The Sarasota Police Department is investigating a sexual assault allegation against Christian Ziegler, chairman of the Republican Party of Florida. The complaint was made by a woman who says she has been in a consensual three-way relationship for several years with Ziegler and his wife, Moms for Liberty co-founder Bridget Ziegler. The accuser also alleges there are videos, and the ongoing investigation of the October incident included a forensic search of Ziegler’s phone.
In response to a request for a complaint filed against Ziegler, the Sarasota police provided the Tampa Bay Times with a heavily redacted report from early October that only revealed a few words, including “raped” and “sexually battered.” Nearly all other details from the report, including names, were blacked out, with police citing, in part, an active criminal investigation.
This news broke yesterday via an outfit I don’t think I’ve heard of before, The Florida Center for Government Accountability. Many details in their account are attributed to anonymous sources, but they were right about the investigation, which no one else was covering.
I can easily believe that moralizing family values-type Republicans who constantly lie about queer people corrupting children are secretly living double lives as swingers and rapists — that happens so frequently there are “not a drag queen” memes to go with incidents. But are these accusations true?
The reaction of the Zieglers’ local party and Moms for Liberty makes me suspect there’s something to it. Whereas Republican outfits usually back their people to the hilt and try to dismiss accusations as politically motivated, these organizations sound like they’re gearing up for a PR crisis.
On Thursday, the Moms for Liberty account on X, formerly known as Twitter, posted: “Yet another attempt today to ruin the reputation of a strong woman fighting for America. … We stand with @BridgetAZiegler & every other badass woman fighting for kids & America.”
The post was later deleted.
The Republican Party of Sarasota County said in a statement it was “shocked and disappointed to hear of the reports” concerning the Zieglers.
”The Republican Party takes all such allegations of potential criminal conduct very seriously and will fully cooperate with investigators,” the group said.
If true, this is a huge deal because of the Zieglers’ close ties to both the Trump and DeSantis camps. Ziegler won the party chair seat over a Tallahassee-based opponent in what was widely seen as a proxy battle between Trump and DeSantis supporters.
Bridget Ziegler not only leads Moms for Liberty, she’s a DeSantis-endorsed member of the Sarasota school board, swept into power on promises to Christianize public education by banning books and persecuting trans people. Bridget Ziegler whipped up support for the Don’t Say Gay law, and she’s one of several prominent culture war kooks/grifters the governor appointed to the oversight board he created to replace Disney World’s existing municipal services board.
We’ll see how this unfolds. The Zieglers’ activities could give new meaning to Florida’s former reputation as a “swing state.” Meanwhile, there’s probably not a single kernel of un-popped corn in the entire peninsula.
Open thread!
AxelFoley
I am absolutely SHOCKED by this.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@AxelFoley: Your winnings, sir.
matt
50 Shades of Brown.
NotMax
Guess this counts as the morning open thread.
If you’re at all into dramatic police procedurals it’s hard to top the French series Spiral. First season (of eight altogether) available on Prime for the month of December, in both subtitled and dubbed versions.
J.
Maybe Bridget can form a new group, Moms for Three-Ways.
Kay
Reminds me of this:
The longer these Trump people are on the public stage the more you understand why they embraced Trump despite their claims of religion and morality. They’re all exactly like him. He’s a genuinely good fit for the fundie Right. He’s revealed who they really are.
Jerry
Evidence number infinity that Republicans are all about controlling other people, especially women. This ties in neatly with this:
Princess
Is this Trump people sticking a knife in de Santis people? Either way, rooting for injuries. Love to see the in-fighting. And let’s us use it to destroy the whole Moms for Liberty brand. Liberty for some of them, I guess.
Jerry
letthemfight.gif
Betty Cracker
@Princess: The husband is a Trumper and the wife is a close ally of DeSantis, so I guess it’s a wash? My guess is the greater threat is to Moms for Liberty. Republican men, including the party’s national standard bearer, don’t lose support for sexual depravity up to and including rape. But women are more strictly policed, so hopefully that’ll work to our advantage for once and diminish the power of this highly toxic brand.
NotMax
Frottage à trois?
//
Geminid
@Kay: In Fallwell Junior’s case, there was a family tradition to uphold. His brother Jonathan is apparently a morally upstanding pastor, as was (apparently) Jerry Falwell Senior. But back in the day, the grandfather and his brother were well-known Campbell County bootleggers.
prostratedragon
Ah, ha-ha!
By contrast, good, good:
They plan to be explicit about this in campaign messaging. So good, good!
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
You do start to wonder though. Maybe a substantial portion of them are like this – sanctimonious religious scolds in public, swingers in private, and that’s why their behavior never seems to bother their base. Maybe that’s the disconnect we can never figure out.
dr. bloor
As always, three-ways for me, but not thee.
DeSantis is probably trying to figure out how to monetize this. Maybe a hot vid for every $50 campaign contribution?
K-Mo
Moms for Libertines
Kay
@Geminid:
I read quite a bit about it (but not family history) so thanks for that. The interesting part to me was what happened after Falwell at Liberty. A large group of women came forward and said they had been sexually assaulted at the school and they were blamed for the assaults (which Liberty then covered up). It was like Falwell’s downfall freed them to tell the truth about what was going on there.
Also- “the pool boy” (HAR HAR) was treated terribly by the media. He was not some slick Romeo. He actually was a very naive 20 year old who was himself raised in a conservative Catholic, Republican family. The Falwells were predators. They almost drove him to suicide.
Andrew Abshier
Sarasota resident here, and Bridget’s shenanigans on the school board were so bad even other conservatives on the board have turned against her. I have to admit to baleful amusement at the Zigs twisting in the wind now.
Mr. Ziegler tried to push through at-large representation on the Sarasota County board. It was defeated in referendum. He tried again, this time with a special election, and lost then, too.
prostratedragon
Milonga á trés
Baud
These people have got to be the biggest users of abortion rights.
RevRick
@Jerry: Or, “the law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.” Anatole France
Kay
I mean, maybe our “the religious base are being manipulated by these charlatans!” is naive. Maybe the religious base think all of this is fine because many of them are behaving the same way. At some point it becomes not the exception but the rule.
Kay
@Baud:
They just go to Virginia. Not that far.
Baud
@Kay:
Everyone has someone that they want to be unjust towards.
That’s how right wing attitudes tempt the lizard brain in all of us.
Baud
@Kay:
Not for people who can afford plaine tickets. Abortion in the morning, Colonial Williamsburg in the pm.
NotMax
@Kay
“God works in deleterious ways.”
//
Geminid
@Kay: Another aspect of the Fallwell Junior case: when the sex scandal broke, Liberty University board members were quick to fire Falwell because they already knew he was a day drinker. That was an open secret among Liberty University higher-ups.
Kay
@Andrew Abshier:
Public schools are really resilient as institutions. They’ve been attacked by various factions of the Right since liberals invented them and they usually bounce back after the conservatives get bored or discredited. By their nature the group within the school changes (parents and children) so they’re always sort of in flux. It’s been their great strength.
Barbara
@Kay: I think you are right. Life is messy, everyone has desires, so their point of shared values is mostly just an agreement about who should be punished for failing to uphold the topline creed, not whether they personally failed to meet it in their private life.
gvg
@Baud: I don’t know. They don’t seem to understand reproductive science that well.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I saw this yesterday. I got to the 3-way detail and rolled my eyes. Then I settled down to await developments.
Baud
@gvg:
Those are the people who need abortion most of all.
Another Scott
@Baud: I hope that investigators are checking for a dungeon in the basement of their favorite pizza parlor.
Cheers,
Scott.
Princess
@Kay: And they project all the dissonance of their lifestyles versus what they preach out onto us. We’re their scapegoats in a literal biblical sense — the goat that was killed to remove the sins of the rest of the community.
Betty Cracker
@Andrew Abshier: Glad to hear there’s pushback at the county level. When I was growing up, Sarasota Repubs were more of the monocle and moneybags variety than the tiki torch and hate-chanting strain. Maybe the Chamber types will reassert themselves eventually, not that they were any prize. But better than open fascists!
I’m seeing some pushback even in the rural red portions of the state. There’s a Moms for Liberty kook on the Hernando County school board a bit south of where I live who has also riled up members of that deeply conservative community with incessant warring against teachers and district officials. Wouldn’t surprise me if she gets bounced in the next election.
Ksmiami
@Princess: Liberty/libertine / potato/potahto. Republicans are always weird about sex.
Raoul Paste
@K-Mo: Nice!
Kay
@Geminid:
I’ve seen a lot of the hypocrisy living were I live and practicing law (small town lawyers know everything that goes on) and even I was shocked at video of one of Trump’s early speeches at Liberty. Just so nasty. This bitter, ungenerous tirade about how people take advantage and you can’t ever trust them. I thought “they’re showing this at a religious school?”
Falwell LOVED it. He was beaming. Another nasty piece of work.
Baud
@Kay:
The Republican base knows how awful their own people are, and take it on faith that liberals must be even worse.
mrmoshpotato
Color me not surprised.
prostratedragon
Not to be outdone, “Why Cornel West Is Broke”.
A different piece, from a different score: Milonga Tres
RevRick
@Baud: Reactionary politicians are forever railing against the loose morals behind Democratic policies, but the truth is their belief systems have a warping, deleterious effect on their souls. The reality is that, across the board, blue states have lower rates of dysfunction, whether that be teen pregnancies, divorces, alcoholism and drug addiction.
