US Politics May 2021: Joe Manchin's Choose-Your-Adventure Book

No one else stepped up, so I stepped in.

Update on Schumer’s imaginary friends

The key part of this conversation with Chuck Schumer, to me, is the way his thinking on the median voter has changed. https://t.co/27UpHiVFQ8

— Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) April 30, 2021

Now he thinks these voters, "Joe and Eileen Bailey," just want government to help them, and they don't care who else it helps. And so the political path for Democrats is to do anything and everything so these voters feeling helped by the government, right now.

— Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) April 30, 2021

They've got footage:https://www.npr.org/2021/05/01/992713857/oregon-lawmaker-who-opened-state-capitol-to-far-right-protesters-faces-charges
A few highlights:
Shortly after that breach, demonstrators scuffled with state troopers and Salem police. One man is accused of spraying officers with bear mace, allowing the crowd to make their way further into the building. Several people were arrested before the Capitol was cleared, and members of the crowd went on to shatter glass doors and assault journalists outside the building. Nearman, meanwhile, promptly walked around the building and entered on the opposite side.

At least three people who participated in the Salem protest went on to participate in the attack on the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.
...Nearman suggested in the statement he was the victim of a political attack, and that he was being subjected to "mob justice."
...In 2017, his then-legislative aide gave a gun to a convicted felon, who then brought it to a pro-Trump demonstration at the Capitol, the Oregonian/OregonLive reported. Court records show the aide, Angela Roman, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor in the incident.

...On Saturday, he's slated to appear at a Salem rally in support of gun rights alongside former congressional candidate and QAnon conspiracy theory supporter Jo Rae Perkins, according to a flyer for the event.

Newman is slated to appear, not the aide (although maybe the aide will be there too).

“The era of big government is over,” POTUS Bill Clinton famously declared in his 1996 State of the Union address.

versus:

Biden has consciously cloaked himself in the legacy of FDR, to hark back to an earlier age of liberalism when government pulled the country out of despair.

— Senator John Cornyn (@JohnCornyn) May 1, 2021

Waiting for the “shit, I didn’t mean to say New Deal liberalism worked!” retraction.

Coming from Sen. Cornyn that is one weird tweet.

Twice in the last month John Cornyn has posted tweets that are directly copied and pasted from published articles (in Politico and the NYT respectively) without any attribution whatsoever. A really strange look for a US Senator. pic.twitter.com/jqlOYD1AhQ

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 1, 2021

That makes sense, he was probably trying to send a link to someone and can’t figure out how it works.

Cornyn has never given the impression of being intelligent.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/may/02/mitt-romney-booed-and-called-traitor-at-utah-republican-convention

please don't make me like romney

here you go:

In his first 100 days, the President has proposed $6 trillion in new spending—about 4x our total federal budget! That amount of spending jeopardizes our kids' future and saddles them with decades of interest costs. pic.twitter.com/Ta5OYgUKfi

— Senator Mitt Romney (@SenatorRomney) April 29, 2021

there's also tweet after tweet about cHiNa

whew, thanks

Give this man a rubber ball nose and giant red shoes

Quote from Senator Chris Coons (D-Del.) on his opposition to vaccine waiver: pic.twitter.com/j0AVqGNCip

— Jeff Stein (@JStein_WaPo) May 2, 2021

American exceptional ism, folks

Q-Trump vanguarder crashing party leadership in South Carolina:
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/05/02/lin-wood-south-carolina-race-485189

“Brain worms” is usually a joke but Lin Wood might actually actually have some heretofore undiscovered neurological disease.

My own diagnosis of Lin Wood is 'utterly shameless power-hungry publicity-chaser' with a large dash of sociopathy to help it go down more easily.

i like how Trump endorsed the incumbent but it doesn't matter - Wood is banking on Trumpiness as a concept overriding Trump as a person.

he may be right! some (mostly old white) people just like the idea of an old white guy who maintains the status quo and sorts us into good and bad. like jesus. or santa.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBAh6o4Ak9M

Zuri got so big!! lol <3

right?!?

Presidential fact-checker David Dale on the first hundred days of this administration:

"Biden is averaging about 1 false claim every 3.5 days.

In the last year I counted Trump before I had to quit the tally because it was too much to handle, Aug. 2019-July 2020, Trump averaged about 8 false claims every 1 day."

into this

The bottom 95% of earners will not see a tax increase under Biden's proposal. Almost all of the changes would affect the top .7% of earners. https://t.co/L4Gwgelgza

— Sawyer Hackett (@SawyerHackett) May 4, 2021

"caught"

Scoop from @kadiagoba: Kevin McCarthy caught on hot mic bad-mouthing Liz Cheney https://t.co/vpFxZ9qVX5

— Jonathan Swan (@jonathanvswan) May 4, 2021

Politicians don't say anything into a microphone they don't expect people to hear.

whom will this surprise, though? He's said that shit aloud.

I mean also, Liz Cheney is not our friend. Liz Cheney still sucks.

they rehabbed W I’m sure Luz will be a shoo in

Lulz

Lol Chaney was a monster too

Politicians don't say anything into a microphone they don't expect people to hear.

https://au.news.yahoo.com/that-awkward-moment-when-peter-dutton-realised-the-mic-was-on-29499733.html

Lol Chaney: Underrated Cure Member

Saw Lol Chaney Jr. walking with the queen.

Pretty much being a d1ck is a 'must have' when buying your own conservative politician world wide.

Trump’s new social media platform is just a feed on his website to approximate him tweeting.

I love the image of him ranting at Mar-a-Lago wedding guests about the 'verrry interesting' recount happening in AZ... magic memories for the happy couple

Trump’s new social media platform is just a feed on his website to approximate him tweeting.

― Joe Bombin (milo z), Tuesday, May 4, 2021 4:45 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

it's incredible

gotta admire the commitment to shitposting

honestly good for him. every time I see an online “libertarian” or strict cOnStItuTiOnLisT whining about corporations like Twitter or FB finally kind of enforcing their TOS my first thought is why the fuck don’t you Pull Yourself Up by Your Own Bootstraps and make your own platform, dipshit. and by george this soup-brained asshole did it.

(obv Twitter & FB are terrible and deserve to be broken up at the very least, if not outright nationalized)

Trump’s new social media platform is just a feed on his website to approximate him tweeting.

― Joe Bombin (milo z), Tuesday, May 4, 2021 4:45 PM (one hour ago)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e5td7-Bpvc

Are you talking about the "news" section on 45office.com? Or something else? I kind of want to gaze in horror at whatever it is, at least for a minute.

this thing is amazing - it has permalinks that don't work, "hearts" that don't do anything, and "share" buttons that copy only the first 55 characters into a tweet for you, or on video posts, don't work.

rong thread though, unless this useless sack of fermented meat juice does anything to do with politics, let's keep him to his own C/D isothread

unperson: https://www.donaldjtrump.com/desk

christ what an asshole

nope not clicking

Paid for by Save America JFC

More like "Save America, KFC."

He's railing against Facebook and yet there's a little Facebook 'share' logo on the right of the post

CNN has been going on--on TV, and on their site--about Liz Cheney and Kevin McCarthy for 48 hours now, like the fate of the world hinges on this. (MSNBC too, I'd bet.)

I want to not care about this but it’s still disturbing, in that it’s further confirmation that the GOP platform is still Trump and nothing else. I like to think that this means the GOP is willingly allowing Trump to be an anchor tied around their necks, but time will tell.

Well, it definitely would not be a good thing if all the remaining normal assholes in the GOP were forced out and replaced with outright lunatics, esp. if the GOP got the house back. Which is not outside of the realm of possibility, either of those things

I don't care.

Spend the hour analyzing the infrastructure plan. Liz Cheney, a horrible human in other contexts, is irrelevant to me.

yea I found the booing of Mitt Romney in Utah to be kinda chilling

I get it -- the Beltway class loves this shit

If they want to hitch their wagon to Trump, have at it:
* the first incumbent seeking reelection to see his party lose the White House, Senate, and the House of Representatives since Herbert Hoover
* Per Gallup, he left office with the lowest average approval ratings in the history of the modern Presidency

Not exactly a political juggernaut, but they can't quit him

To be fair, it's not like any of their alternatives are looking any more promising.

yeah the GOP has kind of reached their logical endpoint, they've left themselves no other option but triple down

i really want to hope that by doing this their influence will just start to whither, but I live in the USA and know better

this will continue to be a problem until democrats take concrete action on any number of voting issues, which they have shown zero interest in doing so far

mass disenfranchisement opens the door to these GOP crazies

xp to Alfred- yeah I don’t give a shit about Liz Cheney, I’m more thinking about what this means for the GOP- again I kind of don’t give a shit, but I was hoping Trump’s loss would lead them to look beyond his particularly toxic brand of politics and move on. But if not… interesting, disturbing, maybe that’s a good thing if it backfires for them or if it proves out that he’s an anchor dragging the GOP out of power. But time will tell! Disturbing in that the GOP is bound to win some elections going forward no matter what, so if we’re looking at Trumpy candidates going forward instead of Romney/McCain type candidates for the GOP… I’m disturbed.

It's more the duration of the story than the story itself I was posting about. Report on it, yes. But two days later, it's basically the same headline--GOP fracture, "hot mic," Cheney will be voted out. Until there's something new to add, move on. Which I realize is a bigger complaint about the media in general.

epistantophus and clemenza both tom

otm too

Lol

I think I'd like to be Tom Seaver--epistantophus?

Tom Hagen

this guy gets it

I truly think it will have absolutely zero effect one way or the other on their electoral prospects. https://t.co/WqFR4gPFsJ

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) May 5, 2021

the thing is though republican voters will not vote for a democrat. and there a lot of them so the potential for another crazy motherfucker winning the presidency is high enough for me to hope the republicans figure their shit out

I think I'd like to be Tom Seaver

Today's Tom Seaver he gets high on you

Considering how histrionic some of the state GOP reaction has been, there is a deep well of crazy out there. I think it is just T-minus so many days until something goes down that will make what happened on 1/6 look like a kegger.

Maybe it will die down, but there are too many people funding and making money off the lunacy. It is not even like Fox News or any of the profit centers fleecing this audience has changed, if anything they are doubling down on the whackamole lunacy.

Hayes is otm of course but it should be said that this sort of lunacy does seem to help the Democrats - 81 million people voted for Joe Biden for God's sake

I dunno, when there are only two parties, and one of them is packed with lunatics, anything less than total obsolescence makes me a little nervous. I don't know how much this helps the Dems, but I also don't know how much it hurts the GOP. It fact, more lunatics and less regular losers might even *help* them at the polls these days, or at least help them enough.

does it help enough to overcome the immense structural advantages that the republicans currently have and are working day and night to make even bigger?

xp

Thank you for your honesty, Senator.

This is the whole ballgame. McConnell said this almost verbatim during the Obama era. Time to learn from our mistakes. We have the majority, let’s use it and not worry about pandering to a party that just admitted it’s not interested in governing.pic.twitter.com/8hwfngH9OP

— Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen) May 5, 2021

does it help enough to overcome the immense structural advantages that the republicans currently have and are working day and night to make even bigger?

xp

― the mai tai quinn (voodoo chili),

It helped enough to get Biden elected but not enough to lose 12 House seats. President Manchin needs to support voter reform.

Whew.. I was worried McConnell was gonna yammer some platitude about cooperating across the aisle for the good of the American people...

I've said it several times before but thinking the Republican party will go away is pure fantasy. Roughly 40% of the country has a conservative mindset; they will vote for anyone who is to the right of Democrats.

40% of ILX is conservative

more lunatics and less regular losers might even *help* them at the polls these days

I feel like four years ago GOP paired Trump with Pence, to try to mitigate a bit of Trump's bluster and braggadocio with some midwestern churchiness. Now that they've discovered that batshit bluster *is* what sells to their base they'll abandon any semblance of "normalcy" and go full-on lunacy party. Bring on Trump/Gaetz 2024.

https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/EYLQT5GRTM23LOTY55YHET3JVM.png

"What about me, Donald?"

they'll abandon any semblance of "normalcy" and go full-on lunacy party.

They road tested that one in Alabama with Roy Moore vs. Doug Jones. It went poorly enough that Alabama sent their first Democrat to the US Senate in ages. That's in Alabama, mind you. The R's biggest problem rn is that Republican primary voters will continue to embrace full-on lunacy, even when it delivers general election losses.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E0o20DJUYCE7Y4g?format=jpg&name=medium

DT peed in that coffee.

Roy Moore is the bottom of the barrel, and even he lost to Doug Jones by only about 1.5%. That is not a margin that make me comfortable.

And then Doug Jones got beat by the human equivalent of a deflated football.

Can we stop discussing Trump

i believe that coach tuberville is just the man to win the war. yeah, we were down before in the earlier quarters. we lost some battles. but now it's 4th and long, and we're on the 40-yard line and it's a little too long for a field goal. but coach says it's just as well because america doesn't tie in wars, america wins the football game. and coach says we don't even need time outs to win back this nation. we just need to keep our air game solid and make sure we get out of bounds and save some clock time.

us politics 2021: drenched in sweat, we love you coach

what about me
it isn't fair
I've had enough now I want my share

President Tuverville is fucked if we have to invade Bear Bryant Stadium IIRC

Tuberville? More like Mr. Potato Head.

