You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy or a more rancorous cabal of irritable, bleached assholes. https://t.co/QFGFca0Yec
— Ragnarok Lobster (@eclecticbrotha) October 25, 2023
Current GOP move is to rush Johnson into the Speaker's office before anyone can listen to all the insane shit he's said over the years. https://t.co/RBNGVchtnC
— zeddy (@Zeddary) October 25, 2023
A risk to picking an outsider because you're too exhausted to keep fighting over normal candidates- you may elevate someone who hasn't been vetted the way those who rise in the ranks normally are. This is very bad and who knows what else is out there? Republicans certainly don't. https://t.co/kFDzqMApiM
— Aaron Fritschner (@Fritschner) October 25, 2023
Who knows what else is out there? Quite a lot, it turns out!
He’s going from low profile in a safe district to starting quarterback in the NFL. The election denial and the support for abortion bans will now be front and center and Rs should have to answer for them. https://t.co/rniCIBwuQ5
— Kate Bedingfield (@KBeds) October 25, 2023
During a House Judiciary Committee hearing, Rep. Mike Johnson attacks Roe v. Wade, insisting that if only women were compelled to bring more "able-bodied workers" into the world, Republicans wouldn’t need to slash Social Security and Medicare. pic.twitter.com/RGzg09TYEW
— House Judiciary Dems (@HouseJudiciary) October 25, 2023
This case of amnesia came moments after Johnson claimed Biden is in cognitive decline https://t.co/LC1uhmgOnS
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 27, 2023
One type of reporter is saying how folksy he is, and others finding the path of destruction he left on the world. https://t.co/jfx5H46LGm
— Sviatoslav Richter Scale (@ilpomodoro2) October 25, 2023
So, no more shellfish? https://t.co/JWbkOK6IQ3
— Ragnarok Lobster (@eclecticbrotha) October 27, 2023
Well, you have to give Republicans credit.
I mean, it was damned hard finding someone worse than Kevin McCarthy, Jim Jordan, and Steve Scalise combined, but they did it.
— Stonekettle (@Stonekettle) October 25, 2023
ON NEW HOUSE SPEAKER MAGA MIKE JOHNSON pic.twitter.com/sFgF5CPv5l
— Trae Crowder (@traecrowder) October 26, 2023
(N.B: Snark warning):
Jordan didn’t have legislative accomplishments. But he built a bloc of steadfast support among House Repubs. He used committee hearings to boost his profile. He got on TV a lot. He got a high-profile committee chair. Last three years his leadership PAC raised $25m. /2
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) October 25, 2023
If he’s effective Johnson’s effect on the country could be catastrophic. But it’s at least as possible that he’s going to be in so far over his head that he’s gone in a month. And if he hangs on he’ll almost certainly cost the Repubs the House /4
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) October 26, 2023
Oh I agree Johnson may be an albatross for them in 2024. I'm just afraid of the damage he can do in the meantime https://t.co/3dv1r7tTbo
— Fleet (now on BlueSky) (@fleetadmiralj) October 25, 2023
OzarkHillbilly
Being Republican is ‘inherently unnatural,’ a ‘dangerous lifestyle,’ and is actively seeking to destroy America.
Lapassionara
No more shell fish, and no more wearing fabrics with two types of fibers.
Ken
The (ha-ha) bright side is that the damage won’t be from him passing the sort of abominable laws he wants, since they won’t pass the Senate and definitely won’t pass Biden. It will all be negative damage, or damage by omission. There will be things that won’t happen, possibly including aid to Israel, aid to Ukraine, the spending bills….
Suzanne
I have to say, I really thought the institutional GOP would have found a way to send Trump/MAGA to a farm upstate by now. I’m genuinely surprised.
MagdaInBlack
Mike Johnson: the bland and smiling face of evil.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I look at that Acy tweet and think sometimes it’s embarrassing to be a white person.
OzarkHillbilly
Kids these days:
US student, 14, wins award for developing soap to treat skin cancer
“HEY YOU! GET OFF OF MY LAWN!!!”
On the more serious side, as one who sees skin cancer in his future, I applaud this development.
OzarkHillbilly
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I have that thought most every day.
Scout211
Mike Johnson got his first SNL parody last night.
SNL Cold Open
Everyone watching the episode last night now knows about Mike Johnson’s “adult Black son” named Mike with an unknown last name only 11 years younger than Mike Johnson. LOL
The cold open starts with a “President Biden is old” piece. Ugh. But then the Mike Johnson piece is good and then it ends with a cameo appearance from one of SNL’s favorite guests. Hint: no cowbells this time.
If you can get through the first part, the Mike Johnson part is good.
Geminid
Mr. Lobster has a way with words. He has a day job (or night job, depending on his shift) as a civil service employee at a Chicago police station. He’s also a fairly knowledgable Green Bay Packer fan.
Geminid
@Suzanne: I also thought Trump’s influence would fade. I used to liken his popularity to a toxic, unstable isotope with a half life of 20 to 30 months. Now I see it as more like a prion disease.
jimmiraybob
Some intrepid reporter should ask Johnson the age of the Earth and whether evolution or Young Earth Creationism should be taught in our public schools. Let his deeply held beliefs be known.
On a side note, his political-history mentor is David Barton (Wallbuilders) who is a prolific liar behind the Christian nation myth. He started as a Texas Republican operative and now produces fake history to advance the cause.
A good antidote to the Christian nation myth is Andrew Seidel’s “The Founding Myth: Why Christian Nationalism is Un-American.” Of course, actually reading the Constitution is not a bad source either.
Yarrow
@Suzanne: They’ve lost control of the monster they created. They apparently don’t know what to do about that.
Bex
Since “Mike Johnson” is a pretty generic name, could we also refer to him as Mikhail Ivanov?
catclub
@Lapassionara: also no cheeseburgers
New Deal democrat
I agree with this 100%. He is a true zealot, and the more “effective” he is, the more a majority’s is going to hate the GOP’s guts.
But just for starters, I would say the chances of a government shutdown next month have increased to close to 100%. Johnson is going to try to impose his morality via holding the budget hostage.
Thor Heyerdahl
@Bex: I’m sure there will be people who decide to change his last name to “Hunt”.
Gvg
@OzarkHillbilly: I don’t. Any more than it’s bad to be black or Jewish or bragging about ancestors (whining about traitor statues being melted means you are oppressed, not) makes you better than other people.
Go back far enough and we are all related. Go back just a few generations and it’s highly likely we all have murderers in our ancestry. Go back many generations and it is certain. It’s also certain we have good and great people in all of our family trees. Forget that. Founders got it right to ban nobility at least. What matters is what you do. I am white. I try to vote ethically, act ethically etc. Do not feel at all shamed or related by these other similar looking lunatics. Don’t even understand them. Try to manipulate them into less harm to others. Don’t waste life on shame.
catclub
I just watched a movie made recently in Australia, and maybe it was edgy by having the pale white people bake themselves with no hats.
No sunscreen.
I thought most Australians have adopted a good many sun safety practices.
BellyCat
Quoted for truth.
Chief Oshkosh
@Lapassionara: And execution of adulterers.
evodevo
@Lapassionara: no more cotton/polyester blends!! What will the garment industry do??
Sasha
His elevation was unanimous: Every single GOP House member voted for him. Thus, every single GOP House member has taken ownership for the megaomnishambles to come.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊😊😊
Suzanne
@OzarkHillbilly: Might I mention that retinol can be helpful in heading off some skin cancers? As someone with a family history of skin cancer, and who got more sun than they should…. I am a big fan of my dermatologist! I get a prescription for much less than the cost of OTC products.
rikyrah
Something ain’t right with Johnson and his ‘adopted’ son.
The math ain’t mathing 😡😡😡
Sasha
That come 2022, the fix will be sufficiently in that the GOP won’t have to worry about ever losing.
Anonymous at Work
The “What were they thinking?” line gives them far too much credit. Gym Jordan floated a name and everyone was too scared of more bad headlines to do anything but surrender.
Ramalama
@jimmiraybob:
and then follow up with a ‘so then you avoid anything invented or discovered from the scientific community such as….prescription medications, electronic devices like an ipad, and Grand Auto Theft video games?’
Suzanne
@Geminid: I thought the strong urge to win would reassert itself for them. I keep noting, because I think it’s critically important, that the non-MAGA GOP is still incredibly competitive. The dynamic still seems to be that lots of non-MAGA Republicans are lying in wait.
They just haven’t found a way to have a winning coalition without those psychos.
Thor Heyerdahl
And the Republicans are going to be seething mad when the same Joe Biden that they tag as being senile, politically rolls Mike Johnson in a DC parking lot.
“Mike, your malarkey has no quarter while I’m president. Talk to your ‘esteemed’ colleague Kevin if you have any other questions”
dmsilev
@Suzanne:
A lot of people thought that. Hoped, really. But the problem is, as we’re all finding out, that the institutionalists don’t actually control the voting base. Or, in today’s world, the fund-raising and media infrastructure. So, what levers do they have to pull to send Trump to the cornfield?
Anne Laurie
But that 14-year-old is a grown man on his own now, and as a white person I’m gonna let *him* decide how much of his biography he wants to share with a curious public.
As I hope this post demonstrates, there’s plenty of skeletons in MJ’s closets, apart from that no-longer-kid…
Nelle
@Gvg: Back in 1956, when I was in Kindergarten, we were sent home to get information about where our parents and grandparents were from (a spectacularly bad idea since the school was one block from an orphanage and all the kids there attended our school). Anyway, my dad told me to tell them that I was a direct descendent of Adam and Eve. So I marched into class and bragged about it. The other kids were jealous.
(Because my dad was born in then called Russia, actually Ukraine, and it was the height of the Cold War, I did take some flack for that.)
MagdaInBlack
It is so weird to me that there is so little Christ in these “christians.” It is as if they never ventured in to the new testament where God had a son and developed a wee bit of empathy.
OzarkHillbilly
Thanx. I had not heard that. I’ll talk to my NP. We don’t have a family history of it but I spent a lifetime working and playing in the out of doors and only once used sunscreen
(long story short, I suffered severe eczema as a kid and had to undergo several methods of treatment that bordered on torture for years and I learned to hate the feel of greasy shit on my skin)
Anonymous at Work
@Thor Heyerdahl: Senate will pass it’s budget and largely ignore House, I imagine. Biggest area for getting a win in Senate is coal cuz Grandpa Blacklung owns coal interests. Guns would have been another but I imagine there’s no more appetite to try.
But I imagine that Little Mickey Johnson will try to walk into the negotiations with a budget that got 217 votes and has no chance in the Senate, and will get ignored, then rolled, then VONC’d.
OzarkHillbilly
@dmsilev: Hoocoodanode that feeding their base blood red meat everyday would give them a taste for it?