Reactionary politics reveals the truth that the notion “ the beatings will continue until morale improves,” never works. Systems built on fear, scolding, shaming, and criminalizing ordinary human failures only guarantee that there will be even more failures.
Baud
@RevRick:
Preach, Reverend. That is spot on.
randy khan
@NotMax:
Spiral is excellent, if occasionally hard to watch. We watched it on MHz, a streaming service specializing in foreign language shows, largely police procedurals. Other good shows (all very different from Spiral) on MHz include Montalbano (Italy), The Sandhamn Murders (Sweden), and The Art of Crime (also France), plus a pretty amusing Italian adaptation of Nero Wolfe. (The premise is that he’s been forced to leave the U.S. and has alighted in Rome.)
kalakal
The Party of the UnFaithful.
On a personal note have been having a miserable few days. Went to dentist on Weds as a tooth decided to start hurting, looks like I will be having one or maybe two root canals. Basically exploded Weds night, very sore, very swollen. Not a happy bunny
NotMax
@prostratedragon
That headline can be read two ways. Both correct.
WereBear
Color me completely unsurprised.
Those of us who have functional lives, with close relationships, and an understanding of the world around us, will hopefully never realize what goes in inside a MAGA head.
Just how desperate, false, and frantic the lives of MAGAs become… or, merely, continue, while balancing the weight of all that brainwashing on their soggy heads.
They can’t think. Not how an adult thinks.
Soprano2
@Kay: Yep, the reason they want this strict moralizing religion is because they think they can’t resist their basest impulses without it. When I heard that there was an app that informed on someone viewing porn to help them not do it, my first thought was “I don’t need that BECAUSE I DON’T WATCH PORN.” They’re all terrified of their baser instincts and feel since they can’t control themselves without all these “governors” the rest of us can’t either.
RevRick
@Baud: No, I think it’s more a case that the conservative mind begins with the assumption that human beings are shitty, and will do any shitty thing they can get away with. From that assumption they reach the conclusion that liberals are hypocrites, never considering the possibility that liberals don’t start from their sick assumptions.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: You misspelled “abusers”.
Baud
@RevRick:
I think liberals sometimes go too far in the other direction. They treat people with more good faith than the evidence before them calls for.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@kalakal: Oh ow. I’m sorry.
Baud
@kalakal:
That sucks. Hope you get relief soon.
Jerry
Oh man, that’s really good. It took me a second read to understand.
Geminid
@kalakal: I have found that sloshing salt water around my gums wiill sometimes help in this situation, at least temporarily.
Soprano2
@prostratedragon: This will be popular with people. No one likes all the fees and crap they tack on at the end.
Baud
rikyrah
Always projection with these people
pluky
Carl Hiaasen has the premise for his next book. Florida is such an embarrassment of literary riches.
lowtechcyclist
@Kay:
I don’t know – it still seems like the kinky consensual sex bothers them more than rape.
Just like those rape victims at Liberty and other fundie colleges, where the sin was that both the rapist and the victim had sex and so were seen as equally sinful, and the fact that one party had forced it on the other didn’t seem to count for anything.
Honus
@J.: I was thinking Moms for Libertines
ETA: sorry, didn’t see K-Mo beat me to it at #16
Tehanu
@Baud: But in their case, the abortion should be retroactive.
Brava!
espierce
Meanwhile, in other Florida news, DeSantis flayed alive by Newsome.
Twitter comment by “fake” Jack E. Smith:
“Governor Newsom, you had your fun. Please provide the combination to the locker you stuffed Ron DeSantis into last night, so we can return him to Roomba support for regular maintenance.”
prostratedragon
NotMax@46: To be serious for a moment, there’s a real tragedy buried in that article.
Chief Oshkosh
@K-Mo: dammit, beat me to it.
lowtechcyclist
@espierce:
Brilliant! The ‘Roomba support’ part is the perfect icing on the cake.
That must’ve been some ‘debate.’ Hoping to see some clips of the best moments!
MFA
@Honus: Or — MILFs for Liberty?
Betty Cracker
Regarding the Newsom – DeSantis debate, I didn’t see it but accounts I’ve read suggest it won’t move the needle for DeSantis, who desperately needs a boost. One article (Politico, maybe — hardly a liberal hub) suggested that Hannity’s attempts to help DeSantis with loaded questions and suspect framing made him (DeSantis) look weak. Pretty much everyone seems to think Hannity did a shitty job of moderating.
trnc
@prostratedragon: Better than nothing, but I doubt this is going to do much. People already know the fees are exorbitant, so it’s not so much of a surprise at the end that the 3-4 minutes of mystery will make a difference. I would much prefer a requirement that explains what the fees are allegedly used for. No way does it cost Ticketbastard more than a couple of dollars per ticket to operate their business, and I assume that their cut of the ticket itself is already profitable.
Michael Bersin
It’s all about the grift.
Not “morality” or “family values”. Those are just means to the grift.
We are not surprised, again.
VeniceRiley
#Moms3Liberty
lowtechcyclist
@MFA:
More like just MIFs for Liberty. ;-)
Lapassionara
@rikyrah: Ditto!
Kay
@Princess:
I’ve come around to believing this about religious fundies and abortion – they don’t consider womens lives or health because we’re the sacrifices they need to atone for their sins – but maybe it IS broader. Liberals have talked about it for years- how the highest divorce rates are the in Bible Belt, etc – hell, my husband is a normie and HE talks about it – how all his conservatve religious tennis buddies are divorced and he’s not – he says this TO THEM – and I suppose now we’ll be talking about it again now that the Religious Right has come roaring back in the GOP.
Baud
@VeniceRiley:
Heh.
Steeplejack
@lowtechcyclist:
@Acyn has coverage with video clips. Nitter link here.
Chief Oshkosh
@RevRick:
Sadly, that doesn’t mean the system fails existentially. For instance, the Catholic Church is still around after how many centuries?
AWOL
@Kay: We always knew who they were in so many ways, those sick, racist fucks.
When I lived in NJ in the 1970s, a guy who’d been working in Jesuslandia for a few years told me, “They fuck behind their respective spouses’ backs every Saturday night and then fall on their knees before Christ every Sunday morning.”
Can you imagine how many of their kids they rape?
Scout211
Thanks for that. In the local news here and in the national news this morning, the general consensus was that they yelled at each other, called each other names, didn’t answer any direct questions and were very loud, leaving Hannity in the dust. It’s good to hear that Newsome was the better debater because all I have read are reviews that are the usual “both sides” analyses.
I would never watch Fox News so I don’t have an opinion of the performances myself.
ETA: or what BC said @68
lowtechcyclist
@Betty Cracker:
Absolutely shocked to hear that! ;-)
That’s one reason I had to wonder about Newsom’s sanity in doing this debate: Hannity’s moderating was obviously going to be blatantly pro-DeSantis; it was going to be 2 on 1. (But in a different way from the thread topic. ;-)
Glad to hear that it seems to have backfired.
OzarkHillbilly
Not gonna weigh in on the specifics of whether or not 1 Corinthians 6:9 has been mistranslated or not (as so many other parts of the Bible have been) but 1946 is fairly recent in terms of history, so they should have had a wealth of materials and even a few witnesses to the 1971 “correction”.
Either way, I’d like to learn more of Kathy Baldock’s and Ed Oxford’s stories.
eta: as well as the filmmaker’s
narya
@Soprano2: And they’ve been convinced that their desires are terrible, shameful things, so they attempt to repress them; we see how that generally works out. Whereas, if they didn’t have all that shame at the start, they could find the path that is healthy FOR THEM. And then, of course, they project that shame and repression onto everyone else. If they weren’t so nasty to everyone else, I’d feel more compassion for them.
Phylllis
@prostratedragon: We spent the night in Charleston earlier in the week, and in reviewing the bill, I noticed there was a ‘destination fee tax’ tacked onto the destination fee. As a wise man I once knew always said, “Republicans hate a tax, but they sure love a fee.”
Betty
Lots of folks doubted that the debate was a good idea, but it seems Newsom was quite effective in making the case against DeSantis and for the Biden-Harris administration. I guess Hannity may be regretting giving Newsom this opportunity.
Edited to correct spelling.
RevRick
@Baud: Oh yeah, our danger is a naive woo-woo. No understanding of people is perfect. But I prefer to err on the side of grace. On the whole, too permissive is less a danger than too draconian.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Betty: The minute the votes are counted a year from now, both parties will be looking for their 2028 nominee. I think Newsom will be in the mix. I think DeSantis has blown his moment.
TF79
The lack of wagon-circling seems pretty telling.
Chief Oshkosh
@Kay: That’s a good point. I’m running through my mental Rolodex now, and I can’t think of a single conservative middle-aged person I know who isn’t divorced. I knew some in the past, but they’re long dead. Thinking further, nearly every one of the males of the former marriages is a real shit.
OzarkHillbilly
@AWOL: How much beer do you need to bring when fishing with a Southern Baptist?
At least a case.
How about when with 2 Southern Baptists?
A 6 pack should do it.
I know, we’ve all heard this joke before, but it still encapsulates the hypocrisy of so many on the christian right.
Kosh III
@RevRick: “I think it’s more a case that the conservative mind begins with the assumption that human beings are shitty”
It’s called Original Sin. We are all born depraved thanks to Adam and Steve.
