I couldn't believe what I was seeing. And over on that other network, the most punchable face on televison was laughing his preppy ass off. This on the same day that we learned more truths about Clarence and Ginni Thomas. He was the guy who complained about a high tech lynching. No Clarence. What we saw today was a high tech lynching.
this has been a day just FULL of some of the most enraging shit I've seen since...I thought saying "1968" would have been a little bit of a stretch but I'm sticking with it.
the most unbelievable thing is that none of these scumbags (I'm talking about ALL of it, everywhere) think it's necessary to do any of this in those famous "smoke-filled rooms." it's right in our faces.
if there's any kind of plus side to this, it's that the two expelled Tennessee state senators suddenly have serious national profiles.
What I saw was a bunch of mostly old fat white guys, apparently looking for the white sheets and hoods, and not a clue as to what kind if a fire they had just lit.
This is so disturbing it’s hard to get my thoughts together. This is fascism plain and simple. What I do know is the Tennessee white republican’s plan to shut them up has completely backfired. These two intelligent and passionate men are on fire now. Along with the youth who will soon be voters.
There's no bottom in this country, I find it ironic when we say another country is " corrupt". Pay attention to any GOP legislature, NC, TN, Montana et al and you will find anti democracy flourishing. In Wisconsin they will impeach a new Supreme Court Judge why? Because they can there is nothing to stop them. We can add ClarencevThomas to the corruption with today's news. Everywhere we look at every level there's authoritarianism and banana republic like corruption.
We are the richest and most powerful failed state perhaps in history and we could have been better. But we have half the country that are deplorable and refuse to be better.
I served 23 years in the Marine Corps infantry and I'm shaken to my core of what I see. The " idea" and principles as set forth in our founding haven't been close to being met, until we have better citizens we never will come close.
Amen. Semper Fi must be to the “self evident” truth: “All men are created equal.” It’s the principle marker we laid down before the world to justify our revolution and our founding.
Last I looked, one newly elected WI state senator was calling for the impeachment of Judge Protasiewicz. It's a long way from that to the state house of representatives actually taking steps to impeach her.
Yet another state I can no longer visit. The list is becoming too long.
Accept that politicians will do whatever is needed to assure success at Job#1 - getting re-elected.
I obviously just cannot understand how valuable their re-election is, since it seems that the blood of the innocent, spilled by crazy people who can carry a military grade firearm, dispensing as much carnage as they see fit is a justifiable political platform.
We live in a shameful time for much of our country. Sad. Very very sad.
The Tennessee legislature is proposing putting guns in schools by arming teachers?? Hoo boy. (Oh yes, I want to be a teacher and shape lives, ooh and extra bonus, I get to carry a gun.) The idea of telling teachers they have to have guns in the classroom is beyond ludicrous. What will happen to those teachers that refuse a gun? And I am sure that many will abhor the idea of being put in a position to maybe have to shoot and kill someone in the course of their workday, they are not law enforcement officers after all.
Lowering the legal age to possess guns, thereby making it legal for young and inexperienced people to own guns, just isn't a smart thing to do. Members of that legislature seem not to be concerned about safety at all and I cannot for the life of me understand their reasoning. More and more, the disregard for human life in the US seems to be coming from a place of absolute disinterest in a good quality of life for people in America, and horrifying self-interest in wealth and power on the part of lawmakers refusing to ban assault weapons.
I would say it is time for the 1/3 to 1/2 of us who sit home on election day to vote. Protests and boycotts are not going to change a damn thing in the growing number of red states which are now controlled by the uber conservative political movement where ,yes, those who actually believe in anti democratic principles do vote.
I think these expulsions will boomerang on the Repugnants. Jones and Pearson are now known nationally. They will be able to raise money for their re-election from Democrats across the country, and they will easily win their seats. They have a national platform now, with their speeches televised on national TV. They have also increased awareness of gun violence against children. Nyah, nyah, Repugnants, you lose!
I believe Tennessee law provides empty seats in the Legislature to be filled by Appointment, front County Commissioners. If so, those first youn Black men could be back in their Seats next week.
