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Balloon Juice

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

No Justins, No Peace

Consistently wrong since 2002

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

Thanks for reminding me that Van Jones needs to be slapped.

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

When do the post office & the dmv weigh in on the wuhan virus?

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Ron DeSantis, the grand wizard, oops, governor of FL

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You are here: Home / Archives for Civil Rights / Women's Rights

Women's Rights

Late Night Open Thread: IN UNION THERE IS STRENGTH

by Anne Laurie|  September 25, 202311:02 pm| 59 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Our Failed Political Establishment, Proud to Be A Democrat, Show Us on the Doll Where the Invisible Hand Touched You, The War On Women, Assholes

@emilyslist stands in solidarity with the @UAW workers. For years, the Big Three auto companies have raked in profits while workers continue to get left behind. It's time to put people over profit and ensure every worker gets a fair contract.

— Laphonza Butler (@LaphonzaB) September 25, 2023

… But Jonathan Martin’s well-insulated fellow ‘journalists’ all chortled at his retort!

Who asked for your empty theater criticism, hack?

— American Eagle Kaiju (@TonyMoonbeam) September 25, 2023

Aw they were *this* close to getting your approval but they blew it! https://t.co/Tg2EoZOx0x

— Not up for trouble, please stop asking (@agraybee) September 25, 2023

Are you issuing this ultimatum to all advocacy groups expressing solidarity or just the women?

— Caitlin Legacki ??????? (@caitleg) September 25, 2023

Exhibit…I lost count a long time ago actually…that calling Politico Tiger Beat on the Potomac is an insult to the original.

— Atticus (@AtticusLabrador) September 25, 2023

The unwritten rule of political journalism is that hypocrisy, real or imagined, is the only vice you can critique from a "neutral" standpoint. Therefore, if you don't have any standards or principled, you're functionally immune. If you do, it's open season. https://t.co/TthSTJ4Uq5

— Nathan Goldwag ???? (@GoldwagNathan) September 25, 2023

Late Night Open Thread: IN UNION THERE IS STRENGTHPost + Comments (59)

Thursday Morning Open Thread: The GOP Death Cult Doubles Down In Its War On Women

by Anne Laurie|  September 21, 20238:12 am| 164 Comments

This post is in: GOP Death Cult, Healthcare, Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat, The War On Women

Let’s be clear: Donald Trump is responsible for ending Roe v. Wade.

And if you vote for him, he’ll go even further. pic.twitter.com/24Xq6s33wv

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) September 19, 2023

Wow.

As the dad of a teen girl, this ad cuts to the bone.

America needs to wake up. Republicans are BEYOND extreme. #MAGAIsWatchingYou pic.twitter.com/MQJSSGSgas

— Nick Knudsen ???? (@NickKnudsenUS) September 19, 2023


Yep:

Hadley’s story is important.

Under Kentucky’s current law—which Daniel Cameron supports and defended to the Supreme Court—women and girls like her would have no options. pic.twitter.com/U89QieNgr2

— Andy Beshear (@AndyBeshearKY) September 20, 2023

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This ad is genuinely hard to watch, and it's also a sign of the wild situation in Kentucky, where Democrats are going on the offensive on abortion, *and it's working* https://t.co/5gAnqHucvk pic.twitter.com/XlvgERSVa5

— Opinion Haver (@AsInMarx) September 20, 2023

This weekend, Donald Trump told a lie about “after-birth abortions”.

And after so many years of binging Fox News, it’s not hard to see where he got that (completely nonsense) idea: https://t.co/Du5h2ktpsF pic.twitter.com/P76huO4Jhv

— Kat Abu (@abughazalehkat) September 18, 2023

Hats off to every journalist who said the pro-life movement would turn on Trump instead of just adjusting their definition of pro-life, way to not get it after 8 years. https://t.co/9cy5ZHneZT

— Not up for trouble, please stop asking (@agraybee) September 19, 2023

It's possible that the 2024 presidential election will be the first post-Dobbs election where the Democrat doesn't significantly over-perform, but it seems unwise to bet on that.

— Not up for trouble, please stop asking (@agraybee) September 20, 2023

Thursday Morning Open Thread 10

Thursday Morning Open Thread: The GOP Death Cult Doubles Down In Its War On WomenPost + Comments (164)

Please proceed, Governor

by Betty Cracker|  September 19, 202310:10 am| 209 Comments

This post is in: 2024 Elections, Open Threads, Politics, Republican Stupidity, The War On Women, Women's Rights Are Human Rights

Remember yesterday when we speculated that a contested primary could be useful in exposing GOP radicalism on abortion? From RadioIowa:

Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis says Donald Trump’s recent statements on the abortion issue show the former president’s “values” are out of step with Iowa GOP voters. Trump said during an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the six week abortion ban DeSantis signed into law this spring was a terrible mistake.

