Sarah Huckasanders said the other night that there’s no left and right, there only normal and crazy. I cannot imagine that any sentient being doesn’t automatically understand into which category to put these loons who want to allow children to walk the streets with Ar-15s because they have constitutional rights too —– is stark raving mad.
The Republican-controlled Missouri House of Representatives rejected a proposal Wednesday that would have banned children from being able to openly carry firearms on public land without adult supervision.
The proposal, which was part of a long debate in the chamber on how to fight crime in St. Louis, was defeated by a vote of 104-39, with just one Republican voting in support of the ban. After the amendment on the open-carry restrictions for minors was initially supported by the Republican legislator sponsoring a broader crime bill, GOP lawmakers on a committee that he leads removed the firearms provision last week.
“Every time we talked about the provision related to guns, we knew that was going to be difficult on our side of the aisle,” state Rep. Lane Roberts (R) said Wednesday, according to the Associated Press.
State Rep. Donna Baringer (D), who represents St. Louis and sponsored the amendment to H.B. 301, said she brought the proposal to the chamber after police in her district requested tighter regulations to stop “14-year-olds walking down the middle of the street in the city of St. Louis carrying AR-15s.”
“Now they have been emboldened, and they are walking around with them,” Baringer said. “Until they actually brandish them, and brandish them with intent, our police officers’ hands are handcuffed.”
While critics and Democrats denounced Republican lawmakers for defeating the proposal, some GOP lawmakers, such as state Rep. Tony Lovasco, defended the decision.
“Government should prohibit acts that directly cause measurable harm to others, not activities we simply suspect might escalate,” Lovasco, who represents the St. Louis suburb of O’Fallon, told The Washington Post in a statement. “Few would support banning unaccompanied kids in public places, yet one could argue such a bad policy might be effective. While it’s reasonable to be wary of minors’ carrying guns, any solution to juvenile crime needs to be crafted properly and respectful of individual rights.”
Our gun fetish is now so irrational that they believe it’s perfectly fine for kids to openly carry a loaded assault rifle around the streets until they “brandish it with intent” and a cop happens to be around to see them do it. Maybe we can get that child soldier thing going with the right wing militias in America.
Meanwhile, kids aren’t allowed to hear about gay people, have an abortion or change their pronouns. But carry a semi-automatic weapon? Of course they can!
If you missed Digby’s Thursday post on what’s happening in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, go back and review. All the political mishchief is not happening on Capitol Hill.
The Marc Elias Democracy Docket newsletter this morning warns yet again to pay attention to what”s happening in red state courts dominated by MAGA judges:
North Carolina (for better or worse) elects its judges and Democrats failed to hold the state Supreme Court in November. Turnout was disappointing. There are multiple reasons why. Among them:
For those wondering why North Carolina Democrats including Cheri Beasley fared more poorly than Democrats in other states last November, districting uncertainty (combined with Democrats’ fecklessness in recruiting) meant Democrats in 2022 left 14 of 50 state Senate seats and 30 of 120 state House seats uncontested. Democrats in those districts had no state legislative Democrats to turn out for.
Democrats in one-quarter of NC legislative districts, many of them very red, had no reason in 2022 to turn out for local Democrats running for legislative seats because there were none to vote for. Cheri Beasley’s U.S. Senate campaign lacked the moxie to motivate them in those areas and could not make up the turnout deficit.
Local races matter, even in rural, red districts. Lose the vote there and you can lose statewide. Even if Democrats don’t win out there, it’s important to shave Republican margins. Lose the legislature and you let the MAGAs run wild. Lose state courts? Same thing. See above. It’s state legislatures, stupid.
Democrats were able to hold two U.S. Senate seats (elected statewide) in Georgia because half that state’s electorate resides in the Atlanta metro area. Less than half of North Carolina’s population is spread out among cities stretching 300 miles from the coast to the mountains.
Rural organizing matters. You can’t win if you don’t show up to play.
MAGA Republicans have turned so far inward that they are speaking to an increasingly thinner — and weirder — slice of America.
I’ll admit that I did not subject myself to the Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) response to the State of the Union Address on Tuesday. But clips and accounts suggest how far down the MAGA rabbit hole she and her party have gone.
So as Greg Sargent of The Washington Post points out, it was remarkable that Sanders spoke largely in right-wing insider jargon. She boasted of eliminating C.R.T. in her state, without even explaining the abbreviation; how many Americans know that it stands for “critical race theory,” let alone why that’s supposed to be such a bad thing?
For that matter, focus groups suggest that most people don’t know what “wokeness” means, or why they should fear it.
