Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

The republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.

Dear legacy media: you are not here to influence outcomes and policies you find desirable.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

Disagreements are healthy; personal attacks are not.

They want us to be overwhelmed and exhausted. Focus. Resist. Oppose.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

75% of people clapping liked the show!

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Radicalized white males who support Trump are pitching a tent in the abyss.

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

Their shamelessness is their super power.

Trumpflation is an intolerable hardship for every American, and it’s Trump’s fault.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

This chaos was totally avoidable.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Amicable Authoritarianism

Amicable Authoritarianism

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Remember “compassionate conservatism”? Republicans (and their media enablers) are going to need a new slogan that keeps up with the party’s evolving ethos. They’ll settle on a persona first, probably.

The wired-for-Republicans political press began casting about for Republicans to fluff in a hypothetical post-Piggy future even before the Porcine imPotentate began his catastrophic second term. You think it’s easy to carry water for those fascist fucksticks? It requires planning and effort, bub!

Anyhoo, U.S. Senator Katie Britt (R-AL) was an early favorite in the Beltway media’s race to unearth a Republican who isn’t a super-obvious monster. Here’s how Politico framed it way back in 2023:

Can Katie Britt Be the Face of the GOP’s Post-Trump Future?
The Alabama senator disdains the politics of hate, rarely mentions her party’s frontrunner and favors robust aid to Ukraine. That positions her well to lead a party digging out from Trumpism.

Britt was a contender for Great White Cross-Wearing Hope until her disastrous State of the Union response in March 2024. The speech is forever imprinted on my mind because I wasn’t focused on politics at that moment at all due to pressing personal concerns.

I would have missed the whole thing had I not been inadvertently exposed to Britt’s SOTU response when an orderly who was whisking me from one hospital room to another parked me near a TV tuned to CSPAN. As I watched the Britt calamity unspool, all I could think was, “Shut up, hissy kitty! So I posted that here the minute I got my hands on my phone again.

If you missed that speech, maybe go watch 30 seconds or so on YouTube? I won’t take any longer than that to demonstrate that cringing can be a whole body experience.

The speech was so terrible, so unspeakably bad, so truly awful that I now realize I understated the sheer scale of the catastrophe in my post on the day. By comparison, it raised Bobby Jindal’s self-immolation-inducing oration to Ciceronian heights.

For these reasons, I figured Britt would have to settle for being Alabama’s smartest serving U.S. Senator. That’s an easy bar to clear as long as spud-dumb Tuberville rounds out the state’s U.S. Senate representation.

But perhaps due to the scarcity of not-obvious-monsters among Republicans, it appears maybe the Times is ready to rehab Britt. Here’s a gift link to an article that appears to be engaged in that effort, though I do not really recommend it.

It was click-bait for me because I knew the author would have to address The Speech, and I wondered if Britt would own up to how truly terrible it was. She did, sort of:

For Ms. Britt, the backlash was unexpected and devastating. She called close friends and family members to make sure they were still proud of her. Eventually, she said, the episode became a lesson in how to “block out the noise” and stay focused on what matters: “being the hands and feet of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.”

Okay, and bless her heart.

But the article’s title — the conceit around which it revolves — is that Britt truly cares about Jesus and children and that she works behind the scenes to “soften” her president’s cruelest impulses.

The G.O.P. Senator Who Can’t Stop Thinking About the Boy ICE Detained
Katie Britt is uniquely positioned to reason with the Trump administration — when she chooses to speak up.

The article opens in that vein, with a description of Britt’s alleged anguish over the fate of the 5-year-old boy in the bunny hat who was kidnapped and shipped off to Texas by Trump’s child-snatching squad. But the real question is: when does Britt choose to speak up? It is asked and answered in an article that really could have ended right here:

In Mr. Trump’s second term, Ms. Britt has voted in line with the president 100 percent of the time.

But it doesn’t end there. It goes on to allege that Britt works behind the scenes to ameliorate the Trump admin’s many depredations:

Her disagreements emerge only in private, in conversations with top White House officials and cabinet secretaries, whose numbers are all saved in her phone.

Over the last year, Ms. Britt has occasionally convinced the Trump administration to reverse course, according to several people with knowledge of conversations between Ms. Britt and Trump officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe those interactions.

Color me skeptical — that’s some big “Ivanka and Jared privately opposed” energy right there. Anyway, there’s nothing particularly interesting about Britt, but maybe this tidbit sheds some light on the mysterious behavior of another shape-shifter:

Senator John Fetterman, Democrat of Pennsylvania, said that when he checked himself into the hospital for depression, Ms. Britt was one of a handful of senators to visit him. Among all his colleagues in the Senate, he added, he considers Ms. Britt his best friend.

Britt’s influence, along with the brain injury, could explain Fetterman’s heel turn. Pure speculation, of course, but maybe he needs to spend more time with Gisele Fetterman and less with Katie Britt.

To end on a more hopeful note, as some of us were discussing in the previous thread, it really doesn’t matter how sincere Republicans who are (or want to be seen as) distancing themselves from Trump and his odious statements and behavior are. What matters is that they realize Hair Furor is unpopular and are making moves to unhitch their cabooses from the Orange Loco-motive. This is good!

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

190Comments

  1. 1.

    Elizabelle

    I saw the FTF NY Times decency-washing Katie Britt.  Or trying to.

    Did not read.  I get Britt and Nancy Mace mixed up.  Maybe a lot of people do.  LOL.

  3. 3.

    Professor Bigfoot

    To end on a more hopeful note, as some of us were discussing in the previous thread, it really doesn’t matter how sincere Republicans who are (or want to be seen as) distancing themselves from Trump and his odious statements and behavior are. What matters is that they realize Hair Furor is unpopular and are making moves to unhitch their cabooses from the Orange Loco-motive. This is good!

    “All that matters is that the dog talks. No one cares what it says.”

  4. 4.

    WaterGirl

    My nostrils flared in disgust the moment you reminded us of her awful cringe-worthy performances with her little girl voice.  Shudder.

  5. 5.

    Scout211

    Aw, come on, BC!  What’s wrong with a sitting US Senator posing as a trad wife in a pristine kitchen? ;-)

    It was awesome in its absolute ridiculousness.  But she smiled and that’s what counts!

    In other news, today is my birthday.  It feels like I’m about a million years old today.  LOL

  9. 9.

    WaterGirl

    @Scout211: Happy birthday!

    Yeah, that kitchen debacle was, well, a debacle.

    Reminders of this awful woman and her little girl performances ought to come with a trigger warning!

  14. 14.

    Elizabelle

    And, the way to get through a GOP hagiography/sane-washing article at the Sulzberger-Kahn Times is to peruse the top (most popular) reader comments.  As for a David Bobo Brooks column.   Which are:

    First:  “ In Mr. Trump’s second term, Ms. Britt has voted in line with the president 100 percent of the time. Her disagreements emerge only in private…” That’s all the public needs to know about the moral leanings of this woman.

    Second: It never ceases to amaze me how these Republican bible thumpers constantly conduct themselves in ways that so directly contravene the teachings they so fervently claim to embrace.

    Third:  A repeat of the first, ending “Actions, not thoughts count.”

    Fourth:  Renee good was a parent of 3, an American citizen, unarmed and merely said “I’m not mad at you dude”. What she got was a hail of bullets to her body and face, shot dead in Main Street. Tell us more about how your party is the party is the party of families.

