They showed me the clip of Trump saying he wanted the economy to crash so he could gain politically. Says he doesn’t want to be Hoover.
Here's the thing: He already is. He’s the first president since Hoover to lose jobs while in office. Some record. pic.twitter.com/eP7RrVtgMQ
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) January 11, 2024
The Affordable Care Act is more popular than ever.
Thanks to our efforts, millions of Americans are saving hundreds or thousands of dollars each year on health insurance premiums, and most people who shop for coverage at https://t.co/2Ls3d80By6 can find a plan for $10 a month or…
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) January 11, 2024
Fox guest: The results speak for themselves. The economy is going in the right direction, gas prices are doing well. The economy is doing much better, the country is doing much better pic.twitter.com/0Nxfh4cl5Z
— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) January 11, 2024
.@SimonWDC: Joe Biden has been a good president and the country is better off. Trump is extreme, dangerous, and erratic. Trump has come out against the Affordable Care Act and said he wants the economy to crash. Trump is not the same candidate that he was in 2020, he's worse pic.twitter.com/hkczjF7MwD
— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) January 10, 2024
Patrolling, impeding law enforcement and storming the Capitol, private paramilitary groups like the Oath Keepers use political violence to threaten democracy. @SenMarkey and I are making it clear: our Constitution in no way protects these operations. https://t.co/BGBFATGoCa
— Rep. Jamie Raskin (@RepRaskin) January 11, 2024
When people have better choices they make them. https://t.co/MgDdlTNS5E
— Tenacious T (@watchtar) January 11, 2024
I’m setting up a separate post about this for later today…
This is incredible news.
And it is important to understand that the children in 15 states won’t see a penny of this because their Republican governors blocked it in those states.
Republicans hate your kids, folks. https://t.co/8t4cuHJjWR
— Democrats in Array ?????? (@DemsInArray) January 10, 2024
And this good (as could be expected) news, too:
BREAKING: The grand jury has decided NOT to indict Brittany Watts. She's the Warren Ohio woman facing charges after miscarriage.
— Laura Hancock (@laurahancock) January 11, 2024
Even Matt Yglesias gets this right…
The murder rate is lower, the unemployment rate is lower, wages are higher, fewer people are dying of Covid. https://t.co/b5f7M8BHRD
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) January 11, 2024
On The Road – Munira – At Home
OzarkHillbilly
Heh. I’m surprised W didn’t make that list, but I suppose he wasn’t in the WH when things got really bad.
Spanky
Joe: “Hey Indicted Former Guy, I knew Hoover. I worked with Hoover. And I can tell ya, you ARE a Hoover.”
“You SUCK!”
TBone
Double deserts is a thing now. I hope they get just desserts soonest.
https://jessica.substack.com/p/the-catholic-hospital-system-killing?publication_id=11153&post_id=140585524&triggerShare=true&isFreemail=false&r=elvx
OzarkHillbilly
Does anyone expect the spawn of trump to be well informed about anything?
NotMax
The skinny on Monday’s
circuscaucus.Dorothy A. Winsor
It’s snowing and blowing here in Chicagoland. Mr DAW put a You Tube fire on the TV.
OzarkHillbilly
@Spanky: If trump was standing on a 6′ step ladder, he’d still have to look up to see Hoover and even at that all he would see is the soles of his shoes. Hoover actually did a number of good things in his life.
Soprano2
The administration fast tracked a student loan forgiveness program. It was supposed to start in the summer of 2024, but now it’s going to be fast tracked and start soon. Of course Republicans are howling about it, saying Biden is trying to buy votes. Funny how they never characterize massive tax cuts as “buying votes”. I’m sure the usual suspects who are angry about Biden not forgiving all of their student loans won’t care about this, but it will help a lot of people. They talked in the story particularly about the subset of people who took out loans but didn’t graduate as people who would be helped.
topclimber
Does Trump being out of office count as a metric?
MagdaInBlack
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I did not feel the least hesitation to call off from work today. Holy cow I can’t even see across the little quad here at the condos.
OzarkHillbilly
@NotMax: .Heh. I saw my counselor this week and hospitals came up. She was a little taken aback when I said I don’t trust Catholic hospitals. When she asked why I told her, “Because I don’t like my health care being dictated according to somebody else’s religious edicts.”
I am a little surprised that she was surprised since she knows my history with the church.
Baud
I’m still on the fence about who to vote for.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Baud: LOL. I rolled my eyes this morning at all the caucus coverage. It’s silly. None of it matters. Trump will be the nominee. Let’s move on to something real.
Soprano2
@MagdaInBlack: It’s not snowing here yet, they’re saying later this morning we might get an inch. Our dangerous stuff is the temps, which are supposed to drop to the teens by this afternoon. It’s going to be really cold for the next five days.
MagdaInBlack
@Soprano2: I think we in Chicago-land get our below zero stuff Sunday.
OzarkHillbilly
@Soprano2: “Winter is coming.”
Omnes Omnibus
@MagdaInBlack: Seven to 12 inches predicted here in Madison in the next 24 hours. Only about one so far and we seem to be in a lull.
artem1s
And the ‘fuck you, I got mine’ GQPers will point to this and say, ‘see the system works! women aren’t going to jail for miscarrying. it’s fine that the prosecutor ignored the voters. women don’t need a constitutional amendment to protect them. if she hadn’t been such a careless, ignorant slut the prosecutor wouldn’t have been forced to waste taxpayers money on a grand jury hearing’.
kalakal
Having the day off to make up for working last weekend.
The British have a habit of giving silly names to machinery ( Boaty McBoatface anyone?) which reaches it’s peak when combined with their love of puns and gritting lorries. Enjoy
The Scots have managed the best yet
Soprano2
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I know, it’s being covered way out of line with its significance. I think the press feels cheated, since in most election years there is at least one real contest for the nomination, but they didn’t get that this year so they’re pretending.
Soprano2
@OzarkHillbilly: No shit! They’re forecasting one day with a low of -8.
Geminid
@topclimber: I would count it as a factor. The office of President tends to magnify a person, and gives them an importance beyond what is earned personally. Some of this will still attach to Trump, but not all of it.
PPCLI
Jr: I can’t think of a single metric where anyone is better off now than they were three years ago… even with COVID
When Trump was prez, every time the stock market went up, he crowed about it and claimed full credit for the rise. Well, the Dow/Nasdaq/ S&P 500 are far higher than than they were when Trump left office. Good news for anyone with a 401K.
NotMax
@kalakal
“There’s no business like snow business.”
//
OzarkHillbilly
@kalakal: Ctrl-Salt-Delete
OzarkHillbilly
@Soprano2: Our lowest predicted is a -2 Saturday night with winds pf 16-24 mph. It finally breaks on Wednesday. My wood stove is going to get quite the workout.
Baud
@PPCLI: If Jr. wants Trump to be president, he should just say so. At least the MAGA are honest about it
ETA: Sorry, I see now that Jr. doesn’t refer to your kid.
Kay
@artem1s:
I think they were shocked at the level of pushback they got.
IMO Ohio conservatives are genuinely clueless about the unpopularity of their wacko Right abortion stance. They believed their own bullshit and assumed everyone agreed with them. They still don’t get it.
Baud
@Kay: I don’t blame them. They see themselves getting reelected, so why wouldn’t their think they ideas are popular.
A jerk misogynist who keeps getting dates isn’t going to think that he’s a jerk misogynist whose behavior is unwelcome.
NotMax
@Soprano2
Hearken back (not fondly, not nostalgically) to January ’77 in St. Paul. when the high temp for the entire month was 0°F.
Recall one time that same month when the weather forecast overnight, with windchill factored in, was minus 84.
Kay
@artem1s:
This is what happens to a political party when media tells them they’re a “silent majority” and the only voters who matter – they get rude awakenings when they venture outside Twitter and cable news and into real world voters.
TBone
@OzarkHillbilly: olive juice.
dmsilev
@OzarkHillbilly: In defense of Jr., he’s really stupid.
And his brother is even dumber.
OzarkHillbilly
@dmsilev: The drugs have burnt his brain. To a crisp.
NotMax
@dmsilev
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Kay
@Baud:
It’s more than that, though.
Voters don’t give a shit about “Wokeness” and DEI either – that’s a wholly NYTimes employees/ Twitter constituency.