Suzanne
@dmsilev:
You’re right. I thought, like, losing would be a lever.
I’m essentially pragmatic. I am probably more sympathetic to much of the left wing than some commenters here, but I like winning. I understand that winning entails half-loaves and imperfect allies and all that. I got this way, in large part, by living in a place where we lost a lot, for a long time. Losing sucks.
Mallard Filmore
@Lapassionara:
I don’t have to give up bacon, do I?
RAM
To me, this Johnson guy seems to embody a classic (and quite numerous) right-wing personality type, the self-hating closeted gay. It will be interesting going forward to see what is actually dug up about him besides all his known vicious crackpottery.
OzarkHillbilly
@Mallard Filmore: Give me bacon or give me death!
prostratedragon
Apply as needed: “Midnight, the Stars, and You”.
gene108
What a smarmy lying motherfucker.
Reminds of Mike Pence, but probably not as dumb.
Dangerman
Yup. He’s going to be a disaster. They might as well have selected George Santos.
This seems like nothing but good news to me; let them fly their Freak Flags high and let it all hang out (for the Love of Decency, Donald, that is NOT what I meant; put that thing away).
Excluding the fact that Donald can’t possibly lose in 2024 (he’s said so and I’m sure he will take losing as well as he did last time), the Right is so fucked. We just need to survive a couple years and hope it’s not a smoking hell hole before they are done.
Ladyraxterinok
I believe digby recently posted that Johnson was unopposed in all the primaries he ran in and had no democratic opposition in his race(s) for the House
She also posted a long list of his “biblical worldview” beliefs
Either she or joemygod posted that Johnson was/is the lawyer for Answers in Genesis Ark project in KY. And that he believes that dinosaurs co-existed with humans
In case you wondered, he is also a Southern Bapthist and has preached in several churches
gene108
@Lapassionara:
I want them to go full Leviticus and start sacrificing animals into a sacred fire.
Suzanne
@MagdaInBlack: As someone who approaches all religion as aesthetic/metaphorical and not as any source of scientific truth…. it’s so great picking and choosing what I want to do and what I do not. LOL.
dmsilev
@Suzanne: Well, Donald Trump doesn’t think he lost. Or has convinced himself that he didn’t lose, anyway. That’s a big part of the problem. If they can’t or won’t acknowledge losing an election, that feedback mechanism is broken.
Anyway, getting set this morning for a nice long walk. LA is closing the 110 Freeway from Pasadena down almost as far as Chinatown, and making it available to walkers and bikers. About 7 or 8 miles going through the arroyo towards the city. Nice weather for it as well, not too warm. I’ll do the whole thing, then probably continue on to Chinatown on surface streets, get some lunch, and then head home.
MagdaInBlack
@Suzanne: Smorgasbord Christianity. I am a heathen myself 😉
OlFroth
I have a feeling that a man who exhibits so much hatred towards gays also taps his foot in airport restrooms.
jimmiraybob
@gene108:
What the hell …. I mean h e double hockey sticks, I propose that they demand that all 613 Biblical commandments be posted on all the walls.
Ladyraxterinok
@Suzanne:
In the early 70s, when my son was quite young (and we were living In IA), he asked us “Do you ever win?)
Another time when we were talking politics during a drive, he asked quietly from the back seat “Can we talk about trees now?
Dorothy A. Winsor
@dmsilev: That sounds like a great walk. Have a good day.
Suzanne
@dmsilev:
Agreed.
And they don’t seem to be catching on, even in other elections when TFG isn’t on the ballot, either.
But again, I would have thought that the GOP who are able to count would have done some behind-closed-doors slapping-upside-the-head. Their problem is that, without MAGA turds, they cannot win anything. Quite a pickle they’ve gotten themselves into.
Geminid
@Suzanne: Republicans just haven’t lost enough. They got hit by a wave election in 2018, but the last two cycles have been closer. I think Democrats will have to thrash them for a couple more cycles at least before the Chamber of Commerce types can wrest the steering wheel from the radicals.
schrodingers_cat
@gene108: Isn’t that the Rigveda?
dmsilev
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Thanks! LA closing a freeway just for walkers, rather than for something important like a film shoot, doesn’t happen very often. Last time they did this was twenty years ago…
Cameron
I hope next year will be better. Violent conflicts around the world,a squirrelly Christian fascist in a position to derail American government…I’m not going to miss 2023 at all.
Suzanne
@dmsilev: That sounds so fun. I was gonna have a long run today, but the rain seems to have other ideas. Enjoy!
schrodingers_cat
Trump is the Republican party boiled down to its essential essence. They cannot quit him because they are him.
kalakal
Bland and smiling, he’s the embodiment of Arendt’s ‘banality of evil’ de nos jours
Kay
@Ladyraxterinok:
This has become the kind of go-to explanation for the radicalism on the Right- a lack of competition- but Democratic congressional leaders are often from safely blue districts or states yet we don’t see it on the D side. Jeffries won his last race 70/30. Nancy Pelosi has a very safe blue district. Gerrymandering/no real competition is bad but it has to be only a partial explanation or we would see it on the D side.
Dorothy A. Winsor
At the library yesterday, I saw one of my books had been checked out. Yay! I don’t want the library to de-acquire them, so they need to circulate. Besides, it made me happy.
schrodingers_cat
OT Has anyone created their own font?
Geminid
There is a new article in Politico about Rep. Andy Kim and his bid for the Senate seat held by the Senator Menendez. It’s titled, “Andy Kim is making a bet on breaking New Jersey politics.” The reporter discusses New Jersey’s system whereby county party leaders can place a slate of their endorsed candidates at the top of the ballot. Rep. Kim is polling very well in head to head matchups with the gilty Senator, but party leaders have not warmed to him. Instead there is talk about a run by Tammy Murphy, Governor Phil Murphy’s wife.
Suzanne
@schrodingers_cat: Yes, many times.
gene108
@Suzanne:
They aren’t losing.
They retook the House in four years, after many House Republicans supported a coup attempt.
They would’ve retaken it in 2020, but Dems won big in 2018 and had a cushion.
The only thing Republicans can do to lose support is work with Democrats to pass actual legislation that addresses real problems.*
A “live girl, dead boy” situation won’t hurt their support one bit. Open corruption doesn’t bother their voters. They’re in a much stronger place than they should be.
*Kevin McCarthy being ousted as Speaker for passing a relatively clean 45 day CR.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Geminid: Party insiders selecting a powerful person’s partner is the kind of thing that leaves a sour taste in people’s mouths. I don’t know anything about Tammy Murphy. Maybe she’s great. But this sounds like old machine politics
schrodingers_cat
@Suzanne: What software did use? If you don’t mind sharing. Thanks.
MomSense
Just think Speaker Johnson will get the superdeeduper security briefings. That seems fine.
Suzanne
@schrodingers_cat: FontLab and Fontographer,
Anonymous at Work
@jimmiraybob: You are both correct and misapprehending the hypocrisy. The hypocrisy is not viewed poorly but as a power-play: I am so holy that the rules only apply to others.
gene108
@Geminid:
Can’t picture the more populous and powerful North Jersey areas rallying behind someone from South Jersey.*
I hope NJ Democrats don’t stab themselves in the dick over this, because 2021 was a very bad year for NJ state legislature races. The right kind of Republican can win a statewide race.
*Edit: Without getting something in return.
MagdaInBlack
@Dorothy A. Winsor: For me, it brings to mind the civil rights era photos of white folk. Similar vibe.
Suzanne
@gene108: They’ve lost a lot of elections they otherwise would have won. The last Senate cycle wasn’t good for them, the post-Dobbs abortion bills are not going their way. But they haven’t lost convincingly enough, I guess.
schrodingers_cat
@Suzanne: Thanks. I have access to Adobe Illustrator but I have never used it.
I tried Microsoft’s Font Maker and was not too happy with the result.
Do you use a tablet? If so which one.
BruceFromOhio
@Ken: Yup. All going according to plan. I cringe at every comment, post, essay, news story that puts this Speaker business and the larger GQP in the context of a functional legislature.
Something along the lines of “Finally! We get to say all the quiet parts out loud.”
Hang on to your shit, Dorothy, because Kansas is going bye-bye.
Nukular Biskits
@OzarkHillbilly:
Yup. Had yet another visit with the dermatologist last week to remove a couple of things. They weren’t cancerous but a few I’ve had removed in the past were.
Getting older after a lifetime of being outdoors whenever I could (and can) is catching up to me. Every little spot is now viewed with suspicion.
Suzanne
@schrodingers_cat: Illustrator isn’t good for controlling all the, like, math details of making a font. It’s good for individual letterforms and logo-making. I’ve never done it on a tablet.
Geminid
@Dorothy A. Winsor: It is old machine politics. I think most New Jerseyans know what’s up and that they can skip past the preferred candidates, so it is still a democratic election. The party bosses and maybe also rank and file Democrats might defend their system to outsiders like you and me. They could use the words someone suggested a few years when there was a contest to pick a new state motto:
BellyCat
Brilliant!
schrodingers_cat
@Suzanne:Thanks. I just want to create a handwriting font of my handwriting. That’s the pilot project. I tried to make a font with my Wacom tablet and MS font maker. But my handwriting looks too scribbly with a digital stylus.
The goal is to create a font of my dad’s handwriting. I love his penmanship.
gene108
@jimmiraybob:
See below 👇
If conservative Christians invoke one part of Leviticus to justify “god hates gays”, than shouldn’t they abide by all of Leviticus starting from the very beginning of the Book?
gene108
@schrodingers_cat:
Yes.
Animal sacrifices were practiced by different groups during the Bronze Age, including Israelites and Vedic era Hindus.
Roger Moore
The Republicans’ problem is any plausible candidate was going to be a dumpster fire. Mike Johnson might burn a little faster and hotter than some of the other choices, but that’s a quantitative difference, not a qualitative one. That’s the problem with being the dumpster fire party.
schrodingers_cat
@Suzanne: They have lost narrowly. They need to lose big and in successive elections. Only then will they change.
Jim Appleton
Open thread, so …
Down to 26F last night here in north central Oregon, brought my hummingbird feeders in for the night, now back out at dawn and there’s ten of the little fuckers fighting.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: We see all this thru blue tinged glasses while Republicans see it all thru blood red tinged glasses. Hence the socialist boogeyman, the antifa terrorists, the “stealing” of elections, etc etc.
BellyCat
Nominated!
Subsole
@gene108:
Executing false prophets would be nice, too. Somebow, I foresee them being…hesitant…to adopt that measure.
For some reason.
<cough>
BruceFromOhio
@Lapassionara: We were just discussing how hard it is to get everyone scheduled at the same time for a stoning, very busy these days.
schrodingers_cat
@gene108: Agreed. Although they didn’t call themselves Hindu. That was a geographic descriptor coined much later.