Ladyraxterinok
@Geminid:
@RevRick:
@RevRick:
Many Evangelicals (GOP diehards) are Calvinists(Mohler has pushed that theological brand on the SBC)
The 5 point Calvin’s (known as TULIP) starts with T, a statement that all people live in Total Deparavity.
Thus they are “groomed” to believe the worst of eveyone
Another Scott
@trnc: Reminds me of some statement about MotU’s compensation.
Something like: “Chairman X gets $10M a year to run the corporation. He doesn’t need $100M in stock options in addition to that to do his job. He’s already being paid to do his job.”
The price should be the final price the customer pays. Biden’s right to go after these junk fees, excessive overdraft charges, and all the rest. It’s usury by another name.
Grr…,
Scott.
narya
@Chief Oshkosh: I saw something–possibly here on BJ, possibly elsewhere–that noted that even R women get tired of dealing with R men, contributing to that statistic. The entitled whining and general sense that their wives are not their partners or equals is just . . . tiring.
SFAW
@Soprano2:
As the Eleventh Doctor said: “Good men don’t need rules.”
SFAW
@narya:
Well, li’l lady, let me mansplain why you’re worng.
zhena gogolia
@kalakal: I’m sorry. I hope it can be fixed quickly and painlessly.
Geminid
@Ladyraxterinok: I’ve noticed that there is a growing controversy over Calvinism within the Southern Baptist denomination. I thought this was a promising development; maybe they’ll go back to brawling about doctrine instead of fighting for temporal political power
OzarkHillbilly
@SFAW: But why oh why does my wife impose so many rules on me???
Kay
It’s funny because with Trump in charge of all Republicans and the Republican Party I think people tended to think they would temper some of the far religious Right fundie craziness, political media definitely thought that, hell, they’re STILL trying to sell Trump as a moderate on social issues- but the opposite has happened. The Religious Right is back, baby, and zanier than ever!
They’re further Right on social issues than they were prior to Trump becoming cult leader. Now it has this scary, violent authoritarian “nationalist” seasoning added, but other than that it’s pure 1980s fundie.
WereBear
Had I stayed in the Deep South, the kind in The Little Foxes, I would have been encouraged to choose from this pool. And probably (like so many women) gotten together with a deeply closeted Southern Baptist gay man.
We would fall in love with each other over art and music and treating each other like people, and ten years and three kids in, it would all fall apart.
I suspected it as a child, but I think few of them could withstand a modern mental health evaluation, even before MAGA turned it up to eleven.
SFAW
@OzarkHillbilly:
You and me both, amigo. [No, wise guy, it’s my wife, not your wife, who is imposing the rules on me.]
But as jackals are fond of saying: you know what you did.
prostratedragon
By the way, 🐇🐇.
kalakal
Newsome has gone viral with a superbly brutal burn on DeStupid
Murder by words
SFAW
@Geminid:
Always possible, I guess, but I’m thinking they’ll just multitask.
zhena gogolia
@Steeplejack: Oh, those are sweet.
Another Scott
@OzarkHillbilly: Good, Good.
Now do Revelation 1:1 – …
And Matthew 16:28.
And …
;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Kay
@Chief Oshkosh:
It’s really true of Right wing prosecutors – they think the worst of everyone – probably because they themselves are bad. Sometimes they come up with these elaborate wacky theories for motive or how things occurred – zebras instead of horses- and you want to say “wow- VERY active imagination – is this about the case or your inner (secret) life?”
zhena gogolia
@kalakal: Great compilation!
OzarkHillbilly
@OzarkHillbilly: I found it on Youtube: 1946 The Movie: The Mistranslation That Shifted Culture With Rocky Roggio.
prostratedragon
@Phylllis: That is so true! It even filters into “efficient” public finance models.
Kay
@kalakal:
I like him. You really can’t fake that, enjoying a good brawl. He is a happy warrior. I only watched a clip, so maybe 3 minutes, but I was surprised DeSantis avoided looking directly at him. In my experience that’s really a “tell” that the other person is intimidated and uncomfortable with conflict. Newsome looks right at DeSantis. DeSantis stares into the space ahead of himself.
OzarkHillbilly
@SFAW: :-) TBH, my wife is a saint who tolerates all of my faults and foibles. Either that or a sucker.
cmorenc
@Kay:
Nailed it.
Marmot
@Princess: That’s still figurative.
/pedantry
Princess
@Kay: That’s why I think it’s actually good that Fundamentalist weasel Mike Johnson is their House leader. Show the country what they’re about and what their agenda is. You want more of this? You know what to do.
schrodingers_cat
@kalakal: See a dental surgeon ASAP. It sounds like your root/s may be infected.
SFAW
@OzarkHillbilly:
Mrs. SFAW as well, at least re: the first part.
My advice: disabuse yourself of the “sucker” thing. [Yes, I know you were joking.]
Albatrossity
As Faulkner may have said, the past is not dead, it’s in my phone.
I imagine that the search of his phone would be quite revealing, on several fronts.
Princess
@Marmot: The goat was an actual goat. The sins of the community were ascribed to it. It was killed. You don’t get more literal than that.
/biblical pedantry
SFAW
@Marmot:
Literally, as Steve in the WTFKW would say.
SFAW
@kalakal:
Some of the tweets are/were hilarious.
kalakal
@schrodingers_cat: Thanks. Yes, 2pm this afternoon, , my dentist referred me to a surgeon when I saw him on Weds. They definitely are on one tooth
schrodingers_cat
OT: Has any BJer done the Artist’s Way?
RaflW
Ron DeSantis is calling for Ziegler to resign. The speed with which they are being offloaded says very strongly to me they were in that three way (the rape charge is a heavier lift) and there’s enough breadcrumbs about their kink that the game is over.
Moms for Book Burning need to pay a heavy price for this. What can we do to assist in that?
JaneE
Even if the rape charges are false, having videos of a three-way doesn’t sit all that well with the parents who want to ban true-story books about gay penguins. If just being gay or trans or acknowledging that there are people who are gay and trans is enough to constitute “grooming”, what does a long standing three way sex partnership do to the kids?
People whose life includes sexual activity that is outside the norm shouldn’t try to be champions of that norm for all, much less imposing it by force.
RAM
The Republican Party takes all such allegations of potential criminal conduct so seriously, in fact, that its members try to emulate those activities every chance they get.
Doug R
“(Two) Moms For Liberty”
sab
@Kay: I only just realized recently that in Ohio marital rape is not illegal. The legislature is working on changing that. I guess Issue 1 was a wakeup call to them that women are fed up and voting.
Bobby Thomson
@J.: Popular alternatives are MILFs for Liberty and Moms for Libertines
OzarkHillbilly
@Another Scott:
According to the article, they didn’t stop with Corinthians 1, they looked at a bunch of other passages as well. Can’t say as to whether they touched on the 2 you cite.
Steeplejack
@schrodingers_cat:
I did The Artist’s Way when it first came out—jeez, has it been 30 years?—and I remember it as being somewhat useful, but not the panacea that these things are often hyped to be. The “morning pages” thing was especially useful, but I was already a journal keeper.
RaflW
@schrodingers_cat: Honest answer: I started The Artists Way with three friends, so that we’d have an accountability circle and chances to reflect together. Even with that, I bogged down fairly quickly. I personally just couldn’t set the habit (I’m sure very meaningful and for many people helpful) of morning pages writing.
The group hung together as we were all self-employed and needed community to support our struggling entrepreneurship, but that particular tool wasn’t right for us. YMMV, and it could well be worth a shot.
WereBear
@kalakal: Pretty quick! I just got back from my new one — and I lucked into a cancellation to see them within a week.
However, my new dentist was able to put in some pain relief and delaying actions which helped.
Funny thing around here: we lost restaurants and dental practices during the Plague Years. Now I have to drive an hour, but they are both top-notch so far.
OzarkHillbilly
Oh no, I tell her all the time that “SAP” is written across her forehead, so plainly even the dogs can read it. She can’t deny it.
WaterGirl
@RaflW:
I don’t have an answer to that, but I like the way you think!
Steeplejack
Redacted.
OzarkHillbilly
@RaflW: Write a children’s book titled, “A Game that 3 can play”?
WaterGirl
@OzarkHillbilly: Yeah, but what about the second Corinthian? Isn’t he weighing in on this? //
RaflW
@JaneE: Never mind that it’s kind of a challenge to have a three way that doesn’t involve at least some same-sex contact among two (or more) of the participants.
So Mrs. Ban-the-gays has been bisexualizing for an indeterminate length of time. I know hypocrisy is a charge with zero sticking power among Republicans, but it may have some traction, when there’s girl-on-girl action.
Bobby Thomson
@OzarkHillbilly: Protestants don’t recognize the Pope as having special authority. Jews don’t recognize Jesus as the Messiah. Southern Baptists don’t recognize each other at the liquor store.
Steeplejack
Kissinger in historical context—by fans who know!
schrodingers_cat
@Steeplejack: I have just started it. And so far done the morning pages for 4 days now. Thanks for sharing your experience.
geg6
@Baud:
Saw a few clips from that. Newsom eviscerated Puddin’ Boy. It was pretty much not very consequential in the scheme of things, but it was entertaining watching Newsom murder him.
schrodingers_cat
@kalakal: Keeping my fingers crossed for you! I hope you get some relief soon.
OzarkHillbilly
@WaterGirl: I don’t know the bible well enough to catch your sarcasm.
RaflW
@OzarkHillbilly: A parody book cover based on Heather Has Two Mommies called Daddy Has Two Girlfriends, with the Zeiglers faces boldly visible?