DeSantis is still running insane anti trans ads in Iowa. His team is stumped on why they aren’t working
Because no one outside Twitter and the NYTimes thinks transgender people are a threat. It’s weirdly ELITIST, the so-called “silent majority”
TBone
Pallette cleanser
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nXJObq5rZDQ
artem1s
He is worse than Hoover. They all are. For decades the US has reaped the benefit of a social welfare system that has kept it’s citizen’s from dying in poverty the way their grandparents and great-great grandparents did. Hoover didn’t have that choice during his presidency. The Hooverville settlements sucked but even they were better than some of the choices people had at that time.
Instead of helping their constituents by making it easier to benefit from the system the GOP has spent those decades trying to destroy the benefits their constituents worked all their lives for and are ENTITLED to. Instead the GOP has heaped tax breaks onto the wealthiest and allowed corporations to steal pensions and labor from the most vulnerable. Yes, Hoover didn’t have the vision to create a social system out of whole cloth. But today’s GOP didn’t have to have any vision at all. They had the choice to help and they failed – time after time.
Frankensteinbeck
@Baud:
In a perfect world I would vote for Baud too, but in this two party system that’s effectively a vote for Trump.
Spanky
@OzarkHillbilly: I’m pretty sure the drugs are covering up a real, innate stupidity.
Another Scott
@kalakal: “Brinestone Ploughboy”
+1
[ rofl ]
Cheers,
Scott.
TriassicSands
@OzarkHillbilly:
Don Jr.’s quote would be most accurate if it read simply: “I can’t think.
of a single metric where anyone is better off now than they were three years ago… even with COVID.Soprano2
@OzarkHillbilly: Yep, I’m so amazingly glad I got that gas furnace this year. It’s not fun to go outside to go in the basement to stoke the fire numerous times during the day and night, plus once it gets in the teens or below that wood furnace can’t really keep our house that warm. I only hope our power doesn’t go out.
Baud
@Kay: Honestly, if Dems did not face the threat of voter backlash, I’d think we’d be more out of touch too. I’m just saying, I get why they get surprised by the backlash.
narya
Guess who is traveling today . . . gotta say, though, that weather like this is definitely a reason to love Amtrak (not that I needed more reasons). I’m visiting my parents–going to refill the freezer with meals of various sorts and provide whatever support I can. Which, honestly, isn’t much, other than my mom enjoying me being there (and dad, too); and that’s a fine reason.
OzarkHillbilly
@Spanky: I don’t disagree. It’s the old, “Which came first?” question that never has a satisfactory answer.
As an aside, my old man asked a neighborhood kid which came first, the chicken or the egg. Jerry proudly responded with great emphasis: “Da WOOSTA!”
Salty Sam .
All the Salty Offspring and Salty Stepkids are meeting in LA for a family get-together this weekend.
All except eldest son, whose flight out of Chicago was cancelled last night. I am extremely bummed…
OzarkHillbilly
@narya: That’s the BEST reason.
Tony G
@NotMax: The caucus “system” is one of the most idiotic procedures for deciding anything. What the hell is wrong with the people of Iowa for tolerating this nonsense?
Kay
@Baud:
I think anti abortion laws are less popular than we were led to believe – in hindsight, I think Democrats were probably too cautious on the issue, believing the media/Right wing assertion that women’s rights are unpopular.
I believed it too, to a certain extent. I’m surprised at how deep and wide support is. I thought we had to apologize and explain too. We don’t. People get it.
Baud
@Kay: Popularity or lack thereof isn’t a fixed thing. Obamacare was unpopular, now it’s popular. A strong defense of abortion rights may well have been more unpopular when people thought the rights were secure, and have become less popular now that people can see the GOP get their freak on when it comes to women’s bodies and health.
NotMax
@TBone
Methinks you mean palate. Howzabout an alternative Pallette cleanser?
:)
narya
@OzarkHillbilly: Getting to the train station will be a little bit of an adventure, but public transportation is ALSO awesome. I always get a room, so I can really just settle in. Based on the maps, once we get out of IL, it’s not bad.
OzarkHillbilly
The people who caucus are invested in the system. Once every 4 years they get to feel like they are important. It’s bigger than Xmas. They get together with all their like minded soul mates where arguments aren’t about what is right and what is wrong, but about what is righter.
Soprano2
@NotMax: I couldn’t live in Minnesota. That year here was bad too, I was in high school and I remember we had a lot of snow and missed over a week of school at a time when they didn’t call off school every time snow was forecast.
narya
@Baud: @Kay: I think it made people generally uncomfortable–whaat abouttt the baybeeeezzzz!–but the attention of the last year has made people see that it really is about bodily autonomy.
Soprano2
@Kay: Also when they live in inside a Fox News/OAN/Newsmax bubble. I’m actually glad liberals don’t live in a bubble like that, it’s not good for a political party to be sheltered from bad news.
Layer8Problem
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Hey, how did your computer problems yesterday turn out?
prostratedragon
@NotMax: Christmas ’83 through the next month were pretty bad in Chicago, but at least we had some slight warmups so that the longest below-zero streak was no more than a week. That’s a different world. Another rough one around ’89 or so.
TriassicSands
There really is no comparison. One of Hoover’s main problems was probably his conventional conservative approach. When the Depression began he lowered taxes and refused to offer direct relief to the unemployed, but he did initiate public works projects to try to increase employment. Then, he signed the disastrous Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act into law. His response to the Depression was inadequate and caused Americans to see him as uncaring.
The wrong president for the Depression, yes. However, he wasn’t a fascist or a criminal like our “favorite” ex-president. Ironically, Trump’s support comes from people believing he really, really cares. That’s just stupidity and ignorance at work.
Soprano2
@Baud: I also think it’s because people can now see the true life consequences of the Republican abortion laws. I don’t think many people thought about how the abortion bans would affect all pregnant women until they saw it demonstrated in real life. It gets a lot more real when you realize it could hurt you or someone you love. It’s not a coincidence that the women who can still remember that are in their 70’s and 80’s or dead. I was 12 when Roe was decided; I’m almost 63.
OzarkHillbilly
@narya: I have always loved riding the train. When I was a kid we rode it once or twice every year on trips to Joliet. That “clack clack” of the wheels on the rails is soothing to my soul, and it’s been 50 years since last I took one.
geg6
Since we’re doing weather reports, it has finally stopped raining/sleeting here in Western PA and the winds have died down to a relatively calm level (from gusts at 45-50 mph to 24 mph) and the temperature is okay at 34 F and going up to 45 F today. But it is supposed to start raining again around 3 or 4, so tomorrow is going to treacherous as the wind is expected to increase and temps will be going down. I think they said we would get a bit of snow/rain (and in the mountains to the east, lots and lots of snow so the skiers will be happy) most of the day. I have no plan to go out at all tomorrow. I’m heading to the store to stock up on groceries at lunchtime today. Aldi’s is within 5 minutes from campus and, since I need some proteins, they have the best meats/seafood close to work. And the wine and spirits store is on the way to Aldi. Am spending the morning trying figure out menus while answering the phone, emails and walk-ins for this last day of add/drop.
ETA: Next week looks like a very hard freeze with temps expected in the single digits. If I wanted to live in MN or WI, I would, dammit!
Geminid
@TriassicSands: To paraphrase Will Rodgers:
Baud
@Soprano2:
One of the problems we continually have is that a lot of people who should believe us when we tell them about right-wing threats choose not to believe us.
I’m not saying we’re always right, but we’re right enough that people should take our warnings more seriously.
OzarkHillbilly
@Soprano2: IIRC, that was the year when STL set the record for days in a row with snow cover. 53 days, I think it was. I loved it.
TriassicSands
@Soprano2:
I think you’ve got the point — people don’t think. Until the repercussions of bad ideas hit millions of people over the head, they are unwilling and/or incapable of figuring out for themselves what the harm will be. That fits nicely with people’s inability to learn from the mistakes and disasters of others.
Steeplejack
@TBone:
It’s “just deserts” (accent on the second syllable), from the same root word as deserve.
Tdjr
@Kay: Abortion has always existed since women have been having babies. The key is SAFE abortions or they’ll end up in back alley clinics again.
Trivia Man
@Omnes Omnibus: lovely poofy snow it is, thats a bonus
Good thing i WFH so i can keep up with it
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Layer8Problem: I’m cautiously optimistic about the computer. I’m going to upgrade my version of Word though.
Baud
Thanks, Biden.
NotMax
@OzarkHillbilly
Lord Buckley’s train bit. No audio editing shenanigans, done live in one take.
