2024

[Sparko]

Or will answer with a trendy brick oven pizza company that they actually despise and wolf down the Domino's.

[Shirley]

You hate to see it.

Today In: Proof Nikki isn't always wrong:

“You’re just scum” — Nikki Haley after Vivek Ramaswamy brings up that her daughter uses TikTok

[jfish26]

You hate to see it.

Today In: Proof Nikki isn't always wrong:

“You’re just scum” — Nikki Haley after Vivek Ramaswamy brings up that her daughter uses TikTok

Nikki is dominating the 2012 primaries.

[Shirley]

I paid $3.05/gallon for gas on Tuesday.

Thanks, Joe!

[jfish26]

I paid $3.05/gallon for gas on Tuesday.

Thanks, Joe!

Sort of amazing, really, that we put people on the goddamn moon fifty years ago with technology that is now inferior to the Wal Mart toy aisle, and yet we as an electorate really do treat day-to-day fluctuations in gas prices as a proxy for whether the President is good at his job.

[KUTradition]

$2.99 here yesterday

[jhawks99]

I paid $3.05/gallon for gas on Tuesday.

Thanks, Joe!

Sort of amazing, really, that we put people on the goddamn moon fifty years ago with technology that is now inferior to the Wal Mart toy aisle, and yet we as an electorate really do treat day-to-day fluctuations in gas prices as a proxy for whether the President is good at his job.

The man in the big chair is responsible for everything. Even my hang nail.

[twocoach]

I paid $3.05/gallon for gas on Tuesday.

Thanks, Joe!

Sort of amazing, really, that we put people on the goddamn moon fifty years ago with technology that is now inferior to the Wal Mart toy aisle, and yet we as an electorate really do treat day-to-day fluctuations in gas prices as a proxy for whether the President is good at his job.

It's the ultimate lazy comeback fueled solely by "I feel like they blamed Trump for everything so I am going to do the exact same thing that I spent 4 years arguing was a dumb thing to do!"

[KUTradition]

^^^^^^^^^

[twocoach]

You hate to see it.

Today In: Proof Nikki isn't always wrong:

“You’re just scum” — Nikki Haley after Vivek Ramaswamy brings up that her daughter uses TikTok

They are both right. It's absolutely scummy to bring up a candidate's family. And it's ridiculous that the Party that claims they want to limit government overreach is talking about banning an app. Take your own advice and talk to your kids and do not allow it to be put on their phone if you feel it is a threat. Full disclosure, I agree that it is a threat and my youngest child will not be allowed to put it on her phone in 2 years when she is allowed to get a phone. If you aren't strong enough to even have that conversation then you aren't strong enough to lead this nation.

[jfish26]

I paid $3.05/gallon for gas on Tuesday.

Thanks, Joe!

Sort of amazing, really, that we put people on the goddamn moon fifty years ago with technology that is now inferior to the Wal Mart toy aisle, and yet we as an electorate really do treat day-to-day fluctuations in gas prices as a proxy for whether the President is good at his job.

It's the ultimate lazy comeback fueled solely by "I feel like they blamed Trump for everything so I am going to do the exact same thing that I spent 4 years arguing was a dumb thing to do!"

And yet, we're somehow still a single election from autocracy.

Frogs Boiled: What Trump is Planning for a Second Term

https://joycevance.substack.com/p/frogs ... um=reader2

[Tuesday] night Democrats saw what happens when they run on the issues. When they run on who they are, instead of running away from it, they win.

Now Democrats need to take on an issue many would rather avoid: Donald Trump and the future of democracy if he’s re-elected. It may seem safer to stick to traditional kitchen table issues—don’t poke the bear—but it’s time to put the most important cards down on the table and have a serious conversation with the American people about what Donald Trump intends to do if he wins again. The writing on the wall is clear. But far too many people remain unaware of Trump’s 2025 plan, or they don’t take it seriously. People who love democracy need to make sure they do.