Because his name is "tuber" and he has a potato for a brain.

https://i.imgur.com/hmiyPbq.pnghttps://i.imgur.com/hmiyPbq.png

I could only spot 4 differences, what is the 5th?

https://cdn.eldeforma.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/theyre-the-same-picture-pam-the-office-meme.png

In the first he's saying. "c'mon, man", while in the second he's saying "malarkey".

you philistines, the one on the bottom has an implied extratextual presidential halo while the one on top does not

Hard times for Rowdy Rudy!

Rudy Giuliani, the former personal lawyer for ex-president Donald Trump, has reduced the size of his personal entourage, according to three people familiar with the matter.

The news of Giuliani’s shrinking entourage comes after years of stories suggesting he might be having financial difficulties — or is at least seeking creative ways to make money as he manages his growing legal woes.... Giuliani accidentally left a voicemail for a reporter in which he said, “The problem is we need some money.”

"Accidentally"

true or false:

I don't think people appreciate that the US is in a little two-year window between being ruled by vicious lying authoritarian morons the last time and being ruled by vicious lying authoritarian morons the next time. Take some big breaths, cause we're going back under soon.

— David Roberts (@drvolts) May 6, 2021

More true than false, probably, but also a prime example of the needless doom-tweeting that led to my break from twitter.

i hear that. i took a break for a few weeks and i'm like a moth to the flame i guess.

tbf to roberts, the vast majority of his writing is about how he thinks the problem can be fixed. he doesn't usually just end it, like that. alas

good to have you back, though

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/05/2022-midterms-democratic-odds-low.html

Dems are doomed to lose house says Eric Levitz :

To keep the House in 2023, Democrats need Biden to stay popular, the Democratic base to stay mobilized, and Manchin & CO. to embrace a ban on gerrymandering.

At present, only one of those things is happening

xp <3

This Elie Mystal piece from The Nation is excellent.

I am not worried about what Mitch McConnell will do should Republicans take back the Senate in 2022. I am not worried about what Republicans will do should they retake all of government in 2024. I am not worried, because I already know the answer: When Republicans have power again, they will do “the worst.” I don’t waste a lot of time or mental energy contemplating the worst, because history has shown that I am simply not creative enough to imagine what evil Republicans will come up with next. No matter where I think the bottom is, Republicans will always find a new one.

Unfortunately, many centrist and moderate Democrats seem paralyzed by the fear of what Republicans will do if they take back the Senate or the White House. They’re afraid to pass sweeping policy or procedural reforms because of how they think Republicans will punish Democratic politicians in the future. It’s hard to even have a debate about big, structural changes to how government functions because too many arguments devolve to “If Democrats do anything, Republicans will be super mean.”

...

I will acknowledge that Republicans will use any action by Democrats as an excuse to further vitiate democracy, should they get a chance. If Democrats kill or even just weaken the filibuster, Republicans will use whatever small Senate majority they’re able to cobble together to ram through the most divisive and extremist laws they can think of. If Democrats add four justices to the Supreme Court, Republicans will add 10 when they get a chance. If Democrats prosecute Trump for corruption and tax fraud, Republicans will prosecute Joe Biden for having ice cream before dinner if they have to. That is their way.

Republicans are not bluffing when they promise retribution should Democrats use the power they have won. But so what? How is that any worse than what we have now? Republicans supported a whole-cloth lie about the results of the last election, which led directly to a massive insurrection against the government. Many of their voters were willing to capture and kill elected representatives or quietly supported those who would. Republicans have chosen to pursue power at any cost, and yet there are Democrats like Joe Manchin who think defending procedural gridlock will “heal” these divides.

Who in their right mind thinks Republicans won’t use all the power they have in, say, 2025 just because Democrats showed restraint in 2021? Republicans never hold their fire because they’re afraid of the Democratic response. They never say, “If we’re not careful, we might piss off Chris Coons.”

...

If securing voting rights means Democrats have to break the filibuster to pass legislation (and it does), then they must do that. If enforcing the constitutional protections of the right to vote means Democrats have to add justices to the Supreme Court (and it does), then Democrats must do that. If these and other acts of protecting democracy mean Lindsey Graham will go on Fox News and angry-cry while vowing vengeance, Democrats must risk that and sell tickets to the meltdown. Voting rights, voting access, and voting certification are among the only things that matter.

that is a good piece, thanks! i was just thinking this morning about getting my nation subscription back up and running

https://i.imgur.com/7Wv7j2G.jpg

idgi

look at all the hands, he has so many hands, clearly he is so old he needs extra hands.

No giant scribbled notes in Sharpie = clearly he's a puppet just reading whatever they hand him.

there's nothing to get, i just like biden's ray-bans

He has a '67 Corvette as well, Karl

i'm not really a car guy, other than the acura ILX (best in class), but biden looks pretty happy in his corvette

https://i.imgur.com/IU0F3IO.jpg

man, could my dad drive a car!

then biden puts his hand on the steering deal and makes racecar noises while pretending to honk

We've already had a president do that, iirc in a truck.

today's dumbest controversy pic.twitter.com/XFN96lrnoQ

— John Whitehouse (@existentialfish) May 7, 2021

xpost Yeah, I wonder the last time trump drove anything faster than a golf cart... decades probably, if ever

But he made 61 references to the Blessed Virgin Mother

Biden should have just said God 12 times at the end to prove he is more Christian than Trump

Probably should have tried harder to emulate this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzq3uoOjmP0

As I recall, when Trump had the protestors gassed and marched across the street to hold up a Bible in front of a church, he didn't mention God even once!!

that was one of the weirdest, worst days

Yeah, I wonder the last time trump drove anything faster than a golf cart... decades probably, if ever

Last confirmed instance in 1995, though presumably not his actual last.

"DeSantis signed these changes into law six months after he boasted about how Florida was 'the state that did it right' in the 2020 election, four months after his Secretary of State boasted of how 'safe, secure and orderly' things were there."

oh must we talk about this now -- I've been dealing with that shit for days

I mean, I guess we could talk about the depressing one coming down the pike in Texas instead. It's all infuriating.

on the plus side, at least people won't be rigging elections anymore.

In the AZ recount, they're actually using microscopes to look for bamboo fibers - smoking-gun proof that the Chinese sent boxes of bamboo biden ballots

good thing they got rid of all the wasteful government spending

I don't know, bamboo is practically a renewable resource.

Self-renewing, even! You can't get rid of it! (My next door neighbor has a bamboo grove in his backyard and every time he chops it down it grows back in like a week. I'm thinking of buying a panda.)

“There’s accusation that 40,000 ballots were flown in to Arizona and it was stuffed into the box and it came from the south-east part of the world, Asia, and what they’re doing is to find out whether there’s bamboo in the paper,” John Brakey, a longtime election audit advocate, told reporters.

After election day, rightwing activists falsely claimed that China had imported ballots to tip the election for Biden and that those ballots could be identified because there was bamboo in the paper. Earlier, workers were using UV lights to examine ballots; while the purpose of doing so was never clear, there was a conspiracy theory after the election that Trump had watermarked ballots (the UV examinations have stopped).

Fucking wingnuts, with all due respect to actual wingnuts (>o<)

Christ, I was ignoring this whole bullshit thing and I genuinely thought Andy the Grasshopper's post was a joke.

John Brakey, an official helping oversee the audit of the 2020 Arizona election, says auditors are looking for bamboo fibers because of a baseless accusation that 40K ballots from Asia were smuggled here. #AzAuditPool pic.twitter.com/57UOBYIehg

— Dennis Welch (@dennis_welch) May 5, 2021

I don't know whether it's a good or a bad thing that I'm no longer surprised when genuinely insane people demonstrate their genuine insanity.

The fools! China printed the ballots on rice paper...heheheheh

the fraudulent ballots were all eaten after the votes were recorded, the perfect crime!

Maybe someone should look into that suspicious increase in panda sightings in Arizona last November.

But were there any Zamfir sightings?

somebody was talking about a possible solution to the AZ problem would be shipping in pandas from one of the zoos around the US and seeing which ballots they ate.

apparently the feds are starting to pay a lot more attention to this AZ audit, may get interesting.

Wow America is super racist

So are they looking for bamboo fibers because we all know Chinese people, like their pandas, just roll around in bamboo all day, or are the 40K ballots supposedly made of bamboo?

it has to do with the voting machines in venezuela. it ALL has to do with the voting machines in venezuela

Well, when Biden takes away our beef and hotdogs and beer, we'll all be eating bamboo shoots as well

Whhyyyyyyyy wooooonnntttt theeeeereeseeee peeeeeeeooopppleeeeee diiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

Cos they bes like ninjas like.
Can't you tell by their efficiency.
If you can throw a lot of shit at a wall I'm sure you can get to see what sticks.
Or run around like a chicken without a head and oops accidentally, not intentionally ruin ballots.
I think AZ might need to tighten it's post election voting legislation.
Pure Freudian gold.
Oh bonus fun didn't I hear they were planning to continue this elsewhere.

https://media.s-bol.com/RW908Y72XEY/547x840.jpg
it all makes sense now

lindsey graham otm i guess?

“She [Liz Cheney] just believes he’s disqualified himself by his conduct, more than it’s any kind of political analysis,” said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.). “If you look at a political analysis, there’s no way this party is going to stay together without President Trump and his supporters. There is no construct where the party can be successful without him.”

Definitely feels like the Democrats need to pit Trumpers and anti-Trumpers against each other. If they can succeed the benefits could be enormous.

preferably in Thunderdome

WE DON'T NEED ANOTHER TARIFF

That Graham quote is kinda nakedly admitting both that the GOP is effectively on life support and that there is no degradation they won't eagerly suffer in order to avoid kicking the bucket. I mean, I think we all knew that, but it's bracing to see it stated so plainly. I wonder what it's like to have the entire substance of your self up for sale like that.

MASTER
BLASTER

I don't know if the war on critical race theory is being covered in another thread, but our state Legislature became the latest this week to effectively make it illegal for K-12 teachers to talk about systemic racism or to basically do or say anything that makes white kids feel bad. The alleged impetus for the law was a possibly apocryphal tale of a white 2nd-grader who came home from school one day and tearfully asked her mom, "Am I a racist?"

good luck usa

The only solace I can find in any of this — and it ain't much — is that none of this is a new fight. We (by "we" I mean more or less the forces of equality/decency/democracy/labor rights) have been fighting against minority rule by white men since the country was founded. This is just our particular chapter of it.

fuckin' white fragility in action

The alleged impetus for the law was a possibly apocryphal tale of a white 2nd-grader who came home from school one day and tearfully asked her mom, "Am I a racist?"

imagine if the (possibly apocryphal) parent had responded to that question with an actual answer and the kid learned something

Definitely feels like the Democrats need to pit Trumpers and anti-Trumpers against each other.

There are ten of the latter and they all work for think tanks or op-ed pages. Trump increased his share of Republican voters from 2016 to 2020.

but no, better to make it a reactionary cause and make sure that children cannot be taught important lessons in school

xp

Yeah, I had that same thought — if either of my kids came home from school and asked "Am I a racist?", I would be happy for the opportunity to talk about it. (Of course, we talk about it anyway, I'm not waiting for their teachers to prompt them. But I'd be glad if they did.)

it's cool, the government can swoop in and tell teachers what they can and can't say, which was a bad thing when it was allowing them to teach Science in addition Creationism but is a good thing now

Wow America is super racist

― rob, Friday, May 7, 2021

The look on Cruz's face when he realizes the woman is a complete lunatic who believes everything he has been saying https://t.co/PBEuml66us

— Jonathan Chait (@jonathanchait) May 7, 2021

The AC/DC blaring in the background is the icing on the cake.

🐦[The look on Cruz’s face when he realizes the woman is a complete lunatic who believes everything he has been saying https://t.co/PBEuml66us🕸
— Jonathan Chait (@jonathanchait) May 7, 2021🕸]🐦

The AC/DC blaring in the background is the icing on the cake.

That Graham quote is kinda nakedly admitting both that the GOP is effectively on life support and that there is no degradation they won't eagerly suffer in order to avoid kicking the bucket.

Lindsay is talking about himself.

Looks like the woman was a troll?

I mean, it’s still noteworthy and Cruz is obv a spineless weasel

Not sure if anyone else is seeing this, but I'm noticing right-wing Facebook commenters starting to use the framing of "nationalist vs. socialist" in talking about Republicans vs. Democrats. They're leaving off the "white" part of "white nationalist" — and would probably insist that's not what they mean — but the subtext is clear. Doesn't seem like a great trend.

"Christian" also implied there too, of course: https://www.newyorker.com/news/on-religion/a-pennsylvania-lawmaker-and-the-resurgence-of-christian-nationalism

"nationalist" definitely implies white and christian, and also straight.

though i see the new yorker has that covered as well, haha

https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/american-christianitys-white-supremacy-problem

Mastriano grew up mostly in New Jersey, in a military family, and attended Eastern College, a Christian university outside Philadelphia. After he graduated, in 1986, he joined the military, and, as a junior intelligence officer, was stationed at the border of West Germany and Czechoslovakia. Mastriano, like many conservative Christians, came to see the Cold War as a spiritual campaign, applying religious notions of good and evil to U.S. foreign policy. “Seeing awful things in the East, and atheistic, communistic, socialist regimes oppressing people” convinced him of the need for “protecting freedom, the free people of the West,” he told “Crosspoint,” a Christian podcast, in 2018. While deployed, Mastriano often carried a Bible under his arm. “It wasn’t for show,” he said.
In 1991, as the Cold War was winding down, Mastriano was deployed to Iraq to fight in the Gulf War. He believed that he was on the front lines of a new religious conflict, this time against radical Islam. Mastriano’s wife, Rebecca, knew little about his posting, which was classified, and gathered people to engage in what she called “spiritual warfare,” praying that he would prevail against evil on the battlefield. In late February of that year, Mastriano’s unit was about to face Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard, when a sandstorm struck. “Thunder and lightning and rain and sand, and it blinds the Iraqis. We can miraculously see through this silicon and moisture in the air, and we start picking off the enemy,” he said, on the podcast. “Because of this, our small regiment, compared to the armored divisions we were facing, was able to break the back of the Iraqi line and therefore end the war rapidly.” Days later, a ceasefire was announced.

