Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

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

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

“And when the Committee says to “report your income,” that could mean anything!

A consequence of cucumbers

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

If marriage is the equivalent of selling yourself into slavery, women with self respect should reject the offer.

Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires Republicans to act in good faith.

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

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / TGIFriday Morning Open Thread: And What Fresh Hell?…

TGIFriday Morning Open Thread: And What Fresh Hell?…

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I cannot imagine what Murphy the Trickster God might have scheduled for a Friday Doc Dump. (Well, I can imagine some possibilities, but I’m hoping everyone takes a long summer weekend!)

Genuinely good news!

Topic of the Week, below the fold, for the sensitive:

Black Republican Michael Steele:

Reader Interactions

271Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    We are fortunate that such a fair/competent judge has been assigned to the trial of the millennium

    I’d prefer a hanging judge myself.

  4. 4.

    p.a.

    Ornstein, “back in the day”, was a center/center right political analyst (may still be) BUT he was among the first to statistically document and honestly report the antidemocratic shift to the far-right of the Republican electorate and then the institutional Republican party.

    IIRC he and his analytical partner(s)- can’t remember the others- were of course attacked and written off as wrong Wrong WRONG experts.  He’s maintained his integrity and really stands out against the craven MSM for quite a while.

  5. 5.

    Jeffro

    Joey Mannarino: “Imma find the most expensive thing I can at the local Wegmans and…and BLAME BIDEN for it!  Genius!”

  6. 6.

    OzarkHillbilly

    What a f’n storm. Lost power Wednesday eve for the 6th time in 3 weeks. Landline phone was ringing with damned near every lightning strike. 4 1/2 inches of rain. Flash flooding everywhere. Spent most of yesterday morning getting toilet water, gas, setting up the generator and cords…

    Blech.

    Woke up about 11 last night and realized the power was back up. Turned off the generator. In the rain. Spent another hour cursing up a blue streak plugging everything back in.

    Double blecch.

    Woke up this morning and guess what? We still have power.

    Not so blecchy.

  7. 7.

    Jeffro

    Jamelle Bouie has a good piece up that ties Jeffrey Clark’s “eh, we’ll just shoot any Dem protestors” mindset to the 2016 election and our democracy’s larger much-needed fixes: This Is The Most Frightening Park of The Latest trump Indictments

    (heavily excerpted ’cause I’m out of gift links! =)

    Buried in the federal indictment of Donald Trump on four counts tied to his attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election is one of the most chilling paragraphs ever written about the plans and intentions of an American president.
    It concerns a conversation between Patrick Philbin, the deputy White House counsel, and Co-Conspirator 4. On the morning of Jan. 3, 2021, Co-Conspirator 4 accepted the president’s offer to become acting attorney general, a job he ended up never holding. That means Co-Conspirator 4 is almost certainly Jeffrey Clark, whom Trump hoped to install as attorney general because Clark “purportedly agreed to support his claims of election fraud,” as a report in The Times put it.
    Later that day, Co-Conspirator 4 spoke with Philbin, who told him that “there had not been outcome-determinative fraud in the election and that if the Defendant” — that is, President Trump — “remained in office nonetheless, there would be ‘riots in every major city in the United States.’ ” To which Co-Conspirator 4 is said to have responded, “Well, that’s why there’s an Insurrection Act.”

     

    …as we mark this development, we should also remember that the former president’s attempt to overthrow our institutions would not have been possible without those institutions themselves.
    Most people who cast a ballot in the 2016 election voted against Trump for president. But in the American system, not all votes are equal. Instead, the rules of the Electoral College gave a small fraction of voters in a few states decisive say over who would win the White House. The will of the majority of the people as a whole — or at least the majority of those who went to the polls — meant nothing compared with the will of a select few who, for reasons not too distant from chance, could decide the election.

    it’s not just that our process for choosing presidents is less resilient than it looks. In addition to its structural flaws, the Electoral College also inculcates a set of political fictions — like the idea that a “red” state is uniformly Republican or that a “blue” one is uniformly Democratic — that can make it easier, for some voters, to believe claims of fraud.
    There is also the broader problem of the American political system when taken in its entirety. There is the inequality of voting power among citizens I mentioned earlier — some votes are worth much more than others, whether it’s a vote for president, senator or member of the House — and the way that that inequality can encourage some voters to think of themselves as “more equal” and more entitled to power than others.

    …one thing is clear, if not obvious: If we truly hope to avoid another Jan. 6, or something worse, then we have to deal with our undemocratic system as much as we do with the perpetrators of that particular incident. Whatever benefits our unusual rules and procedures are supposed to have are more than outweighed, at this point in our history, by the danger they pose to the entire American experiment. The threat to the integrity of the republic is coming, as it often has, from inside the house.

  12. 12.

    different-church-lady

    Not that these assholes will change their tack one bit, but it might be noted that the president’s son is trying to plead guilty.

  13. 13.

    Baud

    Remember when Obama complained about the price of arugula and they called him an elitist.  Good times.

  14. 14.

    lowtechcyclist

    The butterfly effect from Brandon Brown is small change compared to the Butterfly Ballot Effect in 2000.

  15. 15.

    Betty Cracker

    I was skeptical of the Dark Brandon meme at first, but you know what? It works! Kudos to its creators!

  16. 16.

    Soprano2

    @OzarkHillbilly: I wondered if that storm got you. I’m wondering if it affected Quilting Fool, too. It looked like quite the storm went through Wednesday night.

  25. 25.

    Spanky

    @EarthWindFire: Yeah, I doubt he’d find $50 meat at his local Piggly Wiggly.

    (Can’t day for sure though, since I don’t think there’s a PW within 300 miles. )

  26. 26.

    eversor

    @p.a.:

    Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein are the pair.  One worked at Brookings Institution as the center left and the other at AEI as center right.

    They still both work together.  And while AEI has picked up some issues they aren’t The Heritage Foundation.  They are largely Reagan or pre Reagan in their viewpoints though they did pick up some Bush II people.

  29. 29.

    JWR

    @p.a.:

    Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann wrote the book, “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks”. It’s an excellent read, and why he’s one of the few right wingers I tend to read and/or trust. He noted that once that book came out, he became a non-entity to most of our lovely media, not just Fox.

  35. 35.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Soprano2: It was relentless. Indian Creek got within a foot of overtopping Hwy A. In 13 years I have never seen it get anywhere near that high.

  36. 36.

    Betty Cracker

    Reuters has an exclusive about Judge Cannon making bone-headed errors in a trial unrelated to Trump:

    WASHINGTON, Aug 4 (Reuters) – The judge in former U.S. President Donald Trump’s upcoming trial over his handling of classified documents made two key errors in a June trial, one of which violated a fundamental constitutional right of the defendant and could have invalidated the proceedings, according to legal experts and a court transcript.

    Florida-based U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon closed jury selection for the trial of an Alabama man – accused by federal prosecutors of running a website with images of child sex abuse – to the defendant’s family and the general public, a trial transcript obtained by Reuters showed. A defendant’s right to a public trial is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution’s Sixth Amendment.

    Cannon, a 42-year-old former federal prosecutor appointed by Trump to the bench in 2020 late in his presidency, also neglected to swear in the prospective jury pool – an obligatory procedure in which people who may serve on the panel pledge to tell the truth during the selection process. This error forced Cannon to re-start jury selection before the trial ended abruptly with defendant William Spearman pleading guilty as part of an agreement with prosecutors.

    Cannon’s decision to close the courtroom represents “a fundamental constitutional error,” said Stephen Smith, a professor at the Santa Clara School of Law in California. “She ignored the public trial right entirely. It’s as though she didn’t know it existed.”

    Woof. Looks like the documents case could be a shit-show. Oh well. Maybe fiascos will raise public awareness about the importance of appointing competent judges.

    From what I understand, Trump appointed many who were far less qualified and experienced than Cannon. We’re not hearing about their fuck-ups, but it matters.