We all know the story about Ben Franklin emerging from the Constitutional Convention and telling a woman who asked what type of government they’d created, “a Republic, if you can keep it.” The 2024 election is the moment where we find out if we can. If Trump wins in 2024, we lose the Republic. That’s not drama, and that’s not overstatement. That’s what Trump is promising.

On Sunday the Washington Post ran an article about Trump’s plans for a second term that’s a must read. It’s not the first time there has been reporting on Trump’s plans for 2025 if he wins a second term, but this article goes the furthest in laying out Trump’s plans in clear reporting. It starts like this: “Trump and his allies have begun mapping out specific plans for using the federal government to punish critics and opponents should he win a second term, with the former president naming individuals he wants to investigate or prosecute and his associates drafting plans to potentially invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in office to allow him to deploy the military against civil demonstrations.”

It sounds positively Stalinist. But, despite the cautionary tale of Trump’s first term in office, it garnered little attention. Here’s the article, with a gift link. But read on before you click.

The most frightening thing about this, to my mind, is that it’s not new. People simply aren’t paying attention. In October of 2020, before the last election, Trump was already taking steps in this direction. Trump signed an executive order making a change in civil service rules that made it possible to fire employees in policy positions “at will”—for no reason at all. Civil Service regulations are full of “schedules” for different types of personnel and classifications like “exempted service” that don’t mean much unless you’ve lived in the arcane world of federal employment. That made it difficult to understand what the executive order was about. More importantly, it was just too far in the weeds to resonate with folks at that time, when everyone was focused on more important matters like the upcoming election. But the order was characterized by people in the knows as a “‘stunning’” attempt to politicize the civil service and undermine more than a century of laws aimed at preventing corruption and cronyism in the federal government.” It was the logical outcome of Trump’s obsession with a “deep state” that he believed was out to get him.

The point of having a protected cadre of career civil service employees is to preserve expertise within government. But Trump’s executive order meant that any government employee involved in policymaking could be placed into a new Schedule F classification, a classification which left them vulnerable to evaluation based on their politics not their performance, and to dismissal for any reason. Not to put too fine of a point on it, but coming this late in the administration, the order could only be read as an effort to make sure Trump, in his next term (which thankfully didn’t materialize), could swiftly dispose of career employees he believed weren’t loyal to him. The order undid the pesky civil service protections that made it impossible to fire FBI agents who were investigating him or government lawyers who insisted he play be the rules. It was a harbinger of what Trump’s plans for 2025 would look like.

One of the first steps Joe Biden took after being sworn in was to rescind Trump’s executive order.

By the summer of 2022, there was reporting that top Trump allies were working on plans to radically reshape the executive branch of the federal government if Trump won in 2024. Among other things, they were preparing for purges in the ranks of career federal civil servants and lining up Trump loyalists to replace them. A number of the people working on the project are now well known because of their connection to the work done by the January 6 committee and Trump’s criminal prosecutions: Mark Meadows, Jeff Clark, Peter Navarro and Kash Patel are just a few.

Project 2025 is the official name for the plan, which is reportedly being run out of the conservative Heritage Foundation. The basic idea is to seat executive branch power firmly in the hands of the president. Among the goals are defunding the Justice Department and dismantling the FBI, breaking up Homeland Security, and doing away with Education and Commerce. The president would take complete control of agencies that currently operate with a great deal of independence, like the the Federal Communications Commission—all the rules for television and internet that Trump has publicly objected to would be his to change. In many ways, the plan runs in parallel to efforts to demolish the “administrative nanny state” in the Supreme Court this term.

But the Washington Post’s story brings new details to bear.

Among the ideas Trump and his allies have floated, according to the article:

Have DOJ investigate former Trump administration officials and allies who have become critics of the former president

Prosecute DOJ and FBI officials

Appoint a special prosecutor to “go after” President Biden and his family, based on unsupported allegations of corruption that Trump’s allies in the House are already moving forward with

End the separation between the White House and DOJ that prevents presidents from using prosecutions as a tool for political advantage or personal revenge

Draft an executive order to permit the military to be deployed in the United States pursuant to the Insurrection Act. That would permit soldiers to be used against the protests that would be certain to break out if Trump were reelected—Jeffrey Clark, who is reported to be leading this work, was warned in the last days of the Trump administration by a deputy White House counsel that if Trump refused to leave office there would be “riots in every major city.” Clark replied, according to the Special Counsel’s indictment, “That’s why there’s an Insurrection Act.”

