As we ponder the wisdom of the Gov of Iowa using childhood obesity as an excuse to reject Fed $ to help feed low income kids, remember why we’re Democrats.
@JBPritzker reminds us how to spot idiocy when we see it.#DemCast #DemVoice1 #wtpBLUE pic.twitter.com/B8KQyALQJM
— Scorched Earth Dem (@progavalanche) December 23, 2023
Don’t know if J.B. Pritzker will ever run for President, but this excellent clip shows why his name is usually included when the Democrats’ deep bench is under discussion.
Odie Hugh Manatee
I read about this last night. This piece of shit Republican politician is a stone cold bitch of a conservative. Taking food out of kids mouths and letting them go hungry while expressing fake concern for their weight? That’s no problem for the conservatives of the 21st century! Hell, they’re more than happy to pass laws to send these lazy obese kids off to work dangerous jobs like roofing and meat processing to toughen them up and have them shed a few extra pounds.
This is the perfect Christmas message for a Christian like her to be delivering right before Christmas. Pitch perfect!
ETA: Fuck Kim Reynolds and I hope some drunk runs her off the road and into a ditch.
HumboldtBlue
The kiss of peace. That which you do unto my brother, you do unto me.
I didn’t get those from a mass or scripture, that was life in a Catholic family 10.
David ⛄ 🎅The Establishment🎄 🦌 🕎 Koch
They’re concerned about obesity, which is why they worship the morbidity obese former guy.
Jim Appleton
The kindest person in the room knows what to do with a fridge left alone for two months.
eclare
Wow, he has a great message.
satby
@eclare: He’s been a great governor. I miss living in a functional state.
eclare
@satby:
Yeah. I’m sure my state, TN, will follow Iowa in refusing free money to feed kids.
satby
@eclare: 😢
Brachiator
Commencement speeches are supposed to be entertaining and inspiring. This one met the test.
Great central theme on the importance of kindness.
Baud
Skeletons aren’t obese.
jackmac
Pritzker has been an outstanding governor. Right-wingers hate him, but fortunately they are nowhere near any levers of power here in illinois. We’re fortunate to have him.
Ksmiami
Hmm – if we are all concerned about obesity, let’s petition the Dems to pass a law forbidding subsidies to corn farmers since that’s actually the root cause here in the US. See how Iowa likes it….What shit humans Republicans are.
p.a.
Huh. Remember when Michelle Obama was the world’s greatest monster for suggesting kids (and the rest of us) eat healthy foods?!?!
Gretchen
Several red state governors are refusing free money for food stamps, including Missouri.
lowtechcyclist
It isn’t the idiocy, it’s the hardheartedness.
The funny (not in a ha-ha way, needless to say) thing is, there were only two sins that Jesus really harped on, and one of them was hardness of heart. (The other was hypocrisy, fwiw.) And these people who think they’re the Real True Christians and we libs going to hell, are the perfect exemplars of this sin.
They need to repent and be saved. Here endeth the lesson.
brantl
GOP stands for Grinch Ogre Party. These shitbirds can’t be happy unless they’re generating misery.
TBone
Having come to be a Christian type spiritual person very late in life, and having moved from Philly suburbs to a rural small PA town, I noticed some very strange and stark behavioral differences in the churchgoing populations of each locale. Whereas kindness is an admired indicator of toughness of spirit in the more populous Philly suburbs, in the hinterlands it is frequently mistaken for weakness – much more frequently than I’d ever have guessed. In fact, the difference is so stark that I have taken to staying very quiet so that I get overlooked when there is any opportunity for someone in any position of power (no matter how slight their advantage) to demonstrate their prowess by taking that advantage to its conclusion wherein either my wallet or my natural gentility, or both, are left in tatters.
Princess
I’ll never forget Pritzger quietly saving lives in Illinois during COVID while Newsom and Cuomo were showing off and grandstanding and getting all the national attention. I think he’d make an excellent president — he’s very good at what he does. I don’t know if he has the glamour to persuade the fickle crowds. I was extremely dubious about him when he ran. I saw him give a speech at a fairly small anti-Trump demonstration. He kind of has the affect of Fred Flintstone. He talked about how although he was rich, his mother had instilled in her children that they had a duty to serve and to give back. I didn’t believe a word he was saying, but it turned out to be true.
TBone
@Princess: the old concept of noblesse oblige, like chivalry, is on life support. Better if neither were necessary but human nature is what it is.
mrmoshpotato
@jackmac: Hooray for our great Democratic governor, and our Democratic supermajorities!
