Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Cole is on a roll !

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

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

No one could have predicted…

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

As long as McCarthy is Speaker, the House will never be in order.

Putin dreamed of ending NATO, and now it’s Finnish-ed.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

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

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

DeSantis transforms Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

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Women's Rights Are Human Rights

Please proceed, Governor

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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.

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The GOP’s Collective Action Dilemma on Dobbs

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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.

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Reaping the ‘Pro-Life’ Whirlwind

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Because they have no regard for democracy and zero respect for women, Repubs didn’t think through the possible electoral consequences of their decades-long quest to rescind a longstanding constitutional right by overturning Roe. They gave even less thought to the healthcare ramifications — agricultural boards spend more time pondering how grazing land policy affects cattle than your average Repub lawmaker thought about the impact abortion bans have on women’s health.

So, when the Leo Court obliged and effectively made half the population second-class citizens, empowered state-level Repubs to insert themselves into millions of people’s private medical decisions, and forced healthcare providers to change standard care protocols to conform to religious dogma, Repubs were caught flat-footed by public reaction. And now they are belatedly alarmed because the Dobbs decision blowback has been measurable in most elections held since June 2022.

Public responses by individual Repubs are all over the map. House Repubs and Senator Potato Head from AL act as if governing with a mandate to ban abortion nationwide. Chickenshit candidates like Ron DeSantis sign bans in the dead of night and avoid the subject on the trail. But according to NBC News, Senate Repubs held a messaging workshop this week to try to rebrand their way out of this conundrum:

At a closed-door meeting of Senate Republicans this week, the head of a super PAC closely aligned with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., presented poll results that suggested voters are reacting differently to commonly used terms like “pro-life” and “pro-choice” in the wake of last year’s Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, said several senators who were in the room.

The polling, which NBC News has not independently reviewed, was made available to senators Wednesday by former McConnell aide Steven Law and showed that “pro-life” no longer resonated with voters.

“What intrigued me the most about the results was that ‘pro-choice’ and ‘pro-life’ means something different now, that people see being pro-life as being against all abortions … at all levels,” Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., said in an interview Thursday.

Well, maybe those polled have seen stories about women who seek emergency treatment for miscarriages being advised to quietly bleed out in their homes until the local archbishop and megachurch pastor deem their lives sufficiently endangered to warrant medical intervention. Or maybe they’ve read about Orwellian laws that encourage random busybodies to monetize their neighbors’ deeply private situations.

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said the polling made it clear to him that more specificity is needed in talking about abortion.

“Many voters think [‘pro-life’] means you’re for no exceptions in favor of abortion ever, ever, and ‘pro-choice’ now can mean any number of things. So the conversation was mostly oriented around how voters think of those labels, that they’ve shifted. So if you’re going to talk about the issue, you need to be specific,” Hawley said Thursday.

“You can’t assume that everybody knows what it means,” he added. “They probably don’t.”

Yep, that will surely do the trick because if there’s one thing all American women are demanding with a single voice, it’s additional and more specific mansplaining from Josh Fucking Hawley! (Who represents a state that bans abortions with no exceptions for rape or incest, BTW.)

Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., summarized Wednesday’s meeting as being focused on “pro-baby policies.”

Asked whether senators were encouraged to use a term other than “pro-life,” Young said his “pro-baby” descriptor “was just a term of my creation to demonstrate my concern for babies.”

These fanatical dingleberries will never land on the actual word that describes their position on reproductive healthcare, which is “anti-woman.” But it seems like many voters have reached that conclusion all by themselves. I don’t think more branding workshops will keep Repubs from reaping the whirlwind they sowed for generations, but this is America, so who knows.

Open thread.

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Saturday Night Sports Open Thread: Another (Tentative) Win for Spain’s Soccer Women

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Yes, I have been paying attention to this story, but there have been a steady stream of updates.* The latest, per the Associated Press — “FIFA suspends Spain soccer federation president Luis Rubiales for 90 days… “:

FIFA suspended Spanish soccer federation president Luis Rubiales on Saturday while its disciplinary committee investigates his conduct at the Women’s World Cup final, which included kissing player Jenni Hermoso on the lips after Spain’s victory.

The provisional suspension comes less than a week after Spain’s 1-0 victory over England in Sydney, Australia, and a day after Rubiales refused to resign, despite intense pressure from the Spanish government, women players, soccer clubs and officials. Rubiales’ conduct, which also included grabbing his crotch, has overshadowed the enormous accomplishment of Spain’s first Women’s World Cup title.

Hermoso has said she did not consent to the kiss, and the team’s players have said they will not play any more games as long as Rubiales is in charge. It was not immediately clear how FIFA’s latest intervention might affect that…

The president of Spain’s women’s league, Beatriz Álvarez, told The Associated Press that she believed this was the end of Rubiales’ soccer career. The league filed one of several official complaints against Rubiales that Spain’s government has received…

The federation appointed vice-president Pedro Rocha as acting president. It added in a statement that Rubiales “has complete trust in the FIFA’s procedures and will use this opportunity to start his defense so that the truth is known and he is proven innocent.”