It’s the stuff of banana republics. It’s a menu for the end of democracy.

Trump’s campaign spokesman declined to respond to the Post’s story, saying only, “President Trump is focused on crushing his opponents in the primary election and then going on to beat Crooked Joe Biden,” and “President Trump has always stood for law and order, and protecting the Constitution.” It reminds me of what we’ve learned this week in New York Judge Arthur Engoron’s courtroom: if a witness refuses to answer a direct question, the judge is entitled to draw a negative inference from that failure and reach the conclusion the witness isn’t answering because the answer would be damaging to him.

Donald Trump plainly wants to end democracy. That’s not being alarmist, it’s just the truth. The results on Tuesday at the polls suggest that we are prepared to say no. Women really do want and expect to have a right to choose for themselves. They don’t want House Speaker Mike Johnson, or anyone else, making their most important decisions for them. Americans, it turns out, like our form of democracy—a Constitutional Republic. So far, it has endured despite Trump, but it’s essential for people to be aware of what he intends to do if reelected. He is a malignant threat to democracy, and that has to be taken seriously. The singular challenge of the next election will be keeping the Republic in the face of Trump’s plans to take hold of power in a way that suggests he will never relinquish it.

[MICHHAWK]

i predict that in 24. uncles inflation will be a bigger hot topic issue. than ramaslammys ticktock.

[japhy]

It's just 2023, it probably means nothing.

"We have more people. That's a huge part."

Jane Cramer, a mother from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, explained to Salon earlier this year that she felt good about the ragtag team she'd helped assemble to boot Moms for Liberty, the well-funded conservative parents’ rights group, off of her local school board. "We're not organized in the best ways necessarily, but it kind of all fell into place,” Cramer told me. “And we're all obsessed a little bit.”

Last month, I published an investigative report about how Moms for Liberty, a group dedicated to rewiring American education toward the far right, had taken over the board of education in the Pennridge School District, about half an hour outside Philadelphia. Moms for Liberty, a heavily funded astroturf organization linked to GOP leadership, wasn't especially subtle in its strategies, pinpointing a handful of swing districts in purple states, like Virginia and Pennsylvania, and targeting school board elections, which are usually low turnout and easy to win. Once installed, Moms for Liberty members started banning books and Pride flags, as well as protesting that teachers were "grooming" kids with "smut," which usually meant either a history book or acclaimed, age-appropriate fiction. The idea was to create moral panics around sex and race that could tip national elections towards Republicans.

Well, it backfired.

As I reported, parents in the Pennridge district eager to fight back against right-wing radicals formed the Ridge Network and got the word out, arguing to voters that the group was degrading the quality of the public schools. This week, those efforts paid off: Democrats won all five of the open school board seats in the district, wresting control away from Moms for Liberty.

By the time this election rolled around, Moms for Liberty seemed to have already realized their brand had become poisonous. As the Daily Beast reported, "In 2021, Moms for Liberty claimed credit for 33 seats in Bucks County," but in this election cycle, the group "endorsed only a single candidate in the county." The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that some Republican candidates wanted the group to keep its distance, fearful of the taint. And that was my sense of things in the Pennridge district this fall. School board members who had links to Moms for Liberty tried to downplay it and ended up getting outed by investigators from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

The school board election is the latest in an escalating series of victories for the Ridge Network and other resistance efforts in Pennsylvania. Last month, the Democratic-controlled state legislature held hearings about the threat of book banning, allowing parents and educators to speak out. One of those parents, Darren Laustsen, told Salon about his attempts to expose backdoor book banning at Pennridge, which involved books mysteriously being "checked out" so that students couldn't read them all year. In late October, he won a lawsuit against the school district over what the judge called a "cover-up" of such secretive book bans.

