Tough day. Please accept this cute puppy as a balm for the troubled soul:
The ground cover reminds me of the background in the official portrait of President Obama.
Open thread!
Florida woman, still rocking a punk rock ethos in the 2020s, which is kind of sad. Betty Cracker has been a Balloon Juice writer since 2012.
by Betty Cracker| 153 Comments
This post is in: Dog Blogging, Open Threads
Tough day. Please accept this cute puppy as a balm for the troubled soul:
The ground cover reminds me of the background in the official portrait of President Obama.
Open thread!
by Betty Cracker| 149 Comments
This post is in: Activist Judges!, Open Threads
TPM is keeping a running tab of which Democratic senators have said no SCOTUS nominee vote before the midterms. Here’s the list as of an hour ago:
Richard Blumenthal (D-CT)
Bob Casey (D-PA)
Dick Durbin (D-IL)
Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)
Kamala Harris (D-CA)
Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)
Jeff Merkley (D-OR)
Chris Murphy (D-CT)
Chuck Schumer (D-NY)
Chris Van Hollen (D-MD)
Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)
If your senator isn’t on the list, maybe call and ask why? Honestly, I don’t think there’s anything we can do to stop Trump from putting a Federalist Society drone on the court since the Republicans have the majority and nuked the filibuster.
But our senators need to know this is the fight of a generation — and that we are watching. The court just issued a spate of truly appalling decisions that hurt women, workers and minorities. Another Trump pick could doom women’s reproductive rights, marriage equality and voting while young and/or brown.
Americans don’t agree with this agenda — it’s rule by an extremist minority. The situation sucks big green gator balls, no doubt about it. But we can use it as a civics lesson for the folks who sat out the last election.
As bad luck would have it, this happens to be a year when Democrats have to defend more senate seats, and thanks to gerrymandering, we have to win a huge majority to flip the House. We need a blue tsunami, and fighting the Republicans on this nomination — even if we ultimately lose — is one way to build it.
by Betty Cracker| 207 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads, Politics
Kirsten Gillibrand on the next SCOTUS pick:
The President just said the next Supreme Court nominee WILL come from his list of 25 judges that passed his overturning Roe v. Wade litmus test. We need to say NO hearings before the election and work our hearts out and take back the Senate. https://t.co/9HzyIhLQei
— Kirsten Gillibrand (@SenGillibrand) June 27, 2018
Do you have a problem with Gillibrand because of the Franken thing? Get the fuck over it. Squeamish about candidates who were endorsed by or worked with Sanders? Tough fucking shit.
We’ve got racist, Nazi-coddling, misogynistic, plutocratic, xenophobic, authoritarian baby cagers to defeat. If it has a D next to its name and it appears on my ballot, I’m voting for it, whether it’s a neo-liberal platypus or rose-munching banana slug.
It’s time to put all that other shit to the side and pull together because everything — and I mean everything — depends on it. If you see me doing otherwise, please knock me upside the head with a clue-by-four.
Open thread.
by Betty Cracker| 256 Comments
This post is in: Election 2018, Open Threads, Politics, Republican Stupidity, General Stupidity, Our Failed Media Experiment
Good lord, Trump is a fucking idiot:
Wow! Big Trump Hater Congressman Joe Crowley, who many expected was going to take Nancy Pelosi’s place, just LOST his primary election. In other words, he’s out! That is a big one that nobody saw happening. Perhaps he should have been nicer, and more respectful, to his President!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 27, 2018
It’s like he thinks a Republican won the Democratic primary. The Democratic Party’s nominee for the Bronx-Queens district is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She’s a Democratic Socialist who wants to abolish ICE, supports Medicare for all and is in favor of a federal jobs guarantee.
I think it’s safe to say she wouldn’t piss on Trump’s head if his urine-colored, cotton candy-like hair were on fire. There’s a good profile of Ocasio-Cortez in Vogue here.
Here’s a compelling campaign video:
It's time for a New York that works for all of us.
On June 26th, we can make it happen – but only if we have the #CourageToChange.