The federation has threatened legal action against Hermoso for refusing to accept Rubiales’ version of the kiss that happened at the on-field medal and trophy presentation last Sunday…

Rubiales, who is also UEFA vice president, has been leading the joint bid by Spain, Portugal, Morocco — and possibly Ukraine — to host the 2030 World Cup. His suspension means he cannot attend UEFA meetings or vote in October to decide the winning bids for the 2028 and 2032 European Championships…

Hermoso received an ovation from the crowd when she attended a preseason match Saturday for Atletico Madrid, the club where the 33-year-old forward started her long and successful career. Players of Atletico and visitors AC Milan posed before a banner reading “(We Are) With You Jennifer Hermoso.”…

* (Mandatory disclaimers: Organized sports have been ‘politicized’ since at least the days of Olympian Greece; professional sports have notoriously abused the athletes it considers cannon fodder; & in a sport noted for sexist behavior, Spain seems to have been a particularly visible offender.)

Albert Burneko has an excellent recap, at Defector — “Luis Rubiales Shows The Whole World Spain’s Entire Ass”:

… Rubiales is a pig and a moron; this was established long before the kiss. In 2016 Tamara Ramos, then a staffer for Spain’s players’ union, went public with accusations that Rubiales had, among other things, made lewd and inappropriate comments to her in professional settings, such as asking what color underwear she was wearing, and, “In front of everyone he, with the sarcasm he has of laughing, told me ‘Come see, you have come here to put on your knee pads.'” Last year, when 15 players on the women’s national team sent a letter to the RFEF protesting an unprofessional environment under manager and nepo-baby mediocrity Jorge Vilda, Rubiales is who directed the RFEF’s sneeringly hostile and dismissive response, and its doubling down on the worthless Vilda. The very day of the kiss incident, Rubiales had already been spotted in the stands, pumping his crotch with his hand while celebrating Spain’s performance, standing a few feet from Spain’s queen and her 16-year-old daughter. By the time he kissed Hermoso, he’d already drawn the world’s attention for the leering, overfamiliar hugs he’d given each preceding medal recipient on the stage.

The embarrassment didn’t end there, not by a long shot. In the locker room afterward, as he was springing a surprise Ibiza trip on Spain’s players, he made a crack about inviting them there to celebrate “the wedding of Jenni and Luis Rubiales.” When first asked about the kiss’s public blowback, Rubiales attributed the criticism to “idiots.” His RFEF released a statement, purportedly from Hermoso herself, defending the kiss as “a totally spontaneous mutual gesture due to the immense joy of winning a World Cup,” and “a natural gesture of affection and gratitude” and then again as “a gesture of friendship and gratitude,” claiming she and Rubiales “have a great relationship, his behavior towards all of us has been outstanding,” and demanding that everybody stop talking about it immediately. Only that statement turns out to have been issued without the participation of Hermoso herself, who evidently said none of those things. When Rubiales did finally get around to issuing an apology video, reporters learned that he’d first begged Hermoso to appear in it with him, even daring to ask that she do so on behalf of his daughters…

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Zygotes & Zealots

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In the year and change since the Leo Court overturned Roe, Repub politicians redoubled their efforts to deny women agency in life-changing personal decisions and substituted GOP politicians’ half-baked religious fanaticism for medical science, making it impossible for women in many states to get treatment that meets modern medical care standards when experiencing life-threatening medical crises.

Red state governors signed so-called “heartbeat bills” that effectively ban abortion. The feral goons in the House attached antichoice riders to bills, as if legislating with a mandate to ban abortion.

Alabama’s Senator Potato Head is compromising national security by holding up hundreds of military nominations and promotions to try to change Pentagon abortion policy. It should be noted the DOD already doesn’t cover abortion due to federal law, but Tuberville objects to the military giving personnel stationed in red states time off to travel to states where modern reproductive healthcare is legal.

I’m no expert, but it seems like bad politics for Repubs to keep their antichoice extremist freak flag at full mast when red lights have been blinking on the electorate dashboard ever since the Dobbs decision came down, including in places like deep red Kansas and Ohio. Can they not see they’ve staked out a position that’s incredibly unpopular and likely to blow up in their faces?

They can see it — they just don’t have any politically palatable options, and their verbal flights of fancy in the recent debate demonstrate that. Here’s an excerpt from a TPM piece by Kate Riga, a reporter who covers reproductive health issues with uncommon persistence and insight:

“After I gave my life to Jesus Christ as my lord and savior I opened up the book and I read ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you. And see I set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life,’” Mike Pence intoned from the debate stage Wednesday. “I knew from that moment on the cause of life had to be my cause.”*

Pence then took a whack at Nikki Haley, quipping that consensus is not leadership, and went on to tout his support for a federal ban on abortions starting 15 weeks after conception — quickly adding that there is 70 percent consensus behind such a ban (more on this below).

This moment, in the context of Pence’s career and the anti-abortion movement, is staggering.