It's remarkable how swiftly Moms for Liberty became such an albatross organization. As many Pennridge parents complained to Salon, much of the initial media coverage of the group was credulous, buying into the false narrative that it's a grassroots group of normal parents who are simply "concerned" about liberal "excesses." In reality, the group was founded in 2021 by the wife of the chair of the Florida Republican Party and was immediately so well-resourced and fully staffed that it could only be they were propped up by secretive, wealthy donors.

The suspicious aura of money around the group was interesting to journalists, but what really damaged Moms for Liberty was that they underestimated the intelligence of the people in the communities they were targeting. The parents of Pennridge were not fooled by attempts to characterize literary fiction as "pornography." Local residents also feared that rewriting history classes to adhere to right-wing mythologies would ultimately harm the school's reputation, which could hurt both their property values and the ability of their kids to get into good colleges. Above all, multiple parents expressed a belief that schools should be preparing kids for the real world. They worried that right-wing whitewashing of history, social studies and other courses would leave kids without the basic skills necessary to thrive in a diverse, dynamic society.

Moms for Liberty was started, in a fairly obvious manner, to help boost the national prospects of Republicans. So it's a delicious irony that, in two short years, the organization is mostly known as a symbol of the MAGA extremism that is driving down the overall popularity of the GOP, leading to yet another election cycle where Democrats overperformed expectations. The group was meant to put a family-friendly gloss on right-wing extremism. Instead, they got parents and teachers, many who barely have time to work and care for their families, to become political organizers. Messing with people's schools was not, it turned out, a genius political strategy.

Biden is old and teachers are groomers.....NEVER FORGET !

[jfish26]

It's just 2023, it probably means nothing.

"We have more people. That's a huge part."

Jane Cramer, a mother from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, explained to Salon earlier this year that she felt good about the ragtag team she'd helped assemble to boot Moms for Liberty, the well-funded conservative parents’ rights group, off of her local school board. "We're not organized in the best ways necessarily, but it kind of all fell into place,” Cramer told me. “And we're all obsessed a little bit.”

Last month, I published an investigative report about how Moms for Liberty, a group dedicated to rewiring American education toward the far right, had taken over the board of education in the Pennridge School District, about half an hour outside Philadelphia. Moms for Liberty, a heavily funded astroturf organization linked to GOP leadership, wasn't especially subtle in its strategies, pinpointing a handful of swing districts in purple states, like Virginia and Pennsylvania, and targeting school board elections, which are usually low turnout and easy to win. Once installed, Moms for Liberty members started banning books and Pride flags, as well as protesting that teachers were "grooming" kids with "smut," which usually meant either a history book or acclaimed, age-appropriate fiction. The idea was to create moral panics around sex and race that could tip national elections towards Republicans.

Well, it backfired.

As I reported, parents in the Pennridge district eager to fight back against right-wing radicals formed the Ridge Network and got the word out, arguing to voters that the group was degrading the quality of the public schools. This week, those efforts paid off: Democrats won all five of the open school board seats in the district, wresting control away from Moms for Liberty.

By the time this election rolled around, Moms for Liberty seemed to have already realized their brand had become poisonous. As the Daily Beast reported, "In 2021, Moms for Liberty claimed credit for 33 seats in Bucks County," but in this election cycle, the group "endorsed only a single candidate in the county." The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that some Republican candidates wanted the group to keep its distance, fearful of the taint. And that was my sense of things in the Pennridge district this fall. School board members who had links to Moms for Liberty tried to downplay it and ended up getting outed by investigators from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

The school board election is the latest in an escalating series of victories for the Ridge Network and other resistance efforts in Pennsylvania. Last month, the Democratic-controlled state legislature held hearings about the threat of book banning, allowing parents and educators to speak out. One of those parents, Darren Laustsen, told Salon about his attempts to expose backdoor book banning at Pennridge, which involved books mysteriously being "checked out" so that students couldn't read them all year. In late October, he won a lawsuit against the school district over what the judge called a "cover-up" of such secretive book bans.

