Taking away people’s right to make their own bodily decisions isn’t very smart.
Rage away…
Another Afternoon Open Thread: RoeVember Is ComingPost + Comments (250)
by TaMara| 250 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads, Politics, Proud to Be A Democrat, Republican Stupidity, The War On Women, Women's Rights Are Human Rights
Taking away people’s right to make their own bodily decisions isn’t very smart.
Rage away…
Another Afternoon Open Thread: RoeVember Is ComingPost + Comments (250)
This post is in: 2024 Elections, Open Threads, Politics, Republican Stupidity, The War On Women, Women's Rights
The leering degenerate pictured above (the one who is unfortunately still breathing) plans to issue a statement this morning on reproductive rights and women’s bodily autonomy. Here’s the heads up on the Defendant’s wildly overvalued crappy knock-off Twitter site:
Notice anything weird about that message, apart from the mindboggling presumptuousness that would inspire an amoral dullard like that to weigh in on the medical decisions of tens of millions of American women and their doctors? I think maybe it finally dawned on the halfwit that he can’t actually “negotiate” a ban at a gestational cutoff that will “make both sides happy” and bring the country “together,” as he has preposterously suggested in the recent past.
Nope, it sounds like Lumpy is starting to understand that the plurality of anti-abortion fanatics in his party won’t be content with the demise of Roe. They want abortion banned in the U.S., and that deeply unpopular mandate is a threat to their party’s electoral fortunes. Hence the bullshit about “an obligation to the salvation of our Nation” blah blah blah.
It’s fundamentally a defensive message, IMO, a plea to the fanatics not to flip the fuck out and refuse to turnout for the Defendant when he declines to commit political suicide by endorsing an unpopular federal ban or signal approval of the 6-week abortion ban that will go into effect in the Defendant’s adopted home state in a few weeks. Well, good luck with that, Lumpy. Fanatics are by definition irrational.
Open thread.
by Betty Cracker| 130 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads, Politics, Republican Stupidity
Revision note: Guys, the Thread embeds I used in the original version of this post made the mobile version go haywire, so I had to pull the post and replace the embeds with images. That made all the comments go away. I’m so sorry about that! ETA: Annnd, it looks like the comments are back. Emily Latila voice: never mind!
Donald Trump’s campaign reported a record $50.5M haul from a fundraising event held in Florida yesterday: (CNN)
The Trump total from the “Inaugural Leadership Dinner” at the Palm Beach, Florida, home of billionaire investor John Paulson sets a record for a single fundraising event.
“It’s clearer than ever that we have the message, the operation, and the money to propel President Trump to victory on November 5,” Trump campaign senior advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles said in a statement.
Wiles and LaCivita are pros, so a step up from the caddy-and-cabana-boy crew that ran Trump’s 2016 operation. Personally, I think it’s a mistake for campaigns to announce gaudy fundraising hauls, which the Biden-Harris campaign does too sometimes.
I get why they do it — it’s a sign of strength. But the money sloshing around in our politics is nothing to be proud of, and I suspect I’m not the only voter who finds the entire thing grotesque.
It’s especially gross if you’re Don Poorleone rattling the begging bowl at fellow corrupt fat cats. In that case, bragging about the haul gives opponents an opening for, well, what the Biden-Harris campaign account on Threads did last night:
More billionaire scumbags below the fold!
I saw it on Threads because fuck Xitter and the fascist oligarch who owns it, but I assume the rogues’ gallery is published across social media. I am 100% in favor of naming and shaming the tax-dodging, worker-exploiting, fascist-enabling policy failures who are bankrolling Trump, and moreover, I believe it’s important counter-messaging since Republicans across the board are absurdly trying to pass themselves off as tribunes of the working class.
It’s preposterous for soft-handed elites like Donald Trump, Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, Ron DeSantis, etc., to claim they’re looking out for the hardhat types they are busily screwing behind the scenes at every opportunity. But that’s what they’re doing, and to an irritating degree, it works.
Meanwhile, the Biden-Harris administration is reversing the Reagan trickle-down scam via policy, and it’s paying off for workers. That’s why the plutocrats are highly motivated to rally around Trump. Kudos to Team Dark Brandon for calling them out.
Open thread!