Leveticus has a lot in common with Manusmriti. Especially in its absolute contempt for women.
OzarkHillbilly
@Suzanne: The “red wave” that was barely a trickle.
narya
Today’s food recommendation: get some apple cider, and boil it down. You can buy it from King Arthur, but last year I tried making my own, and I prefer that. It’s a really nice thing to add to marinades, because it adds both sweet and a little tart to the mix (I especially like it with miso, ginger, and garlic, for salmon). And it really is just a matter of boiling cider, so it’s a perfect thing to do when you’re going to be in the kitchen all day. I still have a little left from last year–it lasts forever, it seems, if it doesn’t get contaminated–but I wanted to replenish while cider is available.
Another Scott
@Mallard Filmore: Make sure you follow the rules about selling your daughters into slavery. Remember, they’re different from selling your sons.
HTH!!
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
SiubhanDuinne
@Geminid:
Deliberate pun or inspired typo?
Frankensteinbeck
@schrodingers_cat:
History suggests that the more and bigger they lose, the crazier they get.
Percysowner
Our new House Speaker should become a stand up comedian ‘We’re the rule of law team’: Speaker Johnson hints at ‘official’ Biden impeachment They won’t pass a budget, but will be keeping a bogus impeachment going. Le Sigh.
lowtechcyclist
@dmsilev:
Dem states can put some feedback in there by informing Trump that, since by his own admission he’s been elected twice to the office of the Presidency, he’s not eligible to be elected a third time per the 22nd Amendment. So until he corrects the record and states under oath that he was not re-elected in 2020, his name will not appear as a candidate for President on a ballot in their state.
I really think some states should try this, just for the hilarity value. TFG would probably blow a gasket.
Roger Moore
@MagdaInBlack:
I’m not at all surprised. You find people like them in most religions. For all they proudly proclaim how true they are to the Bible, they don’t really care about reading and understanding it holistically. They have a bunch of cultural practices- bigotry, celebration of wealth, social hierarchy, etc.- that are their real beliefs, and the Bible exists to them as a source of quoted snippets to justify those beliefs. If they came from a country with a different dominant religion, they’d quote mine a different set of holy texts instead.
SiubhanDuinne
@gene108:
Would ketchup be an acceptable substitute?
lowtechcyclist
@Frankensteinbeck:
And the less of a threat to the Republic their craziness will constitute.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
Well, there were just so many…
Geminid
Frankensteinbeck: Not sure which history you are citing here.
Frankensteinbeck
@lowtechcyclist:
Absolutely true. They try to destroy everything on their way to irrelevancy. If they can’t have it, no one can. Once they don’t have the power to accomplish that, who cares?
Glory b
@Suzanne: Remeber their political “autopsy?” Their pollsters told them that they needed to promote a platform that addressed the concerns of black people and other minorities. This is why (needing a black face) they elected Michael Steele, who proved remarkably effective. Then, Trump, who was about #13 in the primary, called Mexicans drug dealers and rapists. He immediately shot to #1 and stayed there. Lots of white people who never voted before came out & registered Republican so they could vote FOR HIM.
They ignored the hard work the autopsy would have required because they found voters chomping at the bit to vote for them. This is why he’s the ultimate kingmaker for every other race.
Depressingly, recent polling has shown that even the majority of young white voters lean Republican. A whole new generation of them.
oldgold
Mike Johnson on Fox this morning:
On the impeachment of Biden:
Johnson said he was “encouraging” the work of Chairmans James Comer (R-KY) and Jim Jordan (R-OH) “I think we have a constitutional responsibility to follow this truth where it leads,” he continued. “We’re the rule of law team. We don’t use this for political partisan games like the Democrats have done and did against Donald Trump twice. We are going to follow the law and follow the Constitution.
Frankensteinbeck
@Geminid:
California, the state where in recent memory Republicans went from ‘in charge’ to ‘tiny minority’. Losing did not make them reverse course. It made them steadily more extreme and insane, and they used every bit of power they could to break everything they could until they were utterly irrelevant.
EDIT – So yeah, the theory has been tested. No, losing big does not make the GOP wake up. Racists flip their shit more and more when they’re in the minority.
NotMax
@Percysowner
Brings this to mind. Harrumph.
;)
Another Scott
@lowtechcyclist: I don’t think so.
CNN – August 2020:
Nobody on Earth has been treated as unfairly as him. It’s just so saaaad. :-(
Cheers,
Scott.
lowtechcyclist
@Kay:
I think the missing piece is that Dems have a lot of things they’d like to accomplish that involve passing legislation in Congress, while the Rethugs just want to maintain the feelings of outrage and resentment among their voters, and get on TV.
Brachiator
@OzarkHillbilly:
Yep. That’s pretty much it.
evodevo
@MagdaInBlack: No…they skip right over Him – they love Paul and the fear-mongering god of the Old Testament. I’m always quoting the real Jesus to the fundies at work…they don’t like Him much…too librul and squishy…or, in the case of divorce, too rigid (all of them are divorced at least once lol) . See: praying in public to show off: Matt. 6: 5-6; divorce: Matt: 5: 31-32; beatitudes; hanging out with the “wrong” people: Matt.9: 10-14
Geminid
@Frankensteinbeck: California is not neccesarily a template that all American politics will conform to. Few states approach California Democrats’ 50% share of registered voters. For another thing, there are no longer party primaries there, which differs from at least 45 other states. And we have yet to see how California politics shape up once Trump is off the board.
Brachiator
@lowtechcyclist:
The Republicans mainly want to pass tax cuts and legislation friendly to business. They don’t believe in anything that Democrats want.
If they win the presidency and Congress in 2024, the GOP will repeal and dismantle everything the Democrats passed since the New Deal.
Frankensteinbeck
@Geminid:
Trump has nothing to do with California. This started forty years ago. The process was going pre-Obama. Republicans pissed off minorities and slipped further and further into the minority, and went more and more crazy and destructive. The rest of the nation caught up with California Republicans.
New Deal democrat
@Glory b:
Not according to the research I’ve seen.
https://circle.tufts.edu/latest-research/youth-are-not-monolith-how-different-young-people-voted-2022
Young white women stringly favor Democrats, and the big divide seems to be urban and suburban vs. rural:
@Glory b:
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@gene108:
They are losing. Given the economic turmoil of the past 2 years and history, they should’ve swept both chambers of Congress last year, but they didn’t. They just barely won the House by the thinnest of margins and lost races they should’ve won by running radicals. They’ve been losing several special elections this year as well
Suzanne
@Glory b:
But he’s not. The candidates Trump endorses haven’t been more competitive. Remember Herschel Walker, or Dr. Oz, or Kari Lake? All races that were eminently winnable for Republicans had the GOP not shit the bed.
The GOP ignored the autopsy because rebuilding a coalition that is less racist would be a generational project (with significant odds of failure) and they wanted that quick fix of winning right now.
Trump and his psychodrama turns a small-but-critical number of people away from the GOP (probably to sitting out elections altogether) and it horrifies Dems and left-leaners into turning out, even if they’re holding their noses to do it.
The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
@schrodingers_cat: I have, for a couple of projects. I haven’t done anything commercial with them beyond the design and that particular application, however, so I don’t know if that would be useful for you.
New Deal democrat
@SiubhanDuinne: And how about stoning rebellious teenagers to death:
Suzanne
@New Deal democrat: A bunch of my neighbors would love to stone rebellious teenagers to death. Stop giving them ideas.
Cameron
@SiubhanDuinne: Only if taken from a Holy Hamberder.
Geminid
@Frankensteinbeck: My observation is that Trump turbocharged radical influence among Republican base voters in the Eastern, Midwestern, and Southern states. If he wasn’t a factor in California, that suggests to me that California politics are more singular and less typical.
Roger Moore
@schrodingers_cat:
If you want to create handwriting font, that’s one thing. If you want to try creating something that looks more like real handwriting, with each letter looking slightly different from other copies of the same letter, you might want to take a look at Handwriting Synthesis with Recurrent Neural Networks.
lowtechcyclist
@Brachiator:
I’m not sure House Republicans care much about even those traditional GOP goals. (The Senate’s different because most Senate Republicans have been in Congress since before the Tea Party, and often a lot longer than that.)
If that happens, I doubt that Congress will be a key player. Trump will appoint people who actually know enough to do the dismantling, and the Bogus Scotus won’t stand in the way.
Another Scott
A.R. Moxon – An Appropriate Anger is ARM’s latest essay on Substack.
Pretty good, as always. Some unfortunate typos are distracting, but it’s a good essay.
Cheers,
Scott.
John S.
@Jim Appleton:
Same here in western Washington. Our regular bird feeders have become thunderdome the past couple days, with the stellar jays deciding to act as bouncers to keep out all the chickadees and juncos.
Frankensteinbeck
@Geminid:
They were already there. They got there without the influence of Trump to confuse the issue of cause and effect. In California it got laid out plain: When the party of racism loses repeatedly, loses more and more, they don’t turn around and get more reasonable. They go more nuts. If you’re going to claim that the GOP will snap out of it if they lose big a few times, the one clear test we have had of it says the opposite is true.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
schrodingers_cat
@The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion: It is for a personal project.
Dangerman
CA has basically told the Republicans to go the fuck away. Mostly. There’s a few Red places left, but, on balance, that goose has been well cooked. Charred.
There is a minor Senate Candidate that just announced a week ago or so; I thought she was good at her job (TV reporter), has an interesting background, and she seems intelligent enough (for a USC grad). She’s running as an Independent Democrat. Which means she’s a Republican but just can’t say it because she might then only get a few hundred votes instead of a few thousand.
Why she jumped in for a big prize like Senator as opposed to starting small and building a profile … I mentioned SC, right?
schrodingers_cat
@Roger Moore: I want to make a font of my own handwriting.
BellyCat
Which poll? My guess is that the urban/rural divide, even for youth, will continue apace.
Lapassionara
@New Deal democrat: yea. There’s that part. Not to mention one of my favorite passages: “then Cain went out and took a wife.”
Roger Moore
@gene108:
No, because Jesus said some things they can use to justify ignoring large parts of the holiness code. For example, Jesus said (Matthew 15:11, NIV):
Christians have long understood this to be Jesus giving them permission not to keep kosher. OTOH, Jesus regularly preached against sexual immorality, which they understand to mean the parts of the Bible that teach what kinds of sex are OK are still valid.
The point isn’t necessarily that the fundamentalists are right in their interpretation of the Bible. For instance, Jesus was very strongly against divorce, but conservative Christians seem OK with electing people who have been divorced multiple times. But most of the things people point and laugh at as being fundamentalists ignoring parts of the Bible that are inconvenient to them have been talked and thought about for a long time, and there are well established Biblical interpretations that justify them. The typical fundamentalist may not have read the Bible, but they listen to people who have studied it in enough detail to justify their beliefs through scripture.