It's remarkable how swiftly Moms for Liberty became such an albatross organization. As many Pennridge parents complained to Salon, much of the initial media coverage of the group was credulous, buying into the false narrative that it's a grassroots group of normal parents who are simply "concerned" about liberal "excesses." In reality, the group was founded in 2021 by the wife of the chair of the Florida Republican Party and was immediately so well-resourced and fully staffed that it could only be they were propped up by secretive, wealthy donors.

The suspicious aura of money around the group was interesting to journalists, but what really damaged Moms for Liberty was that they underestimated the intelligence of the people in the communities they were targeting. The parents of Pennridge were not fooled by attempts to characterize literary fiction as "pornography." Local residents also feared that rewriting history classes to adhere to right-wing mythologies would ultimately harm the school's reputation, which could hurt both their property values and the ability of their kids to get into good colleges. Above all, multiple parents expressed a belief that schools should be preparing kids for the real world. They worried that right-wing whitewashing of history, social studies and other courses would leave kids without the basic skills necessary to thrive in a diverse, dynamic society.

Moms for Liberty was started, in a fairly obvious manner, to help boost the national prospects of Republicans. So it's a delicious irony that, in two short years, the organization is mostly known as a symbol of the MAGA extremism that is driving down the overall popularity of the GOP, leading to yet another election cycle where Democrats overperformed expectations. The group was meant to put a family-friendly gloss on right-wing extremism. Instead, they got parents and teachers, many who barely have time to work and care for their families, to become political organizers. Messing with people's schools was not, it turned out, a genius political strategy.

Biden is old and teachers are groomers.....NEVER FORGET !

And yet.

The Democrats who won have prioritized good governance, including the protection of fundamental reproductive rights. In Kentucky, Beshear focused on record economic growth in the state—in his first term he secured almost $30 billion in private-sector investments in the economy, creating about 49,000 full-time jobs—and his able handling of emergencies, as well as his support for education and, crucially, reproductive rights.

In Virginia, Democrat Schuyler VanValkenburg beat incumbent Republican state senator Siobhan Dunnavant, the sponsor of a culture war “parents’ rights” law that was behind the removal of books from schools. While Dunnavant tried to convince voters that VanValkenburg, a high school history and government teacher, was in favor of showing pornography to high school students, he responded with a defense of teachers and an attack on book banning, reinforcing democratic principles. As Greg Sargent noted in the Washington Post, right-wing culture wars appear to be losing their potency as opponents emphasize American principles.

In Ohio, exit polls showed that Republicans as well as Democrats backed the protection of reproductive rights. As Katie Paris of the voter mobilization group Red Wine and Blue put it: “Reproductive freedom and democracy are not partisan issues.”

After such a rejection, a political party that supports democracy would accept its losses and rethink the message it was presenting to voters. But since the 1990s, far-right Republicans have insisted that election losses simply prove they have not moved far enough to the right.

[...]

They are not alone in insisting that Republicans lost not because they are extremist but because they aren’t extremist enough. Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote that “Republicans are losing Republican voters because the base is fed up with weak Republicans who never do anything to actually stop the communist democrats…. The Republican Party is tone deaf and weak…. Republican voters are energized and can not wait to vote for President Trump…. [T]he Republican Party has only a short time to change their weak ways before they lose the base for years to come.”

It is worth remembering that just six days ago, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) called Greene a close friend and said he did not disagree with her on many issues.

Last night’s results highlight a key problem for the Republicans going into 2024. Their presumptive front-runner, former president Trump, is responsible for putting on the Supreme Court the justices who overturned Roe v. Wade and is on video saying he thinks that women who get abortions must be punished. That position has made him a hero with the party’s evangelical base, including lawmakers such as House speaker Johnson. But it is demonstrably unpopular in the general voting population.

As writer Molly Jong-Fast said today: “Women don’t want to die for Mike Johnson’s religious beliefs.”

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.c ... ber-8-2023

[JKLivin]

It's just 2023, it probably means nothing.

"We have more people. That's a huge part."

