Nashville Council votes to reinstate Justin Jones 36-0 pic.twitter.com/cOueZkbtmy
— Acyn (@Acyn) April 10, 2023
Rep. Justin Jones was reinstated to Tennessee's House on Monday, just four days after Republicans expelled him from the Legislature. Moments after the vote by Nashville's governing council, Jones began marching to the Capitol with hundreds of supporters. https://t.co/sqAgxnUwrh pic.twitter.com/sKpqfYwiAt
— The Associated Press (@AP) April 10, 2023
… The unanimous vote by the Nashville Metropolitan Council took only a few minutes to restore Rep. Justin Jones to office just four days after Republicans stripped him of his seat.
Moments later, Jones marched to the Capitol several blocks away. He took the oath of office on the steps and entered the building while supporters sang “This Little Light of Mine.”
A loud round of applause erupted as Jones walked into the chamber with Democratic Rep. Gloria Johnson, who was also targeted for expulsion, but spared by one vote.
“To the people of Tennessee, I stand with you,” Jones said in his first statement on the House floor. “We will continue to be your voice here. And no expulsion, no attempt to silence us will stop us, but it will only galvanize and strengthen our movement. And we will continue to show up in the people’s house.
“Power to the people,” he shouted, to cheers. Republican House Speaker Cameron Sexton told Jones’ supporters in the galleries to “please refrain from disrupting the proceedings.”
Republicans banished Jones and fellow lawmaker Justin Pearson over their role in a gun-control protest on the House floor in the aftermath of a deadly school shooting.
Pearson could be reappointed Wednesday at a meeting of the Shelby County Commission.
The expulsions on Thursday made Tennessee a new front in the battle for the future of American democracy and propelled the ousted lawmakers into the national spotlight. In the span of a few days, the two had raised thousands of campaign dollars and the Tennessee Democratic Party had received a new jolt of support from across the U.S.
Jones’ appointment is an interim basis. Special elections for the seats will take place in the coming months. Jones and Pearson have said they plan to run in the special election…
Representative Justin Jones @brotherjones_ has been appointed by the Nashville Metro Council to fill the vacant seat that Republicans expelled him from. The Council has followed the law, it’s time for the Republican Speaker to do the same and swear him back into the State House.
— Tennessee Democratic Party (@tndp) April 10, 2023
To recap, Tennessee Republicans got a week of thrashing on the national stage, Democrats got money and attention they’ve only dreamed of for years, and Justin Jones didn’t miss a day of session since his expulsion. https://t.co/HnxYQLncbt
— Natalie Allison (@natalie_allison) April 10, 2023
?? @JustinJPearson comforts a woman holding a sign that reads: “Covenant Mom.”
Reminder for the people in power: The families, who are burying children and loved ones murdered in last week’s #CovenantSchool shooting, deserve real action to stop gun violence.
?? via @Dulcet24 pic.twitter.com/A2lKe25eiq
— Tennessee Senate Democrats (@TNSenateDems) April 7, 2023
Because they’d be expelled for something like trying to overthrow the government not for trying to stop kids from being pulped by an AR-15 you disingenuous little freak. pic.twitter.com/Qmulu1qMcM
— Jean-Michel Connard ?? (@torriangray) April 10, 2023
WATCH: To better understand Democratic frustrations surrounding how business is conducted in Tennessee's GOP supermajority House, watch this segment from our award-winning Revealed investigation – long before #TheTennesseeThree made national news. (Please like and share.) 1/2 pic.twitter.com/DOw3LVOznT
— Phil Williams (@NC5PhilWilliams) April 8, 2023
Honestly, I’m not sure this could have gone much better for the Democrats. Maybe if the Tennessee Republicans stepped on a bunch of rakes first. https://t.co/46onuBqOom
— Panda Bernstein (@J4Years) April 10, 2023
Just to put a fine point on this: This was our biggest candidate recruitment week since the Dobbs decision+weeks after.
Usually candidate recruitment #s shake out commensurate with population. That TN makes up nearly 10% of our sign-ups is absolutely wild.
— Amanda Litman (@amandalitman) April 10, 2023
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone😊😊😊
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Baud
The GOP base has waited a long time to be able to let their freak fly. They’re not going to condone any retrenchment.
Geminid
And it’s game on in the New Mexico 2nd Congressional District!
With Squeaker McCarthy at her side, former Rep. Yvette Harrell announced she will fight a rematch with Rep. Gabe Vasquez. She lost to him by less than 2000 votes last November.
Harrell is basically an oil and gas industry lobbyist. Vasquez was a Las Cruces City Council member when he won the district covering the southern half of New Mexico. He is 38 years old.
Princess
Can anyone explain why the Nashville Metropolitan Council can vote to reinstall the state rep? I’d have thought there would need to be a special election. Glad it worked out this way — it makes the GOP expulsion even more stupid if he could always simply be reinstalled.
Baud
That local news report was interesting. The main GOP critic they featured was a lobbyist from Americans for Prosperity.
Also interesting that, at the end, the news people were talking about what taxpayers can do rather than citizens. Must reflect a TN bias.
Baud
@Princess:
As I understand it, there will be a special election too. But I assume the state constitution allows the local counsel to name a temp replacement.
LiminalOwl
@rikyrah: Good morning!
delphinium
Glad he was re-instated and hope the other Justin also gets his seat back.
A commenter yesterday noted that House Speaker Cameron Sexton may not actually live in his own district, which would violate the State Constitution. Hope this gets a lot more attention, if true and that he faces some consequences.
Mousebumples
My 2 monthly (recurring) political donations are to WisDems & Run For Something. Glad to see they are capitalizing on candidate recruitment opportunities!
Good morning, everyone!
BellyCat
The cost of the special election should be legally assigned to the GOP. (One can dream)
Ohio Mom
@Baud: Yes, both Jones and Pearson will have to run in a special election. I’m going to assume they both will win — obviously they had enough support to win the first time — but what a waste of money and effort to have to do so.
I will also assume that Republicans, being Republicans, will put up opponents, making it even more money and effort that Jones and Pearson will have to expend.
Betty Cracker
This hateful creep who represents Volusia County in the Florida statehouse called trans people “demons and imps” after members of the public testified against the latest bathroom bill — they were still there, including kids and their parents.
He is also a preacher who has given the opening prayer at Trump rallies.
The person who tweeted the clip says Barnaby’s remarks establish “unconstitutional animus” that could get the bill enjoined if it passes, which it probably will given the wingnut supermajority.
Barnaby’s GOP colleagues sat silently during the two-minute rant, but someone must have had a word with him later:
They’re all horrible people, every damn one of them.
OzarkHillbilly
As always, every accusation is a confession, demons and imps are they.
Gvg
Reply to Dan McLaughlin about why Republicans would not get the same National response “if they did the exact same thing” it’s because if they did the exact same thing they wouldn’t be republicans. What they would do, is something bigoted and almost the opposite and claim it was the same without any self awareness, then hold a pity party when people didn’t praise them enough.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
If they weren’t actually fascist, that would be a hilarious line.
OzarkHillbilly
Iowa suspends provision of emergency contraception to sexual assault victims
Because getting raped is just the beginning of what the sluts deserve, I guess.
VOR
@delphinium: I though I saw that he admitted he lived in Nashville, not in his district. He reportedly claims it doesn’t matter, that he can run from a district he doesn’t live in, which seems to conflict with some rather plain language in the TN constitution. He apparently has been filing for per diem expenses as if he lived in his district, not in Nashville. Sounds like he has some explaining to do.
Kay
They’re losing their ability to connect politically because they’re so far up the ass of the far Right. It’s like they don’t know how to operate outside a very online echo chamber anymore.
Kay
@delphinium:
“Reside” is more complicated than one might think. It’s a set of factors that are weighed, not a hard and fast definition. It comes up all the time in cases about the elgibility to vote in a certain place and it can be basically a coin flip.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: They live in an echo chamber.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Betty Cracker: It occurs to me that some people need a long time to realize who and what they truly are.
And some people never realize who and what they truly are.
Mr. Barnaby apparently has yet to realize that he’s a monster.
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
I think some of them know it. Theyre already lining up to challenge Marcy Kaptur (US House, OH) – Kaptur trounces any GOP challenger because 1. she’s wildly popular in Toledo, which is her home town and Democratic and, 2., they always put up nutjobs. They have a non nutjob challenger who announced this week. I’m acquainted with him- he would be competitive (although I think she still wins) but the GOP base will never allow it. They’ll pick some other idiot with an anti Biden Youtube channel.
lowtechcyclist
Baseball Crank is totally wrong, of course.
If GOP state legislators were expelled from their state legislature “for doing precisely the same thing” – protesting gun violence – they too would get a big reception on national TV – probably even a bigger one, because it would give the nets a chance to implicitly say, “see, there are some decent Republicans after all!”
Which might be a bit easier for them to do if Republicans were on the right side of, well, anything.
Geminid
@OzarkHillbilly: I think that Volusia Republican’s rhetoric is an example of that echo chamber. “Demons” and “Imps” comes from the “Spiritual Warfare” ideology that used to be a marginal component of evangelical thinking. Now it has crept into Republican ideology, and Webster Barnaby thinks it will elicit approval from the base. Most people will give him the side eye, though.