  37. 37.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    @Baud: The rational part of me is glad for Judge Chuktan. The irrational part of me wants a Cardassian judge (“The verdict is guilty. Let the trial begin.”).

    Note that’s Cardassian, not Kardashian.

  38. 38.

    RevRick

    @lowtechcyclist: There’s one a mile down the road. I’ll check it out. But I’m more likely to find plantains and supplies for enchiladas than a filet mignon.

  39. 39.

    Honus

    @Jeffro: exactly.  And call a filet mignon “$50 meat”  Why not take a picture of a Porsche and say “a small German car now costs $150,000”

  40. 40.

    Brit in Chicago

    In re David Rothkopf’s tweet: my (long-standing) hope is that this is right, and that a significant majority  of the younger generation don’t want a country that supports the racism, misogyny, etc. that he references. I put my hope and my faith in the young!

  41. 41.

    The Thin Black Duke

    @Brit in Chicago: Bottom line, young people have skin in the game. For example, climate change isn’t a theory. The old farts claiming otherwise won’t be dealing with the consequences of their ignorance.

  44. 44.

    JML

    So, when Trump decides to flee to Russia, will his Secret Service detail rat him out to the FBI and stop him or do they go with him? I mean, Secrets Service right now is pretty messed up, with a bunch of right-wing lunatics embedded in there much like the military. How many of his detail has he corrupted?

    There’s something gross but hilarious about Trump taking a private jet to Russia and defecting to avoid prosecution and having like half a dozen Secret Service guys with him.

  45. 45.

    Wanderer

    One thing that really gets under my skin is that tifg is using CPAC campaign donations to fund his legal defense.  The law allowing this diversion of funds to almost any personal use gives us batches of grifting “candidates” looking for quick cash in sums which make for a lovely financial future.  IMHO tifg should pay his legal defense from his personal funds – if he can’t afford that of course an attorney could be appointed for him as any defendant is offered. A go fund me specifically for legal fees could be used. I realize that money from pac funds for lawyers means less money to pay for legitimate campaign expenses but the snooze media is so lazy they just follow him 24/7 anyway so there is no shortage of hearing them fret for him, interviewing his supporters ad nauseum, all at no cost to him at all.

  46. 46.

    smith

    @JML:  Any Secret Service agents who went along with that would have to give up their whole lives — families, friends, homes. They’d never be able to come home again. As fash-curious as some of them seem to be, I doubt if their devotion to TFG runs that deep.

  47. 47.

    Brit in Chicago

    @The Thin Black Duke: That’s true, but it’s also true that the Republicans in power over the last 25 years have been a PR shit-show: W, with his lies and disastrous wars, TFG with his overt rampant narcissism and more blatant lies. Contrast that with the super-cool super-smart Obama (even if some of his policies were lacking). There’s some evidence that a person’s political allegiance is formed during their teens and early 20s, and then is fairly unlikely to shift.

  48. 48.

    Josie

    @Jeffro: ​
     Out of curiosity, I checked filet mignon at the local HEB, and it seems to run about $20.00 per pound. Still too rich for my blood, but a far cry from $50.00

  50. 50.

    kalakal

    Trump gets extradited back to US as a throw-in in Ukraine peace deal

    Why would we want him back? Treat him like we treated William Joyce* after WW2.

    I can’t imagine a defeated Russia having any use for him, let him rot there.

    * Ango/Irish/American Nazi radio propagandist better known as Lord Haw-Haw**. After he was captured by the British and was sentenced to death he appealed to the US as an American citizen. A deaf ear was turned.

    ** He wasn’t Haw Haw, that was another guy but they’ve become conflated

  51. 51.

    Chief Oshkosh

    Just checked at Wal Mart (online), and filet mignon is $20.82/lb. Not cheap, but not $49.99/lb. Top sirloin is half that.

  52. 52.

    Ken

    @Jeffro: If that was his strategy, he should have been looking in the cheeses. There are also some imported vinegars that are ridiculously expensive.

    I could swear I’ve seen this before, and I don’t mean Oz’s crudites — some Republican complaining about the price of food, using an item that isn’t on most people’s shopping lists.  Caviar, perhaps?

    EDIT: I see others got there first.

  53. 53.

    Another Scott

    @Jeffro: Yup, it’s a problem.

    A relatively simple solution is to change the Apportionment formula, by stating “every state shall have a minimum of 2 seats in the House of Representatives” (rather than 1). This lists some alternative formulas, but doesn’t mention assigning a minimum of 2 members per state – my Google-fu is failing me this morning.

    Wyoming has 576,851 people (as of the 2020 Census), so 288,426 people per district.  330M/228,426 = 1144 seats.  Phase the number in over a short period of time (say 3-4 House election cycles, maybe).  It would seemingly be much, much more difficult for small population states to have an oversized impact in the EC with many more House members (and thus Electors).

    Details are left to the reader…  :-/

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  54. 54.

    Honus

    @Soprano2: ah, yes, 2000.  The butterfly ballot, the republicans screaming fraud, and the Brooks Bros riot to stop vote counting.  Almost seems quaint, if it didn’t give us the most destructive presidency in history.  With the possible exception of 2016.

  55. 55.

    Jeffro

    @Chief Oshkosh:This is what the talking heads should be talking about. Thanks for posting it.

    You’re welcome!

    Yeah, no one seems to want to look squarely at the truly horrifying stuff that we (as a country) just barely dodged on J6.  I mean, I get why the GOP (leaders and ‘base’ both) don’t want to look at it – they’d have to own it.  But everyone else?

  56. 56.

    The Thin Black Duke

    @Brit in Chicago: But in spite of how good the GOP’s spin doctors are, young women just saw their bodily autonomy taken away. That’s gonna be hard sell.

  58. 58.

    Honus

     

    @narya: “How’d that work out for Oz? ;-)“

    ah yes, another phony republican populist. As soon as he grabbed that huge bundle of asparagus I thought “you don’t buy asparagus if you’re trying to save money”

  59. 59.

    Jeffro

    @Another Scott: I like it!  I’m also good with “double the House”.  =)

    The American Academy of Arts and Sciences published a good report on how to strengthen our democracy a while back, and there’s a lady in the WaPo (who I think was affiliated with the report?) who occasionally publishes pieces related to it.

    Priority 1.1 is to enlarge the House!

    (1.3 is similar to your proposal but it’s kinda complicated – I like your idea better)

  61. 61.

    Jeffro

    Btw for the folks noting the prices of choice cuts of beef, cheeses, imported vinegars…I’m feeling like quite the grocery cheapskate!

    I was wondering to myself, “what, if anything, do I spend more than the minimum on at the grocery store?” and I think the answer is probably just about “nothing”.

    Hmm.  I might have to splurge a little next time around.  Higher-quality olive oil for caprese salads would probably be worth it.

  62. 62.

    Ken

    @WereBear: Where I am, populist small towns don’t even have a grocery store. It’s the convenience store or an hour away to Walmart.

    Someone mentioned McDowell County WV a couple days ago, I forget why, so I checked its wikipedia page. Among the other depressing information, the county is classified as a “food desert” (a term I more usually associate with city neighborhoods), having just two grocery stores. The Walmart closed…

  64. 64.

    NotMax

    Within living memory.

    No one would argue 1933 was a racially progressive era but OMG, the breathtakingly, blatantly offensive narration snippet from a See America promotional short for American Airlines (still American Airways then), so casually included in the script, is especially repugnant.

    Link should be cued up to the start of the relevant seven seconds within the video (4:38 – 4:45).

  65. 65.

    Ken

    @smith: Any Secret Service agents who went along with that would have to give up their whole lives — families, friends, homes. They’d never be able to come home again.

    Didn’t I see a report that Russia is building a town outside Moscow specifically for people in the US who want to give up their citizenship and move to Russia? Perhaps living with TFG and his secret service detail can be one of the draws.

  67. 67.

