There’s nothing like a little SvE for a fresh case of heartbreak, so this video goes out to Jennifer Rubin:
Jennifer is letting hope get in the way of judgment lately, because she’s also pretty stoked about the letter from 150 has-beens and never-weres who are seeking to “catalyze the reform of the Republican Party”. I don’t remember much from chemistry class, but I was under the impression that catalysts were only used to speed up reactions that were already happening, and there’s no reform happening in today’s GQP.
HinTN
You got that right. No reform needed ‘cept put us back in so your betters can rule you properly.
Llelldorin
Rubin still hasn’t had Max Boot’s revelation that the threads that led to Trumpism have been running through the Republican Party for more than half a century. She seems to think that winding the clock back to 2014 would complete the job. That that Republican Party was all-in for voter suppression doesn’t seem to have clicked yet.
Benw
Oh Liz Cheney doesn’t want to protect democracy? She wants to be the one who loots the country while holding elections rigged in her favor instead of Trump? Huh
JAFD
I am old (and, I hope, getting older) and out of touch. I must admit that I have never heard – or heard of – Ms. van Etten before this post.
Kay
Applying preclearance to 50 states is a good idea. It would fix the mess Justice Roberts created when he gutted America’s most important civil rights law. It isn’t everything that’s needed but it’s a good start. It would bring us back up to at least 1965 levels of progress.
Think of it as a rebuke to the conservatives on the Supreme Court- cleaning up the mess they made.
randy khan
Yeah, that letter is swell, but until they actually *do* something it’s just a strongly worded letter.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
I agree that applying pre-clearance to all 50 states is a sensible response to Shelby County. I just have no confidence that the Roberts Court won’t make up some new excuse to undermine whatever reforms the Democrats come up with.
ETA: I don’t think this means it’s not worth doing, just that we can’t expect a one-and-done victory. Protecting voting rights is going to be a long, hard slog with plenty of setbacks along the way.
schrodingers_cat
Chemistry pedant: Catalysts change the rate of a chemical reaction, they can either speed it up or slow it down.
Percysowner
@Roger Moore: That’s my belief, Roberts et al. will simply say, “Nope, not Constitutional. Tough toenails.”
Edmund Dantes
I am shocked to see Liz Cheney is a bog standard Republican that just doesn’t like trump’s style but agrees with almost everything he tried to accomplish.
Who saw this coming?
The Moar You Know
@Edmund Dantes: this is why I don’t give a shit if she gets turfed out of her seat or not; her issue is not with what’s being done, but only with who is driving the bus.
bbleh
Lol, a family squabble, extended performances for the TV cameras, and … a Village gossip. But nothing’s gonna change. They’re all corporatist authoritarian bigots, they’ll all vote Republican when the time comes, and nothing’s going to change about their objectives or how they pursue them.
Roger Moore
@Percysowner:
More than anything else, I think that’s why he was put on the Court. Undermining voting rights has been a life-long project for him, and I don’t expect him to give up on it now that he has so much power.
Baud
@Roger Moore:
Agree. He’ll say it’s overreach because it’s not targeted, or something.
cmorenc
@Roger Moore:
Especially since the conservative majority on the Court at the time of Shelby were purportedly “originalists” / “textualists”, and yet the Shelby decision flies directly in the face of the explicit language of the 15th Amendment to the Constitution (my emphasis added):
mrmoshpotato
Requirements:
Some of those dumbasses’ bagged gasoline.
A flamethrower.
Shovel to dig the ash pit.
Another Scott
@schrodingers_cat: I was going to express it differently:
Catalysts change the energy barrier for a reaction to occur. They can lower the barrier, making the reaction more likely; or raise the barrier, making the reaction less likely.
If the catalyst decreases the barrier enough, a reaction that wouldn’t occur (in a reasonable amount of time) becomes very likely.
Cheers,
Scott.
mrmoshpotato
@Llelldorin:
Oh Liz knows. She damn well knows. Her dad and W happily accepted the proceeds of a stolen election.
bbleh
@cmorenc: Well, see also Article I, Section 4:
That does not, however, seem to have deterred the Supremes.
schrodingers_cat
@Another Scott: I like it better than my response, after all I am no chemist! Just suffered through a lot of chemistry classes.
catclub
Yes. The only actual GOP officeholders they can name are bulletproof Senators Romney and Murkowski.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: So should we not try to pass legislation about voting rights at all?
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
No, of course we should. We should be deterred by our own predictions of Republican capriciousness.
catclub
Especially when any jurisdiction can get out of pre-clearance by behaving for ten years.
Most did, but Shelby County probably did not. RGB’s dissent was a goldmine of information on the bad faith of the Roberts decision.
Another Scott
Yes, that Taylor Swift.
Youngkin is a former Carlyle Group co-CEO who just
boughtwon the Virginia GOP nomination for governor.The MotUs may regret – even more – messing with her. And messing with politics.
I hope!!
Cheers,
Scott.
Almost Retired
@JAFD: You probably are familiar with Ms. van Etten’s work – at least one of her songs “Every Time the Sun Comes Up.” It was the tune in a recent Volvo commercial. The one where the elaborately-bearded Father sits in the back of a Volvo and looks wistfully at a photo of a young woman while – apparently – returning from his daughter’s wedding. It’s a lovely song. Fortunately, the producers cut it off before it reached the point in the lyrics where she threatens to shit in her boyfriend’s sink.
Keith P.
@JAFD: I’m only familiar with her from “Twin Peaks: The Return” Most episodes ended at a bar where an artist is performing, and hers was one of the best IMO (“Tarifa”)
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: I have seen this troubling trend of doom predictors because Biden does not have a magic wand. We would have been in the position India is right if not for Biden and the Georgia runoffs. We are not doomed. But our fight isn’t over either.