I guess the aptly named Chairman Rommel sees that. I can imagine Rommel scolding Barnaby: “Dis does notink to get our panzers to de Channel!”
Walker
Insurrection is a legal term for a criminal act. If the Republicans think they can meet the bar they should charge them and hold a trial. Like we have done for the Jan 6 participants.
Kay
NYTimes put a weeks-old incident at a fancy law school on the front page- the explainer about the ban on abortion medication went on page 22, so that’s the priority of “news” over there, idiot cancel culture panic gets page 1, actual news gets page 22, but this was the concluding paragraph:
So the cancel culture ninnies and the Right wing have succeeded- they have created safe spaces for Right wing federal judges to speak where they will never be questioned or challenged, because the only people who will attend these events now are ass-kissing careerist law students or rabid Right wingers. Good work, free speech warriors! You shut down any and all opposition to the powerful people who speak at these events.
It’s not enough that these federal judges have lifetime appointments and are ethical train wrecks who don’t follow their own rules, now no one is allowed to question or challenge them in anyway, even at a law school.
OzarkHillbilly
Yeah, most people do to some extent, but they never step out of theirs because that would be too disorienting and uncomfortable.
Baud
@Kay:
I read an explainer about the Texas abortion decision yesterday. It gives me some hope that it may be too much for even the 5th Circuit, or at least the Supreme Court.
The NYT is garbage.
Kay
In Jones’ short address when he re-enters the chamber he starts with “I’d like to welcome the people back to the peoples house” – just perfect. Not his victory, but the peoples.
You can SEE the Republicans grimace as if in pain :)
Princess
@Baud: Thanks. In that case the Republicans were truly idiots for doing this.
lowtechcyclist
@Geminid:
It’s been a while since I was around any of that, but I associate it more with Pentecostal/charismatic types than mainstream evangelicalism.
Either way, it’s crazy shit.
Cameron
@Betty Cracker: “I’m sorry I called you a shit-heeled motherfucker. No, I really mean it – I apologize. Baby Jesus will confirm it. I only say these things because I care.”
WaterGirl
@Kay: I read yesterday that the rule/law/statute actually defines what reside means, and as far as I could tell, he is in violation.
Kay
@Baud:
I could not believe they put the weeks old ridiculous Stanford Law school freak out on the front page. It isn’t just the Right wing that is way too online. It’s our silly, unserious elites who seem to be obsessed with the fine points of acceptable dissent at incredibly expensive colleges.
Last week was pretty newsy! How in the HECK does yet another dumb cancel culture panic merit the front page?
Anyway! Mission accomplished! No one who speaks on a law school panel will ever have to answer a real question again- it wil all be either smarmy ass kissing to advance careers or ideological high-fiving between Right wingers. Excellent work, free speechers!
Soprano2
@Kay: They don’t, they’re used to living in a bubble of their own making. Half the time you can’t understand what they are babbling about because it all references right-wing conspiracy theories that normal people know nothing about. They say things like “the laptop from hell”, and think everyone knows what they hell they’re talking about.
OzarkHillbilly
It’s worth every second of the 4 minutes it takes him to accomplish this feat.
Betty
How cool is it that the Tennessee House Republicans have shown the world their true colors. Good job, guys!
Kay
@WaterGirl:
It’s often just not as intuitive or black/white as people expect. Every year there are court cases in Ohio over residency for everything from voting to public school attendance/high school sports eligibility to serving on a city council. It’s a whole body of law that interprets whatever the rule is.
Geminid
@lowtechcyclist: Yes, I think Baptists and Presbyterians frowned on the Spiritual Warfare idea. There now seems to be a sort of Popular Christianity though, and some Republican politicians embrace it. Spiritual Warfare is a big component.
WaterGirl
@Kay: Look up what theirs says. It was very explicit.
OzarkHillbilly
RF really nailed that landing. Trigger warning: put down the coffee cup and swallow it all before clicking. I will not be responsible for your keyboards.
Kay
@Soprano2:
But there is a group who get it-who seem to know it’s too griftery and too online for normies. The question is whether they can win primaries. I don’t think they can in Ohio.
I heard a funny explanation from a Trumpster for why they keep losing. Okay, I brought it up, but still. I said “but you keep losing – 20, 22 and now specials and judicial races” and he said “it’s because the traditional Republican Party doesn’t want us to win” – so the story they’re telling themselves is that Trumpism is losing because people like Micth McConnell want them to lose so the traditional GOP can take back the Party.
schrodingers_cat
No matter how vile the Republicans get, they still get a majority of the white vote. That helps them win elections. Unless they pay for their behavior at the polls they are not going to change. They will continue to get worse.
Soprano2
@Kay: Josh Hawley doesn’t even live in Missouri – he lives in Virginia – yet somehow he’s our senator. He is allegedly building a house down in Ozark, but that’s been going on for several years and I don’t think it’s built yet. I think he uses a sibling’s address for political purposes, but his family lives in VA.
Albatrossity
From Heather Cox Richardson’s post about the two Black Tennessee representatives who were expelled for representing.
—————
Yesterday, representatives Jones and Johnson flew from Nashville to Newark, and it happened that Joan Baez, the folk music legend, was on the same airplane. In the Newark airport, Jones asked Baez to sing with him. As Johnson filmed them, together they sang two spiritual-based freedom songs that became anthems in the Civil Rights Era: “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me ‘Round” and “We Shall Overcome.”
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: I remember first experiencing that years ago when I was in a conversation with a bunch of Republicans who started going on about “the terrible thing Bill Clinton did with China” and just nodding about it like it was an infamous event everyone immediately recognized.
I was never entirely sure what the terrible thing was that Bill Clinton did with China. There were several possibilities: they might have been talking about the Wen Ho Lee incident or the Sandy Berger espionage thing or maybe even the Buddhist temple fundraising thing, but I would only have known if I’d spoken wingnut. Or maybe they didn’t even all know what the first guy was talking about but nodded along because they knew there had to be a terrible thing Bill Clinton did with China.
Quinerly
@VOR:
https://popular.info/p/update-tennessee-speaker-admits-his
Daoud bin Daoud
@Kay: You’re describing the Republican wet dream: they speak, and their speech is law. We listen (silently, meekly) and obey. You know, master and slave shit.
narya
@OzarkHillbilly: And they don’t truly believe that Nice Girls ever get raped.
The absolute best thing about all of the news above, at least to me, is how many young folks are getting INVOLVED. As an Old who was vaguely concerned about who would lead the charge as the Even Olders in Congress and elsewhere left, I am much less concerned. I also note that so very much of the involvement is started by fights against gun violence–there’s a change coming, I hope. I’m even more grateful for Nancy Smash supporting her successors and getting out of the limelight so they can lead.
Soprano2
@Kay: “Normal” Republicans can win here in Springfield. We have a Republican state senator who is “normal” for a Republican – he doesn’t buy into any of the conspiracy theories and actually tries to get things done. They ran a crazy against him last year in the primary, but the crazy lost. To me it’s a sign that Springfield is more normal than the surrounding towns and counties. We have some real doozies in the state legislature from down here, that’s for sure, but they represent the towns outside Springfield, and other counties down here. If you can stomach it google “Mike Moon” and behold the insanity who became a state senator.
Betty Cracker
@Geminid: My maternal grandfather was a Southern Baptist preacher, so I was dragged to Sunday services weekly and packed off to Jesus camp during the summer until I hit puberty and refused. It was a long time ago, so I can’t remember if the folks in that church used the exact phrase “spiritual warfare,” but the concept was definitely present!
Nothing in Barnaby’s rant would have been considered odd in that context, though back then the primary targets for literal demonization were atheists and feminists.
Kay
@Daoud bin Daoud:
It’s absolutely what the Right wing judges want. They pitch an absolute hissy fit every time they are challenged. I fear Alito may have a stroke when he launches into one his diatribes about uppity liberals.
The impolite law students might have toughened the big whiny crybabies up a little. Now they’re safe from any dissent of any kind. It’s just gross that the administrators of these schools fold so easily and always take the side of the most powerful people in any dispute. Jesus Christ. Stick up for your students for once, you cowards.
lowtechcyclist
@Albatrossity:
Wow, that’s one serious across-the-generations connection there!
delphinium
@OzarkHillbilly: Cool-that watermelon was the perfect ending. : )
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: I realized a little while ago that I haven’t heard anyone chortle “that’s why you libs always lose elections” for a few years now.
For decades from maybe 1980 it was this understood bit of folklore that Democrats usually lose elections, every kind of elections, even if they do win sometimes. Democrats were just understood to be the Loser Party. Now, I guess the idea is that Democrats are stealing elections.
lowtechcyclist
@Kay:
I fear that he won’t!
OzarkHillbilly
@Soprano2: Well, that’s in character for him. Remember when he had to be forced to move to Jeff City because it was in the state constitution that the AG had to reside there?
Good times…
lowtechcyclist
@Matt McIrvin:
And it’s much harder to find a translator than if they’d been speaking jive.