The Sanders rebuttal, wrote Matthew Sheffield, “was filled with far-right buzzwords that were likely incomprehensible to most Americans who had bothered to watch.”
Sanders spoke in narratives already “well past their sell-by date,” Kurgman adds.
The name of Rep. Jim Jordan’s (R-Ohio) new “Weaponization of the Federal Government” subcommittee, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) told the committeee in testifying Thursday, is a case of “pure psychological projection.” Weaponizing government is what Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans did, in spades [timestamp 49:50]. Jordan’s audience for his hearings is that same faction of not-of-this world MAGA insiders. “Normies” not receiving extremist narratives by IV drip won’t understand what it’s about.
Krugman concludes:
Just to be clear, there are culture warriors on the left, and some of them can be annoying even to social liberals. But few have significant power, and they certainly don’t rule the Democratic Party, which isn’t locked into a closed mental universe, impervious to inconvenient facts, whose denizens communicate in buzzwords nobody else recognizes.
Republicans, however, do live in such a universe — and what Sarah Huckabee Sanders showed us was that they can’t step outside that universe even when they should have strong political incentives to sound like normal people and pretend to care about regular Americans’ concerns.
Follow The Daily Show’s Jordan Klepper’s Twitter feed or The Good Liars to see how bizarre the GOP base has become. Did you know Hillary Clinton has been replaced with a body double? That Donald Trump is currently president and running the country from Mar-a-Lago? That Nazis won WWII? That Mars has been colonized for decades? That there is no war in Ukraine; it’s all actors?
There is, however, a lesson in the Sanders debacle that the left is just learning. Our messaging friend Anat Shenker-Osorio cautions the left never to take their policies out in public: “It’s unseemly.” Drew Westen (“The Political Brain“) warns them not to take their acronyms out in public either.
The first time I heard GOTV (get out the vote), I thought it had something to do with television. Activists should never talk to normal people the way they speak with each other. There are few more effective ways for turning off potential volunteers than by making them feel as if they don’t belong. MAGA Republicans are perfecting that.
One of the most accomplished pop music composers of the 20th century, Burt Bacharach, has died at age 94. The musical maestro behind 52 top 40 hits including “Alfie,” “Walk on By,” “Promises, Promises,” “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head,” “What the World Needs Now is Love” and “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?,” Bacharach had an untouchable run in the 1960s and 1970s with a wide range of pop, R&B and soul artists. According to the Associated Press, Bacharach died on Wednesday (Feb. 8) at his home in Los Angeles of natural causes.
Working with lyricist partner Hal David, Bacharach and David were dubbed the “Rodgers & Hart” of the ’60s, with a unique style featuring instantly hummable melodies and atypical arrangements that folded in everything from jazz and pop to Brazilian grooves and rock.
Many of their songs were popularized by Dionne Warwick, whose singing style inspired Bacharach to experiment with new rhythms and harmonies, composing such innovative melodies as “Anyone Who Had a Heart” and “I Say a Little Prayer.”
Bacharach’s music cut across age lines, appealing to teens as well as an older generation who could appreciate the Tin Pan Alley feel of some of David’s lyrics. His fresh style could keep the listener off balance but was intensely moving, defying convention with uplifting melodies that contrasted the often bittersweet lyrics.
Granted, he was 94, and enjoyed a long and productive life, but this is another one that hurts (we’ve had a string of them lately). I realize it’s generational; as I Tweeted today:
With all due respect to Mike Myers, it's weirdly disheartening to see "Austin Powers" trending with "Burt Bacharach" (why not "Casino Royale","What's New, Pussycat?", "Butch Cassidy", "The Boys in the Band", "Arthur", et. al.?). Or perhaps I'm THAT f**king old.
And get off my lawn. I guess I AM that f**king old, which became abundantly clear after I received a number of replies schooling me on a thing or two…prompting this apologia:
Here’s what “the kids” were referring to:
At any rate, the Bacharach/David catalog is a rich vein of pure pop for now people of any generation; which is why their songs can play any room-from cocktail lounges to mosh pits.
That said, the recording artist most synonymous with the legendary songwriting team is Dionne Warwick. Bacharach, David, and Warwick had an amazing chemistry. Here’s a clip from a 1970 episode of The Kraft Music Hall, which illustrates why Bacharach and Warwick were such a perfect match of composer/arranger and recording artist…the easygoing rapport, mutual respect, and the creative inspiration each took from the other is palpable.
Casual brilliance. Like most pop geniuses…he made it look so easy. A much harder task is picking my 10 favorite Bacharach songs, so I’ve cheated a bit and made it an even dozen.
