Someone donated one with the motto written in Arabic.
The sheer volume of dumb stunts flowing out of the Texas and Florida state capitals is just amazing. How is a state like NC even supposed to compete?
2: Yes, this story, A Florida district declines dictionary donations as it navigates a new book law was circulating among my fellow librarians at work.
https://www.npr.org/2022/08/22/1118787106/florida-book-law-dictionary-donation
It occurred to me to wonder if the far-left (by US standards) California Legislature enjoys better public regard than its Texas equivalent. It does! Measured by net approval (approve minus disapprove), California hovers around +10, Texas around -10.
(US Congress is far lower, usually around the -50s. Probably all states enjoy a "closer to home" halo, plus more people having an opinion. Congress's recent peak, in Gallup, was the trifecta honeymoon of early 2021, when it got up to -25.)
I remember back when flag-burning was the big issue, a column arguing that you could tell when a democracy was slow dying, b/c it would prize the symbols of things, over the reality of things.
Instead of actual adherence to the Christian Gospels (gotta kidnap little migrant children), adherence to "In God We Trust".
Gotta mouth "support the troops" but no way will we actually *fund* the VA.
A lot of NYS courtrooms have "In God We Trust" signs, and I used to amuse myself on calendar calls working out anagrams. The only one I recall offhand is "Wet Rust Dingo."
That is to say, more people have an opinion on US Congress than do on state legislatures.
5: I saw some well-placed snark yesterday with Biden's student debt move about a bunch of right wing God-botherers furious that they would be asked to forgive debts.
10- Since the income based repayment changes (arguably more important than the topline dollar cancellations) eliminate interest on the principal, Biden could make it appealing to the Christian Right by arguing that only Jews charge interest.
Here's another fun story out of Texas about a middle school named after a guy whose life story needs to be censored before it can be presented to kids.
"Life is so Good," co-written by George Dawson, the grandson of a slave, contains descriptions of a lynching that Dawson witnessed. Dawson's friend was lynched after he was accused of raping a white woman.
I always thought "In God we trust" was a dumb motto because God is not a trustworthy character. Trusting God worked out poorly for Job (up to the last verse), Jonah, Anne Frank, and most of humanity. Fear Him, sure, but don't trust Him.
Obligatory: https://www.theonion.com/israelites-sue-god-for-breach-of-covenant-1819565490
Also this seems easy to sabotage by mailing In God We Trust posters to schools, decorated with dancing uteruses or whatever.
Another state encountered this, so Texas's law learned from their experience and said the poster "may not depict any words, images, or other information other than" the text and flag]. That's why the guy said "But who says it has to be in English?
But I wouldn't at all put it past a lower court to say "The statute said 'In God We Trust' in English and that means it has to be in English', or past the appellate courts to sit on their hands thereafter. And maybe that even is right legally? After all, it is the state (badly) expressing itself; states also have more leeway to throw out vanity license plates on those grounds.
income based repayment changes (arguably more important than the topline dollar cancellations)
Yes! I almost posted about this. 5% of discretionary income is really not much. One explainer I saw also said that loans would be forgiven after 10 years of repayment, which sounded too good to be true, and it is: it only applies to loans that were originally less than $12,000. The is admirably clear.
"In God We Trust" in English, only the letters all made out of little naked people.
11: I think it's well-established in modern Christian thought that opposition to charging interest makes you a Muslim.
Off topic(?) request: Heebie, you got a new toilet last year, right? What brand did you settle on (hahahah) and was there a bunch of discussion on the blog somewhere? Or am I misremembering?
We got the Toto Drake II and I've been exceedingly content with it.
4: Stories about people leaving California for Texas or Florida often feature people saying they didn't like California's political environment, not just the higher cost of living. To the extent that the people leaving actually like the politics where they're going, and are not just talking about what they didn't like in CA, I'm guessing they're probably helping to improve CA by no longer being in its electorate.
19: It sounds like a multi-generation musical supergroup.
20: Most people leaving California are low-to-middle-income, primarily motivated by housing prices. I think that outweighs the small stream of rich assholes who are replaced by people making new fortunes anyway.
I'm in Missouri, which probably has as much nonsense as Texas but the St. Louis Airport seems fine. Not going to raw dog the air just in case.
23: sure but are they the people generally in the newspaper profiles? It's always "I felt excluded by inclusive language and also we couldn't afford to keep buying a bedroom for each of our cars, which need cheaper gas."