Jane Cramer, a mother from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, explained to Salon earlier this year that she felt good about the ragtag team she'd helped assemble to boot Moms for Liberty, the well-funded conservative parents’ rights group, off of her local school board. "We're not organized in the best ways necessarily, but it kind of all fell into place,” Cramer told me. “And we're all obsessed a little bit.”

Last month, I published an investigative report about how Moms for Liberty, a group dedicated to rewiring American education toward the far right, had taken over the board of education in the Pennridge School District, about half an hour outside Philadelphia. Moms for Liberty, a heavily funded astroturf organization linked to GOP leadership, wasn't especially subtle in its strategies, pinpointing a handful of swing districts in purple states, like Virginia and Pennsylvania, and targeting school board elections, which are usually low turnout and easy to win. Once installed, Moms for Liberty members started banning books and Pride flags, as well as protesting that teachers were "grooming" kids with "smut," which usually meant either a history book or acclaimed, age-appropriate fiction. The idea was to create moral panics around sex and race that could tip national elections towards Republicans.

Well, it backfired.

As I reported, parents in the Pennridge district eager to fight back against right-wing radicals formed the Ridge Network and got the word out, arguing to voters that the group was degrading the quality of the public schools. This week, those efforts paid off: Democrats won all five of the open school board seats in the district, wresting control away from Moms for Liberty.

By the time this election rolled around, Moms for Liberty seemed to have already realized their brand had become poisonous. As the Daily Beast reported, "In 2021, Moms for Liberty claimed credit for 33 seats in Bucks County," but in this election cycle, the group "endorsed only a single candidate in the county." The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that some Republican candidates wanted the group to keep its distance, fearful of the taint. And that was my sense of things in the Pennridge district this fall. School board members who had links to Moms for Liberty tried to downplay it and ended up getting outed by investigators from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

The school board election is the latest in an escalating series of victories for the Ridge Network and other resistance efforts in Pennsylvania. Last month, the Democratic-controlled state legislature held hearings about the threat of book banning, allowing parents and educators to speak out. One of those parents, Darren Laustsen, told Salon about his attempts to expose backdoor book banning at Pennridge, which involved books mysteriously being "checked out" so that students couldn't read them all year. In late October, he won a lawsuit against the school district over what the judge called a "cover-up" of such secretive book bans.

It's remarkable how swiftly Moms for Liberty became such an albatross organization. As many Pennridge parents complained to Salon, much of the initial media coverage of the group was credulous, buying into the false narrative that it's a grassroots group of normal parents who are simply "concerned" about liberal "excesses." In reality, the group was founded in 2021 by the wife of the chair of the Florida Republican Party and was immediately so well-resourced and fully staffed that it could only be they were propped up by secretive, wealthy donors.

The suspicious aura of money around the group was interesting to journalists, but what really damaged Moms for Liberty was that they underestimated the intelligence of the people in the communities they were targeting. The parents of Pennridge were not fooled by attempts to characterize literary fiction as "pornography." Local residents also feared that rewriting history classes to adhere to right-wing mythologies would ultimately harm the school's reputation, which could hurt both their property values and the ability of their kids to get into good colleges. Above all, multiple parents expressed a belief that schools should be preparing kids for the real world. They worried that right-wing whitewashing of history, social studies and other courses would leave kids without the basic skills necessary to thrive in a diverse, dynamic society.

Moms for Liberty was started, in a fairly obvious manner, to help boost the national prospects of Republicans. So it's a delicious irony that, in two short years, the organization is mostly known as a symbol of the MAGA extremism that is driving down the overall popularity of the GOP, leading to yet another election cycle where Democrats overperformed expectations. The group was meant to put a family-friendly gloss on right-wing extremism. Instead, they got parents and teachers, many who barely have time to work and care for their families, to become political organizers. Messing with people's schools was not, it turned out, a genius political strategy.

Biden is old and teachers are groomers.....NEVER FORGET !

And yet.