Princess
If Bridget Zeigler were smart and capable, she’d have a teary press conference today in which she announced that her terrible husband coerced her into this sinful lifestyle, but she’s divorcing him and rediscovering her relationship with the Lord. That way she could salvage her own reputation. But given how she was probably raised and what circles she has no doubt travelled in, I bet that is beyond her even to imagine.
Betty Cracker
@RaflW: I just saw that in WaPo. I wonder if DeSantis would call for resignation if his man had prevailed in the GOP chairman race that was functionally a Trump-DeSantis proxy war? (Ziegler is Trump’s man.) My guess: nope. They have no principles.
As for how this can be leveraged to undermine Moms for Liberty, I think everyone was getting sick of those book-banning, queer-bashing nutjobs anyway, so hopefully every candidate they endorse will have to answer questions from reporters and citizens about why they’re associating with an organization founded by a depraved hypocrite
ETA: Of course, every Repub is associated with the depraved hypocrite Trump, but as noted upthread, women’s behavior tends to be more closely policed.
KSinMA
@kalakal: Oh dear, so sorry!
RaflW
@geg6: Gavin saying (roughly) “Neither one of us is going to be the 2024 nominee” to Ron is a great line. It make it clear that Newsom isn’t doing this debate as some sort of coming at Biden, and reduces Ron to the sideshow he is now.
Baud
Sandra Day O’Connor is dead.
Redshift
@trnc:
I wouldn’t be so sure. I read an article recently about a company (Netflix, maybe?) that tried a change to up-front pricing, doing a test where users randomly got either that or fees at the end. They found that users were more likely to complete the purchase if the fees were at the end (probably because they were invested in the process by that point), and also that it made them perceive competitors with fees tacked on as being cheaper, even though they knew the price didn’t include fees.
So it’s really a problem that can only be solved by regulation — if it’s done individually, a company that tries to give people what they want (up-front pricing and a fair comparison) loses competitively. But if it’s required, companies with lower or no fees are the ones at an advantage.
WaterGirl
From the twitter feed of some unknown person named “Jo”:
Too long for a rotating tag, dammit!
Steeplejack
@WaterGirl:
“Two Corinthians walk into a bar . . .”
geg6
@Betty Cracker:
TPM has some clips in their Morning Memo. Hilarious.
WaterGirl
@OzarkHillbilly: You don’t remember Trump thinking that 2 Corinithians was about “two Corinthians”?
As in “two Corinthians walk into a bar”.
WaterGirl
@RaflW: You know, even just a simple mockup of that cover would probably go viral on social media!
CaseyL
Authoritarianism attracts people who have no internal code to speak of. People empty of anything but solipsistic appetite.
It’s a natural fit for psychopaths and sociopaths – they attain leadership positions.
It’s also a natural fit for people who feel profoundly lost and alienated – they attain community. And, since they have no internal compass, they take on the values of that community, as promulgated by its leadership…whatever those values are at any given moment, subject to change at the whim of the leaders.
Being in an authoritarian mindset also relieves the leadership of having to “live up to” espoused values – the lower orders not only don’t expect it from them, they get a vicarious thrill seeing their adored leaders break conventional moral/ethical boundaries. It shows how powerful their leaders are, validating their choice to follow them.
frosty
@prostratedragon: Yeah, the resort fees were an expensive surprise on our trip to Hawaii this summer:
“But what if I’m not going to use the gym or the beach towels? Do I still have to pay this?”
“Yes”
geg6
@Chief Oshkosh:
The only one I come into contact with and know well is my staff assistant. She’s on marriage #5.
TS
@RaflW:
gift link
https://wapo.st/49YXjqF
sdhays
Not the same level as Kissinger, 2023 has now also taken Sandra Day O’Connor.
UncleEbeneezer
Leave it to Republicans to somehow ruin three-ways. I’ve been hanging out in some online kink spaces and it’s surprising how popular they are with conservatives. Sadly, there are a lot of people who want the freedom to have their fun and even break traditional gender norms and lifestyle standards, while continuing to support shitty politicians who maintain those rigid and restrictive norms and are totally fine with legislation that punishes women, LGBTQ people etc. It’s a super-gross example of their “Freedom For Me, But Not For Thee.” I’ve been listening to some really good sex podcasts and one of the podcast hosts said some really progressive-sounding, Feminist stuff only in lay terms. So I wrote in to her praising her for it and saying how important it is that people like her (she has a lot of listeners) pushing back at the Patriarchy, which is the ultimate source of the bonds that restrict so many people from exploring their sexual and gender identity etc. So she read my comment on her next episode, thanked me for the kind words but then clarified that she doesn’t really believe in Patriarchy and then gave an explanation that indicated that she had no idea what Patriarchy actually is or how it works! And she hosts one of the top sex podcasts around. All of which is to just reiterate the fact that there seems to be very little correlation between interest in kink and a generally Sex+ outlook and any interest in understanding Systemic Oppressions that are intimately related to sex/gender. Studies and polls show that Conservatives are even more interested in kink stuff than Progressives, and watch more porn too. But don’t ever let that fool you into thinking it changes their views about Women, LGBTQ People etc.
Steeplejack
@Baud:
She was dead to me long ago after her hack election-rigging vote in 2000.
OzarkHillbilly
I once spent more than a few wkends caving in TAG every year. On at least one of those trips I found myself into a quick stop store in Scottsboro AL on a Sunday morning in search of beer. This being the heart of the Bible Belt one would expect bans on selling alcohol on a Sunday, but Scottsboro didn’t, they had a unique solution to the problem of saving SB’s precious eyes from the sight of alcohol. You’d go to the counter first and ask for a brown paper bag. Then go to the Beer cooler, get your beer and put it in the bag. The cashier would look in the bag and ring it up. You pay and go.
The whole thing sounded rather silly (everybody knew what was in the bag) but personally I thought it was a genius solution to protecting the feefees of the SBs while allowing a thirsty me to buy beer on a Sunday morn.
Scout211
Yes, Ron, scrutiny is definitely your enemy. LOL
Omnes Omnibus
@sdhays: 2023 already took a better O’Connor.
RevRick
@Ladyraxterinok: I am a Calvinist. Southern white evangelicalism is what happened when Calvinists made a deal with the devil— slavery. I am what happens when we saw clearly what an evil slavery was. Most of those who opposed the Trail of Tears, and were abolitionists were Calvinist clergy and their families. My branch of Calvinism ordained the first black man, Lemuel Haynes, in 1785, ordained the first woman, Antoinette Brown, in 1853, and ordained the first openly gay man, Bill Johnson, in 1980.
If I sound defensive, it’s because I think I am standing on some ground worth defending.
Frankensteinbeck
@OzarkHillbilly:
I find this one fascinating. Arsenokoitai appears twice in the Bible and nowhere else. It’s a completely made up word. It could mean anything, was assigned ‘sodomy’ in the King James, and yes, the context of passage it appears in is about prepubescent slave boys forced to work as prostitutes.
Suzanne
@sdhays: As an ex-Arizonan, I have highly mixed feelings about Sandra Day O’Connor (much as I feel about John McCain).
Mostly I think she sucked.
geg6
@Steeplejack:
Same. Fuck her.
UncleEbeneezer
@Princess: Sadly that might even be true. Men pressuring/coercing their wives into swinging and other variations of non-monogamy lifestyles, is a really common problem.
RaflW
@OzarkHillbilly: Dunno if it’s still the case, but TX used to allow retail alcohol sales till midnight every night, and some earlish hour every day… except Sunday. That day, you couldn’t buy alcohol till noon. BUT, they extended the Saturday night sales till 1 a.m. Sunday. Which IS the Lord’s Very Early Morning if you ask me, but somehow exempt. Because it’s not ever about what it claims to be about with religious conservatives.
(When we first moved to Houston in 1980, we liked going to a Mexican place for Sunday brunch. They had free champagne for the adults, because they couldn’t sell booze before noon. Clever!)
OzarkHillbilly
@WaterGirl: I remember him citing 2 Corinthians and getting shit for the way he said it (not 2nd Corinthians) and beyond that I paid zero attention to the pile on because I’m not Christian enough to care what words one uses in citing the Bible.
Betty Cracker
@UncleEbeneezer: Some folks seem able to work out what’s fair and just without formally studying systemic oppression and acquiring the lingo. That’s good because most people probably aren’t going to do that work.
RevRick
@Kosh III: The word depravity comes from the French “pravus” meaning stick, and Jean Cauvin would have known that. We are all crooked sticks in our own ways, shaped by the crooked stickness of the world and our families of origin. But he never intended fit to be interpreted as hopeless, because he adhered to the Reformation doctrine of “simul Justus et peccator,” which means we’re both sinners and saints at the same time.
RaflW
@prostratedragon: I have noticed that Marriott at least now has a toggle in the app and web site that lets you select “show total price per night” which includes all mandatory costs (room, resort fees, and all taxes).
Doesn’t include the too-often exorbitant parking ($35/nt for us recently on Pompano Beach — but I know where to look during booking to see that. We got a great deal overall and I just lumped the valet cost in because it was a holiday trip and we needed us some beach. Just really wish it hand’t been in Flori-duh. Sorry Betty).
Omnes Omnibus
DC Circuit rules that Donald Trump CAN be sued for inciting the Jan. 6 crowd. He is not immune because he was president. Link to Opinion (PDF).