“Donald Trump may think it’s terrible. I think protecting babies with heartbeats is noble and just and I’m proud to have signed the heartbeat bill in Florida and I know Iowa has similar legislation,” DeSantis says. “I don’t know how you can even make the claim that you’re somehow prolife if you’re criticizing states for enacting protections for babies that have heartbeats.”

Like everyone in the pro-lie movement, DeSantis is a fucking liar. A fetus at six weeks looks kind of like a tadpole and nothing like the Gerber baby, and it doesn’t have a “heart” in any meaningful sense of the word. Here’s how a qualified medical expert (i.e., NOT Ron DeSantis) describes it:

“While the heart does begin to develop at around six weeks, at this point the heart as we know it does not yet exist,” said Dr. Ian Fraser Golding, a pediatric and fetal cardiologist at Rady Children’s Hospital San Diego.

So yes, Repubs are liars, and the reproductive freedom issue isn’t going away. I’m NOT saying the Dobbs decision will carry Democrats to victory in the fall. I am saying the Dobbs decision is deeply unpopular and a millstone around Republicans’ necks because they own it 100%.

That’s why they generally avoid talking about it, but the infighting is bringing the issue to the fore. Good.

Open thread.

Please proceed, GovernorPost + Comments (209)

The GOP’s Collective Action Dilemma on Dobbs

by Betty Cracker|  September 18, 20231:55 pm| 117 Comments

This post is in: 2024 Primaries, Open Threads, Politics, Republican Stupidity, The War On Women, Women's Rights Are Human Rights

Repubs have a massive Dobbs problem. It’s terrifying for GOP candidates who have to get votes outside of deep red areas, so Repub politicians and the anti-abortion activists who support them are addressing it in the usual way: lies and misdirection.

But it’s tricky because they spent decades screaming in people’s faces while trying to remove a constitutional protection for half the population. Adding to the awkwardness, their victory was delivered by an openly rigged, corrupt court that most Americans don’t trust.

That’s a lot to sweep under the rug, and the task is complicated by the fact that Repubs are embroiled in a contested presidential primary. Weirdly enough, this might be one of the few scenarios where access-based, horserace reportage can be useful. Stenography allows us to observe the narrative sausage-making from each camp in real time.

Like his rivals, Trump has tried to have it both ways on abortion. He steamrolled Kristen Welker during the NBC interview yesterday, and the take from NYT horserace specialists Haberman & Swan suggests the GOP field has a collective action dilemma: Repubs overall would be better off downplaying the issue, but individual candidates have an incentive to play it up.

Here’s a gift link to the Times piece and a few excerpts:

Asked whether Mr. DeSantis went too far by signing a six-week abortion ban, Mr. Trump replied: “I think what he did is a terrible thing and a terrible mistake…”

With Ms. Welker on Sunday, Mr. Trump again refused to clarify his position.

“What’s going to happen is you’re going to come up with a number of weeks or months,” Mr. Trump said. “You’re going to come up with a number that’s going to make people happy.”

He made a far-fetched promise that as president he would “sit down with both sides” and negotiate a deal on abortion that would result in “peace on that issue for the first time in 52 years.”

Yep, that’s definitely not going to happen, just like the “terrific,” “phenomenal” and “fantastic” replacement Trump promised for the Affordable Care Act never materialized either. But Trump, a prolific liar and equivocator, recognizes other liars and equivocators, and in that interview, he called them out or put them in a position to call themselves out.

Welker tried to pin Trump down on whether he supported federal or state level bans. It doesn’t matter, according to Trump, who remained fixated on a magic number of weeks where there’s an imaginary consensus that only he can reveal. When Welker tried to get an answer on the fetal personhood question, Trump aimed a firehose of bullshit at her, splattering his rivals in the process:

FMR. PRES. DONALD TRUMP: It’s much more important, the number of weeks is much more important. But something will happen with the number of weeks, the amount of time, after which you can’t do it. And you know what? The most — the most powerful people that are anti-abortion are okay with that now. And you know what? They weren’t okay with that even a year ago.