    Mai Naem mobileI

    @JML: that’s what bothers me about the classified docs. I find it difficult to believe that all the secret service agents were unaware that TFG initially  had classified docs that he wasn’t supposed to have anf that he didn’t return everything he was supposed to have. There’s secret service who’ve served in the armed forces. Don’t tell me they don’t understand classification rules and don’t tell me they were unaware about the National Archives asking back for documents.

  68. 68.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Brit in Chicago: Young right-wing white people are smaller in relative numbers than they used to be, but also more intensely fascist and deranged, which makes me think a future of a lot of right-wing terrorism is in the offing.

  73. 73.

    Betty Cracker

    @NotMax: Florida’s state song, minstrel show tune “Swanee River,” had that offensive word in the lyrics until the 1970s! To his credit, back when he was a Repub governor in the aughties, Charlie Crist tried to throw that song out as the state song and designate a new one because the whole thing basically sucks, but the statehouse wouldn’t hear of it.

  74. 74.

    Matt McIrvin

    Enlarging the House is an interesting idea but I think it’s just tinkering on the margins.

    When it comes to the Electoral College, the big problem is that winner-take-all representation gives large swing states outsize power to swing the presidential election on tiny margins. Since the big purple states, these days, happen to be more likely to lean slightly Republican than slightly Democratic, this gives the Republican Party a huge effective margin to win with popular-vote minorities. That’s far more important than the small-state bonus. It’s also something that could flip rapidly, but it’s antidemocratic regardless.

    In Congress, the problem is the minority obstructive power of the Senate which has caused Congress as a whole to largely abdicate from passing substantive legislation, apart from some grossly necessary bills that get passed with workarounds of Rube Goldberg complexity. I think this is actually the single biggest problem in our political system. Expanding executive power and corrupt Supreme Court justices would be much less of a problem if Congress could/would actually do its job. The other branches are just walking into a power vacuum.

  75. 75.

    Steeplejack

    @mvr:

    Because big states would get a lot more reps, as the size of the House would increase dramatically.

  76. 76.

    Baud

    @Matt McIrvin: You are correct about the Senate. It is the biggest problem with our democracy right now IMHO.

    ETA: At least the way the GOP has weaponized the filibuster.  (Dems now stop stuff too, but that is because the GOP opened the door to misuse of the filibuster.)

  77. 77.

    Gravenstone

    @Josie: From the placard in the picture, I think the offending filet mignon is some combination of adjectives (eg. natural, free range, organic) that “justify” a 150-200% increase in value over more pedestrian fare.

  79. 79.

    prostratedragon

    @mvr:  I think the idea is to use the 2 rep minimum as a scale factor to set the population for all districts. At present I know that some big State districts contain well over 500,000 people.

  82. 82.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: The deadlocked Congress also gives pundits a convenient out to object on procedural grounds to any policy change they don’t like, and SCOTUS and other wingnut judges a means of breaking shit: they can both claim “it’s Congress’s job to fix this,” secure in the knowledge that Congress never will.

  83. 83.

    Ken

    @mvr: How does giving small states an extra rep help?

    It wouldn’t alone, in fact I think it would make things worse as long as the number of representatives was fixed at 435. I think there’s an assumption that we’d also increase that number so each representative, er, represented the same number of people.

    So: Wyoming has 580,000 people, each representative is for 290,000 people. California with 39,240,000 people then gets 135 representatives.

  86. 86.

    Honus

    @Ken: when I was in high school (1970) McDowell County had a population of nearly 100,000. Today I think it is less than 10,000.
    A friend of mine’s family had a store there in Iaeger for 80 years.  It closed a couple years ago. Her dad, the owner, retired and there was no business anymore anyway.

  87. 87.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: …The filibuster has been eroding around the edges; it already doesn’t exist for judicial appointments any more. At some point, the logjam is going to break and when the Rs control Congress, we’ll get a flood of crazy, destructive legislation. But, you know, that’s how it’s supposed to work. If you don’t want bad laws, don’t vote for those assholes. Democracy is healthier when people can see the connection between cause and effect.

  88. 88.

    Another Scott

    @mvr: The number of electors in the Electoral College is based on the number of House and Senate numbers (1:1?  Something like that).  All House districts are (roughly) the same size.  If House districts are smaller, then larger population states have proportionally more say in the EC.  (Wyoming gets 1 more House seat, so 4 electors, but California gets 100 more (haven’t done the math) and instead of having 42 (haven’t checked the math) they have 142.)

    IOW, people have a larger role in choosing electors and the President than land.

    I hope this is clearer.  Thanks.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  89. 89.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Gravenstone:

    Have to say, though, that is one gorgeous piece of meat. I just hope it doesn’t end up with TFG — he’d have it burnt to a crisp and slather it in ketchup, which IMO would justify a whole new batch of indictments.

  91. 91.

    Brit in Chicago

    @prostratedragon: With 435 reps and about 330 million people, an average district has over three-quarters of a million people. That hardly makes for a personal relationship between a citizen and their rep. One solution is a huge expansion of the number of reps, as is being discussed. Another is to give up the idea of a personal relationship (which is never going to be with an average sort of citizen, always with an unusually vociferous or rich one).

    Then there’s no reason not to go for proportional representation, which would imply an end to gerrymandering, and a big step towards having an actual democracy. (Then we’d need to end the absurdity of every state having the same number of senators, and the influence of big money in politics. Hey, a guy can dream.)

    ETA: And we’d have to end the Electoral College too—now I’m really dreaming. But it’s worth thinking about what we’d need to do to make this a full democracy, if only to remind ourselves how far away from that we are.

  92. 92.

    CliosFanBoy

    Any bets that $50 filet was not only in an elite pricey store, but it was in New York City or some similarly expensive city??

  93. 93.

    Quiltingfool

    @Soprano2: I saw your comment yesterday, wondering if my area around Lake of the Ozarks got hit by storms, nope, nothing happened here.

    I live on the far western edge of Camden County, and the storms hit the far eastern side, about 50 miles away.  My nephew lives over there, and they had a tornado there, and most likely lots of downed trees and such, MoDot was out in full force, I heard.

    It’s raining right now, but it won’t last long!  We have gotten a bit more rain now, the yard isn’t brown anymore!

  98. 98.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Quiltingfool: ​ MODOT was out here too. Using highlifts to clear the roads of downed limbs, trees, and rocks/gravel left behind by the flooding.

  100. 100.

    eversor

    @Jeffro:

    It’s not the sticker shock of that item, it’s well within range and hardly the most pricey thing there.  It’s that Wegmans is up in the Whole Foods price range of stuff if not more.   Which for a bunch of people who screech about shopping at Whole Foods is sort of funny.   They are both upper middle class stores.

    It’s doubly dumb because, like Whole Foods, it’s not even “good” in the sense of it.  This isn’t some actual butcher or cheese monger or other specialized store.  A bunch of wealthy assholes complaining about the price of Wegmans is sort of funny.

    But you know, the cost of crudites!

    Hell people are screaming about the price of Rolex right now.  A Rolex sub is now over 10k rather than under it (has been for a while), which is somehow an issue.

  101. 101.

    Steeplejack

    @mvr:

    As others have explained, the ratio doesn’t remain the same.

    Ken at #83: “So: Wyoming has 580,000 people, each representative is for 290,000 people. California with 39,240,000 people then gets 135 representatives.”

  102. 102.

    Geminid

    @Brit in Chicago: One thing I don’t like about proportional representation is that it would lead to a proliferation of smaller parties and, in effect, a parliamentary-like system requiring coalition governments. Some people argue that this would be a good thing, but I don’t think so.

  103. 103.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Geminid: People accustomed to such systems find ours bizarre–two parties, with the others relegated to spoiler status and mostly made of trolls, seems like a ridiculously narrow range of choices.

    Basically all it means is that we form our coalitions before the general election, and multiparty parliamentary systems form theirs after.

  105. 105.

    Geminid

    @Geminid: I would say in general about various structural reforms people like to discuss is that they are a harmless distraction. They are not gonna happen this decade. In the short and medium term, I think we will have to run the machine as we found it, as a 19th century politician put it. That would be Abraham Lincoln.

