US Politics, December 2021 — I have had it up to here waiting for the U.S. Congress to be remastered

Nothing from me for an opening post except to say I have a bad heartsick feeling about Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

Good morning!

Facemelting levels of irony right here

Red states are paying unemployment benefits to people who quit or are laid off after refusing vaccination.

The GOP had previously decried unemployment benefits and fought to eliminate them.

Now FL, IA, KS & TN are paying people to remain unvaccinated.https://t.co/E5uyR3rs0o

— Nick Mark MD (@nickmmark) November 30, 2021

Are those states also gonna raise unemployment benefits to a level where they're something you can live on? Because I believe the actual amount they give you in Florida in particular is a nickel a week, plus they spit in your face and toss it on the ground for you to pick up.

sigh I know it would mostly end up unfairly affecting the most vulnerable (and likely vaxxed) so I say this mostly joking, but I’m about ready to see COVID start doing some real numbers in ahem certain populations

Ah, that fresh new-thread smell

It's really quite astounding how Lucy the GOP is able to keep convincing Charlie Brown their constituency that they're totally not going to pull the football away this time. I mean, I guess these soon-to-be unemployable louts will just incoherently blame the Democrats anyway when their meager benefits run out.

Love that title

Something I was thinking earlier this morning:

It’s unlikely that the US will become two or several different countries in our lifetime. Laughable! Fanciful! Logistically goofy, BUT

Emotionally and psychically the process feels underway. There are already states I can’t imagine visiting willingly as it is, a realization that started setting in back in 2015/2016 and that’s calcifying now.

I fear we’re just going to court challenge over big and petty bullshit until being a country is so baldly untenable that this experiment ends finally

Don’t mean to sound so defeatist and usually I’m not. Maybe this is emo tired bleak mid-winter me talking

As you were!

The probable Roe overturn is going to accelerate things imo. Further sorting as people and companies flee from states with abortion bans, leaving behind a bitter and extreme majority and a trapped minority.

I don't think that's wrong at all, I had been thinking something along the lines of Raymond's post all weekend, but I was hesitant to toss more pessimism out into the world.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/22/politics/supreme-court-polling-roe-wade/index.html

(CNN)Fewer than one-third of Americans want to see the Roe v. Wade decision overturned, according to a set of three polls released over the past week, with key elements of Texas' restrictive new abortion law also garnering relatively little support in the polls.

In a Marquette Law School survey released Wednesday, just 20% of the public favors overturning Roe v. Wade, with 50% opposed to doing so, and another 29% say they haven't heard anything or haven't heard enough to have an opinion on the ruling. In a Monmouth University poll, 62% of Americans say the Supreme Court should leave the decision as is, compared with 31% who want to revisit it. And in a Quinnipiac University survey, Americans say, 67% to 27%, that they generally agree with the 1973 Supreme Court decision that established a woman's right to an abortion.

Those results track with polls earlier this year that also found majority opposition to the idea of overturning Roe v. Wade.

Ah well nevertheless

The will of the majority amounts to exactly 'fuck all' in this country.

You're going to have to show me the receipts where American companies like Apple are going to leave a cushy tax haven like TX because abortion.

I'm equally skeptical about this having some massive negative electoral effect for Republicans. It's just as likely that voters will assume "Joe Biden outlawed abortion".

or they'll think 'why didn't Biden stop the SCOTUS from doing that - he's the president'

SC overturns Roe v. Wade-- Good news for John McCain!

cant see any electoral consequences at all honestly. those who care already vote Dem. all the BS about how Trump/Mitch were stealing SC seats didn't really have much effect either. minority rule is kind of the entire goal here.

energized Dem base like in 2018 maybe?

I think it will make it harder for anti-choice pols to win in blue states now that there are real stakes

Only if the Democrats could sell people on a plan to do something about it. They can’t pass voting rights protections, much less tackle deeper structural issues.

the sanctitude of the filibuster must guide us all

the filibuster is dank

Only if the Democrats could sell people on a plan to do something about it. They can’t pass voting rights protections, much less tackle deeper structural issues.

