyrah: in one way, Mace IS a moderate Republican: she at least pretends she wouldn’t vote for the Crazy (oh so very publicly, boy wadda scoop Politico), while the Gaetz-Greene types don’t even pretend.  With the goalposts having been moved so far, she probably does count as a “moderate Republican.”

    But as to calling them out, I concur they cling to a fantasy that somewhere there are “responsible Republicans,” but I don’t think it’s any real allegiance to “fairness” (although they may tell themselves it is); I think it’s because a HUGE segment of their viewership/readership also clings to that fantasy and wants it validated, and if they — where “they” includes everyone from publishers to editors to individual “journalists” — refuse to validate it they’re gonna lose all those eyeballs.  IOW, it’s much more a business/career decision than any considered or consistent ethical position.

  114. 114.

    Kay

    July 14, 2023 at 2:37 pm

    @Gretchen:

    I want all media people to read Roe and then Casey and then Dobbs. It won’t take them that long. Maybe there could be a Zoom course for them – an “overview”.

    It’s fashionable to shit on Roe as a decision (by people who don’t have to grapple with this impossible fucking legal problem) but the longer I’m around the better it looks. Three tiers where the three sets of rights (state, women, fetus) also tier and shift places makes a lot of sense. It’s really pretty elegant. No one has ever done it better. There aren’t 75,000 answers to this legal dilemma. Roe may be the best answer.

  115. 115.

    Chris

    July 14, 2023 at 2:45 pm

    @bbleh:

    But as to calling them out, I concur they cling to a fantasy that somewhere there are “responsible Republicans,” but I don’t think it’s any real allegiance to “fairness” (although they may tell themselves it is); I think it’s because a HUGE segment of their viewership/readership also clings to that fantasy and wants it validated, and if they — where “they” includes everyone from publishers to editors to individual “journalists” — refuse to validate it they’re gonna lose all those eyeballs.  IOW, it’s much more a business/career decision than any considered or consistent ethical position.

    Honestly, I think it’s even dumber and cruder than that:

    The demographic slice most pundits are in, or want to be in, or want to at least be irrevocably linked to, is East Coast Elites.  And despite what they think in the heartland, the tribal party affiliation for East Coast Elites has always been Republicans.

    It is, mind you, a specific kind of Republican, with East Coast Republicans historically playing the moderates to Western and Southern Republicans’ conservatives/reactionaries.  But still Republican.

    Most media pundits believe the natural rulers of America are Moderate Republicans, because that’s what they see themselves are (never really caring how meaningless, nonsensical, and anachronistic the concept has become).

  116. 116.

    Gravenstone

    July 14, 2023 at 2:50 pm

    @JPL: If people wonder why lawyers keep choosing to work for Trump, the sheer number of billable hours that can be generated following through on his pleas to escape his myriad messes has to be just staggering.

  117. 117.

    Roger Moore

    July 14, 2023 at 2:51 pm

    @Gravenstone:

    The question is not the number of billable hours you can get working for Trump; it’s a question of whether those bills will be paid.

  118. 118.

    Matt McIrvin

    July 14, 2023 at 2:54 pm

    @Chris: Not only that, they think moderate Republicans of their type (repulsed by “both sides” on culture war stuff; low-tax/low-regulation hypercapitalists about money) are the underrepresented Great American Center. They don’t realize that they are a tiny elite sliver of the population.

    Not to mention, they think their preferences would be served if we just “got the smart people together in a room and had them hash everything out”.

  119. 119.

    patrick II

    July 14, 2023 at 3:02 pm

    @Brachiator:

    I agree with everything you said about DeSantis.  He is a placeholder in case Trump is out of the race for whatever reason.

    I also think he is a mild (if that can happen) psychopath.  I don’t know that he tortured cats as a kid, but he has no sense of other people.  It is weird when he tries to act like another person — most on display when he knows he has to laugh but really doesn’t know how so he comes out with that weird wide-mouthed bray.  He can also be personally cruel like when he commanded schoolchildren to take off their masks at one of his appearances.  Not exactly torturing a cat..;.but still.

    It is like watching one of those aliens in the movies who have taken human form and want to fit in.  They watch other people trying to learn how to act, but there is something just a bit off in their manner that makes people wonder what is wrong with them.  There is plenty wrong with him.

     

     

    @Brachiator:

  120. 120.