  106. 106.

    Immanentize

    @lowtechcyclist:

    The next day was hangin’ day, the sky was overcast and black
    [Mike Pence] lay covered up, killed by a penknife in the back
    And [the former guy] on the gallows, [his pants began to stink]
    The hangin’ judge was sober, [she] hadn’t had a drink
    The only person on the scene missin’ was the Jack of Hearts.

    I will never again hear that beloved song the same way.

  109. 109.

    Baud

    @Matt McIrvin:

    @Geminid:

    The best way to demonstrate proof of concept is through state election and governance reforms, but people who push such things tend to focus on the national government.

  110. 110.

    Ken

    @Jackie: But the skinflint TIFG would have to pay them out of his own tightly sewn up pockets.

    That’s an interesting question — whether, if Trump should flee to Russia or Saudi Arabia or wherever, he would still receive Secret Service protection paid for by the US government.

    If he did have to pay for his own security — well, in either of those places there are people who can pay his security a lot more, if you get my drift.

  112. 112.

    Subsole

    @Jeffro:

    I think the news has always downplayed how awful these guys are;  if the GOP ain’t so bad, then the media constantly carrying their water ain’t so bad either. It’s a way to avoid addressing their own dereliction/complicity.

  113. 113.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Baud: Well, Maine passed IRV (though it got constitutionally blocked for the one case they cared about the most), so such reforms are not impossible.

    Going to something other than winner-take-all EV for presidential elections is a Prisoner’s Dilemma situation: it would make things better if everyone did it, but any state that does it is damaging its own power, and if it only happens in blue states it makes things worse. That National Popular Vote Compact was an extremely clever bid to work around this kind of problem, but I think it’s the kind of thing that requires too much explaining.

  114. 114.

    Immanentize

    @Jeffro: higher quality balsamic vinegar is more important than higher quality olive oil on caprese. I have performed the experiments!

  116. 116.

    JCJ

    @Bruce K in ATH-GR:  A Cardassian judge would be excellent.  That reminds me – my daughter follows a Twitter account from Gul Dukat (@realGulDukat) – He wants to Make the Alpha Quadrant Great Again.

  117. 117.

    Honus

    @eversor: Yeah, I’m having trouble with the idea that a lot of people will go hungry or be late to work because the prices of filet and and Rolexes are too high

  118. 118.

    Tenar Arha

    @Jeffro: LOL You can even save money on that. I buy my EVOO (imported or California depending on what’s available) at Costco in a giant green bottle & transfer it to a smaller bottle for cooking.

    I buy their giant jar of Greek olives, that lasts forever in the fridge, for my occasional Horiatiki salad. But I’ve switched from the giant box of feta crumbles to buying real sheep’s milk feta at the grocery store bc I like the taste better. ;)

  119. 119.

    Geminid

    @Matt McIrvin: People tend to idealize parliamentary systems. They look great in theory but in practice they can be very problematic. Spain’s two-party minority government took 15 months and a second election to form, and I think they just had new elections after two and a half years.

    Holland’s governing coalition just fell out over asylum policy. I read that a recent givernment-obviously not this one- was the first in a couple decades to serve out its alloted 4 years.

  120. 120.

    Subsole

    @Matt McIrvin:

    Yes.

    That said, part of the reason the 90s were so hellish for the hwite powur set was that the lunatics actually got through and started blowing shit up. Which put the fear into Joe and Judy Six-pack, and got the government cracking down.

    Then that thrice-damned asshole’s followers flew some jets into some towers, and the militia goobers got a new lease on life.

  121. 121.

    New Deal democrat

    I just can’t help but feel sorry for that poor guy (or gal) at the Chinese propaganda ministry who came up with the original “Dark Brandon” image of Biden with laser eyes (and their superiors) who thought that portraying Biden as a badass demon was a great coup.

    I wonder where they are now.

  123. 123.

    Geminid

    @Jeffro: It’s a good time to stock up on olive oil. A drought in Europe has slashed Spanish and Italian olive oil production. Turkey just banned olive oil exports in order to keep its domestic prices from climbing too high. Prices in this country certainly aren’t going to get any lower.

  125. 125.

    Jeffro

    @Immanentize: Noted!  And eager to try this out a.s.a.p!   =

    ETA: (and Geminid & Tenar, I just saw your notes, too)

    Mmmm mmm MMM, gonna be a good weekend!

  127. 127.

    Geminid

    @Edmund dantes: That may be so. I still don’t think we will see 435 House members choose to dilute their power anytime soon.

    Maybe some enterprising reformers will put up primary challengers to press House reform. I don’t see them as being successful, though. People still vote on kitchen table issues. This is more of a coffee table issue.

  129. 129.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: No, the Democratic Party, for example, is already a coalition.  In a parliamentary system, AOC, Tim Kaine, and Joe Manchin would likely be members of different smaller parties.  They have enough in common that they could come together to form a coalition after an election, but they differ on a lot of things as well.  One of the main advantage of a parliamentary system is that it doesn’t paper over the differences between coalition members.  OTOH one of the downsides is that institutional loyalty to a coalition is less strong.  Coalition partners can be less likely to bite the bullet over coalition priority with which they disagree agree than a party member is over a party platform issue.

  131. 131.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Betty Cracker: I got a Dark Brandon t-shirt from the Biden-Harris campaign.  A woman waiting for a bus saw it and could not stop raving about how great it was!

  133. 133.

    Jackie

    Heh

    “Magistrate Judge Moxila Upadhyaya addressed former President Donald Trump as “Mr. Trump” yesterday in court — which “irked him particularly,” CNN reports.

    He prefers “Mr. President.””

    Funny that indicted individuals aren’t consulted about personal choices when facing a judge!🙄

  134. 134.

    Jeffro

    Btw for the folks who are acknowledging the difficulty if not the current impossibility of some of the structural reforms we’re kicking around: I hear you.  I just think they become less difficult, perhaps not impossible, if we get them out into the discourse more often.

    But it all starts with winning elections, I get that!

  135. 135.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Jackie: The traitor crybaby can stomp his widdle feet all fucking day.  The Judge was right to address him thusly.  He’s proven through his actions he’s utterly unworthy of the honorific.

  136. 136.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Geminid: There was a paper that came out some years back claiming that presidential systems like ours tended to slide into dictatorship, but parliamentary systems didn’t.

    I do wonder, though, if that finding was dominated by the fact that presidential systems mostly prevail in the New World, a region with a lot of poor countries historically plagued with the United States meddling with their politics in invidious ways, whereas parliamentary systems prevail in rich postwar Europe.

    I also keep in mind that THE paradigmatic example of a democratic republic falling into dictatorship, the rise of Hitler, happened on the parliamentary side of a semi-presidential system.

  137. 137.

    Glidwrith

    @Spanky: If you ever want saffron in a dish, I found a Mexican spice called safflower which is the same thing and infinitely less expensive.

  138. 138.

    Kent

    @Geminid:

    People tend to idealize parliamentary systems. They look great in theory but in practice they can be very problematic. Spain’s two-party minority government took 15 months and a second election to form, and I think they just had new elections after two and a half years.

    Holland’s governing coalition just fell out over asylum policy. I read that a recent givernment-obviously not this one- was the first in a couple decades to serve out its alloted 4 years.

    EVERY Democratic system has to have some sort of coalition building process to reach 51%.  In parliamentary systems that process happens AFTER the election between the parties in smoke filled rooms so to speak.  In the US that process happens BEFORE the election during the primary and general elections.  So we have union types in coalition with civil rights activists and environmental leftists in the Democratic Party and fundies in coalition with anti-tax business types in the Republican Party.

    Our system actually brings the process closer to the people who then, of course, complain when the resulting candidate or coalition doesn’t perfectly match their own personal proclivities.  So you just can’t win I guess

    The main advantage to parliamentary systems is not the coalitions, but the fact that you don’t have the gridlock of split rule with the executive held by one party and the legislature by another.  Plus parliaments tend not to go in for filibuster type rules to empower minorities.  So if you can form a government you can tend to get shit done.