25: Yes, but are we talking about makeup of newspaper pages or of the electorate?
19&21: Situation no win
Rush for the rains in Africa
I can't go on, so I give in
Gotta drag myself away from you
It's not worth it to me to look up one of the other guy's songs for this joke.
Yeah, I don't know his songs by heart either.
26: I was talking about a specific subset of people leaving CA ("to the extent that..."), not everyone for any reason.
(and not also being completely serious)
10. I've always loved the term "god-botherer," but I never looked it up till now, and it turns out I've misunderstood it all this time. I had thought it applied to basically all Christians, and that the party they were annoying was not other people, but a deistic God, who had created the world and then left it to its own devices while He went on to pursue other interests. But then Christians come along, always praying and supplicating and wanting His attention and forgiveness, and He's like, "omG, what is it this time, can't you people figure it out and leave me alone?"
31: Huh, I had thought the same thing. Apparently it just means someone who bothers other people about God? Boring.
19: It takes what heebie's dishing like a champ.
I learned it from watching you!
That reminds me of a cult I learned about in high school that would recruit followers with this enticing message, "I am a toilet. Are you?" Was this the Children of God?
https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/am-toilet-moses-david-1973-133235800
I didn't make this up!
On the topic of things I didn't make up:
"The senior boys did an initiation, where they went out to the baseball fields and made the younger players put cookies dipped in hot sauce between their butt cheeks. Then, they had to race each other, and if any of the cookies fell out the person would have to eat it. They made them do this in an open space completely naked. They then also were throwing hot sauce on some of the players, then at a later party, made some of the freshman get down to their boxers and give lap dances to some cheerleaders."
** pamphlet is much whiter than photographs show**
Yeah, I bet it is.
And other sources say they were specifically oreos.
40: Well, the Children of God aka Teens for Christ aka The Family of Love aka The Family aka The Family International has been accused of "child sexual abuse, physical abuse, exploitation, the targeting of vulnerable people, and creating lasting trauma among children raised in the group", but I don't think they are particularly racist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Family_International#:~:text=The%20Family%20International%20(TFI)%20is,Children%20of%20God%20(COG).
In 1976,[7] it began a method of evangelism called Flirty Fishing that used sex to "show God's love and mercy" and win converts, resulting in controversy.[8]
You don't say.
Not necessarily racist, but probably pretty white.
46: It gets better!
After 1978 Flirty Fishing "increased drastically"[15] and became common practice within the group. A Mo Letter from 1980 (ML #999 May 1980) for example was headlined "The Devil Hates Sex! --- But God Loves It!".[19] In some areas flirty fishers used escort agencies to meet potential converts. According to TFI "over 100,000 received God's gift of salvation through Jesus, and some chose to live the life of a disciple and missionary" as a result of Flirty Fishing.[17] Researcher Bill Bainbridge obtained data from TFI suggesting that, from 1974 until 1987, members had sexual contact with 223,989 people while practicing Flirty Fishing.
48: And more!
"Loving Jesus" is a term TFI members use to describe their intimate, sexual relationship with Jesus. TFI describes its "Loving Jesus" teaching as a radical form of bridal theology.[30] They believe the church of followers is Christ's bride, called to love and serve him with wifely fervor; however, this bridal theology is taken further, encouraging members to imagine Jesus is joining them during sexual intercourse and masturbation. Male members are cautioned to visualize themselves as women, in order to avoid a homosexual relationship with Jesus. Many TFI publications, and spirit messages claimed to be from Jesus himself, elaborate this intimate, sexual relation they believe Jesus desires and needs.
Yeah, I think I had vaguely heard of these guys before but the details are wild:
"Loving Jesus" is a term TFI members use to describe their intimate, sexual relationship with Jesus. TFI describes its "Loving Jesus" teaching as a radical form of bridal theology.[30] They believe the church of followers is Christ's bride, called to love and serve him with wifely fervor; however, this bridal theology is taken further, encouraging members to imagine Jesus is joining them during sexual intercourse and masturbation. Male members are cautioned to visualize themselves as women, in order to avoid a homosexual relationship with Jesus.
"Have sex with Jesus, but definitely not gay sex" is quite the theological take.
52: Yes, it's like Rule 34 for religion --if there's a belief you can make up, there's a religious group that believes it.