ETA: To forestall the question: Yes, this can and probably will be appealed to the Supreme Court who, IMO, will not take the case.
Ken
That was my reaction yesterday, when the county GOP released their statement about the seriousness of the allegations. The usual response is to deny and claim it’s a political attack, like that Moms for Liberty tweet in the quote — which has now been deleted, hmmm….
It makes me wonder just how many people already knew about this.
brendancalling
We covered MFL on the Progress Pondcast a few months ago when those devils came to Philly, and we will be revisiting them this week when we release the next episode.
I love seeing evil people get busted like this. And I have no doubt the allegations are true—not only is it always projection with these people, but the Florida GOP (even DeathSentence) is backing away from the Zieglers like they have typhoid fever.
And while we’re highlighting at the Zieglers and their raping (why are Republicans always raping?), let’s not forget that the head of Philadelphia’s MFL chapter is a convicted child molester.
Maybe they should call their group “Moms for Libertines.”
Geminid
@RaflW: I think that Georgia still doesn’t allow alcohol sales until noon on Sunday. I found that out one Sunday at a Publix in Atlanta.
Marmot
@Princess: I do love a pedantic tiff.
If we’re the literal goats in any sense, I’ve really been doing it wrong.
Nettoyeur
@NotMax: Spiral (French title: Engrenages = gears) is great, in the vein of The Wire. Even better if you speak French and have lived in France, but still excellent without that.
Haydnseek
@WaterGirl: And for those of us old enough to remember the Chrysler Cordoba commercial with Ricardo Montalban—It was a leather bar.
jonas
I forget if I read it here or maybe some place like Wonkette earlier this week that there’s a movement afoot among a lot of right-wing Christian Talibangicals now that they deep-sixed Roe to go after no-fault divorce (i.e. to get granted a divorce, you have to prove adultery, abuse, or abandonment — no more “irreconcilable differences”). I’m sure, though, that they’ll make the man’s bar to prove these things in a spouse he wants to offload a lot easier than for the woman.
Nettoyeur
@NotMax: Oh la la super !
schrodingers_cat
OT: Has anyone here used 100% cotton resume paper to practice watercolor? If so what brand did you use.
narya
@Omnes Omnibus: whoa. That’s one for which I was waiting. I think you’re right, that SCOTUS won’t take it. Can they stay anything to hold off not taking it until after the 2024 election? (They did that w/ some voting rights cases, IIRC.)
WereBear
@Princess: Southern Baptists don’t want wives who are smart and capable.
rikyrah
RIP Sandra Day O’Connor
Matt McIrvin
@Princess: I was just thinking about how any child will tell you it’s not fair to be blamed or punished for something somebody else did that you had no control over, but adults create whole moral systems around the idea that this actually makes sense.
Nettoyeur
@Kay: This phenomenon is not new. The 17th C French playright Molière wrote about religious hypocrites and sexy times in the play Tartuffe, as did Nathaniel Hawthorne in the Scarlet Letter.
Steeplejack
The NYT has posted a retrospective article on Sandra Day O’Connor (🎁 link) that covers other cases of her hackitude that I had forgotten about.
Omnes Omnibus
@Nettoyeur: I believe Chaucer touched on it as well.
Another Scott
@WaterGirl:
JoJofromJerz has had a strong Twitter game for quite a while.
(Dunno who she is exactly, but she occasionally posts pictures with the President, inside the WH grounds, etc.)
Cheers,
Scott.
Miss Bianca
@Kay: I remember being genuinely shocked when I learned that some of the most prominent Republicans in the small town I moved to in western Colorado used to indulge in something called “key parties”.
I had no idea what this meant until someone explained it to me – you all showed up at someone’s house, put your car/house keys into a basket, which got passed around and the keys got plucked out at random- who picked? I dunno, but I’m guessing the males in the crowd – and then you went home with whomever.
I was like, “Damn, Skippy. Sorry, but that’s just gross.” (And then I couldn’t stop thinking about it when I’d see the Mayor, who was also the Fire Chief. Who was also my neighbor. Yeah, it was weird.)
Suzanne
@jonas: There is absolutely a movement to ban no-fault divorce, because women initiate most divorces. LMAO.
I will note that even though lots of social conservatives engage in divorce, they aren’t really okay with it and there’s lots of judgment about it, so they will make sure others know that it’s a “Biblical divorce”.
JaneE
@RaflW: but only men were forbidden to lie with other men
Nelle
@schrodingers_cat: Morning pages since 2009. But. Sometimes, they are just a whine fest, nothing creative. Still, it gets some of the whining out of the way. The better insights, the better writing begins near the middle of the last page. My mind has a lot of sludge to work through.
Miss Bianca
@kalakal: Sorry to hear it. I’ve been having tooth issues too, but been between dentists and kind of dreading what the news is going to be when I finally get back into the chair.
Another Scott
@OzarkHillbilly: I could see someone messing that up.
It was the (roughly) “that’s the one you like, right?” bit that got me. It was obviously, and explicitly, lazy pandering. It showed exactly who he is, but nobody in the cult cared.
“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” – M.A.
Grr…,
Scott.
lowtechcyclist
@OzarkHillbilly:
Nowhere does the article mention which translation of the Bible they’re talking about. It’s not like there’s just one.
I’m going to guess it was the Revised Standard Version, since the RSV was the standard Protestant translation during the post-WWII generation, at least for non-KJVers.
OzarkHillbilly
@Frankensteinbeck:
If you read the article, they interview 2 (3? more?) Greek Scholars who came up with a translation for Arsenokoitai (which they said was a combination of 2 different words). Their translation had to do with sexual perversions but homosexual relations were not picked out (?) / a part of it(?).
All of this carries the caveat of “IIRC.” I read the whole piece but I did not memorize it and may have unintentionally combined 2 unrelated paragraphs (I have committed such sins before).
Omnes Omnibus
@Miss Bianca: FWIW, I have only seen it in movies about the ’70s, but the women picked. The men can’t pick someone else’s car keys, you silly girl. It’s their car, you see.
schrodingers_cat
@RaflW: Thanks for sharing your experience. I have started with the pages.
@Nelle: Same here. So far they are working better than the to-do lists I make!
WaterGirl
@Steeplejack: The only thing I respect about her is that she publicly acknowledgded what she had done.
Ken
Oh come now. How difficult could it be to hear “person man woman camera tv” and repeat back “man woman woman livestream onlyfans”?
sdhays
@Steeplejack: Yep. She wanted to retire and chose the man to appoint her replacement.
She joined a coup for the most banal of reasons.
OzarkHillbilly
@RaflW: Heh. Arkansas still has a fair number of dry counties, a fact some people aren’t aware of. The easiest way to know you are entering a dry county is because there is always a liquor store or 3 at the county line. Except of course when one is going from one dry county to another.
Another Scott
@schrodingers_cat: Not for watercolors, but a few decades ago I used to write letters with a fountain pen on Crane’s Kid Finish “paper”. Good stuff. (They make the “paper” for US currency.)
HTH a little.
Cheers,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: Children are very good about knowing what’s fair.
See also, dogs.
jonas
If you recall, it’s basically what allowed a young state senator named Barack Obama to snag a Senate seat in Illinois a few years back…
Citizen Alan
@Kay: Evangelical Christians are basically taught from a very early age that if they will just agree to get dunked in the magic bathtub, usually between the ages of 6 and 9, they can do whatever they want for the rest of their lives and still get into heaven. It is the most pernicious form of tribalism in America today, because it teaches children at a very young age that it is socially acceptable to be a sociiopath as long as you carry the right tribal markers.
Scout211
NBC News has a gossipy behind-the-scenes report on the Newsom-DeSantis debate.
Sparks flew behind the scenes at the Ron DeSantis and Gavin Newsom debate
jonas
@OzarkHillbilly: I don’t know if it still is, but many years ago I had the pleasure of visiting Berea College in KY and it was in a dry county at the time. Meals were lovely and paired well with the fresh ice water and a wedge of lemon, as I recall.
MattF
Santos is expelled.
Old Man Shadow
Anyone who loudly screams about what other people are doing in the privacy of their bedrooms has a closet full of sex scandals at home.
UncleEbeneezer
@Betty Cracker: Sure but there’s light-years of distance between studying Systemic Oppression and believing that Patriarchy isn’t real. Her answer was filled with the same Anti-Feminist bullshit that I used to argue all the time, when I was in my twenties and completely clueless (and in denial) about Feminism. I don’t expect everyone to be an expert on Patriarchy and Systemic Racism, but I do believe that anyone who flat out denies them, really shouldn’t host podcasts that preach sexual freedom.
Baud
@MattF: Historic.
Scout211
Bipartisanship is back!
Alison Rose
Glad to hear folks are happy about how the debate went, but for the love of the Bear Republic, can y’all please remember it’s Newsom, no ‘e’ on the end? I don’t know why it bugs me so much but it does, LOL. Maybe because I also get my name spelled wrong a lot so I’m overly reactive to it.
But yeah, sounds like he kicked Puddin’ Boy’s ass, even if Fox wants to pretend otherwise. I loved this moment when he corrected Ron on how to pronounce the VP’s name and told him “it’s Madam Vice President to you”. Fuck yeah.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: Good to know, thank you!