  139. 139.

    MisterForkbeard

    @JWR: This book came out when I was in college (or close to it) and it was excellent. It was also eye-opening; it’s thesis was that the political issues in the country and a lot of our problems were squarely the result of a Republican Party where lies, hyperpartisanship and death of expertise were all encouraged.

    And like you say (and he notes this too) he went from being booked constantly on news shows to not being booked at all over the course of a week. No one was allowed to say that Republicans were off the deep end – but conversely, calling Democrats traitors was very normal in the media and got your more bookings.

    It was one of the first times I realized how wired the media is for Republicans. It’s still pretty bad, too.

  140. 140.

    eversor

    @Honus:

    As someone who owns a Rolex and shops at butcher shop (and Wegmans, and Whole Foods) I think I’m doing fine!  The price of upper middle class luxury goods is too damn high, sock it the poor!

    Also my income has gone up by the low five figures during Biden.  It was stagnant under Trump. I’m upper middle class, shit went slightly up in cost but I make more.  Which is… good.  It also wiped away tons of debt in the process.  I’m, rather happy and content with things.

    Also if we are griping about the price of goods raw oysters at the local place dropped from 3 bucks to 1.50 and I’m going to take advantage of that.

    I don’t know what these people are griping about economically.

  141. 141.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Another Scott:

    A relatively simple solution is to change the Apportionment formula, by stating “every state shall have a minimum of 2 seats in the House of Representatives” (rather than 1).

    <snip>

    Wyoming has 576,851 people (as of the 2020 Census), so 288,426 people per district.  330M/228,426 = 1144 seats.

    There are two separate changes here, one stated and one unstated.  The stated change is you’re increasing the minimum number of Representatives per state from 1 to 2.  This would make things worse by itself – see below.

    The key but unstated change you’re making is using the population of the lowest-pop state to set the size of the Congressional districts, and using that to set the number of Congressional districts nationwide, rather than leaving it fixed at 435.

    With a minimum of 2 Congresspersons per state, that gets your 1144 CDs. ISTM that it should work roughly as well with a minimum of 1 per state and 572 CDs.  I’d have to be shown why it doesn’t.

    (Just changing the minimum from 1 to 2, with no other changes, would actually increase small-state overrepresentation, because the House would still be limited to 435 Representatives, and now Wyoming, North Dakota, etc. would now be grabbing two each rather than just one.)

  142. 142.

    Baud

    1. What’s the largest country with a true parliamentary democracy with proportional representation. Anything approaching our population?
    2. As I understand it, in parliamentary systems, party leadership has a lot more power of discipline.  That’s the trade off of having more, smaller but more ideologically coherent parties.
  144. 144.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kent: A thing that strikes me when we talk about low electoral participation in the US is that in many of these parliamentary countries, people don’t actually vote on very many things. There’s a general election in which you basically vote for which party you support, and that’s it for national/regional government. At long intervals there might be some kind of national referendum about something important, and there might be local elections. But we vote on many more things here. which makes voting much more complicated and sometimes drives people away.

    This also gives the people who do vote much more power, but when most people don’t vote that can be gamed in terrible ways. There’s some kind of balance to strike between ease and power, much as with software design.

  145. 145.

    UncleEbeneezer

    Saw some dirt-cheap fares from Burbank to JFK and we are considering a trip in the Fall to check out Hudson Valley (where we hope to move eventually) but it’s unlikely to happen since FIL is now fighting a rare cancer and we don’t really know if we feel comfortable planning a trip that we might end up having to cancel (losing a bunch of $).  We are both so tired of having every vacation decision complicated by pet health (2019), Covid/Wildfires (2020), Wildfires (2021), MIL Health/Death (2022-2023) and now FIL Health (2023).  So we plan to stick to something less risky and do our usual trip to the Eastern Sierra for fall color, with Hudson Valley as a backup that will only happen if several things work out just right (unlikely).

  147. 147.

    Geminid

    @Kent: I like our looser coalition forming process, especially how the party apparatus does not choose the candidates. Most of the time voters choose them in state run primaries. Candidates succeed and fail on how well they can attract a winning coalition in the primary and then the general election. That places a premium on pragmatism both politically and in governing, which I think is a good thing. Right now Republicans are failing because they are very unpragmatic in both respects.

  148. 148.

    JoyceH

    The weird thing about the Brandon meme is that it feels like a private joke, something you share with your two best friends or your sisters – but it’s nationwide.

    Another weird thing. That footage of Trump talking with the press after the arraignment, out by his plane holding an umbrella- I saw a wider shot, and that dang umbrella said “TRUMP” on it. What is WITH that guy slathering his name on everything? I try to imagine any other political figure or previous president carrying an umbrella with his name on it and it just doesn’t work.

  150. 150.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Immanentize:

    I will never again hear that beloved song the same way.

    Happy to do my bit. :-D

    @Layer8Problem:

    Her I’ve heard of!

    Christina Hendricks was hot.  (Probly still is!) And we Firefly fans saw her first. :-)

  151. 151.

    Baud

    The current rigid ideological split between the parties is a product of the civil rights era.  Historically, geography played a more important role vis-a-vis ideology.

  152. 152.

    cain

    @JML: His crowd would still vote for him even if he turned traitor. They’ll simply declare themselves pro-Russians. The professional media will both sides that as well. lol.

  154. 154.

    Geminid

    @Kent: Parliamentary systems just find gridlock in other ways. One comes out of the difficulty in maintaining a durable governing coalition, but I think there are others.

    France’s Fourth Republic ended because of prolonged gridlock. The stress of its war in Algeria precipitated constitutional change, but the Fourth Republic had already had a lot of dysfunction in that century. The response was a the Fifth Republic, with strong-president system not unlike that of the U.S. That was the only way they could get Charles deGaulle to take the job.

  155. 155.

    cain

    @Wanderer: Why? The dude is hoovering money from GOP land. CPAC, Rhonda’s org – they won’t have any money left to actually do elections. Wait till he goes to jail or gets declared guilty – they’ll throw even more money at him. Not one of those fuckers will say a word about it either.

  156. 156.

    MazeDancer

    @Anyway: Thanks!

    All the Dem mugs, from different years, are made in the same place.

    Which I am guessing is among the few union pottery/printers available.

    Hefty, sturdy, plenty of room for fingers.

    Not quite sure why the Hillary mug has the grip on the opposite side than the others. (Including the non-snarky Biden/Harris one  I also have.)

    Maybe she made it for lefties. or preferred the picture facing the drinker rather than others at the table when sipping.

  157. 157.

    Glidwrith

    @JoyceH: A toxic narcissist; one that’s so insecure he has to plaster his name on everything to reassure himself that he matters.

    Also, plastering his name on everything is how he makes his money, by licensing it out.

  158. 158.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Matt McIrvin:

    That National Popular Vote Compact was an extremely clever bid to work around this kind of problem, but I think it’s the kind of thing that requires too much explaining.

    Another problem with the NPVIC is that there’s no enforcement mechanism.  Any GOP-controlled states could just change their minds about participating if staying in meant electing a Dem.

    I really think we need a system that allows for new parties to come into being, and grow, without being spoilers.

    The big problem for the last 40 years, really, is that as the GOP has repeatedly cut off its moderate wing, the choice for its more moderate voters has still been GOP and Dems.  And that lack of somewhere to go besides all the way over to the other side has enabled the GOP to retain the support of nearly half the electorate as they’ve turned into a collection of raving lunatics.  In a more rational system, each move to the right would have cost them a nontrivial portion of the electorate to a more centrist party.  But there’s nowhere else to go in our system.

  159. 159.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @cain: ​
      Why is feminizing DeSantis’s name a go-to insult? And, yes, it bothers me when people do it Lindsey Graham too.

  161. 161.