The Democrats who won have prioritized good governance, including the protection of fundamental reproductive rights. In Kentucky, Beshear focused on record economic growth in the state—in his first term he secured almost $30 billion in private-sector investments in the economy, creating about 49,000 full-time jobs—and his able handling of emergencies, as well as his support for education and, crucially, reproductive rights.

In Virginia, Democrat Schuyler VanValkenburg beat incumbent Republican state senator Siobhan Dunnavant, the sponsor of a culture war “parents’ rights” law that was behind the removal of books from schools. While Dunnavant tried to convince voters that VanValkenburg, a high school history and government teacher, was in favor of showing pornography to high school students, he responded with a defense of teachers and an attack on book banning, reinforcing democratic principles. As Greg Sargent noted in the Washington Post, right-wing culture wars appear to be losing their potency as opponents emphasize American principles.

In Ohio, exit polls showed that Republicans as well as Democrats backed the protection of reproductive rights. As Katie Paris of the voter mobilization group Red Wine and Blue put it: “Reproductive freedom and democracy are not partisan issues.”

After such a rejection, a political party that supports democracy would accept its losses and rethink the message it was presenting to voters. But since the 1990s, far-right Republicans have insisted that election losses simply prove they have not moved far enough to the right.

[...]

They are not alone in insisting that Republicans lost not because they are extremist but because they aren’t extremist enough. Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote that “Republicans are losing Republican voters because the base is fed up with weak Republicans who never do anything to actually stop the communist democrats…. The Republican Party is tone deaf and weak…. Republican voters are energized and can not wait to vote for President Trump…. [T]he Republican Party has only a short time to change their weak ways before they lose the base for years to come.”

It is worth remembering that just six days ago, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) called Greene a close friend and said he did not disagree with her on many issues.

Last night’s results highlight a key problem for the Republicans going into 2024. Their presumptive front-runner, former president Trump, is responsible for putting on the Supreme Court the justices who overturned Roe v. Wade and is on video saying he thinks that women who get abortions must be punished. That position has made him a hero with the party’s evangelical base, including lawmakers such as House speaker Johnson. But it is demonstrably unpopular in the general voting population.

As writer Molly Jong-Fast said today: “Women don’t want to die for Mike Johnson’s religious beliefs.”

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.c ... ber-8-2023

Meh. I'd be curious about the definition of "far right". Is it really unreasonable not to want grade school kids to be taught about intersectionality, or even sexuality in general, without their parents' permission? I don't have a problem with schools wanting to address the issues, but I want the opportunity to opt my kid out if I so choose. I was teaching a grad seminar last week with a group of student interns in the school systems, and I was shocked at how much the schools hide from parents about the discussions counselors and teachers have with students about their sexuality. If my kid thinks he or she might be trans, I damn well better know about it, especially if some counselor I don't even know is calling them by a name different than the one I gave them and talking to them about transitioning their sex. That's not "far right" in my book, it's just being an informed parent.

[jfish26]

It's just 2023, it probably means nothing.



Biden is old and teachers are groomers.....NEVER FORGET !

And yet.

The Democrats who won have prioritized good governance, including the protection of fundamental reproductive rights. In Kentucky, Beshear focused on record economic growth in the state—in his first term he secured almost $30 billion in private-sector investments in the economy, creating about 49,000 full-time jobs—and his able handling of emergencies, as well as his support for education and, crucially, reproductive rights.

In Virginia, Democrat Schuyler VanValkenburg beat incumbent Republican state senator Siobhan Dunnavant, the sponsor of a culture war “parents’ rights” law that was behind the removal of books from schools. While Dunnavant tried to convince voters that VanValkenburg, a high school history and government teacher, was in favor of showing pornography to high school students, he responded with a defense of teachers and an attack on book banning, reinforcing democratic principles. As Greg Sargent noted in the Washington Post, right-wing culture wars appear to be losing their potency as opponents emphasize American principles.

In Ohio, exit polls showed that Republicans as well as Democrats backed the protection of reproductive rights. As Katie Paris of the voter mobilization group Red Wine and Blue put it: “Reproductive freedom and democracy are not partisan issues.”