OzarkHillbilly
Seconded. I’m sure it’s not easy for her either.
Spanky
@Matt McIrvin: Maybe it was some story about smashing all the plates on his last night in the White House, or something.
Soprano2
@OzarkHillbilly: Yep, I remember that. LOL
OzarkHillbilly
@Spanky: That would be trump.
Matt McIrvin
@Spanky: They saw something narsty in the woodshed.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
I don’t think this is that far from the truth; it’s just told in a way that makes them victims. What’s really happening is their extreme positions are driving away some people who were traditionally Republicans. If you’re obsessed with victimhood, that looks a lot like traditional Republicans conspiring with Democrats to deny you the victory, but it’s really just the democratic process.
Baud
@Spanky: I’ve never watched Fox News on a regular basis. But the thing that made me realize that they were a propaganda outfit rather than just a conservative news organization was when the GAO reporting on the claims that Clinton trashed the White House on the way out. I believe the GAO largely cleared Clinton, but Fox News presented it as a vindication. But more importantly, Fox claimed that the GAO “had pictures!,” but then Fox didn’t show the pictures!
If you’re going to mention pictures, show the pictures! Hasn’t anyone over there heard of “pics or it didn’t happen.” Sheesh.
Miss Bianca
@Matt McIrvin: Hey, *I* recognize that one!
BlueGuitarist
Looking into the Tennessee State House saw a story I missed 2 years ago: While opposing public funds for schools that teach critical race theory, ignorant TN state rep Lafferty wrongly described the 3/5 scheme as anti-slavery when in fact it gave more power to slave owners, as made clear at the constitutional and ratifying conventions. So Lafferty unintentionally provided a good reason to require the teaching of critical race theory.
Anyway
In states like TN, the urban population is so underrepresented – signing up more D-leaning voters in Memphis and Nashville will not shift the composition of the state house :-(. We need a Finnish-style algorithm where more densely populated areas get more representation. Not just the case in TN, this is a big structural problem for Ds.
band gap
Just want to put this bit of insight up here again. Re: disrupt, disruption
https://mastodon.social/@sethcotlar/110164348561717423
Nelle
@Kay: Fear? Or hope?
Honus
@Betty Cracker: here’s a really good article on a southern gay man trying to reconcile his sexuality with his Christianity.
https://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/a40218049/christianity-queer-why-i-still-believe-in-god/?source=nl
BC in Illinois
@Soprano2:
His twitter name is @HawleyMO [sic].
ETA: Of course, “BC in Illinois” has lived in St Louis County MO for 7 1/2 years now.
sab
@Kay: Years ago the Cleveland City Club gave Scalia their First Amendment Award at an event where Scalia gave his acceptance speech and it was not allowed to be recorded or reported on. News blackout on everything except that he got the award.
Geminid
@Soprano2: I had a Republican state Senator like that (I’m in a different district now). Emmett Hanger was one of three Republican Senators to join Democrats in the 2018 session in expanding Medicaid. He had a wingnut challenge him in 2019, and she trashed his vote “for Obamacare.”
The looney lady’s biggest issue was gun rights; her ads featured her blasting away at ranges and advocating for so-called “Constitutional Carry.” Hanger was the only Republican I’ve seen using gun safety as an issue. His mailers denounced her proposal to allow “untrained and unlicensed” people to carry concealed weapons.
Hanger won his primary easily. His district lay mostly in the Shendoah Valley, and Republicans there tend to be conservative but not radical. His opponents also made a mistake one Sunday morning: they stuck campaign literature on the car windshields in his Church of the Brethren parking lot while Hanger was attending services. That sort of thing is frowned on in the Valley.
UncleEbeneezer
This “Demons and Imps” bullshit is a great example of why we all need to support, respect, listen to, defer to and fight for Transgender People. They already have their existence/truth mocked by the other side and are continually made out as scapegoats in just the same ways that Native/Indigenous, Black and Gay People were historically. They don’t deserve that bullshit from anyone, but especially from our side.
sab
@Roger Moore: That happened to my mother. Her side of the family had been Republican since the Civil War. She got to the point in her eighties where she just couldn’t bear being labelled Republican anymore. But she wouldn’t switch to Democrat. So she missed all the primaries. She said it didn’t matter anymore because there were so many secret cabals that nobody really knew who or what they were voting for even at the precinct committee level.
lowtechcyclist
@Honus: Looks like it’s paywalled. Is a gift link possible?
UncleEbeneezer
Sigh, Florida Nazis doing what they do. (TW: LGBTQphobia, Racism etc.)
UncleEbeneezer
But I was assured by
very smartpeople that Feckless Merrick Garland would never take the DOJ investigation all the way up to the Big Fish from the Trump administration…tick, tock…rikyrah
@Kay:
No, Kay. Either you reside in the district you are running from, or your don’t. One of the many reasons I loathed Paul Vallas – HE DIDN’T LIVE IN CHICAGO. He lived in the South Suburbs – WHICH IS NOT CHICAGO.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
Depends how you look at it. It gave slaveholders less power than if they counted slaves as full people who couldn’t vote.
But no matter how you slice it, it was good for slaveholders and bad for slaves.
OzarkHillbilly
@sab: My parents were Republicans. The Iraq war cured Ma of that affliction. Alzheimers took care of Pop. If it hadn’t I’m sure he’d have followed Ma out of it.
frosty
@OzarkHillbilly:
Finally! Four minutes getting sidetracked on the internet that weren’t a complete waste of time!
rikyrah
@Albatrossity:
Saw them on the Twitter.
One thing that has stuck from the moment I read it:
Both Justins are Divinity School graduates. Jones is in school now, and Pearson’s parents are BOTH ministers.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Baud: It’ll either be a bridge too far for SCOTUS, or, alternatively, SCOTUS will use the opportunity to go full on nondelegation doctrine and say that the FDA has no authority to do anything because Congress didn’t spell out to the last excruciating detail exactly the way they are supposed to do and how.
Matt McIrvin
@band gap: These guys often speak glowingly of “disruption” in a business context, when their prejudices aren’t what’s getting disrupted.
Matt McIrvin
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: Rhetorically it’s often used as if counting an enslaved person as 3/5 of a person was the bad thing, but of course the real atrocity was that they were enslaved and they couldn’t actually vote at all, but the people who owned them still got some proxy power from owning them.
Immanentize
@Matt McIrvin:
@Miss Bianca:
“Or maybe it was the tool shed, or the bike shed….”
Great book! Great movie!
Anyway
@Immanentize:
Yes. Another fan here.
artem1s
@Kay:
I can attest to that. My ‘fuck you I got mine” republican voting family members all believe this. They went from hating McCain because of the disinformation campaign waged by Rove and W in 2000. Then they turned to hating the Bushes (again – they already hated Poppy after St Raygun wasn’t allowed to run for third term) not because W crashed the economy or anything else he, predictably, did poorly but because he wasn’t awful enough to the poors and women and Blacks. And they also hate the mainstream GOPers because they let the Black guy beat them twice. They will find their next Great White Hope to pin all their hateful dreams onto sooner or later. And when they finally turn on TFG it will be brutal.
glory b
@Kay: True. I think his problem is that he takes a per diem of over $100 per day for “travel” to & from the home that he doesn’t seem to live in.
I think that may be what lands him in hot water, if it does.
Another Scott
@rikyrah:
Good, good.
Cheers,
Scott.
Jeffro
Good stuff from Jamelle Bouie today:
Miss Bianca
@Immanentize: You know, I love the movie *so* much, that of course I decided to try the book – but couldn’t get into it! One of those rare (for me) cases of “the movie is better than the book!”
Part of that might have just been the wonderful, wonderful casting. I mean, Ian McKellan intoning, “THUR’S NOOOO BUTTERRR IN HELL!”? Comedy gold. No, comedy platinum.
Jeffro
@Jeffro: the best part is the ending:
different-church-lady
“…you disingenuous little freak” is gonna put a smile on my face for the rest of the week.
Another Scott
@Jeffro: +1
It’s not corruption because Crow doesn’t have a case before the SCOTUS is a laughably, and infuriatingly, narrow constraint. Congress needs to fix it.
If a GS-12 cannot accept a $20 gift for a birthday, then the SCOTUS should not be able to accept lavish perks.
This isn’t hard.
You work for who pays you.
If you want to accept giant remuneration from “friends”, then you shouldn’t be on the public payroll.
Choose. You can’t do both without being corrupt.
Grr…,
Scott.
Gvg
@schrodingers_cat: They may get the majority of the white vote, but when the majority is only 55% of the white vote and the other 45% votes democrats with oh 95% of the blacks Americans and 75% of most other minorities it works out pretty well, whereas when 75% of the white vote went Republican, democrats were losing elections. The margin is pretty important.
Also the college educated trend towards the democrats is good because they tend to vote more reliably.
what we really need to do is train the young to vote all the time.
Jeffro
Here’s a LOL on how Republicans are trying to have their cake and suppress women’s rights, too. They know that reproductive rights will be a powerful issue in 2024 (and they’re likely to lose bigly because of it)
But tell me this is someone on the verge of a “compromise”, or a party on the verge of moderating…
I’m pretty sure we had reached some sort of consensus about abortion “limits” a while back when it was between a woman and her doctor.