    Matt McIrvin

    July 14, 2023 at 3:19 pm

    @Kay: I think that during the long post-Reagan decades there was this polite version of the anti-Roe position that said that the result might have been good but there was something terribly wrong with the legal reasoning, and pretended that the opposition to Roe on the right had something to do with the Court going about it the wrong way. Sometimes they’d claim it would be fine if it were a law passed by Congress instead of a court decision.

  121. 121.

    rikyrah

    July 14, 2023 at 3:23 pm

    @schrodingers_cat:

    You are on point 👏🏾

  122. 122.

    TriassicSands

    July 14, 2023 at 3:27 pm

    @bbleh: in one way, Mace IS a moderate Republican…

    There is a risk of getting lost in the semantic weeds.

    Is Mace a moderate when compared with most other House Republicans? Maybe. Is she a moderate when viewed from a more or less objective viewpoint? No. She votes for legislation that is antithetical to a free and just society. Talk, as they say, is cheap.

    The Republican Party has been moving steadily rightward, embracing ever more radical positions for decades now. With the ascension to power of Trump and the allegiance other Republicans have shown to him, the party has now embraced enough radical positions, some of which are not simply authoritarian, but fascist* to qualify simply as a radical party. Can people be considered “moderates” when their voting records reflect allegiance to radical positions? I would say “No.”

    Calling Nancy Mace a “moderate” has no meaning, because her voting record is not at all moderate. Is it more moderate than Matt Gaetz’s voting record? According to Progressive Punch, which ranks Republicans and Democrats based on their voting records, not really. Their records are remarkably similar.

    *Where fascism embraces the threat and use of violence to achieve its goals. That reached its peak on January 6, 2021 and the failure of the Republican Party as a whole to condemn Trump’s incitement and his supporters’ actions further reinforces the use of the label of “radical” to describe the party and its members.

  123. 123.

    moops

    July 14, 2023 at 3:39 pm

    Mace providing another perfect demonstration of “Stupid or Evil?”

  124. 124.

    Kay

    July 14, 2023 at 3:44 pm

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Sneering Right wingers in law school pretended they objected to the “reasoning” and some weakling centrists joined in. Yu really have to go to law school to get a full appreciation of how arrogant Right wing lawyers are. They think they are just so, so smart.

    But Roe holds up really well as a compromise for this truly unique situation where there are three sets of rights and one set (the fetus) is not static and as one recedes the other comes to the fore. So as the fetus matures the womans right has to give way more and more. I can live with that. What I can’t live with is no rights for the woman at all. That’s not acceptable to me. I don’t think it should be acceptable to anyone. She can’t just disappear as an adult legal person with civil rights and liberaties  for nine months and then reappear. That’s a permanent second class status for 1/4 of the population (women of childbearing age)

    It’s unthinkable to me.

  125. 125.

    Gravenstone

    July 14, 2023 at 3:46 pm

    @Roger Moore: Fair point. Man is rather notable for stiffing his workers.

  126. 126.

    mrmoshpotato

    July 14, 2023 at 3:47 pm

    @moops:

    Mace providing another perfect demonstration of “Stupid or Evil?” 

    Can’t be both?

    Stupidly evil, evilly stupid?

  127. 127.

    Chris

    July 14, 2023 at 3:47 pm

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Yeah, that’s always been how centrism works.  They never disagree with the outcome that liberals want.  It’s always the way liberals do it that’s wrong, somehow, no matter what it is.

  128. 128.

    jimmiraybob

    July 14, 2023 at 3:53 pm

    @Ruckus:

    “Oh Shit!” is the universal human response to “It’s Too Late!”

    Or that it’s about to be too late.

  129. 129.

    Kay

    July 14, 2023 at 3:53 pm

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Too, let’s look at the sloppy, careless shit the Right pushed thru after Dobbs. They can’t even manage to make it align with keeping OB/GYNs and maternity wards alive.

    The state laws they wrote are garbage. They harm women. Turns out Roe wasn’t so “poorly reasoned” after all, looking at the Right wing alternative. Let’s talk about “poorly reasoned”. They didn’t understand that their bans encompass miscarriage medical treatment? Fucking dopes. Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy.

  130. 130.

    rikyrah

    July 14, 2023 at 4:06 pm

    @satby:

    Truth 👏🏾

  131. 131.