;)
TriassicSands
@Geminid:
Agreed. Hoover was another person whose background was not well-suited to being president. I’m always horrified when voters express the belief that because people were successful in business they will make good presidents. That terrible idea was taken to the extreme when applied to Trump, because he was never even a good business person in any legitimate sense. But he was an excellent crook. Sort of.
NotMax
@Baud
“Hmpf. We don’t do kilometers in the U S of A.”
//
catclub
Does anyone expect the spawn of Trump to do anything but lie?
he may be well informed on which nations do not allow extradition to the US.
Juju
@OzarkHillbilly: I think that Biden probably meant that Trump was the second one term president to lose jobs, as did Hoover.
JCJ
@Omnes Omnibus: Quite a bit more in Brookfield and Pewaukee. The wind is really blowing from the east. Perhaps we have some lake snow.
Brit in Chicago
@PPCLI: ” the Dow/Nasdaq/ S&P 500 are far higher than than they were when Trump left office”
Yes, and it’s even more striking if you compare with their levels just before the election.
catclub
@TriassicSands: I disagree on Hoover. His response to the 1927 Mississippi flood was pretty presidential.
artem1s
@Kay:
The assholes behind this prosecution are hardly shocked that there was push back IMO. That would be a valid response from someone who has empathy and even a small measure of self awareness. Instead what they will be shocked about and furious is that a bunch of ‘woke liberals’ were even allowed on a grand jury to begin with. This will only lead to what I’ve been thinking was their inevitable goal after they aborted Roe. They will try to pass laws that lead to women (especially women of color) not being able to serve on juries, hold office (hold a job) or vote, all in the name of protecting them from themselves. They just took their next steps with overriding DeWine’s veto (just as he knew they would). There is no peak wingnut to the level of horrible shit these assholes can dream up out there in OH diner land. Never underestimate or give them the benefit of the doubt. The next thing they try will be even worse than the last. They are dying off, know it and are desperately furious about it.
Jeffro
@Kay:
wait…Kay, are you trying to say that non-stop culture war isn’t a huge vote-getter?
;)
Brit in Chicago
@dmsilev: Remember when we thought Jeb Bush must be the smart brother (because W so clearly wasn’t)? Perhaps in the Trump family it’s Barron?
catclub
@artem1s:
The threatened indictment was ” grand jurors declined to return an indictment for abuse of a corpse against Brittany Watts, 34, of Warren,”
TriassicSands
@catclub:
Fine. But the test was the Depression
When I say his “background,” I am also including his conservatism, not just that he was an engineer. Prior to the Depression, he had a good reputation. He’d been involved in government and had some success. But his response to the Depression was an abject failure in the eyes of voters (who are, admittedly, not always as great judge).
Another Scott
@Baud:
Speaking of the ocean floor, this was in the news yesterday:
Out of sight, out of mind, but still out there.
:-/
More at the link.
Cheers,
Scott.
RevRick
@OzarkHillbilly: The level of butthurt amongst the GOP about how much things have improved under President Biden is a thing to behold. The X reactions to these favorable tweets among rightwing ers is both funny and disturbing. You can just feel the rage boiling beneath the surface.
Soprano2
@Baud: I think a lot of women thought “I’m never going to need an abortion, that won’t affect me”. They didn’t think through all the ramifications of banning abortion. I think most people don’t realize a D&C is an abortion!
Soprano2
@OzarkHillbilly: We had bad winters in 1977, 1978 & 1979.
Omnes Omnibus
@TriassicSands: Getting an A on the midterm doesn’t do much when you bomb the final.
Layer8Problem
@catclub: When it came to Europeans starving during and after World War I he was the man to go to and was tremendously effective. In 1927 he was tasked with responding to a massive natural disaster. When it came to economic hardship, he was the wrong guy.
Juju
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I roll my eyes at all the caucus coverage as well, because caucuses are non democratic and stupid, and caucuses held in January in the upper Midwest even more so. However, I live in the southeast now, and anything below 40 is too cold for me. I grew up in the Midwest and northeast US, so I know about that cold weather that makes your nose hairs freeze when you breathe, and I don’t miss it at all. Also, snow tires.
Another Scott
@RevRick: GQP – “Government doesn’t work!!11”
Democrats – “Look on my works ye mighty and despair!”
GQP – “Just watch!”
:-/
We need to prevent line 3. As always.
Cheers,
Scott.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊😊😊
OzarkHillbilly
@Juju: Yes.
Steeplejack
@rikyrah:
Good morning! 🙏
topclimber
@Frankensteinbeck: How can it be a perfect world if Baud is not President?
geg6
@Soprano2:
Here in WPA, the worst ones in the time I’ve been alive have been 1993, 2010 and 1978. The two absolute worst snowfalls here happened before my time in 1890 and 1950 (which holds the record for snowfall here–almost 30 inches in three days).
narya
@Soprano2: I also think there’s another, possibly more subtle/below-the-surface thing going on: since the 1970s or so (we could argue dates), women have been gradually understanding themselves to be autonomous human beings, exploring what that means. It’s a sudden realization, in some ways (the “click” that Ms magazine talked about), but figuring out all of the ramifications is a much longer process–and there’s generational change on top of that, i.e., girls and women who grew up under a different set of assumptions. The whole thing just lands differently than it did 50 years ago.
narya
@rikyrah: Good morning! Staying warm and dry?
Layer8Problem
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Just gonna toss in a public service announcement to everybody:
Folks, back up your personal files, at least the important stuff. Get one of those big enough external USB hard drives and do it regularly. And verify that you can read at least some of the backed-up stuff off of that USB drive, because the universe has this habit of randomness screwing up our clever plans.
Oh yeah, and don’t smoke and try not to drink as much, and read a book once in a while, and would it kill ya to comb your hair and stand up straight for cryin’ out loud? 😁
TBone
@NotMax: luv that! Pals (and pallettes) were on my mind.
OzarkHillbilly
@Brit in Chicago: If referring to siblings in general, my money’s on Ivanka as the smart one. She knows how to keep her mouth shut.
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
Barbara
@catclub: Losing the contents of a miscarriage in the toilet is totally normal. It probably happens in a high percentage of miscarriages. You start bleeding, you’re in pain and, to put it gently, when spasms start everything inside wants to come out including the contents of your other organs, so, duh, you sit on the toilet.
I can’t believe anyone would see that as a prosecutable event. I did read, however, that Ms. Watts was told that she could stay in the hospital and decided to leave because she was upset and wanted to think more about what was happening. Also totally understandable, but the hospital might not have been as indifferent to her as I first thought. I would imagine that the hospital is engaging in quite a bit of interpretation and spin at this point because they come out of this looking pretty bad.
Gretchen
@Barbara: I think Ms Watts may have been worried about the cost of a hospital stay on top of a few ER visits.
OzarkHillbilly
@Soprano2: It was certainly one of those years. I was living on Arsenal street right across from Tower Grove park. My all time favorite apartment from my misspent youth.
UncleEbeneezer
@PPCLI: The metric is “Having a President who hates the same people I hate.” And sadly that seems to be all that MAGA voters (and even a non-trivial % of non-MAGA Republicans) really care about.
Barbara
@Gretchen: Yep. I thought that as well.
TBone
@Geminid: thank you for that smile.
Gretchen
I told a younger person that before Roe there used to be whole hospital wards for septic abortions which were no longer needed after legalization. She flat out didn’t believe me. Doctors who staffed those’d wards were the biggest proponents of legalization.
taumaturgo
Like every four years and according to the tropes repeated endlessly like clockwork by the duopoly political parties, this is the do-or-die election.
Like the 2020 elections, this election should – I won’t say would – be decided by the suburban vote, mainly the white female vote. If they align with the pro-choice rage of having their body autonomy ripoff by politicians, then Biden should win reelection. However, if they align with the anti women sentiments, Trump may have a shot, barring a timely guilty verdict in the secret documents smuggling charges.
TBone
@Baud: the dirty effin hippie commie pinkos are usually right, that’s why we annoy maga so much.
UncleEbeneezer
@Baud: Yes. And conservatives are pretty well known to live in the constant delusion that everyone shares their shitty views on every issue.
Barbara
@Gretchen: Sort of like there were lots of people who needed rehabilitation services due to polio, and before that, large numbers of people who couldn’t work and spent long spells of time in TB sanitaria. Did you know that some ski lodges in Vermont are repurposed TB hospitals?
