DL Open Thread: Sunday, October 27, 2024
Yes, It Was A Great Speech. At least in part because Michelle made a very important point:
“If your wife is shivering and bleeding on the operating room table during a routine delivery gone bad, her pressure dropping as she loses more and more blood, or some unforeseen infection spreads and her doctors aren’t sure if they can act, you will be the one praying that it’s not too late,” Mrs. Obama said. “You will be the one pleading for somebody, anybody, to do something.”
And while she acknowledged the anger that many Americans feel about the “slow pace of change” in the country, she warned: “If we don’t get this election right, your wife, your daughter, your mother, we as women, will become collateral damage to your rage.”
Mrs. Obama’s words — at a rally in Michigan where she introduced Vice President Kamala Harris — amounted to an extraordinary centering of women’s bodies and their private experiences in an American presidential election. She discussed menstrual cramps and hot flashes, describing the shame and uncertainty girls and women feel about their bodies. She told women they should demand to be treated as more than “baby-making vessels.”
And she castigated the media and many voters for holding Ms. Harris to a higher standard than her opponent, for “choosing to ignore Donald Trump’s gross incompetence, while asking Kamala to dazzle us at every turn.”
Early-Voting R’s May Well Be Voting For Harris. Check out the over 11-minute video from Meidas Touch. Might as well get my prediction out there: Harris will win. Women are gonna turn out in droves. The Great Unwashed Angry White Young Males will not.
The History Of American Christian Nationalism. Hey, it’s Sunday, maybe you have some down-time. Read this. Know thine enemy. Not just great reporting from Pro Publica, but great history as well. A tiny taste:
Inside a red-rimmed sports arena, more than 15,000 evangelicals gathered with conservative activists to discuss how to get Christians more involved in politics.
They had come to an event known as the National Affairs Briefing because the evangelists Billy Graham and Bill Bright reported that God had issued each of them the same warning: America had only 1,000 more days of freedom. After speaking with the pair, televangelist James Robison said God had urged him to host a conference that would “refocus the direction of America.”
The sea of believers roared as Republican presidential candidate Ronald Reagan took the podium.
“This is a nonpartisan gathering, and so I know that you can’t endorse me,” Reagan said. “I want you to know that I endorse you and what you are doing.”
The moment underscored an important shift in American politics, helping to cement evangelical Christians as a reliable conservative voting bloc.
But while Reagan took the spotlight, backstage in Dallas, Robert Billings, a Reagan campaign adviser who had helped found the Moral Majority, nodded to a less prominent visionary: R.J. Rushdoony, the father of a more extreme movement known as Christian Reconstructionism.
“If it weren’t for his books, none of us would be here,” Billings remarked, as recalled in an essay by Gary North, an economic historian and Rushdoony’s son-in-law.
You know you want to read more. Read more.
Could This Issue Doom Rick Scott In Florida? A longshot–but it should:
Wetter, more destructive hurricanes, like the back-to-back storms that pummeled Florida this fall, are pushing the state’s homeowners insurance market to the brink of collapse.
When asked by Florida Atlantic University pollsters in June who was most responsible for the high cost of insurance in the state, the largest share of surveyed voters blamed Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. But it was his Republican predecessor, Rick Scott, now a U.S. senator, who lured low-quality insurance companies to the state and left Florida’s publicly owned insurer-of-last-resort agency struggling to provide for more homeowners as private insurers went bust or refused to renew policies in hurricane-prone areas.
Now Scott’s Democratic challenger for Senate, former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, is hoping voters can make the connection between Scott’s eight years as governor and the financial squeeze caused as insurers increasingly fail to pay to repair properties damaged in hurricanes Helene and Milton.
As part of a years-long crusade to force more Floridians into the private insurance market, Scott raised premiums and rescinded discounts from the Citizens Property Insurance Corp., the government-backed nonprofit insurer, all while giving private companies extra incentives and protections to operate in the state.
Now that warming-fueled storms are routinely causing billions of dollars in damage across Florida, private insurers are fleeing the state, forcing customers back to Citizens. But now the deals the public insurer offers come with higher premiums and worse coverage.
The climate emergency was already a hot-button political issue in Florida long before devastating back-to-back hurricanes named Helene and Milton barreled into the state in recent weeks.
Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor who considers global warming “leftwing stuff”, angered environmental advocates by signing a bill in May scrubbing the words “climate change” from state statutes and in effect committing Florida to a fossil fuel-burning future.
They saw his comments and actions as merely the latest acts of an extended period of climate denialism by state leaders – including Rick Scott, his predecessor as governor who is seeking re-election as US senator next month in a tight race with the Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell.
Scott also censored talk of the climate crisis. Nicknamed “Red Tide Rick” by opponents for slashing $700m in water management funding intended to fight toxic algae blooms, Scott “systematically” disassembled “the environmental agencies of this state”, according to the Democratic former senator Bill Nelson.
What do you want to talk about?
Expecting electoral carnage by the usual suspects of the south, and believe “Christian Nationalism” will play a big part in it. As noted radical Christian groups have thirsted for revenge on a changing America for a long time, and seek a far right “Messiah” to lead them to a Fascist promised land where dissent is not tolerated, as that is the pure essence of religion. No need to look to Israel, Gaza and now Iran, we have the same home grown hatred right here, right now.
With all due respect, the last thing we should be doing is underwriting insurance in places people shouldn’t be incentivized to dwell in the first place.
Yep, I should have added this blurb from the article:
“If elected, Mucarsel-Powell said, she would try “to sit down with Marco Rubio” and “work together to provide solutions.” But she said that stronger building codes are just part of the issue and that the federal government should stop providing financing to property developers building in areas that are forecast to face more flooding as seas rise.
“We need to be responsible in providing mortgage loans for new homes or loans to developers that are building knowing they’re building in areas that would be susceptible to flooding and building in a state where we know we have experienced severe hurricanes,” she said. “That should have already been changed years ago.”
All development in Florida should cease. That won’t happen, so fuck ’em all.
Agreed, but a strange sort of fun to watch at a great distance.