Mastriano believed that this was a miracle, and

deepsigh

Just because you blather on and on about Jesus doesn’t mean you behave according to his very valuable and often otm teaching. Sorry for pointing out the obvious.

Remind me what Saddam Hussein had to do with radical Islam?

The look on Cruz's face when he realizes the woman is a complete lunatic who believes everything he has been saying

i looked for "the look" and didn't see it :'(

i read the gospel of luke again recently and am always taken aback by the number of times that jesus tells everybody to give everything away before they follow him
xp

of course, that is the one metaphor in the bible, and "give everything away" is a metaphor for "make as much money as you can and funnel some of the excess through christian charities, to the degree that it saves you money on your taxes"

he meant "Give It Away" in the Red Hot Chili Peppers sense

And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, "Take, eat; this is my body. What I got, you got to get it; put it in you."

Anthony Jesus

Christ, we solved religion in under an hour.

Just because you blather on and on about Jesus doesn’t mean you behave according to his very valuable and often otm teaching.

Yours truly scowling through Charlie Crist's boilerplate speech on Saturday

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/552596-biden-hits-63-percent-approval-rating-in-new-ap-poll

23% of Republicans approve? Higher than I'd expected

xp

amazing

Alfred is the power behind the throne (throne not included).

this man went to a park dressed as if for a chamber of commerce meeting. He wore black buckle shoes.

excellent scowling work

Alfred are you actually scowling directly at the shoes in this photo

lol please someone else emerge. last thing we need is another Gubernatorial term from someone who already was our Governor as a Republican and then later switched parties.

Hell, I’ll take it. Just get DeSantis gone.

I'm cool with Val Demings, though I wonder how safe her and Crist's districts are.

Alfred are you actually scowling directly at the shoes in this photo

― Guayaquil (eephus!)

I was afraid to look at those shoes lest I transform into a Cristian.

Alfred is the power behind the throne (throne not included).

Soto-San!

extremely strong vibes in this photo from Alfred

Crist don't kill my vibe

.@POTUS: "We're going to make it clear that anyone collecting unemployment who is offered a suitable job must take the job or lose their unemployment benefits."

Full speech here: https://t.co/zOJnXufl9Y pic.twitter.com/4B9lKPJWxY

— CSPAN (@cspan) May 10, 2021

fuck this guy

anyone collecting unemployment who is offered a suitable job must take the job or lose their unemployment benefits.

Afaik, unemployment benefits in the USA have always carried this stipulation and still do. The intent of this requirement is fucked up and weights power toward employers, but this is how it has always been structured and it's not about to change any time soon.

why even validate that stupid fox talking point?

It's like he can only go so long without slipping back into stern grandpa mode and hectoring about idleness or weed or something.

I remember years ago I when I was on unemployment, I had to show my 'work search' and where I had gone to look for work (this in CA).. I would just use the phone book and put some random places from the yellow pages. AFAIK, they never checked up on me, or if they did it didn't affect my payments.

Yeah, in NJ you have to answer a questionnaire every week asking if you've been looking for work, if you refused any work, blah blah blah, and they always hang it over your head that they can ask to see your job search notes at any time...

in MN it's just going through the motions, click no on two questions before you put in for the week's payment online.. never heard of it being followed up on

Yeah, when I was on unemployment about a decade ago, I had to list a certain number of places I had reached out to each week. I was super paranoid and kept a massive list and copies of all my cover letters I sent out, just in case, but it didn't seem like they did a lot of validating/checking up on them.

i can say with certainly that FL DEO is too overwhelmed and incompetent to do any following up

We are working to change that!

i mean they can try, my mom (whose name is Bernicia Filibusterstein for anybody surveilling this forum) was filling in any five jobs for a while as she outright can't work right now.

well actually she hasn't had to YET since the requirements were suspended til now but she had done that in the past apparently, lol.

Has anyone tried with the FL DIO though

Holy diver, Batman!

Afaik, unemployment benefits in the USA have always carried this stipulation and still do. The intent of this requirement is fucked up and weights power toward employers, but this is how it has always been structured and it's not about to change any time soon.

― sharpening the contraindications (Aimless), Monday, May 10, 2021 4:44 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

"suitable job" allows a lot of wiggle room that meant that many (most?) states didn't in practice enforce this even before covid. see https://www.thebalancecareers.com/unemployment-refuse-job-offer-2064181.

biden's statement is shitty but changes nothing. if the administration does something to make the definition more explicit (e.g. stops california ignoring it with a definition of "suitable employment" that is essentially "a job i want") then that will not be a return to pre-pandemic status quo ante. it will be *worse* than things were under trump.

I applied to be CEO of Amazon, starting pitcher for the Yankees, and lead singer of the Rolling Stones.

Me too. I didn't get a single callback.

I don't know if Biden's statement is the right move, but the goal of it is to preserve the $300 payment for people. Lots of states including mine are talking about opting out of it. I think the White House strategy is aimed at blunting the shiftless-idle narrative. I don't know about where you all live, but the political narrative here is 100 percent that you can't a damn burger at McDonald's in under 10 minutes because Joe Biden is paying all them line cooks to sit home smoking blunts.

To put it bluntly.

traditionally this is known as 'The Servant Problem'

paying all them line cooks to sit home smoking blunts.

lol fuckin' seriously, everybody smoked weed at the restaurants I worked at. I smoked with my kitchen manager in his truck after Cinco De Mayo once.

there was also fucking going on, on the expo table, so...

I think it's less the blunt-smoking than the non-making-me-a-burger part that the right finds so infuriating. The notion that no one wants to work their shitty jobs for shit pay is enraging.

But anyway that's what Biden is trying to respond to, to keep the payments available. Which probably won't work here, at least. They already slashed the max unemployment period in half. (On top of also refusing to expand Medicaid, of course. Our state has kept billions of dollars of assistance from poor people out of sheer contempt for them.)

"closely watched" VA Gub "race" pace does have *some* inneresting assspecks, esp if you're into a truer/already bluer Southern state, and for inst:Virginia Republicans eschewed holding a state-run primary and instead opted for what organizers described as an “unassembled convention,” with about 30,000 pre-registered Republicans voting at nearly 40 sites across the commonwealth on Saturday. Is this or will this be a thing, where you guarantee honest voting process by running and rolling yr own? And can Democrats do it too, or is that sure sign of sketch?
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/05/10/youngkin-virginia-gop-nomination-governor-486854
(Also, as you maybe more likely saw, Newsom recall is going nowhere in polls)

Yeah the VA GOP thing was meticulously engineered to exclude Ms. Trump-in-Heels, and it succeeded. Cute how they had to institute ranked-choice just for this purpose and this purpose along.

Democrats hereabouts have no interest in that process, nor do they have a need to.

I can't speak for other states. Perhaps there are state races where there's a fear of, e.g., a Berniecrat winning vs. an establishment candidate? These things seem highly situational.

* along = alone

The NV Democrats fiasco probably has some establishment people looking to ensure that doesn’t happen elsewhere.

fwiw I did have several friends who in 2009 who spent an entire year gaming the unemployment system so they could smoke weed and play video games all day. obviously I was cheering them on with every check they received but these people do exist

where do I sign up for that

in FL you'd be homeless doing that real fast, considering up until recently, it was capped at $275/week. and very few people get that maximum!

the one time I was on it, I got $68 a week lol

guess that settles that!

Dr. Fauci rejects Rand Paul's claims: "Senator Paul, with all due respect, you are entirely, entirely and completely incorrect that the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain of function research in the Wuhan Institute."

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) May 11, 2021

leave out the 'due respect' part next time, and replace it with "you little bitch"

In 'shockingly old when you learned' crossover I was least in my 20s when I realized that you can provide someone with the amount of respect they are due and that amount can be zero.

in FL you'd be homeless doing that real fast, considering up until recently, it was capped at $275/week. and very few people get that maximum!

I think these guys got $200 a week which is plenty in Manitowoc. my rent was $100 a month!

anyway tbf there really weren't a whole lot of jobs; occasionally they'd land shitty 3rd shift factory jobs that they'd actively try to get fired from

Great Recession was my last time on unemployment... good times, even without the extra covid booster

Wow. Just...wow.

Gayle King, CBS news anchor: "Tell us about your dating situation."

Stacey Abrams, Nobel Peace Prize nominee: "I haven't been focused on that this month. I've been focused on saving democracy."

— Victoria Brownworth (@VABVOX) May 11, 2021

If you listen closely when she's on the air you can hear the wind whistling through Gayle King's empty skull.

NEW: Biden will nominate Rahm Emanuel as U.S. ambassador to Japan https://t.co/E36sTDHiWa

— Axios (@axios) May 11, 2021

Obviously this could be much worse, but just how does this guy do it?

King's question is terrible, but also, come on, anybody can be a Nobel Peace Prize nominee

There are about 150 more impressive ways to characterize Stacey Abrams

Rahm must have inherited Epstein's little black book.

"How far away can we ship this motherfucker?"

that occurred to me too, but that's got to be a desirable gig for the professional unelectable politician class

Walter Mondale served as ambassador to Japan under Clinton. It’s a fun gig.

what're you gonna do about it, joe

NEW: This weekend, Joe Manchin said the John Lewis Voting Rights Act “has to be done.”

He said the bill deserves universal support because elections should be accessible, fair and secure. “This is ridiculous.”

But Manchin, who’s pro-filibuster, hasn’t explained how to pass it. pic.twitter.com/JrdlLp0Eq3

— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) May 10, 2021

Douchey! Details even worse than I'd noticed: https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/ej-montini/2021/05/10/doug-ducey-sham-election-audit-exposes-threats-cowardly-governor/5014127001/
Also:
PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey on Tuesday signed legislation purging infrequent voters from a list of those who automatically get a mail-in ballot each election, ignoring protests from Democrats and prominent business leaders who said the measure would suppress the votes of people of color.

The Republican governor acted hours after a tense debate in the state Senate, during which Republicans tried to silence Democrats who said the bill would perpetuate systemic racism.
https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-arizona-race-and-ethnicity-bills-elections-f66f8b032bd081092715f55dc1195134

"...the bill would perpetuate systemic racism..."

In the state where they're searching for bamboo fiber ballots, because, you know CHY-NAH

These days I'm honestly surprised the GOP doesn't just say outright 'yes, that's the point.' Don't know why they're still at all coy about their full-bore embrace of villainy.

suddenly, much of the world began to heard a soft but distinct evil cackling noise whenever republicans spoke or acted. those that heard it heard the same thing. but many of the people couldn't hear it at all. WIS -2, LCK -1

Speaking of embrace of villainy, this is some Monty Burns shit.

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/552958-tennessee-cuts-off-300-federal-unemployment-supplement

Mississippi's doing the same thing: https://mississippitoday.org/2021/05/10/gunn-end-mississippi-unemployment-federal-300/

Yep. Won't be a red state left with 'em.

Oh they're embracing the shit out of it

Texas’s population boom should be a boon to Democrats. But Republicans are reaping the gains. https://t.co/vN9a5MqpMy

— Senator John Cornyn (@JohnCornyn) May 11, 2021

The article he links is very good and accurately describes what it's like for me living in a big liberal city that's been gerrymandered to hell.

But he takes exactly the wrong lesson from it

Cornyn’s habit of sharing sub-headlines like that without any commentary is so weird.

Quite a quote from Ilhan Omar (from here):

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E1MMQDfXoAIDsPS.jpg

2024 election's gonna be...fucked up. State legislatures will not recognize Democratic votes.

hell yeah omar

since court packing seems like it will not happen (guh), really hope Clarence Thomas and Alito die in the same hot air balloon accident. this week.

the destruction of SCOTUS really might just wind up being the worst legacy of the Trump admin (eventually surpassing "transforming the GOP into saying it was what everybody knew it was for many decades")

It's just crazy to see how the GOP is still bending over backwards to prove loyalty to Trump, I don't get it. I mean, yes, obviously on some level they anticipate his cultists to be big primary voters, but it's just so weird to see them hitching themselves to such an albatross this late in the game. The Democrats couldn't wait to distance themselves from the one term failure stink of Jimmy Carter and he wasn't impeached twice and effectively deplatformed. It's bonkers.

Just wait until they take back the WH and congress and *they* expand the court, and pack it with even more lunatics.

It's just crazy to see how the GOP is still bending over backwards to prove loyalty to Trump, I don't get it. I mean, yes, obviously on some level they anticipate his cultists to be big primary voters, but it's just so weird to see them hitching themselves to such an albatross this late in the game. The Democrats couldn't wait to distance themselves from the one term failure stink of Jimmy Carter and he wasn't impeached twice and effectively deplatformed. It's bonkers.

― soaring skrrrtpeggios (jon /via/ chi 2.0),

It's possible that conservatives have long been not-so-secret fascists and opposed to democracy since 1964 and Trump finally gave them a Moloch to worship?

what happens if Trump dies? serious question

Depends on how humiliating and/or hilarious his death is imo

It's possible that conservatives have long been not-so-secret fascists and opposed to democracy since 1964 and Trump finally gave them a Moloch to worship?