Always Something There to Remind Me (BurtBacharach, Hal David) – Sandie Shaw
This was a #1 hit in the UK for Shaw back in 1964.
Baby, It’s You (BurtBacharach, Luther Dixon, Mack David) – Smith
This early Bacharach hit had previously been covered by The Shirelles and The Beatles in the early 60s, but I’ve always loved this swampy blues version, with a seductive and soulful lead vocal by Gale McCormick. It made the U.S. top 5 in 1969.
Do You Know the Way to San Jose? (BurtBacharach, Hal David) – Dionne Warwick
Warwick’s version is, of course, definitive.
God Give Me Strength (BurtBacharach, Elvis Costello) – Kristin Vigard
This version (sung by Kristin Vigard) appears in the sleeper Grace of My Heart. Allison Anders’ 1996 film features a knockout performance by Illeana Douglas. Elvis Costello recorded a version for Painted From Memory, his 1998 collaboration album with Bacharach-but curiously, Vigard’s beautiful interpretation remains unavailable in any other format.
I Say a Little Prayer (BurtBacharach, Hal David) – Aretha Franklin
Another definitive rendition. Three words: Queen of Soul.
The Look of Love (BurtBacharach, Hal David) – Dusty Springfield
Dusty Springfield’s breathy delivery and the most laid-back sax solo in the history of recorded music make this one really special. This version memorably graced two film soundtracks: Casino Royale (1967), and The Boys in the Band (1970).
Make it Easy on Yourself (BurtBacharach, Hal David) – The Walker Brothers
Scott Walker’s mellifluous baritone makes this a winner. The 1965 single topped the UK charts at #1, and peaked at #16 on the Hot 100 Chart in the U.S.
Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head (BurtBacharach, Hal David) – B.J .Thomas
Bolstered by its utilization for a memorable (if oddly incongruous) scene in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, this song hit #1 in the U.S. and Canada in late 1969.
This Guy’s in Love With You (BurtBacharach, Hal David) – Herb Alpert
Herb Alpert was never in love with his own voice, but his laid-back performance (and subtle trumpet work) struck a chord with millions of record-buyers, which handily pushed this to #1 on the Billboard charts in 1968. Bacharach arranged.
Walk on By (BurtBacharach, Hal David) – The Stranglers
I was torn on this one, because I love Isaac Hayes’ epic version equally (featured on his classic 1969 album Hot Buttered Soul, which I wrote about here). But I decided to go with The Stranglers, who released this fab version in 1978. Shades of the Doors’ “Light My FIre”.
What the World Needs Now (BurtBacharach, Hal David) – Jackie DeShannon
This peaked at #7 in 1965. Covered by many artists, but DeShannon’s version rules.
The Windows of the World (BurtBacharach, Hal David) – Dionne Warwick
Warwick has declared this haunting, moving antiwar statement to be her personal favorite from her own catalog. Unusually political for a Hal David lyric, it was released in 1967.
Bonus Track!
Bacharach Medley (BurtBacharach, Hal David) – The Carpenters
Say what you will about the Carpenters…but their Bacharach medley was killer-bee. No Autotune here, kids…absolutely live. Harmonies pitch-perfect as the studio version, AND she’s keeping perfect time.
Since the 2020 Democratic primary, Biden’s secret weapon has been the low expectations set for him by his opponents. Rather than approach him as the flawed but formidable politician that he is, Biden’s critics on the left and right have consistently presented him as a befuddled individual who is unable to finish his sentences. They have cocooned themselves in clips of his gaffes, both real and fabricated, and convinced themselves that the Biden they see in their social-media bubble is the Biden that exists in actuality.
The only problem with this caricature is that it does not survive contact with reality. It’s true that at 80 years old, Biden is no longer as adept an operator as he once was. He speaks slower and struggles more to control his stutter. And of course, he has been prone to comical verbal stumbles his entire career. But Biden’s experience working a crowd, his empathetic human touch, and his sense of humor remain intact. His ability to unite disparate factions of a fractured party remains undiminished. It’s no wonder that a handful of unruly political neophytes at the State of the Union failed to knock him off his game. He’s been playing it for longer than they’ve been alive.
The refusal to acknowledge and contend with Biden’s strengths, not just his weaknesses, continues to hobble his opponents. By consistently lowering the bar for the president’s performance, they have repeatedly enabled him to easily vault over it. As much as anything Biden himself has done, this persistent misapprehension of his capacity has fueled his surprisingly productive presidency.
