US Politics, June 2023: We Refused to Let Our State Descend Into Some Kind of Faucian Dystopia

what an asshole

It's hard to imagine his war against woke will resonate nationwide. All of my friends think he is Scott Walker 2.0 but who knows

that's the one with "Jackie" on it though

I have no idea what that means at all

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8n5FLWAjcSQ

Goethe's Fauci

As mentioned in the bonus tracks on the May thread, a federal judge last night threw out Tennessee's drag ban as an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment. The judge was a Trump appointee, fwiw. On the one hand a totally predictable outcome, but these days I'm always relieved when federal judges find obviously unconstitutional things unconstitutional.

Anyway, the Republican state rep who sponsored the bill is doing a great job showing that you don't have to understand how laws, courts or the Constitution work in order to serve in the Tennessee Legislature.

The judge provided an “opinion” that the law was unconstitutional but the court ONLY enjoined the law in Shelby county. IT STILL STANDS AND APPLIES TO THE OTHER 94 COUNTIES. I’m hopeful our AG will continue to defend it and appeal the decision.

— Representative Chris Todd (@RepChrisTodd) June 3, 2023

(Narrator: The law does not still stand and is in fact unconstitutional in the other 94 counties too.)

Some real "evolution is just a THEORY, man" energy there

Yeah "opinion" in scare quotes is hilarious.

We Refused to Let Our State Descend Into Some Kind of Faucian Dystopia, after all we already live in Florida said the governor from Tallahassee.

The Blair Erskine video is funny but not her best — but the response video is amazing

Kandiss Taylor explaining how the Earth is flat pic.twitter.com/CByWpLX0ZU

— blaire erskine (@blaireerskine) May 25, 2023

Fmr. GA Gov candidate and current GOP official Kandiss Taylor is upset about the SNL skit making fun of her as a flat-earther. She explains her actual position, which has something to do with globes being NASA propaganda. I think. pic.twitter.com/1hFE5kSv5M

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) June 5, 2023

It's hard to tell whether she's putting us on.

Redefining "Globalists"

It's hard to tell whether she's putting us on.

She has a podcast called “Jesus, Guns, Babies,” which was also her slogan when she ran for governor. She definitely has a shtick, but she’s at least as serious as, you know, Boebert or Greene.

Jesus, Guns & Babies is one of my favorite left wing blogs.

I went home with an atlas, the way I always do
How was I to know, the flat plane gave a distorted view?

She has a podcast called “Jesus, Guns, Babies,” which was also her slogan when she ran for governor. She definitely has a shtick, but she’s at least as serious as, you know, Boebert or Greene.

Oh, I remember her candidacy--I live in Atlanta. It always seemed like a bit of a joke, but that video seems to be pure satire.

"Jesus, Guns & Babies" is my favorite Warren Zevon song.

Meanwhile Ted Cruz has spent the past few days arguing on Twitter with the pastor who gave the invocation at DeSantis' swearing in — about whether or not Uganda's death penalty for gay people is a good idea. (If it's any consolation, the one who is in the U.S. Senate is against executing gay people.)

1/x Pastor, I don’t know you, but I honor your ministry.

Your biblical analysis is in error. Jesus told us to “render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

We are talking the laws of man, not the Old Testament laws of God.

Do you really… https://t.co/R7pxogJwap

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) June 5, 2023

Under His Eye

you absolutely do not have to hand it to Ted Cruz for setting the bar at "I think genocide is bad, actually"

I am running for truth and justice as a presidential candidate for the People’s Party to reintroduce America to the best of itself - fighting to end poverty, mass incarceration, ending wars and ecological collapse, guaranteeing housing, health care, education and living wages for… pic.twitter.com/u3NYGUbG1S

— Cornel West (@CornelWest) June 5, 2023

yeah ok cornell

you absolutely do not have to hand it to Ted Cruz for setting the bar at "I think genocide is bad, actually"

Especially not when it’s prefaced by “I honor your ministry”

I love how the GOP standard of compassion these days is not sentencing people to death:

well, i'm glad we can agree on that much pic.twitter.com/xzrsaio1uc

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 5, 2023

Nikki Haley on how she would prevent mass shootings: "We should make sure there's the clear bulletproof tape that we have at courthouses and airports, we should have that at our schools to protect them." (She doesn't propose new gun restrictions.) pic.twitter.com/3LoVuhqtSz

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 5, 2023

What, like the kids are going to be mummified in this tape or something?

https://unobtainium13.files.wordpress.com/2022/01/boyintheplasticbubble.jpg

If I were president I would just make kids walk around chanting "I'm rubber, you're glue, whatever you shoot bounces off of me and sticks to you."