Biden-Harris Campaign Creates Rogues’ Gallery of Trump-Humping BillionairesPost + Comments (130)
This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Proud to Be A Democrat, Republican Stupidity, Republican Venality
One of the ugliest features of Trump-MAGA politics is the use of disasters to spread conspiracy theories, invent new culture-war obsessions, and pit one region of the country against another.
We're seeing that now with the Baltimore horror. 1/
— Greg Sargent (@GregTSargent) March 30, 2024
One of the ugliest features of MAGA politics is the eagerness to seize on large-scale accidents, disasters, and pandemics to spread conspiracy theories, invent new culture-war obsessions, and pit one region of the country against another…
Now, after the disastrous collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, MAGA figures and some GOP politicians are reviving that playbook yet again, in some cases with hateful, conspiratorial gusto. But this time the absurdities are of a next-level sort. That’s because the disaster, by severely hampering Baltimore’s port operations, is impacting regions and industries that rely on the port to export goods. Those include areas sometimes called “MAGA country,” places in the agricultural and industrial heartland throughout the Midwest.
In short, the Baltimore collapse demonstrates with unusual clarity that when it comes to calamities of this sort, we really are all in it together. That, of course, is exactly what the MAGA worldview seeks to deny at all costs—and is once again trying to do here.
This week, Pennsylvania GOP Representative Dan Meuser slammed President Biden for calling on Congress to fully fund the response to the Baltimore collapse. Meuser insisted it’s “outrageous” that Biden wants to fund repairs in their “entirety,” and even demanded that some of this money must be taken from “ridiculous E.V. expenditures.”
Presto: Meuser—who helped run Trump’s 2020 campaign in Pennsylvania and sowed doubts about Trump’s loss—converted the disaster into a zero-sum culture-war standoff between repairing essential transportation infrastructure and combating climate change…
Some Republicans are arguing that because the collapse wasn’t a natural disaster, we should look to insurance coverage and the shipping company whose cargo ship slammed into the bridge. In fairness, some Democrats have also made similar suggestions. But the Democratic stance is also that new federal funds absolutely should be appropriated, because it’s critical.
Some GOP lawmakers are already treating future funding of the Baltimore response as a future concession on their part. Representative Jeff Duncan says Congress should not spend “one more dime” of additional infrastructure money before a border wall is built, as if the need for disaster relief can be used to extort Democrats into funding MAGA priorities in return.
It should go without saying that Baltimore’s plight does not deserve to be smeared with degenerate culture-warring, demagoguery, and extortive threats. Disasters strike all parts of the country. And in this case, the horror doesn’t only impact the immediate area. It has hamstrung operations at the Port of Baltimore, whose operations are essential to export traffic that comes from other regions, including storied Trump country.
For instance, billions of dollars in autos, coal, agricultural and construction machinery, soybeans, and many other products pass annually through the Port of Baltimore, according to U.S. Department of Transportation data. A lot of those products come from states like Wisconsin, Iowa, Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania (whose western part abuts northern Appalachia and the industrial Midwest), that data shows.
What’s more, the federal aid package that members of Congress are currently drawing up will not merely repair the collapsed bridge. It will also in part replenish the Army Corps of Engineers, which is currently spending money to get the port operational again, a Democratic aide says. In other words, federal funds are essential to enabling the port to function so that those exports from other parts of the country, including from plenty of MAGA-GOP territory, can return to normalcy as quickly as possible.
And some federal aid passed by Congress will also be poured into the federal Emergency Relief Program, according to the Democratic aide, a fund currently undertaking rebuilding projects in response to recent extreme weather destruction in red states like Arkansas, Kentucky, and Montana…
It is not a new thing for Republicans to treat disasters in blue areas as less deserving of our collective attention than disasters in red areas. But Trump supercharged these tendencies. Brian Beutler urges us to remember that during Covid, Trump didn’t merely neglect blue areas of the country; he used the pandemic to actively threaten retribution against parts of the country that didn’t support him.