    Geminid

    @Baud: I remember when people talked about the prospect of Hakeem Jeffries becoming leader of the House Democrats. “This won’t do,” some people said. “You can’t have both Congressional leaders from the same state!” That was so 20th Century.

    But now I tend to look at such criticisms critically, and think that maybe the people who raised the issue just didn’t like Jeffries to begin with.

  162. 162.

    Rob in CT

    @Geminid:

    I think it’s something that’s worth talking about, because the way ideas end up “out there” is that people talk about them…

    I agree that reforms that would really help (get rid of the EC, change Senate apportionment somehow) are big, big lifts and not gonna happen anytime soon.  But we should lay the groundwork for them.

    Also, discussing these structural issues can help lower-info voters understand why certain things don’t happen, and might channel their frustrations in more helpful directions.

    (this is optimistic, to say the least, but we should try)

  165. 165.

    dm

    @JML: Trump’s plane is a 757.  Flight range of a 757 is around 4000 nautical miles.  Miami to Moscow is 5500 nautical miles, New York to Moscow is similar. I bet he wouldn’t be welcome if he tried taking the short hop to Havana .

    So… he’d have to use someone else’s plane.  Too bad all the Russian oligarchs probably have their planes interdicted from US and EU airspace.

  166. 166.

    zhena gogolia

    @Omnes Omnibus: I think the rationale is that he persecutes drag queens, so it’s a way of making him a drag queen. Or something like that. I’m not sure. I’m not a fan of it.

    But I do like “Donald Jessica Trump”!

  167. 167.

    Geminid

    @lowtechcyclist: I thinkthe GOP has been steadily shedding voters from the middle. At least, that’s what I’ve seen in Virginia over the last 20 years, Glenn Youngkin’s victory notwithstanding. Virginia has gone from red to purple to blue since 2000. Some of that is due to demographic change, but part of it is because erstwhile Republican voters became alienated by an increasingly radical party. I think this will be demonstrated again this fall.

  171. 171.

    Geminid

    @Rob in CT: I think there is no problem with talking about structural electoral reform, so long as people don’t start believing that we’ll never get anything done so long as these stumbling blocks exist, and start to discount the value and importance of winning what we can under the present system. That’s the heavy lift we have to make now.

  173. 173.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Matt McIrvin:

    But we vote on many more things here. which makes voting much more complicated and sometimes drives people away.

    This also gives the people who do vote much more power, but when most people don’t vote that can be gamed in terrible ways. There’s some kind of balance to strike between ease and power, much as with software design.

    I don’t know if this is a Maryland thing or a Calvert County thing, but here we’ve got a lot of offices that should be appointed but people vote on them instead.  I can’t remember if it’s the Recorder of Deeds or the Register of Wills that we vote for, but whichever, very few voters have any idea how well the officeholder is performing their duties, or what that would even mean.  And it would seem like that’s the definition of an appointive office, but we vote on it.  And that’s hardly the only office like that.

    I personally think the answer is a strong county executive.  Vote for the executive, or let the board of county commissioners choose the executive, and vote for the board, but either way, vote for people to appoint people to those offices that most of us have no idea what they do.

  174. 174.

    Alison Rose

    @Honus: That was the first presidential election I was able to vote in, and let me tell you…it nearly soured me on the whole damn concept. Then in 2004 I was like “Okay, obviously Kerry will win because Bush and Cheney are evil and awful” and then NOPE. If Obama had lost in 2008, I might have started to wonder if I had jinxed the whole system somehow.

  175. 175.

    Anyway

    @Geminid:

     “This won’t do,” some people said. “You can’t have both Congressional leaders from the same state!”

    Whoa, it’s only now occurred to me that the house and Senate leaders are from the same state (and I am a regular reader of a political blog)! Who are these people saying it? I must lead a sheltered life!

  177. 177.

    Jackie

    @JoyceH: I saw that umbrella this morning. I’m sure you can purchase your very own TRUMP umbrella at his online gift shop 😉

  179. 179.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Geminid:

    I thinkthe GOP has been steadily shedding voters from the middle. At least, that’s what I’ve seen in Virginia over the last 20 years, Glenn Youngkin’s victory notwithstanding. Virginia has gone from red to purple to blue since 2000. Some of that is due to demographic change, but part of it is because erstwhile Republican voters became alienated by an increasingly radical party. I think this will be demonstrated again this fall.

    I dunno, I’d say it just has to do with the way the more urban parts of the state are growing, particularly northern Virginia and Hampton Roads.  There are just more people in Virginia who would fit in with our coalition anyway.

    Meanwhile, cities like St. Louis have been shrinking, so states like Missouri are going the other way.

  181. 181.

    lowtechcyclist

    @M31:

    in a different county in MD but we vote on weird little offices too, like “Clerk of the Orphans Court” and stuff like that

    Yep, we vote for that one here in Calvert as well.  I’m guessing it’s a state-level thing.

  182. 182.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @zhena gogolia: Okay, I can see that derivation, but I think that it requires too much explanation and, without it, verges into dangerous waters.  Also not a fan of the Donald Jessica thing.*

    *To be honest, the whole Randy Rainbow phenomenon leaves me cold.  The price I pay for not liking musical theater, I guess.

  183. 183.

    Baud

    @lowtechcyclist: There are too many elected offices throughout the country, but I think the counterargument is that it becomes easier for local political machines to form if many offices are appointed.

    ETA: In other words, I think it derived as an anti-patronage measure.

  184. 184.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Okay, I can see that derivation, but I think that it requires too much explanation and, without it, verges into dangerous waters.

    I thought it just emerged more organically.  You get ‘Rhonda Santis’ just by shifting the accents and pauses very slightly.  Then it’s not much of a change from ‘santis’ to sandtits.’

  185. 185.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Baud: ​
      It’s a holdover from our post-revolutionary enthusiasm for “democracy.” Even military officers and NCOs were elected in many state militias up to the early days of the Civil War.

  188. 188.

    Matt McIrvin

    @lowtechcyclist: We don’t vote for judges here (which I think is more the exception than the rule at the state level, today), but we do vote for sheriff and register of probate.

    And most people don’t even interact with the sheriff’s office unless they go to jail (in most states, the county sheriff heads the police for the unincorporated area outside of cities and towns, but in most of New England, there is no such place).

  189. 189.

    snoey

    @dm: Bamako is 4100 and change from Miami and Wagner will greet him there. If you stripped out all the gold shit it might be do-able.

  190. 190.

    gvg

    @Matt McIrvin: And I prefer forming the coalitions before, so I get to choose when I vote, rather than a surprise after I vote. also our coalitions are longstanding and tend to merge in understanding. Long ago my issues were education, women’s rights and nature. I have learned a lot since then about civil rights that I in principle knew, but just didn’t have all the details I do now because of all the people I have met who have taught me. Decades of conversations matter. Loyalty matters.

    Not that is is done the same in each country anyway. But I would not choose that system if I could.

  191. 191.

    cain

    @Omnes Omnibus: The funny thing was that I was actually referring to Rhonda of the RNC not DeSantis. I couldn’t remember RNC so I filled in the head of the RNC’s name.

    ETA – I do appreciate you calling me out – regardless. I don’t use those names for DeSantis – I got plenty of other nicks though that are not gender based.

  193. 193.

    p.a.

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Honest to god, there are times when I’d accept a diminished capacity defense. Not just from Trump, either. From most of them.

     

    Honest to FSM, what would you pay for Ivanka to publicly try to get him declared incompetent to save him from real prison time, and to see his reactions as well as the reich-wing media’s!  I’d throw some $$$ into the kitty.

  196. 196.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @cain: ​  Okay, then. Sorry for the implicit misogyny accusation. OTOH, it does show another problem with the use of the nickname for DeSantis; it can lead to confusion.

  197. 197.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Soprano2: We got another 2″ last night for a grand total of 9″ over 3 days. And they are talking about more rain thru the wkend.

  200. 200.