Anyway
@Geminid:
Same with DE. Don’t know if it has changed now but old habits die hard and I don’t take a chance with the liquor store on Sunday until the afternoon. I lived in Philly for a long time and am used to crazy liquor sale rules…
Tony Jay
@UncleEbeneezer:
My friend has a pretty simple theory about conservatives and their cognitive dissonance where illicit sexy business is concerned. They want it to be illicit. They want it illegal and suppressed and carried out in dark places, because they get off on the seediness of it. They used to say that there was nary a Tory MP who hadn’t, at one time or another, buggered a rent boy, but that never stopped them from voting to keep buggery illegal and standing in judgement over ‘immoral lifestyles’.
For my money there’s also the power dynamic. Harder to go to the Police or the Press with stories about being sexually exploited if the sex you’re talking about is illegal anyway and the person you’re accusing is a well-connected politician who can and will use the law to silence and punish you.
Alison Rose
@MattF: HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHAHAHA BYE BITCH
Miss Bianca
@Omnes Omnibus:
Ah, now I am enlightened.
Or maybe endarkened, I dunno, it’s still early-ish over here and I’m thus still on my first cup of coffee.
Delk
The Moms for Libertines thing was all over Twitter yesterday— I’m sure Pete Doherty and Carl Barât are laughing at the publicity. Their group, The Libertines has a new album coming out.
edited for typo.
Soprano2
@lowtechcyclist: The way they see it, the woman is just as much at fault because her attractiveness made it impossible for the man to resist her. If only she hadn’t shown the bottom part of her leg, they think, he wouldn’t have done that. It’s a gross mindset, but it’s real.
Scout211
@Alison Rose: oopsie! Thank you for the correction.
I know how to spell Newsom’s name but his name is so close to awesome, my fingers get confused. 😉
CaseyL
]@MattF:
The news I see only says that the vote is happening now, not the result.
ETA: OK, confirmed by Marc Elias:
BREAKING: George Santos EXPELLED 311-114.
Eunicecycle
@Citizen Alan: I had a fundy tell me that, too; that once you are “saved” you cannot do anything to be “unsaved.” He happened to be a good guy as far as I have seen so he did not seem to be taking advantage of this get out of jail free card, but I imagine there are many who do.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: I may be misremembering, but what I recall is that it showed that he had no idea how the numbering in the bible works, ie that he has absolutely no familiarity with the bible – as he was pandering to so-called Christians.
Ken
I don’t drink, so the only liquor-law idiocy I’ve noticed is the little kabuki dance when the checkout clerk is under 21, and has to call an older clerk to swipe the booze over the scanner. Apparently the swipe meets the legal definition of “selling” the liquor, since the youngster then takes over again, receiving the payment and handing over the receipt.
Truly the majesty of the law is a wondrous thing.
Baud
@CaseyL: Dammit. I hate premature jubilation.
Soprano2
@Kay: It’s not a coincidence that in stories it’s always female virgins who are sacrificed for some reason. They honestly believe women are unclean and evil, and constantly need to be “cleansed” to be full human beings.
Scout211
@CaseyL: CNN live update:
sdhays
@CaseyL: I just got an alert that he’s been expelled.
The Republican majority is now officially even more tenuous.
CaseyL
@Baud: No, it really did happen! I updated my comment.
He’s OUT!
OzarkHillbilly
@Another Scott: I could easily mess it up. I don’t and have never studied the Bible, but there are a few parts I like to quote that basically encapsulate how I think people should behave, universal values and all that. Obviously Christian conservatives have different parts they like to quote.
The difference is I am not pretending to be anything I am not, just stating how I personally feel.
marcopolo
Santos has been expelled!
Edited to add with the R Congressman from OH leaving & McCarthy making noises about leaving, that would mean a 2 vote margin for House Rs. And I think the stupid “a single member can bring a motion to vacate the Speakership” rule is still in effect. I predict fun times ahead.
Anyway
@Miss Bianca:
My dentist retired just before the pandemic and I put off finding a new one. So went 3+ years without a visit and was dreading going back to one. Finally went to one on a friend’s recommendation and it wasn’t too bad. It was much worse in my mind.
TL:DR – Do it!
OzarkHillbilly
@lowtechcyclist: They probably say which version in the documentary.
Soprano2
@narya: My husband had a friend that we were convinced was a repressed homosexual. His hatred toward both most women and homosexuals was pretty extreme, in the “doth protest too much” vein. He never had a good relationship with a woman; he did get married when he was young and had a son, I have no idea how.
Omnes Omnibus
@Delk: New Libertines album? Yay!
Subsole
@Geminid: I expect they’ll intensify their hate campaigns in a desperate attempt to forestall said brawling. So that simmering tension is likely a net negative.
I mean, isn’t a lot of what the Right is, now? Hate for Libs so they don’t have to sit around hating each other?
Baud
@CaseyL: Woohoo!
rikyrah
When Don and Barbara Rickles met Bob and Ginnie Newhart, they became friends for life — as told in Judd Apatow’s latest film
By Rick Kogan
Chicago Tribune
•
Published: Nov 29, 2023 at 5:00 am
Here, ladies and gentlemen, is Bob Newhart:
“Somebody called me up and they said, ‘Look, Don Rickles is looking for a best friend … and none of us wanna do it. Would you?’
“And I said, ‘How long?’
“They said, ‘A year at the most’.”
Bob Newhart and Don Rickles were friends for nearly 60 years and that unlikely pairing has been captured, the above joke included, in the latest film from Judd Apatow, the acclaimed director/producer of such hit movies as “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” and “The King of Staten Island,” and TV’s “Freaks and Geeks.
This movie, codirected by Michael Bonfiglio, is titled “Bob and Don: A Love Story.” It is only 20 minutes long and playing not in theaters or on any streaming service. But it is on The New Yorker magazine’s website, accompanied by a fine story by Bruce Handy, in which Apatow tells him, “I don’t think there are two comedians that most comedians like more than Don Rickles and Bob Newhart. They’re just completely beloved characters. You might not notice it on the surface, but their influence is very deep in how people try to be funny.
“Bob and Don: A Love Story” is, flat out, one of the best movies of this or any year, an affectionate and admiring film that entertainingly uses archival footage, home movies, selected performance bits and interviews to tell its story. Filmed after the deaths of Don Rickles (in 2017) and his wife Barbara (2021), it features recent interviews with both Newharts, Bob and Ginnie. Children Mindy Rickles and Tim Newhart offer charming anecdotes and enlightening observations.
There are ample examples of the wildly different styles of the two men. Even those too young to have seen and watched and laughed along with Newhart and Rickles in their prime will delight in these clips and will likely dive deep into the hundreds of internet repositories of their lengthy careers.
Here, ladies and gentlemen, is Don Rickles, on the difference between his and Newhart’s comedic styles:
“Well, yeah. Bob’s a brainy kind of comedian and I’m a kind of guy that gets laughs.”
https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/ct-ent-bob-newhart-don-rickles-documentary-kogan-20231129-6dcz3jzxbncwhpqamoocrp5bxa-story.html
Alison Rose
@Scout211: Haha I accept that excuse ;)
Lapassionara
@marcopolo: Wow! I didn’t think they would do it. Good!
Delk
@Omnes Omnibus: new single Run Run Run is out.
Omnes Omnibus
@Soprano2:
Ahem, when two adults….
kalakal
@MattF: They’ve yet to build the
jaillegislature that can hold George Santos!WaterGirl
@Scout211:
Wow. Cheating in plain sight. Brazen.
OzarkHillbilly
@jonas: Eating out in dry counties can be a challenge for some. I usually just get iced tea or coffee.
Omnes Omnibus
@Delk:
I like it. With Shane gone, it’s good to know that Pete is still around.
Ksmiami
@Old Man Shadow: ding ding ding. That is the fundamental difference between liberals and Christianists.
zhena gogolia
@Omnes Omnibus: It appears in The Ice Storm, right? I’ve heard stories of it happening around these parts in the old days.
OzarkHillbilly
@Old Man Shadow: I happen to think that anyone who obsesses over what other people are doing with their genitals is a pervert.
Geminid
@Ken: That’s also a way to doublecheck the purchaser’s age, in case the underage clerk is tempted to sell to their friends.
Manyakitty
@Kay: the hypocrisy is baked in.
Omnes Omnibus
@zhena gogolia: That’s the movie that popped into my head immediately.
Citizen Alan
@sdhays: Good riddance.
Chief Oshkosh
@WaterGirl: Yeah, but that’s not covered in the NYTimes piece. As I’ve noted here before, I was in the audience at a dinner talk when she admitted that her decision was at least in part driven by the desire to ensure a Shrub win so that she could retire with a Republican president naming her successor.
The NYTimes piece even notes that her husband publicly said as much at the time of the initial vote counting, a story she denied, again, according to the NYTimes.
Hundreds of thousands of deaths later, all due to US amorality, the ME still a totally wrecked mess, and a sharp rise in Stupidity & Malice as Feature in US politics, and here we are.
So fuck you, Sandy. I hope you’re hot as hell right now.
Jackie
@Alison Rose: Vote tally:
311 — Yays
114 — NAY
2 present
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Brachiator
@kalakal:
Yikes !