    Tony G

    July 14, 2023 at 4:31 pm

    @Ruckus: In my opinion, one of the stupidest aspects of American culture is the cult of nostalgia for the 1950’s.  It started only about ten years after the fifties had ended (e.g. Sha Na Na, Grease, Happy Days) and much of it was harmless, but it has an undertone of longing for the days when non-whites, women and other undesirables knew their place.  Trump’s MAGA cult is a recent manifestation of that (where “Again” must mean the fifties).  The stupid thing is that a continuously decreasing number of people even remember the fifties now.  I’m an old geezer of 67, and my only memories of the fifties are as a three-year-old in 1959.  It’s a cult of an imagined past that most people don’t remember.

  132. 132.

    Citizen Alan

    July 14, 2023 at 4:41 pm

    @rikyrah: There are no moderate Republicans. Moderate Republican politicians do not exist. Nance Mace might as well claim to be a purple unicorn.

  133. 133.

    Roger Moore

    July 14, 2023 at 4:44 pm

    @Kay:

    They didn’t understand that their bans encompass miscarriage medical treatment? Fucking dopes. Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy.

    They’re really ideologues rather than dopes.  They meet the strongest criteria for ideologues, which is that they allow their ideology to choose the facts rather than the other way around.  They want to believe their abortion laws will be good, so they ignore any predicted bad consequences as a parade of horribles concocted by their enemies.  This attitude toward facts is the besetting problem of the contemporary Republican party.  They simply can’t accept any facts that contradict their beliefs.

  134. 134.

    Citizen Alan

    July 14, 2023 at 4:48 pm

    @Brachiator:

    The theme song for the old Archie Bunker TV show had the lines, “those were the days.”

    “Girls were girls and men were men. Mister we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again.”

    Yep, that’s pretty much the GOP platform, isn’t it?

  135. 135.

    Chris

    July 14, 2023 at 4:51 pm

    @Tony G:

    Not to pile onto a demographic that already gets a ridiculous amount of shit, but I think a lot of that is simply down to what a huge shadow Boomers cast on the cultural landscape.  For most Boomers, The 1950s = Childhood, so of course that’s the era that they’re nostalgic for, and the era that, if they’re conservative especially, they think is the American “normal” that we’ve all somehow deviated from.

    Lately I think Nostalgia Decade is shifting more and more from the 1950s to the 1980s.  These things are supposed to go in twenty years cycles, but the 1980s are still punching way above their weight class in terms of nostalgia staying power.

  136. 136.

    Roger Moore

    July 14, 2023 at 4:57 pm

    @Tony G:

    In my opinion, one of the stupidest aspects of American culture is the cult of nostalgia for the 1950’s. It started only about ten years after the fifties had ended (e.g. Sha Na Na, Grease, Happy Days) and much of it was harmless, but it has an undertone of longing for the days when non-whites, women and other undesirables knew their place.

    IMO, a lot of it is Baby Boomer nostalgia.  Most generations have some kind of nostalgia for when they were growing up, but the Boomers were so dominant as a cultural force that their viewpoint became entrenched as the default.

    In this case it’s probably important that there were a number of positive features of the 1950s: the USA had a dominant international position, there was prosperity that allowed even high school dropouts to achieve a decent lifestyle, and there were rapid material improvements that made people generally optimistic that the world was becoming a better place.  That meant plenty of people beyond the Boomers saw the 1950s as a halcyon era.  Even minorities, who were objectively much worse off in the 1950s, could see it optimistically as a time of rapid improvement in civil rights.  All it takes is a willingness to ignore the obvious downsides of life in the 1950s: mind-numbing conformity, constant existential dread of nuclear war, a society that was tearing itself apart over racism, White flight leading to the collapse of American cities, etc.

  137. 137.

    Citizen Alan

    July 14, 2023 at 4:58 pm

    @Matt McIrvin: My only regret about Roe is that I think the timing of it killed the ERA by eliminating pregnancy as the source of the biggest gap between the rights afforded to men and those afforded to women. I think if Roe had gone the other way, the ERA would have passed and provided a firmer constitutional basis for abortion rights. But that’s angels dancing on the head of a pin territory.

  138. 138.

    opiejeanne

    July 14, 2023 at 5:00 pm

    @Brachiator: At first when i read this, I thought “why is Nancy Pelosi voting for this?” I confused Mace with Smash, thought it was a newish designation.