Lucian is correct - this is far from over. Judging from the demonstrators outside the chamber in Nashville, this action has further galvanized a fierce voting bloc of young people, minorities, and sensible individuals who don't want to see their children gunned down in school. What could be more common sense than that? The GQP legislators apparently have none. They will rue the day, just as the GQP generally is ruing the day the Dobbs decision came down. The Wisconsin Supreme Court election this week was a perfect example of what it is yet to come. And it will be glorious!
This is disgusting, DESPICABLE and just plain stupid. Done in the same vein as the plantation owner and his overseer - just because they can. Time to put those old Fools to rest.
The Wisconsin Legislature has also been gerrymandered. But they made a fatal mistake. Have you ever heard of Michael Gableman? He is a former Wisconsin State Supreme Court Justice who the Republican Assemblyman Robin Vos hired to "investigate" voter fraud in the 2020 election at the behest of TFG. He did such a poor job and spent so much of taxpayer dollars ($2.5 million so far) that I think it woke a lot of voters in Wisconsin up and now they have a liberal majority on the State Supreme Court who will overturn the gerrymandered maps. The Michael Gableman fiasco is very interesting in a sad, disgusting, despicable way. Here's a link to the latest developments in the case: https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2023/03/03/gableman-hit-with-3rd-ethics-complaint-over-wisconsin-election-review/69966909007/
But the legislature is threatening to impeach the newly elected justice based on a case she presided over as a county judge. Hopefully cooler heads will prevail, but it seems the GOP will sink to any level to maintain control.
The GOP's strategy is to create as much drama and histrionics as possible . My gut feeling tells me this threat of impeachment is to try to make it appear that they still have control. This new judge threatens their very existence and rightly so.
Once again, the sane citizens of our state are embarrassed, angry and disheartened at what passes for legislating in our 75% Republican House. In a gerrymandered state where voters choose their representatives not on morals, ideas, intelligence or experience, but simply by the letter at the end of their names, I am not hopeful that change will occur any time soon. The cost to democracy is immeasurable.
Born in Memphis. The good ole white boys are the near dead. The vast majority of the younger folk are not racist. My family is mixed race now, and happily so. Once someone nukes gerrymandering TN will stop being the idiocracy we saw today.
Tennessee has a liberal tradition. Al Gore (remember him?) is from Tennessee, as was his father. For those with really long memories there's Estes Kefauver, Adlai Stevenson's vice presidential running mate in 1956.
Just so! And like Texas (Ralph Yarborough, and today, Lloyd Doggett), this seems like so long ago nobody can recognize it. The "New South" promised in the 70s by hopeful progressives has withered on the vine.
Yes. There are counter tendencies to this, including something of a reverse "great migration" of Black people back to the South. Those in power are trying to stave off the political implications with gerrymandering and limiting access to the ballot. As for Texas, let me give a shout out to my erstwhile Lion's Head drinking buddy (when he was visiting New York) Jim Hightower, and to the late ladies Ann Richards and Cissy Farenthold, with whom I once danced the Cotton-Eyed Joe (along with about fifteen other of her closest friends).
Please don’t forget Mollie Ivans, the keen-eyed and very witty columnist who knew Texas backwards and forwards. More backwards, actually, since the revanchist forces there, as in the rest of the South, are quite strong.
Of course! How could I forget Mollie? I'll always remember her calling out a Texas legislator for opposing funding for bilingual education because "If the English language was good enough for Jesus Christ, it's good enough for the schoolchildren of Texas."
My Daddy’s family left Edinburgh in the late 1600s and landed in Virginia. (One of my great grandfathers was deeded land from Lady Catherine Fairfax only 15 miles from my current home in Northern Virginia, a fact I learned only after Ancestry.com was developed.) A couple of them went west and stopped in Tippah County Mississippi where they remained. As far as I know, none of my family ever wanted to get very far away from rolling hills and deciduous trees, similar to the Scottish landscape.
I know people from Tennessee who are good people, as good as any you'd want to meet, but like Texas and Mississippi and all the rest, they are outnumbered and outmaneuvered by the worst sort of throwbacks and the US electoral and legal system is now controlled in many places by operatives who know exactly how to exploit the flaws and loopholes and weaknesses for their own gain.