    Fifth: The senator is a sterling example of a privately kind, caring person who inexplicably and inexcusably chooses to support an amoral president. A privileged “Christian” who does a little bit of good while standing by and nodding as massive harm is done.

    Seventh:  from St. Paul, MN: Yes, she may be a lovely and compassionate person, but the following exchange gave away the game: “Asked how she felt about Mr. Pretti’s killing, Ms. Britt struggled to select the right words. She sighed. Ten seconds passed. ‘I’m sad for our country,’ she said. ‘I don’t think that the escalation that we’ve seen, particularly in Minnesota, I don’t think it is. … ‘ She paused for another eight seconds. Mr. Trump and his supporters would most likely read these comments. Productive.’” In other words, an immediate and full-throated condemnation of a senseless murder: utterly beyond her. So pardon me if I take all this “bridge building” propaganda with a grain of salt.

    Eighth:  I think Britt is a hypocrite and that she doesn’t follow the teachings of the Bible. I also think that that headline for this piece is misleading. Rather than thinking about little Liam and his fate, Britt appeared to be thinking more about how the optics of a child being detained would fit with the narrative she needs to continue to stay in Trump’s orbit.

    Ending with comment number Ten, from Brooklyn Dog Geek (great name, or what?)

    “We are the party of parents, the party of families…” Girl, stop. You’re the party that likes to PRETEND you love families and parents. The party that loves to manipulate their voters with words like “family” and “parents”. But the Republican party does not actually care about families. Especially the children. And the whole world has endless proof of it.

    So.  The NY Times readers get it.  Even as Republican-washing is being forced upon us.
    Sulzberger-Kahn even sent this Britt story around as the “Great Read of the Day.”  Give me a break.

  17. 17.

    Tony Jay

    stay focused on what matters: “being the hands and feet of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.”

    Oh, I get it. Shes being stigmatised!

    Weird.

  18. 18.

    Elizabelle

    @different-church-lady:

    ELEVATOR PITCH: “What if, in season three, the Nazis put the masks back on?”

    LOL.  But that’s exactly what the German industrialists  Sulzberger-Kahn NY Times are trying to do.

  19. 19.

    MattF

    Any politician who has an actual shred of decency fled the R party years ago. Most of the remainder have perfected the skill of changing the subject. I worry sometimes that the short attention span of the electorate will limit any window of opportunity we have to fix things— but I have some confidence that things will get worse before they get better.

    It’s a lesson for me personally in that I’ve always held that worse is only worse and never better, but live and learn.

  20. 20.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @different-church-lady: LOL

    And now, looking back at what I wrote… what I MEANT was, “it’s like how we don’t care WHY they’re turning against Hair Furor, just that they ARE.”

    I am having the devil’s own time with allegory this morning.

    BACK TO THE SHOWERS!

    Edited because I’m having the devil’s own time with the English language this morning. Sheesh!

  21. 21.

    lowtechcyclist

    it really doesn’t matter how sincere Republicans who are (or want to be seen as) distancing themselves from Trump and his odious statements and behavior are. What matters is that they realize Hair Furor is unpopular and are making moves to unhitch their cabooses from the Orange Loco-motive. This is good!

    And Dems should keep the pressure on.

    I remember how the GOP and other right-wing spokespersons would always demand that Dems denounce the latest thing that, say, Al Sharpton said.  Well, what Donald Fucking Trump says matters a hell of a lot more than anything Sharpton ever said, so GOP pols should damn well feel the heat to denounce Trump putting out that video that he most certainly hasn’t apologized for.

  24. 24.

    Snarki, child of Loki

    Late-stage Trumpism (are we there yet? PLEEEZE!) will require MAGAts to affirm their total loyalty to the Trump.

    Sure, there’s the whole “prostration before He, Trump”, but that’s ephemeral and so not enough for hardcore MAGA, especially those in office.

    They need to have their FOREHEADS BRANDED with a big “T”.

    There are some “T” branding irons available on etsy (of course there are!) One or two would be enough to handle the need for MAGA Senators and House members, but all the admin flunkies and State MAGA will use up that supply pretty quickly.

     

    SO, in the spirit of helpfulness: use a propane torch (get from your local home store) to heat the logo on a Tesla to a dull red heat, then apply the MAGA forehead.

    Go for it, Republicans! It’s just liebral fake news about ‘mark of the beast’ stuff!

  25. 25.

    different-church-lady

    @Professor Bigfoot: ​To be serious for a moment: in the short term it doesn’t matter why. In the long run it’s pretty important that we care, because if we don’t figure that out it’ll come right back.

  28. 28.

    piratedan

    It sounds like Britt is busy coasting into the Susan Collins lane of public concern and little else.  The NYT and beltway courtier crowd adore those because they can project all kinds of secret anguish with nary a deed in confirmation.  Great way to dump 2k worth of words with no actual content provided to the reader.

  30. 30.

    Another Scott

    If you missed that speech, maybe go watch 30 seconds or so on YouTube?

    I want those seconds back. :-/

    Politics is important. Vitally important. It’s how we decide to address the big problems that affect all of us. People who debase it and reduce it to “See how white her teeth are and how much she smiles! And she wears a cross! Don’t you want to join her team and vote for her?” are the enemy of sensible, functioning government institutions that have to find a consensus, muddle through, and move humanity forward.

    The string pullers only want power, and that’s a very, very different thing.

    Grr…

    Thanks? ;-)

    Best wishes,
    Scott.

  31. 31.

    WaterGirl

    clicking on today’s sidebar image – highly recommended!

    Amazing how much some of these photos change when you get to see the larger size.  They go from “that’s pretty” to “wow!”

  32. 32.

    Geminid

    I’ve been watching the race to succeed GA-14 Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, and lsst week there was an interesting wrinkle in the Northwest Georgia contest: Trump endorsed local prosecutor Clayton Fuller in the primary. That left state Senator Colton Moore at a disadvantage, and Moore’s supporters are blaming Trump’s advisors for boosting “Clay the Rino.”

    Moore has earned a reputation as a boat-rocker, and has been a harsh critic of Governor Brian Kemp. My Atlanta friend thought this was the establishment closing ranks. When I wondered if the establishment could deliver the voters, he replied:

       I’m betting yes. I’d have to look into the new guy, but I bet his district is like my brother’s. The political culture is very immediate, like the cicadas, the call goes up in swelling unanimity.

    Before my friend’s younger brother became a judge, he held an elected, multi-county “circuit prosecutor” post similar to Clayton Fuller’s.

    The all-comer, “jungle” primary is scheduled March 10. The Democrat who was the party candidate in 2024 is running again, and a poll shows him leading with 27 percent of likely voters. Fuller was second at 24% and Moore polled just 12%. I believe the runoff will be in May.

  33. 33.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @different-church-lady:  Truth has been spoken; and the long term problem is a big one.

    Between a phenomenal, widespread lack of media literacy and a tight concentration of media outlet ownership in very few hands, outlets perfectly willing to outright lie in service to their owners’ wishes; there are a LOT of gullible, easily manipulated people, our long term challenge is a formidable one.

  35. 35.

    Elizabelle

    Happy birthday to Scout211 and Gloria and to any jackals keeping quiet about it.

    More NY Times reader comments:

    **  “Look, I believe in the law,” she reiterated again and again. “I believe in the enforcement of the law.” It seems like she would have no problem defending the Fugitive Slave Act.