And Kim Reynolds can fuck herself with rusty farm implements. What an absolutely cruel asshole.
mrmoshpotato
@brantl:
And even then they aren’t happy.
brantl
@mrmoshpotato: no, it never is, enough for them, they always think there is more they could do , to push other people down, and some fascist teeter-totter mechanism will lift them up.
They staunchly refuse to believe that a rising tide lifts ALL boats.
Kristine
@Princess: I had my doubts about Pritzker as well—not another billionaire please—but he’s been great.
wenchacha
@p.a.: Also, too, the outcry for super-sized sugary drinks that Mayor Bloomberg (?) wanted to outlaw.
Geo Wilcox
Kim Reynolds, like all GQP, has it backwards. More money means parents can buy nutritious food for their kids and help stave off obesity. Poorer kids eat shittier food and get fat consuming the garbage the food companies put into it. The added sugar, salt, fat, etc. plus the chemicals they spice it up with mean poor kids will get fatter the less money their parents have to buy food for them. Stupid ;lying bitch.
EarthWindFire
@Geo Wilcox: Kim Reynolds knows. She just doesn’t care. The cruelty is the point. She’s the epitome of the smart idiot Pritzker described.
SFAW
@brantl:
I think they believe it at some level; they just don’t want it to lift the boats of THOSE people.
SFAW
@EarthWindFire:
“The cruelty is the point” has been (accurately) stated about Rethugs in many blogs (etc.) I wonder what would happen if Dems were to weaponize it (so to speak) as an ubiquitous campaign slogan. Would it finally break through the informational shell of the low-info voters? One would hope.
Another Scott
Indeed that is excellent. Thanks for the pointer; I passed it on.
My personal, shorter, variation on that is – don’t punch down.
Happy Christmas
AdamEve.Cheers,
Scott.
Walker
Iowa is a welfare state that depends on farm subsidies. We should link the monies through legislation. If they turn this down, they turn down the farm money.
artem1s
These Governors who decide to use their cruelest self to deny federal dollars to the most vulnerable in their states are signaling to the GQPer party leaders their worthiness to the lost white cause. It’s a great that the Dems have come to understand that there is no political downside to pointing out the GQP dogwhistles and cruelty. It’s sort of become their new superpower. Here’s hoping that calling out the bullies and wanna be GQP Young Guns becomes the Dems New Years resolution in 2024 and beyond. And this Norquist, bootstrap bullshit dies a whole lot more in the coming New Year.
Uncle Cosmo
Bingo. The current Rethuglican abomination is all about status and its restoration to those who feel they’ve lost it.** The most direct way to elevate the status of the Thug base is to shove those they compete with down into the mud by stealing whatever the latter have. With the extra advantage that the Scrooge McDucks on top are applauded by the base for the theft, increasing their obscene wealth and their ability to inflict cruelty on those Others at the same time. It never crosses the base’s peabrains that the bastards on top are stealing from them as well, so long as the Others suffer more.
** And it’s not a new or recent thing. Ask yourself why roughly an eighth of Southron (white) yeomen, most of whom had no realistic hope of ever owning a single slave, willingly, nay eagerly, went to war (and a quarter of them died) to defend the economic interests of the slaveholding class: “Well, boah, least you ain’t one o’ them.”
RevRick
@Geo Wilcox: The GOP has three basic items on its economic agenda:
1). Cut government by cutting taxes (especially on the wealthy);
2). Cut regulations on business;
3). Resist any downward redistribution of income (because it makes the poors lazy).
That’s it. And there’s the reason why 96% of the jobs created since the end of the Cold War have been under Democratic presidents. The GOP operates under the delusion that you can grow the economy by subtraction. And they make arguments rooted in cruelty to justify it.
leeleeFL
I’ve always liked Pritzger! Now it’s an absolute truth that I will vote for him when the chance presents, like Obama at the 2004 Convention!
He made me remember Lord Baelish’s idiom, “Chaos is a Ladder”!
MomSense
@Jim Appleton:
Ha!
The kindest person in the room doesn’t plant a willow tree too close to the house!
MomSense
@Geo Wilcox:
It’s so frustrating. We have a statewide program where Mainers can use their EBT cards at our farmers markets. And then the farmers markets have veggie bucks so if someone spends 30 they get an additional 15 for produce. It’s great food and means they can participate in a fun community event.
I volunteer at the EBT booth at our farmers market
Chief Oshkosh
@Walker:
I see no down side to this. Great idea. This country has had a corn surplus since the Pilgrims. We really ought to be using farm subsizidies to encourage just about any other crop, and we should do it with legislation whose preamble explains/stipulates/requires the ENTIRE chain, from taxpayer to farmer to market to consumer. Every time.