Cornel West is a piece of shit.

DeSantis, he says, defends da classics:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/desantiss-revolutionary-defense-of-the-classics-florida-western-canon-galileo-caesar-great-books-275268d9

DeSantis couldn't tell DeFoe from DeMaupassant

Wait, Larry Elder's in the mix again?

Chris Christie formally announced his presidential campaign on Tuesday.

See who's running in the 2024 presidential election so far. https://t.co/fedRD6UQVz pic.twitter.com/Ptj5zqDJ27

— The New York Times (@nytimes) June 6, 2023

I think Christie is just going in on a suicide mission.. just as a shit-stirrer

He should write another book that no one will buy about his campaign. Here are some titles:

"Shitting the Bed"
"I GOPd Myself"
"Cannonball!: Making a Big Splash in the Deep End of the Campaign"

Cornel West is a piece of shit.

i'm gathering that is the new consensus on him, though I feel like this is a recent development.

As DJP said on the other thread, "Cornel West is a fascinating blend of righteous seriousness and deeply laughable unseriousness." Me, I never thought about him that much, but the moment in the Bill Withers doc where West and Tavis Smiley take turns kissing his ass, and then Withers says the opposite of what they'd been saying, and they just kind of crack up and start kissing his ass again is a personal fave. That, and the way he kept playing Harvard against Princeton.

Who cares about harvard and princeton?

i saw some blowback re: an essay he published in WSJ advocating for not ditching classics which, I could not read because it was paywalled, but I don't disagree with that; I did disagree with the framing of the blowback which was that he was "siding with Desantis". Although maybe he did in the article, dunno. I mean you can still study the classics along other fucking things. this zero sum bullshit from everyone is tiring.

akm otm

There was a big attack piece on West years ago by Michael Eric Dyson—which seemed to have come about because West was critical of Obama.

I also couldn't read the paywalled article, but West has made other comments about this and he is 100% full of shit in giving DeSantis credit for supporting "classical education," which is a contemporary right-wing buzz phrase for Hillsdale College Christian nationalism. It's mostly embarrassing that West either doesn't know that or is pretending not to.

Of course you can still read Plato and study Michelangelo and Mozart or whatever, nobody serious is saying you shouldn't. (And it would be worthwhile pointing out to these fuckers that Socrates got killed for "corrupting the youth," their favorite excuse for banning books and hating LGBTQ people).

That’s the point—desantis is, if anything, the enemy of the western humanistic tradition.

West seems completely irrelevant tbh. It’s mildly interesting that all of these other marginal people are running for president - RFK Jr., Christie, Ramaswami, Elder, Hutchinson, Williamson, Scott, Burgum for fuck’s sake - and Haley, a consummate grifter. I wish CNN wouldn’t give people like Haley a platform to express hate for transgender people and not push back though

I think most of them are running to increase their profile and to raise money. Some of them are running to be Trump’s VP, but none of them have a chance. Trump is going to pick a hard line election denier, someone like Kari Lake or Kristi Noem, for his VP this time

Xpost I hear he likes gladiator movies

Socrates seemed like a right pain in the ass, tbh

A bugger when he's pissed iirc

I wish all these assholes, from across the political spectrum, would stop with the vanity presidential campaigns. I'm not worried about them siphoning off votes from "real" candidates, not really; it's just that it's all so fucking pointless and hollow and transparent. Cornel West doesn't want to be president. Cornel West wants to be on television.