Sadly so. The roots of racism are oh so deep and the sins of the fathers that birthed the culture of racism to rationalize the expedient of black slavery to steal the value of their labor are visited on their children.
Having been born and raised in NC, I am glad I left at age 18. I lived through the 50’s, the 60’s, the 70’s, etc. Racism is heavy throughout the South. That’s just fact and that’s why I never looked back after I left. I couldn’t live there amongst people who spouted pure unadulterated bullshit. Who beat people up. Who lynched blacks. I never want to be associated with that legacy. With that said, the two young Tennessee lawmakers, the two Justins, are so brave, so courageous, so smart, and I hope they continue to lead our country towards winning back democracy. Their eloquence is so reminiscent of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speeches. All they are trying to do is represent the people who voted them in and to push gun control!! JFC...the KKK never left Tennessee! We HAVE to support any of these young candidates who want to protect us with common sense laws. Please donate to the two Justins through ActBlue.
A day of reckoning is inevitable. If Amerika doesn't kill them first, in the blink of an eye today's children will be voters. To repeat what I posted earlier: When I see a gerrymandered state legislature disrespect valid public rage this way I can only wonder.that the hell they're thinking. These guys are all *nuts*. How long do they think they can get away with this s—t?
They can get away with it until voted out. And if they can control who is next elected President by taking into their own hands the right to choose the next president, they needn’t worry about that either
The Republicans in the Tennessee General Assembly must be idiots. They made the Justins into martyrs and I would guess they’re going to be back as soon as special elections are held.
Remember post Civil War Reconstruction and the so called “Redemption” that reasserted white patriarchal supremacy by all available means? This is “redemption II”, and in the wake of the successes of the Civil Rights and Women’s and LGBTQ+ movements, as before the aim is to reestablish white patriarchal supremacy. Salient preparatory steps along the way: The Southern Strategy that transformed the Party of Lincoln into the revanchist party of racism, religious bigotry and patriarchy, the adoption by Nixon of anti-abortionism to garner the Catholic vote and the Powell Memo that birthed the Heritage Foundation and its plutocratic partners shaping media, education and electoral politics.
The Civil War is not over, but, instead of regional, it is now National and in terms of the struggle between democracy and tyranny, it is also global.
At some point the Old South of my youth is going to come to a reckoning with who they are and what America really stands for, and how far they departfrom that standard. This was supposed to be about taking a stand against gun violence; and what we saw was straight out of old fashioned Southern Gothic. Including not expelling the white woman member of the state assembly. This entire scenario could have been staged by Democrat-leaning media consultants. The contrast could not have been more compelling advocacy for democracy.
Gerrymandering is both a electoral and generational problem. Partisan-driven redistricting is highly addictive. Back in1972, when I was working in the California Legislature's legal office, I worked on the bill that redrew the State Assembly legislative districts. I've been there.
I much prefer the kind of nonpartisan statewide redistricting commission that we now have in California. Nothing is perfect, but this system is a huge improvement. Protecting incumbency is like an opioid, there's never enough, and as time goes on, people need more to respond to population and demographic changes.
I couldn't believe what I was seeing. And over on that other network, the most punchable face on televison was laughing his preppy ass off. This on the same day that we learned more truths about Clarence and Ginni Thomas. He was the guy who complained about a high tech lynching. No Clarence. What we saw today was a high tech lynching.
extremely well said, Michael.
this has been a day just FULL of some of the most enraging shit I've seen since...I thought saying "1968" would have been a little bit of a stretch but I'm sticking with it.
the most unbelievable thing is that none of these scumbags (I'm talking about ALL of it, everywhere) think it's necessary to do any of this in those famous "smoke-filled rooms." it's right in our faces.
if there's any kind of plus side to this, it's that the two expelled Tennessee state senators suddenly have serious national profiles.
. . . and so does the Tennessee General Assembly. ;-)
that might actually be the way they think about it, bu7t that just means they're incapable of even ENVISIONING a "long game."
didn't they used to be FAMOUS for their "long game?"