Americans always underestimate wisdom as a balance to the physical infirmities of age. We’re not a culture that values experience. Sure, Biden might go senile in the next couple of years or his body might fail him. That’s a risk. But the fact that he’s old and has been around the political block is actually a big strength in our current environment. He doesn’t panic when things go wrong, he trusts his instincts because they have been honed by years in the trenches, he’s confident is what he believes and all of that may be just what the doctor ordered right now as we face this massive case of arrested development on the right.
During his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Joe Biden criticized Republicans for proposing to “sunset” Medicare and Social Security every five years. In response, many Republican lawmakers booed the president, prompting him to quip, “So, folks, as we all apparently agree: Social Security and Medicare is off the books now.”
Perhaps these Republicans really do disagree with a plan put forth by a member of their leadership mandating periodic expiration of popular entitlement spending. But at least some of their judges are all for it—and want to transform the idea into constitution law. Recently, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals crafted a theory that would empower courts to strike down mandatory spending on federal programs, compelling Congress to either reappropriate the money or let the programs die. This radical and antidemocratic reading of the Constitution would threaten Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, the Affordable Care Act, unemployment benefits, child nutrition assistance, and so much more. Democrats and Republicans would be foolish to ignore the rebellion against federal spending that’s brewing in the 5th Circuit.
The conservative assault on entitlement programs arose during litigation against a frequent target of GOP ire: the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a watchdog agency created in 2010 that protects Americans against exploitative fraud and deceit in home mortgages, credit cards, consumer loans, and retail banking. For years now, right-wing litigators have argued that the CFPB is unconstitutional because it is funded independently: The agency draws its budget from the Federal Reserve, which in turn draws its budget from interest on securities. Because Congress does not directly appropriate money to the CFPB every year, lawyers claimed, its funding violates the Constitution’s appropriations clause.
At least seven different federal courts dismissed this theory until it landed in the 5th Circuit, the nation’s Trumpiestappeals court. In May 2022, Judge Edith Jones—a Ronald Reagan appointee and hard-rightbomb-thrower—wrote a 39-page concurrence asserting that the CFPB is funded unconstitutionally. Four other judges joined her. Then, in October, a three-judge panel formally declared that the CFPB’s independent budget mechanism renders the entire agency unconstitutional. Judge Cory Wilson, writing for the panel, revoked the CFPB’s ability to issue or enforce any regulations. (All three members of the panel were appointed by Donald Trump.) Thus, under the current law of the 5th Circuit, the CFPB effectively does not exist.
You might wonder: What does this skirmish over a small financial agency have to do with hundreds of billions of dollars in annual entitlement spending? The answer: everything. In her concurrence, Jones took pains to clarify that her reasoning was not limited to the CFPB. Jones announced that all “appropriations to the executive must be temporally bound.” If Congress does not put a “time limit” on funding, it gives the executive branch too much discretion over spending. Under the Constitution, she claimed, the executive must “come ‘cap in hand’ to the legislature at regular intervals” to ensure that it remains “dependent” and “accountable.” Judge Wilson approvingly cited this idea in his own opinion formally invalidating the CFPB, highlighting the “egregious” nature of the agency’s “perpetual funding feature.”
All told, seven judges on the 5th Circuit have now endorsed the notion that courts must strike down appropriations that allow “perpetual funding” of government agencies or programs. If their view becomes the law of the land, it will empower courts to abolish trillions of dollars in entitlement spending. Why? Because today two-thirds of annual federal spending is “mandatory”—including some of our nation’s most beloved social safety net programs. All of this spending amounted to $5.2 trillion in fiscal year 2021 that would suddenly be at risk of elimination by judicial fiat.
Do you think the Supremes won’t do it? I have no idea if they’ll blow everything up, as this would certainly do, but I certainly would not put it past them.
One of Steve Bannon’s philosophies that he has injected thoroughly into the GOP (which has long believed in something similar even if they were more subtle about it) is the idea of dismantling the “administrative state” by which he means …. this.
If you think this debt ceiling hostage taking is bad, just wait until Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz are in charge of reauthorizing 100% of the budget every year. It is, literally, the end of the country.
For some reason the new “weaponization committee” called Tulsi Gabbard, Chuck Grassley, Ron Johnson and Jamie Raskin as their first witnesses. You can imagine how the first three testified. It was the predictable shit show. But Raskin was magnificent.
This is how you do it:
Raskin: "It's all about restoring Donald Trump, the twice impeached former president to the office he lost by seven million votes in 2020 and tried to steal back in a political coup and violent insurrection against our constitutional order." pic.twitter.com/ddg4V4w6ON
James O’Keefe wants to be the next … Robert Preston?