    **   … Only Alabama could elect a brainless and corrupt ex-football coach and this un-Christian women as their representatives in the U.S. Senate.

    **  It seems like she was offered an opportunity for a humanizing puff piece that she didn’t deserve, and still managed to mess it up.

    **  She’s a United States Senator. If she truly can’t say what she believes, we are already a dictatorship. She is a coward and an opportunist.

    **   So many Christians wonder how an athiest can have a moral compass without religion, and this article about Sen. Britt perfectly encapsulates the argument that simply being Christian does NOT in fact provide you with those tools.

    **   She wasnt there when Renee Good’s brothers testified and that should tell you everything

    **    Britt is not just any, ordinary hypocrite. Her brand of hypocrisy is dangerous and deadly. There is a straight line from her words and deeds to the detention of the 5-yr-old boy she supposedly cares about, and the killings of Goode and Preeti, for that matter. Her attempt at empathy, or at least its portrayal as such in this piece, is absolutely sickening.

    **   Britt would have disclosed Anne Frank’s location even though she “seemed like a nice girl for a Jew.”

  37. 37.

    Steve LaBonne

    Hey, Britt’s speech is a useful resource for anyone who wants to know what “fundie baby voice” sounds like. ;)

  39. 39.

    sab

    @Steve LaBonne: I was raised to have that voice. My adult voice annoys me because it isn’t that. My husband thinks my adult voice is perfectly normal. I think I sound too bossy.

    ETA My parents didn’t raise me to have that voice. Florida schools did.

  40. 40.

    Elizabelle

    @Geminid:  That’s very kind, but I don’t think Bible thumping has done anything for developing a mass of ethical, compassionate people.

    It’s a sop to those who want to conform with their pastors and the status quo.

    Alabama and the South seem to have a lot more Bible thumpers than a representative democracy can withstand

    ETA:  I speak not of actual Christians, but of these Bible-quoting, cross-wearing cosplayers.  I wish Jesus could come back and kick them in the a$$.

  42. 42.

    lowtechcyclist

    @WaterGirl:

    clicking on today’s sidebar image – highly recommended!

    Yeah, snow – just what I want to see more of right now. :grumble:

    Never before had snow that you could bounce a basketball on.

  43. 43.

    Elizabelle

    Gonna put up two more NY Times reader comments, just for those who preferred not to click on the gift link, or could not access the article.

    This, from Christopher in Brooklyn:

    Spare me.

    Ms. Britt is the kind of “Christian” that defended chattel slavery, the Fugitive Slave Act, and in a later era Jim Crow with a soft demeanor, a sweet smile, and a carefully selected Bible verse. The kind that might quietly intervene to save an enslaved child from a particular act of cruelty, but who would never speak out against the slave owner, much less the institution of slavery. She’s the sort who paid her maid on time and gave her a Christmas bonus, but when the Montgomery Bus Boycott broke out, attended the White Citizens Council meetings and decried the “inflammatory rhetoric” of Rosa Parks and Dr. King.

    ICE and CBP agents are the slave catchers of the 21st century. They hunt down poor people who have fled various horrible combinations of war, poverty and oppression, for which the U.S. usually bears some responsibility. 70% of the their abductees have NO criminal record. They “enforce the law” in name only. They are a force of lawlessness, many barely trained, some deliberately recruited through white supremacist channels, unvetted and riddled with drunk drivers, wife beaters, child molesters, and Proud Boys. Their abuses of their anonymity, their brutality, indiscipline, and general thuggishness has been so extensively documented that Ms. Britt really has no excuse for pretending that they are otherwise.

    Ms. Britt thinks that she is a good person because she is polite and goes to church. She’s not. She is a servant of evil who dirties the name of Jesus.

  44. 44.

    Kayla Rudbek

    @sab: The really disconcerting thing is when I hear that type of voice at work, and I know there’s nobody under 18 in my office. I start looking around wondering who let the kid through security.

  47. 47.

    Elizabelle

    This NY Times reader comment, with the text of a letter Britt sent out:

    Here is the form letter she sent out to concerned constituents today:

    “Thank you for reaching out regarding the recent tragic shootings in Minneapolis. I am truly grateful that you took the time to contact me.

    On January 7, 2026, during a confrontation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Renee Good was killed by an immigration officer in self-defense. On January 24, 2026, Alex Pretti was killed. Like the loss of any American life, both deaths are tragic. I support a fair and impartial investigation of these shootings and expect full transparency from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

    My support for law enforcement remains unwavering. As we have seen repeatedly, violent rhetoric from the Left has heightened tensions and put both the public and law enforcement safety at risk. It must stop. Radical sanctuary cities give criminal illegal aliens a safe haven at the expense of the safety and security of American citizens and our communities. These reckless policies undermine the rule of law and make the jobs of our brave law enforcement officers even more dangerous.

    Thank you again for contacting me. Please do not hesitate to reach out if I can be of assistance.”

    I love how she is for “a fair and impartial investigation” while already predetermining that Renee Goode was killed in self-defense. She talks about “violent rhetoric on the left” while championing a man who calls entire Black communities “garbage.” She has sold her soul, like so many.

    NOTE:  the above is all from the reader commenter.

  48. 48.

    Geminid

    @Elizabelle: I thought I was being realistic, not kind especially.

    And I did not reference Bible thumpers because the comment I responded to did not. But since you do, I’ll observe that Virginia has bible thumpers too. They’re just in a proportion different than in Alabama.

  50. 50.

    RevRick

    @Professor Bigfoot: The GOP hitched their cabooses to Trump, because he gave them everything they wanted without having to admit it. They are a party that wants just three things: shoveling wealth to the top, glorification of the nation state, and creating rigid hierarchies of race, class, and gender. And Trump has given them all these things to the nth degree.
    There’s a concept in Family Systems Theory called the identified patient. It rests on the idea that there’s one person who is unconsciously assigned the role in the family of acting out all its dysfunction. Trump fills that role for the GOP. He acts out all their dysfunctional ideas and serves as a convenient foil for them to tut-tut about as their identified patient. But all the unhitching of their cabooses cannot hide the fact that their system bred him, nourished him, and watched him grow.
    Their system is rotten to the core. And if certain members of this “family “ sound less crazy than the rest, well they are. But they are still part of and invested in that system. And what that system spews out is what they want, because that system spews out fascistic order. 

  51. 51.

    Elizabelle

    @Geminid:  I feel so lucky to live in a blue/purple state.  I empathize with those who find themselves in red states.

    Just so sick of the American South (why yes, Virginia is part!) dragging the rest of us backwards.  Bless their sugary little hearts.

    It’s not the people, per se.  It’s the Senators and Congressweasels they inflict upon the rest of us.  (NOTE:  All power to Senators Warnock and Ossoff.  Love them!)

    In Germany, rightwingers are forbidden to employ swastika imagery.  So, a lot of them use the Confederate flag.  They know damn well what it stands for.  Someone raised a Confederate flag on a US military base in Germany a few years ago; don’t know those responsible were ever caught (or publicly disclosed).

    The German right also organizes with anti-vaccine rallies.

  52. 52.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Elizabelle:

    Good Lord, Britt’s a piece of work.

     As we have seen repeatedly, violent rhetoric from the Left has heightened tensions and put both the public and law enforcement safety at risk.

