Weekend Open Thread

14 thoughts on “Weekend Open Thread”

1. Vitriolic Mysogyny against Nancy Pelosi. From TPM.

   The Cost Of Being A Woman In Politics

   Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has joked about hitting Pelosi with the Speaker’s gavel; Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) indicated support for executing her; several January 6 insurrectionists said that they were going to the Capitol specifically to hunt and murder Pelosi. She’s a constant boogeyman on Fox News, complete with unflatteringly edited photos, and her online treatment is only cruder and more violent.

   The Republican Party has been using her face in campaigning against Democrats since 2003, before she was widely recognizable. Before the 2010 midterm elections, the National Republican Congressional Committee was using Pelosi in 70 percent of its ads, easily eclipsing those mentioning then-President Barack Obama. The trend continued, with her being invoked in TV ads seven times as often as her then-Senate counterpart Harry Reid (D-NV) in 2012 and around three times as often in 2014 and 2016, according to the Wesleyan Media Project.

   “People can’t stand to see a woman in that position of power, and to do as good a job as Nancy Pelosi did,” Nina Jankowicz, vice president at the Centre for Information Resilience, told TPM. “And she’s a woman past her reproductive prime, which the right hates — as well as certain parts of the left — since women are only good for making babies. She hits a lot of different pain points for them.”  

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   1. “When people criticize men in positions of power, they say ‘your policies are stupid,’” Krook said. “For women, it’s ‘you stupid, fat bitch, you’re so ugly, just kill yourself and die.’”

      “People say, ‘oh, politics is dirty for all people.’ Men are not threatened with rape,” added Kristina Wilfore, co-founder of #ShePersisted, an organization focused on combating gender abuse and disinformation online.

      The following conspiracy was even spewed here on Colorado Pols by our local gun activist Agit-propagandist:

      And, as is the way of the right-wing media circuit, others offered much darker responses. Fox News host Tucker Carlson mused that DePape was actually Paul Pelosi’s lover; Elon Musk shared with his nearly 128 million followers a link to a conspiracy site alleging that Paul Pelosi was hosting a sex worker in an episode that turned violent; Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) tweeted (then deleted) “LOL” in response to a photoshopped picture of men with hammers next to a gay pride flag.

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      1. Technically counter agit-propagandist but you knew that already…

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2. Constitutional Originalism Permits Wife Beating and Lets Abusers to have Guns. Heather Cox-Richardson is profound this morning.

    

   A panel of three judges of the right-wing Fifth Circuit [] ruled that a federal law prohibiting people who are under a domestic restraining order from owning a gun is unconstitutional.

   In the 2022 New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen decision, the Supreme Court said that the government must prove that any gun regulation is “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation,” and because the Constitution’s Framers didn’t stop domestic abusers from possessing guns, we can’t either. As Ian Millhiser points out in Vox, it was not until 1871 that a state court determined that “a husband has no right” to beat his wife. 

   Slate’s legal reporter Mark Joseph Stern notes, “There is no real doubt that the 5th Circuit's decision is going to lead to more abusers murdering their wives and girlfriends. It will also increase mass shootings. Domestic abuse[rs] are vastly more likely to commit heinous acts of gun violence.” Millhiser says it is very likely the Supreme Court will take up the case. 

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   1. And it was many many years between that initial state court ruling and national acceptance that husbands couldn't legally beat wives.

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   2. Opinion available here, and holy fucking shit. This particular federal statute "is an 'outlier[] that our ancestors would never have accepted.'" Cuz having easy access to the means of offing uppity bitches was of paramount importance to the Framers, I guess.

      But my "favorite part" is the whole "Oh, and that stuff in Heller and Bruen about 'law-abiding, responsible' firearm owners? Fuck that. The Supreme Court didn't mean a word of it." Tethering a right to keep and bear arms to law abiding behavior wouldn't yield a wingnuttically correct result here, as the defendant was a shitburger's shitburger:

      Between December 2020 and January 2021, [Shitburger] was involved in five shootings in and around Arlington, Texas. On December 1, after selling narcotics to an individual, he fired multiple shots into that individual’s residence. The following day, [Shitburger] was involved in a car accident. He exited his vehicle, shot at the other driver, and fled the scene. He returned to the scene in a different vehicle and shot at the other driver’s car. On December 22, [Shitburger] shot at a constable’s vehicle. On January 7, [Shitburger] fired multiple shots in the air after his friend’s credit card was declined at a Whataburger restaurant. (Footnote omitted.)

      SCOTUS might as just go ahead and rule that there's no such thing as a constitutional firearm regulation. That's clearly where we're headed.

      And finally, how is Edith Jones only 73 years old? It feels like she's been on that wingnut court at least that long.

       

       

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   3. Misogyny and racism were central to the Founding Fathers’ narrow view of who deserved “freedom”, let alone “ life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”

      It has only been in the last 150 years that this runnel vision has gradually and painfully expanded responding to massive resistance and demands) to include non-white people and women. .
      Unlimited ownership of firearms was critical to maintaining that fragile privilege in the face of increasingly diverse enfranchisement and empowerment. It still is the energy behind gun worship…..to keep “them” from going “ too far”. 

      .
      I have my own story of domestic violence at the hands of a gun cultist, and survived to tell the tale.

      This Supreme Court, if unchecked, would happily return us all to what they consider to be rhe “Good Old Days” of America. 

      so when someone with an arsenal declares the need to “Take Our Country Back”, this is what they have in mind.

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      1. Backlash to Women's Me Too. Interesting article in Vox.com

         Advances of women have ebbed and flowed, and this article discusses some of the tides. One observation is that moments of feminist success are often followed by a wave of backlash. To be specific:

         "The backlash has two targets: Reproductive rights and financial freedom"

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         1. IMHO, abortion remains available in all states regardless of what laws get passed by heavily religious, misogynistic, politicians. State politicians can’t control the US mail or its contents. They can’t control women traveling out of state. The two biggest barriers are 1) how to help lower income women get the healthcare services they need, and 2) convincing women in the bad states to be quiet about their activities and convincing all women to stop monitoring periods by electronic devices that can be tracked.

            “Pro-lifers” are slowly losing cross the country. Even so, this is not a time for complacency as the anti-choicers are creative, like possible requirements on young female athletes to provide information about their menstrual frequency.

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3. Okay, I tried to answer the question myself. Reading about the shake-up of the primary calendar, I was trying to remember in which year a state went out of order, and was docked convention delegates. Does anyone remember the year and the state?

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   1. It was Florida in 2008.

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      1. 

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4. Is George Santos running for Mayor of Denver?

   https://www.9news.com/article/news/local/next/next-with-kyle-clark/denver-mayoral-candidate-andy-rougeot-false-claims/73-7a73fdd0-50d4-4586-99b6-9326449c1cae

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   1. No, but Rougeot s working from the same playbook: make shit up, lie about his opponents, appeal to peoples existing prejudices and biases, and when confronted, accuse the media of being bought by the other side.

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