KRISTEN WELKER: Your former vice president, Mike Pence, believes that a fetus should have constitutional rights. Do you believe that, Mr. president?

FMR. PRES. DONALD TRUMP: Well, Mike Pence said something about 15 weeks too, which was a big change for Mike Pence, because Mike Pence had no exceptions. I have exceptions, by the way. I think people should have exceptions. I think if it’s rape or incest or the life of the mother, I think you have to have exceptions. It’s very important…

Now all of a sudden — excuse me — now all of a sudden he’s saying 15 weeks. I said, “Wow, where did that come from? That’s a radical change.” Look, something is going to happen that’s going to be good for everybody. And that’s what I’m — I’m almost like a mediator in this case.

He’s not wrong about Pence — supporting a 15-week federal ban (even while leaving draconian state bans in place) is a radical change. The forced birth gang’s willingness to engage in that bit of misdirection is a testament to how much they fear the backlash.

The Times interview notes that Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of S.B.A. Pro-Life America, was “less than thrilled” that Trump attacked DeSantis for the six-week ban but unwilling to criticize Trump. Of course she won’t criticize Trump — she’s as much of a liar as he is.

None of the forced-birth liars have the guts to say what they really want, which is to give the absurd notion of “fetal personhood” force of law and use it to control every woman who ovulates, the downstream consequences in terms of personal freedom and the ability to deliver or receive standard medical care be damned. In the pre-Dobbs world, Dannenfelser and Pence would have denounced as a baby killer any Repub who proposed a 15-week ban.

Meanwhile, the campaign mouthpiece for DeSantis used the Times coverage of the abortion issue to take a whack at Trump, and liar and equivocator Mike Pence lied and equivocated some more:

A spokesman for Mr. DeSantis, Andrew Romeo, responded to Mr. Trump’s attack by criticizing the former president for suggesting he could negotiate with Democrats on abortion, adding that the “disastrous results of Donald Trump compromising with Democrats” while he was president included “$7 trillion in new debt” and “an unfinished border wall.”

Former Vice President Mike Pence, a strict social conservative who has run to the right of everyone in the Republican presidential field on the abortion issue, cast his former running mate’s comments in stark moral terms.

“Donald Trump continues to walk away from the pro-life legacy of our administration,” Mr. Pence said in a statement Sunday morning. “There’s no negotiating when it comes to the life of the unborn. We will not rest, we will not relent, until the sanctity of life is restored to the center of American law in every state in the nation.”

To sum up, this issue isn’t going away for Repubs. In addition to the House loonies attaching forced-birth provisions to every bill in that chamber and Senator Potato Head of Alabama continuing to hold the U.S. military command structure hostage to his radical forced-birth agenda in the other, it looks like Trump and the Not-Trumps in the primary will keep the issue on the front burner through an endless slap-fight among themselves. That’s encouraging!

Open thread.

The GOP’s Collective Action Dilemma on DobbsPost + Comments (117)

Sunday Night Funnies Open Thread (Extremely On-Line Social Media Edition)

by Anne Laurie|  September 17, 20239:06 pm| 98 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, The War On Women, #notintendedtobeafactualstatement, Assholes, Bitter Despair is the New Black

"Banality is like entropy; everything collapses into it in the end. And so the organization premised on relentless self-congratulation for the capacity to offend leaves us with this: respect mothers." https://t.co/KeUAKwDkoe

— Aaron Bady (@zunguzungu) September 17, 2023

Yes, you *have* heard the name Bari Weiss before, at least if you’ve skimmed the posts sharing my unhealthy compulsion to mock Bari and all her cronies. On the other hand, their ‘ideas’ are so weightless and insubstantial that perhaps they slide off your minds, unregretted.

It’s the end of the weekend, after one chaotic week and facing into another, and mocking the deserving is as much energy as we can spare… (Bonus: Elon Musk’s most mock-worthy ex!) From Kerry Howley at NYMag, “Scenes From the End of the Sexual Revolution”:

The question “Has the Sexual Revolution Failed” contains within itself a number of other questions (failed at what? Failed whom? Why are we talking about this?), precisely none of which were answered Wednesday night at the Ace Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, where 1,600 plaid-skirted e-girls and be- khakied normies and the aspiring canceled paid as much as $165 a seat to hear a British ideologue, a deft Dimes Square shape-shifter, an ex-Muslim podcaster, and Techno Mechanicus’s mother debate the resolution. You can’t really fault the organizer, even if the organizer was Bari Weiss. It ought to have worked. An ill-defined proposition, half of Red Scare, a random British lady very upset about BDSM, and Grimes? No notes…