UncleEbeneezer
@New Deal democrat: So basically only rural, white kids have any interest in the GOP. That makes sense. But it is bad news for the GOP.
Another Scott
@schrodingers_cat: Albatrossity “signs” his posted photos. Maybe he has some pointers?
Good luck!
Cheers,
Scott.
Cameron
@Roger Moore: I thought the wingnuts had rewritten that as “What gets rammed down their throats does not defile them.” But I may well have misinterpreted; I’m not fluent in wingnut.
Jeffro
I guess it’s (politically) hard for them to knock someone out of contention when they’ve spent the past eight years pretending that his every (insane) word was oratory, his every (fumbling) action was grace.
Also, any criticism of trump would have sounded, well…Democratic…and they couldn’t have that, could they? Not if The Left Is Always Wrong is the only thing their party stands for, anyway, which it is.
UncleEbeneezer
@Jeffro: There’s really no mechanism for knocking somebody out of contention if their voters want him. If the GOP base doesn’t rally behind some alternative candidate, it is what it is. Sadly, a big chunk of GOP voters want Trump, so here we are.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Jeffro: We still pretending Republicans haven’t been this way since about Goldwater?
Jeffro
1,115% this.
Democratic voters expect their reps to govern, to get policy results. The reps expect this of themselves.
GOP voters expect their reps to inflict as much damage on the libs as possible, and the reps are happy to try and comply.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
schrodingers_cat
@The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion: Can you briefly outline your process if you don’t mind.
Thanks.
You can write to me at my blog email
Soprano2
@oldgold: It’s both hilarious and sickening that he thinks people will actually believe that their pursuit of Biden with no evidence is anything but political. Only the MAGA’s will believe that, everyone else can see that it’s for revenge.
Ruckus
Why is anyone questioning why they chose one of their worst members to be their leader?
Why does anyone question that they have anyone better than him?
The right has been politically useless for decades now, because they want to go backwards to a time and country that never existed.
Hate is their guiding beacon and they have not one other concept of politics or life.
And they think that going backasswards will make the world revolve the other direction so that time can go backwards. They understand nothing because they want what they can’t have, they want the world to be the game that their twisted, tiny, worse than useless minds think existed. And it really never did. They are hateful, deluded, infantile and have far more power than they should because of that. The world they want will hurt them as much as anyone else but their heads are so far up their exit ports that they can only see what the rest of us flush away.
Roger Moore
@Frankensteinbeck:
I would say it slightly differently, mostly because I think people misunderstand Prop 187. What really happened was the Democrats were recovering from their lows of the Reagan years. When Clinton, Feinstein, and Boxer won in 1992, the Republicans were scared for their prospects and decided to activate their base by doubling down on bigotry with Prop 187. It helped them in the short term- Pete Wilson won reelection in 1994, and the Republicans retained control over the state government, but it did nothing to stop their long-term slide.
One thing that has definitely happened in California that can’t really happen in the country as a whole is shifts in state demographics caused by interstate mobility. I think a lot of the people who hated and feared minorities have left for redder pastures, while people who are happy living in a diverse state have moved in. It’s basically White flight on a larger scale. That sped up the pace of Republican irrelevance here in California, but it’s boosted Republicans in places like Texas, where a lot of the White flight wound up.
Kristine
@Suzanne: @OzarkHillbilly: Good to know about retinol. I have some prescription-strength cream but don’t use it regularly.
As someone who had a melanoma scare last year–atypical appearance, small freckle-like thing, caught early, passed one year of quarterly checks and have moved on to every 6 months–I’m for anything that helps. Soap would be great. I hate the feel of sunscreen. Instead I wear a hat and long pants/sleeves and sweat like my fever just broke.
Geminid
@Frankensteinbeck: I have not claimed that the GOP “will snap out of it” if they lose big a few times. I suggested that ithey had to be thrashed for two or more cycles before the Chamber of Commerce types can wrest the steering wglheel from the radicals. I did not day they would, just laid out a neccessary condition.
I would not be guided by “the one clear example” in one state, even if it is California. For one thing, I do not consider California to be that typical a state for reasons I said at #115. I also do not see American politics nationwide as so simple that one clear example anywhere can be a predictor for the future.
Soprano2
@lowtechcyclist: They want to impose their religious beliefs on all of us with legislation, don’t forget that one. They are interested in passing legislation, it’s just that they aren’t interested in any kind of compromise to do it because they 100% want to rule by decree like a king would. No compromise for them!
Miss Bianca
@Jim Appleton: You still have hummies? Jealous! Ours are usually always gone before the first week in October.
Ruckus
@Frankensteinbeck:
As they aren’t driven by any sort of logic or reality the current loudest members of the conservative party want nothing to do with logic or reality. They want what they want, which is to play politics with the lives of those they hate, which is everyone that isn’t them.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
But if he asserts they’re just “following the evidence where it leads,” he’d be right to assume that a large portion of voters aren’t familiar enough with the relevant facts and would rather believe the Republican Speaker of the House than find out for themselves.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
They will then come up with some bullshit that all those laws are “ceremonial”. The Fundamentalists are basically playing cut and paste with The Bible.
Geminid
@Jeffro: It’s also hard to dislodge Trump from a dominant position when there is no dynamic and popular alternative.
I think that’s true of the primary, but it’s also true for the larger party fight. Trump’s biggest adversary among elected Republicans is Mitch McConnell. He is not popular or dynamic, and no one else of consequence is standing out or even trying to.
Kathleen
@Kay: OT, but here is article in Capital Journal related to your concern yesterday about whether “religious” people could derail passage of Issue 1 (one perspective):
https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2023/10/23/for-some-religious-ohioans-issue-1-about-autonomy-more-than-beliefs
Mike in NC
Looking at the photo of the goobers standing behind Mike Johnson: If somebody was to sell an Elise Stefanik Halloween mask, I think they’d do a brisk business.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I think the other thing people are missing about the hard Right, particularly Christian Fundamentalists, like Johnson here, is to them the means justify the ends. Johnson doesn’t care about really making the Far Right’s “Leave to Beaver Meets the Handmaiden’s Tale America” fantasy happen, he simply wants to be seen going threw the motions and above all being an utter douch to anyone who opposes him. As other pointed out he was an Answers in Genesis lawyer, reality denial is an act for faith to them.
Cameron
@Geminid: Most people who were peddling Ron DeSantis have gone quiet. Certainly, if he was the best they could come up with against Trump, they don’t have a whole lot.
Ruckus
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
Many of them have been worse than Goldwater for their entire “adult” lives.
Look back at politics in this country 50-60 yrs ago. Their wasn’t the communication that we have now so a lot of the country didn’t have the concept of being anything else than what they had been and think they want to go back to. And that is hate and power to hold that hate over others. They want a world that they think existed in every part of the world, and it didn’t, which is how the change of the last 50-60 yrs has been possible. They have the delusional concept that their hate gives them the power over someone. But communications, like we are doing now, changes that forever. They are losing and losing badly and rapidly. Not rapidly enough but their desperation is showing and that is never a good sign for the losers.
Matt McIrvin
@Ken: That’s of a piece with the evil of Mitch McConnell: he never seemed really interested in legislating to get his way, just in stopping things from happening. Exercising negative power.
Citizen Alan
@MagdaInBlack: Most of them have never read either testament. They have a short list of “clobber verses” (as Slactivist used to put it) they have memorized that they can use to justify whatever hateful thing they want to do. Consider that for most Evangelicals, the central dogma of their religion is that no matter how badly they act, god still loves them unconditionally simply because they got dumked in a magic bathtub when they were little kids at their family’s insistence. And having been dunked, they can act as cruelly as they want and god will still rapture them up to heaven someday so they can kick back and laugh while everyone who ever disagreed with them on issues of morality is tortured infinitely.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Ruckus: I would very much like it if they would lose faster, please.
On another topic, Fareed Z asked a guest if Trump would go to jail, and the guest said yes. I realized I don’t believe that. He deserves it, and will almost certainly be convicted of at least one of those 91 charges. But I don’t believe he’ll go to jail. What do the rest of you think?
Matt McIrvin
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
The grandest expression of this is dispensationalism, which holds that different absolute laws of morality hold in different periods of history. The things in the Bible that don’t fit their preferred authoritarian model, they say belong to a different “dispensation”–either one that held only in the distant past, or, in some cases, one that will hold in the future after Christ returns to earth and founds the millennial kingdom. Their justification for this is a bizarre collage of disconnected Bible verses rearranged.
Ruckus
@Geminid:
Also Mitch is/has aged out. What that means is he is no longer the leader he once was. He has lost his claim to leadership of the damned. He’s been pushed aside by people worse than him. And yes, it really is possible that he was never the worst. Close, yes, but no cigar. His desire was to not make things better, today, their desire is to make things worse, because they see that as the only way to make them better for them. And they are correct. They will never be good or better, unless everyone else gets worse.
Matt McIrvin
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I find it hard to believe that Trump will ever experience any legal consequence that really practically hurts him, but that’s mostly because of a straightforward assumption that the future will be like the past. It is until it isn’t.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I think he will go to jail. Or at least some form of house arrest. Why do you think he won’t?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Yes, this.
Speaking as an atheist to the Believers here, Dispensationalism is why what these people claim to be Christianity bears so little resemblance to your beliefs.
Read about it here
And let me note, Dispensationalism rise parallels the Emancipation movement.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Matt McIrvin: @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I suspect I’m like Matt, believing that Trump won’t go to jail because he’s always escaped consequences. Also jailing an ex-president would be a sharp departure from US history.
Mind you, I want it to happen. I just find I can’t make myself see it
ETA: I can picture house arrest. So maybe that. And he’ll be a PITA every second of the time.
Brachiator
@lowtechcyclist:
RE: The Republicans mainly want to pass tax cuts and legislation friendly to business. They don’t believe in anything that Democrats want.
The GOP was solely responsible for the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Provisions related to Individuals expire in 2025. Legislation will be necessary to deal with this. The GOP will also want more corporate tax goodies.
RE: If they win the presidency and Congress in 2024, the GOP will repeal and dismantle everything the Democrats passed since the New Deal.
Trump is not smart. His previous appointments were not particularly distinguished. And if he were to actually dismantle programs like the Affordable Care Act or Social Security, he will need legislative fig leaves as substitutes.
Also, it would be a national disaster if voters elect Trump to be president again. He is clearly mentally deranged. He will spend his entire term seeking revenge and getting even. If Congress falls to the Republicans, they will use the opportunity of having a friendly, but disengaged president to their advantage.
NotMax
@Suzanne
Obligatory?