It's time to get to work. Please retweet this video and sign up to knock doors + more at https://t.co/kacKFI9RtI to bring our movement to Congress. pic.twitter.com/aqKMjovEjZ
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Ocasio2018) May 30, 2018
I’d vote for her in a heartbeat. So will the 10-term congressman she beat in the primary because he gets the stakes:
I want to congratulate @Ocasio2018. I look forward to supporting her and all Democrats this November. The Trump administration is a threat to everything we stand for here in Queens and the Bronx, and if we don't win back the House this November, we will lose the nation we love.
— Joe Crowley (@JoeCrowleyNY) June 27, 2018
I don’t think a candidate like Ocasio-Cortez could win a statewide race in Florida today, but there are districts here she could win, and that builds a bench for the future. I don’t happen to live in one of those districts. But, like most Democrats, I’m happy to see folks to the left of the party’s center win primaries if they 1) don’t demonize our party, and 2) are capable of beating Republicans (these concepts are related, IMO).
Scanning the Beltway coverage this morning, I see that Ocasio-Cortez’s win put the “Dems in Disarray” narrative into hyperdrive. Whatever, man. We won’t see Ocasio-Cortez — or Ben Jealous — wagging a finger in our faces and telling Democrats to abandon “identity politics,” especially not with a racist, sexist, xenophobic demagogue in the Oval Office.
Works for me. Now — go win.
by Betty Cracker| 261 Comments
This post is in: Election 2016, Open Threads, Politics, Assholes, General Stupidity
Mitch McConnell’s most famous felony — Grand Theft, Supreme Court Seat — sure is paying off, and the nasty old senatortoise’s social media team openly gloated about it by posting the photo below in response to a spate of crappy SCOTUS rulings that came out today.
5-4 rulings featuring Gorsuch in the majority are piling up.
Trump travel ban✔️
Voter roll purges✔️
CA pregnancy law❌
Gerrymandering✔️
Arbitration✔️ https://t.co/PeoPQnI1sD— Steven Dennis (@StevenTDennis) June 26, 2018
If McConnell were a Democrat, ten thousand earnest wankers would scold him for motivating turnout in the opposing party and violating the sacred rules of comity and decorum. But he’s a Republican, so he gets called a genius for subverting the U.S. Constitution, and his wife gets a plum grift perch in the Trump Cabinet of Corrupticons.
Some folks on Twitter are calling this the Sarandon Court. Fair enough.
Open thread.
* H/T to Rick Overton on Twitter.
by Betty Cracker| 123 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads, Politics, Trump-Russia, Assholes, General Stupidity
CNN just followed up on a story about how Russian trolls exploited people’s legitimate anger over the summary execution of Minnesota motorist Philando Castile to help Trump win the election. Here’s an excerpt:
By 2016, American prosecutors allege, the Internet Research Agency [Russian troll farm] was “primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Hillary Clinton.”
According to prosecutors, an internal memo circulated in February 2016 read, “to use any opportunity to criticize Hillary and the rest (except Sanders and Trump — we support them).”
Later in 2016, according to the indictment, the group began trying to discourage African Americans from voting.
One post on a fake black activist account highlighted by prosecutors read, “[A] particular hype and hatred for Trump is misleading the people and forcing Blacks to vote Killary. We cannot resort to the lesser of two devils. Then we’d surely be better off without voting AT ALL.”
Trump will do nothing to address this attack on our democracy since it benefits himself, and the Russians will continue to exploit the fault lines in our society since their last disinformation campaign was so wildly successful. So, how can we, as activists in our own communities, prepare for the onslaught?
The real activists in Minnesota modeled one way forward. They had no idea at the time that Russian trolls were exploiting Castile’s death, but they were skeptical when an anonymous person started organizing a local event online:
Around 8 a.m. ET on July 7th, less than ten hours after the shooting, a Facebook page began running ads targeted at people living near Minneapolis and promoting an event called “Justice for Philando Castile.”
The event was scheduled for the coming weekend and would take place outside the police department where the officer who shot Castile was based. Quickly, thousands of people expressed interest in attending.