  139. 139.

    bbleh

    July 14, 2023 at 5:11 pm

    @Chris: @Matt McIrvin: in part I agree: it’s a happy coincidence of personal political philosophy and business/career interests.  Guess they chose the right profession!  But I don’t think it’s all stupidity or reflexive tribalism, or even necessarily mostly so.  They may not be the brightest bulbs on the chandelier, but they live and breathe this stuff every day, and only a small fraction of what they see and hear makes it into print (sometimes via a very conscious and specific arrangement).  They have at least as good a sense as anyone of the games that are played, and of the degree to which the Republican Party has gone off the deep end, and a better sense than most.  A substantial part of their bias — maybe even most — is a conscious choice on their part, and ain’t no way business and career don’t factor strongly, even decisively, into it.

  140. 140.

    Matt McIrvin

    July 14, 2023 at 5:15 pm

    @Chris: Yeah, the 1980s get nostalgia as a time when we cast off all that liberation stuff and tried to get back to the 1950s.

    And I think we’re starting to see some nostalgia for the early 2000s as a time when we got back to the 1980s getting back to the 1950s.

  141. 141.

    Chris

    July 14, 2023 at 5:50 pm

    @Matt McIrvin:

    I still think liberals should be working 1990s nostalgia for everything it’s worth.  It’s the latest era anyone associates with peace and prosperity before all the shit-shows of the 2000s and 2010s (and now, it seems, 2020s).  It’s the era in which most Millennials were children and therefore have rose-tinted glasses for even in a non-ideological sense, the same way Boomers do for the 1950s.  And Millennials are the biggest generational demographic since Boomers, and a much more liberal one, so that’s a group you definitely want to play to/keep on board.  And, of course, it had a Democratic president.

    The messages of “remember your childhood?  Democrats did that!  Everything that’s gone to shit on your adult life started when the Supreme Court ended that era and anointed Dubya president!  Vote Democrat!  Blame Republicans!” basically write themselves.

    (You’d have to overlook plenty of things about the 1990s, but this is political messaging, people do that all the time.  Conservatives certainly did when making the 1950s the centerpiece of their nostalgia campaign).

  142. 142.

    Subsole

    July 14, 2023 at 6:23 pm

    @Chris: I find 80s nostalgia baffling.

    I was a child in the 80s, and I am nowhere near as nostalgic as some Millennials/Zoomers seem to be for it.

    I mean, the toys were cool, the music was catchy, and the Saturday cartoons were awesome, but the decade itself was kinda sleazy and desperate.

    The counterculture was badass, but the culture they were countering was awful. We had a president with an actual fucking blackface minstrel show at his inauguration. We had AIDS. We had rampant drug violence and an utterly collapsing middle class, the Junk Bond Kings, and the destruction of the unions. I mean, that “cyberpunk” bullshit didn’t leap full-formed from Gibson’s brow. And while we were too young to understand it, we were certainly old enough to know mom and dad were worrying about it.

    I was six, and I knew as a matter of fact the world was going to end in nuclear fire. Like, we all just assumed humanity would end in our lifetime. That was just a given. I can’t even say we were scared, because it was just so baked into the culture. Which was insane, looking back on it.

    I guess what I am trying to say, in my ugly rambling way, is this:

    I wish people would spend less time watching the commercials from back then, and more time looking at actual, factual PICTURES from back then. I think they might find it illuminating.

     

    Some of the kids I know are stunned when I show them photos of New York from back in the 70s. They can’t get over how smoggy it was

    Beautiful example I read somewhere. That show Stranger Things gave all the characters walkie-talkies, because the idea that you might be out if touch with your friends all day, or all weekend, is just alien to us now. Fundamental misunderstanding of the millieu it is trying pay homage to.

  143. 143.

    Chris

    July 14, 2023 at 6:47 pm

    @Subsole:

    I mean, being one of those Millennials who’s far too young to remember any of the eighties, that’s basically it.  To the extent that 1980s nostalgia works on me, “I like the eighties” is shorthand for “I like a whole bunch of pop culture from that decade that cast a huge shadow over my childhood even if it’s too old for me to have seen it when originally released.”

  144. 144.

    Realworldrj

    July 15, 2023 at 9:41 am

    “What are we going to do for jews?” Josef Goebbels confided to Politico staff, pointing to a string of issues that he sees the Nazi Party as ignoring, from jobs to the deportation to camps. “We have touched none of that this year. That’s my frustration”

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