;)
frosty
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Matt McIrvin:
One thing that’s always bothered me about the Christ’s Kingdom/Christ will return thing is this: these people live in a democracy and were supposedly raised to respect the Constitution. Is all of that supposed to go out the window when Jesus returns to Earth? What about people of other faiths?
Tony G
@Suzanne: Unfortunately, at this point, Donald Trump, Gym Jordan and Mike Johnson ARE the “institutional GOP”. That is what one of the two major parties in the United States is, at this point.
Brachiator
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Trump is already being hit with consequences, and he doesn’t like it. A criminal conviction, even without jail time, may be what people will have to accept.
Tony G
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): These people already explicitly reject the idea of democracy (“a Biblical Republic”, you see) and, although they give lip-service to the United States Constitution, they reject that as well.
The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
@schrodingers_cat: I’d be glad to (though I don’t know how useful you will find my experience–I develop specialized fonts by hand, not using tech, so it may not be applicable to your needs)–but unfortunately, when I click on the link to your blog email, it simply opens my own email account instead of directing me to yours. If you’d care to shoot me a link (again, if my experience is at all relevant to what you’re doing), I’ll expand on my experience.
Matt McIrvin
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
the cynic in me says: Because he’ll be elected President first, and become effectively immune. And after that there may be no justice system capable of touching him, or he’ll die first.
It is, though, worth keeping in mind that the Trump Organization has already been given the corporate death penalty, which is going to hit him hard financially and in terms of his personal privileges–the details of that just haven’t been finalized yet so it isn’t really stinging yet.
catclub
@Glory b: Your timing of events is all wrong. Michael Steele was head of GOP for the 2010 election, which was a huge success for the GOP. So they fired him and put in Reince Priebus while Mitt Romney ran for president and Lost. THEN they had the autopsy and kept Priebus instead of firing him.
Brachiator
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
You do realize , don’t you, that this is all crazy talk, and is not meant to make sense?
I suppose that a believer would say that God will figure out the details.
Or that the kingdom of man will not be necessary when the kingdom of God has been established.
God will also solve climate change. And maybe we will all have wings and not need cars or planes.
gene108
@lowtechcyclist:
From what I’ve read, Republicans do a much better job supporting new candidates than Demcocrats do. Maybe the advantage in being a party that values (or valued?) top-down central control.
p.a.
RIP Matthew Perry. One obit (LA Times?) mentioned he wrote about his alcohol/drug struggles and the fact he’s failed sobriety 60 or 70 times since 2001 😳. No foul play, cause to be determined.
Another Scott
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Former VP Burr was arrested and tried for treason. They probably would have convicted him if they had charged him with an easier-to-prove crime.
TIFG broke all kinds of norms. Smith and Garland have been clear that everyone is equal under the law. If he’s convicted in federal court, I expect him to serve some jail time.
I kinda expect that, when the trial actually starts the next day, he’s going to try to plead to lesser charges and get out of it with a misdemeanor and fines. I don’t think it’s going to work that way for him. (At a minimum, the federal government, rightly, takes protection of classified materials that become infamous in the news very seriously. The whole national security information system will break down if they don’t throw the book at him for being so defiant.)
We’ll see!
Cheers,
Scott.
Matt McIrvin
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): From an American fundamentalist’s perspective, Constitutional government is just a stopgap until the Kingdom of Christ appears–they would absolutely accept a monarchy with the literal embodiment of God running it over a democracy; I mean, that’s not even a question. Many of these people like to harp on how we’re “a republic, not a democracy” anyway; they’re conditioned to be suspicious of democracy.
And people of other faiths will convert or burn, and when they burn they will deserve it. Read, say, the “Left Behind” books and that’s all absolutely overt.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Brachiator:
Social Security is the third rail of American politics. Voters will absolutely raise a stink if they try this
Matt McIrvin
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): You’re assuming that what voters think or do will matter after that.
MisterForkbeard
@frosty: Okay, that’s funny. My wife buys from them religiously too. Specifically, their “BC Hats Cool as a Breeze” hat, where the brim is canvas but the top is mesh.
They did a run of them in purple a few years back and she bought 3 of them.
mrmoshpotato
Rush him into office? Has he not been sworn in as Speaker yet?
Ruckus
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I believe that if they put cuffs on him and led him to a cell, he’d just explode on the spot. SFB is a guy who wanted to be the leader of everything but he has zero skills of any kind, other than being pure shit in shoes. With lifts to make him a bigger shit. His one and only thing he had going for him was some money. He of course has done absolutely nothing positive with his money other than learn to lie about how much he has, and he does that even to himself. Actually especially to himself. He’s the guy that thinks his shit doesn’t stink and he spreads it around to prove it. And it really, really isn’t working because he smells – a lot and badly. He’s never been worth 2 pennies rubbed together as a human being, he got that from his father. He thinks that money makes him who he is, but money can’t buy humanity, one gets that by actually being human. He is, but is an extremely shitty example because he constantly tries to be something he is incapable of – being actually a better human. And that is because he thinks money is what would make him better but it very, very, very rarely does. Money can buy the trappings of better but not the actual better. That only comes from BEING better. And he has an extremely negative concept of actually being better. He thinks his money makes him better. Which is why he’s lied about his money his entire life. He’s a shitty human being who thinks the money he doesn’t actually have makes him a better human. And money cannot buy humanity, that is earned. And he’s never earned anything in his 77 yrs. Nothing. Zero. Nada.
Citizen Alan
@Dangerman:
Tell me about it. After moving to california, I had gotten complacent about it even knowing that fresno was more conservative than most of the state. But then, yesterday, I was shopping for some new dress shirts (in a DXL big and tall store, naturally) and I crossed paths with a big burly guy with a goatee wearing a Let’s Go Brandon T-shirt who would have fit in very nicely in any Mississippi Dollar General.
Matt McIrvin
@frosty: I’ve worn a series of Tilley hats for a while–people joke that I look like Crocodile Dundee but they are in fact Canadian. The one I have now has a sort of mesh vent strip around the crown.
This is one of those possessions that apparently puts you in a sacred tribe of dudes. I’ll be walking around somewhere minding my own business and somebody yells “why, THAT’s a TILLEY HAT!!! Congratulations, my brother!!!!” There is a fandom.
They’re supposed to be insured against loss on your honest word, but I tend to replace mine out of pocket (or put it on my Christmas list) when I misplace it somewhere because it provides an opportunity to switch the style up a little.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Matt McIrvin:
Why wouldn’t it?
mrmoshpotato
What he’s insisting upon can be fucked with rusty farm tools, and it also doesn’t make any damn sense.
Cameron
I could see Trump getting house arrest, since it would be tough to give him Secret Service protection in a regular prison.
Barbara
@Ruckus: SFB is an actual math whiz who has no real people skills. Whatever exposure he had to ethics through his parents was clearly funneled through a brain with inadequate logical reasoning, that reduces all problems to pure math even when totally inapplicable.
Cameron
@mrmoshpotato: It’s not supposed to make sense. It’s meant to convey how very badly he wants to save SS and Medicare, but the selfish wimmins force him (more in sorrow than in anger) to take an ax to said programs.
Brachiator
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Republicans don’t care about voters. Their plutocrat bosses demand that Social Security be demolished. It won’t be easy, but the GOP will be able to use Trump as a populist stooge who will pretend that he is trying to save the program.
The Supreme Court gutting Roe has the GOP excited. They think that they can get away with anything if they retake Congress.
Matt McIrvin
@Cameron: I’ve heard some speculation that if he does somehow end up incarcerated, it will be a kind of solo if not literally solitary confinement on a military base where the Secret Service can practically do their job, perhaps relatively comfortable but he’d be the only inmate.
unctuous
@schrodingers_cat: This is the right answer. The expiration date on MAGA is the average lifespan of MAGAs themselves.
Ruckus
@OzarkHillbilly:
As one how has had skin cancer in his not so distant past, anything that can help is beyond good. Way beyond.
A soap that fights skin cancer. At 14. Now that is one smart human being. We have huge companies with labs and scientists working and a 14 yr old comes up with a relatively cheap and easy answer. Of course it’s too cheap and easy and they can’t make a lot of money from it so…..
surfk9
@Citizen Alan:
Fresno is not bad for MAGA. You should see Oroville and Shasta. Those people are nuts
Kathleen
@Ruckus: I recall that the media in 1963/1964 treated the Birchers and even Barry Goldwater as scary outliers. Remember how John Chancellor was kicked out of the Republican National Convention in 1964? I’m guessing treatment was due to media overlords being “mainstream” Republicans who didn’t appreciate the interloper Goldwater. Now media treat Right Wing with “Look! Nazi Next Door Shops At Kroger Just Like You Do”.!
Citizen Alan
@Matt McIrvin: I remember reading in amazement on slactivist about how Tim Lahaye, the author of the left behind series, did not believe that the beatitudes were relevant to how Christians should live their lives. Jesus’s famous about “blessed are the meek and blessed are the peacemakers” and all that describe what conditions would be like in heaven rather than what they should be like on earth today. So anyone who tried to follow the beatitudes in their day-to-day life, such as by supporting peace initiatives, was actually doing the work of the Antichrist (who, btw, ended up being the secretary general of the UN).
unctuous
@Anonymous at Work: This power play thing is why they love Trump. Corruption, rape, treason. They love it because it’s a boss move to own the libs by doing it and then even more by getting away with it.
Trump is Caligula’s horse elevated by white conservative christian racists as a fuck-you-because-we-can to the rest of the nation.
Ruckus
@Matt McIrvin:
He’ll be in solitary confinement?
YES!
He’ll go completely insane even faster. His entire adult life has been about being seen as the one great human being. And to do that one has to be seen. To not be seen, to not be able to walk out and go in front of the cameras, what will he do for exposure and adulation? Of course there will be cameras in the jail but the world won’t see the screens, so that will be a hell of a lot better for us.
Kathleen
@Dorothy A. Winsor: USA Channel would turn that into a reality show “President’s Prison” produced by Mark Burnett of “Apprentice” fame, featuring a parade of disbarred lawyers cooking up wacky appeals.
Citizen Alan
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Evangelicals in my experience genuinely believe that everyone who does not share their beliefs with close to if not exactly 100% agreement is going to go to hell and be tortured, literally forever. Evangelical opinion makers and leaders believe in a religion based on sadism, and most of their followers go along with it.
Anotherlurker
@Mallard Filmore: So. Johnson knows how to beat his slaves, according to his book of stories?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Brachiator:
And who exactly, outside of the idiot MAGA base, is going to buy that?
JoyceH
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
My take is that eventually Trump will go to jail because they simply have no other choice. He’s already been charged in four different cases in four different jurisdictions, and honestly, I don’t think Jack Smith is done yet. The charges are incredibly serious and the evidence is overwhelming. He’s going to be convicted of something, he just is.