What I saw was a bunch of mostly old fat white guys, apparently looking for the white sheets and hoods, and not a clue as to what kind if a fire they had just lit.
This is so disturbing it’s hard to get my thoughts together. This is fascism plain and simple. What I do know is the Tennessee white republican’s plan to shut them up has completely backfired. These two intelligent and passionate men are on fire now. Along with the youth who will soon be voters.
There's no bottom in this country, I find it ironic when we say another country is " corrupt". Pay attention to any GOP legislature, NC, TN, Montana et al and you will find anti democracy flourishing. In Wisconsin they will impeach a new Supreme Court Judge why? Because they can there is nothing to stop them. We can add ClarencevThomas to the corruption with today's news. Everywhere we look at every level there's authoritarianism and banana republic like corruption.
We are the richest and most powerful failed state perhaps in history and we could have been better. But we have half the country that are deplorable and refuse to be better.
I served 23 years in the Marine Corps infantry and I'm shaken to my core of what I see. The " idea" and principles as set forth in our founding haven't been close to being met, until we have better citizens we never will come close.
Add Idaho to that list. The governor signed the Abortion Trafficking bill today.
Amen. Semper Fi must be to the “self evident” truth: “All men are created equal.” It’s the principle marker we laid down before the world to justify our revolution and our founding.
Last I looked, one newly elected WI state senator was calling for the impeachment of Judge Protasiewicz. It's a long way from that to the state house of representatives actually taking steps to impeach her.
Yet another state I can no longer visit. The list is becoming too long.
Accept that politicians will do whatever is needed to assure success at Job#1 - getting re-elected.
I obviously just cannot understand how valuable their re-election is, since it seems that the blood of the innocent, spilled by crazy people who can carry a military grade firearm, dispensing as much carnage as they see fit is a justifiable political platform.
We live in a shameful time for much of our country. Sad. Very very sad.
The Tennessee legislature is proposing putting guns in schools by arming teachers?? Hoo boy. (Oh yes, I want to be a teacher and shape lives, ooh and extra bonus, I get to carry a gun.) The idea of telling teachers they have to have guns in the classroom is beyond ludicrous. What will happen to those teachers that refuse a gun? And I am sure that many will abhor the idea of being put in a position to maybe have to shoot and kill someone in the course of their workday, they are not law enforcement officers after all.
Lowering the legal age to possess guns, thereby making it legal for young and inexperienced people to own guns, just isn't a smart thing to do. Members of that legislature seem not to be concerned about safety at all and I cannot for the life of me understand their reasoning. More and more, the disregard for human life in the US seems to be coming from a place of absolute disinterest in a good quality of life for people in America, and horrifying self-interest in wealth and power on the part of lawmakers refusing to ban assault weapons.
This is just the beginning. The racism and fascism are out in the open now. It's going to continue to get worse-look at what Idaho did today.
The Civil War never ended for these assholes.
Time for mass protests, boycotts, and general strikes.
I need to look for this Idaho news. What now? What a state in terrible denial.
I would say it is time for the 1/3 to 1/2 of us who sit home on election day to vote. Protests and boycotts are not going to change a damn thing in the growing number of red states which are now controlled by the uber conservative political movement where ,yes, those who actually believe in anti democratic principles do vote.
I think these expulsions will boomerang on the Repugnants. Jones and Pearson are now known nationally. They will be able to raise money for their re-election from Democrats across the country, and they will easily win their seats. They have a national platform now, with their speeches televised on national TV. They have also increased awareness of gun violence against children. Nyah, nyah, Repugnants, you lose!
It’s going to be a close race between democracy and tyranny
I believe Tennessee law provides empty seats in the Legislature to be filled by Appointment, front County Commissioners. If so, those first youn Black men could be back in their Seats next week.
I have the feeling you're right. but it'll take TIME.
Lucian is correct - this is far from over. Judging from the demonstrators outside the chamber in Nashville, this action has further galvanized a fierce voting bloc of young people, minorities, and sensible individuals who don't want to see their children gunned down in school. What could be more common sense than that? The GQP legislators apparently have none. They will rue the day, just as the GQP generally is ruing the day the Dobbs decision came down. The Wisconsin Supreme Court election this week was a perfect example of what it is yet to come. And it will be glorious!