This kind of thing has become a feature of MAGA politics, as opposed to an incidental by-product of a particular governing vision. Trump flaunted his treatment of blue America as a zone of disease and debauchery that all but deserved to be abandoned to a fate of mass death and suffering by dint of its moral inferiority to MAGA America. Make no mistake: His very public relishing of his power to do this was central to this performance and, one imagines, to its appeal to the MAGA masses…
How long before the GOP suggest the bridge shouldn't be rebuilt because Black people are using it https://t.co/NaBm3PMBBC
— Ragnarok Lobster ?? (@eclecticbrotha) March 28, 2024
If you're going to use DEI as an adjective you might as well just say the n-word. https://t.co/XcASNXPruR
— Enhanced Interrogated Poet (@agraybee) March 26, 2024
Alternatively:
America runs on the work of immigrants like those who died in Tuesday's bridge collapse.
During the pandemic, I introduced the Citizenship for Essential Workers Act with @SenWarren, @SenAlexPadilla & @tedlieu. Essential workers deserve better than our broken immigration system. https://t.co/PqZYQEI5VO
— Joaquin Castro (@JoaquinCastrotx) March 28, 2024
Former @GovLarryHogan now running for US Senate, was warned that Baltimore bridges could collapse if he allowed bigger cargo ships and a bridge was hit.
Hogan blew off the advice, big news broken by @LeverNews a small nonprofit news outlet in Denver.https://t.co/JQ4bx6dmAl
— David Cay Johnston (@DavidCayJ) March 31, 2024
If we’re gonna get all sniffy about ‘facts’ and ‘data’, here’s a starter…
Baltimore bridge collapse: Who will pay for the destroyed bridge, harmed businesses and lost lives? https://t.co/WosThrrs3h
— The Associated Press (@AP) March 30, 2024
Repub Venality / Stupidity Open Thread: Trolls Under the Baltimore BridgePost + Comments (49)
by Betty Cracker| 105 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics, Open Threads, Politics, Republican Stupidity
I thoroughly enjoyed this CNN account of Republicans rhetorically punching each other in the snot-locker, stomping fellow caucus members’ insteps and kneeing one another in the beans with great force. The donnybrook concerns an upcoming GOP primary in the Virginia 5th between arch-conservatives Bob Good, the incumbent and GOP House Freedom Caucus chief, and challenger John McGuire.
House GOP reps are blasting each other with a level of rancor I can’t recall seeing before the whole party went feral. It’s hard to guess who is on the side of whom, given that everyone involved is a hard-right creep:
“Bob Good didn’t come here to govern. He came here to be famous,” [Derrick] Van Orden, a Wisconsin Republican, told CNN. “Bob Good’s wearing our jersey, and he’s not on the team.”
Van Orden added: “If you look at what we have not been able to accomplish in this Congress, it’s predominantly because of Bob Good and his ilk.”
Van Orden is a gigantic dick in his own right — you may recall him as the asshole who screamed and cursed at Senate pages who were lying on the floor in the Rotunda taking photos at the end of their term last year. And speaking of massive fore/dickheads:
“This is the most important primary in the country,” said [Florida Rep. Matt] Gaetz, who led the charge to oust McCarthy and has targeted two other sitting Republicans in their primaries so far this cycle. “Bob is our masthead. Bob Good is our leader among House conservatives to get us on the same page to ensure that it is the people’s interests that rise above the special interests. They know that they hate us. But you know what, there are more of us.”
Good backed DeSantis in the primary, which is the focus of most of the verbal slap-fights. Earlier this year, Trump advisor Chris LaCivita told a Virginia paper that “Bob Good won’t be electable when we get done with him.” But LaCivita declined the opportunity to slam Good anew for the CNN article, so perhaps Trump’s attention is on other things right now, like hoovering up RNC money.
Other members of the Deplorati also expressed opinions on Good:
Rep. Ryan Zinke of Montana, a former Trump Cabinet member who is backing McGuire, added: “We can do a lot better than Good,” he said. “We can do great.”
And Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene – who was booted from the Freedom Caucus last year after sparring with her GOP colleagues – has endorsed McGuire, saying Good “cannot be trusted and will work against Trump.”
“John McGuire endorsed and supported President Trump while you stabbed him in the back,” she posted on X.
Good angrily dismissed her.
“Nobody cares what Marjorie Taylor Greene says or thinks. And she’s a one-man show, she’s grandstanding and she wants attention,” Good said.