Sure, but they don't need him to pursue that shit anymore, clearly they are doing an excellent job at the state level without him. I get that he opened the door, but it seems like he's outlived his usefulness.

I think it's less about Trump himself and more that Trump revealed that you can more or less get away with a lot of things that were previously considered unthinkable, and so Republicans want to ride that wave as far as it will take them.

re: Trump death: Drowning in ketchup? Hilarious. Dying on the toilet while trying vainly to post a tweet? Humiliating and hilarious. At this point I need to stop speculating because I lapse into a reverie of ever-more-humiliating fantasy deaths for that individual, and I don't want to give him the headspace at this point.

I think it's less about Trump himself and more that Trump revealed that you can more or less get away with a lot of things that were previously considered unthinkable, and so Republicans want to ride that wave as far as it will take them.

I don't disagree with this at all, but I guess I'm just baffled like the Cheney stuff. Like why waste time stretching out her punishment for daring to speak ill of him instead of ruthlessly pursuing their agenda? That's the part I don't really get, the symbolic shit that actually accomplishes nothing more than paying fealty to Trump.

it's less about Trump himself and more that Trump revealed that you can more or less get away with a lot of things that were previously considered unthinkable

bingo

ruthlessly pursuing their agenda?

their agenda is anti-democracy. They're doing it in the courts. Ousting Liz Cheney is part of the agenda.

Yeah, the problem with Liz Cheney, as far as GOP leadership is concerned, is not simply that she voted for impeachment but that she is being noisy about it and making things difficult for them.

right, they need to punish her to clear away any roadblocks for when it comes time to overturn the next election

Same reason why the Republican party in Michigan got rid of the GOP canvassing board member who voted to certify the election results.

Okay, it's all more depressing than I thought.

yeah I know there's a lot that needs attention right now but Dems really need to be pushing voting rights 3x harder than normal, who knows how many more chances they'll get

problem is it's very difficult to fight the GOP tactics within the system because of how willfully the GOP like to flout the law. gives you no room for missteps, and at worst you eventually have to become the thing you're fighting against

good morning!

2024 election's gonna be...fucked up. State legislatures will not recognize Democratic votes.

― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, May 12, 2021 9:51 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

This. 2020 is going to look like the 1788 in comparison.

the

i'm not sure what to say. it is bleak. Omar's statement from above is exactly right.

the GOP isn't going to bounce back from this, i don't think. it's the last stage of...something. is it the end of scooby doo when the mask comes off and everything is fine again? i don't think so. this is more like politicians you didn't vote for removing their mask and revealing that they're all reanimated klan wizards from the 1910s. it's frightening, all the more so because of all the tens of millions who love what's happening, are demanding it, even. plus the tens of millions who move along in lockstep.

and yet, i look outside my window and it's a perfect day and the leaves are finally filling out the branches. my own neighborhood and city voted overwhelmingly against trump. the creepy cowboys from my hometown are off doing their (racist) things in that same shitty county.

what happens after this step, in the collapse of US democracy? the openly stated goal of other states (like RUSSIA!!!!!! but you can't say that) was to undermine US confidence in our election system. i don't know how you all feel about things, but i feel like we are there. now. it seems like we are one major fucked up election away from the whole thing snapping. we know, years before the 2022 and 2024 elections, that in the aftermath there will be an uproar from republicans believing their votes were "stolen" in states where they lose, democrats fighting uphill yet again in gerrymandered/jim crow'd states and districts, and a political and legal system too broken identify and fix the problems.

and yet, the sun is shining, i can't really affect anything that's happening, and even when i write to my reps and beg for their help i know that they don't respond. you're lucky if you get put on their email list.

the ancient greeks thought that even 500 people was too many people for a local democracy (at least one in which every citizen could actually participate meaningfully). i don't have a better idea for a political system, uh, but this one is cooked

anyway, ignore that of course, but i do think cheney's ouster is a kind of breaking point, with significance that will be hard to explain to later generations (if anyone still cares at that point). it was shocking on jan 6, before the violence, when GOP politicians were already planning to vote for an attempted coup. then THAT happened, and it was shocking when some of those same GOP politicians STILL voted for it, on the same day! people like mccarthy were briefly doing something close to the right thing, in early January, criticizing what happened. then they all kissed the ring again in mar-a-lago, and now today they've commemorated their downfall with the cheney vote. it will be hard to explain, but this is it. we're done here.

My only hope for 2024 is that Trump's failson gene activates and that he makes a big noise about running (without actually running), but also somehow hates all of the 37 candidates who do run and trip over themselves trying to obtain said endorsement and the whole thing somehow backfires.

somehow

what happens if Trump dies? serious question

My stepmom revealed that she prays for this daily

Cheney is a breaking point because they have now enshrined an explicit willingness to lie about and overturn election results as a condition of party leadership. You can now no longer be in GOP leadership if you are not willing to throw out votes that you don't like. Alfred is otm about 2024, all of the pieces are being put in place here from state voting restrictions to the ongoing radicalization of GOP state legislatures to now the congressional leadership, all with the goal of influencing and if necessary disregarding election outcomes. It will all be under the guise of phony "fraud" accusations, of course, we've already seen how that will go. Except next time it won't be Rudy at the 4 Seasons, it will be a planned strategy executed by competent people.

That doesn't mean it will work — the actual outcome of such a concentrated effort is unpredictable — but it is obviously what is being explicitly prepared for. The sad thing is that the best bet for the survival of our democracy is for a Republican candidate to actually win outright in 2024. They would of course prefer to not have to overturn the results and claim an actual popular mandate. But if they get one, then they'll have even more ability to reshape the landscape for the next time.

So, yeah. It's all pretty grim, because as long as one of our two major parties is just waiting in the wings to institute authoritarian rule as soon as they get the chance, we have kind of limited options. They're going to win eventually. I don't know what happens then.

what happens if Trump dies? serious question

imo, Trump's death would change nothing, except we'd all have to endure the establishment and its media piously pretending that he was simply "controversial", instead of an in coherent, hateful, racist shit stain barely recognizable as human. Republican policies and practices wouldn't budge a millimeter, but the race to be the nation's next most popular racist would intensify.

I assume they'd insist he's not dead.

my hope is trump is on trial (for any number of things) leading into the '22 midterms and as hilarious as that sounds it will be fatally demoralizing for GOP voter turnout. they can't win with MAGA alone

Yeah I think it's a mistake for people to focus too much on Trump at this point. He remains very important, but also if he does die tomorrow this party continues down the path it's already on. It was never just about him. He's already triggered the doomsday machine.

If Trump dies, they’ll return to a more genteel ethnofascism, but it would probably hurt them to a small degree. No one else in the party can front like they’re outside ‘the swamp,’ which will render his previously apolitical cultists apolitical again.

we just need to beat up more conservatives IMO

I feel like the GOP's overt voter suppression can come back to bite 'em. The 2018 midterms showed that when Trump's name isn't on the ballot, the Trump voters don't necessarily show up in droves. And let's face it, some of their voters are pretty old and prefer voting by mail,etc.

As long as white supremacist apocalyptic evangelicals are the largest voting bloc, some form of ‘Trumpism’ is going to be competitive.

also since so many Protestant sects belong to the "you can be a sumbitch and get to Heaven by saying sorry on your deathbed", most of those folk don't exactly care for self-introspection.

I actually remember going to a Methodist church at 11 and being taught that and thinking "wow cool, all I gotta do is figure out when I'm doing and just apologize then"

*dying

more broadly, how do you get people who think they are going to another, more fabulous world with no libs, minorities, or gay people after they die, to give a fuck about improving this world.

The probability that those evangelical voters have minorities, gay, and anti-Trump people among them worth killing.

Xpost -John Lennon, "Imagine"

It was the hope of the demographics are destiny crowd that there would just be fewer of those people but American Catholicism has been infected by American Protestantism and white supremacy is a strong motivator to bring in new adherents.

I do think a different republican candidate would struggle more to sell the stolen election narrative. Part of the reason that Trump was able to get as much mileage as he did was that he believed his own bullshit way more than some of these "smarter" republicans do. You see time and again when they are pressed on these questions they get all mealy-mouthed and stumble, whereas Trump would just lie and bluster full throttle regardless of whether it made sense or not.

Except next time it won't be Rudy at the 4 Seasons, it will be a planned strategy executed by competent people.

maybe...but like, even with Trump out of the picture, it's not like the GOP has their shit together. they have people like Hawley, Crenshaw, MTG, Ted Cruz, etc. who are good at kicking shit up but I don't see how any of them get Trump's following. none of them are going to get the wall-to-wall, WWE-style coverage that Trump got. none of them have the aura of "success" that Trump had. so much of Trump's rise in 2015 was this idiotic "well maybe we SHOULD give someone like that a chance!" talking point. a huge chunk of his appeal was that he was an outsider who wanted to shake up the system. idk if someone whose career began as an elected official can capture that.

also, I know this is gonna sound real condescending, but a lot of Trump's appeal was in the fact that he was a genuine dipshit. he really was as dumb as the people who voted for him. GOP voters can sense when they're being pandered to and guys like Cruz & Hawley come off like debate club geeks. I cannot see the current GOP base getting excited about either of them. even the real dumb ones like MTG are not as good at trolling and that's gonna be a huge part of it as well. there's a certain lack of self-awareness that you're gonna have to have and very few people on the planet possess that. I'd be more worried about like, the Dilbert guy than any of these clowns.

xpost "Demographics are destiny" was the path to keeping Mitt Romney types out of office. Which is why Republicans have abandoned Mitt Romney types. Bare-knuckled white supremacy and evangelical dominionism married to an overt willingness to subvert election outcomes is a new tack.

Also, it doesn't matter all that much how many actual people believe a stolen election narrative, as long as there are enough people in Congress and state legislatures willing to at least pretend to believe it. At the moment there are a lot of them, and they have just made it essentially mandatory.

And maybe this will all blow up in their face, I don't know. What worries me is that they have some big structural advantages that mean they will inevitably win back either Congress or the White House or both, and when they do it will be as this radicalized post-Trump party.

I don't see how voter suppression will blow up in Rs faces unless there is a legislative backlash (Manchin: sorry, no) that survives SC scrutiny (Barret: sorry, no).

another problem for them is that espousing GOP ideology right now as a public figure might get you banned from Twitter and I don't think you're gonna be able to campaign much on the My Pillow guy's site

Fox News and Breitbart will just host them

Trump didn't win on Fox alone, though - CNN had like 3 full-time hires whose only job was to defend him on air. I wanna say they learned their lesson but they continue to employ Rick Santorum so they'll probably do the same thing in 2024

the last time I saw Santorum on CNN, Cuomo was yelling at him for being racist so I don't know how much longer CNN is going to employ him

I dunno, that's probably good political theater. Lefties see it and feel righteous, righties see it and feel martyred, everyone at CNN goes home happy.

Obviously, instead of feeling smug and righteous that Santorum got yelled at on tv because he's racist, we should be yelling at CNN for promoting racist views.

Well, yeah.

maybe...but like, even with Trump out of the picture, it's not like the GOP has their shit together. they have people like Hawley, Crenshaw, MTG, Ted Cruz, etc. who are good at kicking shit up but I don't see how any of them get Trump's following. none of them are going to get the wall-to-wall, WWE-style coverage that Trump got. none of them have the aura of "success" that Trump had. so much of Trump's rise in 2015 was this idiotic "well maybe we SHOULD give someone like that a chance!" talking point. a huge chunk of his appeal was that he was an outsider who wanted to shake up the system. idk if someone whose career began as an elected official can capture that.

see i kinda agree with this. no one else has the traction trump does

more broadly, how do you get people who think they are going to another, more fabulous world *with no libs, minorities, or gay people* after they die, to give a fuck about improving _this_ world.

more broadly, how do you get people who think they are going to another, more fabulous world *with no libs, minorities, or gay people* after they die, to give a fuck about improving _this_ world.

what are they waiting for?

that's what i always ask. 'if this world is terrible, why not die and go to your superheaven'

I'm sure there are some successors of Kevorkian who will help u on yr way

They are actively trying, believe me

They are waiting for an act of god to kill them, or looking for an act of god to walk into

Like a random guy driving steamrollers on suburban streets?

^^^ love that Paul Simon quote

People who kill themselves go to Hell according to most Christian dogma that I know/remember.

We can send those who wish to join the Kingdom of Heaven to an island and we can hunt them win win

…while we’re taking our inspiration from classic works of fiction

xp that’s dogmatically true. The trick is to put yourself in a position to die where you don’t technically kill yourself

that's why they're so mad that biden is gonna ban all the red meat!

For example, “I will take this poisonous snake with the power of the lord!”

Er, tame. But some try to “know” the snake as well

They’re pretty much dying of whiteness anyway.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying_of_Whiteness

I want to white out

The problem is they're killing the rest of us, too

otm

"Dying of Whiteness": Underrated Vampire Weekend Bop

my favorite Carly Rae Jepsen couplet:

white problems
who's got'em?

Dying of Whiteness is a great book, highly recommended.

Looks like Matt Gaetz has a long weekend ahead of him

Breaking: Joel Greenberg, Seminole's disgraced former tax collector, is now set to change his not-guilty plea during a hearing Monday morning. This signals that he has reached a deal with federal prosecutors. Deadline had been Saturday.