    As the One she claims as her Savior said, “you shall know them by their fruits.” The protesters in Minneapolis (and Chicago, and Los Angeles, and Portland (OR and ME), have been overwhelmingly nonviolent in their actions, and maybe that whitewashed sepulcher should follow Jesus’ example and judge them by those.

  53. 53.

    laura

    Performative Christianity just makes my teeth itch. Combine that japery with fundy sexy baby voice and it’s even worse, and yet, that tongue bath in the NYT is revealing because it shows that she; and her ilk; are trying to burn their uniforms and blend back into the decent side of American life. And they will keep on trying because they too see that the orange Idol they worship is going down in a flaming bag of dogshit on our collective porch and they hope to walk away with as little hot shit on their shoe as possible. Sadly, the MSM will do everything possible to assist in rehabbing their post trump power seeking. On the side of decency are the Christopher in Brooklyn’s who can see clearly and call her out specifically for the absence of works of faith and her actions consistent with neo confederacy. I’m with Christopher- call bullshit loudly, often and keep the receipts handy.

  54. 54.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Elizabelle:

    Just so sick of the American South (why yes, Virginia is part!) dragging the rest of us backwards.  Bless their sugary little hearts.

    To quote Neil Young from more than half a century ago:

    Alabama, you’ve got the rest of the Union to help you along. What’s going wrong?

  56. 56.

    Geminid

    @Elizabelle: I feel lucky to have lived in a state that went from Red to Purple to Blue in this century. I’d like to think I’ve learned from watching that process.

  57. 57.

    Nilnoc

    @Tony Jay: Having very recently visited the earthly remains in Assisi of San Francesco, I have been wondering if the Stigmata were/are painful.

  58. 58.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Skippy-san:

    Alabama is a terrible state full of terrible people.

    You know what? It really isn’t. I know how easy it is to generalise about a particular group of people, but (a) it’s inaccurate if not an outright lie, and (b) it is the foundation of racism, sexism, antisemitism—all the “isms” most of us rightly condemn. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

  59. 59.

    Bupalos

    @piratedan: I don’t know how you can be so cynical about a piece packed with verifying informational details. I guess you missed that SHE HAS HER COLLEAGUES PHONE NUMBERS SAVED ON HER PHONE. People who are not super active in opposing the administration’s worst impulses would just look up the numbers and punch them in on the phone manually. Katie Britt means business. Those numbers are SAVED.

    (like Britt herself, I’m given to understand.)

  60. 60.

    sab

    @RevRick: I admire that because of your vocation and profession you have learned psychology as well as theology.

    Some of your comments earlier have made me rethink my own family dynamics, and I have adjusted my own behavior accordingly. Which has helped a lot. Even retired you are still doing good.

  61. 61.

    Elizabelle

    @Geminid:  Yeah, that has been great.

    How much of that is evolution, though, and how much is in-migration?  Virginia does have excellent colleges, and federal government jobs.

  62. 62.

    M31

    lol Here’s what I thought after this quote, “being the hands and feet of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.”:

    “That is, Holy”

    /dadjoke mode activated/

  63. 63.

    Nilnoc

    Also too, I’d like to hear Sen. Britt’s opinion of Bad Bunny. I’m thinking she’s like all the Rethugs who think Puerto Rico is foreign and the Confederate flag is American….

  65. 65.

    WTFGhost

    The Alabama senator disdains the politics of hate, rarely mentions her party’s frontrunner and favors robust aid to Ukraine. That positions her well to lead a party digging out from Trumpism.

    Well, if you disdain the politics of hate, you have to mention your party’s *LEADER* (not “frontrunner”) as hateful, and speak against him. She does use “DemocratIC Party,” and admits that she’d vote for a Democrat over an obvious corrupt candidate, right? Because if not, she profits from the hate, and just doesn’t indulge, personally.

  67. 67.

    sab

    Snow and cold for another day. Our american staffordshire terrier is bored out her skull. Solution: sit at the window and bark every time anything moves outside.

    Just a typical terrier, although an eighty pound one.

    The cats are very weary of all the barking. They could go to the basement, but it is much warmer upstairs.

  69. 69.

    Kristine

    Interesting column over at the Sun-Times this morning. Folds in with occasional discussions over here that a portion of Trump voters are gettable.

    MAGA is a bit of a moving target, but a recent Economist/YouGov poll found that only 24% of all voters described themselves as “MAGA supporters” and a perhaps surprisingly low 54% of Trump voters so identified. In other words, a minority of the voting public and only a little over half of the GOP is Trump’s loyal base.

    A new survey from More in Common, an international pro-democracy organization (I sit on its global board), offers a more granular look at Trump 2024 voters and provides further evidence that MAGA is definitely not half the country. They canvassed over 18,000 Americans over eight months. In looking over their findings, the group categorized the Trump voters into four clusters: MAGA hardliners, anti-woke conservatives, mainline Republicans and the reluctant right. Their conclusion? Trump voters were a coalition, not a cult.

    I also took note of one particular number:

    Trump’s base is hate-filled and dangerous, but it is not the majority. Nor is it half of the country. As a January Pew poll found, only 27% of respondents say they support all or most of Trump’s policies, down from 35 % when he took the oath of office. Nearly all of that decline is attributable to Republicans. The erosion is proceeding fast, and based on the small size of the cult, there is plenty of room for more. Onward!

  70. 70.

    WaterGirl

    @RevRick:

    There’s a concept in Family Systems Theory called the identified patient. It rests on the idea that there’s one person who is unconsciously assigned the role in the family of acting out all its dysfunction.

    I have never heard that before.  That’s super interesting.

    I will have to ponder that some more.

  71. 71.

    Quaker in a Basement

     “being the hands and feet of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.”

    That’s where they drove the nails, yeah?

  72. 72.

    Elizabelle

    @WaterGirl:  I do love reader comments.  It’s the ONLY reason I kept my (sob) WaPost sub — they allow reader comments (although an AI bot censors some of them; it’s fun to see people get around that).

  75. 75.

    Bupalos

    Alright I insist Cracker get lavishly praised for what she does here, every time she does it. So can someone else pick up the slack? Because I started feel like a stalker after the 10th time I noted that literally no one does this stuff better.

    Just always a mix of “god that’s good” and “I know EXACTLY who that is without looking, can’t be anyone else.”

  77. 77.

    sab

    @Bupalos: Anne Laurie does quite well in my opinion.

    ETA She doesn’t have quite the snarky flare, but I don’t think that is what she is aiming for anyway.

    I love them both.

  78. 78.

    Geminid

    @Elizabelle: It’s a combination of several demographic trends. In-migration from both other US states and foreign countries played a role. And more Virginia-born people  have gone to college, which is a form of internal demographic shift.

    Virginia’s prospering economy has helped these shifts along. But that doesn’t mean we’re exceptionally virtuous or even industrious. It just means the tax dollars from forty-some other states are being spent here.

  79. 79.

    laura

    @WaterGirl: I’ve always thought of that person as the sin eater or the whipping post or scape goat. That’s a very heavy and unnecessary burden to bear.

  80. 80.

    RevRick

    @WaterGirl: Family Systems Theory was begun by Murray Bowen in his work with hospitalized schizophrenics. He noticed a pattern of how the patients would make great improvements in their mental health… until family visits occurred and then it would be back to square one.