I know this is harsh of me, but we often hear people say things like “no parent should have to watch their child die” but for the vast majority of human history nearly every parent watched their children die. There were Victorian photographers who specialized in images of deceased children.
It bothers me that people don’t credit the Enlightenment and scientific advancement nearly enough for our relatively safe passage through life — sure, we have problems, but dying of TB or lethal childhood illness isn’t something most of us worry about, or at least not in the US, Japan, or Europe. Getting to live long enough to start worrying about cancer in our later decades is actually a big win for us.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@TBone: thanks, very nice.
UncleEbeneezer
Well season 4 of For All Mankind finished last night and I must say, this show is as good at building up crazy tension as any I’ve ever seen. You have to go into every episode (especially season finales) asking yourself “Okay, how can this all go horribly wrong?” and then get ready for twists you didn’t even imagine. Such a great show and such a shame that it gets zero recognition when it comes to awards season.
Jeffro
meanwhile, at least one Dem (Schiff) is raising a couple of the issues that MUST be raised (over and over and over) until we get some action: abolish the filibuster and the Electoral College
I know it’s not the economy, Dobbs, etc etc…but it has to be a part of the national conversation, every cycle.
Yarrow
@artem1s:
This is 100% true. They already talk about only allowing property owners to vote and one vote per household, which of course would be the head of household. They also talk about how everything went to hell once women got to vote. They want to de-person women so they are something owned by men.
Baud
@Jeffro:
SiubhanDuinne
@OzarkHillbilly:
Winter is icummen in,
Lhude sing Goddamm,
Raineth drop and staineth slop
And how the wind doth ramm!
Sing: Goddamm.
Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us,
An ague hath my ham.
Freezeth river, turneth liver
Damn you, sing: Goddamm.
Goddamm, Goddamm, tis why I am,
Goddamm.
So ‘gainst the winter’s balm
Sing Goddamm, damm, sing Goddamm
Sing Goddamm, sing Goddamm,
DAMM.
— Ezra Pound
kindness
What the hell is Don Jr whining about? He can’t think of a single thing that is better now than it was 3 years ago?
I bet he means his coke dealers aren’t letting him run up a tab anymore, so he’s pissed.
catclub
@Another Scott:
GQP – “Government doesn’t work!!11”
FTFY
TBone
@Steeplejack: I know but I was on a kick this a.m.
Brit in Chicago
@OzarkHillbilly: She’s the reason I said “smart brother” not “smart one”. She did, of course, marry the execrable Kushner. I suppose anyone can make a mistake, but that does not speak well for either her intelligence or her taste.
Kay
The Israeli defense on the genocide accusation is just so bad – they had to know at some point they would be called to answer for this somewhere.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Brit in Chicago:
Mike in NC
Over a cup of morning coffee, I read an article in the local rag about the overlap of White Supremacy and Evangelical Christianity. Last year there were 26 members of the US House of Representatives Oversight and Accountability Committee who refused to sign a letter denouncing the former. Gee, Katie, I wonder how many of them were Republicans?
TBone
@artem1s: target acquired, sight accurate. 1,000% this.
satby
@Soprano2: I’m 68 and remember it clearly. As do my friends. The difference is that even in a Catholic hospital they would treat ectopic pregnancies and miscarriages appropriately back then, because no one pretended that magic would happen and a baby would survive non-viability. There also wasn’t any nonsense about a heart beating at 6 weeks. The anti-abortionist went so deep into anti-science to try to create doubt and support that a sizable percentage of people think zygotes look like microscopic, fully formed baby dolls.
TBone
@Soprano2: it’s too icky to think about.
Scout211
@Jeffro: Speaking of Schiff, he holds a 4% lead over Katie Porter but the big news I’d that Steve Garvey (GOP) is closing in on Porter. This, according to the latest poll.
I still think it will be Schiff and Porter as the top two in the jungle primary, but the media is stoked that there is a GOP candidate in the running now.
TBone
@Layer8Problem: *straightens up in seat, corrects posture, and contemplates pants* Now you’ve gone too far😆
Ken
Do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
TBone
@taumaturgo: Taylor might have sumthin’ to say about that
lowtechcyclist
@Barbara:
That had never occurred to me, but it makes total sense now that you mention it. The Magic Mountain, American-style.
And picking up on your point about the Enlightenment, some of the people in the Christian fellowship at my college were big fans of Francis Schaeffer. They were of the belief, which I assume came from Schaeffer, that the late Middle Ages were this golden age, morally speaking, and that things had been going downhill starting with and on account of the Enlightenment.
Even at that young age, all I could do was look at them and say, “WTF?” And fifty years later, my thought is: the Middle Ages had the Black Plague. And our post-Enlightenment society was able to create a vaccine to control the plague of Covid in a matter of months. Anyone who’d rather be living then than now would have to be out of their everloving minds. And that’s just one of a zillion ways that the Enlightenment has made our world better than theirs.
Jeffro
@Baud: good deal – add it to the conversation!
(Personally, I don’t think we need to abolish the filibuster – just abolish the Senate =)
Ejoiner
@UncleEbeneezer: agreed! Haven’t watched last night yet, but I love the series…one of the best scifi treats ever. (Also on Apple and just finished – the surprisingly good Godzilla Legacy series. My wife was a “no” on it to start, but was shocked at how much she liked it! Great last episode as well :) )
TBone
@Jeffro: hear, hear!
Paul in KY
@kalakal: I got ‘malicious web site’ when I clicked the link.
TBone
@SiubhanDuinne: ❤️
Uncle Cosmo
@OzarkHillbilly: He could’ve stopped after “I can’t think” and for once he’d have been correct.
@OzarkHillbilly: Here’s a link to Ezra Pound’s “Ancient Music”. Enjoy!
satby
@Scout211: I think Lee’s disadvantage is her age, she’s 77 now. It understandable wanting to cap off a lifetime of public service with election to the Senate and she’d be a great one, but with all the concentration on the older pols blocking younger ones from advancing she’s swimming against a desire for generational change.
TBone
@kindness: l.o.l.
Nettoyeur
@OzarkHillbilly: Did not have much to start with.
Baud
@satby: Agree. It’s sad, but we have more good people than we have top slots for.
frosty
I’ll add mine: hot showers. Louis XIV in Versailles didn’t have a hot shower.
Second choice: flush toilets.
lowtechcyclist
@SiubhanDuinne:
I hadn’t thought about that in years! One of my fellow grad students ~40 years ago had it on his office door, and I loved it right away. At the time, though, I didn’t know it was a takeoff on a medieval song about a different time of year:
Sumer is icumen in – Wikipedia
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Barbara: during one of the 2 ER visits she was waiting for EIGHT hours for the hospital to make a decision about whether they could admit her and do a D and C, in other word complete the miscarriage she was going to inevitably have (unless of course she did not have a complete miscarriage and turned septic and died from that…) 8 hours. She probably figured if they were not going to do anything she would rather be in pain at home and be slightly more comfortable.
The hospital did not want to get in trouble for performing an abortion, even on a doomed pregnancy, so they dithered and waited for the legal people to figure it out. Probably does not help that it is a Catholic hospital….
TBone
@Mr. Bemused Senior: 🤭
Betty Cracker
@UncleEbeneezer: I liked the finale. Do you think there will be a season 5?
lowtechcyclist
@frosty:
We measure food insecurity, as we call it, now. There’d have been no need back then; practically everyone had frequent times when they weren’t getting enough food to eat, let alone the kinds of food the human body needs.
Jeffro
David French nails it: the worst thing about trump is how his followers devolve right before our very eyes
TBone
@Mike in NC: it was a topic on the snippet of Moanin’ Joe I saw today; as well, this author was on:
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-MAGA-Diaries/Tina-Nguyen/9781982189693
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Jeffro: Thankfully, only one of those two things is in the Constitution. Abolishing the Senate filibuster is absolutely within reach. Electoral College not so much…
@Baud: That’s our Jeff Merkley! He has always led on this issue since we elected him as Senator in 2008.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@frosty: Technology changes everything!
Paul in KY
@Brit in Chicago: If he runs away from his presumed ‘dad’ as fast as he can (while still getting some of that money), then he’ll be the smart one.
geg6
@Barbara:
The old administration building on my campus (demolished about 15 years ago) was my county’s TB hospital. My first office here was in that building.
satby
@Baud: When I went back to manage the Dr.’s office three+ years ago, I told her I would only stay a year, because I strongly believe that if you don’t have to work in your retirement age years to survive you shouldn’t occupy a job a younger person without SS could fill. That was before 3.5% unemployment, of course. It wasn’t a highly skilled job and it’s a good job a younger person could build a career on. I ended up staying two until we found a good team that could manage well, but once in place and with my eyesight declining, I was happy to leave. There are reasons to work until you’re older, of course; but no one on their deathbed ever said they wished they had worked more.