Story soon on https://t.co/YW9kPUGr6P

— Jeff Weiner (@JeffWeinerOS) May 13, 2021

and yet, he's still a sitting member of congress. i seriously expected to get back from a recent vacation and find him in jail. but the gop, etc

tbh, i'm surprised they ever found the courage to take away the committee seats from neo-nazi Steve King

I'm really excited to see just what it takes to force him to resign.

imagine going into work and everyone's waving hello at the guy who makes fake IDs so he can sleep with teenagers, and everyone knows it

like, that one thing alone would be enough for me to make a huge fuss and quit my job, if they didn't throw the fucker out IMMEDIATELY. i guess congress is different, because there's over 100+ dudes who are completely corrupt and also actively try to fuck teenagers

tbh I'm guessing that fucking teenagers has long been a bipartisan activity in Congress. (I'm also going to stipulate without googling that there is a Capitol Hill-themed porn movie out there called Bi-Partisan.)

let's not forget what a scumbag Greenberg was too. he was my tax collector at one point, and one year during Trump's admin he was engaging in flame wars on Twitter with people and actually looking up their tax records and using it against him ("maybe you'll pay your registration tax on time next year" or something, he said to one person)

(in addition to what he was already accused of, obv)

Gaetz is on tour right now, and you know what tour is all about, right?

a girl in every high school

it's called the fucking America First tour, it's un-fucking-believable. i believe greene is fundraising off of the fascism tour as well

it's called the fucking America First tour, it's un-fucking-believable. i believe greene is fundraising off of the fascism tour as well

greene sticking it to the libs by touring with a guy who is trying to fuck teenagers

(I'm also going to stipulate without googling that there is a Capitol Hill-themed porn movie out there called Bi-Partisan.)

I did google and it's not Capitol Hill-themed

the Fucking America First tour

this thing is the first time i've learned about private citizens being "tax collectors." it seems like something that would happen in a smaller, older state, like delaware.

greene sticking it to the libs by touring with a guy who is trying to fuck teenagers

I think you mean "a guy who fucked a teenager"

it's still infrastructure week

Biden on Thursday reiterated his willingness to compromise on an infrastructure package as he welcomed a group of six Republican senators to the Oval Office of the White House, a meeting he said came together at their “mutual request.”

Biden said he believes the Republicans, including Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), who has taken the lead in promoting a more modest infrastructure package than one proposed by Biden, are operating in “good faith.” Biden said he hoped the discussion would include what “constitutes infrastructure from both our perspectives” as well as funding levels.

Asked by a reporter if he is prepared to make a lower offer, Biden, said, “I’m prepared to compromise.”

Biden was joined by Vice President Harris, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.

Other Republican senators attending the meeting were John Barrasso (Wyo.), Roy Blunt (Mo.), Mike Crapo (Idaho), Patrick J. Toomey (Pa.), and Roger Wicker (Miss.)

will be shocking when these same senators support a GOP coup in 2024

I'm really excited to see just what it takes to force him to resign.

The head of his party was just impeached twice, yet served his full term and retired with full benefits. With such a clear example to follow, why on earth would he resign?

Infrastructure? Each state should have its own plastic recycling plant, no more shipping our garbage off to Asia

sometimes when i get a little sloppy drunk i like to advise everyone to never, ever admit you're wrong, and to always fight back and punch back 10x harder, no matter what. it's usually triggered by seeing someone be completely wrong and realizing they'll never admit it, but the true inspiration is the today's GOP. as much as they've been supporting fascism since 1964, at least they had at least SOME sense of shame for many of those years. it is completely gone now.

again, the infamous "i could shoot someone on 5th avenue" bla bla bla was an important threshold. most people thought he was just being dumb or crass or whatever, and most of the others who took him seriously were shocked that he would say that. but now i realize that the GOP and conservatives were listening closely and were very excited by the possibility that they could be above the law

Biden, said, “I’m prepared to compromise.”

He's working from an old script, but I'm fine if the amounts to be spent change somewhat at the margins, so long as those "margins" do not include the spending designed to strengthen minority communities and fight climate change. The exact dollar amount isn't the core issue, but it's directly coupled to how strongly the policies will be implemented.

seems like a compromise bill with broad republican support plus everything else pushed through reconciliation would be the way to deal with this

this has been coming for a week or two apparently

Joe Manchin just proposed a really aggressive voting rights bill that goes well beyond the bill that Democratic leaders are pushing.https://t.co/uES8dbXdsm

— Ian Millhiser (@imillhiser) May 13, 2021

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/13/us/politics/mcmaster-fbi-trump-project-veritas.html

Be cool if the CIA heart attack gun got turned on Erik Prince.

huh that's surprising from manchin

It’s a big who cares if he’s expecting (lol) 10 GOP votes for cloture.

Yeah it seems like an obvious feint?

really don't get what his angle is here

To even analyze this as strategy breaks my brain, but he wouldn't float this proposal if he wasn't "signaling" movement of some kind, I guess.

he wants bold voting laws but we absolutely must preserve the sanctity of the filibuster? ok....

Fun detail from the AZ dog & pony show audit:

According to documents released under court order, however, Cyber Ninjas prepared for sinister antifa agents to disrupt their efforts.

For instance, they worried that a nearby chemical storage area could be sabotaged by leftists as part of an orchestrated attempt to breach the counting area.

This hasn't happened.

yet

Manchin probably thinks if he proposes a *really* strong voting rights bill that, darn toot it, he *really* means, well, the Rs will just *have* to come around and compromise on a weaker voting rights bill, without him having to nuke his precious filibuster. Manchin would be wrong.

I'm positive he knows that will not happen.

I see it more as a "look guys I want good things too stop yelling at me I'm a real Democrat" and when it goes nowhere oopsy daisy.

I don't know why but I have this nagging feeling that Joe Manchin...might not be very smart.

xp

this is the most plausible explanation so far

What an absolute maniac https://t.co/ADCquJ1Lo9 pic.twitter.com/JLJoyH0pJV

— Maggie Serota (@maggieserota) May 13, 2021

didn't she do this to David Hogg?

yes

She’ll probably be elected for another 20 terms, too

And of course she followed it up with the, "see? she's afraid to debate me" bullshit.

The more you resemble a brain stem rattling in a metal bucket, the more successful you will be in today’s GOP

Good morning!

great news

Who is surprised? Per CNN:

All 219 House Democrats have reported being vaccinated.

Of the 212 House Republicans, only 95 -- of 44.8% -- have said they are vaccinated. https://t.co/VtpXhF3N91

— Jennifer Bendery (@jbendery) May 14, 2021

Ron Johnson:

"I thought I was doing everyone a favor," Johnson told CNN in a phone call in March. "I don't think any of this is settled science, but the reason I am not vaccinated yet is I have had Covid and even when I had it, I had a mild case. ... Now I am being attacked as being anti-science. It boggles my mind."

Doing everyone a favor...by getting COVID? idgi

"mind"

every time I see MTG speak I can only think of On Cinema Tim, it's like she's doing an impression of him

Doing everyone a favor...by getting COVID? idgi

Doing everyone a favor by not taking a vaccine because he presumes he has antibodies that are protecting him, which: https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and-conditions/if-youve-been-exposed-to-the-coronavirus

Natural immunity to COVID-19 is the protection that results from having been sick. But we don't know how long natural immunity lasts, or how strong it is. So can we count on natural immunity to protect us from reinfection? If so, for how long? Unfortunately, we don't know the answer to either of those questions.

There have been some confirmed cases of reinfection with COVID-19. In other words, a person got sick with COVID-19, recovered, and then became infected again. This is rare, but it can happen.

The CDC states that people who have gotten sick with COVID-19 may still benefit from getting vaccinated. For now, people are eligible to get the COVID-19 vaccine whether or not they were previously infected. Vaccination criteria may change in the future as scientists learn more about natural immunity after COVID illness.

It's also worth noting that someone who has been re-infected — even someone with no symptoms — has the potential to spread the virus to others. That means that everyone, even those who have recovered from coronavirus infection, and those who have been vaccinated, should continue to follow CDC guidance on mask wearing and other prevention measures.

IOW, yes you are an anti-science idiot, Ron Johnson

go play in Grassley's Dairy Queen sex dungeon

pft giving dairy queen sex dungeons a band name

i think it's time for covid to do everyone a favor and get ron johnson

pft giving dairy queen sex dungeons a band name

I feel like "Dairy Queen Sex Dungeon" is more of an album title

dairy queen is the band name, sex dungeons is the ep

I still don't get why it does everyone a favor, though.

Very normal person.

New: A since-deleted video from 2019 shows MTG harassing @AOC's office through a locked door. Calling her "crazy eyes" and telling her through the office's mailbox slot to "get rid of your diaper" while telling the office to open the door and come out. https://t.co/QgcJucs4o8 pic.twitter.com/ccTufF90Z9

— andrew kaczynski (@KFILE) May 14, 2021

imagine the sex dungeon possibilities

must I

I still don't get why it does everyone a favor, though.

the "logic" is that someone else who doesn't have antibodies will get the vaccine sooner, even though logistics don't really work like that

it's not like vaccines are in short supply in the US right now. He's not doing anyone a favor by allowing others to 'get it first' if that's what he means.

i'm starting to think this Ron Johnson guy doesn't know what he's talking about

and if he's so blatantly wrong on this, that could raise questions about his beliefs about many other things....but best not to think about that

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) said Friday that he and an aide to Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) got into a confrontation over the use of face masks on the House floor.

The incident is the latest involving allegedly disruptive behavior by Greene and her staff.

“I had a mask on as I stepped off the Floor,” Swalwell said in a tweet. “An aide with @mtgreenee yelled at me to take my mask off. No one should be bullied for wearing a mask. So I told the bully what I thought of his order. Predictably, he went speechless. I regret I wasn’t more explicit.”

Greene’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

According to Scott Wong, a reporter for the Hill, the aide involved was Greene spokesman Nick Dyer. Wong reported Dyer as saying, “Biden says you can take off your mask.”

Swalwell “confronted Dyer” and “got in his face,” Wong said in a tweet. He added that, according to Dyer, Swalwell said, “You don’t tell me what to [expletive] do!” The Washington Post could not independently verify the exchange.

Under new guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, vaccinated Americans can now mostly ditch their masks indoors — but lawmakers must still wear them on the House floor.

Asked by CNN whether the House’s mask mandate would be relaxed, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday said: “No. Are they all vaccinated?”

i'm beginning to understand how julius caesar ended up getting stabbed by 40 senators. it starts with words, and then the annoying people get aides that even more annoying, and then eventually it escalates to fistfighting, and then shortly after that the stabbing starts

I would fund a Karl Malone speaking tour.

i think that tour would end in me getting my ass kicked halfway at a a microbrew open mic night

but tbh i've always wanted to go down fighting

Caesar is only the most famous stabbed Roman politician, those guys were constantly stabbing each other!

I would advocate for more of this in modern politics but all that would happen is Greene, Gosar, and Boebert would all stab Manchin repeatedly in the neck while he burbled “but my bill is bipartisan”

maybe senators from both parties could stab manchin

although the stabbers are really the representatives in the house. senators are more like mafia bosses. house reps are the ones with the knives

Doing everyone a favor...by getting COVID?

Yes I think anything that temporarily incapacitates Ron Johnson can be accurately characterized in this way

Meantime

BREAKING: Matt Gaetz's confidant, Joel Greenberg, admits to many crimes in plea(+80 pgs). He doesn't name Gaetz. Greenberg says he and "other adult men" engaged in "commercial sex acts" w/minor. Greenberg says he witnessed the other men having sex w/minor. https://t.co/qzPBYLEopm

— Michael S. Schmidt (@nytmike) May 14, 2021

Fairly typical not to have the cooperator name the co-conspirators in the cooperation agreement, at least at this stage — prevents tipping them off. You would name them in a cooperation agreement reached after charges were filed against everyone. https://t.co/QbGxW4CrI2

— EveryKneeShallBowHat (@Popehat) May 14, 2021

Bear in mind federal prosecutors likely wouldn’t go against a defendant — let alone a sitting Congrrssman — without very substantial corroborating evidence to support any testimony from Greenberg, who is supremely skeevy and a terrible witness.

— EveryKneeShallBowHat (@Popehat) May 14, 2021

From yesterday's Politico Playbook:
PALM BEACH MAKES CONTINGENCY PLANS IN CASE TRUMP IS INDICTED — Law enforcement officials in Palm Beach County, Fla., have actively prepared for the possibility that Manhattan District Attorney CY VANCE could indict former President DONALD TRUMP while he’s at Mar-a-Lago, according to two high-ranking county officials involved in planning sessions.

Among the topics discussed in those meetings: how to handle the thorny extradition issues that could arise if an indictment moves forward.

An obscure clause in Florida’s statute on interstate extradition gives Gov. RON DESANTIS the ability to intervene and even investigate whether an indicted “person ought to be surrendered” to law enforcement officials from another state — which means that as Mar-a-Lago prepares to close down for the season and Trump relocates to Bedminster, N.J., it isn’t just the Florida heat he’s leaving behind: He could lose a key piece of political protection.

“The statute leaves room for interpretation that the governor has the power to order a review and potentially not comply with the extradition notice,” says JOE ABRUZZO, clerk of the Circuit Court of Palm Beach County, the official who would be in charge of opening a potential fugitive-at-large case.

One wrinkle to Abruzzo’s potential role in all of this: He is a former close associate of President JOE BIDEN’S younger brother, FRANK. Abruzzo tells Playbook that despite his friendship with the Biden family, “the full extent of the law will be followed and carried out appropriately, without bias.”