Ghost of Joe Liebling’s Dog
@lowtechcyclist: The dot trick might work : Insert a dot in the URL right after “.com” – turning it into “.com.” – and see if that bypasses the problem.
(I didn’t run into the problem in the first place with this particular article, so can’t say if the trick works.)
Soprano2
@Jeffro: That person is not actually trying to reach any kind of “compromise” or meet people where they are. She wants to impose her morals and beliefs on the rest of us because she absolutely believes she is saving human beings. People like that will not compromise, period.
Baud
@Jeffro: “We find the murder of 5% of babies to be an acceptable casualty rate if it will help Republicans win elections.”
Betty Cracker
@Jeffro: I was going to do a post on that, but probably won’t have time. The framing isn’t quite right — it’s not that the base is pressuring poor little agentless elected Repubs to go medieval on marginalized people. But it’s true the GOP is the dog that caught the mail truck and is now trying to figure out how to detach its fangs before its head goes under the wheel.
Quinerly
@lowtechcyclist:
Someone on BJ turned me on to “12ft Ladder” site to get over paywalls. Works 99% of the time for me.
Gvg
@Jeffro: part of their problem is science told them things they didn’t want to hear so they said ignore science and then spend decades babbling nonsense in an echo chamber with no ability to burn their fingers in a hot stove so to speak. They really do not understand that a biological body is an interconnected whole set of systems and a lot goes wrong on a regular basis that doesn’t even have anything to do with pregnancy plus pregnancy is hard work for a body. So they refuse to face that some fertilized eggs are doomed and should be removed quickly, that some women can’t safely bear children, that they don’t know what the hell they are talking about and they really don’t get that a bunch of drugs have multiple uses. That’s just allowing for a general anti abortion stance but with a better scientific basis. They are refusing to even try to make their policies doable. These extreme nutty attacks on legal precedents will upend a lot of things and profits that have nothing to do with child birth. Honestly that Texas judge must have issues where he just wants to make a big wreck so people have to pay attention to him, worse than Trump.
Immanentize
@Miss Bianca: “Clap a bit of butter on it!”
It’s true, the casting is extraordinary in the movie. But the movie does not quite capture Mrs May Smiling’s (Joanna Lumley!!) Bra collecting obsession like the book does.
My wife and I used to randomly ask each other: “do you have the brochure for the Ford Vahn?”
Barbara
@schrodingers_cat: No, it doesn’t “help” them win elections — it is essential to their electoral viability. Your citation to the percentage of white people who vote for Republicans always avoids looking at it at the level where it matters — by relevant locale or geography, not to mention by age (a fact that is clearly apparent when midterms tend to be more Republican leaning because — duh — older people are more reliable voters). It is also the case that the overwhelming dichotomy between how white and black people vote in southern states distorts the fact that the disparity is much less in many other states, and that there are subgroups — like, really important subgroups — of white people who vote Democratic. Your fixation on white people as if all white people are exactly the same is tedious and, by denying that there are other important aspects to their identity that also influence the way they vote (income, education, gender and so on), it is not really very helpful to understanding how it is possible to get more white people to vote for Democratic candidates.
Another Scott
@Soprano2: The National Right To Life Committee has always been more interested in imposing its ideas of laws and politics on the rest of us than understanding and creating a favorable-to-them consensus on reproduction.
Yet another plug for Jill Lepore’s “Birthright” at the NewYorker:
It’s always, always been about politics since the 1960s. (Before that, it was about a crank at the AMA wanting to control midwives and panic about ‘brown hordes’ taking over because there weren’t enough white babies….)
tl;dr – Watch what they do, not what they say about “compromise”.
Grr…,
Scott.
lowtechcyclist
@Matt McIrvin:
Exactly. It’s as if each slave got negative 3/5 of a vote.
Ghost of Joe Liebling’s Dog
@Another Scott: Imagine Thomas as, let’s say, a mid-level manager overseeing the “Geek Squad” support group that operates out of the local Best Buy.
Imagine Crow meeting them somehow in the first place
– and would that even happen? Presumably Crow “has people” who take care of “that sort of thing” outside of his view; why would he ever be troubled with it? But suppose it did –
(And by the way, just how did Crow and Thomas actually meet? None of the Newsies seem to have asked this, but it’s an interesting question. I doubt it was by merest accident. My guess is, they met because Crow wanted to buy a Justice, and how you get to the cash register in that particular store is interesting! Who brokered the transaction, and how was it arranged? Hello, “Professional Journalists”! Your story awaits, and right now it’s just crickets chirping…)
– can you imagine Crow adopting this little middle manager as his “dear friend” and lavishing vacation after yacht trip after private jet flight on this person for 20 years or more …?
Somehow such a meeting of the minds seems a little unlikely to me.
Of course it’s just my naive opinion, but I think that Crow bought Thomas because of what he does for a living, not because of his boyish charm and sparkling personality .
EarthWindFire
Yeah, didn’t take long after Obama’s inauguration to figure out that’s what “W wasn’t conservative enough” meant. Good times.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@lowtechcyclist: There is a physicist named John Baez who is internet-famous for developing the definitive guide to scoring crackpot science. Goes back at least to the Usenet days of the 90s.
He is a relative (a cousin, I think) to Joan Baez.
BruceFromOhio
Is our fascist enablers learning?
Besides, cranky boy, it would the voters doing the expelling, not the colleagues. Consider the distinction.
BruceFromOhio
@Ghost of Joe Liebling’s Dog:
Nothing naive about it.
Immanentize
Along these lines, if Trump would just stick with his prior opinion about abortion — “I really don’t care, leave it to the States,” he would further increase his support among Republican primary voters. Trump’s most fervent supporters don’t care about abortion unless it’s about controlling other people. All the other candidates are head deep in full anti-abortion shit.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Ghost of Joe Liebling’s Dog: I can imagine Thomas being suddenly invited to all the “right” cocktail parties in DC after being seated on the Supreme Court, specifically for the purpose of introducing him to the people who wanted to bribe him.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Immanentize: Trump doesn’t lead, though. He’s chasing clout from a bloodthirsty mob.
lowtechcyclist
@Ghost of Joe Liebling’s Dog:
It worked for maybe eight or ten seconds, then it blurred over and gave me the “members only” message. I shoulda copied while it was visible. I opened a new tab and tried again, but this time it saw me coming.
Anyhow, now that I know about that trick, I’ll be sure to try it in future paywall situations.
Immanentize
@Ghost of Joe Liebling’s Dog:
I believe the Crow connection to Brother Clarence is Ginni and her wealthy family. So, Crow made an exception because he was convinced Thomas was “one of the good ones.”
Immanentize
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
Fair enough, but he could gain clout by not being an “anti” zealot.
West of the Rockies
Republicans get to flaunt their gun fetish via Twitter and stupid Christmas cards all the time. I hope their actions in Tennessee cause them an infinite amount of grief.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Immanentize: Maybe he could, but he ain’t too bright, courageous, or interested in right or wrong.
Miss Bianca
@Immanentize: The Ford van! “Them thur Ford vans!” Yeah, Pal D and I swap that reference too.
Stacy
@Geminid: Fellow Virginia here in Rep. Jennifer Wexton’s district. She just announced she has Parkinson’s Disease but feels she’s is doing well and will continue to serve our district.
Jeffro
@Baud: “…and believe you me, we’ll be circling back to that 5% after we
get through this entirely self-inflicted disasterwin the next election”mrmoshpotato
Good!
But still bitchslap most of Tennessee.
Geminid
@artem1s: I thought George Bush’s disastrous war in Iraq had secondary effects on the Republican party. It drove some people away outright, and for many who remained it undermined the legitimacy of the Republican establishment.
BlueGuitarist
@lowtechcyclist:
@Matt McIrvin:
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
The Constitutional Convention rejected an alternative to the 3/5 scheme: Gouverneur Morris’s proposal to only count free inhabitants.
Morris asked “Upon what principle is it that the slaves shall be computed in the representation? Are they men? Then make them Citizens and let them vote….”
Morris said the 3/5 scheme
“when fairly explained comes to this: that the inhabitant of Georgia and South Carolina who goes to the coast of Africa, and in defiance of the most sacred laws of humanity tears away his fellow creatures from their dearest connections and damns them to the most cruel bondages, shall have more votes in a Government instituted for protection of the rights of mankind, than the Citizen of Pennsylvania or New Jersey who views with a laudable horror so nefarious a practice.”
Jeffro
@Betty Cracker: they caught all three mail trucks – guns, abortion, and climate change. And Gen Z is fed. up.
It’s amazing that Dems are winning due to culture-war issues. They really ought to lean in to all of it.
lowtechcyclist
@Quinerly: Thanks – I’d never heard of it before!
Worked like a charm. (Copied the text, just in case.)
Jeffro
@Gvg: why, it’s almost like their anti-abortion stance has very little to do with abortion…hmm…
Geminid
@Stacy:I’m sorry to hear that about Rep. Wexton. I’ve always been grateful to the three Virginia women who flipped Republican seats in 2018 and she was one of them, along with Elaine Luria and Abigail Spanberger.