Okay, but imprisoned? Again, I think they’ll have no choice. Like I say, the charges are serious. No way can he get probation or supervised release. House arrest? Well. Let’s try that. Not at Mar A Lago, unless they want to turn the whole place into a prison. The Trump tower penthouse maybe. But remember, Trump is DANGEROUS. He has deranged and violent followers who act, not on his orders, but on his mere hints. And he knows things, things that are supposed to be the highest secrets our nation has, and a tendency to blab about them just to show off.
So any house arrest would have to be incredibly stringent, with the same sort of visitor and communications restrictions of any prisoner in Leavenworth. And he’s GOING to find some way to violate the terms of his house arrest. Either that or his wacko army will turn the location of his house arrest into a focal point, to gather and wave flags and cause trouble. Does NYC want that? Does Palm Beach?
No, he’s going to wind up with his own wing in Leavenworth, somewhere out in the boondocks with high barbed wire fences, where his loons can’t cause too much trouble.
In my opinion, there are only two ways that Trump can avoid imprisonment – to die first, or defect while he still has freedom of movement. Okay, three, he turns into such a drooling vegetable that he winds up in a hospital for the criminally insane.
schrodingers_cat
@The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion: Trying again
[email protected]
mrmoshpotato
@Suzanne:
Dump is the monster they’ve spent 40 years trying to create. And 50 years of screaming about Roe v Wade. Dump IS the GOP.
They can’t just go “We were bullshitting you idiots for generations! Please stop voting for the orange madman!” As much as soft-spoken assholes like Liz Cheney and Mittens would like. (A return to quiet assholery, fucking over the most vulnerable people in the country, giving tax cuts to the obscenely wealthy, etc.)
It would be very interesting to see the reaction to them doing just that though.
raven
@JoyceH:
Gentlemen, Chicolini here may talk like an idiot, and look like an idiot, but don’t let that fool you: he really is an idiot. I implore you, send him back to his father and brothers, who are waiting for him with open arms in the penitentiary. I suggest that we give him ten years in Leavenworth, or eleven years in Twelveworth.
Chris Johnson
@Matt McIrvin: Yeah, but he already lost, and before he ruined his cred with unpolitical moderates. He lost with independents WHILE President. He lost before Giuliani did that press conference at the, what was it, a dirty book store? While drizzling hair dye? And then they all got dragged into court?
I don’t think he’s doing better with independents and nonvoters than he was doing while he was President with all the press trying to cosign and normalize his bullshit. Call me crazy. I think he’s looking less good to the average person.
dmsilev
A very pleasant morning walking the freeway. Whoever scheduled it for Halloween weekend was a genius; best sightings were a dinosaur on a skateboard and a fully armored Mandalorian on a bicycle.
Also, here’s a conundrum to think about. The road was divided, people and dogs and so forth on foot on one side and riders on the other. Which side should the trio on horseback have been? The horses themselves were on foot, or hooves anyway, but the people were riders…
(in the event, they were with the pedestrians)
Sister Golden Bear
I truly hope Johnson becomes the albatross around Republicans necks before he does too much damage. But heightening the contradictions hits a bit different when you’re one of the contradictions being heightened.
No, he won’t be able to pass bills that survive the Senate or a Biden veto. However, he can do much to mainstream a multitude of hatreds. We’ve seen this in the UK where a constant stream of anti-trans rhetoric by the news media and now politicians has caused public acceptance of trans people to go backwards.
Matt McIrvin
@JoyceH: I don’t think you could put Trump in any regular prison with other prisoners. The security arrangements would be impossible and, as you say, it can’t be a publicly accessible place either. So, Leavenworth or a military base or something.
Matt McIrvin
@Chris Johnson: Trump doesn’t have to do better, Biden just has to do worse. And there are all sorts of reasons he could do worse, most of which the media are doing their best to amplify.
The question is just whether negative partisanship and actual visceral fear of Republican policy outweigh that. We don’t know. The numbers from special elections and such are encouraging. But it’s an unknown. It does seem like framing it as Biden vs. Trump makes things look worse than framing it any other way.
Eolirin
@Geminid: I don’t think they can. It’s not clear that without the radicals they have the numbers necessary to win. I think in most places the crazies are the majority of the party.
The problem they have is the isolated media ecosystem they’ve built has created a one way ratchet that’s pushed that radicalism to an extreme that’s being viscerally rejected by everyone else and that won’t compromise with the rest of the coalition. That media ecosystem has its own incentive structure and winning elections isn’t actually high on its list. So without media reform that kills the propoganda channels and without an end to Russian influence, I don’t see that getting better. At best those people just stop turning out in the same numbers.
When they lose enough that that happens what’s left on the other side isn’t big enough to win outside of a regional basis. Or, if the crazies win like they have in AZ and MI, there’s no home for the less crazy part of the party as they’re the minority, and when they stop turning out or decide to make a home for themselves with the Democrats, the crazies don’t have the numbers either. This is the current story in Arizona, just with the demographics a few years away from being overwhelming. We should be losing there, but we aren’t because their coalition cleaved itself in two.
We’re not going to win in places like Alabama and Arkansas though. The crazies have the numbers in those places. But this is a process that’s going to take some time, and we need to not lose a single election until the party has finished breaking apart.
They might be able to right enough parts of the ship, ie, not running a lunatic that can’t beat Tester in Montana, that they can do immeasurable damage in the mean time. McConnell’s corruption of the courts will do damage for a very long time if they have just enough numbers to paralyze the rest of the government.
Also, broadly, gerrymandering counters their numbers problems so they can win legislatures without being able to win statewide. The gap will grow on that until gerrymandering can be overcome.
@schrodingers_cat: I don’t think they will. They didn’t in California. They only know how to double down.
Matt McIrvin
@mrmoshpotato: The Republican Party is waiting for Trump to die at this point, and they’re stuck with him until that happens. Trump is old and visibly unhealthy but seems to have a family history of surprising longevity, so who knows how long they’ll have to wait. But death from natural causes is probably a more effective way of getting rid of him than anything they can manage to do.
Jeffro
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: we what? Of course they have.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Sister Golden Bear:
Not to discount your fears, but all of the “woke” rhetoric stuff hasn’t resonated with people here in the US according to polling, for example; it’s fallen flat with people outside the terminally online
JoyceH
@Matt McIrvin:
Oh, granted! He’s not going to be in Gen Pop, that’s for sure. His own wing, heck, his own prison! And there’s precedent – Spandau Prison in Germany remained open for several decades with ONE prisoner. The Americans might have been willing to release the pathetic old man, but the Russians were determined that Rudolph Hess complete his life sentence.
And I don’t mind that. I don’t demand that Trump sleep on a two-inch thick mattress and eat rotten prison food. He can have a comfy bed, he can have all the McDonald’s he wants. Just keep him away from being able to get his deranged words out to the public. Have the Trump wing staffed by the Secret Service. They can even call him Mister President. But man, VET those agents, because I’m sure Trump has Turned some of them.
Glory b
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I understand that the NJ Dems pushed a gerrymander specifically for Kim at hus behest, so it might not be like he doesn’t do machine politics too.
Jeffro
Or when there’s no real alternative, period. Even the loudest and most anti-trump among them had frequent praise for much of what trump did, or wasted their time bashing Democrats. So it’s not hard to see why nothing dynamic or equally popular got going.
Eolirin
@Kay: It’s because Democrats don’t have white Evangelical Christians as their core voting base. There’s a really significant cultural difference between the two parties.
These are the sorts of people who spread transparently bullshit lies about Protcol and Gamble’s CEO going on live TV and declaring he worshipped Satan and pumped up the Satantic Panic movement. Their entire culture is built on repeating and claiming to believe claims they very much know are untrue to prove tribal membership, and are fundamentally against the idea of Democracy and compromise. These are Holy Warriors fighting for God in an elminationist struggle against the Godless and the Gay and the Black.
And their media ecosystem is designed to sell to them, first and foremost. There’s no moderating force there. We don’t have anything comparable on the left.
Their safe districts most represent their values and our safe districts most represents ours; extremism just happens to not be one of them for us.
Matt McIrvin
@dmsilev: The answer is one! The others were all going the other way, FROM St. Ives!
wait, that wasn’t what you asked…
Ruckus
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
He was president.
We’ve never had a president as shitty, willingly ignorant, or as big an asshole. We’ve had some that have pushed the limits but ShitForBrains goes way over the limit and will go farther and farther over the limit unless he gets to be the ultimate national leader, the one, the only ShitForBrains. And those that want that are his fan club, because they want one of their own to shine. And he only knows one direction – worse. He is incapable of being a decent human. He only knows crapola. And he’s not capable of getting better, only worse. Crapola does that, goes only one direction – worse. The only positive here is that he’s stepped in shit so often that he’s left a trail of shit everywhere he’s ever gone or been close to. He’s easy to track. And he’s left such a large quantity of shit everywhere he’s been that finding it is easy. The only problem is that he was president and it difficult for many to admit that anyone as shitty as SFB was president, actually elected to the highest office, which he reversed into one of the lowest. Our current president has reversed the slide/avalanche rather nicely but SFB continues to yell and scream like a 4 yr old, attracting the other 4 yr olds with drivers licenses and voting rights. A lesson to be learned, never put a 4 yr old, shitty, 300 lb, toddler in the highest office of the land. It won’t end well. And yes we have proof.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Jeffro: There’s still plenty of superficial good will directed to our colleagues across the aisle and notions of bipartisanship that too many Dems, particularly among the Senators, deem to be the goal and not the method.
I’m also a little sensitive because of the Romney appologia that Youtube pushed me last night from CBS This Morning.
dr. luba
@catclub:
Many have. But there are still many idiots. My friend who does Mohs surgery there has no shortage of patients.
I’d also thought that most Australians weren’t racist, but the recent referendum has disabused me of that notion.
jimmiraybob
Given all that’s come out recently, I’m thinking the Mike Johnston stands heads and shoulders over all the other preeners and auditioners for Trump’s VP pick.
Matt McIrvin
@Eolirin: I’ve never been quite convinced that they know these claims are untrue. I think many of them end up with a different concept of knowing or reality than yours or mine. It’s akin to the New Age idea that you can create your own reality by affirming it frequently enough.
unctuous
@Citizen Alan: Why do all these goobers seem to have goatees?
Cameron
@Matt McIrvin: That makes sense.
jackmac
@Jim Appleton: It’s been at least three weeks since our last hummingbird sighting here in the fringe Chicago burbs. We put our feeder away for the season on Saturday. We’re looking at lows in the 20s tonight — coldest night so far this fall — so it’s also farewell to my surviving flowers.
mrmoshpotato
@Scout211: Papa Pumpkin!
lowtechcyclist
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I’m not without hope, but I won’t believe it until it happens.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Matt McIrvin: I mean, my dad who has been engrossed in the right wing media ecosystem since Rush Limbaugh believes all these patently false claims but isn’t especially religious. He even goes back to believing claims I unambiguously debunked only days before, a recent example being claims that Kamala Harris was discouraging COVID vaccination.