If an indictment comes down while Trump is in Bedminster for the summer, this could all play out very differently. New Jersey’s extradition statute is similar to Florida’s, giving the governor the power to investigate an out-of-state warrant. But its governor is Democrat PHIL MURPHY, who is no fan of Trump’s, and would not likely intervene to stop Trump’s extradition. In the event of an indictment, Trump’s lawyers could also negotiate a condition of surrender, which could cut local law enforcement out. An attorney for Trump declined to comment.

With Trump settling down in New Jersey for the next few months, Florida is unlikely to have to sort through this any time soon. But the clock is ticking on the Manhattan D.A.’s investigation: On March 12, Vance said in a statement that he will retire at the end of 2021, and speculation abounds that his office — which is currently investigating whether Trump and his businesses committed banking and tax fraud, among other lines of inquiry — could issue indictments before passing the case along to his successor.

And that means that Palm Beach County may yet have to get involved — depending on whether Trump is indicted, of course, and whether that happens after Mar-a-Lago reopens in the fall.

The message here is that Trump should remain in FL and never, ever come up north again. Ever.

but if i'm reading that correctly, if he stays in FL then DESANTIS will probably step in and pull some bullshit if he's indicted

oops, DeSantis I mean! i subconsciously absorbed the Playbook STYLE

last I saw he actually relocated to New Jersey for summer.

is MTG a ... is she a drinker? she seems a bit drinky drinky.

It appears from that article that Mar-a-Lago shuts down entirely each summer. No way would he stay at a completely empty resort all summer, being served by a skeleton staff.

Like an inverse of The Shining

https://i.imgur.com/9wgyOrS.jpg

it is true that MTG likes to enjoy an adult beverage (OR TWO!) with the gals at lunch, what is wrong with that?!

https://i.imgur.com/vZ186jB.jpg

MTG would hang out in town, working out, or just working, period. And yes, she would hang out and sometimes enjoy a beer or two with friends as they talked life and football!

https://i.imgur.com/9wgyOrS.jpg

so she drank beers with her friends. Sometimes she has too many beers. She likes beer!

https://i.imgur.com/CkZkNKo.jpg

so this is what it has come down to, in this country. a patriot drinking a beer in her backyard with her friends, talking about life, and football, and yes, having a beer or two at lunch with the gals. You people make me sick. I hope you're proud. I hope you're proud of what you've done to tear down her down, you SICKOS!

https://i.imgur.com/77zGnoR.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/CkZkNKo.jpg

sweet jumping MARY AND JOSEPH!! Let MTG give the old lady a BATH!! You know she’d give HERSELF a bath if she could!! But she CAN’T!! So let MTG DO IT!! You think she LIKES smelling that way?!! For GOD’S SAKES, have some COMPASSION!! Good.. Lord..!

https://i.imgur.com/CkZkNKo.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/vZ186jB.jpg

and yes we enjoyed beer pong, everyone did!

dammit, that second to last one was supposed to be

https://i.imgur.com/77zGnoR.jpg

you have to imagine the golden boy doing the "i am so fucking proud to be brave in public" face as lindsey serves justice

horrifying, thank you

is based on a horrifying true story

i think i'm going to post the same thing on twitter, so get your mute buttons out

sex dungeon

Well I hope she like plant-based beer because that's all there is these days

btw KM - did you get retweeted by Noname yesterday?

god i hope not, i believe i was shitposting even more than normal yesterday! although, i did "like" one of her tweets yesterday, so maybe twitter did the thing where it let you know that i liked it?

i'm pretty sure you did - i saw it but then when i tried to click the tweet the tweet of yours was deleted

i did not see the full twitter handle of the person she was retweeting but it was yours up until it cutoff

Maybe it was

@weinventory
Independent inventory company providing objective inventories, check-ins, check-outs, mid-term reports, covering Surrey, Hampshire and Sussex

that seems like a good follow, especially for people in the inventory business!

the only thing i remember deleting yesterday was a follow-up to this important message:

I took a few weeks off Twitter to do a residency/retreat regarding NFTs. Turns out that everyone that supports them should be eating shit! documentation to follow

— Zach TBD (@weinventyou) May 13, 2021

i then posted a link to foundation.app, a devastating burn on the company and cryptocommunity. however, no one responded and i didn't like the idea of ever directly linking to them without smartass commentary in the same tweet. so maybe she retweeted the foundation.app tweet? that would be weird. but also, it illustrates the problem of having a tweet that's just a link to a shitty community full of people who think the world needs more financial speculation that is based upon magical thinking - even if it gets picked up by someone on the level of noname, it lacks the context of the other message. so i admit, i did delete it.

i hope that i didn't delete something really dumb and then she retweeted it as an example of how dumb some people can be! that would suck, and i would feel like chris christie re: springsteen

it all comes back to US politics, you see

Oh no:

President Biden on Friday signed an executive order revoking Trump's order that established a "National Garden of American Heroes" that called for erecting statues of hundreds of prominent Americans.
The order called for the garden to be built by July 4, 2026. But with Biden's order on Friday, the park will not be constructed.

I had not heard of this until now.

instead we will build a National Garden of American Turds

The original executive order listed 31 historical figures as examples of those who would receive a statue in the Garden.[2] On January 18, 2021—two days before leaving office—Trump signed a new executive order listing 244 historical figures, including all 31 previously named, of those who would receive statues.[15][16][17][18] The revised list included 192 men and 52 women.[11] Names marked with an asterisk (*) were included in the original executive order.

Ansel Adams
Samuel Adams
John Adams*
Muhammad Ali
Luis Walter Alvarez
Susan B. Anthony*
Hannah Arendt
Louis Armstrong
Neil Armstrong
Crispus Attucks
John James Audubon
Lauren Bacall
Clara Barton*
Todd Beamer
Alexander Graham Bell
Roy Benavidez
Ingrid Bergman
Irving Berlin
Humphrey Bogart
Daniel Boone*
Norman Borlaug
William Bradford
Herb Brooks
Kobe Bryant
William F. Buckley Jr.
Sitting Bull
Frank Capra
Andrew Carnegie
Charles Carroll
John Carroll
George Washington Carver
Johnny Cash
Joseph H. De Castro
Joshua Chamberlain*
Whittaker Chambers
Johnny "Appleseed" Chapman
Ray Charles
Julia Child
Gordon Chung-Hoon
William Clark
Henry Clay*
Roberto Clemente
Grover Cleveland
Red Cloud
William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody
Nat King Cole
Samuel Colt
Christopher Columbus
Calvin Coolidge
James Fenimore Cooper
Davy Crockett*
Benjamin O. Davis Jr.
Miles Davis
Dorothy Day
Emily Dickinson
Walt Disney
William J. Donovan
Jimmy Doolittle
Desmond Doss
Frederick Douglass*
Herbert Henry Dow
Katharine Drexel
Peter Drucker
Amelia Earhart*
Thomas Edison
Jonathan Edwards
Albert Einstein
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Duke Ellington
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Medgar Evers
David Farragut
Mary Fields
Henry Ford
George L. Fox
Aretha Franklin
Benjamin Franklin*
Milton Friedman
Robert Frost
Gabby Gabreski
Bernardo de Gálvez
Lou Gehrig
Theodor Seuss Geisel
Cass Gilbert
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
John Glenn
Barry Goldwater
Samuel Gompers
Alexander D. Goode
R. C. Gorman
Billy Graham*
Ulysses S. Grant
Nellie Gray
Nathanael Greene
Woody Guthrie
Nathan Hale
William Halsey Jr.
Alexander Hamilton*
Ira Hayes
Hans Christian Heg
Ernest Hemingway
Patrick Henry
Charlton Heston
Alfred Hitchcock
Billie Holiday
Bob Hope
Johns Hopkins
Grace Hopper
Sam Houston
Whitney Houston
Julia Ward Howe
Edwin Hubble
Daniel Inouye
Andrew Jackson
Robert H. Jackson
Mary Jackson
John Jay
Thomas Jefferson*
Steve Jobs
Katherine Johnson
Barbara Jordan
Chief Joseph
Elia Kazan
Helen Keller
John F. Kennedy
Francis Scott Key
Martin Luther King Jr.*
Coretta Scott King
Russell Kirk
Jeane Kirkpatrick
Henry Knox
Tadeusz Kościuszko
Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette
Harper Lee
Pierre Charles L'Enfant
Meriwether Lewis
Abraham Lincoln*
Vince Lombardi
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Clare Boothe Luce
Douglas MacArthur*
Dolley Madison*
James Madison*
George Marshall
Thurgood Marshall
William Mayo
Christa McAuliffe*
William McKinley
Louise McManus
Herman Melville
Thomas Merton
Billy Mitchell
George P. Mitchell
Maria Mitchell
Samuel Morse
Lucretia Mott
John Muir
Audie Murphy*
Edward R. Murrow
John Neumann
John von Neumann
Annie Oakley
Jesse Owens
Rosa Parks
George S. Patton Jr.*
Charles Willson Peale
William Penn
Oliver Hazard Perry
John J. Pershing
Edgar Allan Poe
Clark V. Poling
John Russell Pope
Elvis Presley
Jeannette Rankin
Ronald Reagan*
Walter Reed
William Rehnquist
Paul Revere
Henry Hobson Richardson
Hyman Rickover
Sally Ride
Matthew Ridgway
Jackie Robinson*
Norman Rockwell
Caesar Rodney
Eleanor Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt
Betsy Ross*
Babe Ruth
Sacagawea
Jonas Salk
John Singer Sargent
Antonin Scalia*
Norman Schwarzkopf
Junípero Serra
Elizabeth Ann Seton
Robert Gould Shaw
Fulton Sheen
Alan Shepard
Frank Sinatra
Bessie Smith
Margaret Chase Smith
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Jimmy Stewart
Harriet Beecher Stowe*
Gilbert Stuart
Anne Sullivan
William Howard Taft
Maria Tallchief
Maxwell Taylor
Tecumseh
Kateri Tekakwitha
Shirley Temple
Nikola Tesla
Jefferson Thomas
Henry David Thoreau
Jim Thorpe
Augustus Tolton
Alex Trebek
Harry S. Truman
Sojourner Truth
Harriet Tubman*
Mark Twain
Dorothy Vaughan
C. T. Vivian
Thomas Ustick Walter
Sam Walton
John P. Washington
Booker T. Washington*
George Washington*
John Wayne
Ida B. Wells-Barnett
Phillis Wheatley
Walt Whitman
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Roger Williams
John Winthrop
Frank Lloyd Wright
Orville Wright*
Wilbur Wright*
Alvin C. York
Cy Young
Lorenzo de Zavala

should have been a poll probably

impressed that Trump didn't accidentally nominate George Thorogood instead of Thurgood Marshall

Billy Mitchell
https://i.imgur.com/5gccKWb.jpg

fucking arrogant prick, met him at the Mall of America once

also fuck John Wayne

Trump's order said that the proposed garden would be managed by the Task Force for Building and Rebuilding Monuments to American Heroes

lol so much of what they did was indistinguishable from an Onion article

some of those people are not really American but hey, Whitney Houston!

Florida!

We can place Matt Gaetz in a hotel room snorting cocaine with an escort, according to two sources.

A source also says Joel Greenberg will testify that she’s one of 15+ women that Gaetz paid for sex.https://t.co/Gaffy2jibz

— Matt Fuller (@MEPFuller) May 14, 2021

The tweet itself hides a deeper issue for Gaetz, really:

But what distinguishes this woman, Megan Zalonka, is that she turned her relationship with Greenberg into a taxpayer-funded no-show job that earned her an estimated $7,000 to $17,500, according to three sources and corresponding government records obtained by The Daily Beast.

Levelled-Up Fundraiser: Cocaine W/Yr Congressman!

fuckin Christopher Moltisanti shit, dumbasses

I heard some good advice once, which was if you have to do an illegal thing, don’t do two illegal things.

looks like Gaetz and Greenberg subscribe to the adage "May as well be hanged for a sheep as for a goat."

Was the sheep underage?

We are all the sheep

proving once more that wisdom based in the folkways of agrarian society doesn't translate well to modern life

Good one Matt

Gaetz: “I'm being falsely accused of exchanging money for naughty favors. Yet, Congress has reinstituted a process that legalizes the corrupt act of exchanging money for favors, through earmarks.”

— Henry J. Gomez (@HenryJGomez) May 15, 2021

“I may have fucked kids but Biden has to be fucking kidding with this infrastructure bill amirite?”

I did nothing wrong but if I did it was legal now

Naughty by Favors • G.O.P.

i have downloaded my twitter archive and confirmed that @noname did not retweet me. i do not remember which thread this was on. i am sorry.

#onethread
#paymentforposts
#sex4vets

The Saudis are in a war that has killed over 350,000 people. They have no startup or innovation culture and total disregard for human rights and democracy. They never faced a Holocaust. I am for a human rights centered policy to Palestinians but reject completely the analogy.

— Ro Khanna (@RoKhanna) May 16, 2021

getting dumber by the day

so why is the intelligence community/military suddenly 'okay' with talking about unidentified aerial phenomena? given that i don't trust anything that comes out of their mouths and there is no way they would admit to something unless it served their interest somehow, i assume they are trying to cover for advanced aerospace projects like they did in the 50s/60s, trying to bamboozle china/russia, or trying to quietly signify to china/russia that we have some very special new toys and not to fuck with us? not sure why they'd do the latter but i dunno.

something very fishy is going on and i am having trouble figuring out what

They're mad because conspiracies moved away from UFOs and black helicopters to adrenachrome and international nonces, they want to get the attention back.