Paul in KY
@Soprano2: Blizzard of 78 was the worst snow weather to hit KY in my lifetime.
Jeffro
And following on French’s piece, here’s Michelle Goldberg: MAGA has Devoured American Evangelicals
That’s just pathetic. Vander Plaats knows trump can’t win and is going down for the count on multiple felony charges…so the solution is to back DeSantis so trump can be pardoned.
Ah well – I hope it all tastes like ashes to them in the end. #ETTD
TBone
@frosty: after using a composting toilet for a few years, I concur.
OzarkHillbilly
@SiubhanDuinne: Heh.
yellowdog
@Kay: It’s not that they don’t get it, it’s that their whole personality is determined by whatever will hurt people (not THEIR kind of people) and pwn the libs. Even their fucked up morality doesn’t enter their decisions. They CAN’T act other wise.
Ramona
@SiubhanDuinne: errr, I love Pound’s poetry, but perhaps you might not be aware that he was a self-proclaimed fascist.
satby
@Jeffro: Great article. I see it manifest in my red area as a vicious selfishness and general IGMFU. And a perpetual grievance against anyone who might be more comfortable or contented in their lives, even if not more wealthy. MAGAts are bad people.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@OzarkHillbilly: That is such a beautiful area, especially in the snow.
TBone
@Jeffro: inspired me to refresh my memory about Father Coughlin.
Mike in NC
In case anybody thought there couldn’t be a bigger piece of shit out there than Donald Trump, along comes Trump Junior. How’s the ugly divorce battle working out?
Jeffro
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: I hear you, but we’ll never put abolishing the EC within reach if we don’t talk about it.
(of course, a Dem candidate winning Texas’ EC votes would help bring the GOP around on abolishing the EC too. =)
OzarkHillbilly
@Brit in Chicago: I suspect she married him because he’s a greedy little fuck who will stop at nothing in his quest for mammon. If so, she wasn’t wrong to marry him. She got out of the trump org in time to avoid being sued by NY state, she has stayed out of the whole coup mess by keeping her mouth shut and putting as much mileage as she can between the orange ass and her as she can, and she and hubby managed to parlay their time in DC into $640 million.
I may not be fond of her or her amorality, but she’s smart.
Layer8Problem
@lowtechcyclist:
Did they have some clever answer for the medieval murder rate? They had a massive crime problem, which I can only assume was the fault of the Democrat nobility.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
That was part of while people were pissed at him, from his relief work he should have been the man to deal with the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl.
And that’s what Trump doesn’t it get, it wasn’t the Depression that killed Hoover, it was Hoover reaction to it.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
We’re also more moral than they were in the Middle Ages.
artem1s
@Kay:
I agree, Dem candidates spent way too many years parsing out ‘good’ and ‘bad’ abortion messages. Way too many candidates doing the ‘I’m morally opposed to murdering babees’ but ONLY inthecaseof ‘necessary, emergency’ situations, I guess it’s OK to make an exception tosavethelifeofthemother (not women – mother).
IMO. the most important thing Obama did during his presidency was to say, out loud, that reproductive medical care was a financial/economic necessity for all humans. That you can’t have financial security if you don’t have bodily autonomy. That choice isn’t only about abortion. It was the first time I’d heard an elected President link passage of Roe to the financial security and well being of women, children and families. It cost him in the midterms. It cost a lot of Dems their seats in Congress to try to include reproductive care in ACA. But it was worth the cost because after that, Dem candidates started to be far more candid about their support for Roe and all reproductive care in general.
mrmoshpotato
I see Shit For Brains Jr takes after Shit For Brains Sr.
GFY, you 80’s used car salesman.
oldgold
To the MAGA claim that God sent Trump, I ask, “Did God run out of locusts?”
lowtechcyclist
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon:
Obviously, the Constitution can’t be changed overnight – it has to be preceded by a lot of hard work just to get the topic on the table, let alone change minds.
But there are ways we need to amend the Constitution, and the Democratic Party needs to put them in its platform, at the very least.
Direct popular vote is one.
An affirmative right to vote is another – the amendments in the Constitution just say that right can’t be denied on account of sex, race, color, previous condition of servitude, or age (for those of at least 18 years of age). It can always be denied for other reasons. That shouldn’t be allowed.
The ERA, and include sexual orientation in addition to gender.
An amendment sunsetting declarations of war and other authorizations of the use of military force abroad unless renewed. The freakin’ AUMF from 2001 is still in place and available for Presidential use.
An amendment protecting workers’ right to organize and negotiate with their common employers as a unit.
That’s off the top of my head, I could probably come up with a few more.
Paul in KY
@Baud: Agree on that. Don’t abolish the filibuster completely (as that might bite us in the ass someday), but return it to the old way where you had to stand up there and actually talk/control the floor for as long as you can.
OzarkHillbilly
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: Tower Grove is still my favorite STL park.
Citizen Alan
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon:
I will say it once again for the 10,000th time. We don’t need to abolish the electoral college because it would be very easy to fix what is fundamentally broken about it through simple legislative action. Unfortunately, no one wants to even consider that easy fix bcause doing so would diminish the individual power of the most powerful members of the house of representatives, and none of them want that.
The solution: Expand the house of representatives so that there is one representative for every one hundred thousand citizens. This would give us just over 3300 representatives, and accordingly the more popular states would get an appropriate bump in electoral votes based on their population. If California has 330 EVs and Iowa has 32, the inequities of the electoral college are suddenly a lot less of a problem.
SFAW
@Baud:
“Tell me why I should vote for
HillaryBiden, but without using the words ‘Trump’ or ‘Supreme Court.’ Or ‘insurrection.’ Or ‘the great economy.’ Or ‘COVID.’ Or ‘improved healthcare.’ Or ‘lower crime.’ Or ‘DEMOCRACY.’ “Kay
@yellowdog:
Well, I can tell you that Republicans where I live were shocked by the abortion referendum. They believed we would lose. They never really grappled with abortion as a practical matter – never thought it through. They still have t accepted that they are going to have to find some bright line between “abortion” and “emergency medical care” or their state statutes will fail – the laws won’t work as criminal laws as long as they interfere with medical care.
There is no bright line. They will never find it because it didn’t and doesn’t exist.
The anti abortion (Catholic) countries recognized this. It’s why Mexico and Ireland decriminalized. It’s a logical error – a misunderstanding of the process of pregnancy.
Baud
@SFAW:
“If you can’t explain why I should vote for Biden using mime, you haven’t earned my vote!”
UncleEbeneezer
@Ejoiner: It’s so weird to me that For All Mankind is so constantly snubbed because it is every bit as good as Battlestar Galactica, a show it is closely related to and one that was such a huge cultural touchstone and pretty much invented the Prestige TV/Binge-worthy trend. Not only are the acting performances and plot twists as good (or better) than any other show but the special effects are incredibly good too.
We are enjoying Monarch, but it’s pretty cheesy at times (especially Kurt Russell), needs less drama and more action/monsters. It’s also hard not to judge it compared to Godzilla Minus One, which is so much better all around. Still a fun show tho.
Lapassionara
@artem1s: Yes. I remember a phrase about abortion that included the words “safe” and “rare.” Pro-choice advocates always seemed to be on the defensive and to be apologetic when defending Roe. Big billboards showed sympathetic-looking fetuses with the line “abortion stops a beating heart.” Well sometimes, not having an abortion stops a beating heart too. Before Roe, abortion might have been illegal in most states, but it was available even so. Now, it is not at all.
UncleEbeneezer
@Citizen Alan: That doesn’t fix the problem of the Senate tho.
SFAW
@mrmoshpotato:
Fuck that, I’d believe Joe Isuzu over Junior, 12 times out of 10, any day.
lowtechcyclist
@Layer8Problem:
I wouldn’t have known enough back then to even pose the question, so I have no idea whether they had an answer to it.
TBone
One more
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NGybe9m2V3E
OzarkHillbilly
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: He applied standard conservative economic theory to a situation I suspect nobody was prepared for. Everything was going gang busters during the roaring ’20s until it collapsed like the house of cards it was. He was not up to the task.