But he hears the same shit, literally, regurgitated day after day on Fox. Repetition of lies with callous indifference to the truth is their not-so-secret weapon.
Cameron
@Matt McIrvin: Maybe offer him a Russian penthouse tour?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Brachiator:
@Matt McIrvin:
That all makes sense. I think what stuck out to me is that it’s such a contradiction on the surface. That and it’s disturbing to think these people exist. Hopefully aliens never come to Earth and try to pretend to be Jesus
Matt McIrvin
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
Ooh! I even know where that one came from! It’s a good one because you can claim it was kind of supported just by cherry-picking part of a quote and ignoring context.
Glory b
@BellyCat: Correction, white male voters, young white women are still majority Dem.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/democrats-really-need-to-win-back-young-white-male-voters-from-the-gop
unctuous
@Ruckus: Lots of people in the US think money makes them a better person. Goes along with thinking money is God’s blessing. Which naturally means you must be a better person why else would He bless you with money? Duh.
Citizen Alan
@Jeffro: This. It was frustrating to see people praise Liz Cheney for “putting country ahead of party” when it was patently obvious to me that her sole objection to Trumpism was that it wasn’t promoting American fascism for the benefit of her and her friends and family.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
That’s all of them.
lowtechcyclist
@Brachiator:
True. But there are people ready to do the picking for him this time, that he’s ready to listen to. If you think his 2025 picks would be 2017 all over again, you’re sorely mistaken.
Cameron
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Ron DeSantis had no charm/e-i-e-i-o/He did his best to do trans harm/e-i-e-i-o/With a “woke,woke” here/And a “woke,woke” there/Here a “woke”/There a “woke”……help me out here, people.
zhena gogolia
Okay, I guess it’s a good thing I have an appointment and can’t wallow in BJ today.
We’re all doomed.
brantl
The new Rethuglican motto: Douche canoes, and Johnson, too!
mrmoshpotato
@Matt McIrvin:
Hey now. Don’t forget us on the other side of the aisle!
True.
Glory b
@Glory
@BellyCat: The problem also is that young white rural voters report that they are significantly more likely to vote than urban and suburban ones.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@lowtechcyclist: That’s probably a good description of where I am too
Citizen Alan
@unctuous: I think I can speak to this with some authority being an expatriate Southerner who wore a goatee for many years: For most of them/us, it’s pure laziness. Originally, goatees got popular because certain popular (Southern) baseball players and NASCAR racers wore them and it became a tribal marker. But mainly, it’s because if you’re a stocky guy with a jowly face, the hardest part of shaving and the part where you’re most likely to cut yourself is around the chin and the upper lip. With a goatee, it’s just three or four straight swipes on each side, and you’re done shaving and ready for work, but around the chin and upper lip, you have to go slower and more carefully. That’s why I wore one for nearly 30 years. I only stopped because it became a running joke on the Herman Caine Awards subreddit that Southern Christian fat guys with goatees who caught Covid were disproportionately likely to die, and I shaved it down to a moustache before I moved to Queens rather than risk people New Yorkers think I’m part of a hostile tribe. I am thinking of growing it back after No Shave November, though, simply for the convenience.
Shalimar
Just listened to a clip of our new House Speaker blaming school shootings on “not teaching right and wrong anymore,” instead we “teach survival of the fittest.” “For a couple generations now.”
The 100th anniversary of the Scopes Monkey trial is 21 months away. This guy is woefully uneducated.
Bill Arnold
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
How is this ceremonial?
Deuteronomy 22:8 (NLT)
Citizen Alan
@lowtechcyclist: I just think he’ll die before he can go to jail. He’s not healthy mentally or physically. And honestly, the vast majority of the people who surround him desperately want him to die of natural causes (or at least seemingly natural causes) so they will be rid of his influence and can tell the cult that it was the Democrats who hounded him to his death. I think if he reaches the point where he genuinely believes he’s going to jail, he’ll get a stash of Adderall (probably one that one of the kids left for him to find), and end it all.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
Natural selection was working just fine until socipaths turned a social version of it into an ideology; an ideology the Republicans espouse vehemently, if I’m not mistaken.
lowtechcyclist
@Citizen Alan:
That’s the weird thing about their antiabortion stance. AFAICT, the vast majority of them believe in some sort of age of accountability with respect to heaven v. hell. That is, if a toddler gets killed in a car crash, said toddler will go to heaven, because it hasn’t reached an age where it can be held accountable for its sins.
So all those aborted ‘unborn babies’ would go to heaven. If they’re born, most of them would surely go to hell. (Especially because their moms are all sluts, right? If born, they’re not gonna be raised in the True Faith.) So apparently they want those ‘unborn babies’ to spend eternity in Hell.
Madeleine
@frosty: I slso have an Aussie hat. It’s from Solbari, is SPF 30, I think. It’s made of cotton and linen, which, I thought, would make it cooler than hats that include or made of synthetics. I got it for a week in Maine in July and I was happy with it.
Eyeroller
@Ruckus: It’s a cool science project but I’m extremely skeptical about this “soap.” It is based on a hypothesis, there were no clinical trials. It looks like the main ingredient is currently being used against basal cell carcinoma, which is *very very very* different from melanoma, a far more aggressive cancer.
I know everybody loves to think some 14-year-old will cure cancer, but the purpose of the competition described (which has gone through a number of corporate sponsors over the years) is to encourage teenagers to develop scientific thought. Their projects rarely go anywhere.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I don’t know how long the appeals process can be dragged out, how many issues he can drive all the way to the USSC, if/how/when the Secret Service (which is a whole ‘nother question in my mind) will file its own suit. So on jail, I doubt it.
Other questions: Will a lazy, obese man who never smoked or drank and whose parents lived well into their nineties outlive that process? And if he does: What exactly would house arrest look like?
lowtechcyclist
@Citizen Alan:
I think there’s a better chance he’ll be found not competent by the time he would otherwise be sentenced to prison.
Citizen Alan
@Bill Arnold: I believe EVT is referring to a legal concept called “Ceremonial Deism,” a bit of nonsense from Sandra Day O’Conner used to justify putting “In God We Trust” on our coinage. It’s invoking God’s name in a way that doesn’t really mean anything. Which one would think that Christians would object to because it violates the Second Commandment, but then, most GOP Christians can’t seem to name all the Commandments anyway.
lowtechcyclist
@Shalimar:
You know what taught survival of the fittest in place of right and wrong? Back when the schools used to do basically nothing about bullying.
Now most school systems take bullying seriously and try to prevent it as much as possible. And Mike Johnson’s kind are actively against that.
That asshole can go fuck himself.
lowtechcyclist
@Citizen Alan:
They certainly don’t pay much notice to the one about bearing false witness.
Citizen Alan
@lowtechcyclist: I once asked a preacher “If personhood begins at birth but the Age of Accountability isn’t until 7 or so, and the majority of all fetuses throughout history were terminated either through abortion or miscarriage, doesn’t that mean that the overwhelming majority of the souls you will encounter in Heaven will be zygotes floating around (presumably with little halos and tiny angel wings)?” He hemmed and hawed before storming off angrily.
Wapiti
@dmsilev: iiuc. horses can be spooked by bicycles, so they’d probably be better with the pedestrians.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Citizen Alan: The 2nd commandment, one I view among the most important in my amalgam spiritual practice, but is the most roundly rejected by every Christian Church that I’m aware of.
Another Scott
The Casualty List collects the names of all the folks in the House and Senate who are leaving. Some pickups (UT) may be nearly impossible, but I hope we do what we can to run the table and pick up every seat that we can. We cannot be complacent.
I also hope that the NY Democrats get their act together and flip the House seats that they let get away in 2022. Grr…
Eyes on the prizes.
Cheers,
Scott.
Wapiti
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Judging from his dad’s condition, house arrest would eventually look a lot like a memory care facility, except the health aides would be vetted by the Secret Service.
WaterGirl
@OlFroth: Yep.
But does he have a wetsuit?
Subsole
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
This, right here, is why I gave up on so many friends and family.
I spent decades bashing my head against that wall. I’d break through, for a day, or maybe two, and then they’d listen to Limbaugh and bloop, back to square zero.
Glory b
@lowtechcyclist: I recall a funny interview Stephen Colbert did with a Republican who wanted copies of the Commandments in every classroom, but could only remember one or two of them.
WaterGirl
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Do you check out your own books, just to keep them active?
WaterGirl
@unctuous: Welcome!
Now that I have approved your first comment (and your second one) the rest will show up for people right away.
unctuous
This bears repeating. It’s really hard to get normies to understand this, they just can’t wrap their heads around something that seems so relentlessly bigoted and…evil.
lowtechcyclist
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
We don’t know yet, of course.
What I’d
for is that they’d find or build him a small house on the grounds of a secure, fenced-in government facility such as a military base or Federal prison, with space for him and a couple of Secret Service agents to live there. That way it could be built without Internet access from the get-go, and just a landline phone with limits on its use, because that’s what prisoners have to live with. And no cell phones in prison, of course.
It wouldn’t be solitary confinement, of course, since his Secret Service guards would be there to say hi to. But it would be the end of his freedom to interact with the larger world in the manner of his choice. Because that’s what prison is like.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@WaterGirl: I never have. I think I’d be kind of embarrassed even though I’m the only one who’d know, since checkouts are done at a machine rather than with a librarian.
unctuous
@WaterGirl: Thank you.
I mistyped my email address as i’ve commented here before. I guess that tripped the new commenter filter.
Geminid
@Another Scott: Democrats may have left some California House seats on the table as well. At least I remember people saying Democratic turnout was lower than hoped, and their were some close races. The closest was John Duarte’s; he won by 556 votes, I think.
A Politico article last week described 6 California Republicans as representing potential “swing districts.” They were John Duarte, Mike Garcia, Michelle Steele, Young Kim, Ken Calvert, and David Valadeo.
Matt McIrvin
@Glory b: Well, obviously he wanted them posted everywhere so he wouldn’t forget!
Tony G
@Matt McIrvin: I think that if Trump is not elected president (and does not steal the presidency) next year, he’ll be an “honored” member of the wingnut-welfare circuit, with shows on NewsMax, OAN, maybe even Fox News. Sort of a wing-nut-emeritus. For his cult members it won’t matter if he just drools and babbles. He is their leader.
Matt McIrvin
(Big old graven images of the Ten Commandments, to bow down before and serve. No rule against that, right?)