Probably because they got a taste of that sweet new Space Force money and are trying to shake down for even more.

They're trying to create a soft landing for us when they reveal they've been in contact with aliens since the 50s.

Maybe they're trying to rob conspiracy nuts of one of their pet subjects, so as to lower the general noise level of governmental distrust?

This doesn't strike me as the best move, necessarily.

DEVELOPING:

"Asking a Judge to Unseal Files, Rudy Giuliani's Lawyers Demand Explanation for 'Extremely Damaging' Claim That He Might Destroy Evidence" https://t.co/vqbPWb3kTF via @lawcrimenews

— Adam Klasfeld (@KlasfeldReports) May 17, 2021

We mere mortals can't understand the brilliance of the legal strategy from genius Rudy.

i may destroy evidence, streaming now on hbo max

https://i.imgur.com/mI9OaC2.gifhttps://i.imgur.com/mI9OaC2.gifhttps://i.imgur.com/mI9OaC2.gif
https://i.imgur.com/mI9OaC2.gifhttps://i.imgur.com/mI9OaC2.gifhttps://i.imgur.com/mI9OaC2.gif
https://i.imgur.com/mI9OaC2.gifhttps://i.imgur.com/mI9OaC2.gifhttps://i.imgur.com/mI9OaC2.gif

In their letter, Giuliani's counsel appear to confirm earlier reporting that feds tapped into his iCloud via a "covert warrant" in 2019, and Bill Barr's DOJ wouldn't approve earlier attempts to execute the search warrants.

— Adam Klasfeld (@KlasfeldReports) May 17, 2021

so why is the intelligence community/military suddenly 'okay' with talking about unidentified aerial phenomena?

This New Yorker story does a good job of laying out the trajectory of all of that over the past few decades: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/05/10/how-the-pentagon-started-taking-ufos-seriously

It's not all because of one particular writer, but she's a big part of it, she's really kind of pushed the doors open. And there are indeed X number of unexplained phenomena and have been for years. Doesn't mean any one thing in particular, but it's interesting.

Meantime, speaking of interesting, this news has surfaced:

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/watchdog/story/2021-05-15/manchester-contributions-probe

Key part:

Documents obtained by The San Diego Union-Tribune show at least one witness with the last name Manchester was ordered to provide records and information to a U.S. District Court grand jury last month, “in connection with an ongoing criminal investigation.”

That same person, whose first name was redacted in the U.S. District Court documents, also was commanded to appear at the courthouse on the morning of May 4 — and to bring a slew of materials.

The subpoena orders the recipient to “produce any and all records, documents and correspondence” in their possession, custody or control from May 1, 2017, to the present related to political donations made by Douglas Manchester, the unnamed Manchester and “Douglas or (redacted) Manchester’s family and/ or the nomination of Douglas Manchester to be the U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas.”

The demand from federal prosecutors included an option for the witness to provide the requested documents directly to an FBI special agent in lieu of personally appearing at the Washington, D.C. courthouse.

The documents request copies of any communications between the Manchesters, the RNC and RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and Co-Chair Tommy Hicks. They also demand communications between the witness and any employee or agent and any member of Congress or their staff.

choice little bit from that ufo piece:

After Elizondo resigned, he and other key AATIP participants—including Mellon, Puthoff, and Semivan—almost immediately joined To the Stars Academy of Arts & Science, an operation dedicated to U.F.O.-related education, entertainment, and research, and organized by Tom DeLonge, a former front man of the pop-punk outfit Blink-182.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-has-blown-off-rudy-giulianis-pleas-for-help-as-feds-circle?source=articles&via=rss

lol @ the thought of any of these morons genuinely expecting him to have their backs when shit hit the fan

it's like when you're playing Mario and you think Bowser's gonna let you just waltz past him

Rudy's big mistake was looking like a fool he so transparently is when he was publicly fronting Trump's effort to overturn the election via lawsuits. The runny hair dye incident and Four Seasons Landscaping fiascoes doomed him.

i think we should keep the door open to the idea that rudy has made multiple Big Mistakes

like the time when he wanted the "really good scrutiny" applied to his case

guys i'm very sorry this person is on your shores, but still i'd like you to perhaps book a few free tickets, and definitely DO show up oh yes
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/nigel-farage-americas-comeback-tour-2021-pittsburgh-pa-tickets-152757061483

weird

Hm.

Ex-AG Bill Barr's DOJ reportedly used the weight and force of the prosecuting arm of the U.S. federal government to try to unmask a parody Twitter account that trolled a Trump-loyalist Congressman. 🔽 https://t.co/SrYj8qpfhI

— Adam Klasfeld (@KlasfeldReports) May 17, 2021

on an entirely unrelated note, here's a temporary email address generator

https://temp-mail.org/en/

Judge Howell gave DOJ until Wednesday to file a public version of its response, and the only specific instruction is that it must redact the name and contact information of the DOJ attorney(s). That information is almost always public. pic.twitter.com/iBqKRN7W75

— Brad Heath (@bradheath) May 17, 2021

I suppose the judge was just trying to tamp down on the volume of death threats and hate mail to the DOJ attorney(s).

You never know.

Anyway if you'd like a satisfying read, here's the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors as well as the sheriff and recorder ripping the hell out of the Arizona GOP Senate leader who ginned up that psuedo-audit. A reminder that said board is very much GOP as well.

https://www.maricopa.gov/DocumentCenter/View/68972/20210517-Response-Letter-to-Senate-President-Fann---FINAL

This thread on said board's own meeting today essentially talking about all this plus further points is worth your time

Chairman Jack Sellers says what Cyber Ninjas is doing on behalf of the Arizona Senate is a “grift disguised as an audit.”

— Dillon Rosenblatt (@DillonReedRose) May 17, 2021

Maricopa county says Cyber Ninjas is just straight miscounting ballots https://t.co/riK3xBi6l3 pic.twitter.com/vM5Wa9XjnX

— Sam Levine (@srl) May 17, 2021

So you're like okay

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/capitol-rioters-trump-defense-comes-up-again-and-again-will-it-make-a-difference

And then you read this bit and what

I spoke to the "QAnon Shaman" Jacob Chansley's attorney, Albert Watkins, for this story. Here's what he had to say... https://t.co/6gZ2jzPvSh pic.twitter.com/b4w62dYvLN

— Matt Shuham (@mattshuham) May 18, 2021

sorry if this offends anyone, this thing i'm about to say, perhaps disrespectfully, but

xpost didn't see that until I posted to the Q thread ... between the AZ GOP and this guy, with friends like these ...

i'm not clicking that but is he a public defender? if not, who is paying for him?

will it work for a black man on death row in Texas? absolutely not. but these guys? hey maybe.

*Matt Gaetz’s attorneys furiously taking notes*

I assume thousands of MAGA donors

xp

The bio for Albert S. Watkins is pure, classic Albert S. Watkins.https://t.co/5Ax4zznR6J pic.twitter.com/uVQqSqllZ1

— Matt Fuller (@MEPFuller) May 18, 2021

what a piece of garbage.

This guy was also the lawyer for the St. Louis gun couple?!?

all I'm gonna say is if this somehow works it will go down as one of the most infamous defenses in court history. "your honor, my client is clearly a brain damaged moron" will become known as "The Watkins Defense"

this is the scene where Keanu Reeves tells Craig T Nelson "no no no see the jury is gonna see that I don't like you and therefore I can't be biased in your favor because I hate you, it's a good thing!"

it makes total sense these guys would pick a legal shitposter to represent them

none of the defendants are going to mind claiming to be dumb as a defense, the men would only speak up if the defense is they had tiny weiners or low sperm count. then theyd plead guilty

Holy hell I just hurt myself laughing

well well well

JUST IN: The FBI is investigating what it calls a massive scheme to illegally finance Sen. Susan Collins' 2020 reelection bid, Axios has learned. https://t.co/36nNweHIUc

— Axios (@axios) May 18, 2021

hahahahahahahaha

Not worth trying to evade the Daily Beast paywall for this but lol Sinema might really be more stupid than evil.

Senator Kyrsten Sinema is confused. At a private caucus meeting last week, she pointedly asked Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer why Democrats can’t overcome Republican opposition to the major ethics and voting rights reforms that Joe Biden promised voters, and that over 60 percent of Americans across party lines support. But Sinema wasn’t talking about the For the People Act that Schumer hopes to squeak through. She was referring to her own competing legislation.

Chuck, Chuck why can't you make Josh Hawley SEE REASON?!

I'm almost willing to believe she doesn't know how this stuff works, Manchin on the other hand...

I’m sure Collins is very concerned about this report

more than that, she's deeply saddened!

it must be some misunderstanding

I’m sure she feels that someone has learned their lesson after this breaking news came to light and there’s no reason to investigate further

I'm sure there was a moment where she vigorously shook her head in disappointment in the mirror and, that's that. Let's all move on.

https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/506910b184ae5a723be4b21f/1429792523972-2R75Z4UGRLQQIFOZ3NF6/ke17ZwdGBToddI8pDm48kO_pXNNRJPnKIW1o8esU4aFZw-zPPgdn4jUwVcJE1ZvWQUxwkmyExglNqGp0IvTJZUJFbgE-7XRK3dMEBRBhUpwN7cWxrmu9MX3GXen4hH_R93PNc6Eq9517Y08UXGJ6WPbpx4LlIAL9E3mBkJqJeYo/image-asset.jpeg

"I. will. be. deeply. concerned."

McCarthy is going all Both Sides Now... he doesn't want to dwell on Q-Anon Shaman (which is in the past), let's talk about antifa and BLM violence

Lotta good results in various Pennsylvania races today.

Has any politics happened this month I’ve not really been following

buncha good bills that passed the House got bogged down in the Senate

Same ol.

mitch mcconnell died. he choked on his own vomit as he was lying about something

I’ll check again next month

us politics is grim

This is better than I expected, honestly.

252-175, the bill passes with 35 GOP defections https://t.co/meI9MSoylP

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) May 19, 2021

Not GREAT, but it makes McCarthy look even more like a tool.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKTC7Vtg2oU

VI.

‘You don’t take from God’

Shelby Busch and Steve Robinson’s latest rally in Arizona was billed as a “revival,” and for good reason. At a veterans’ memorial near the State Capitol on May 8, speakers framed the audit in biblical terms.

“Put your faith in God, like we have with this audit,” said a woman named Patty, wearing a “Latinas for Trump” shirt. “The election was stolen, and you don’t take from God. I will die fighting. We all need to be there. It is a war.”

“We know who wins in the end,” said a congressional candidate named Jeff Zink, seeming to equate the certainty of God’s final victory with the eventuality of Trump’s.

“That heaviness you feel every day when you wake up?” Busch said. “That’s spiritual warfare.”

Robinson, who referred to Trump as “our rightful president,” said “several states in this nation are soon to follow” Arizona.

After Busch and Robinson spoke to the crowd of about 100, they hustled over to the shade of the state Senate building. They were scheduled to speak remotely at a rally in Georgia featuring Lindell. They smoked Camels and waited in the virtual green room on Robinson’s phone. Away from the microphones, their rhetoric was softer. Their loyalty is to the Constitution, they said, which means fighting corruption and fraud.

“We’re confident it’s happening,” Robinson said, “but we don’t know why.”

The audit, Busch said, “is about identifying the problems so that we can work as a nation to resolve these issues.”

But how could they trust a partisan audit that was conducted without proper oversight? By way of explanation, Busch talked about a 2017 tweet from Hobbs, when she was the leader of the state Senate’s Democratic minority, criticizing Trump for “pandering to his neo-nazi base” in his response to the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville. Shelby felt Hobbs was referring to all Trump supporters as Nazis. And Hobbs was in charge of the 2020 election in Arizona.

“I understand why you wouldn’t trust this audit,” Busch said, “but can you understand why we don’t trust your election?”

This audit. Your election. What’s happening in Maricopa can seem confounding, but maybe it’s that simple.

The skirmishes continue. Last week, the official audit Twitter account accused Maricopa County of spoiling evidence by deleting election databases. The account shared a screenshot of a database directory, without any explanation of what it meant. The wild claim was retweeted more than 12,000 times and boosted by the usual suspects.

Pulitzer shared the tweet on Telegram, where followers replied with “Firing squad!” and “Time for hanging?”

On Steve Bannon’s podcast, Rep. Finchem, who is hoping to become Arizona’s top election official, wondered if this evidence revealed Maricopa’s “incompetence” or “criminality.”

Patrick Byrne, the former CEO who is raising money for the audit, announced that “we now have the forensic proof of another massive federal felony.”

“Look at that, you guys,” Gail, the Scottsdale real estate agent, told her followers on YouTube, sharing the database screenshot. “I mean, it’s a crime. This is a crime scene.”

The Gateway Pundit, a pro-Trump website that has access to the coliseum, declared that Maricopa officials “DELETED ENTIRE DATABASE DIRECTORY from Voting Machines.”

Trump repeated the accusation, announcing on his website that “the entire Database of Maricopa County in Arizona has been DELETED!”

Jack Sellers, the Republican chairman of the board, called the allegations “false” and “outrageous.”

“This is not funny,” Sellers wrote to Fann, the Senate president. “This is dangerous.” The county released a technical document Monday explaining how the server functioned, which appeared to clear up the matter.

At a meeting Tuesday, a Cyber Ninjas subcontractor said that all this “may be a moot point,” because he’d since been able to “recover” the files in question, though the county described that they were there all along. Was it a misunderstanding? Did someone screw up? It didn’t matter. The crime fantasy had already spread, and Trump was promising “many other States to follow.”