FDR had a vision of how to get us out of it and the DEM party stood behind him.
Citizen Alan
@UncleEbeneezer: If you’re referring to the filibuster, that can be changed by modification of a senate rule which is even easier. We just haven’t had fifty one reliable democratic votes to make it happen.
EarthWindFire
I get horrified too. Why put someone in charge of an entire country when their biggest expertise is selling stuff to particular segments of the country? What Trump has showed us once and for all is that’s a feature, not a bug, for the majority of GOP voters. That’s even more horrifying.
lowtechcyclist
@Citizen Alan:
That solves the part of the problem that the EC overweights the small states. The big problem is that 50%+1 takes all the electoral votes for each state, so a fairly small number of voters in a handful of swing states are the people who really determine the outcome of elections. 45,000 votes in a few states in 2020 was the difference between Biden winning and Trump being re-elected.
narya
@TBone: Rachel Maddow’s podcast does an excellent job detailing his reach and effect. (I think it’s “Ultra.”) It’s quite chilling.
Kay
@yellowdog:
Trump doesn’t get it either. He thinks it’s a matter of compromising on “weeks” or making exceptions for rape or incest.
That isn’t the issue. The issue is how do they decide what is emergency medical care and what is abortion without making medical decisions?
They can’t. That’s why they are in this box and can’t get out of it. Their ideological definition of abortion does not match the reality of pregnancy – it bleeds into pregnancy. It can’t be cleaved off neatly.
Look at the Watts case. Her case turned on whether the fetus expired prior to expulsion or at expulsion. They had to bring a physician in to speak to that. 50 million women of child bearing age in the US. Do conservatives want to try each pregnancy complication in a court? Because they have to under their legal scheme.
UncleEbeneezer
@SFAW: Also don’t you dare mention: ‘voting rights’, ‘civil rights’, ‘bodily autonomy’, ‘Trans rights’, ‘guns’, ‘global warming’, etc…
evodevo
@NotMax: Yessss…I remember that winter QUITE well…the high here in northcentral KY was 10 for WEEKS. It was quite a shock to the system here, because winters had NEVER been that cold. City water was frozen all over the state, because water lines were only buried about 18 inches, and the frost line that year went down 24. We were living in a modestly insulated 12 x 60 mobile home, heated with LP gas and froze the whole month of Jan/Feb. Changes were made LOL
TBone
@EarthWindFire: selling stuff like our stockpile of protective gear to the highest bidder during a pandemic.
UncleEbeneezer
@Citizen Alan: I’m referring to the fact that the Senate is, by design, the biggest affront to Democracy imaginable because it gives Wyoming voters disproportional power over CA voters.
Paul in KY
@Layer8Problem: I don’t see how anyone (with a lick of sense & cunning) would have been caught for murder in 1400s. Really would take multiple eyewitnesses, statement from the soon to be dead victim or blood & brains all over you to get fingered.
Paul in KY
@Baud: People, especially the nobility/gentry, did all kinds of evil shit back then to advance themselves or family. Life was cheap, you will probably be dead next week…go for it!
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
Constitutional Amendments can be stopped by 16 State Legislatures. Democrats may be able to stop a bad amendment, but they sure won’t be passing a good one anytime soon.
Abolishing the filibuster only takes an aligned majority of Senators.
DC Statehood only takes a congressional majority.
Amending the Constitution is not a good plan. There are other ways to get where we need to go.
Paul in KY
@lowtechcyclist: Being convicted as a traitor or for sedition would be a good reason, IMO.
TBone
@narya: yes, I admire her focus. I should listen to that but sometimes have trouble with podcast attention span (reading is my preference).
Paul in KY
@Citizen Alan: I can’t see that ever happening. Logic is good, but no way that ever happens, IMO.
Uncle Cosmo
But he was Secretary of Commerce at the time, and had to get the approval of then-President Calvin “Silent Cal” Coolidge. Hoover was not sworn in as POTUS until 4 March 1929.
(Not saying Hoover did not do some good things, e.g. organizing the provision of food to millions of starving Europeans during and after the Great War.)
Baud
Paul in KY
@Baud: Gee, our ole LaSalle ran great!
Betty Cracker
@Kay: The “weeks” thing is thumpingly stupid because it assumes the average person understands fetal development. They don’t.
Captain C
Cocaine is a hell of a drug.
kalakal
@Paul in KY: How odd. Can’t imagine why, it’s a perfectly legit UK satirical/ humour site called “The Poke” – been running for years. I’m sorry about that, works fine when I try so I don’t know why it shouldn’t work for you.
Ohio Mom
@Citizen Alan: There’s a certain elegance to your proposal but I am left wondering about the logistics of 3,300+ Representatives. Where do they meet, in a stadium? How does a committee function with a membership of what, hundreds?
Even if we doubled the amount of people represented by an office holder, that’s still something like 1,600 Representatives.
I’m open to this idea* if someone could describe how to manage such a crowd.
*Not that it matters what I think.
Baud
@Captain C:
artem1s
@catclub:
what’s your point? I know what the indictment was for. It was clearly an attempt to frame spontaneous abortion (miscarriage) as a crime.
Baud
@Ohio Mom:
We’re gonna need a bigger whip.
evodevo
@lowtechcyclist: Not to mention interminable internecine wars that devastated the agricultural countryside and killed civilians by the thousands…during lulls in the plague and other communicable diseases…
TBone
@Betty Cracker: they don’t know what a zygote is.
Old School
@Ohio Mom:
First, we build a Galactic
SenateHouse of Representatives.a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
@catclub: He wasn’t president then; he was elected in 1928—partly in reaction to his work during the flood, as well as his relief work in World War I.
mrmoshpotato
@SFAW: LOL! Fair enough.
Trivia Man
@narya: It is vastly different. I belueve that in 1970 nearly all states did not allow women to open a line of credit in their own name. Even today an unmarried woman must fight like hell to get medical procedures done that might affect future reproductive options in case a hypothetical, currently non existent, future husband might object.
I read about a married lesbian who had to try 10 doctors before one would perform a tubal ligation without a husbands permission.
my position is WOMEN ARE PEOPLE
Timill
@frosty: Dentistry with anaesthesia.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
It doesn’t solve their problem.
Take it to 15 weeks. Most of the women in Texas who are suing because they were denied medical care were past 15 weeks.
Weeks or rape or incest don’t fix the fundamental flaw in their thinking.
They can’t rope off “good women” from “bad women”. They caught all 50 million in the net.
Trumps supposedly smart n savvy take is just as dumb as the rest – they can’t make their ideological/ religious views of women conform with the reality of pregnancy
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
@Gretchen: I used to work with a doctor who was a retired professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Vanderbilt. He once told me “People who have never cleaned up after amateur hour should shut up about limits on abortion.”
Ixnay
@SiubhanDuinne: Fookin brill. We used to do Summer is icumen in in music school. Now someone needs to do the Geographical Fugue.
Literata
@TBone: It’s “dulce et decorum est, pro blastocyst mori” even if they don’t know a blastocyst from a fistula
Kay
Conservatives thought it would be easy to punish bad women while protecting good women from punishment.
But it’s not. As long as they keep killing “good” pregnant women AND “bad” abortion seeking women they will have this problem.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Soprano2:
That seems like a problem that can be applied to a lot of topics, like vaccination, where people take the benefits for granted after so long and eventually forget what life was like before it
trollhattan
@OzarkHillbilly: And yet Stanford has an institute named for Hoover!
Now that Kissinger is dead (still dead, right?) I wonder who the most famous member is? https://www.hoover.org/fellows
Mattis? Wolfowitz? Condi? Nobody remembers Pete Wilson.
Matt McIrvin
Really I’d say the dropping homicide rate is probably just the destabilizing psychological effects of the COVID pandemic wearing off. But it certainly could have been otherwise.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Ohio Mom: Even if the House of Reps was only doubled, it would shift the balance a little in our favor. Wyoming, for instance, would still only have 1 representative. The # of Reps from California and New York would likely double.
lowtechcyclist
@Paul in KY:
Yabbut who really cares? It’s not like there’s going to be a huge bloc of votes from actual seditionists. WRT voting, the problem is the number of supporters they have who weren’t involved in any crime.
Better to just ensure that everyone 18 or older may vote. Start including exceptions, however seemingly righteous, and they’ll be leveraged in bad ways.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@trollhattan:
INfamous member. That line up is execrable.