A start

https://www.lawdork.com/p/florida-ruling-trans-care-ban-minors

I hope people are paying attention to what's happening in Missouri right now - where the state AG is holding up a pro-choice ballot measure by claiming that it would cost the state BILLIONS of dollars to restore abortion rights https://t.co/WYHaiStnwR

— Jessica Valenti (@JessicaValenti) June 26, 2023

Ergh. Thought one: I was born in Missouri and many of my family members still live there. I don't recognize it anymore (and neither do my family members).

The current political climate there would have been unthinkable just 20 years ago; now it is thoroughly entrenched. Missouri went from the Carnahans to Eric Greitens to Josh Hawley in an eyeblink. I will never be able to reconcile myself to that.

I had to go to St. Louis recently for unavoidable reasons and I was deeply conflicted about even spending money there. I am sad about it but powerless to change it.

Thought two: I legit have a degree in English and philosophy. And I often have trouble parsing news about legal decisions where it's like, we're upholding a stay of a ban on banning something.

Headline: appeals court forbids enforcement of the ban on (insert fun thing here). Um, yay, I guess?

Headline: supreme court declines to hear appeal on case that would have banned the banning of (insert fun thing here). Um, yay, I guess?

Eventually the quadruple negatives will stack up so far that no one really understands what a judicial decision means. We have decided not to stay the lower court's decision to forbid the state from enforcement of its ban on not banning the banning of, um, a thing. A thing that some people like and some people don't.

As for now, the court has determined that the legal challenge against the statute banning the ban of (the thing you like) has been stayed.

Navigate backward through the previous 20 pages before you know whether to be ecstatic or outraged.

I'd like to issue a correction. It was actually a much more handsome and daring singer named Chris Gaines who was booed off the stage in two minutes

Lol

“Eventually the quadruple negatives will stack up so far that no one really understands what a judicial decision means. We have decided not to stay the lower court's decision to forbid the state from enforcement of its ban on not banning the banning of, um, a thing. A thing that some people like and some people don't.”

This shit is exhausting, isn’t it? (I say this as an English major, a Philosophy minor, a former newspaper reporter, and a current communications professional)

And I think this is why I shy away from some media coverage of legal stuff, and am drawn to reputable sources who will deliver the gist. It’s just labyrinthine.

More top notch work from the DeSantis social team pic.twitter.com/IoeSboNMg1

— Dan Pfeiffer (@danpfeiffer) June 26, 2023

Fake I think

DeSantis for Senate

I’m warning socialists and communists not to travel to Florida. They are not welcome in the Sunshine State.pic.twitter.com/ZB4RVz6XdK

— Rick Scott (@ScottforFlorida) June 27, 2023

This skeleton looks like he's got some Rick Scotts in the closet.

brb gonna tell the Swedes and I just saw they gotta go

Why does a state that relies so much on tourism work so hard to make itself repellent to most of America?

Took all his strength to not say “Northern Agitators”

Though I’d like to have a Negroni with Alfred in his home state someday, yeah, with every passing week Florida becomes a place I’m less interested in visiting ever.

(I’ve *physically* been in the state before, on tarmacs and in airports; the last time was actually Sunday.)

Ugh, mangled syntax. But you get what I mean.

huh wonder what Scott thinks about FEMA in Florida, guess it's time to cut 'em off

Though I’d like to have a Negroni with Alfred in his home state someday, yeah, with every passing week Florida becomes a place I’m less interested in visiting ever.

Your state is cooler in every sense, including your presence in it. Leave us to our taint.

can't be worse than Texas and the beaches are definitely better

Don't Worse With Texas

happy to report both of my trans friends who were looking to escape FL both got out and to much better environments

I mean, I know what it's like to live in a shitty state--I was living in AZ back when the voters rejected the MLK holiday (basically because "Don't tell us what to do, East Coasters.")

Why does a state that relies so much on tourism work so hard to make itself repellent to most of Americathe rest of the world?

There really seems to be an arms race among republicans as to who can be the most repellent: viz: the cum-chugging contest between Abbot and DeSantis.