The alt-right’s inchoate longing for sexual repression in the absence of religion remains mysterious. Fifty-six percent of the audience, polled beforehand by text at an event featuring four ambitious women and moderated by a queer married media mogul, agreed that the sexual revolution had “failed.” The debate was drawn from Louise Perry’s book, serviceably titled The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, which takes as its presumed reader an extremely credulous liberal raised up in isolation from any information beyond the feminist blogosphere circa 2004 and who needs to be informed, at truly extraordinary length, that men are, on average, physically stronger than women. Women have been pressured to “fuck like men,” a situation that leaves alpha males very happy but all women depressed, abused, vulnerable, and commodified. If there is nothing here that went unsaid by Kay Hymowitz or Christina Hoff Sommers in the dark heyday of the hookup-culture think piece, at least everything sounds better in a British accent.

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Perry struggles with specifics but seems to genuinely believe we would be happier with mid-century sociosexual norms (let’s assume it’s a kink), so it was simultaneously unfortunate for her and very funny that her more capable co-debater, Anna Khachiyan, refused to defend the proposition. Khachiyan could not “with a straight face” argue that the sexual revolution failed. She thinks sex is “cool and fun.” “The idea that we live in a society where men are in charge,” she said through a cloud of vape smoke, “is funnier than anything Tim Dillon has ever said.” She “low-key agreed” with the other side’s Sarah Haider, who made the sensible point that having to marry to achieve economic stability was also a form of sexual commodification. The problem with the sexual revolution, Khachiyan said, with destigmatizing all the stigmas, was being left to make do in a society in which “there’s no one to blame but yourself.”

Men in my vicinity were betting that Grimes would not show, but there she was, chaotic neutral, tasked with defending 63 years of presumptive progress. “I’m really bad at reading from a paper,” she said underneath her nymphcore bonnet, and later, speaking for all of us, “I don’t know what I’m supposed to be rebutting.” She suggested, promisingly, that we “rebuild civilization.” Her suggestion for a better civilization: free child care at work…

Another review, from the LATimes entertainment section — “Bari Weiss’ big L.A. debate was less ‘free expression’ than self-promotion”:

… If you’re looking for smart, incisive, even plain provocative dialogue about those questions, stop reading here. There was little to no daylight between the panelists’ views, and they were tethered by a common goal: calling attention to their own brands by sitting on the shoulders of the very movement that afforded them the freedom to sit on that stage and talk in circles.

As for the contentious viral moments that organizers might have hoped to leverage into financial support, followers or cultural cachet, those never happened. The audience of 1,600-plus, all primed to cheer the speakers’ adversarial views, found less and less to react to as the panel digressed. Rowdy millennials in Camille Paglia T-shirts, stoic middle-aged men in promotional “Free Press” baseball caps and well-groomed seniors in the pricey seats up front instead witnessed a group of like-minded women mostly agreeing with one another. There’s an art to skating on the edge of right-wing rage while pretending to be a nondenominational outsider, a skill Weiss has tried to harness over the years with varying degrees of success. Wednesday’s event was a prime example of what it looks like when the act falls flat…

And yet — Mission accomplished! Here we are, talking about Bari Weiss!

Sunday Night Funnies Open Thread (Extremely On-Line Social Media Edition)Post + Comments (98)

The Pro-Lie Movement (Open Thread)

by Betty Cracker|  September 14, 202311:55 am| 156 Comments

This post is in: 2024 Elections, 2024 Primaries, Open Threads, Politics, Republican Stupidity, The War On Women, Women's Rights

I won’t truly believe America is safe from the possibility that Ron DeSantis could win the 2024 GOP primary (and thus have a non-zero shot at becoming POTUS) until the day a living, breathing and un-incarcerated Trump accepts the nomination. (Frying pan, fire, etc.)

Truthfully, my anxiety will persist beyond that. Trump is so legally and actuarily imperiled that we shouldn’t discount his distant-though-closest, squintiest rival until the ballots are printed and the voting starts.

DeSantis isn’t giving up either. He’s preternaturally committed to this run. He’s still plodding around in cowboy boots he finds uncomfortable so he can look a bit taller. Before the campaign launch, he lost weight so rapidly he earned the nickname “Captain Ozempic” in Tallahassee. He is rumored to have given up not only dessert spoons but the pudding cups themselves.

show full post on front page

Also, I really hate to admit it, but the GOP debate guru seems to be working his magic because while DeSantis wasn’t especially impressive at the first GOP debate, it wasn’t a disaster. He often remembers to lower his naturally high-pitched, whiny voice down an octave (like the Theranos scam lady allegedly did). And he’s way better at controlling his rage around not-Fox News reporters.