Matt McIrvin
@UncleEbeneezer: We’ve been gradually working through the backlog of For All Mankind, and as a big space/science-fiction nerd it does seem to me that it gets less believable as it goes on. The first season was pretty grounded in actual period space technology, though it melodramatized everything; S2 fudges a few things, like the Shuttles that can somehow get to lunar orbit; more and more gets pulled out of butts as you get to about season 3 and the Mars race. But it’s pretty good as drama and they at least thought about how space works a bit.
JML
@Uncle Cosmo: I think the craziest thing about Hoover is that after losing the election, he still expected FDR to support his plans and continue doing the same things Hoover had put in place. And was furious when FDR blew him off.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
i think so too. We have to stop listening to panicking ninnies. Jesus, the bullshit they churned out because of an uptick over a year. “We are now a low trust society!” They’re always afraid of the wrong things.
I also think police basically went on strike for two years because they had a big hissy fit over efforts to hold them accountable. They have a lousy clearance rate. They need to explain how increasing their funding will make them better at their jobs. The clearance rate should be going UP because 3/4s of the country is on video surveilence. How can it be going down? Any explanation for why they no longer do traffic enforcement? They just don’t feel like it?
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
Someone needs to write a dystopian novel about a woman doctor who nearly died because she couldn’t get an abortion. She goes on a revenge spree. She kidnaps male leaders in the anti-abortion movement and implants fertilized eggs on internal organ tissue. She films the process and does a massive release on social media so that everyone knows who her victims are and they can’t quietly get the zygote removed.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Kay:
I think you’re right that the general public don’t care about or are against things like DEI/”wokeness”. One thing I worry about though is Youtube grifters and the YT algorithm funneling younger people to extremist ideologies by using pop culture and nostalgia to brainwash them into thinking liberal/progressive themes are “political” while conservative/alt-right politics never are.
ETA: Hell, these people and their audiences throw a hissyfit every time a POC/LBTQ+/female character is the lead/focus
lowtechcyclist
@trollhattan:
Once I saw Scott Atlas’ name on their list (he’s a senior fellow), I stopped scrolling.
trollhattan
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Right? If they ever hold a general meeting, time for some comet-rooting.
Another Scott
@Ohio Mom: Google tells me that Germany has the largest freely-elected lower house in a legislature – 736 members. Their important committees have 37 (defense), 43 (budget), and similar members.
US House Appropriations has 61 members, Judiciary has 44, Ways and Means has 43, Agriculture has 52, etc., etc.
There are ways to significantly enlarge the US House and still have it work efficiently and effectively. They’ll figure it out. ;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Kay
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
You would know more about that than I do – that’s your age group. My middle son says there’s truth to it for young men – both AA and white- that a lot of them are drawn to shows like Joe Rogan or Tucker Carlson. He was asking me really pointed questions about affirmative action- the legal issues- in a way that made me think he had listened to someone attack it. He’s a Democrat though- he’s actually a pll worker now, so a super Democrat :)
I always thought Democrats should go after young white working class women apart from young white men. I think the women are more liberal and open minded and Dems could take a chunk of that working class vote.
Paul in KY
@kalakal: No problem!
suzanne
@narya:
Ironically, Amtrak experienced some sort of server and communications problems today that suspended service between NYC and Philly. My train from Philly back to Pittsburgh is two hours delayed and I’m sitting here in the train station.
Kay
I’m no fan of Hunter Biden. The fact that he’s a recovering drug addict has nothing to do with that I see as his privileged assholeness in regards to his father’s powerful position(s). I haven’t seen a shred of evidence that he was ever anything other than a person who relied on his famous father for income (indirectly) – I refuse to feel sorry for someone who pays 20,000 a month in rent.
BUT, even I think these bullshit hearings are unfair. He appeared! Let him defend himself. I hope the public sees it as unfair too. Smart of him to show up. But then drug addicts are often clever. It’s part of why they’re so infuriating.
Paul in KY
@evodevo: Plus, since there is no effective police presence (except in biggest cities/castles), perpetual living in fear of a band of heavily armoured thugs descending upon you and having their way with you and there’s not a damn thing you could do about it.
TBone
@a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio): priceless.
Paul in KY
@lowtechcyclist: I care.
TBone
@Literata: hahahaha!
suzanne
At the risk of sounding like David Brooks, may I note that trail mix is TWELVE DOLLARS at the newsstand in the train station?! Gummy bears are EIGHT DOLLARS.
Paul in KY
@Another Scott: 3,000 is 4 times that number.
TBone
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: brilliant.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: I am a panicking ninny about many things but not about street crime, for God’s sake.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: …I do feel a little dirty talking in “pandemic is over” terms given that, you know, both times I actually got COVID were “after the pandemic was over”, the second time a couple weeks ago. But sociologically that’s how it breaks down.
TBone
@Kay: I am that demographic except for young.
Soprano2
This is their fundamental problem. They can’t write into law that women who got pregnant the “right” way for the “right” reasons can have abortions, while the “sluts” who got pregnant the “wrong” way for the “wrong” reasons cannot have abortions. It’s about the idea that pregnancy is the price a woman should pay for having sex, and that especially if you have the “wrong” kind of sex you should have to pay, with your life if necessary, to teach you not to do that again.
Another Scott
@Paul in KY: Yes, and?
The National People’s Congress has 2977 members. They make it work. (Yes, I know they’re a rubber stamp and only meet 2 weeks a session, etc., etc.)
There’s nothing magical about 435.
I like the idea of each state having a minimum of 2 representatives. (Why should a state ever have more senators than representatives??) That would give around 1145 representatives (330M/half of Wyoming population). I don’t see that as being a stupidly large number.
Having a lot more representatives would give cities and suburbs (where people actually live) a more balanced share of power. And would make representatives more representative of the people that elect them.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Soprano2
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Yes, it can. I believe one reason fascism is on the rise again is because most of the people who fought it in WWII are dead.
TBone
@suzanne: isn’t President Biden in Allentown today?
Soprano2
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: “The Blacklist” did an episode pretty much like that, only it was a woman who was raped. She captured her rapist and kept him prisoner in her basement; she used his semen to impregnate the men. It was mind-bending.
suzanne
@TBone: Is he? I have been wrapped up in work all week and have not really been paying attention to the world.
TBone
@suzanne: https://www.mcall.com/2024/01/12/president-joe-biden-lehigh-valley-live-updates/
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: I live in the part of town where many people believe there’s a shooting every week. I talked to our resident retired police officer about it; he told me that he tells everyone that if they aren’t involved in a life of crime or with the criminal element, they’ll probably never have an encounter with a criminal no matter where they live. I told him I absolutely believe that. We’ve had a few minor things happen that could have happened anywhere, but it’s pretty much like living in any part of town.
Paul in KY
@Another Scott: 1145 is alot less than 3000 odd. Certainly would have to build a ‘Galactic House’ as there’s no way the Capital would hold em (even the 1145). Plus the GQP braying jackasses would be times 2.5 or so. To me, seems kinda like the trillion dollar coin.
Baud
A large legislature might be feasible if we had a parliamentary system with strong top-down party management. We don’t, however.
Another Scott
@Paul in KY:
To my surprise and delight, the team’s last proposal reveals that we could actually take the House of Representatives up to 1,725 members without having to construct a new building.
;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Uncle Cosmo
@trollhattan: My preferred method of swift and sure retribution, Q. D. Meteor</strong>….
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Trivia Man: There are actually networks of women who put women in touch with OB/Gyns in their area willing to do tubal ligation without arbitrary rules about You must have had children, You must have had at least more than one child, You must be over a certain age. You might change you mind (like you are too flighty to make up your mind about an important decision)
Jay
@suzanne:
How much are doubles of 20 year old Single Malts?
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: I’m not.
Annie
@Trivia Man:
There’s more to it than a husband’s permission. There are gynecologists who have been sued for performing tubal ligations — a decade after the surgery — by women who have changed their minds and are furious that their own doctor performed the operation. “The doctor should have known I might change my mind about this!” I know because I used to work in a law firm that did plaintiff-side medical malpractice and we were asked to take several such cases. Our firm did not accept any of them but other lawyers did on occasion. I remember quite well the fury of the women who wanted to sue — always fury toward the doctor who did the surgery, not themselves for demanding it.
Citizen Alan
@UncleEbeneezer: Which is why we’re supposed to have checks and balances. One branch where every state is treated equally with the same number of votes. One branch where larger states have more power because of population.