Rick Scott was a corporate healthcare crook/executive, I always thought he was a bog-standard replacement level country club republican but I guess the ante has been upped and he’s afraid of being primaried by a sentient Confederate uniform.

the Sundown State

He headed a firm responsible for the largest Medicare fraud in American history. He's a special little man.

he looks like the Dilbert guy got bit by a vampire

HCA...what a joke. HCA which basically just shipped a local actor who was in a brutal car accident and is recovering from several injuries to a long term care facility while he was still battling pneumonia

I'm really hoping my piece-of-shit governor loses reelection but I don't even know if he's got a credible opponent. He just turned down $10 million in federal funds to feed poor kids lunch and tried to play it off that it was because the paperwork was too much trouble.

Biden: There’s a guy named Tuberville, Senator from Alabama, went out and said he strongly opposed the legislation. Now he’s hailing its passage. pic.twitter.com/7kALjzyUq4

— Acyn (@Acyn) June 28, 2023

There once was a guy named Tuberville
So ugly he could stop an Uber still

After President Biden assailed the Supreme Court's affirmative action decision on Thursday, a reporter asked if he thought the high court was now "rogue." Biden took a long pause before responding. "This is not a normal court," he said. Watch his remarks. https://t.co/nG2wJVu5pa pic.twitter.com/hqausM47rW

— The New York Times (@nytimes) June 29, 2023

But also this--

President Biden: "I think if we start the process of trying to expand the [Supreme] Court, we're gonna politicize it — maybe forever — in a way that's not healthy."
pic.twitter.com/hQiZz19hTF

— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) June 29, 2023

Yeah that ship has sailed, further than any ship has ever sailed

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/florida-radioactive-roads-phosphogypsum-potentially-cancer-causing-mining-waste-bill-signed-ron-desantis/

This is a little bit too on-the-nose I think

If a large amount of the electorate don't believe in science how can you convince them that these charlatans' actions will cause the unnecessary cancers that will kill them sooner than they needed to die?

I think Biden's tendency to characterize Republican power plays as aberrant is at least somewhat performative; he thinks it will benefit him to be seen as the reasonable, stable leader who just wants to get back to normal. And he may not be entirely wrong. But I think it's also not far from his actual views, which make him reluctant to fight fire with fire.

that's the dumbest-ass biden position i been forced to swallow for a minute. now i'm like, "does he believe that? really?"

Is it? He's been the same guy since 20212
.

This story on Kennedy is really good. Unmerciful not only to his stupid ass, but to the journalists who are lining up to slobber over him. "As a journalist who has been told for decades that my empathy for the female candidates I often cover is probably overemotional and built too strongly on personal identification, let me just tell you that you should never stand between a white male political journalist over the age of 40 and his feelings about the Kennedys."

Can't wait to see what kind of kook attracts the dumbest potential Democratic voters in 2028, are there any wellness youtubers who didn't go completely fascist?

I wouldn’t get too worried, his poll numbers keep falling as people get to know him.

What puzzles me is why the billionaire tech bro venture capitalists puppeteering this guy somehow think running a candidate for the Democratic nomination to Biden’s right will somehow damage Biden with Democratic voters—just as the whole vaccine issue has sorted into a partisan thing!

Your average Dem primary voter probably owns a Fauci bobblehead—this guy ain’t going anywhere.

remember when May 1st never happened? let's not drop the ball tomorrow.

It says something that you go from "I never inhaled" to a fully admitted ex-heroin addict running for President.

Lovely story about Miss Texas, who is not conservative and who has spent her tenure traveling through her home state and speaking out against its right wing laws and policies:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/06/30/averie-bishop-miss-america-texas-platform-diversity/

She's got a really healthy "changing minds one at a time" outlook.

I’m really curious about how/when Matt Taibi lost his mind. That’s really sad

sorry if this was already covered, but the kid from the college admissions supreme court case is canadian?!

Finally this shameful discrimination against Canadians will end.

Wait a sec. Isn't it July now?

No one else would bell the cat, so I've tossed this onto the floor:

U.S. Politics, July 2023: The SCOTUS Shelves Its Instruments of Torture for Some R&R