This is disgusting, DESPICABLE and just plain stupid. Done in the same vein as the plantation owner and his overseer - just because they can. Time to put those old Fools to rest.
But how now that they seem to have gerrymandered themselves into seemingly impregnable positions?
The Wisconsin Legislature has also been gerrymandered. But they made a fatal mistake. Have you ever heard of Michael Gableman? He is a former Wisconsin State Supreme Court Justice who the Republican Assemblyman Robin Vos hired to "investigate" voter fraud in the 2020 election at the behest of TFG. He did such a poor job and spent so much of taxpayer dollars ($2.5 million so far) that I think it woke a lot of voters in Wisconsin up and now they have a liberal majority on the State Supreme Court who will overturn the gerrymandered maps. The Michael Gableman fiasco is very interesting in a sad, disgusting, despicable way. Here's a link to the latest developments in the case: https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2023/03/03/gableman-hit-with-3rd-ethics-complaint-over-wisconsin-election-review/69966909007/
But the legislature is threatening to impeach the newly elected justice based on a case she presided over as a county judge. Hopefully cooler heads will prevail, but it seems the GOP will sink to any level to maintain control.
The GOP's strategy is to create as much drama and histrionics as possible . My gut feeling tells me this threat of impeachment is to try to make it appear that they still have control. This new judge threatens their very existence and rightly so.
Once again, the sane citizens of our state are embarrassed, angry and disheartened at what passes for legislating in our 75% Republican House. In a gerrymandered state where voters choose their representatives not on morals, ideas, intelligence or experience, but simply by the letter at the end of their names, I am not hopeful that change will occur any time soon. The cost to democracy is immeasurable.
What visceral fears can explain such loathsome behavior?
I'm pretty sure that NONE of these assholes is even remotely aware that fear is the source of anything.
as far as they're concerned, they're angry and there's no reason for introspection beyond THAT.
Luc, You been to Tennessee.?
I have. There are large number of folks there that believe their White god predestined white folks to own non white "humans."
And if they can't own non white people outright. They will own them financially as a commodity.
Of course that has created white slaves. Oops.
I meet folks there that were still proud klansmen in the 1990s. Dosen't seem much has changed.
I lived in Tennessee for 6 years.
Born in Memphis. The good ole white boys are the near dead. The vast majority of the younger folk are not racist. My family is mixed race now, and happily so. Once someone nukes gerrymandering TN will stop being the idiocracy we saw today.
Tennessee has a liberal tradition. Al Gore (remember him?) is from Tennessee, as was his father. For those with really long memories there's Estes Kefauver, Adlai Stevenson's vice presidential running mate in 1956.
Just so! And like Texas (Ralph Yarborough, and today, Lloyd Doggett), this seems like so long ago nobody can recognize it. The "New South" promised in the 70s by hopeful progressives has withered on the vine.
Yes. There are counter tendencies to this, including something of a reverse "great migration" of Black people back to the South. Those in power are trying to stave off the political implications with gerrymandering and limiting access to the ballot. As for Texas, let me give a shout out to my erstwhile Lion's Head drinking buddy (when he was visiting New York) Jim Hightower, and to the late ladies Ann Richards and Cissy Farenthold, with whom I once danced the Cotton-Eyed Joe (along with about fifteen other of her closest friends).
Please don’t forget Mollie Ivans, the keen-eyed and very witty columnist who knew Texas backwards and forwards. More backwards, actually, since the revanchist forces there, as in the rest of the South, are quite strong.
Of course! How could I forget Mollie? I'll always remember her calling out a Texas legislator for opposing funding for bilingual education because "If the English language was good enough for Jesus Christ, it's good enough for the schoolchildren of Texas."
thank Linda. Here's looking foward to such.
coincidently earlier today I was searching for an old dude named Hopper I worked for in AZ in 59.