It would be a shame if these irredeemably terrible people kept hurling insults at each other, right up until the June primary vote! (I assume they’ll all scuttle back under their rocks if Trump opens his fat orange yap to endorse one of the candidates.)
I know nothing about the district, but my guess is if it elected Good, it probably isn’t gettable for Democrats. (Maybe knowledgeable friend of the blog Geminid or someone else with local knowledge will weigh in with a more informed take?)
Anyhoo, here’s hoping crushing pressure and high temperatures harden already hard feelings into a diamond-like consistency in the House GOP. Open thread!
by Betty Cracker| 179 Comments
This post is in: 2024 Elections, 2024 Primaries, Open Threads, Politics, Republican Stupidity
This isn’t a prediction, but my gut feeling is Trump is going to lose in November more decisively than generally supposed right now. I also believe his candidacy will have a measurably negative effect on his party’s fortunes, partly because of stuff like this: (Politico)
Donald Trump’s bid to oust a Florida Republican who backed Ron DeSantis over him is reviving a long-running GOP anxiety: that he can’t be dissuaded from the grudges and inflammatory rhetoric that plagued his party’s lawmakers during his first term.
Trump’s call for a challenger to Rep. Laurel Lee (R-Fla.), the only House Republican from DeSantis’ state to endorse the Florida governor in the primary, reveals a campaign with little interest in courting his former rivals and their supporters.
The article quotes sundry Republicans who are shocked — shocked! — that Trump seems indifferent to the electoral fate of any GOP candidate not named Donald J. Trump. But as the noxious orange fart cloud is fond of braying at his hate rallies, “You knew I was a snake when you took me in!”
Lee, the targeted rep in the Tampa Bay area, will likely win her primary. IIRC, the candidate filing deadline had already passed before the alleged political savant Trump tried to gin up a MAGA challenger.
But local Dems have identified an excellent candidate to oppose Lee in the general, Hillsborough County Commissioner Pat Kemp. I know Kemp a little from working with the Democratic Party in that county before we moved. Like all Florida districts, the 15th is heavily gerrymandered, but Kemp seems exactly the type of experienced and disciplined pol who could pull off an upset.
Anyhoo, some in the crappy national political media are finally noticing that substantial portions of the Republican base are still voting for Trump opponents in primaries long after those candidates flamed out, and these savvy pundits are belatedly concluding that this isn’t a positive sign for GOP unity. All I can say is welcome to the party, pals!
I’m not confident about anything. The past several years revealed the galloping stupidity and malevolence of a greater portion of our electorate than I fully comprehended before 2016.
But today, the Trump-led Republicans are failing on the basic blocking and tackling parties must do to succeed, like not turning the party institution into a personal grift operation and not gratuitously attacking incumbents with seats in a closely divided chamber. May they reap what they sow in abundance.
Open thread.
by Betty Cracker| 116 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads, Our Failed Media Experiment, Politics, Republican Stupidity
Our shitty political press has been trading credibility for access and pushing horse race coverage as news forever, so it wasn’t surprising when NBC News hired Ronna McDaniel as a paid election analyst. But it was still an outrage because she is (or at least was until the conditions attached to receiving a paycheck changed) an election denier. One line the MSM outlets kinda-sorta enforced was refusing to pay people who lie about the outcome of the 2020 election.
Chuck Todd — of all people! — called his own employer out over the weekend about the hire: (Politico)
“There’s a reason why there’s a lot of journalists at NBC News uncomfortable with this,” Todd told Welker, citing prior “gaslighting” and “character assassination” from McDaniel’s RNC.
But this paragraph from the Politico piece demonstrates how MSM outlets STILL don’t get it and perhaps never will, even with a fascist dictatorship breathing down our necks:
The on-air protests represent what could be a seminal moment in political media as news organizations continue to grapple with how to responsibly represent voices from the Trump right on their screens and in their pages without handing their platforms over to election deniers or bad faith actors who have attacked and attempted to discredit their own reporters.
Emphasis mine because it’s as impossible to “responsibly represent voices from the Trump right” in news coverage as it is to responsibly serve botulism-infused pig rectums at a restaurant. Just don’t fucking try that. Cover “the Trump right” like you’d cover a violent fascist cult, because that’s what it is.
Open thread.