MagdaInBlack
@lowtechcyclist: I would pity the secret service agents, and trump wouldn’t last a week without his external validation/adulation.
brendancalling
Just dropping in to let y’all know I just ran 20 miles in just over 4 hours. This is the longest of the training runs before marathon day, it’s all tapering from here on out.
My legs dislike me right now.
Brachiator
@lowtechcyclist:
No.
I’m a furious agnostic and don’t care much about any religion. But it’s weird that discussion about evangelicals typically end up as absurd parody of their actual beliefs.
The battle to restore women’s reproductive rights is tough enough without these pointless diversions.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@brendancalling: Are you going to run in the NY Marathon? My nephew is getting ready for that too. He lives upstate. He’s also been posting on FB about his project to run all the streets of Oneida County
Eolirin
@Matt McIrvin: At minimum they’re not concerned with whether they’re literally true. They’ll change opinion on a dime if it’s required to repeat things that have become new markers of belonging or to gain a tactical advantage.
Bill Arnold
@Barbara:
Trump, with a couple of his kids, on Howard Stern.
“What is 17 times 6”
D.J.Trump tries to bend arithmetic to his will. He almost succeeds.
His kids embarrass themselves, too.
sab
Wow. Rob Portman has come out in favor of ranked voting. Maybe he was afraid of the primary.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Citizen Alan: In other words, he’d be turned into a latter-day Jacky Smurch? (Cross-reference James Thurber.)
Brachiator
@brendancalling:
I get tired thinking about running 20 miles.
You did great. Have fun with your marathon.
Suzanne
@brendancalling: That’s awesome. Go you.
I want to do a half in the spring.
Matt McIrvin
@Brachiator: In this case, it’s a logical consequence of things they do profess to believe (if there’s really an age of accountability beyond which people are at risk of literally infinite punishment, and before which there’s a free ticket to Heaven, why do we want anyone to survive to that age?)
But if you are obnoxious enough to press them on it, they’ll probably just back off and say that we don’t understand everything; there are some mysteries only God understands.
That is, after all, pretty much official Catholic doctrine on this subject as well, concerning unbaptized infants. Popular Catholic lore made up the whole notion of “limbo” to split the difference between making God a monster who would torture a baby for having sheer bad luck (if they do go to Hell), and the idea that maybe it’s good to kill babies to save them from any risk of Hell (if they don’t go to Hell). But the Church doesn’t officially endorse this, they just say that these things are mysteries that God understands and we don’t. Which is not wholly unreasonable, from their perspective.
Ruckus
@dr. luba:
Humans are like every other animal, insect, fish, bird, whatever, living beings. It’s just that there are humans that have different characteristics, skin color, hair type/amount, and the genders are somewhat obviously different, unless they really try not to be. So it’s easier to see who’s who and what’s what. And we’ve developed language, that can be rather specific, showing emotions, stupidity, a grasp of reality – or not… But at the end of the day we are animals, with survival as one of the constants, but also as something to trade away for some end result that may or may not be beneficial. We don’t do a lot of things that animals do, some rather easily, like fly or climb trees. But we’ve learned to make things that other animals can not, to do things that other animals can not. I’m not sure, after almost 3/4 of a century of experience that all of this is actually a lot better, and some of it for sure isn’t. Take greed. Please. But it is what it is today, tomorrow it might be better, it might be worse, it’s humanity. Some of us hired a shitstain to be our leader but he proved himself to be – just a shitstain. Some must like that, or just be so unaware that they can’t see it. So now we have to clean up the mess and that isn’t easy, with such a massive shit stain.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@brendancalling:
Cool! I probably couldn’t run for 30 mins unless my life depended on it, let alone 4 hrs. What marathon are you running?
Bill Arnold
@jimmiraybob:
Do you think he can consistently do that adoring “There Is No God But Donald J. Trump” gaze that M. Pence mastered? Because that is the main job requirement.
WaterGirl
@Jim Appleton: That’s gorgeous little fuckers, please!
There go two miscreants
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Oh, the televangelists and prosperity gospel preachers would never stand for that! No way they’d let some furriners horn in on the grift.
pluky
@Dorothy A. Winsor: We’re talking NJ here. This is old school machine politics.
Ruckus
@brendancalling:
I just walked 2 miles in about an hour. Before I reached old fart status I could do it far faster. And every day. But it’s ok, I know others my age who can’t do 2 miles at all. And some younger.
BTW congrats on the 20. And enjoy the marathon. I used to know some my age who did Ironman, one, a friend, went to HI for the championship and did very well in her age group.
brendancalling
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I’m doing Philly. New York is expensive—and that’s before you take lodging into account
wjca
Perhaps it’s aspirational…?
Dorothy A. Winsor
@brendancalling: Do well and have a great time
ETA: “great time” See what I did there?
pluky
@Matt McIrvin:
I nominate Eareckson Air Station.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eareckson_Air_Station#:~:text=Eareckson%20Air%20Station%20(IATA%3A%20SYA,in%20the%20Alaskan%20Aleutian%20Islands.
Jackie
@jimmiraybob: Pence II. But MJ wouldn’t hesitate to ignore the Constitution to overthrow the government.
evodevo
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): If you go by today’s talibangelical determination, it will be my way or the highway…everyone except the members of their particular sect (and we’re talking about some Olympic-level hair-splitting here) will go to the hot place…and that’s other Xtians. We aren’t even considering the other 9 billion people…they will go there unless they instantly convert to the proper sectarian beliefs. Just ask any one of them some pointed questions, and brace yourself for the answers…
wjca
I can see the attraction. But it does seem a bit rough on the Secret Service guys. Assuming, as I certainly do, that they aren’t part of his cult.
Bill Arnold
@Jackie:
As such people would say in other contexts, that’s what the second amendment is for. His half life would be measured in months, if he started such a civil war.
WaterGirl
@mrmoshpotato: White women as breed mares for white boys and girl.
Timill
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I think he will do time in jail, but not as a result of a conviction. I think Judge Engoron will fairly soon get fed up with increasing fines and jug him over a weekend for contempt of court.
Cameron
@brendancalling: Good luck! I’ve lived down here since 2016 (and like it), but I still miss Philly.
WaterGirl
@Eyeroller: You are living up to your name with that one! :-)
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: NY and CA!
WaterGirl
@brendancalling: Wow! Great job with the run and with your dedicated training!
Captain C
@RAM:
At this point I would not rule out actual skeletons in the basement or backyard.
Kathleen
@brendancalling: Congratulations!
Scout211
This thread is long in the tooth but I didn’t think this comment was right for Cole’s war on women post.
Arnold was on Meet the Press today and he lived
updown to my cynicism about him. USA Today has a write-up about his appearance on the Sunday program.He may have made a great video about anti-semitism, but he’s still just another ”third way” true believer.
Ruckus
@schrodingers_cat:
THIS. Not every single one of them but far more than they realize.
Also politics has changed in the last 40 years, with things like what we are doing right now, discussing things and getting other opinions from people that we are likely to never actually meet. The clubhouse has gotten a hell of a lot bigger and has many more discussions about this, that and everything else. In some ways the distance and lack of face to face has I believe actually allowed communications to grow. It takes away the faces, the ability to perceive and misinterpret what we think is being stated because it has to be written out. It’s not the only possibility to discuss things but it can be more clarifying than say a meet up, where you might discuss more of daily life and less of politics. It also allows those of like minds to see the percentage that agrees with them or not and to discuss why rather than only what.
wjca
And won’t that be a terrible shock to his system? I mean, he really really hates losing money by getting fined. But, at the end of the day, I suspect it amounts in his mind to nothing more than bribery — paying money to get what he wants, regardless of what the law says. Which, after all, is a business practice he is quite familiar with.
But actually getting tossed in jail, not just a mug shot suitable for more grifting but actual jail time? That would be freakout time. (And somehow I’m guessing that he wouldn’t try to monetize pictures of him in an orange jump suit.) I wouldn’t bet money on his avoiding racking up more jail time for contempt by his reaction.
Ruckus
@Kay:
Democrats discuss, republicans follow. Completely different animals. Look at the current leaders of both parties. Democrats discuss and come to an agreement, republicans follow. Our politicians listen to us, republicans listen to and follow their leaders. And often get extremely pissy when someone doesn’t follow. It’s like being in the military, one has to listen to and follow someone else, who does the same with those above them. Non military life isn’t listen and follow, it is discussion and agreement/disagreement and learning how to move on. It’s more adult and less parent/child.
Ruckus
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I believe he will have to go to jail because he isn’t going to confirm to any rules of release. He may not go directly to jail but be released under strict rules of conduct, which he would violate, likely more than once in the first week, possibly the first day when he walked out of court to face the press and gave one of his “See how pissed off I am that they didn’t recognize my greatness!” speeches. SFB sees himself as one of the world’s greatest human beings and at his age and stage of dementia that isn’t going to ever get any better. Only worse.
Ruckus
@Eyeroller:
First, how did you get any of this from the comment you linked to?
Second, if this soap does change the way soap and skin react to each other it MAY affect the way skin cancer grows. There is more to this than it’s more or less aggressive. It concerns why and how does skin cancer form in the first place. Many humans spend a lot of time in the sun and never get skin cancer. I spent much of my adult life in the sun and used many treatments and/or long sleeve shirts and hats to guard against the sun and I still got skin cancer. And yet over the last 10 yrs or so I haven’t had a repeat. And I get checked regularly.
It’s not cut and dried. We are the same, in an overall manner, we are all different in many subtle ways, chemically there are many differences/levels. We are also genetically different in many subtle ways, not just the obvious ones.
TerryC
@evodevo: About 115 billion people have lived. Takes a LOT of angels and demons to keep them all in line.
dnfree
@OzarkHillbilly: Late to this thread, but I have had skin cancer and I hate the feel of greasy stuff on my skin. So if I’m ever outside for more than five minutes, I’m wearing long-sleeved sun-blocking shirts (such as sold by Lands End) and long pants (like Eddie Bauer), even if it’s 90 degrees. Also a sun-blocking hat with a big brim. People do stare sometimes when everyone else is in shorts.
Brachiator
@lowtechcyclist:
RE: Trump is not smart. His previous appointments were not particularly distinguished.
Coming back late to a dead thread. I just thought this was funny.
How could I possibly be “sorely mistaken” about a speculation?
Paul in KY
@dmsilev: Should be a cool walk. When do you get to walk on it without getting killed!
Paul in KY
@JoyceH: If he’s found guilty on the classified docs case, he has to do some time. So may others have had to do some for less egregious violations.
Paul in KY
@JoyceH: Actually it was the British that wanted him to serve out (and never spill his guts on Edward VIII, etc.). When they found out the CCCP was going to vote to release him, they had him offed.
Paul in KY
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: You might have him checked out for dementia.