After such a rejection, a political party that supports democracy would accept its losses and rethink the message it was presenting to voters. But since the 1990s, far-right Republicans have insisted that election losses simply prove they have not moved far enough to the right.

[...]

They are not alone in insisting that Republicans lost not because they are extremist but because they aren’t extremist enough. Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote that “Republicans are losing Republican voters because the base is fed up with weak Republicans who never do anything to actually stop the communist democrats…. The Republican Party is tone deaf and weak…. Republican voters are energized and can not wait to vote for President Trump…. [T]he Republican Party has only a short time to change their weak ways before they lose the base for years to come.”

It is worth remembering that just six days ago, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) called Greene a close friend and said he did not disagree with her on many issues.

Last night’s results highlight a key problem for the Republicans going into 2024. Their presumptive front-runner, former president Trump, is responsible for putting on the Supreme Court the justices who overturned Roe v. Wade and is on video saying he thinks that women who get abortions must be punished. That position has made him a hero with the party’s evangelical base, including lawmakers such as House speaker Johnson. But it is demonstrably unpopular in the general voting population.

As writer Molly Jong-Fast said today: “Women don’t want to die for Mike Johnson’s religious beliefs.”

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.c ... ber-8-2023

Meh. I'd be curious about the definition of "far right". Is it really unreasonable not to want grade school kids to be taught about intersectionality, or even sexuality in general, without their parents' permission? I don't have a problem with schools wanting to address the issues, but I want the opportunity to opt my kid out if I so choose. I was teaching a grad seminar last week with a group of student interns in the school systems, and I was shocked at how much the schools hide from parents about the discussions counselors and teachers have with students about their sexuality. If my kid thinks he or she might be trans, I damn well better know about it, especially if some counselor I don't even know is calling them by a name different than the one I gave them and talking to them about transitioning their sex. That's not "far right" in my book, it's just being an informed parent.

If all the right was seeking was some sort of notification requirement…then there would not be such a huge issue. The problem - which you know, or should know - is that Moms4Liberty etc want to go WAY beyond that (but want to do this thing, which you’re echoing, where they use opposition to the less-objectionable things to mask the pursuit of much MORE objectionable things).

[MICHHAWK]

the teachers union needs to stay in their lane.

reading. riting. rithmatic. that is all we need from you. i will do the rest.





the teachers union is the biggest villian to come out of these last 4 or 5 years.

[JKLivin]

And yet.



https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.c ... ber-8-2023

Meh. I'd be curious about the definition of "far right". Is it really unreasonable not to want grade school kids to be taught about intersectionality, or even sexuality in general, without their parents' permission? I don't have a problem with schools wanting to address the issues, but I want the opportunity to opt my kid out if I so choose. I was teaching a grad seminar last week with a group of student interns in the school systems, and I was shocked at how much the schools hide from parents about the discussions counselors and teachers have with students about their sexuality. If my kid thinks he or she might be trans, I damn well better know about it, especially if some counselor I don't even know is calling them by a name different than the one I gave them and talking to them about transitioning their sex. That's not "far right" in my book, it's just being an informed parent.

If all the right was seeking was some sort of notification requirement…then there would not be such a huge issue. The problem - which you know, or should know - is that Moms4Liberty etc want to go WAY beyond that (but want to do this thing, which you’re echoing, where they use opposition to the less-objectionable things to mask the pursuit of much MORE objectionable things).

Hence, my question about what, in your mind, constitutes "far right". Apologies in advance that I don't pay attention to Moms4Liberty or whatever they're called.

[JKLivin]

the teachers union needs to stay in their lane.

reading. riting. rithmatic. that is all we need from you. i will do the rest.





the teachers union is the biggest villian to come out of these last 4 or 5 years.

But you won't do it correctly. You're not educated enough to understand the intersection of reading and social justice or math and gender fluidity or writing and diversity, equity, and inclusion. That requires a teaching certificate and a current ACLU membership.

[Sparko]

The teacher's union may be the only thing keeping education functional in the midst of constant attacks by Mothers for Fascism and other Christian Nationalists with axes to grind.