One of my customers I’m working for today has Parkinson’s. He says some days are better than others. It’s a terrible disease.
lowtechcyclist
@Another Scott:
As Fred “Slacktivist” Clark frequently points out, the evangelical belief that abortion is murder is a belief that’s younger than the Happy Meal.
Mimi haha
@rikyrah: That kind of shit makes me nuts too, and I grew up in Oak Lawn.
FTR, I keep a C*bs schedule on my fridge so I know when my current immediate area is going to be inundated with people who can’t figure out how to park in the city. And I don’t even drive.
Baud
@Jeffro:
I find it sad. Liberal voters are supposed to be the ones that act to prevent problems but a sliver of us didn’t take elections seriously enough, which is why we’re having to deal with so much extremist behavior.
lowtechcyclist
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Cool! I’m learning about all sorts of new stuff today.
lowtechcyclist
@Stacy:
Obviously each person’s body handles something like that differently, but my father started showing Parkinson’s symptoms just after he turned 80, lived another decade, was physically active for all but the last couple of years, and mentally sharp until the last few months.
In the end, Parkinson’s wins, but there’s a lot one can do to keep it at bay for quite some time.
rikyrah
@Baud:
Uh huh
Uh huh
While the real-life consequences of these hideous laws come up every damn day in the lives of women and the harm to women’s health.
BlueGuitarist
From Tiger Beat on the Potomac
The RNC’s inopportune trip to Nashville
GOP BIGWIGS DESCEND ON TENNESSEE: Wealthy Republicans will convene in Nashville on Friday for the RNC donor retreat — a long-planned event….Privately, Republicans acknowledged to Playbook the inconvenience of visiting a state where local party leaders are mired in ugly headlines and accusations of racism. Their presence, they know, will likely invite questions about whether national Republicans condone the decisions of their Volunteer State brethren….Event speakers include…TRUMP… also several moderate House Republicans — like Reps. MIKE LAWLER (R-N.Y.) and MIKE GALLAGHER (R-Wis.), who may not want to be seen siding with the Tennessee GOP on this….full list of RNC donor retreat speakers here
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2023/04/10/the-rncs-inopportune-trip-to-nashville-00091176
Nora
@BlueGuitarist: Aha, my own representative, Mr. Lawler, is attending this event. I think I’ll send him a note asking him if he condemns the behavior of the Tennessee Republicans.
Kathleen
@UncleEbeneezer: Not only “feckless” but “gutless”. I think that’s my favorite. The guy who successfully prosecuted McVeigh is “gutless”..
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
“They’re all horrible people, every damn one of them.”
That deserved to be seen again.
Baud
@BlueGuitarist:
I’m sure Trump will act with decorum and restraint given the volatility of the situation.
lowtechcyclist
@Kathleen: Yeah, I don’t mind being ‘feckless’ because it just means I have no fecks left to give.
UncleEbeneezer
Here is an interesting Politico article about how Gen X became a disappointingly Trumpy voting block. It argues that our attitude of cool detachment and cynicism made us particularly susceptible to Third-Party nonsense, Non-voting apathy and even outright support for MAGA:
I think there is a lot of truth to it, but I would also guess that Gen X was unique in that we really marinated in an absolute sea of misogyny, promoted most obviously by Rush Limbaugh, FoxNews (endlessly bashing Hillary and Feminism), Shock Jocks, Rapey John Hughes films, Misogynist Rap/Hip-Hop followed by extremist MRA/Incel, GamerGate websites and social media etc. So it’s not real surprising that we don’t collectively vote as strongly Dem as we should based on our racial demographics. Though I would add that the fact that we still have averaged D+6 from 2016-2020 Elections (that # will likely get worse once we have the numbers from 2022, sadly) is actually a bit better than I would’ve expected.
PS- I’m a bit devastated to find out that Cherielynn Westrich is a MAGA Republican now. Back when The Rentals’ song “Friends of P” was getting heavy airplay on MTV, I had such a crush on her :(
Kathleen
@lowtechcyclist: Ha! I plan to steal that w/ your permission
206inKY
@schrodingers_cat: This is partly an illusion since gerrymandering has gotten more and more extreme even in the last few years. The KY supermajority is a house of cards built out of districts that fractured any blue pockets beyond Louisville last year. In TN, Nashville’s federal delegation is 100% red despite the metro council voting 36-0 just now on reinstating Jones. Gerrymandering is brutally effective in the short term but highly brittle in the long run.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@UncleEbeneezer: Oy, that article
supporting the losers and suckers and un-photogenic wounded, and the two people he pardoned because Kim Kardashian got her picture took with him.
But she did her homework!
Baud
@UncleEbeneezer:
Dukakis in a tank really did a number on them.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Probably captures the attitude better.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@BlueGuitarist:
also several moderate House Republicans — like Reps. MIKE LAWLER (R-N.Y.) and MIKE GALLAGHER (R-Wis.),
Lawler may have to play a moderate for his suburban district, but I’m pretty sure Gallagher is only “moderate” in the sense of basic table manners and doesn’t spook the horses like Frau Blucher or Gym Jordan
Barbara
@Immanentize: But the “quietly” moderate Republican voters aren’t the kind that devote their time and resources to getting out the vote. I call the latter the “amplification voters,” and that’s why changing course is so hard for Republicans.
Another Scott
Reuters – Ukrainian hackers say they have hacked russian spy who hacked Democrats
[ womp, womp ]
Cheers,
Scott.
JaneE
I get a kick out of all the calls for “decorum”. Of course it only applies to black legislators, women and the Democrats.
Shouting is bad, shooting is good. Got it.
UncleEbeneezer
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yeah, she’s pretty sad, all around.
Baud
@JaneE: Depends who is doing the shooing.
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
They’re all horrible people, every damn one of them.
They can’t help themselves. Their upbringing allows them to believe that there is only one way in the world and that all humans have to follow that one way or we are just animals. As the world becomes more open and as there are more of us that get exposed to more than 20 to 100 humans in a small town, we find that there are far more than just that one way to be human. We can define human differently than just one, or 23 or whatever number of religions there are, we can actually exist and not believe in religion as it’s presented or not believe at all. And still be reasonable humans. It’s not that it is a foreign concept it is that it is not a requirement to believe a thousands of year old story to be a reasonable human being.
Ken
But if avoiding that is a requirement, what state could they meet in? Would they end up holding all meetings at an abandoned oil rig in international waters?
StringOnAStick
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: I wonder if the SCOTUS votes to basically eliminate the FDA, does that mean that EVERY prescription drug can either no longer be prescribed (and therefore paid for by your insurance) or just plain end all prescription drugs, period. Since the Amarillo judge ended access to the abortion drug by saying the FDA doesn’t have jurisdiction, then all prescription drugs are in the same boat. Because if they take that nondelegation theory to the logical end that the Amarillo judge did, then those are the results. That should go over well.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@UncleEbeneezer: Don’t forget Gen X getting marinated in violent, no rules patriotism ala Rambo, Rocky, Van Damm, Red Dawn, etc. Add in the huge waves of crime and drugs in the 70s and 80s, which Conservative Boomer and Silent parents blamed on Great Society initiatives and the sexual revolution.
Trivia Man
@Another Scott: I am confident the RNC was also compromised. If THAT data gets out, hold onto your hat.
Jeffro
@UncleEbeneezer: I agree that it was a combination of having Reagan then Gingrich in power during our formative years, Limbaugh on the radio, Fox on the TV, and idiots like Glenn Reynolds on the internet.
(fwiw, my Gen X RWNJ brother was probably always going to be a RWNJ regardless of all those clowns, so who knows
ETA: I’m also not all that concerned about my generation…my two kids are fuh-LAMING liberals just like the rest of Gen Z, and they are fired. up. to make change happen on gun violence, abortion rights, and climate change. They’re also all-in on taxing the wealthy and corporations to pay for it, too.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@206inKY:
Louisville Metro Republicans keep trying to offer countywide candidacies that only seem to appeal to the average white voter in places like Fairdale, Okolona, Hillview, J-Town, Valley Station and PRP. The problem for them is that the vast majority of the residents of the county don’t live in those places and don’t see any good future in relying on needless austerity, even less accountable policing and white supremacy in setting government policy.
Sister Golden Bear
@Betty Cracker: Magneto was right.
lowtechcyclist
@Kathleen:
But if I give you my permission (consider it given!), then it wouldn’t be stealing, would it? ;-)
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
No way anybody could make a movie like Serpico in the 80s. Frankly, I think you’d have trouble doing it now.
All those PI shows, Adam 12, Dirty Harry and Death Wish started an ugly damned slide.
BlueGuitarist
@Nora:
if you’re on Twitter, join @PhilipstownPete for Lawler trolling.
UncleEbeneezer
@Jeffro: Oh, Millenials/Gen Z give me real hope. They are SO FAR LEFT that I just hope I live long enough to see them actually wield significant political power. They really have the potential to change the game and finally get us within sniffing distance of being an actual Democracy.
I also just read that we are on the cusp of “Not At All Religious” overtaking “Slightly Religious” as the most common descriptor. A HUGE shift, even since 2013. That’s a good thing too.