My Daddy’s family left Edinburgh in the late 1600s and landed in Virginia. (One of my great grandfathers was deeded land from Lady Catherine Fairfax only 15 miles from my current home in Northern Virginia, a fact I learned only after Ancestry.com was developed.) A couple of them went west and stopped in Tippah County Mississippi where they remained. As far as I know, none of my family ever wanted to get very far away from rolling hills and deciduous trees, similar to the Scottish landscape.
I know people from Tennessee who are good people, as good as any you'd want to meet, but like Texas and Mississippi and all the rest, they are outnumbered and outmaneuvered by the worst sort of throwbacks and the US electoral and legal system is now controlled in many places by operatives who know exactly how to exploit the flaws and loopholes and weaknesses for their own gain.
agree
Sadly so. The roots of racism are oh so deep and the sins of the fathers that birthed the culture of racism to rationalize the expedient of black slavery to steal the value of their labor are visited on their children.
Having been born and raised in NC, I am glad I left at age 18. I lived through the 50’s, the 60’s, the 70’s, etc. Racism is heavy throughout the South. That’s just fact and that’s why I never looked back after I left. I couldn’t live there amongst people who spouted pure unadulterated bullshit. Who beat people up. Who lynched blacks. I never want to be associated with that legacy. With that said, the two young Tennessee lawmakers, the two Justins, are so brave, so courageous, so smart, and I hope they continue to lead our country towards winning back democracy. Their eloquence is so reminiscent of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speeches. All they are trying to do is represent the people who voted them in and to push gun control!! JFC...the KKK never left Tennessee! We HAVE to support any of these young candidates who want to protect us with common sense laws. Please donate to the two Justins through ActBlue.
And every single one of them is a church going, Bible quoting "Christian" who will be in church this Sunday to praise his version of God-white.
This is why I'm an atheist. I refuse to be in a religion that openly despises anyone who isn't white.
A day of reckoning is inevitable. If Amerika doesn't kill them first, in the blink of an eye today's children will be voters. To repeat what I posted earlier: When I see a gerrymandered state legislature disrespect valid public rage this way I can only wonder.that the hell they're thinking. These guys are all *nuts*. How long do they think they can get away with this s—t?
They can get away with it until voted out. And if they can control who is next elected President by taking into their own hands the right to choose the next president, they needn’t worry about that either
The Republicans in the Tennessee General Assembly must be idiots. They made the Justins into martyrs and I would guess they’re going to be back as soon as special elections are held.
I'd like to think so -- that these expelled members will run again and be RE-ELECTED as a poke in the eye to those fascistas in their senate.
Remember post Civil War Reconstruction and the so called “Redemption” that reasserted white patriarchal supremacy by all available means? This is “redemption II”, and in the wake of the successes of the Civil Rights and Women’s and LGBTQ+ movements, as before the aim is to reestablish white patriarchal supremacy. Salient preparatory steps along the way: The Southern Strategy that transformed the Party of Lincoln into the revanchist party of racism, religious bigotry and patriarchy, the adoption by Nixon of anti-abortionism to garner the Catholic vote and the Powell Memo that birthed the Heritage Foundation and its plutocratic partners shaping media, education and electoral politics.
The Civil War is not over, but, instead of regional, it is now National and in terms of the struggle between democracy and tyranny, it is also global.
Thank you for your clear-eyed discernment.
At some point the Old South of my youth is going to come to a reckoning with who they are and what America really stands for, and how far they departfrom that standard. This was supposed to be about taking a stand against gun violence; and what we saw was straight out of old fashioned Southern Gothic. Including not expelling the white woman member of the state assembly. This entire scenario could have been staged by Democrat-leaning media consultants. The contrast could not have been more compelling advocacy for democracy.
But how to unwind the gerrymanders that are strangling government of, by and for the people?
Gerrymandering is both a electoral and generational problem. Partisan-driven redistricting is highly addictive. Back in1972, when I was working in the California Legislature's legal office, I worked on the bill that redrew the State Assembly legislative districts. I've been there.
I much prefer the kind of nonpartisan statewide redistricting commission that we now have in California. Nothing is perfect, but this system is a huge improvement. Protecting incumbency is like an opioid, there's never enough, and as time goes on, people need more to respond to population and demographic changes.