Take care. I hope all goes well.
kalakal
@zhena gogolia: That’s where I’ve heard of it from
Anyway
@UncleEbeneezer:
Reminds me of Camille Paglia. She’s sex+ but hates Dems and Feminists with a passion
jonas
@OzarkHillbilly: Arsenokoitai is a hapax — it’s a word that appears only in the New Testament and nowhere else in the Greek lexicon, which is why it’s very complicated to translate. Paul probably coined it using the two separate words found in the passage from Leviticus 18:22 in the Greek Septuagint translation forbidding “men/males” (arsenos) from “sleeping with/lying with” (koiten) other men as one did with women. Paul is basically saying “don’t do the thing that the men in Leviticus 18:22 were forbidden to do, whatever that was.” It certainly had to do with sex in some sense, since that’s the topic of the chapter, but what *about* the things the two men were doing in the bed was the abomination? Was it the same-sex pairing itself, or the imitation of heterosexual intercourse? It says nothing about men sleeping with men in ways that *aren’t* like sleeping with a woman, and of course doesn’t mention two women as a problem at all. Did it imply male prostitution, or pederasty, as opposed to a committed or consensual relationship? We just don’t know for sure.
Alison Rose
@Scout211: I will add that Newsom rarely uses teleprompters. He has dyslexia and has talked about how it makes it difficult for him to read teleprompters or cue cards, so in almost every speech and presser and such, he’s speaking from memory. He’s got an encyclopedic knowledge of facts and numbers and info.
OzarkHillbilly
@Anyway: Way beack in the 70s/80s STL had a ban on all liquor sales until noon or so on Sunday morn. Except for restaurants, they could sell alcoholic beverages. There were several STL restaurants that had drive thrus that were only open on Sunday morning. They sure did a bang up job of serving breakfasts on the go to all the hungry neighborhood people.
Brachiator
@MattF:
As Curly Bill said in Tombstone…
UncleEbeneezer
@Tony Jay: I’ve seen people make statements that are dangerously close to suggesting that treating women/LGBTQ people/Black People etc., as inferiors is okay because otherwise the taboo of their fave kink might be diminished. It’s so freaking gross.
zhena gogolia
@Alison Rose: I’ll add it to my all caps list.
NEWSOM
CORNEL WEST
and of course
STRZOK
MattF
@kalakal: I suppose Santos will try to leave the country— but the indictment will be an obstacle to that. Maybe an alias…
brendancalling
@rikyrah: i didn’t know she was alive.
Tony Jay
So, with Sir George Santos, inventor of free form Jazz, frequent collaborator with the late Stephen Hawking and Hereditary Knight-Commander of the Esoteric Order of Brethren Spiritual (Southern Rite) expelled from the House, I guess the countdown has begun for constant hearings into expelling random Democratic representatives.
Who is going to be first in the barrel, I wonder?
Baud
@Alison Rose:
Oh god, if he’s the nominee in 2028, what’s the over/under on the number of NYT front page stories about whether he is capable of fulfilling his duties as president?
Citizen Alan
@UncleEbeneezer: I am reminded of the historical absurdity that that Jack Ryan’s exposure as a creep who tried to pressure his wife Jeri Ryan (7 of 9, from Star Trek) into some bit of unwanted kindness Indirectly led to barack obama becoming president of the united states.
zhena gogolia
@rikyrah: I’ll watch that during my lunch today! Thanks.
MattF
@Tony Jay: Santos himself already introduced a resolution to expel Jamaal Bowman, the guy who pulled open the fire door…
Tony Jay
@UncleEbeneezer:
That’s what my friend was talking about. It’s just not as much fun for some people if they’re not doing something naughty.
Repression fucks people up. Truly.
OzarkHillbilly
@jonas: You’ve just said what the article more or less said with a lot more detail. Thanx.
zhena gogolia
@kalakal: I don’t think it’s in Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice because they’re a smaller group. There are other cultural references, but I’m not thinking of them right now.
Alison Rose
@zhena gogolia: Oh God, Strzok. That’s one I have to Google every time. Thankfully I don’t need to type it nearly as often LOL
Matt McIrvin
@Tony Jay: I think there’s also a thrill of power in the idea that they can easily get away with doing something that other people can’t
The evangelical idea that the saved have a free get-out-of-jail card to do anything they want isn’t quite right: it’s limited to Daddy. Everyone else has to renegotiate their salvation on a daily basis.
Alison Rose
@Baud: Yeah, there are already often comments on his social media posts calling him illiterate and the r-word, because Republicans are just the classiest bunch of folks.
Geminid
@Jackie: Santos’s expulsion may hasten a guilty plea, because he has less to lose now. Before, he at least had a steady paycheck. And it’s possible Santos has dirt on other New York Republicans, in which case he could be more forthcoming with prosecutors.
zhena gogolia
@Alison Rose: I have trouble with the first names of Sinema and Gillibrand. Cannot keep them straight.
OzarkHillbilly
@Tony Jay: Easy, AOC or Omar, probably the latter.
UncleEbeneezer
@Anyway: Exactly. It’s such a bullshit stance, imo. It’s like saying you are Sex+ but then being in complete denial of the fact that societal LGBTQ-phobia is one of the biggest factors of the tragically-high suicide rate in that community.
Steve in the ATL
@NotMax: you have pimped Spiral here before, and I for one am grateful for that. It was great!
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
Same.
Steeplejack
@zhena gogolia:
NICOLLE WALLACE.
zhena gogolia
@Steeplejack:
MICHAEL BENNET
Alison Rose
@zhena gogolia: I have a friend from high school named Kirsten and she once said she’s probably been called Kristen more often than her actual name.
UncleEbeneezer
@Omnes Omnibus: That’s the weirdness that I’m referring to above. Those communities are Feminist enough to know that they have to let the women do the picking, or will have certain safety/comfort concerns of women centered in various ways (so they kinda get it) but then there’s also boatloads of Misogyny in the scene and a non-trivial % of them probably go home and vote MAGA. They’ll be Progressive when it serves their boners, but nothing beyond that. It’s a really common thing I’ve noticed in several sex podcasts hosted by white women.
zhena gogolia
@Alison Rose: I have a similar problem.
Citizen Alan
@Alison Rose: I think if I did not make a point of spelling out my name whenever I am asked it on the phone, I would get more correspondence addresses to Allen than Alan. And indeed, I just had to correct that on my phone because spell trick insists on Allen as well.
Ken
@zhena gogolia:
MORNINGTON CRESCENT
Citizen Alan
@Omnes Omnibus:
I thought the women picked, but unless they specifically knew which set of car keys belonged to which person, it was basically random. Indeed, I was under the impression that the prospect of completely random sex with no strings. Attached was the entire point of a key party.
zhena gogolia
@Ken: Hmmm, didn’t know about that one!
My husband saw the headline on here, “Henry Kissinger Is an Ex-Parrot,” and said, “Why ‘ex-parrot’?” So for the 1000th time I showed him the skit.
ETA: Because phrases like “pining for the fjords” and “the choir invisible,” which for some reason escape my lips from time to time, ALWAYS have to be explained.
Tony Jay
@Matt McIrvin:
Yup. Once you’re in The Club, dues paid and loyalties set, then The Club will protect you from the all the consequences those little people have to contend with. That’s how The Club works, whichever Club it happens to be that you’re a member of.
@OzarkHillbilly:
My thinking too. They’ll go after Omar for perceived antisemitism. The usual suspects will be only too happy to back them up.
Another Scott
@WaterGirl: @OzarkHillbilly:
Sorry I wasn’t clear.
I meant I could see him messing up calling “Second Corinthians ” “Two Corinthians”. It’s his other comments…
NPR.org from 2016
It was pure pandering, and he couldn’t be bothered to spend an erg of energy to get it right.
And Ted and Marco are just as craven as he is. And all the students who snickered and voted for him anyway, also too.
Grr…,
Scott.
Betty Cracker
@UncleEbeneezer: My guess is if you ask 100 random women for a definition of the patriarchy, maybe 10 or 15 would have the same understanding of it as you, and more than half would respond with a blank stare. I agree it sucks that the podcaster is clueless about feminism, but it sounds like you enjoyed her show and assumed she shared your views before you wrote. Sometimes that’s as good as you can hope for in this dumbed-down culture.
Another Scott
@marcopolo: Indeed.
Cheers,
Scott.
Anoniminous
@Omnes Omnibus:
Given who we’re talking about there’s an underlying assumption there needing examination
UncleEbeneezer
@Betty Cracker: Very true. And I really do enjoy the good stuff that she does, it’s just so frustrating to so often see people who are so close to getting it but are unable (or not interested in) to take the next step, dig any deeper or connect micro to macro to understand the bigger picture.
Anoniminous
@Soprano2:
Poem in the Greek Anthology had the answer for that: turn her around and pretend she’s her brother.
Geminid
@zhena gogolia: Don’t forget:
EZIO PINZA
Kelly
@K-Mo: Wins the thread
Matt McIrvin
@UncleEbeneezer: Years ago I recall talking to some libertarians who argued that they voted Republican because while they didn’t like Republican positions on these issues, they felt the money-and-gunz freedoms the Republicans would give them were prerequisites to securing any other freedoms, so those were the important ones.
zhena gogolia
@Geminid: Does his name come up around here a lot?
lowtechcyclist
@geg6:
I think I’ll pass – necrophilia is dead boring.
Geminid
@zhena gogolia: The only time I can remember Ezio Pinza coming up here was a few monts ago, when I was talking about the Broadway production of South Pacific and I said the male lead was played by Enzio Pinza. I was quickly corrected.