Scout211
I think Pritzger is great and is a wonderful Governor. My sister lives in the North Burbs and loves him. This clip shows what a powerful speaker he is, too.
As a Californian, I can’t defend Newsom’s national attention. He does seek it, no argument there, but he also gets it from Republicans and the media because it’s California, the butt of many GOP jokes and too many straw man arguments.
But I don’t agree that he was “grandstanding” during the pandemic. He and the California legislature saved countless lives with their policies and safety measures instituted here in California during the pandemic years. I am grateful for those policies.
On the other hand, after VP Harris and Governor Whitmer, my next vote in the primary would likely be Governor Pritzger ( if those were the choices in 2026). It would likely not be Governor Newsom.
Gvg
In Newsomes support, he has seemed to spend a lot of effort supporting the Democratic Party as a whole, the individuals and fighting the stupid persistent reputation biases that republicans have been using against us for years. You can’t overcome that in just a few years but we do have to start. It has seemed to me like he was trying. He seemed to have an awareness of the whole party.
I also remember that Nixon supposedly got his nomination by banking a lot of favors in working a lot of re election speeches and campaigns for other republicans between when he was VP and when he ran and won. I read this in a book on him, that he put in a lot of work for others when it was assumed he wasn’t going anywhere anymore. Unglamorous work.
Since Floridas democrats have almost died, I appreciate Newsome.
its good their are other excellent democrats in office too. I don’t need to put them down to praise another.
wjca
Ah, but he also said “Suffer the little children”**. Obviously that’s a divine command. And what better way to make children suffer than by starving them?
** Of course it’s cherry picked and out of context. How else could scripture be made relevant to today?
/snark
Scout211
@Scout211: Oopsie! Correction: ( if those were the choices in
20262028).Math is hard. ;-)
wjca
But then, ask yourself why, in a time when lots of people were more attached to their state than their country**, there were men like the 1st Alabama Cavalry Regiment. (Who, among other things, were part of Sherman’s March to the Sea.) Men who risked it all to leave their homes in the South and fight for the Union.
** That was Lee’s excuse for ignoring his oath and leaving to lead the Confederacy.
Brit in Chicago
@Ksmiami: Perhaps one reason for Biden’s acting to make the Iowa caucuses less important in choosing the Democratic nominee for President is to make it easier to someone to attain that office without having to swear to retain subsidies for high-fructose corn syrup, the requirement for ethanol in gasoline, and other things which help a few Iowans but hurt the nation as a whole. Am I giving Uncle Joe too much credit?
RevRick
@wjca: That is not the sense of what is meant by “ suffer the little children,” an archaic use of the verb, suffer. Let, permit, have forbearance for or pay special heed to are more accurate, modern translations.
Of course, I know what you’re saying, because the fundies and Evangelicals, who give place of honor to the King James version, are not always careful about the shifts and nuances of language, and woodenly assume that it means what they think it means.
A similar passage is in John 12:8, where Jesus says, “ You always have the poor with you….” Have here is not meant to say, well poverty is inevitable, so don’t bother trying to fix it, but in the older sense of wedding vows “to have and to hold”, where have means “ opportunities to care for.”
Geminid
@wjca: Also, the South had a draft almost from the beginning of the war and a large minority of soldiers in the Confederate Army were draftees. A lot of draft dodgers hid out in the mountains, and some went west like Samuel Clemons. I think he left before the draft, but he might have seen it coming.
Although, I guess if Clemons had stayed in Missouri he might not have been drafted because the Union won control of the state government early on.
Union forces also grabbed a big chunk of Tennessee in 1862 (thanks to Ulysses Grant), and New Orleans also. Those victories denied the Confederates a large pool of draftable men.
And a fair amount of men from Confederate states went north and enlisted in Union regiments.
wjca
Actually, I’m aware. But I’m also aware of how many, especially RWNJs, are utterly ignorant.
Another Scott
@Brit in Chicago:
Remembering that Ted Turner was once the largest landowner in the USA, made me look…
DTNPF.com (from October):
The banksters are everywhere…
Cheers,
Scott.
Ksmiami
@Brit in Chicago: Iowa is trash. No other state is singularly responsible for the agricultural monoculture of corn. And anyone who believes depriving kids of food and the basics of life should be dropped off in the desert.
grubert
@Ksmiami: not all Republican voters. My MIL is a fine and kind woman, just very sheltered and unaware of the world in general.
I don’t talk politics w her.. but then I live in a solid blue state, so I guess that’s a luxury.