What happens when the MAGA AMPFest event has such a terrible turnout that there is no money in the budget for real entertainment? You get Project Veritas’ James O’Keefe singing show tunes. Good times. pic.twitter.com/vFDqjKWNvb
Project Veritas’ James O’Keefe has always been a little bit nuts. But now his own organization has turned on him, and he’s reportedly taking a break from being a dirty trickster for a while. The staff has produced a memo to the board saying that he’s abusive and crude (you don’t say!) and that donors are sick of his antics. Apparently, he’s been spending money like a drunken sailor.
All of this is par for the course for a standard right wing grifter, which he is (among other things) but I have to admit that this surprised me:
The memo’s authors also raised concerns about O’Keefe’s use of Project Veritas money to promote his own theatrical ambitions. Project Veritas is best known for its undercover stings against Democratic groups and other Republican targets. But O’Keefe, who performed in high-school musicals, has added a series of musical productions to the group’s repertoire, including an elaborate “Project Veritas” experience that involves O’Keefe dancing while wearing a bulletproof vest.
In December, Project Veritas acknowledged improperly giving O’Keefe $20,500 in “excess benefits” to pay for Project Veritas staff to accompany him to Virginia as he performed a lead role in a production of the musical Oklahoma!.
In the memo, one employee worried that all of the money spent on musicals risked alienating donors.
“All the theatre stuff and how that is handled makes me very uneasy,” the memo reads, adding later, “In the end, we are in a deficit now, our fans and potential fans beyond do not respond positively to all of that stuff.”
I guess that explains the little dance routine above. He’s planning a second career. It looks like he’s going to need one.
Prominent supporters of former President Donald Trump on Wednesday criticized Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address.
Sanders, who served as Trump’s White House press secretary, delivered a rebuttal to the president’s speech that largely focused on Republican culture war issues and accused Biden of surrendering his presidency to a “woke mob that can’t even tell you what a woman is.”
“Most Americans simply want to live their lives in freedom and peace, but we are under attack in a left-wing culture war we didn’t start and never wanted to fight. Every day, we are told that we must partake in their rituals, salute their flags, and worship their false idols, all while big government colludes with Big Tech to strip away the most American thing there is—your freedom of speech. That’s not normal. It’s crazy, and it’s wrong,” Sanders said, later adding that the “dividing line in America is no longer between right and left — it’s between normal or crazy.”
Former chief Trump strategist Steve Bannon lit into Sanders’ speech on his “War Room” podcast on Wednesday, criticizing her for failing to mention Trump’s name.
“It was an insult to President Trump. She does not exist politically if it was not for President Trump,” he said.
Bannon called Sanders’ speech “terrible.”
Bannon made the comments while speaking to longtime Trump booster Lou Dobbs, who was fired from the Fox Business Network for spreading false election claims.
Dobbs said the speech was a “great insult” to Trump, complaining that Sanders did not even mention his name when she discussed going on a Christmas visit to Iraq with the former president and the first lady.
“It looked like the Governors Association had written that speech and aligned themselves with Ron DeSantis. It was a shame,” Dobbs complained.
“You are right this was like written by Ron DeSantis and the entire RGA,” Bannon agreed.
Lou Dobbs tells Bannon that Sarah Huckabee Sanders speech tried to undermine Trump in favor of Desantis: “I think that was a great insult to Trump – not mentioning his name. To not mention his name, to talk about ‘new leadership’ .. it was a shame.” pic.twitter.com/Qekoo1LWmB
From Hullabaloo’s earliest days, Digby has attributed juvenile behavior on the part of the GOP’s most unwanted to an epidemic of arrested development. “Maybe the only thing we need to know about Trump and his followers is that they are all suffering from arrested development. It really could be just that simple,” she wrote in 2015 as the Trump train picked up steam.
One suspects that cultural historians will explain the last couple of decades as a period of mass cultural insanity (my expectation). In the end, Digby’s arrested development take may be more accurate.
I was a former early childhood intervention specialist and this is brilliantly spot on. https://t.co/2eUjBzyMgB
Speaking of arrested devlopment, if you missed the crackup on the set of Deadline White House on Wednesday (at MTG’s expense), it’s in the first minute. Enjoy.
"It underlines the idea that [Republicans] don't care about leading the American public. They have given up on that… most of the Republican Party has decided to jettison that traditional idea that you're supposed to lead everyone" – @matthewjdowd w/ @NicolleDWallacepic.twitter.com/KPCgBekXfW