30/31: Wait, I thought it was a euphemism for sodomy. Like, to be understood as "god-humper" or "god-fucker," as a reference to their level of enthusiasm for religion. Like bugger. I'm so disappointed.
I'm so disappointed.
Sounds like someone could use an abusive sex-cult.
In other religions news, the Hobby Lobby by the Mexican restaurant I like is now a Spirit Halloween.
Which it's just too soon to open. Wait for October.
There's a waiter here with a strand of pearls and chunky earrings. Which suggests either Nebraska or Mexican restaurants are changing.
We don't have Nebraskan restaurants here. They don't serve their earrings chunky?
The pearls were probably not real because they were huge.
Nebraskans have small pearls. Got it.
Moby! Sally is reporting for a Bay Area public radio station and had a story on today's news about a homeless encampment. They have cob houses! (And pose a fire risk and need services and all that. Not a happy story. But the cob houses were a bright spot).
She's on the KPFA evening news today, starting at 37:40.
Yes, because cob is very fire proof.
Is she already graduated and working?
Graduated a year ago, and she's had this internship for several months now.
Time really moves. Congrats to her, belated.
Probably most of the interest comes from the homelessness angle, but just a whole show about cob would be better.
62: A man could get himself beat up in Omaha bars for saying that.
This whole thread reminds me of a lake in Iowa that, when I was a kid, had businesses with signs reading "In God We Trust. Everyone else, cash." I wonder how that works now that everyone uses cards?
That's just "cash, grass, or ass. Nobody rides for free" for Christians.
In other words, the monkeys appear to engage in "a form of self-directed, tool-assisted masturbation,"
So much for human supremacy!
74: Forgot to give link - here, this should allow you all to read the article
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/26/science/monkeys-sex-toys-masturbation.html?unlocked_article_code=AODKKa8gTNMB8XVJIc7_gMG36EeTmiLucKp--iUw7R2tWqhi2UMXerTkRug82P_9vc68INJfAxG-kaQ-PFGk9USttxw6g50szkv-ddgdvNsMPX5OwFAD0jf0R7WdCSEKOIUT-F-0NG9bC6mBJmcZx_bAfVclCJsxbWFDXweXjfZ6efJiMy34e5V6eiIsJebHqxZuJB6dQuQp5-g-jqJF9wBg8DL9sN632f0PkWhQroi8vYQDQobpctUXaecFW-Ihi1pH1lg4pslEguzLUPk6hAsBZ5yOWiYkMzAxuSIdKosT85WSA9DWL9tuXYDSE1-WgtF06V7kiO2Kwg5cbOshOMGyPCYuK3U&smid=share-url
Heebie, even in Texas, the kids are (mostly) all right.
I'm in Kansas, which seems fine. There's more rocks than I thought.
They don't call them the Flint Hills for nothing.
Anyway, whatever is the matter with Kansas, it works fine if you're drunk.
But what about the risk of being carjacked by Jesus: https://genius.com/Terry-allen-gimme-a-ride-to-heaven-boy-lyrics
sex cult nun is a middling decent memoir by a woman born & raised in the children of god/the family, granddaughter of the og nut/cult leader. not sure entirely correct to say they're not racist, as she tells it.
given where & when i grew up there was an ambient high quotient of current & former cult members about - both my parents' contemporaries who had joined & those who were born into cults & it was just something that was among the data points pertinent when forming friendships & romantic attachments, children born into cults tended to have certain recurring issues & prudently would be if possible consigned firmly to friend status. i'd hoped that tide had exhausted itself & then learned the parents of one of the kid's closest friends, an absolutely dear lovely person, are in a completely bullshit apocalyptic hideously exploitative cult. depressingly instantly explained so fucking much. can only take solace in the reported egregious sexual exploitation this cult is known for tends to target a different gender than this lovely kid, grim grim solace.
avoid high control groups like the plague folks!
I feel like 8 hours in Kansas should leave me prepared for that, but no.
Peltola is up to 39.64% in the latest count. (Recall that she was targeting 40% to have a good shot at winning in the ranked-choice tabulation.) This is very close to the final first-place count but there may be a few more votes trickling in.
Yeah, it's going to be very close. Great that Peltola has a shot at it, but wtaf is wrong with Republicans? Why would anyone vote for Palin when they have the option of someone with basic competence and sanity who's still far right? It's bananas.