But, to [Mica] Grimm, something didn’t feel right.
“So the activists really know each other here,” Grimm told CNN. “We’ve seen each other’s faces, and if we don’t know each other, then we know someone who knows someone.”
No one in the tight-knit community of activists seemed to know who was behind the campaign.
Grimm and her fellow activists questioned the troll who set up the account and persuaded him to give them the keys to the rally page by threatening to out him as an impostor if he didn’t. Then they staffed the event with experienced organizers. In doing so, they likely prevented the chaos and possible violence the Russian trolls hoped to foment.
We’ll have to be similarly smart to prevent disinformation campaigns from disrupting the upcoming midterms. Our government isn’t going to help us. We’re on our own.
by Betty Cracker| 271 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads, Politics, Assholes, General Stupidity
Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, a corrupt Trumpster, tried to attend a screening of the Mr. Rogers documentary in downtown Tampa this weekend and was jeered out of the theater:
Pam Bondi attempted to attend a screening of the Mister Rogers documentary a day after announcing her plan to end protections for health care consumers with pre-existing conditions. Here, via @timintampa, is what happened. pic.twitter.com/zMLrSayS8M
— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) June 23, 2018
This comes on the heels of Sarah Huckabee Sanders being kicked out of a Virginia restaurant and DHS boss Kirstjen Nielsen and creepy presidential adviser Stephen Miller getting publicly shamed at two separate Mexican restaurants. Wingnuts are bellowing like ruptured cows about discrimination and lack of civility.
The newspaper biz would call that a “dog bites man” story. Of course the “Fuck Your Feelings” crew — who support a racist, sexist, xenophobic demagogue because they’re tired of “political correctness” — melt like extra-dainty snowflakes the minute they get a taste of their own medicine.
But non-wingnuts are aghast at the incivility of denying Sarah Huckabee Sanders a pan-seared pork chop too. Here are a couple of samples:
Kind of amazed and appalled by the number of folks on Left who applauded the expulsion of @PressSec and her family from a restaurant.
This, in the end, is a triumph for @realDonaldTrump vision of America:
Now we’re divided by red plates & blue plates!#sad— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) June 24, 2018
Cute play on the “red states, blue states” thing, huh? And below, Balloon Juice’s favorite Beltway reporter from the NYT retweets The Post’s anti-heckling editorial:
“Those who are insisting that we are in a special moment justifying incivility should think for a moment how many Americans might find their own special moment.” https://t.co/VtmMSPbVQ5
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) June 24, 2018
These smoking hot takes fail to take into account a few relevant factors. First, when our country is caging babies and toddlers, we’ve moved beyond the realm of political discussion. I’ve had this argument with my Trumpster relatives, who profess to be stunned by my refusal to “agree to disagree.” This isn’t Democrat vs. Republican anymore; it’s good vs. evil.
Second, what recourse do we have? An erratic, lying demagogue is remaking the country in his vile image, and the institutions that exist to check presidential behavior like rampant thievery, failure to protect democracy and open subversion of the rule of law have instead rolled over and piddled on their own bellies. So what the fuck else are we supposed to do?
And that brings me to the third thing the Tone Police are missing here: They’d best hope the reaction to Trump and his minions’ outrageous behavior remains as tame as denial of entrees and feature films. That’s actually a fairly mild response to an administration declaring itself above the law, crapping on the US Constitution and interning children.
Anyone who’s ever been a clinic escort, public gun control advocate, canvasser for Democratic candidates, identifiable as a liberal woman or minority online, etc., already knows what it’s like when wingnuts “find their own special moment.” I’ve lived in their “special moment” for all of my adult life and have been admonished to “respect their feelings” for decades.
Fuck their feelings, and fuck the tone police. If we don’t stand up to oppose an administration this destructive, we don’t deserve a democracy.
I still believe our best hope is to vote these pricks out of office, and I’m doing what I can to make that happen. But I’ll be damned if I’ll treat these authoritarian goons like patriotic Americans who just happen to hold different views.