OverTwistWillie
@Baud:
I believe generational think pieces are, by and large, bullshit.
A “generation” is a rolling 5 or 6 year high school cohort. That makes for common youth & pop culture references.
i.e. Someone born in 1980 will only know Family Ties from reruns, not whatever first run zeitgeist it may have captured for someone born in 1970.
1970 might have gotten the cultural references in Dazed and Confused, but it was older sibling stuff, and gone by the time they got to high school.
UncleEbeneezer
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: Absolutely. And the Govt-Is-The-Enemy bullshit, Xenophobia, Racist Welfare Queens/Boostraps bullshit etc. But the thing that really stands out more and more to me is the Misogyny. Like when I think about the people I’ve known who seemed middle ground and ended going MAGA or just dis-interested/Third Party, the Misogyny is the thing that Gen X seems to still be in denial about.
danielx
@OzarkHillbilly:
My parents were Republicans, but “that scoundrel Nixon” took care of that. That was mom’s phrase, pop’s was more along the lines of “that miserable sonofabitch”. Or maybe it was the other way around, always a possibility with mom.
Burnspbesq
@UncleEbeneezer:
The smart bet re Miller’s testimony is that he takes the Fifth at least 100 times.
UncleEbeneezer
@OverTwistWillie: Generational boundaries are blurry and arbitrary. But that doesn’t mean that art/culture and what is popular doesn’t have a profound impact on how we see the world and set our values, and that the shifts aren’t instrumental in politics for people of different ages and exposures. We (Gen X) did not see positive examples of Feminist Women, LGBTQ people etc. in our formative years. Millenials/Gen Z did. It’s much harder for LGBTQ-phobia to take strong hold in them the way it did in so many of us (not to mention Boomers and Silents who are still pretty damn LGBTQphobic).
UncleEbeneezer
@Burnspbesq: DOJ can grant him immunity if they think they don’t consider him a target. Then he can’t plead the fifth.
Steeplejack
@Trivia Man:
I would love for that data to get out, and I would be happy to hold onto my hat.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@UncleEbeneezer: Yeah I read that article wondering if she had had some kind of conversion– either religious or Randian or whatever. She thinks there’s no difference between “the Clintons” and “the Bushes” and trump was a social justice warrior. /shrug emoji/ I don’t know how you reach people like that.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@danielx: Ironically, I was going over old Presidential debates a few months ago and Nixon seems to be the last Republican who ran for President whom I could understand someone voting for. I wouldn’t have voted for him, but I understand.
Granted, this was Nixon/Kennedy, so well before his actual Presidency.
Dopey-o
ya know, I’m just saying, some context or a link would be really helpful.
this drives me crazy: heart-felt, full-throated endorsement of a book / movie / article / opinion, without the faintest clue of what the poster is referring to.
“Agreed!” “Totally!” “That movie is our favorite!”
It’s called “Blockquote.” If that’s too much trouble, there are grammatical tricks which are used to reduce your readers’ confusion.
Geminid
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I guess everyone is entitled to their own political taxonomy, but now when I see reporters talking about “moderate” Republicans I think, “that’s moderate-conservative.”
I do see ideological differences among Republicans. When I look at their 5 Virginia Representatives, I categorize Rob Whitman, the 1st CD Rep as “moderate conservative,” and 5th CD Rep Bob Good as a “radical.” Cline (6th CD), Kiggans (2nd CD), and Griffith(?) (9th CD) fall in between.
Nationally, I think Representatives Fitzgerald (PA), Bacon (NE), Valadeo (CA) and maybe a few others are just marginally less conservative than Wittman. They’re still only “moderate” relative to the majority of their Republican colleagues.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@UncleEbeneezer: Yeah this is the main thing – GenX marinated more than any other generation in the final culmination of RW messaging/propaganda and came of age during peak 1980’s jingoism. I’d also argue that we were the first generation to do worse than our parents (i.e. the first for whom the “American Dream” died) and so that bread resentment. So GenX went looking for a scapegoat and the propaganda blaming the nation’s decline on “those people” and their reliance on “Big Government” worked. The Politico article notes GenX have lower educational attainment and that certainly doesn’t help because it makes people more susceptible to propaganda both via the airwaves and (more recently) online.
Millennials were even more screwed economically than GenX but for most of their existence conservatives have been screwing up royally and screwing them economically and so they can’t as easily hide behind propaganda and messaging because the fond remembrance of “Morning in America” isn’t there for them. I mean, if you can’t remember Reagan, you have GW and Trump as references for conservatism and neither is a shining example of success, economically or otherwise. Contrast that with maybe some recollection of Clinton and then firm memories of Obama and there’s not enough propaganda lipstick in the universe to make those GOP pigs look good by comparison
I’d also note that the Politico article elides non-white GenXers, which is probably where the D+6 voting pattern comes from. But what else is new? The MSM just can’t help ignoring everyone but white folks for some reason.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Dopey-o: I can only help with the movie discussed upthread, Cold Comfort Farm, which I also endorse.
Soprano2
@Jeffro: Plus the constant pounding on the Clintons in the ’90’s by the mainstream press, where they were representing them as criminals more often than not.
Baud
Gen X was obviously inspired by Reagan’s success in Grenada.
Barbara
@UncleEbeneezer:
I don’t understand how you can say this:
I might agree with LGBTQ — or at least the T part, but it seems to me that there were plenty of liberal women and gays who were influential and important but that the tidal backlash was just a lot bigger than they were.
I think that the end of the Cold War gave credibility to Reagan and capitalism that they would otherwise not have gotten. And then, Gen X was the first generation to grow up in the world that boomers made, and for many, it was destabilizing, especially at the family level. All of those things probably made retrenchment inevitable.
The Lodger
@Dopey-o: This. Even in this thread, I have no fucking idea which movie Immanentize, Miss Bianca and Matt McIrvin were talking about. I love you all, but would it kill you to make some specific references for those who haven’t memorized the movie
(ETA) Thanks to Jim, Foolish Literalist for identifying the movie. Never heard of it.
EarthWindFire
Those limits were set in Roe v Wade, no matter how much partial birth abortion hooey she spewed before it was overturned. She could have saved herself a lot of trouble and not have to find those limits now by just learning what Roe v Wade actually said. But that was never really the point, was it?
Burnspbesq
@UncleEbeneezer:
Yes they could, but the next grant of immunity will be the first in this investigation. I would have to believe that Miller’s testimony would be extremely high-value before I would think about immunizing him.
OTOH, I think immunity for Meadows is a no-brainer. He not only knows where all the bodies are buried, he knows the color and model number of the shovel.
Steeplejack
@OverTwistWillie:
Good point.
Jeffro
@Geminid: You’re too generous with Good. I would categorize him as a “complete psycho”.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
Been thinking about some things relevant to guns.
Nelle
I stumbled onto something this morning at the local coffee shop. One of the baristas has been cheerful and friendly. She needed a break and I invited her to sit with my friend and me. The woman is 18. I asked her where she got her news. She doesn’t like the news but anything she gets is from TikTok. She hates politics. I asked her if there was anything she wished that older people like us would hear and do something about (we are both in our 70’s), what would that be?
First, her body, her choice. Why would it be otherwise? She hadn’t heard that contraception itself might be on the agenda. “But I take it for controlling horrible periods! That’s f…..ed!” (I took birth control pills for the same reason, ages 15 to 19.)
A little later, I asked about guns. She teared up. She said that she always expected to die in her school and that she was so grateful to graduate. But then, tears came back, her younger brother is still in school. She talked as if they were potential targets in a war zone.
I’ll go back and listen/talk with her more. Not about political parties, not about policies yet, not even about registering to vote yet. I want to hear her, and see if she can see a stake in participating in voting at least.
I taught college fresh/soph for decades and I miss that age. I’m old and not in a hurry. I think I’ll just plunk down in places and see if they want a listener for the next few months. I’ve got to find a place with better tea, though, or bring my own tea bags.
Geminid
@Jeffro: I can afford to be generous to Bob No-Good. Those wonderful redistricters put Greene County in the 7th CD!
Jeffro
@Soprano2:
Yup.
I may have told this short tale on BJ before but about 15 years ago, me and Mrs. Fro went out to dinner with two other couples – one we knew well, and one we had just met. The evening was going along fine, and at one point, the conversation turned to politics. Mr. Just Met and I noted that we were getting more and more active in politics (helping with door-knocking, phone-banking, etc) with each election.
Mr. Just Met: so, good deal! what really got you really engaged?
Me: the Clinton Impeachment! and then the 2000 election!
Mr. Just Met: me too! Amazing!
About five seconds later, ‘amazement’ turned into ‘quickly changing topics’ as we discovered we’d gotten all fired up…on opposite sides. LOL.
“Ahem…so…isn’t this fondue just lovely?” =)
Gen X can be a 50/50 draw, then, but hurry up and take the keys, Gen Z!
SiubhanDuinne
Maybe this has already been mentioned, but it sounds as though Chicago got the nod for the 2024 DNC. Per a fleeting snippet I heard on MSNBC in the car, so could have it wrong.