Riga points out that proposing a 15-week federal abortion ban is a massive walk-back for zealots who believe zygotes are the equivalent of newborn babies. It’s not just Pence — antichoice group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America signaled they are with Pence and the other two candidates who embraced a 15-week federal ban (Scott and Hutchinson).

It’s a good point. Whether the type of antichoice fanatics who scream “MURDERER” in people’s faces at clinics will be onboard with this “compromise” remains to be seen, but the SBA people are pretty hardcore — their president blasted candidates who said the matter should be left to the states, calling out Burgum by name — so their public acquiesce to a 15-week ban is stunning all by itself.

Riga concludes:

(Pence) is the man who, just a year ago, in prepared remarks, said that “our goal should be not just to make abortion illegal, but totally unthinkable for every American citizen,” that “we believe that life begins at conception.”

Dobbs revolutionized our politics, in ways we’re still reckoning with and struggling to predict. Nowhere is that more evident than in the “moderation” of Mike Pence, the anti-abortion crusader in search of a consensus to follow.

I think she’s right. The limp dissembling of other debate participants, including Nikki Haley and abortion-banner Ron DeSantis, underscores what a millstone they now perceive this issue is. Tuberville and the House howler monkeys don’t have to face a broad electorate; would-be presidents do.

It’ll be fascinating to see how Democrats approach this issue over the coming year. Beltway outlets speculate that VP Harris will take a lead role on the issue when the campaign begins in earnest, and Dems plan to hang antichoice extremism around the necks of every Repub up and down the ballot. Biden’s snarky ad buy for the debate illustrates the attitude. After all, we have the real consensus.

Open thread.

*Riga notes that Pence misleadingly cobbled together bible verses to make it sound like he has his lord and savior’s stamp of approval on antichoice policies. She also points out that Pence lied about 70% national consensus on 15-week bans.

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Saturday Morning Open Thread: Enjoy Our Wins

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Saturday Morning Open Thread 21

(Clay Jones via GoComics.com)

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Taking the Pledge (Open Thread)

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image of ronna mcdaniel holding up three fingers
Ronna Romney McDaniel after being asked how many toes Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has on each foot

Remember when Mitt Romney’s genius niece asked Repub presidential aspirants to sign a pledge that they would support the party’s eventual nominee as a condition to appear in the debates? Yeah, it’s not going so well. The leader of the motley pack (by a lot!) won’t sign: (NBC)

“I wouldn’t sign the pledge,” Trump told host Eric Bolling. “They want you to sign a pledge, but I can name three or four people that I wouldn’t support for president. So right there there’s a problem.”

Trump declined to name the candidates he wouldn’t support, but criticized both former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie whom he said would both “ask me nasty questions.” The two former governors have been sharp critics of Trump, the GOP front runner in the polls.

During the interview, Trump also said he would announce next week whether he will participate in the Aug. 23 debate in Milwaukee, though a refusal to sign the loyalty pledge would make him ineligible under the RNC’s criteria.

Spoiler alert: he won’t participate, and McDaniel gave him an out with the pledge stunt. She has no idea just how scorched earth Hair Furor is going to go on her party unless it giftwraps the nomination and presents it to him on a silver platter with a nice red bow.

Speaking of stunt pledges, Nikki Haley continued her campaign o’ cringe with a showy flourish when she signed the so-called “Beat Biden” pledge: (Fox — no link because fuck them!)

Hammering down on a point she has made in the past, Haley crossed out President Biden’s name in the pledge and wrote, “President Harris,” signaling that she believes this race is not against Biden in the long run and instead against Vice President Kamala Harris.

“I have said, and I say it to every Republican candidate who’s going to get on that debate stage, I will support the Republican that comes out of that. Certainly I want it to be me, but I’m gonna support the Republican because I don’t believe that America can afford President Kamala Harris and we need to remember that.”

I figured all the hopefuls would turn on Ron “Dead Bounce” DeSantis in Trump’s absence, but maybe Haley is angling to be the VP of whoever emerges, so she’ll bare fangs at Harris instead. Haley’s rhetoric on the stump is similar to that of DeSantis:

The only woman in the GOP race, Haley has said transgender students competing in sports is “the women’s issue of our time” and has drawn praise from a leading anti-abortion group, which called her “uniquely gifted at communicating from a pro-life woman’s perspective.”

Meanwhile, women nationwide, including in red states like Kansas and Ohio, are telling Repubs what’s really “the women’s issue of our time.” And it sure as hell isn’t trans kids trying to play sports, all of whom would probably fit into a single Cheesecake Factory restaurant with plenty of room to spare. These people are mind-bogglingly out of touch.

A TPM reader pointed out that the Repub reaction to finally overturning Roe is similar to their response after the Bush admin knocked over Iraq. Neocons schemed to topple Saddam Hussein for a decade, but when the smoke cleared, the reaction was: Uh, now whut?

Moral of the story: don’t expect a building plan from a wrecking ball.

Open thread.

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