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@Almost Retired: It’s “I washed your dishes / but I shit in your bathroom” Not a threat!
germy
@schrodingers_cat:
Did you see this about Modi’s government?
https://thenib.com/india-covid-crisis/
Almost Retired
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: I saw a threat. After the reference to the dishes, I took it as “I shit in your bathroom….this time….”
schrodingers_cat
@germy: I haven’t and thanks for sharing but I have been following Modi’s and BJP’s black deeds since he got reelected in 2019.
Blaming Kamala Harris at the end is a cop out and you cannot really understand the motivations behind what the BJP does if you leave out religion and caste and insist on using an economic lens alone.
Roger Moore
@Another Scott:
In practice, it’s hard to make something that raises the energy barrier for a reaction. It’s not too hard to make something that lowers is, because you can provide an alternative, easier way for the reaction to happen. It’s very hard to raise the energy barrier because you have to somehow prevent the reaction from happening the way it naturally wants to happen.
Roger Moore
@schrodingers_cat:
We absolutely should. We just shouldn’t fool ourselves about how easy it’s going to be to protect voting rights in practice. The issue wasn’t settled by the original VRA, and we shouldn’t expect it to be settled by the new VRA.
MattF
OT. Gaetz’s pal is pleading guilty. Probably bad news for Matt.
Another Scott
@Roger Moore: Someone just needs to invent a time-reversal catalyst. There’s probably a PhD in there, somewhere.
;-)
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ksmiami
@mrmoshpotato: don’t forget the salt or lye to sprinkle over their zombie ashes. I don’t want the gop just defeated, more incinerated is what I’m going for.
schrodingers_cat
@Roger Moore: I have no illusions about this country in particular or humanity in general. The revanchists never give up, in India for example the battles over inclusiveness vs. bigotry have been going on for millennia. But am afraid that predictions of doom benefit one side alone and that is not the Dems.
JAFD
@Almost Retired: I am old, out of touch, and not possessing a TV set, either
JAFD
@Keith P.: see above
trollhattan
@Another Scott:
To completely sprint into OT land, the cost of catalytic converters will have a significant influence on how quickly full-electric cars enter the fleet. Rhodium is presently $27,900/oz, platinum is $1,216.
If converter thefts are booming in your metroplex like they are here, this is the reason.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
trollhattan
@MattF:
Is he deal-cutting for a reduced sentence? Providing testimony against his running buddy? Please say yes.
trollhattan
@Almost Retired:
Well, she is from Jersey.
Kay
They’re allowed to use stimulus funds to do this. We could see really interesting uses of stimulus funds.
DeWine’s vaccine sweepstakes is another example.
It really makes me furious at the “austerity” push after the Great Recession. What a damn boneheaded bandwagon that was. Idiots.
Puddinhead
@trollhattan: Rhodium. Valerie Harper’s best role.
MattF
@trollhattan: He’s changing his plea, which suggests a deal. May find out more on Monday.
Another Scott
?? “I’m burnin’, I’m burnin’, I’m burnin’ for you…” ??
(via nycsouthpaw)
Cheers,
Scott.
Kay
@MattF:
Call me crazy, but I think it’s a weird coincidence that Gaetz had such a close relationship with a person who has been charged with creating fake ID’s in a different criminal scheme.
When you read the prior charges of Gaetz’s co-conspirator it’s like “hmmm. you would need every one of these criminal tools to traffic underage girls”. One can use them for other crimes too! But the overlap is certainly suspicious.
trollhattan
@Another Scott:
In yet more automotive news.
It’s a jungle out there, I tells ya.
trollhattan
@Another Scott:
Please to be enjoying this gasoline-related video.
https://youtu.be/XRjNdgAetQE
I think double-bagging was a solid move, don’t you?
trollhattan
In the category of Georgia versus New York, my money’s on New York.
Another Scott
@trollhattan: [ boggle ]
Cheers,
Scott.
Another Scott
@trollhattan:
Cheers,
Scott.
HinTN
@Another Scott: Just like someone needs to invent an energy sink like a microwave in reverse so you can pop your drink in there at room temperature and pull out a cold one.
HinTN
@Another Scott: Probably lit up as soon as he got behind the wheel.
trollhattan
@HinTN:
Here’s the griddle version.
And, specific to bottle goods.
Another Scott
@HinTN:
Believe it or not, that’s kinda the way laser cooling works.
;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Sasha
Basically, she’s trying to eat her one-party rule and not have it too.
TKH
@schrodingers_cat: pedant’s pedant here. A positive change of rate is a speeding up.
A catalyst cannot change the position of the equilibrium, but it lowers activation energy and hence speeds up the reaction so that equilibrium is reached faster.
HinTN
@Another Scott: So Sundiver had it right. Cool !!!
Taken4Granite
@Another Scott: You mean like thiotimoline?
James E Powell
All over the internet, people are talking about the Cheney Wing of the Republican Party as if it’s a real thing. As far as I can tell, it’s one person. Have any other House Republicans gone on the record agreeing with her? They all seem to be huddled under the umbrella of the voice vote. The press/media should ask every one of them if they voted to remove her.
catclub
Maxwell’s demon, for the Win.
dww44
@James E Powell:
He probably isn’t in the Cheney wing of the GOP, but Adam Kinzinger has been standing up strongly for her. He must hail from a safe district, or is he just a genuinely principled person?
Llelldorin
@mrmoshpotato: Liz absolutely knows. Rubin is the one who seems a little bit confused here.