Check out when Nora O’Donnell challenges him at about the 3:25 mark — you can see DeSantis almost launch into a snippy, condescending reply, but then his face goes blank as he mentally counts backwards from 20 or whatever the guru said to do in that situation.

But makeovers and remedial etiquette lessons only take you so far. DeSantis lost his fattest-cat donor due to his extremely hard-right policies, including the six-week abortion ban. O’Donnell questions him about that in the clip above; here’s the CBS News account in text form:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said he does not support criminalizing women who receive abortions even after he signed a six-week abortion ban into law earlier this year that includes language that could be interpreted as such.

“We have no criminal penalty,” DeSantis, who is running for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, told “CBS Evening News” anchor and managing editor Norah O’Donnell in an interview Tuesday. “The penalties are for the physician.”

Kudos to CBS for pointing out that the law is open to interpretation. Florida’s supermajority GOP statehouse churns out garbage laws that are intentionally vague and often don’t withstand judicial scrutiny outside of courts stocked with hard-right Fed-Soc hacks. Unfortunately, the fate of reproductive healthcare in the state is being decided by a hack court. (Jezebel)

On Friday, the Florida Supreme Court heard arguments in a lawsuit that could trigger a six-week abortion ban, which would devastate access for people in the South. One Justice, Charles Canady, is intimately familiar with the ban because his wife, state Rep. Jennifer Canady (R), co-sponsored it—and he didn’t recuse himself from the case.

Barbara Pariente, a former chief justice of the Florida Supreme Court, said in June that Canady should step aside. “I know Justice Canady to be of the highest ethics,” Pariente said. “I cannot imagine himself not recusing himself from a bill that his wife co-sponsored…”

Even if Canady had recused, things still wouldn’t look good for abortion access: Five of the seven justices were appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and several of them have personal ties to the anti-abortion movement. All five are members of the conservative Federalist Society, the same group that all of Donald Trump’s Supreme Court appointees belong to.

The shamelessness of elite right-wing legal hacks is surpassed only by the astounding credulity of their elite liberal and centrist colleagues. This appears to be true at the state level as well as the federal. Seriously, I never want to hear about the “highest ethics” of a forced birther judge ever again. They’re all liars.

No one should trust DeSantis on this because he lies a lot about specific policy questions. For example, when questioned by impudent reporters about the ramifications of the “don’t say gay” law when he first signed it, DeSantis angrily claimed people were overreacting because it would apply to grades K-3 only (though vague language caused broad administrative changes as school districts took ass-covering measures). A short time later, DeSantis asked his appointees in the state education department to expand it to all grades, which they immediately did. He just flat-out lied.

He’s lying about this “heartbeat” nonsense too, and it’s not surprising because “pro-life” activists lie all the time. They intentionally deceive scared girls and young women with their (now taxpayer funded) “crisis pregnancy centers” and lure them in for indoctrination. The ones who say “leave abortion law to the states” are lying because they would back a federal ban, and the ones who say they support a 15-week federal bans are lying about that too because they’d leave draconian state laws in place.

To quote Hannibal Lecter paraphrasing Marcus Aurelius, “Of each particular thing, ask what is it in itself? What is its nature? What does he do, this man you seek?” He lies. They all lie. That is their nature.

Open thread.

The Pro-Lie Movement (Open Thread)Post + Comments (156)

Open Thread: Nancy Pelosi, Living Her Best Life

by Anne Laurie|  September 12, 20234:13 am| 69 Comments

This post is in: A Woman's Place Is In The House, NANCY SMASH!, Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat

Great read by @markzbarabak about the former House Speaker who dances in four-inch heels in the wings of Grateful Dead shows: Column: Nancy Pelosi on Dylan, the Grateful Dead, a wild night in Argentina — and the healing power of music https://t.co/lPsZQgEvKr

— Seema (@LATSeema) August 29, 2023

Bob Weir was cold.

It was a partly cloudy July night and temperatures were falling as Dead & Co. played before tens of thousands of fans in San Francisco, ancestral home of the band’s legendary forebear, the Grateful Dead.

Typical summer weather in the city, and Nancy Pelosi knew what to do.