    Ken

    @Anyway: Whoa, it’s only now occurred to me that the house and Senate leaders are from the same state! Who are these people saying it?

    People who don’t want to come right out and say Jeffries is a n-CLANG (thank you Mel Brooks)?

  201. 201.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Alison Rose:

    Then in 2004 I was like “Okay, obviously Kerry will win because Bush and Cheney are evil and awful” and then NOPE.

    Defeating Bush in 2004 was always a heavy lift because of 9/11 and war. He’d had something like 80-90% approval immediately after the terrorist attacks, and he’d been bleeding it out ever since, except that there was a big tick up when the Iraq war started and other one when they got Saddam Hussein. It takes years for opinion on a war to go sour, and for Bush junior, he still had just enough juice left by late 2004 to get him to reelection. It was amazing that it was as close as it was.

  202. 202.

    eversor

    @Delk:

    It’s also based on where you live.  A lot of elite conservatives live in major cities where the place is going to be inflated because cost of living is high and there isn’t no Walmart for cheap shit either.  Shit just costs more, oh well.

    It’s very easy for these “elite conservatives” to cherry pick this shit and it’s like “You’re in fucking NOVA, you went to Wegmans, and that’s a Rolex at COSTCO!  The fuck are you complaining about!”

  204. 204.

    piratedan

    @MazeDancer: ummm, that would be Tucson, AZ… they’re a cool place to shop at, on the first Saturday of each month, they open up the place to customers to pick over the remainders and slightly flawed items at a huge discount.

  207. 207.

    Laertes

    Also? What kind of fancypants butcher are they shopping at? I pay like $30 a pound for USDA Prime filet mignon, and I live in an expensive city. $50 is bonkers.

  211. 211.

    Geminid

    @Anyway: I don’t recall anyone here saying it, just a few pundits. You’d have had to be looking hard to find them, but I have followed Jeffries’ career ever since he won election as Caucus Chairman in November, 2019. When this “problem” was raised, it did not get much traction. One reason might have been how Speaker Pelosi held her cards close to her vest., and did not say she would step aside until a week after tge election. I think that was just over a week before the new caucus elections.

    She had other good reasons to do this, but one effect was that it helped keep this from becoming a big ideological fight. Some people on the outside tried to make it one, but Reps. Jeffries, Clark and Aguilar were trusted by the members themselves and ran unopposed, I believe.

  213. 213.

    Fair Economist

    @Another Scott:

    Wyoming has 576,851 people (as of the 2020 Census), so 288,426 people per district. 330M/228,426 = 1144 seats. Phase the number in over a short period of time (say 3-4 House election cycles, maybe). It would seemingly be much, much more difficult for small population states to have an oversized impact in the EC with many more House members (and thus Electors).

    I see this a lot, but the truth is it would make little difference. Of the 3 elections where the popular loser won due to the EC, both the 1888 and 2016 elections would have had the same result even with an infinitely large House. Only 2000 would flip with this kind of reform to reduce the Electoral College bias.

    And, of course, the bias in the *Senate* is a much bigger problem and that would be unaffected by any EC reform.

  214. 214.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @lowtechcyclist: ​

    I was always kind of find of the text-to-speech rendering of Pat Cipollone as Patsy Baloney. But I suppose you could accuse that nickname of the same kind of misogyny, even though I think the humor comes from the “Baloney” part rather than the “Patsy” part.

  215. 215.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @Omnes Omnibus: Omg I thought I was the only one!  Randy Rainbow and Sarah Cooper are two internet comedy crazes that never really hit for me.  Both amusing enough to make me smirk but never actually laugh.

  216. 216.

    zhena gogolia

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: Patsy is an Italian-American male nickname for Pasquale.

    ETA: I know this from the late comic Pat Cooper, born Pasquale Caputo, who would have his mother yelling “Patsy Cabudo!” with the Sicilian soft consonants.

  219. 219.

    zhena gogolia

    @UncleEbeneezer: Sarah Cooper is one-note. Randy is a musical genius. The real genius is J-L Cauvin. Brilliant improv and impressions of Trump, Pence, DeSantis, Musk, McConnell, and (my favorite) Cory Booker.

    ETA: And Andrew Cuomo! “RESPIRATORS”

  220. 220.

    Ken

    @M31:  in a different county in MD but we vote on weird little offices too, like “Clerk of the Orphans Court” and stuff like that

    Is that one of those weird ones where the office changed from its historical role, like the Texas Railroad Commission controlling all oil and gas pipelines in the state? Say, the Clerk of the Orphans Court now handles boat registrations.

  224. 224.

    Fair Economist

    @Geminid:

    France’s Fourth Republic ended because of prolonged gridlock. The stress of its war in Algeria precipitated constitutional change, but the Fourth Republic had already had a lot of dysfunction in that century. The response was a the Fifth Republic, with strong-president system not unlike that of the U.S. That was the only way they could get Charles deGaulle to take the job.

    I’m starting to wonder if the solution is a parliamentary system with Executive Wing becoming civil service all the way up, including the Prime Minister and the parliamentary chair. That way a parliamentary system could function even without a coalition majority – there would be votes on each issue, with shifting alliances in complex arrangements, which is generally a good thing anyway.

  225. 225.

    cain

    @Omnes Omnibus: The other thing is just saying “Rhonda” seems to imply DeSantis – that’s a bit troubling. Also, as Zhena mentioned I even got the name wrong – it’s Ronna McDaniels not Rhonda.

  227. 227.

    Scout211

    In other news, SCOTUS has been issued their directive  from TIFG:

    My political opponent has hit me with a barrage of weak lawsuits, including D.A., A.G., and others, which require massive amounts of my time & money to adjudicate,” Trump complained on Truth Social. “Resources that would have gone into Ads and Rallies, will now have to be spent fighting these Radical Left Thugs in numerous courts throughout the Country. I am leading in all Polls, including against Crooked Joe, but this is not a level playing field. It is Election Interference, & the Supreme Court must intercede.”

  229. 229.

    pieceofpeace

    Open thread….friends and I are visiting New Orleans in late October this year.  Any input re visiting there, such as what to do, where to eat, what not to do, and any excursions around or outside of town.  I’m focused on live music spots, including gospel, and activities, while welcoming anything food.  I haven’t been there since 1990s….Thank you!

  231. 231.

    Geminid

    @lowtechcyclist: More people in our coalition that can fit anyway! That’s not how Kaine, Warner and Northam win. They don’t neccesarily tailor policy to cater to Independents and disaffected moderate-conservatives, but they run their campaigns like those folks are welcome in their big tent, and they reel some of them in.

    That’s how Abigail Spanberger ran in my congeessional district. She talked “bipartisan efforts” and “reaching across the aisle” so much I imagine some Democrats wanted to puke. I was like,”You go, Abigail!” A lot of regular voters want to hear that stuff. You can say they’re low information, wishy-washy etc., but you can’t say these people don’t vote.

    Spanberger’s 2025 campaign for Governor will be instructive in this regard. She won’t start it for a few months and emphasizes that Democrats should put all their energy into this fall’s legislative races. Spanberger wanted to give Democrats a heads up that next year they’ll have to defend an open seat in the 7th CD though, and that’s why the news of her plan to run for Governor in 2025 came out last weekend.

  233. 233.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @zhena gogolia: ​
      Cauvin also leaves me cold. I suspect that, if I were older, Voughn Meader would have done little for me as well. And, as far as Rainbow’s musical genius goes, that’s as may be, but I still don’t find him more than mildly amusing.

  237. 237.

    Tenar Arha

    @Alison Rose: My first vote was in 1984 (hahaha Reagan’s 2nd term)

    Anyway, I can totally sympathize with your feeling of jinxing things somehow. But always remember it wasn’t just incumbent advantages & rally round the flag. GOPers had already demonstrated they were happy to attack war heroes’ records before Kerry. Ex. John McCain in the 2000 primaries in South Carolina, or  then Max Cleland ‘s Senate race in 2002 (?). Democratic campaign professionals really should never have been caught out by the ways Republicans were willing to ignore all their stated principles by attacking veterans like John Kerry because GOPers like Karl Rove had already done it before within both their own party, and to others. 