Baud
@SiubhanDuinne: Someone mentioned it up top. Kind of glad the mayoral election turned out the way it did.
Jeffro
@Geminid: you. lucky. dog.
I still can’t believe I went from Gerry Connolly to Bob Good. I try not to think about it too much. It’s almost literally like going from Italian to tire rims and anthrax.
Geminid
@SiubhanDuinne:
“Chicago, Chicago,
that Toddling Town…”
Baud
@Geminid: Ugh. Not looking forward to Chuck Todd covering the 2024 race.
CaseyL
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: I like this idea, and am willing to help, if any of them are within reasonable driving distance of me.
Geminid
@Jeffro: Or from the Sublime to the Ridiculous.
Jeffro
Ah…when the wars were short and won in 40 minutes or less…
I think Heartbreak Ridge was longer than the Grenada operation, come to think of it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@SiubhanDuinne: seems to be a done deal
I would’ve picked Atlanta, myself, but people are pointing out that hosting a convention doesn’t seem to be the turn-out machine some us hope it would be (Charlotte, 2012, Philadelphia ’16)
.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@CaseyL:
I tend to think it works, in that in invokes shame in the target and triggers an empathetic response regarding the dead among onlookers.
Silence can be incredibly powerful in that setting – as in “we’re not disrupting your activity, but we are informing you as to the character of this person you are associated with”.
It will take a fuckton of discipline.
Geminid
@Baud: I never see Todd, just hear about him. Two local radio stations rebroadcast Meet the Press at noon on Sundays, but for some reason I keep forgetting to tune in.
UncleEbeneezer
@Barbara: There were SOME Feminists in the tv series’ I remember as a kid, but they were usually shrill stereotypes and rarely treated seriously. Gay characters were mostly there to be laughed at for how weird/unusual and literally “queer” they were compared to the hetero-norms in our society and almost never centered in the actual storylines. Actual positive representations and stories that highlight the relevance, importance and value of Feminism/LGBTQ Rights really hasn’t been widespread in our culture until just recently. We’ve made tons of progress just in the past 15 years in this regard. What Millenials/Gen Z are growing up seeing on tv, films, music etc., is exponentially more tolerant/diverse and for lack of a better term “woke” than the cultural landscape I grew up in.
Manyakitty
@sab: #ironyisdead
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Jeffro:
So much jingo to that movie – I don’t hate it, but I don’t love it, either. Too much sappy shit.
RaflW
@delphinium: Judd Legum’s Popular Info broke the story, and NC5 tv’s Phil Williams is now in the hunt (and he seems dogged about this sort of stuff, which is great).
It looks like Sexton may even have committed per-diem and travel expense fraud, since he claimed many, many driving trips to his in-district “home” (on which he is two years behind on paying property taxes, too!).
lowtechcyclist
@UncleEbeneezer:
This born-again Christian totally agrees with you on this. I am so motherfucking tired of ‘Christian’ being used as a tribal identifier, rather than any attempt to wrestle with and derive meaning from the things that Jesus is recorded as having said.
I keep thinking, if everyone who says they believe in the Rapture got Raptured, then this nation, at the very least, would be a much better place for those of us left behind.
UncleEbeneezer
@Burnspbesq: We have no way of knowing who DOJ has or hasn’t granted immunity to at this point. I’m confident that Jack Smith is smarter than Steven Miller and wouldn’t be bring him in unless he was confident he can get something useful out of him. They could be just using Miller to corroborate things they know from other cooperating witnesses. And there are ways to ask questions to get to that corroboration without giving Miller the opportunity to invoke the fifth.
lowtechcyclist
@Dopey-o:
I just Googled ’12ft ladder’ and there it was.
ETA: But thanks, Jim, Foolish Literalist, for identifying the movie @182.
Soprano2
@RaflW: This is the problem with becoming too visible in the way he did, suddenly everyone is trying to dig up your skeletons. I’m sure he never thought what he was doing with the per diem would be put in the papers, for example. Makes me wonder how many people abuse that particular thing.
BruceFromOhio
@Jeffro:
Same, both TeensFromOhio are registered, they vote, and they. Are. Pissed. Off.
lowtechcyclist
@Geminid:
Well, you know how it is. The media have to pretend that moderate Republicans are still a thing.
Steve in the ATL
@SiubhanDuinne: look what happens when you tear down Cabrini Green!
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Rob Lowe agrees with you!
UncleEbeneezer
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: I went to see Phyllis Schlafly speak at U. Delaware when I was still young and foolish enough to be friends with College Republican dudes. The frothing-at-the-mouth hatred of the Clintons, still makes me shudder to this day. It was one of the things that started to make me (slowly) realize that I was NOT a Republican like my parents, though it took a few years and the W administration/Iraq to push me solidly into the Dem tent.
UncleEbeneezer
So are we not gonna get a thread on the fact that America is finally, fully in Low Risk category for community spread of Covid? Seems like a pretty big, Biden deal to me!!!
lowtechcyclist
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
A hard NO to that last one. You don’t get to choose who you’re related to.
Old School
@UncleEbeneezer:
Only at the State level. The link pulled up county breakdown for me and there still is a number of medium and high spots there.
geg6
@UncleEbeneezer:
My younger sister and I are technically Boomers, but we both were born at the very tail end (me in 1958 and her in 1964). I am happily in touch with dozens of people I went to high school with on FB (yay, Class of ’77) and we, almost unanimously, are liberals and Dems. She is in touch with only about a half dozen of the people in her class (boo, Class of ’82) because she can’t deal with their MAGA-ism and FOX talking points. It’s weird how a just a very few years made such a difference in our cohorts’ attitudes.
KSinMA
@Nelle:
Good for you!!!
JoyceH
Late to the thread, but checking in to say that I watched The Return Of The Justin live on television and it was quite impressive! I got a bit misty-eyed at the crowd singing “This Little Light Of Mine”. Nice choice, We Shall Overcome is a smidge too freighted with gravitas, and by now maybe even a bit trite. (Like the television show funerals with the bagpiper playing Amazing Grace. Just once couldn’t we have Danny Boy on a harmonica?) Suggested song list for The Return Of The Justin II – “When The Roll Is Called Up Yonder.”
Kay
@UncleEbeneezer:
I just dont think that’s at all true. Generation X were exposed to lots and lots of “feminist” or “independent autonomous women” pop culture, arguably more than millennials.
This is a list of just the tv shows that featured female leads or important characters who were actually (stated) feminists or who were working women raising children. Some of them, a lot of them, were hugely popular when G Xers were coming up.
I don’t know why Gen X is so far Right but it isn’t because they had no positive feminist pop culture influences growing up.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@lowtechcyclist:
I considered it, but then reached opposite conclusions:
My own family now feels unsafe in public places. The notion of pink-cheeked, well-fed, luxuriously-shod extended family members of gun plutocrats seeing the consequences of the profits and feeling consequent shame and judgment can lead them to more vociferously pressure dad/grandpa/brother to mend ways.
See the reaction of Rick Scott in his offering of only “thoughts ‘n prayers” over the death of banker Tommy Elliott in the shooting. Two of my good friends (and former law office partners) are inconsolable because they were genuinely tight with Elliott – one simply couldn’t come out of his office (I actually met Elliott in the past – super nice guy). By way of contrast, Scott continues to shill for the gun lobby. Something needs to get through to them, and I think it requires angry family members of their own families.
I am being kind of shitty because one of my youngest child’s friends that was a pal from grade school forward was working there yesterday and had to endure that horror. Nothing focuses me more on solutions than horror.
Manyakitty
@Dopey-o: For. Real. Just give us a clue–a breadcrumb even.
trollhattan
“Won’t someone think of the poor, innocent guns?”
Evidently, Tennessee has thoughts, prayers and solutions for this vexing problem. A state so badly messed up, the unmessing is a huge mountain to climb.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@UncleEbeneezer: Misogyny really is a huge issue with my generation. That is a thing I have to remind myself of when I compare my career to younger people. Rules against sexual harrassment were new when I first started working, and plenty of people, men and women, thought they were terrible and took the ‘fun’ out of work life. Only in retrospect do I see that I graduated into a weird world. Women were flooding into the workspace and a lot of the older and younger men believed in a world where our only options SHOULD have been caretaking roles and staying home with their kids. Instead, they found themselves competing with talented women, even if the odds were handicapped against us.
Manyakitty
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: helpful, as I tried and failed to figure that out. Thanks!
rikyrah
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
as a non-White GenXer, I was raised and bred on Reagan hatred. Black folks knew who Reagan was from the moment he began his Presidential campaign in PHILADELPHIA, MISSISSIPPI.
Manyakitty
@Burnspbesq: and he is supremely undeserving of the slightest bit of immunity, guilty mfer. Nevertheless.
rikyrah
@Nelle:
I teared up reading this. Just horrible. And, I grew up in the crack era.
Jeffro
Breaking: Alvin Bragg is suing Gym Jordan so that Jordan will stop interfering in the Orangemandias investigation.
LOVE
IT!
rikyrah
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I would have chosen Atlanta too, but, we will welcome the DNC to Chicago.