But think of how much she pisses off normal people!
90: Particularly given that she just up and quit halfway through her last elected job.
Is that still considered "well-known" in Alaska? I am always amazed by how quickly facts slip from public grasp.
She resigned almost a lifetime ago, if you're Hawaii.
Yeah, it's wild. She's not even popular among Alaska Republicans! And yet.
I think heebie is right that memories are fading. I've seen some analysis saying that her support is driven by people new to Alaska since she resigned. Presumably right-leaning independents who like Trump, but are not really partisan.
It's like Dr. Oz, a small majority of the Republican Party actively prefers clowns and so they win primaries even when they have bad favorables with Republicans.
People moving to Alaska because they're the kinds of people who'd do things like vote for Sarah Palin.
We get people moving here all hopped up on Yellowstone, or some other media creation. Or just the frontier myth in general.
My kid added Montana State U to his college list and we were like, Where did that come from? But I guess they have a decent computer science program?
Although it appears the CS program is named after Governor Assault.
I think he donated the money before politics. Def before gov.
I'm an alum. It's a phenomenal value.
Do I like Evan Williams or Ezra Brooks?
This is important because I'm at a reception with only one.
That's very confusing, because both of those are bourbons, but only one is a co-founder of Twitter.
Do I like Jack Dorsey or Jack Daniels?
I'm drinking Crown Royal until I get an answer.
Thanks. That's the one they don't have.
But now I don't feel bad about sticking the host for the Crown Royal.
How ingrained is the "both sides" narrative in the elite American media? So ingrained that, in writing about pre-Civil War parallels with modern times Sarah Vowell literally finds a way to equate the extremists on both sides of the American slavery issue.
The country circa 1850 was trapped in a trilateral predicament in which President Fillmore, presiding over a Unionist center aiming to prohibit slavery's extension into the new western territories, was caught between a far left and a far right, some abolitionists being almost as keen on secession as the slaveholders -- an outcome that would have benefited the latter.
Vowell doesn't mention that sensible centrist Millard Fillmore signed the Fugitive Slave Act and the Compromise of 1850 that allowed New Mexico and Utah to be slave states.
Wow, that is an impressively terrible piece.
Not reading the NYT saves a bunch of time.
The phrase "Unionist center" applied to 1850 makes me think of the Encyclopedia Brown where they figure out an artifact is from a later period because it says "First Battle of Bull Run" when supposedly the second battle hadn't happened yet.
I would have gotten away with it if it was possible to make change for someone with $7.19.
The deer is up there again. I'm going to grill beef, but feel guilty about taunting her.
I'm happy to be corrected by teo, but it seems to me that allowing NM and Utah to decide the question themselves created basically a 0% chance that either would come in as a slave state.
NM definitely. I'm less sure about Utah; Mormons in those days had a complicated set of attitudes about slavery. When I get home I'll check what McPherson says about this.
Yeah, the wiki article on Mormons and slavery is very illuminating.
According to McPherson, Utah legalized slavery in 1852 and NM enacted a slave code in 1859. In the 1860 Census, however, Utah counted 29 slaves and NM had zero.
Maybe they were lying to look better?
New Mexico has it's issues, but is currently the only state with a license plate that is both colorful and not stupid.
Maybe after Kansas and Nebraska, the rest of the country was all cleared out of people interested in migrating to spread slavery.
Not cleared out of people by any means, but running out of places where the geography was conducive to the kind of plantation slavery that had developed in the South. There were tons of crazy schemes to invade places like Cuba and Central America.
129 is a good point. Plantation slavery IIRC was so profitable that it drove up the price of slaves to the point that you almost couldn't afford them unless you were going to use them for plantation slavery. And, like every other imported commodity, slaves would be more expensive the further you got from the seaport where they were landed, because of the cost of onward transportation to the point of final use.
So to get widespread slavery in New Mexico you would need to figure out something to do with slaves in New Mexico that was significantly more profitable than using them on plantations in the coastal southern states.
And when I say significantly, I mean it, because the logistics here are literally as well as figuratively lethal. There were no railroads into the New Mexico Territory in 1860, as far as I can tell, and I don't think there were any navigable rivers. You would have to move those slaves overland, on foot, at huge cost - not least because they would need to be very heavily guarded, and would almost certainly suffer severe attrition on the march.