  238. 238.

    UncleEbeneezer

    @zhena gogolia: Love JL!!  Check out JL’s comedy special Tall Boy and his appearances on The Black Guy Who Tips podcast.  Both on YouTube.  He’s much funnier in long form, than just his impressions.  He’s also super-smart and pragmatic about politics.

  239. 239.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Fair Economist: The small-state bonus in the EC has less of an effect than people think in part because small states are still small, and in part because the Democrats have some too. Delaware, Vermont, Hawaii, lately New Hampshire, functionally DC–all small states that lean Democratic in presidential elections. The difference is just that these states are geographically small instead of being sparsely populated wilderness, so they don’t look as big on a map. But they cancel out much of the Republican advantage from the empty Plains states.

  240. 240.

    Geminid

    @Matt McIrvin: The 2018 midterm elections featured 40 Democrats flipping seats from the East Coast all across the country to the West Cosst. A common denominator for most of these districts was that they were largely suburban (I believe that Elissa Slotkin and and another Democrat flipped suburban districts that year in Michigan). Those are the battlegrounds Democrats are winning now. I have not followed Michigan politics closely, but I suspect that winning formerly Republican suburbs was part of how they they won statewide.

  248. 248.

    Ken

    @Geminid: I have not followed Michigan politics closely, but I suspect that winning formerly Republican suburbs was part of how they they won statewide.

    Who would have thought that suburban moms cared about their own reproductive rights, and about people protesting outside their kids’ schools and banning books?

    I’m hoping that the Florida Republicans are going to find out that the moms are also concerned about alimony and their kids’ ability to take AP classes.

  250. 250.

    Ken

    @Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: Justice Roberts sez “Have a nice trial”

    Roberts didn’t even show up for Trump’s last trial, though Article I Section 3’s “When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside” seems pretty clear. Personally I’d call that not being on “good Behaviour” (Article III section 1).

  251. 251.

    Geminid

    @Matt McIrvin: You can add Rhode Island to that Democratic small state list. These are still overbalanced by the Republican small state advantage, but as you say that’s not as extreme as people sometimes believe.

    I think that at some point before Reapportionment was final there were fears that Rhode Island would lose one of its two Congressional Districts, but evidently they squeaked by. They’ve got a special election coming up, to replace David Cicciline. I think the primary isn’t very far off. There’s a big field of hopefuls.

  253. 253.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Different strokes of course. I do find Randy Rainbow’s production pretty impressive if not a bit repetitive. Has some good pipes for sure

  254. 254.

    Jackie

    A bit of color commentary I didn’t see in all the coverage yesterday:

    “Trump’s campaign team was miffed by a lack of traffic support from local police after he arrived in Washington, forcing the motorcade to weave through rush-hour traffic. Other motorists attempted to change lanes between the motorcade, showing less deference than typical for an average funeral procession. The welcome from onlookers at the courthouse was occasionally hostile, with several middle fingers from bikers and spectators along the highway from the airport. There was a Biden flag on a corner near the courthouse.”
    Good article from the WaPo. Gift link https://wapo.st/44ZXrn6

  255. 255.

    Tony G

    Wow.  I’m pleasantly surprised to see Michael Steele’s fiery remarks.  I’ m old enough to remember when Steele was considered to be a right-wing figure when he was the RNC head from 2009 to 2011.  As bad as the Republican Party was back then, it’s much worse now.

  256. 256.

    Captain C

    @Betty Cracker: This sounds like it could be a cause to switch judges, if necessary:  “Judge doesn’t understand the law, here’s a huge example.  New judge please.”

    Republicans really don’t care about the quality of their hires at all, it seems, as long as they spout the right ideology and make the rulings that their masters want.

  259. 259.

    Geminid

    @Omnes Omnibus: I like your terse answers. It’s like there’s an Omnes Eightball in Madison, Wisconsin.

    I am hoping to market an Occam’s Eightball. It would have answers like “That’s too complex,” “Try again”  and “You’re overthrinking this.”

  260. 260.

    Jay C

    @Jackie:

    “Miffed”??

    Screw them: this was an arraignment in Federal Court, not a MAGA rally. I wonder what their defendant/candidate thought of the lukewarm reception: hopefully, it made him miserable….

  262. 262.

    AM in NC

    @p.a.: Yep. Ornstein and Thomas Mann were on mainstream news shows ALL THE TIME before they released their statistical analyses about how the GOP went round the bend compared to the Dems.

    Then they were dumped because they gave lie to the “both sides” garbage. It was astounding how quickly they went from “favorite centrist commenters” to “personas non gratas”

  263. 263.

    Juju

    @Omnes Omnibus: Because the writer is a 10 year old boy and he thinks girls have cooties. Also, they should stop insulting Rhonda. She’s a very nice person.

  265. 265.

    Ken

    @Jay C: Screw them: this was an arraignment in Federal Court, not a MAGA rally.

    Though given that it’s his campaign team that’s “miffed”, and the fundraising he’s doing off of the trials, it’s clear they wanted it to be a campaign event.

    Also, the “little fish” January 6 convictions seem to have scared off a lot of supporters — or tipped them into paranoid fears that every event is a trap, which works out the same way. So I don’t expect much in the way of spontaneous demonstrations, or even “spontaneous” demonstrations.

  266. 266.

    Another Scott

    @lowtechcyclist:

    With a minimum of 2 Congresspersons per state, that gets your 1144 CDs. ISTM that it should work roughly as well with a minimum of 1 per state and 572 CDs. I’d have to be shown why it doesn’t.

    I’m not sure I understand the criticism. Do you think 1144 is too many?

    My premises are:

    1) Congressional districts have too many people now. It’s nearly impossible for one representative to fairly consider the interests of 761,000 people (the current number).

    2) It makes no sense to me that there are fewer representatives than senators in any state. There should be at least equal numbers in a modern state (with many – often competing – interests). Why? See #1.

    3) If we’re going to have an Electoral College, then it should reflect the will of the voters (since we’ve seen that the EC isn’t a bunch of politically disinterested greybeards who only care about what’s best for the ideals of the country and who protect us from extremes). The senate has outsized influence in the EC because there are too few representatives in the large-population states.

    Given all that, making the number of districts based on half the population in the lowest-population state makes sense to me. It’s easy to understand, easy to explain (easier than the cube-root method), and achieves our (or at least my) policy goals.

    Making districts equal to the population of the smallest state still, as you say, only gives that state only one representative. I think that’s a bad thing.

    I’d like a pony too, but we don’t get what we want (and need) without agitating for it.

    My $0.02.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  267. 267.

    Soprano2

    @Quiltingfool: I’m glad you’re OK. I was thinking about you and Ozark when I watched the weather Wednesday night. I saw that one area got 13″ of rain in 3 days! That’s crazy amounts of water.

  269. 269.

    eversor

    @Laertes:

    There is prime, which is what people think is good beef, then there is good beef.  Then you get up into breeds of cattle, organic, grass fed, or dry aged and that price can double with a quickness.  This isn’t even touching Wagyu beef, let alone true Japanese Kobe at which point take that 50 per pound, and then multiply it by x5.

    It’s not uncommon for regional stores to price/choose what they carry by who lives there.  IE the COSTCO here sells Rolex, go a bit further out and it’s Tag’s, further out and it’s Seiko.  And not the good 10,000+ a watch Seiko but the 200 buck quartz pieces of shit.  So you can sticker shock yourself by walking into the wrong COSTCO with a quickness.  But it’s not priced wrong, your ass just doesn’t make enough for that COSTCO.

  271. 271.

    wjca

    @JML:  Why, oh why, wasn’t TFG at least required to surrender his passport?  (Not that I would be sorry to see him gone; Putin’s got no use for him except as someone who might rescue his Ukraine fiasco.)  But still, it seems like equal treatment would mean at least that.

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