  81. 81.

    gene108

    @MattF:

    Any politician who has an actual shred of decency fled the R party years ago. Most of the remainder have perfected the skill of changing the subject. I worry sometimes that the short attention span of the electorate will limit any window of opportunity we have to fix things

    I think it’s more the endless repetition of those talking points by the right-wing propaganda machine for as long as it takes to drive what a good chunk of the country thinks.

    The War on Christmas kept being brought up for years every holiday season.

    They’ve conflated asylum seekers crossing the southern border with a foreign invasion, conflated them with illegal immigration, and described the border being constantly overrun with these hordes coming unchecked into the U.S., since Obama’s second term when a wave of unaccompanied minors came seeking asylum.

    When the right-wing propaganda machine finds something their audience reacts to they keep pounding it for years.

    I think this is a bigger issue than constantly throwing shit on the wall to see what sticks.

  83. 83.

    Bupalos

    @hueyplong: Would that pod of right whales could swim up, strain her through their silky baleen, and send her on a course through the guts and out, as the slurry of salt water and shit that she was born to be.

  84. 84.

    Ben Cisco

    My Idiot Senator (Tradwife Edition) can make all the mouth noises she wants; it will be of no consequence in the end. That SOTU response was LEGENDARY,  and anyone taking anything she says seriously is a couple of sausage links short of a breakfast platter.

  86. 86.

    lowtechcyclist

    @WaterGirl:

     I thought you could enjoy its beauty since you don’t have to shovel it or walk on it!

    Actually, walking on the snowcrete is easy, just as long as it’s covering reasonably level ground.  My 170+ pounds don’t sink in at all, I just walk on top of it.

    And actually it looks quite beautiful in the places where it isn’t piled up from plowing and shoveling.  But it’s been two weeks of looking at it, and I’m ready for a change of scenery.

    Not to mention, it’s too damn cold out there for running or walking, let alone cycling.  I could really use some exercise besides shoveling.

  87. 87.

    RevRick

    @sab: We had two female mini dachshunds who absolutely refused to go out unless we had shoveled a patch in our yard for them to do their business. The winters of 1993 & 1996 were brutal in this regard.

  88. 88.

    WTFGhost

    @Gloria DryGarden: A belated happy birthday! You have to have another happy day, now, to make up for my not being able to wis you a happy birthday *on* the day. NO SKIMPING! I expect a good happy day.

     

    @dmsilev: Really, you do need to see Britt doing the fundy baby voice to get the full effect. Still, remember, if not for Katie Britt, we wouldn’t know that Republicans didn’t give a damn about the death of Laken Riley, until they could blame it on an immigrant.

    @Scout211: Happy birthday!

  89. 89.

    Professor Bigfoot

    @Elizabelle: Just so sick of the American South (why yes, Virginia is part!) dragging the rest of us backwards.  Bless their sugary little hearts.

    I try to remember that the South is a place, but the Confederacy is a worldview.

    That worldview is all over America, today.

  90. 90.

    Frank Wilhoit

    There is actually a point here.  When you have factionalization within a party, no one can advance within the party except lightweights.  The worse the factionalization, the lighter the lightweights have to be in order to have a chance to float up the chimney, like a fleck of ash.  Thus, if, Katie Britt.  Lightweightness is not just about stupidity.  Tommy Tuberville is stupider than Katie Britt but he is an attention whore, constantly flapping his mouth.  That makes him a little heavier, and he sinks back into the flame.

    This puts parties in a bad situation — objectively bad, as they see what is going on and they don’t like it either; but there are only two alternatives.  One is realignment, so that the parties would be more unified within themselves.  But everyone is convinced that realignment is the ultimate disaster and must be avoided at any cost.  The other is outsiders: hence Trump.

  92. 92.

    ArchTeryx

    @Elizabelle: The South is a major problem but only one part of the South: The rurals. Most Southern cities really aren’t at all bad and many are blue. They’re just vastly outnumbered by the rednecks. If you burned every last rural area in this country down to the ground, the country would be a whole lot better for it.

  94. 94.

    sab

    @RevRick: Eighty pound dogs don’t expect or get much assistance from their owners. If we cleared her a patch she would just sniff accusingly and pee elsewhere.

  95. 95.

    trollhattan

    Maybe not as on the nose as when Sports Illustrated laid off their entire photography staff, but this Bezos move is as ghoulish as it is predictable.

    The National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) says in a statement that it understands the Post has laid off all nine of its staff photographers and half of its dozen photo editors.

    “It’s hard to overstate how significant a moment this is for photojournalism… The Washington Post particularly has been an inspiration to countless photojournalists through its fearless and relentless coverage, both domestic and international. Their photojournalists and editors have swept the BOP and have regularly won Pulitzer prizes over the decades. They are legends in our field.”

    “We can just use word things to describe visual things.”

    —Ed

  96. 96.

    WTFGhost

    @sab: Apropos of nothing specific, I’m the product of abuse, and, when I find something I dislike about myself, it’s usually because of the abusive background. So if you feel you sound bossy, it might be because of prior injury causing you to misperceive how you truly sound.

  97. 97.

    Scout211

    @RevRick: As a former clinical social worker/psychotherapist, family systems theory is well known to me.  I like what you are saying but I am a bit skeptical that it applies to the Trump world for the simple fact that the family and its dysfunction was formed way before he joined them. Remember, he was a Democrat for many years.

    In the GOP system or family, he seems more like an outsider recruited to act out for them, with their understanding that he will take the heat.  More like a crime family recruiting a criminal to act for them.  Family systems theory is about unconscious dysfunction in families over time. Trump and the GOP are fully conscious of their motives.

    Just my two cents.

  98. 98.

    trollhattan

    @RevRick:

    How are they supposed to catch badgers with that attitude?

    My dog is leggy but also lacks comprehension of “snow” whatever that may be.

  102. 102.

    ArchTeryx

    @Bupalos: That gets hilarious if you know marine biologists who study whales. A lot of the study, since the whales can be very hard to find, is done through their poop. That floats, kind of like Trump does when you throw him in the water.

    Anyway, I’ve actually seen social media posts of research teams comparing different kinds of whale poop and how hard it is to clean off your shoes. Despite many baleens eating the same basic prey, their biochemistry can be wildly different. The joke is: Most whales, you get their poop on your shoes, you wash it off. You get Right Whale poop on your shoes, you burn the shoes.

    This has been your biology lesson for today. I’d take a good honest centrifuge tube of whale poop over these people any day of the week.

  103. 103.

    piratedan

    @Bupalos: thank you for setting the record straight and chastising my unkind words.  To wit, the actual doing of plugging numbers into a phone is noteworthy in itself.  Perhaps THIS is the evolution we seek, the transition from a heavily furrowed brow to the actual doing of keeping phone numbers of all of her colleagues is indeed telling in the deed itself.

  104. 104.

    Bupalos

    @sab: talent and effort abound here and are appreciated all. And all do something a little different. Cracker I just think is the best at what she does and I don’t mean ranking people here, I mean like in the entire ocean of politically inflected online wordsmithery…. I can think of maybe two or three in this effortlessly inventive class, and they’re national figures. David Roth for one. People gush about Alexandra Petri… I think Cracker’ could simultaneously wrestle an alligator while tossing off better phrases.