Socks, she told the Birkenstock-shod guitarist on a visit backstage. And a hat.

It may be easier to picture the former speaker, still one of America’s most influential women, surrounded by suits and wingtips than beads and sandals. But Pelosi, who grew up listening to opera waft through the streets of Baltimore’s Little Italy, is a genuine tie-dyed in the wool Deadhead, as cultists and aficionados of the group are known.

She’s friends with Weir and drummer Mickey Hart, having seen the Dead and assorted iterations more times than she remembers. On several occasions, the elegantly styled lawmaker has been seen dancing in the wings, 4-inch heels and all.

It wasn’t certain she’d make the band’s valedictory performance that night, one of the last of Dead & Co.’s recently concluded farewell tour. The House of Representatives was pitching another fit, with balky Republicans acting up, must-pass legislation stalled and restless lawmakers anxiously eyeing the exits.

But in the end, the House approved the necessary defense spending bill with time to spare and Pelosi easily made it home for the Friday night show, mingling with the band and scoring the evening’s set list as a souvenir.

When Weir returned for the second half he was still sockless.

But he had on a hat…

show full post on front page

(A smart lad listens to his nonna.)

“They’re wonderful musicians,” Pelosi said of the Dead and company, putting a lie to the notion — propounded mostly by haters — that the group’s kaleidoscopic catalog can only be enjoyed in a drunken stupor or chemically induced haze. (Pelosi doesn’t drink and has never used drugs.) “It’s great music.”…

Perusing the menu at San Francisco’s Delancey Street Restaurant — a favorite of local politicians, staffed by ex-convicts and recovering addicts — Pelosi savors the freedom of life as just another member of the House.

“You have to remember,” she says, “that for 20 years, either as speaker or [minority] leader, I was responsible for everything that happened on the floor … in terms of what happened with the Democrats … and I didn’t even realize that it was a burden until it was gone and I was like, ‘Oh, my God. What a relief.’ ”…

“I still, obviously, take an interest in the legislation,” Pelosi goes on, “and I still raise money for the Democrats,” though not the $1 million a day she pulled in as speaker. “It’s a completely different story.”…

“Liberated” and “emancipated” are words Pelosi often uses in her new incarnation. She’s started on a book — not a memoir, but an account of certain decisions…

Not gonna lie, I’ll put my name down for a preorder.

Part of a ‘savvy’ update from the ever-savvy Puck:

No Senioritis for Pelosi: One of the more batted-around questions in Democratic politics is how involved Nancy Pelosi is in raising money for colleagues, after passing her rolodex to Hakeem Jeffries in January. In fact, a glance at her campaign and leadership PAC finance reports shows the speaker emeritus is still a surprisingly active rainmaker. Pelosi has donated to about 60 House Democratic incumbents so far this year, ranging from safe members like Eric Swalwell to freshmen still getting their political apparatuses set up, like Jasmine Crockett, to nearly all of the vulnerable Democratic members known as “Frontliners.”

Pelosi also sent cash to four House Democrats who are running for Senate: Colin Allred, Ruben Gallego, Lisa Blunt Rochester and Adam Schiff. But Schiff is still her clear favorite of the bunch, as she gave a separate $100,000 to an independent expenditure called “Standing Strong PAC” that was formed solely to back Schiff’s California Senate campaign. That race includes two of Pelosi’s California delegation members, Barbara Lee and Katie Porter. F.E.C. records also show Pelosi transferred about $1.2 million to groups focused on redistricting, which remains a live issue amid litigation in New York, North Carolina and several Southern states.

Early each cycle, leadership in both House caucuses set internal fundraising expectations for members (especially the ones who don’t have to worry about reelection) based mostly on leadership positions and committee assignments. Per D.C.C.C. records, Pelosi has already well surpassed Democratic expectations. She’s met the $500,000 in dues the D.C.C.C. requested of her, and has raised $6.4 million in direct contributions to the committee, far beyond the $1 million goal set for her. The D.C.C.C tally calculates she has donated $989,000 to Democratic House candidates in competitive races…

On top of that Pelosi has spent and has cash on hand in her treasury $5,673,722.40, Sanders $37,964,112.82 – almost SEVEN times Pelosi!

For the record, Pelosi's Congressional District in CA has more constituents than Sanders STATE of VT.

What is he doing with all that cash?

— New Yorker ???? ???? ???? (@ThomB01) September 10, 2023

Open Thread: Nancy Pelosi, Living Her Best LifePost + Comments (69)

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