The idea that there is any set of circumstances under which we flat-out abolish the Senate is absurd. It would mean completely reinventing our entire system of government, to the degree of requiring a Constitutional convention. And nothing in this world terrifies me as much as the thought of a Constitutional Convention when there are enough red states to force a fundamentalist theocracy on the rest of us.
trollhattan
Assuming 40, same as downtown.
Citizen Alan
@Ohio Mom: I thought that too … until Covid. But we have just gone through a 3-year-long social experiment that proved to me quite conclusively that 90% of office work in every business including government can be done via email and Zoom meetings. 3300 Members of Congress. Of those, the (arbitrary number) 500 with the most seniority get office space in the capital. The rest work out of the offices in their individual districts and attend hearings remotely. And those districts would frequently be so small that the average citizen could drive to it and stand a good chance of their Congressperson being in the office that day. Wouldn’t it be better if your Congressman was someone from your county who you probably knew personally or were at most 3 degrees of separate from knowing personally? As opposed to your Congressman being some random guy you see in TV ads every two years and who spends at least 48 weeks out of every year in D.C., hundreds or thousands of miles away from their constituents?
Citizen Alan
@Kay: I don’t think they believe in the idea of “good women.” Eve ate the apple, and God said “Let Woman bring forth her children in pain.” That and nothing else drives the anti-abortion movement. If it were otherwise, the political entities most opposed to abortion would aggressively support a social safety net for children born into poverty, and not a single one of them does. Deep down, they genuinely believe that the primary purpose of pregnancy is to torture women because of Original Sin.
JML
@Paul in KY: I like the “Wyoming Plan” where when you redistrict you take the population of the smallest single district state in the country and make that the basis for the size of the House by dividing the population by that number to set the number of members. Keeps the House more of the People’s House and appropriately populous to represent the larger states better, without ending up with something absurdly large and unwieldy.
and it would also dilute the electoral impact of states with smaller populations more appropriately without eliminating them from consideration. It doesn’t fix the issues with the senate…but it would be better in DC.
Suzanne
@Jay:
Yeah, David Brooks and I don’t frequent the same kind of establishments.
Trivia Man
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: Im glad to hear it is getting better.
To address Annie’s point lower down, i am sorry some women have regrets. and it doesn’t sound fair to then sue 10 years later over your decision. Lots if people make decisions they later regret – get married, but a house, have kids for example. Doesn’t snd like grounds fir a lawsuit to me. I wonder if a woman who is refused the procedure can sue the dr for child support or damages from a pregnancy gone wrong?
Another Scott
@Citizen Alan: The WaPo opinion piece I link to at #267 above argues that we can do an 11,000 member House, for similar reasons and using similar techniques.
Cheers,
Scott.
Gretchen
@TBone: I still want to know if Kushner was selling protective gear to the highest bidder in 2020. There were east coast governors acquiring PPE on their own and disguising it in food trucks to get it to hospitals. Feds were intercepting and confiscating PPE. Nobody has ever reported who order that and where the stuff went.
Annie
@Trivia Man:
Oh it isn’t fair, but when has that stopped anyone?
These suits don’t generally go very far, AFAIK, but the doctor still has to have an attorney file a demurrer to get it dismissed.
And there is a tort for “wrongful birth”, at least in California — when a vasectomy or tubal ligation fails and a woman gets pregnant but does not have an abortion.
FWIW, a friend of mine in her late thirties requested a tubal ligation after her second child was born in 1998, and her doctor did it. No consent from her husband was needed, or even discussed.
Gretchen
@Kay: I’m no Hunter fan either but I’m disgusted that nobody in Congress can/wants to stop Marge Green from waving around nude pictures of him every time she gets a chance at the mike. That’s just wrong, and if it were pictures of a woman people would make it stop, but it seems like it’s no big deal if it’s a man.
Gretchen
@Citizen Alan: This. There’s a whole strain of evangelicism that argues that women have to be under a man’s headship because Eve ate the apple. No mention that Adam ate it too. These are young people of both sexes that insist men need to make all the decisions because women are the weak vessel.
TBone
@Gretchen: needs to be pursued and prosecuted imo.
Paul in KY
@Another Scott: Got me there :-)
TBone
@Gretchen: ejaculation causes 100% of abortions.
Paul in KY
@Omnes Omnibus: I think I am, as I would have offed a couple of HS douchewads if I was Middle Ages Rollin.
Paul in KY
@Citizen Alan: IMO, every ‘congressperson’ would demand office/floor desk/all the shit they get now.
Another Scott
@Paul in KY: Not having to travel to and from DC dozens of times a year would be a huge, huge plus for them. They could have giant desks in their district offices. ;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Paul in KY
@JML: Interesting scenario, JML.
Geminid
@TBone: A fuller quotation, from Will Rogers’ weekly column of November 17, 1932:
Citizen Alan
@Paul in KY: They can “demand” whatever they want. But office space and committee assignments are already done on both a partisan and seniority basis. Which is why Johnson was able to rudely kick Pelosi out of her Speaker emeritus office basically on a cruel whim.
Paul in KY
@Another Scott: Some of them probably like being in DC more than being in their dumpy districts.
lowtechcyclist
That’s nice. The problem is, once you start putting it into the law that everybody gets to vote, except this group or that group, it’s an avenue to widen that definition.
The punishment for insurrection should be prison. If they want to vote for Rethugs from prison, well, better that than opening the door to other citizens being deprived of their franchise.
Look what’s happened in Florida. The people passed an amendment to the state constitution saying that felons would regain the franchise once they’d served their term. We’ve seen how that worked out. Any voting rights amendment shouldn’t give any opponents of voting rights the tiniest ledge to stand on.
Paul in KY
@lowtechcyclist: They sure ought to be in prison for treason for the rest of their lives or on death row. Insurrectionists, however, will get out someday & (personally) I don’t want them having the ability to vote in the nation they tried to overthrow.
NaijaGal
@Barbara: It was a Catholic hospital, so an ethics committee debated for eight hours whether or not she could be treated while her doomed fetus still had a “fetal heartbeat.” That would have happened, Dobbs or not, because Catholic hospitals do the same thing in blue states where there are no abortion bans. The “fetal heartbeat” rule means in many cases that the mother is pretty much dying from sepsis by the time the Catholic hospital doctors are allowed to act.
After waiting eight hours, Ms. Watts probably realized nothing would be done and left (it’s not like the hospital offered to have her wait for free).
The next day, when she returned, the ethics committee still hadn’t arrived at a decision, in spite of their ER doctor’s recommendation to terminate. She left again.
She was hospitalized after the miscarriage and is lucky she didn’t die from sepsis.
lowtechcyclist
@Citizen Alan:
Huh??????????????????????????
Have you people who keep saying things like this ever read Article V of the Constitution???
Anything passed by such a convention still needs to be ratified by 3/4 of the states before becoming part of the Constitution. All a convention would do is bypass the Congressional part of ratifying an amendment.
13 blue states is all it takes to block a red-state Constitutional amendment. Hawaii, California, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Illinois, Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont. Hey wait, that’s 14, and they’re all pretty damn certain to be on the right side of anything like that. We don’t need Michigan or Virginia or Pennsylvania or Maine.
I really don’t get you convention alarmists. All of you seem to be of the mind that anything it passed would go directly into the Constitution. And that’s just not how it would work.
lowtechcyclist
@Paul in KY:
Well, I don’t either. But it’s a matter of priorities. I don’t know whether the states are excluding millions of people from voting with their shenanigans, or merely hundreds of thousands. But my priority is that that needs to end. If the cost is that a few thousand insurrectionists still get to vote from prison just like any other felon, I think that’s a price worth paying.
satby
@suzanne: It was the GPS server, the one that tells crews and traffic controllers where all the trains (freight trains too) are on the board.
Paul in KY
@lowtechcyclist: Good point.
NotMax
@lowtechcyclist
“Why don’t they pass a Constitutional Amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as good as Prohibition did, in five years we will have the smartest people on earth.”
= Will Rogers
;)
Jeffro
a belated thank you!
Sally
@lowtechcyclist: Hear! Hear! No citizen should lose the right to vote, ever, for any reason. I am fanatically in favour of “universal franchise”. I am very much in favour of insurrectionists losing their right to own a “gun” (of any sort). Gun rights probably mean more to many of them than voting rights anyway …
Sally
@lowtechcyclist:Duplicate