  105. 105.

    catothedog

    @Professor Bigfoot:

    Between a phenomenal, widespread lack of media literacy and a tight concentration of media outlet ownership in very few hands, outlets perfectly willing to outright lie in service to their owners’ wishes;

    “All things are subject to interpretation. Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.”

    – Nietzche

    Without destroying white power over media, there is no real democracy in this country.

    Without having a powerful Democratic Party aligned media, there is no Democratic power in this country, even Dems govern.

    Power is when you control the narrative of your agenda, not when you have to tailor your agenda for keeping the narrators happy.

  106. 106.

    sab

    @RevRick: That sounds like my ex’s family. Schizophrenic sister was often squared away and settled by Salvation Army, and then the family would arrive to “help.”

  107. 107.

    wonkie

    For most voters, and this includes some on our side, image and style matter to the exclusion of substance. Of course the Rethugs and the “moderates” and the “nonpartisan” and the “center” etc are looking for a nice fascist–and it will work, too. We need to make sure that we don’t be so focused on Trump that we forget that the goal must be to marginalize the whole Republican party. That brand needs to be toxic, regardless who the face is.

  108. 108.

    Another Scott

    @Professor Bigfoot: +1.  And elsewhere.

    A decade or so ago, we spent a few summer days in Vienna, Austria and were walking around looking for a place to eat lunch.  Some barker/host guy was outside one restaurant, asked where we were from, we said “Virginia”, and he lit up and started singing the praises of the Traitor Robert E Lee.  Just going on and on about how brilliant he was, etc.

    We were uncomfortable about the turn in the conversation and mentioned that Obama won Virginia twice.  He was visibly shocked.

    We ate lunch somewhere else.

    People are weird, and often not in a good way.  :-/

    Thanks.

    Best wishes,
    Scott.

  109. 109.

    Bupalos

    @sab: I’ve been reading Moby Dick again. But yeah, it does go science fiction when the whales are somehow swimming through the capitol.

  110. 110.

    sab

    @Bupalos: BC is a damn good writer, and very astute besides. I think the whole jackaldom mostly agrees.

    I just wanted to get props in for Anne Laurie who investigates and aggragates exceptionally well.

  113. 113.

    sab

    @Bupalos: I have never read Moby Dick. I took the advice that the opera is long but shorter than the book.

    Should I read it?

    I had an Oxford Annotated Revised Standard Bible that I lent to a friend who was reading Moby Dick for an English class in college. He aced the class then stole my bible. I took that as a message that I shouldn’t read Moby Dick.

    I have read a lot of other Herman Melville works.

  115. 115.

    Bupalos

    @catothedog: There are some serious problems in looking for democratic solutions within a Nietzschean  worldview.

    Fortunately Nietsche isn’t simply right.or wrong, neither good nor evil…and maybe no further “beyond” than “short of.”

  118. 118.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Scout211:

    Aw, come on, BC! What’s wrong with a sitting US Senator posing as a trad wife in a pristine kitchen? ;-)

    It was awesome in its absolute ridiculousness. But she smiled and that’s what counts!

    LOL!

    And happy birthday!

  121. 121.

    MagdaInBlack

    @sab: I was sitting here applying that to my late husbands family, and yeah: get away from them and mental health improves.

  125. 125.

    Elizabelle

    From our Not Racist In Chief, via the murdered WaPost:  in which he admits it was indeed he that shared the video, but ….

    Trump refuses to apologize over video showing the Obamas as apes

    “No, I didn’t make a mistake,” the president said.

    ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE — President Donald Trump declined to apologize for sharing a social media video that depicted Barack and Michelle Obama as apes, saying he did not realize the image of the former president and first lady was tacked on to the end of the clip.

    The president said Friday that he had watched and passed along the video — which focused on claims of voter fraud until the final seconds of the clip — to unidentified “people” to post to his Truth Social account, but that he “didn’t see the whole thing,” including the brief portion that showed the heads of the Obamas edited onto the bodies of apes.

    [Trump called the voter fraud part of the video “strong” several times.]

    … The video was posted late Thursday night. On Friday morning, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt defended the post, decrying the “fake outrage” and saying the ape image was “from an internet meme video” that showed Trump as “King of the Jungle” and other Democrats as “characters from the Lion King.”

    … In response to a question from The Washington Post about whether he would heed the calls of some Republicans to apologize for posting the video, which was widely condemned as racist and offensive, Trump said he would not.

    “No, I didn’t make a mistake,” Trump said on his way to Palm Beach, Florida, for the weekend. “I look at a lot of — thousands of things. And I looked at the beginning of it. It was fine.”

    … Speaking to reporters on board Air Force One on Friday [editors, what are those?], Trump dismissed the notion that the post and his handling of it could hurt him with the minority voters he had made gains with during the 2024 election. He touted criminal justice reform legislation passed during his first term, as well as his efforts to ensure funding to historically Black colleges and universities.

    “I am, by the way, the least racist president you’ve had in a long time, as far as I’m concerned,” Trump said. He touted his electoral performance with Black male voters in 2024, compared with past Republicans.

    “Black voters have been great to me,” Trump said. “I’ve been great to them.”

    Asked whether he condemned the racist portion of the video, Trump said, “Of course I do.”

    The post Thursday night was the latest example of the president’s social media habits prompting condemnation from some in his party — and resulting in White House staff having to take down posts.

    Last year, Trump posted an AI-generated video that featured him promising the public access to “medbeds,” a concept pushed in recent years by right-wing conspiracy theorists who claimed the devices could cure illnesses if the government made them available to the general public. The post was deleted after facing scrutiny. And Trump a month later shared another AI-generated video portraying him flying a fighter jet that dropped excrement on protesters at “No Kings” rallies.

    While giving the facts, it kind of seems like the WaPost is saying — look, medbeds, dropping shit on protesters, Obamas as apes — it’s just Trump.

    And isn’t it lovely that only Republicans complained about Trump’s behavior here?  The word “Democrat” appears exactly once in the whole story.  In which they are described as “characters from the Lion King.”

    Only Republicans Matter.

  128. 128.

    sab

    @MagdaInBlack: But I took things I learned from my ex’s family and applied it to my own. Not helpful.

    Took me a decade of marriage and a few years later to realize they were seriously not okay.

  130. 130.

    Geminid

    @sab: I reread Moby Dick a couple years ago, and I think you might like it. That’s one where you might best read a couple chapters a day, or every few days.

    There’s no reason to rush. Melville’s narrator recounts a voyage of almost three years. And after a while, I felt like I’d been on that ship for years.

    Moby Dick was a big flop when it came out. Critics panned the novel and it sold few copies. That book basically ended Herman Melville’s career as a professional writer.

    It took critics of a later generation and from a different continent– Europe– to finally appreciate Melville’s art. I think you could appreciate it too, if you are patient.

  132. 132.

    Tony Jay

    @Nilnoc:

      I have been wondering if the Stigmata were/are painful.

    Judging by the frequency with which Britt adopts Smile Face, apparently not.

  133. 133.

    Bupalos

    @sab: That’s legitimately hilarious about the bible.

    I’ve read Moby Dick enough times that I now just pick it up and read from it a lot, kind of like people do with the bible (generally not for the same reasons.) It’s shot through with biblical reference and religious and anti-religious meditations, humanism, fate and free will, the banality of evil…megalomania of course… just so much that it’s hard to actually think about whether it’s just “good” as a story anymore. It’s extremely rich. It’s intricately interwoven with very deep themes of American history. I’d certainly recommend it. With the warning that there are basically weird informational/meditative mini chapter asides about whales and whaling, that are completely aside from the tale, that can become simply unreadable. Leave you reaching for the bible even, as you say.