The audit “has nothing to do with overturning the election,” Fann repeated Tuesday.

“The story is only getting bigger,” Trump said in a statement.

And so his supporters will continue to look at Arizona like a domino.

If it doesn’t fall, what will they do? If it does, what falls next?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2021/05/21/arizona-election-audit-trump-maricopa/

This audit. Your election. What’s happening in Maricopa can seem confounding, but maybe it’s that simple.

Last week, the official audit Twitter account accused Maricopa County of spoiling evidence by deleting election databases. The account shared a screenshot of a database directory, without any explanation of what it meant. The wild claim was retweeted more than 12,000 times and boosted by the usual suspects. Pulitzer shared the tweet on Telegram, where followers replied with “Firing squad!” and “Time for hanging?” On Steve Bannon’s podcast, Rep. Finchem, who is hoping to become Arizona’s top election official, wondered if this evidence revealed Maricopa’s “incompetence” or “criminality.” Patrick Byrne, the former CEO who is raising money for the audit, announced that “we now have the forensic proof of another massive federal felony.” “Look at that, you guys,” Gail, the Scottsdale real estate agent, told her followers on YouTube, sharing the database screenshot. “I mean, it’s a crime. This is a crime scene.” The Gateway Pundit, a pro-Trump website that has access to the coliseum, declared that Maricopa officials “DELETED ENTIRE DATABASE DIRECTORY from Voting Machines.” Trump repeated the accusation, announcing on his website that “the entire Database of Maricopa County in Arizona has been DELETED!” Last week, the official audit Twitter account accused Maricopa County of spoiling evidence by deleting election databases. The account shared a screenshot of a database directory, without any explanation of what it meant. The wild claim was retweeted more than 12,000 times and boosted by the usual suspects. Pulitzer shared the tweet on Telegram, where followers replied with “Firing squad!” and “Time for hanging?” On Steve Bannon’s podcast, Rep. Finchem, who is hoping to become Arizona’s top election official, wondered if this evidence revealed Maricopa’s “incompetence” or “criminality.” Patrick Byrne, the former CEO who is raising money for the audit, announced that “we now have the forensic proof of another massive federal felony.” “Look at that, you guys,” Gail, the Scottsdale real estate agent, told her followers on YouTube, sharing the database screenshot. “I mean, it’s a crime. This is a crime scene.” The Gateway Pundit, a pro-Trump website that has access to the coliseum, declared that Maricopa officials “DELETED ENTIRE DATABASE DIRECTORY from Voting Machines.” Trump repeated the accusation, announcing on his website that “the entire Database of Maricopa County in Arizona has been DELETED!” Last week, the official audit Twitter account accused Maricopa County of spoiling evidence by deleting election databases. The account shared a screenshot of a database directory, without any explanation of what it meant. The wild claim was retweeted more than 12,000 times and boosted by the usual suspects. Pulitzer shared the tweet on Telegram, where followers replied with “Firing squad!” and “Time for hanging?” On Steve Bannon’s podcast, Rep. Finchem, who is hoping to become Arizona’s top election official, wondered if this evidence revealed Maricopa’s “incompetence” or “criminality.” Patrick Byrne, the former CEO who is raising money for the audit, announced that “we now have the forensic proof of another massive federal felony.” “Look at that, you guys,” Gail, the Scottsdale real estate agent, told her followers on YouTube, sharing the database screenshot. “I mean, it’s a crime. This is a crime scene.” The Gateway Pundit, a pro-Trump website that has access to the coliseum, declared that Maricopa officials “DELETED ENTIRE DATABASE DIRECTORY from Voting Machines.” Trump repeated the accusation, announcing on his website that “the entire Database of Maricopa County in Arizona has been DELETED!” Last week, the official audit Twitter account accused Maricopa County of spoiling evidence by deleting election databases. The account shared a screenshot of a database directory, without any explanation of what it meant. The wild claim was retweeted more than 12,000 times and boosted by the usual suspects. Pulitzer shared the tweet on Telegram, where followers replied with “Firing squad!” and “Time for hanging?” On Steve Bannon’s podcast, Rep. Finchem, who is hoping to become Arizona’s top election official, wondered if this evidence revealed Maricopa’s “incompetence” or “criminality.” Patrick Byrne, the former CEO who is raising money for the audit, announced that “we now have the forensic proof of another massive federal felony.” “Look at that, you guys,” Gail, the Scottsdale real estate agent, told her followers on YouTube, sharing the database screenshot. “I mean, it’s a crime. This is a crime scene.” The Gateway Pundit, a pro-Trump website that has access to the coliseum, declared that Maricopa officials “DELETED ENTIRE DATABASE DIRECTORY from Voting Machines.” Trump repeated the accusation, announcing on his website that “the entire Database of Maricopa County in Arizona has been DELETED!” Last week, the official audit Twitter account accused Maricopa County of spoiling evidence by deleting election databases. The account shared a screenshot of a database directory, without any explanation of what it meant. The wild claim was retweeted more than 12,000 times and boosted by the usual suspects. Pulitzer shared the tweet on Telegram, where followers replied with “Firing squad!” and “Time for hanging?” On Steve Bannon’s podcast, Rep. Finchem, who is hoping to become Arizona’s top election official, wondered if this evidence revealed Maricopa’s “incompetence” or “criminality.” Patrick Byrne, the former CEO who is raising money for the audit, announced that “we now have the forensic proof of another massive federal felony.” “Look at that, you guys,” Gail, the Scottsdale real estate agent, told her followers on YouTube, sharing the database screenshot. “I mean, it’s a crime. This is a crime scene.” The Gateway Pundit, a pro-Trump website that has access to the coliseum, declared that Maricopa officials “DELETED ENTIRE DATABASE DIRECTORY from Voting Machines.” Trump repeated the accusation, announcing on his website that “the entire Database of Maricopa County in Arizona has been DELETED!” Last week, the official audit Twitter account accused Maricopa County of spoiling evidence by deleting election databases. The account shared a screenshot of a database directory, without any explanation of what it meant. The wild claim was retweeted more than 12,000 times and boosted by the usual suspects. Pulitzer shared the tweet on Telegram, where followers replied with “Firing squad!” and “Time for hanging?” On Steve Bannon’s podcast, Rep. Finchem, who is hoping to become Arizona’s top election official, wondered if this evidence revealed Maricopa’s “incompetence” or “criminality.” Patrick Byrne, the former CEO who is raising money for the audit, announced that “we now have the forensic proof of another massive federal felony.” “Look at that, you guys,” Gail, the Scottsdale real estate agent, told her followers on YouTube, sharing the database screenshot. “I mean, it’s a crime. This is a crime scene.” The Gateway Pundit, a pro-Trump website that has access to the coliseum, declared that Maricopa officials “DELETED ENTIRE DATABASE DIRECTORY from Voting Machines.” Trump repeated the accusation, announcing on his website that “the entire Database of Maricopa County in Arizona has been DELETED!” Last week, the official audit Twitter account accused Maricopa County of spoiling evidence by deleting election databases. The account shared a screenshot of a database directory, without any explanation of what it meant. The wild claim was retweeted more than 12,000 times and boosted by the usual suspects. Pulitzer shared the tweet on Telegram, where followers replied with “Firing squad!” and “Time for hanging?” On Steve Bannon’s podcast, Rep. Finchem, who is hoping to become Arizona’s top election official, wondered if this evidence revealed Maricopa’s “incompetence” or “criminality.” Patrick Byrne, the former CEO who is raising money for the audit, announced that “we now have the forensic proof of another massive federal felony.” “Look at that, you guys,” Gail, the Scottsdale real estate agent, told her followers on YouTube, sharing the database screenshot. “I mean, it’s a crime. This is a crime scene.” The Gateway Pundit, a pro-Trump website that has access to the coliseum, declared that Maricopa officials “DELETED ENTIRE DATABASE DIRECTORY from Voting Machines.” Trump repeated the accusation, announcing on his website that “the entire Database of Maricopa County in Arizona has been DELETED!” Last week, the official audit Twitter account accused Maricopa County of spoiling evidence by deleting election databases. The account shared a screenshot of a database directory, without any explanation of what it meant. The wild claim was retweeted more than 12,000 times and boosted by the usual suspects. Pulitzer shared the tweet on Telegram, where followers replied with “Firing squad!” and “Time for hanging?” On Steve Bannon’s podcast, Rep. Finchem, who is hoping to become Arizona’s top election official, wondered if this evidence revealed Maricopa’s “incompetence” or “criminality.” Patrick Byrne, the former CEO who is raising money for the audit, announced that “we now have the forensic proof of another massive federal felony.” “Look at that, you guys,” Gail, the Scottsdale real estate agent, told her followers on YouTube, sharing the database screenshot. “I mean, it’s a crime. This is a crime scene.” The Gateway Pundit, a pro-Trump website that has access to the coliseum, declared that Maricopa officials “DELETED ENTIRE DATABASE DIRECTORY from Voting Machines.” Trump repeated the accusation, announcing on his website that “the entire Database of Maricopa County in Arizona has been DELETED!”

things you just want to copy and paste over and over again, because they sum it up

#onethread
#stopcompromisingwithchristianfascists

Fucking scum

I hate them all

https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/23/politics/republicans-extremists-worse-than-2012/index.html

So what happens, what do we do when "Cyber Ninjas" confidently claims Trump won? What do we, as people in the reality-based community do?

Mix a Negroni.

also get a gun

MTG to Robert Reich: Greene responded: "Don’t know you, but when I saw Berkley in your bio, I got it. Just put the hammer and sickle with it."

Not that far off from something Jesse Helms or Reagan would have said 45 years ago, though. The narrative there fails because conservatives/Republicans have been like this for our entire lives.

What does MTG have against Busby Berkeley?

"Being a communists professor, you’ve never done the real hard work that builds the economy, you just teach ideas that will destroy it."

silly "professors" and "teachers" doing their teaching! HOW HAVE THEY HELP THE ECONOMY?

People need to stop paying this useless person (Greene) any attention.

Yeah, her whole deal is attention. Don't give it to her, she has no power.

On the other hand, if you don't pay attention to her she apparently follows you down the street, filming herself screaming at you, then posts the whole thing, and then people react to *that.*

Biden just dropped student debt cancellation down to zero. That’s right, the Biden administration has decided to cancel $0 in student debt.

— Gravel Institute (@GravelInstitute) May 24, 2021

chodes

DeSantis signed the Big Tech Conservative Ass Protection Act bill, a few days before an injunction is filed I'm sure.

the Biden administration has decided to cancel $0 in student debt.

and the official announcement is made on Twitter by Gravel Institute??

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/24/student-debt-forgiveness-reportedly-dropped-from-bidens-annual-budget.html

That article shows that tweet is inaccurate.

Yeah idk I’m not holding my breath that it happens none the leas

Is it? Waiting for the memo his people are crafting to entrench his argument that Congress has to do it means it’s not happening.

At least the “new FDR” pieces have slowed to a trickle.

Biden doesn't want to do it, but Schumer does, so I wouldn't count it out altogether.

Schumer can't get Manchin and Sinema on board with legislation that makes Democrats competitive in national elections.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/05/24/suspicious-package-rand-paul-490640

no rush guys. at all. you have a lot on your plate. in fact if you need to settle your existing caseload, that's perfectly alright. I'm sure it's nothing.

government shouldn't be involved in investigating anything

It was probably a delivery meant for Cocaine Mitch.

the 2019 bill barr memo, unredacted

💥 OMG. They just now unredacted those key portions. So I’m now going to just show you the pages that were previously redacted. I’ll show you the before and after.

1/

— Jennifer Taub (@jentaub) May 25, 2021

"Just this weekend Richard Marx called for violence against me and now we receive this powder filled letter.”

No, it don't mean nothin'
No victim, no crime
It don't mean nothin'
Till you sign it on the dotted line

pierce has had it

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a36531276/half-republicans-believe-donald-trump-still-president/

This is beyond the beyond. There is no compromise with this. There is no common ground. There is no deal to be struck. Millions of our fellow citizens are lost in rebellion against reality, and the only solution for the common good is to isolate them from decision-making and hope enough of them find their way back to make the country governable again. I’m not optimistic.

i agree. the idiocy is mindboggling...like, just being near it all the time, by virtue of living in this country and paying attention, is making ME dumber...a LOT dumber!

i feel like algernon about 3/4 of the way through the book

from the comments... good reminder: Once again let us to re-issue the reminder that these Republicans constitute only around 14-16% of the total population... the stink they make give them appearance of being a larger group, they are by far the minority in the country.

KEEP TRUMP ALIVE

good piece: dense, heavily referential doomscrolling

https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2021/05/the-brazilianization-of-the-world/

move over, Lollapalooza pic.twitter.com/YCp9P0fxEj

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 25, 2021

*Please no coolers*

William H. Macy is not invited. Harsh.

"please no cool people"

That American Affairs article has a subhead that beautifully sums up late stage capitalism: Modernity without Development.

i haven't been to brazil, but i have been to the first centuries after christ, and in some ways life right now reminds me of that: he said he was coming back, during our lifetimes. but it's been several generations now. some go on believing more fervently than others, others shuffle off because the promise was broken

the party will rage on till 5pm at the latest

Biden Concerned Ambitious Agenda Could Be Stalled By Him Not Really Caring If It Happens Or Not https://t.co/dwHfwFZXAz pic.twitter.com/LsWEYPKytX

— The Onion (@TheOnion) May 25, 2021

How dare you?!

'Modernity without Development'