And once you've got them there - to an undeveloped territory that's mostly desert, full of angry heavily-armed locals who will be only too happy to steal and/or liberate them - what on earth are you going to do with them that will make it worth your while?
129: Right, but you could say the same of Kansas, and lots of slavery-supporters went there. So it seems like there may have been a limited supply of people willing to spurn the economics.
Possibly it was less obvious that Kansas was not suitable for plantations?
132: to an extent? But you could get all the way to Kansas City by rail in 1860, and of course the Missouri is navigable all the way. Logistically that's a big difference.
And even with that, there weren't a lot of slaves there. Wiki says only 200 in the whole of Kansas on the eve of the Civil War, most of them domestic servants rather than plantation workers. Whether Kansas was a free state or a slave state was important, but more because it meant a change in the pro/anti slavery balance in Washington, rather than because there was some huge local pro-slavery plantation interest.
Slavery-friendly geography (as in 129) means two things, remember: you need to have Black Belt soil that will support high-yield intensive production of labour-intensive profitable crops, and you need to be surrounded by either pro-slavery people or sea, because otherwise your slaves will escape. (And even sea won't help if you're unfortunate enough to be fighting the Royal Navy - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_refugee_(War_of_1812)).
Even if you found good tobacco soil in Kansas, you've still got the problem of escapes.
Having been in Kansas less have 48 hours ago, I suspect that escaping from Kansas wouldn't be that much easier than escaping from Mississippi. It's a long walk across very open ground with not much food before you get to help.
Lot of underground railroad traffic out of Missouri, though, north to Iowa, which is about 170 km north of KC, along the Missouri river.
I think you'd about have to get to Council Bluffs to find people. I think you'd have to steal a horse or boat if you weren't in peak condition. And then you'd be a black person on a boat or horse in a place with very few black people moving about.
132, 133: Yeah, Kansas isn't exactly the Black Belt but it's not as completely incompatible with plantation slavery as areas further west. It's right next to Missouri, after all, which had plenty of slave plantations mostly growing hemp. In fact, what Douglas was trying to do with the Kansas-Nebraska Act was carve out a more slavery-friendly part of the Nebraska Territory that would presumably come in as a slave state under popular sovereignty to balance the presumed free state that would come from the rest of the territory.
It didn't work out that way, obviously, and the ultimate result of the violent struggle between pro- and anti-slavery factions was that the antis won and Kansas came in as a free state. But that was a very contingent outcome and not an inevitable result of the geography.
Geographically speaking, Kansas has way more rocks than I remembered. Not that I've ever spent much time there. But there were lots of areas where when the road cut through a hill, you'd see it was rock and not dirt.
Politically, you don't see the density of signs for Trump that you do in rural Pennsylvania, even if you account for the lower population.
Extreme SE Kansas has a very southern feel, but I do not think it was where the early settlements were (much more out of K City and St, Joseph's MO).
141: In fact the cover of the 2019-2020 official Kansas Highway map, was deceptively rocky. (The location was literally on the Colorado border)
People driving through should stop in the Flint Hills if possible.
luckily for the enslavers, all the economic & logistical issues with enslavement of africans & their descendants didn't apply to enslaving indigenous folks already in new mexico & the rest of the west. the different ag & industrial activities in the west produced different patterns of forced labor, servitude & bondage but even the west could rise to the occasion & import significant numbers of ruthlessly exploited workers from overseas whose liberty was severely restricted.
Yes, 147 is an important point. There was no shortage of forced labor in any of these places! On NM specifically, I will renew my occasional recommendation of Captives and Cousins for more details.
Still is! As I'm sure dq was implying. Coerced by poverty, unable to return to Mexico from fear of attracting ICE's attention. A major theme on the UFW's twitter account is how long it has been since the profiled worker was able to see their family in Mexico. For many, it has been decades.
The railroad. My ancestors built the other end, starting from Omaha. Got a much better deal and were able to buy a farm out of it.
jfc people yes the transcontinental rr built famously from the west by chinese migrant labor. not chattel slaves but paid less than white workers & treated far worse. there was no citizenship & farm owning bonus after the spike was driven, let's just say. & the uk empire gets a walk on role with the political-social-economic misery in so china that facilitated recruitment.
The U.K. also played a big role in encouraging Irish labor to go to America.
Anyway, the irony is that now China doesn't want my beans.