    Hey as an Akronite you may appreciate that one of the “asides” is a story within the story about the wild race of “lakers” and “cannalers” from the Ohio that spend their lives drinking and brawling in “the grogeries of the towpath.” What is now The Winkimg Lizard in Penninsula is literally one of these, maybe some survive in Akron. Kind of a kick to see the mythological “wild backwoods” way this area was treated on the east coast then.

  135. 135.

    Melancholy Jaques

    @Kristine:

    I have no use for these polls of people who don’t want to admit they are racists morons. They claim they don’t support all or part of that asshole’s actions or policies, but nobody asks them the follow-ups because they’d still vote for him over any Democrat.

    The actions or policies that they claim they do not support were all actions & policies that that asshole very specifically promised to do when they fucking voted for him. So, please, Trump voters, go fuck yourselves.

  136. 136.

    MagdaInBlack

    @sab: Took me a long time too, altho my husband (the black sheep) did once, when I did my usual “I know theyre good people but..” respond with ” has it ever occurred to you they’re not good people?”

    We inherit our damage. Recognizing it takes time.

  138. 138.

    sab

    @Bupalos: Yikes! We used to go to the Winking Lizard in Peninsula a lot. Great ribs.

    Then we went there off the Cuyahoga Valley train with our late Black  grand-daughter and had one of the most racistly toxic experiences I have ever had in my sheltered experience as a white person. Grand-daughter just shrugged it off as “this stuff happens.”

    I wrote management an outraged letter and got the usual apology, but I have never been back to any of their restaurants, and we used to be regulars.

  139. 139.

    MattF

    @Geminid: To be specific, it was D.H. Lawrence who catapulted Moby Dick (and Melville) into fame and prominence in his Studies in Classic American Literature.

  140. 140.

    Ella in New Mexico

    @Elizabelle:

    Fifth: The senator is a sterling example of a privately kind, caring person who inexplicably and inexcusably chooses to support an amoral president. A privileged “Christian” who does a little bit of good while standing by and nodding as massive harm is done.

    Good Germans= Republican Fundie Christians

  141. 141.

    Elizabelle

    Thank you for the reminder that Moby Dick is in the public domain.  (Duh.)  Should be plenty of good copies on the internet.

    Can we skip (or skim) the whaling chapters and still get the gist of the novel?

  142. 142.

    RevRick

    @Bupalos: Vernard Eller wrote King Jesus’ Manual of Arms for the ‘Armless in which he says that Moby Dick is the book that isn’t in the Bible. It is the cautionary tale about going on a crusade. Captain Ahab had one job: bring back as much whale oil as he could harvest.  But he went off on his own personal crusade that led to disaster.

  144. 144.

    Bupalos

    @Geminid: It does require (and reward) patience. Including patience with racism and sexism, though it appears mostly in an odd well-meaning ‘humanist’ forms. Women are barely present and just a kind of symbol of stability and civilizing rationality. But then civilization itself is viewed with some ambivalence, and the idea of being civilized or uncivilized contains some more modern themes of alienation from nature. And from that emerges the now familiar ‘noble savage’ treatment of the uncivilized non-white characters. Though this treatment extends further than the “non-white” we would think of, for instance to Welsh or to the unsettled settlers  from The Ohio.

  148. 148.

    Citizen Alan

    @Tony Jay: Every time I see shit like that from right wing christians, i’m reminded of Jesus Christ’s language in the book of Matthew wherein he gave his clearest description of who was a christian and who was not. He specifically identified people who on judgment day would loudly proclaim what great and wonderful christians they were, but he would cut them off with a query asking what did they do “for the least of these” before telling them to depart “for I never knew you” and calling them evildoers.

  150. 150.

    BlueGuitarist

    @Gloria DryGarden:
    Happy belated birthday!

    You share a birthday with Bob Marley! (As you know. And George Washington’s order to inoculate all troops against smallpox. Yay public health mandates!)

    Many times, heading out to a protest demonstration
    I’m listening to, singing along with, Bob Marley:
    🎶
    “Come we go chant down Babylon one more time,
      Come we go chant down Babylon one more time…”

  151. 151.

    Baud

    Treason is a distraction from Epstein

    Last spring, the National Security Agency (NSA) detected evidence of an unusual phone call between an individual associated with foreign intelligence and a person close to Donald Trump, according to a whistleblower’s attorney briefed on the existence of the call.

     

    The highly sensitive communique, which has roiled Washington over the past week, was brought to the attention of the director of national intelligence (DNI), Tulsi Gabbard – but rather than allowing NSA officials to distribute the information further, she took a paper copy of the intelligence directly to the president’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, the attorney, Andrew Bakaj, said.

     

    One day after meeting Wiles, Gabbard told the NSA not to publish the intelligence report. Instead, she instructed NSA officials to transmit the highly classified details directly to her office.

  152. 152.

    Ella in New Mexico

    @Kristine: the problem with polls not matching election results is that a near majority of Americans, R or L don’t fucking vote. No point reporting on the numbers of all the people who disagree if they’re not doing anything to make the country better.

  153. 153.

    sab

    @Elizabelle: I am also so sorry my granddaughter experienced that.  Doesn’t matter now because she is dead, but I am so sorry and so angry that she had to experience that among many other things in her short bright life.

  154. 154.

    Ksmiami05

    @Professor Bigfoot: I do not care what masks they put on. I do not care that they tend to their gardens. I consider Republicans against everything good in the USA and actively harmful to us all.

  155. 155.

    Layer8Problem

    @Geminid:
    I had to read Moby Dick in high school and actually enjoyed it, but I had liked The Scarlet Letter too. So I’m a sucker for New England[-ish] Transcendentalists, sue me. Regardless, the whale characterization and biology chapters were tiresome, and I have it on good authority are tremendously out of date sciencewise. But that’s a Nineteenth century novel for you.

  157. 157.

    SC54HI

    Another EXCELLENT video/podcast from Sarah Taber.

    She & Kate Barr (progressive D running as an R in NC because it’s the only way she might win) discuss the recent history of immigrant labor in NC ag. A lot in this discussion but they go into detail on what’s happening with “undocumented” immigrant labor being phased out in favor of “documented and legal” immigrant labor in the H2A program.

  158. 158.

    lowtechcyclist

    @RevRick:

    @lowtechcyclist: I do my walking at the zombie mall a mile and a half down the road.

    Yeah, I’m just not used to having to drive somewhere in order to exercise. I’m used to being able to just go out the door and start my walk/run/bike-ride from there. Even through most of the winter, though the cycling usually has to take a few months off over the winter.  Not to mention the nearest indoor mall, live or zombie, is in Annapolis which is 35-40 minutes away by car.

  160. 160.

    cmorenc

    @WaterGirl: I worked for 2 years representing patients in commitment hearings at one of NC’s primary mental hospitals, and can verify from experience that the “designated patient” phenomenon is an actual and not just a theoretical model.  A main subset of the phenomenon is where often, it is glaringly apparent that the whole family of the patient being subjected to commitment is riddled with psychopathology, and the designated patient is the weakest link in a recurring family psychodrama.