Manyakitty
@Nelle: you will probably make more of a difference this way than by buying thousands of dollars worth of ads. Thank you.
Renie
@Jeffro: Saw that too and also LOVE IT! Been trying to find out if there is going to be a protest on the 17th when Gymbo brings his ‘field hearing’ to the Javits Center in an attempt to go after Braggs policies. Jordan’s theatrics are getting out of hand and the irony of him weaponizing the federal gov’t after state agencies seems to be lost on him.
Kent
I think we need a new name for this phenomenon where a one political party shits in the bed and produces a multiplicative effect in the other.
In this case if the TN GOP wanted to diminish Jones, their best option would be to just ignore him and pretend that he didn’t exist. They had the voted to defeat him at every pass anyway. So no big deal. But they had to go all racist and turned him into a national hero, multiplying his national twitter following by 1000-fold, bringing Kamala Harris to the state, etc.
There is something called the “Streisand Effect” where if you object to something on the internet you just generate more views. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect We need a political name for the same thing in politics that we just witnessed this week.
BlueGuitarist
@Nelle:
good for you!
sounds like next level deep canvassing!
rikyrah
@UncleEbeneezer:
I disagree. And, we hadn’t quite put a name to misogyny yet, but, I see it in retrospect – toward the feminists.
This is true, but, my personal interactions with LGBTQ kids from high school, when they came out. I told Peanut, I remember those bad old days. I remember the LGBTQ friends that we had to both acknowledge and accept who they were AND help them hide it from their families. The contradiction was obvious and horrible back then. We ARE NOT going back to those bad old days.
Manyakitty
@geg6: ooh boy, we grew some wingnuts in my class of 86. Woof.
Manyakitty
@Jeffro: awesome, but warn people about that poison link. I don’t want to give FTFNYT even a click.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Jeffro: yes! I wonder, does Jordan really want to question Mark Pomerantz who wanted to indict Trump a year ago?
Seems like a recipe for an outcome similar to TN.
Miss Bianca
@The Lodger: I’m sorry, did I miss the part where all commenters are now under some obligation to identify any and all references for the benefit of others who don’t get them? I’ve been away for a while, you see, so maybe this is some new rule that I’m not aware of.
ETA: I mean..my dude, if it means that much to you, you can always *ask*.
Gravenstone
@Nelle: Thank you for being proactive like that. Even if it’s one person, it’s a start on showing that not everyone older is indifferent to their lives and challenges.
BlueGuitarist
@Geminid:
538 has the % each senator and representative voted with Biden: scores for the MC you mention
Griffith 18
Wittman 14
Cline 7
Good 3
Fitzpatrick 70
Bacon 34
Valadao 30
link (if you click on individual members it shows info on each vote)
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-congress-votes/house/
Geminid
@Miss Bianca: I was wondering too, but I wasn’t gonna get strung out over the movie mystery. I just thought it was funny.
Did you ever build the sauna? Gonna build it?
Miss Bianca
@Geminid: Ha! The sauna project is waiting on another project, namely, can we use a chainsaw-driven field-milling technique (discovered on Youtube) to make planks out of our own logged trees? Inquiring minds want to know!
(Once we’re over the burn ban in our county, that is, enacted last week…unlike many other areas of the mountain West this year, we got very little snow and we are dry, dry, dry in what is normally the wettest month of the year.)
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@rikyrah: I’m a white GenXer and I never got the Reagan appeal. Was finally of voting age in 1988 and phone banked for Dukakis in…West Michigan. Boy was that depressing. After that I wasn’t really a close follower of politics until Bush-Gore. I did always think it unfair that Carter became a punchline for the ultimate political loser whereas Pappy Bush was a one term loser too but in that case was treated as though the country had failed him rather than the other way around.
Then I moved to the DC area for a job and now I get it. People speak of Boston Brahmins but let me tell you folks in Boston are mere pikers compared to the worst of the Beltway elite when it comes to obsessing over private schools, colleges and upper crusty, old money status markers (let me be clear this is far from the majority of Beltway residents most of whom are normal everyday folks). Pappy Bush had all the right connections, went to all the right schools, etc. The fact that someone like that could fail in any sense is anathema to these people. He had to have been failed because it was inconceivable that someone like them could fail.
Whereas a mere peanut farmer or a yokel from Arkansas from a single mom family, I mean someone like that is, if not expected to fail, then is not viewed as an inevitable success by these people. The second of them couldn’t be portrayed as a total loser because he won a second term. But they never forgave him for beating one of their own who totally deserved better because he was old money who went to all the right schools etc.
UncleEbeneezer
@Kay: Seven of the shows on that list (Ms. Maisel, Orange Is New Black, Veep, Fleabag, Killing Eve, Ugly Betty, How To Get Away) are very recent (starting in 2010 or later), that is not what I would consider Gen X tv shows. Definitely not the stuff Gen X grew up watching. That leaves 23. Twenty-three shows in the history of television!!
A quick search of Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, AppleTV yield about 100 shows that are Feminist/Stong Female Lead/Women Written/Directed. That’s CURRENTLY in production and airing RIGHT NOW (or in the past couple years). Girls/women have had exponentially more Feminist/Strong Women content in the past decade than was ever available before. And that especially includes stories that finally center Black Women, Queer Women, Undocumented Women and Transgender Women. And that’s just English-language series! Now expand to add International shows and that number expands significantly again. I can think of at least a dozen Feminist Nordic Noir series as well and another dozen Feminist/Strong Women centered K-dramas too!
Of course there were some back in Gen-X days, but come on, you can’t even compare it to how many there are, how easy they are to find and how varied they are nowadays. Millenials and Gen Z voters have had the wonderful benefit of dozens of Women-centered stories to choose from, for most of their life. And pretty much every Gen-X Feminist I know (which is pretty much every woman in my life) wishes they had had that benefit when they were adolescents and young adults in the 80s-90s. Hell, half of my women friends are working in Hollywood precisely because they wanted to help create that world for all of us to enjoy.
StringOnAStick
@UncleEbeneezer: It might be low in many places but anecdotally it is raging here in Bend, OR. The grocery stores are out of Covid tests and wiped out of genetic cough syrup, half wiped out of the name brand stuff. We didn’t seem to have any major outbreaks for a year or so, and with it being more than 6 months since the last booster, things are rough here. We know several people who got it last week; we got it 2.5 weeks ago.
sab
@UncleEbeneezer: I read an interview with Dick Wolf of Law and Order. He said that they didn’t bother to have women cops or prosecutors until someone pointed out to him that in a lot of households the wife controls the remote. He wanted better ratings, so diversity happened.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Barbara: yeah I recall lots of feminism in popular media growing up (was born on the cusp of the 70s). What’s even weirder is that acceptance of gays and lesbians was much higher with GenX than earlier cohorts. We have polling data that tells us that. Seinfeld’s “not that there’s anything wrong with it” was pretty much the attitude of most GenXers. At least that was my perception. Then a few years ago some of them fell hard for TFG and seem to be on a downward trend to becoming worse and worse people, including adopting new prejudices they never before exhibited. Not exactly sure what explains it.
Steve in the ATL
@JoyceH:
By the time my second kid finished elementary school, I hated this song with the fire of a thousand AR-15s.
J R in WV
@Dopey-o:
Go to a search engine [ Google, DuckDuck any of them ] and enter 12foot ladder paywall and inspect the results.
That whole process would have taken less time and effort than your comment took.
StringOnAStick
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: What you said is so true; I think we are similar in age. I was always top of class for my BS and MS in groundwater geology, so I was definitely headed into a male dominated field; when the economy would get bad, the women and non engineers would get laid off, every damned time. One of my main clients read the owner of the engineering from the riot act for laying me off. One of my cohort lost her city engineering/land title job when the new boss told her, a single mom, that a man needed her position to raise a family. And a year before her pension would have vested so she’s 68 and still working 3/4 time. At least she has a skill set where she can still work and the pay is decent.
Kay
@UncleEbeneezer:
A lot of the mothers of Gen X were themselves feminists. I can’t think of closer role model that .
I think Gen X went Right– they went further Right than the overall culture and influences they came up in. It’s a reaction to culture becoming more liberal, not a viewpoint developed by being surrounded by conservative culture.
UncleEbeneezer
@rikyrah: I didn’t mean to imply that there were NO Feminist shows/films etc. at all, but that they were much less common and a smaller slice of the overall media landscape, compared to the past 10-20 years. We’ve seen a wonderful explosion in them recently. Studios are purposefully seeking out more stories and writers/directors. Streaming services have whole channels dedicated to Women-centered content. This simply was not the case during Gen X.
Bill Arnold
@OzarkHillbilly:
This is true, for some of them. And some others are eager Tools of Satan/Evil.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Kay: I think Gen X saw the split really widen between the political affiliations of women and men.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@StringOnAStick: Sounds like we are similar in age.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: ah, Bill Schneider and the Gender Gap! CNN’s Inside Politics was the gateway drug to my political junkiedom back in the 90s
WaterGirl
@Baud: I wonder if the election results for mayor played a role in this announcement.
I wonder if it’s possible that it was Chicago if this person won, and Y location if the other one won.