Omnes Omnibus
@Anoniminous: Of course. The men drive. They own the cars. They own the women. Honestly, I would guess that many would be more willing to swap wives than swap cars.
zhena gogolia
@Geminid: Hahaha, I missed that one or I would have been very strict with you.
kalakal
@zhena gogolia:
For no particular reason other than it’s an awesome name guaranteed to give spell checkers nervous breakdowns
Sir Ranulph Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes
Marmot
@Scout211:
I know the OED caved, but this is literally the one word that can’t mean “figuratively.” So I pedant on.
zhena gogolia
@kalakal: Relative of Ralph and Joseph, right? Maybe even father?
JaySinWA
Is “Mom’s for Indecent Liberties” still available?
Alison Rose
@Marmot: Plus, I’m sure it was more like “this has gone on long enough, we’re not doing an encore”. Because apparently Hannity wanted them to go longer than the originally agreed-upon time.
Marmot
@Omnes Omnibus: A new Libertines album?! Strangely, the singer reminds me of Shane — or did, back when.
lowtechcyclist
@RevRick:
The way I’d understood ‘total depravity’ was just that there was no sin-free part of us, not that we were entirely sinful.
Being a math geek, I’ve got an analogy from the notion of dense subsets. A subset S of the real numbers is dense in the reals if any interval (a,b) of positive length contains at least one element of S.
It so happens that both the rational numbers and the irrationals are dense in the reals: there’s no interval that contains just one or the other. The analogy is this: there is sin in every part of our souls; no part of us is sin-free. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t goodness there too.
Manyakitty
@sab: changing it how? By enshrining it in the state constitution?
kalakal
@zhena gogolia: Third cousin once removed.
He’s a pretty amazing character, first person to cross Antarctica on foot, ran 7 marathons in 7 days on 7 continents, he climbed Everest aged 65 etc, etc
Geminid
@zhena gogolia: You’re the one who corrected me! I guess you’re so used to this it’s become automatic.
zhena gogolia
@Geminid: 😃Sorry I forgot!
Yes, grade a few tens of thousands of papers and it will do that to you.
lowtechcyclist
@OzarkHillbilly:
I’ll be damned if I’m going to watch the documentary just to find out.
And absent that piece of information, it’s impossible to say whether the mistranslation means anything or nothing.
Omnes Omnibus
@kalakal: That has an easy work around. The call him “that fucking madman.” Simple.
StringOnAStick
@kalakal: Call the dental surgeon you were referred to asap and get some antibiotics to get that swelling down, you are dumping bad bacteria everywhere in your body right now. Also, they will not work on your tooth until the infection has been knocked down because, and this is the important part to know, the local anaesthetic does not work as well in highly infected tissue (it’s a pH interaction issue). If you want this whole issue resolved quickly then you need those antibiotics immediately.
Ken
@Omnes Omnibus: You’ve unearthed a memory… There was a skit that used a key party setup, except after the keys were drawn all the guys yelled “I got the Corvette!” etc. and ran out of the room, leaving the women looking at one another in astonishment.
I don’t think SNL. Maybe In Living Color?
lowtechcyclist
@Marmot:
I’m totally OK with language evolving – but there’s no other word meaning what ‘literally’ means. Water it down, and there’d be no word at all to represent that concept.
So on this one, I pedant right along with you.
Ruckus
@Barbara:
Bingo!
They are not trying to control themselves they are trying to control everyone else so that they have one up on everyone else. Notice that everything they want to outlaw is often the things they are getting away with. It’s like having too much money, you know they are, at least internally, being Scrooge McDuck, at least thinking of sitting in piles of money and just throwing it up in the air because they have enough to do that. Is Moms for Liberty about the kind of liberty we think about when we say it, or is it about being able to do enjoyable things that they want everyone else convicted and jailed for because it’s outside the BS they push on everyone else?
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
Does anyone know if Zeigler’s school board tenure has had any effect on Pine View or Booker schools? The one is a gifted student magnet school and the other at least used to be an arts school.
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
@Ruckus: Ditto. Four years undergrad at a SBC-sponsored university; I felt like I majored in hypocrisy. Watching what the faculty – and upperclassmen fraternity bros – got away with was an education in itself. The pattern seems to hold true to this day.
Soprano2
@OzarkHillbilly: I think there’s one at the MO line in some cases, because you’re entering a dry county. Before you could get Yuengling here we bought some when we went to Eureka Springs – we went to WalMart to get it.
Soprano2
@Omnes Omnibus: I guess what I mean is I have no idea how any woman could have ever had sex with him. LOL I was always proud that he couldn’t buttonhole me enough to come up with a nickname for me. That was one of his things, to nickname people. He called my husband the Polish version of John, because my husband is mostly Polish. He never could pin me down like that, though. I was proud of that.
Soprano2
@Chief Oshkosh: I remember it was reported on at the time that she was at a party and talking about how upset she was that Gore seemed to have won, because she wanted to retire and wanted a Republican to name her successor. That was a day or two into that whole mess. I was glad to know she finally admitted she made that decision not because of the law, but for amoral personal reasons.
Anoniminous
@Omnes Omnibus:
Your assumption is that the men were looking for hook-ups with women and not other men
kalakal
@StringOnAStick: Thanks, they gave me antibiotics straight away
Ruckus
@lowtechcyclist:
A lot of things in a conservative world used to be by force. They likely do not see this concept as unusual or wrong, unless applied to them. As long as the police were not using their nightsticks on them….
walkingg
@schrodingers_cat:
Are you considering the resume paper primarily because it’s more economical? The problem I see with using it as practice paper is that you’ll be getting all your practice on paper with qualities that are fundamentally different than the watercolor paper you will hopefully use for more finished work.
I would suggest as an alternative: Richeson Bulk Watercolor paper. 50 sheets of 9×12″ 88lb is $12.50, 135lb is 17.50 at Blick art materials online store. It’s more expensive than resume paper but lots cheaper than most watercolor pads. You might also want to glue the sheets together into DIY watercolor blocks to help prevent buckling. There are youtube videos for this. I’d go for 135lb weight paper for blocks.
Tony G
@J.: Moms for Liberty. In fairness, there is NOTHING in the Constitution or the Bible prohibiting three-ways. You really can’t make this stuff up.
walkingg
@schrodingers_cat:
All that being said Southworth resume paper isn’t bad to work with just different…thinner, less absorbent etc.
Ruckus
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I think DeSantis has blown his moment.
At least he’s consistent.
What’s that old saying – he’s his own worst enemy….
Ruckus
@Kay:
ShitForBrains, or trump if you will, SFB will do pretty much anything to be considered superior/in charge/on top. In his mind he is superior to everyone else on the planet. And within his party are a lot of males who see money as the prime directive. So someone with their outlook and money must be a leader. The fact that SFB started by stealing a lot of his deceased slum lord father’s money from his siblings, money that today could be a hell of a lot more if he’d hadn’t wasted so much of it trying to be who he turned out to be, he actually might have turned out to be a human being. Instead he turned out to be a worse than useless, over filled sack of shit that has debased this country and humanity. He’s on the decline side of aging, his brain, such a shit repository as it is, is decaying daily and likely soon will not have enough even badly operating cells to keep him alive. He’s ridden himself hard and put himself away wet, because his brain is functionally not normal. He confuses shit with best instead of it being waste, and really there is no changing/fixing this at his age. He is a normal pompous, arrogant, conservative, ass of a man, but with money.
Kosh III
II Sam 1:26 has King David morning the death of Prince Jonathan by saying: “Jonathan your love for me was wonderful, passing that of the love of women.” QJV
The haters try to explain it away even though King Saul chastised Jonathan for his pairing with David. And Jonathan was much older, David was a mere lad when they joined.
Kosh III
As to booze, the prize goes to Moore County Tennessee which is dry(beer is ok) The only significant employer in the county is Jack Daniels.
In Nashville you could not buy until noon Sunday, then they moved it to 10am to accommodate the beer sales at the Titans football playpen.
The Lodger
@WaterGirl: I think you can find the second Corinthian in a leather bar.
Dopey-o
I am so tired of stories that expect me to register to read 1 story that might be relevant.
If you notice from my numerous and voluminous posts, I like to use gift articles, or hrefs to archive.org.
You may also notice that I block-quote the original poster, so readers don’t have to flip up and down the page to know what I am referring to. “I totally agree! He should be taken to the woodshed for that!” Huh?
But that’s just me.
Martin
@Tony G: It will be entertaining reading the explanations for how nobody in the 3-way is queer.
kmax
@zhena gogolia: late to the party.. but there is a quick scene in Jim Carrey’s Grinch movie where the adults are tossing their keys into a bowl at a party.
schrodingers_cat
@walkingg: I have 98 pound mixed media paper by Canson on which I am using for my watercolor practice. I also have a 25% cotton paper from Fabriano.
I was going to use the resume paper to print out some stuff for coloring/drawing pages. Yes because its cheaper and can go through the printer easily than thicker papers
So resume paper won’t be good for wet on wet techniques.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Please strike out all references to MfL and replace with the proper name of the group: Hos for Hitler.
White supremacists across the nation thank you for noticing. ;)
Kayla Rudbek
@schrodingers_cat: I have tried it in the past but I am not good at mornings. Maybe I should try evening pages instead of morning pages…
Citizen Alan
@Ruckus: Not while I’m alive.
walkingg
@schrodingers_cat:
I hesitate to say any material can’t work, though I doubt resume paper will give you the watercolor effects you want. The canson paper will be closer but is thicker. But I think you are saying that your paper choices are contingent on your method of transferring your desired image?
Have you considered changing your transfer method? Graphite transfer paper is cheap and easy. An artist’s light box is more expensive but a lot of fun.