  161. 161.

    gVOR10

    I managed two minutes of her address at which point she still hadn’t actually said anything.

  162. 162.

    Bupalos

    @RevRick: Absolutely I can see that. The Ahab character is cast quite explicitly as being at war with god. It’s more the broad ”deist’ god, the “nature and nature’s god” god. It’s a Johna story, and of course the Johna story is quite literally given as a story-in-a-sermon-in-a-story as foreshadowing early on.

    One of the really great themes is how Ahab the spiteful, condescending megalomaniac recruits the crew to share his purpose.  And it’s really specifically on the spiritual smallness of the material pursuit versus the grandiosity of Ahab’s blaring blasphemy and rebellion against god.

    The  John Huston/ Orson Welles movie adaptation played this out more fully, even juggling the ending just a bit to emphasize the crew’s fervor for killing the whale, and depicting this fervor as extending past the point that Ahab is controlling them. His war fully becomes their war in a way that doesn’t really happen in the novel. And it’s their carrying this forward that dooms the ship.
    I think that the time it was made, very close to the Nuremberg trials, probably influenced that choice.

  163. 163.

    Layer8Problem

    @sab:  They worked with what they knew back then, and Melville had been right up against their slaughter and participating in it in the real world.  It’s still a great novel and tremendously human in multiple good and not-so-good dimensions.

  166. 166.

    Anonymous At Work

    Britt and her fundie baby voice help make her, like Suzy Collins, into a Senatress or Senatrix: a non-male office holder supposedly advocating for women but really doing whatever the men tell her to do

  168. 168.

    ArchTeryx

    @Layer8Problem: The best way to think about Moby Dick is really two books in one: A fictional story and a nonfiction documentary.

    The fictional story everyone knows about the Pequod, based, of course, on the ship Essex (and the REAL story will raise the hairs on your neck).

    A documentary detailing the New England whaling industry and how whaling ships operated. Done to the last detail.

    People go into the book expecting only story #1, and get documentary #2 for free. Then go, “WTF am I reading?”

    You want actual Sperm Whale accuracy, go look at Susan Bird’s or Ingrid Visser’s videos some time of Sperm Whale pods. The whalers (no surprise) had everything dead wrong about them. Nowadays, Sperm Whales think of us as friend-shaped, or at the least, objects of intense curiosity. They also take great pains not to hurt us with their 220 dB hunting clicks

    You want scary? Go look up Livyatan melvillei some time, named after Melville himself. A prehistoric Sperm-Whale-like creature that had the jaws and feeding habits of orcas. An orca the size of a large Sperm Whale. That, that is scary. These things took on megalodon and ate them.

  169. 169.

    Bupalos

    @sab: Don’t worry, you’ll probably skip through that anyway. I think yeah, the science is not going to be up to snuff, the real point of all that stuff from the literary point of view (as opposed to the reality that the guy did spend time whaling and was legitimately amazed at the creatures) is to establish whales as kind of nature’s biggest, most powerful, most wonderful and mysterious creature.

  171. 171.

    Anomalous Cowherd

    @Scout211:

    Will Mr. Trump ever figure out that he’s being used as a cat’s paw – that they will shovel all the blame on him as the Designated Scapegoat? That he is the rube, the fall guy, the pigeon? He’s just the magician’s hand misdirecting the gullible audience to bright, shiny, loud distractions. His children will be pariahs and his name will become a synonym for fecal matter: “I gotta go take a trump.” “The trump room is the second door on your left. Don’t forget to flush.”

  172. 172.

    Just look at that parking lot

    In the book, Ahab has brought his own secret whaling crew , which he keeps hidden below, until they start spotting whales. Captains wouldn’t go out in a harpoon boat, it’s considered too dangerous. This crew is described as being from the East, yellow skinned  & wearing turbans. The regular crew of the Peqoud thinks this irregular crew is devilish & evil.

    Ahab probably did this in case the regular crew backed down and wouldn’t follow thru with pursing Moby Dick, once the whale’s  furry is unleashed. Also he had to be the one to slay Moby Dick, no one else.

    This crew of stowaways isn’t  in the movie.

  173. 173.

    RaflW

    Just back a bit ago from a Not on Native Land rally that was near the now-infamous (regionally? beyond?) Whipple Federal Building adjacent to Minneapolis. At the conclusion, we tied 4,000 ribbons in red, black and yellow to represent the 4,000 Minnesotans so far swept up and ‘processed’ thru Whipple.

    The Indigenous leaders who organized and 100% ran the event made it clear, that there’s a throughline from the bullshit treaty Zebulon Pike made to steal the land, the deaths of 38 by hanging (btw Whipple was an Episcopal priest who managed to appeal to the American gov’t to get almost 90% of the over 300 who were scheduled to hang in the territory spared) to the immoral and often illegal detentions happening now.

    But Britt has a sad? FUCK her.

  174. 174.

    jonas

    @piratedan: One Republican emoting or expressing “concern” is worth, like, ten Democrats actually taking a position and taking action on something.

  178. 178.

    Tony Jay

    @Citizen Alan:

    Yup. I’ve got no problem with Jesus. Seems a solid enough fella with his head screwed on where. Woke as fuck. Had some decent things to say.

    Christians, on the other hand. Sucks teeth.

  183. 183.

    prostratedragon

    @Scout211: ​   The recruited patient? Thinking back, that does seem to be what happened, now that you mention it. So that would be less likely to explain him, than to tell something about the group that recruited him.

  185. 185.

    dnfree

    @WaterGirl: I remember “identified patient” from when my husband was in graduate school in social work, more than 50 years ago, so it’s not a new concept but may not have made much impact outside of family therapists.  Yes, the person experiencing the most visible pain, or “acting out” noticeably, isn’t always the source of the root problems and shouldn’t be assumed to be by the therapist.  A family can come in and tell you about all the problems with just one child, or a spouse might identify all the problems with their mate, with the idea that the therapist should “fix” that person and then things will be fine.

  186. 186.

    WTFGhost

    @sab: That’s injury enough – “you won’t sound ladylike, unless you…” is just the same as “oh, you moron, no one does *that* except queers and fags, which are you?”

    Once you decide your way is right, and you’re willing to hurt people to make them conform, you’re a bully, and you’re damaging people. Well, not *you* @sab, yo know wat I mean.

  187. 187.

    dnfree

    @Another Scott: We had a house painter who had immigrated from Austria in to paint a couple of rooms in our Chicago apartment in the early 1970s.  There he was, up on a ladder in our place, cheerfully telling us that Hitler wasn’t as bad as he was portrayed.  We didn’t say anything, just never hired him again.

  188. 188.

    dnfree

    @Citizen Alan: I have occasional online conversations with a man who belongs to an extreme fundamentalist group (the kind who not only believes Genesis is true, but also that 6000 years is a literal length of time).  In his interpretation of “the least of these”, he believes it refers only to how he treats his fellow Christians, not all the rest of us.  There are Bible verses that would indicate he’s wrong but his version is very insular.

  189. 189.

    WaterGirl

    @dnfree: It’s really  kind of shocking how people are able to see what they want to see, even if something else is right in front of their eyes.

  190. 190.

    TerryC

    @catothedog:Power is when you control the narrative of your agenda, not when you have to tailor your agenda for keeping the narrators happy.

    Mark Twain said something like: “If a man gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and mostly in between does what he wants that man is a success.”

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