Archives for 2024

Looks like we could use an open thread.

Here, have some happy dogs.  I was doing some electronic filing today and came across this image.  Possibly from H,E, Wolf last year.  No idea!

Thursday Evening Open ThreadPost + Comments (39)

MTG, Gosar, et. al. seem fairly crazy, but Nancy Mace seems to be the one Republican Member of Congress where crazy is a way of life:

A man has been arrested, and Nancy Mace is wearing a wrist brace and shoulder sling after the South Carolina congresswoman said she was “physically accosted” in a Capitol office building on Tuesday afternoon.

Mace claims she was “was physically accosted at the Capitol” by “a pro-tr*ns man.”

“One new brace for my wrist and some ice for my arm and it’ll heal just fine,” Mace wrote on X. “Your tr*ns violence and threats on my life will only make me double down.” […]

Three attendees told The Imprint that McIntyre, 33, had done nothing more than shake the Mace’s hand and exchange a few words. Mace is a co-chair of the bipartisan foster care caucus, and she spoke at the event.

Elliott Hinkle, a youth LGBTQ+ rights advocate, told The Imprint that McIntyre shook Mace’s hand and made a comment that the many transgender youth in foster care “need your support.”

“From what I saw, it was a normal handshake and interaction that I would expect any legislator to expect from anyone as a constituent,” Hinkle said, adding that an aide to Mace later tracked McIntyre down and asked for his name and to repeat his comments to the representative. Two other witnesses corroborated his description of events.

Who knows what happened, but her former comms director has weighed in:

Accidentally (not really) Like a MartyrPost + Comments (138)

Here’s a gift link to Erin Reed’s list of the 81 Democrats who voted for the defense authorization bill that included termination of TriCare benefits to trans kids (dependents of military personnel).   This is the first anti-trans bill of the modern era, according to Erin.  There were 16 Nay votes on the Republican side, but some of those were nutters like MTG, Andy Biggs (chair of the Freedom Caucus), Paul Gosar, etc., so I’m guessing they had some kind of objection to the bill that had nothing to do with the anti-trans provisions.   This vote sure isn’t an encouraging sign to any trans person.

The fact that Johnson will have a tiny majority next year, along with a good number of Freedom Ca-ca members who love voting against every bill that comes to the floor, is going to make it hard for him to get anything done.  In the comments yesterday, there was some discussion of the Democrats’ strategy to protect Social Security.  Brian Beutler [gift link] has a perspective on that:

So the plot against Social Security is real, and it goes all the way to the top. That’s why Democrats are prepared to once again oppose cuts to Social Security as a bloc. Running back their 2005 and 2017 plays in defense of the safety net is what Hakeem Jeffries had in mind when he dismissed other, major aspects of partisan opposition as “distraction[s}.” It’s why TPM’s Josh Marshall, a veteran of the safety-net wars, published an article with the headline “Let’s Call It: Trump 2.0 Is Lining Up for Massive Social Security Cuts.”

And, to be clear, it’s important for Democrats to be ready, even against a tiny incoming GOP majority. But we should all try to anticipate the ways that 2025 will be different from 2005 and 2017. I would advise Democrats to prepare for opposition on many other fronts, too, and with the expectation that the main focal points of politics in the coming year are likely to be taxes, immigration, and tariffs rather than the roots and branches of safety-net programs.

And to the extent Democrats do need to run defensive plays to protect safety-net programs, they should imagine ways these fights might not play out exactly as the did in the past.

Erik Loomis, fan favorite here, was on a podcast that I thought was pretty good.  As a labor historian, he had a good perspective on the history of what used to work to build community for the Democratic Party, and how that’s lost in the modern era.  This includes the loss of liberal religion as well as the decline in union membership.  He also called out the Democrats’ habit of running 3 month campaigns versus the Republicans’ eternal campaign.  The deal with Loomis, IMO, is the longer the form, the better the content.

One of the topics Loomis mentioned was that commenters in LGM have, in frustration, called a lot of voters stupid.  I see that here, too.  I just think that’s a pointless labeling that gets us nowhere.  The question that interests me is what information those so-called stupid people — the ones who aren’t completely in the thrall of Trump, or aren’t irredeemable racists and/or sexists — used to make up their minds, and why information from Democrats didn’t convince them to vote for our candidates.

Various LinksPost + Comments (278)

Some good news:

Joe Biden has carried out the largest act of presidential clemency on a single day in modern US history, commuting the sentences of almost 1,500 people and pardoning 39 Americans convicted of non-violent crimes.

In a statement issued on Thursday, the White House said that Biden’s sweeping act of clemency was designed to “help reunite families, strengthen communities, and reintegrate individuals back into society”.

The almost 1,500 commutations ordered by the president all relate to people who were released from prisons and placed in home confinement during the Covid pandemic. Thousands of prisoners were released to their homes as an emergency measure under the Cares Act to prevent the rapid spread of coronavirus through federal prisons.

Each individual included in the new commutations had been serving their sentences at home for at least a year and had shown they were reunited with their families and were committed to rehabilitation, the White House said.

[…]

Under the commutations, the almost 1,500 Americans will retain their convictions but have their sentences reduced. The 39 people pardoned by Biden have had their guilty verdicts wholly erased.

The White House said the 39 were all individuals convicted of non-violent crimes, including drug offenses. Among them were a woman who led emergency response teams during natural disasters; a church deacon who had worked as an addiction and youth counsellor; a doctoral student in molecular biosciences; and a decorated military veteran.

Keep ’em coming!

Biden Pardons 39, Commutes Sentences of 1500Post + Comments (49)