― papal hotwife (milo z), Wednesday, December 1, 2021 1:00 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

yea this is kinda what it comes down to. I understand how hamstrung Biden is on the issues he ran on and how the real driver of policy is in fact moderates like Manchin but they gotta find a way to do something tangible. just delaying the apocalypse ain't gonna cut it anymore

it will make it harder for anti-choice pols to win in blue states now that there are real stakes

I don't see it. If the court kicks everything back down to the states to decide, then the issue will be fought out in (often gerrymandered) state legislatures. But voters already act like abortion has 'real stakes' in local and state offices.

hmm. You think people in PA wouldn't think harder about electing a Republican governor knowing he would sign an abortion ban?

this seems right to me tbqh

Can’t know for sure, but I think the CW that the end of Roe will be a boon to Dems is wrong, and (unless something changes) their inability to do anything about it despite concurrent majorities will be a huge blow to near-term morale. Sadly it looks like we’re gonna find out.

— Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler) December 1, 2021

inability to do something about an issue has never stopped anyone from running on it iirc

Abortion is unlike a lot of other issues in that even a lot of people who favor it being legal are not super-comfortable with it and would prefer not to talk about it. Also, it's not a decision-making election-tipping issue for a lot of people in the squishy center on it.

I doubt most Republican voters are really voting on issues, apart from rich people who think of nothing but taxes. They're voting on fears and gut instinct and overlook all the specifics in favor of reactionary bullshit. So I doubt overturning Roe will do much of anything, at least not nationally. Locally, it might be different. Contrarian/reactionary/libertarian/"moderate" GOP voters don't always overlap with the loons and religious nuts, and there have been so many close elections lately it could move the needle a little. And if the needle moves, there's no reason to believe overturning Roe will *help* the GOP, because everyone anti-abortion votes firmly Republican already. But they could lose a person here or there.

A story I've no doubt told before, my 5th grade teacher had a neighbor who was a teetotaling nun. Supposedly when prohibition was enacted, her neighbor got totally smashed and wandered out into the street screaming "no one tells me what to do!!!!!" That's America in a nutshell.

Abrams reportedly running for GA gov.

Go Abrams, go Beto!

I have no idea if either of them has a chance but that, yes, that is the path. Obtain power and use it.

We don't seem to be getting anywhere by pointing at Republicans (who are getting power and using it) and saying "they are BAD, don't you SEE?"

That’s Kamala Harris pretending to drive an all-electric bus, then honking the horn.

“The wheels on the bus go ‘round and ‘round,” Harris said, letting out a big laugh as Pete Buttigieg looks on. pic.twitter.com/gGNw7pQvNM

— Christopher Cadelago (@ccadelago) December 2, 2021

Veep deleted scene

Just as losing one's virginity is a r of passage for young adults, losing one's dignity is a rite of passage for elected officials. I'm pretty sure this wasn't Harris' first inane staged event.

I’ve never watched VEEP, but this sounds like the sort of photo op that VEEP would take down.

the chemistry between harris and buttigieg is undeniable

That Buttigieg-as-Kendall-Roy video killed me.

Lacks the verve of the Trump photo
op in the truck where it looks like he is making “honk honk” noises.

Pete said, "If you knew how I felt now,
you wouldn't act so adult now."

That’s too bad imo because in addition to putting Biden’s life in jeopardy on purpose last year, the former president is trying to overthrow the constitution through both pseudolegal and violent means right now! https://t.co/jFZTdlUdxj

— Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler) December 1, 2021

yeah seriously! i guess he knows that the house republicans are going to impeach him in february 2023 and he thinks that maybe if he shows that he is a nice guy they won't do it?

“He seemed like he was in pretty bad shape but I just figgered it was all those diet pills fucking him up.”

i assume "i don't think about the trump" is based on the idea (correct!) that running on trump will lose elections (e.g. VA). i don't think it's "i don't think he's a problem".

I'm not sure how he's supposed to respond. Maybe "Fuck him and his mother" would work.

I think it's equal parts "fixating on Trump is bad messaging for the midterms, so let's not do that" and "if I say on camera that I don't give the tiniest fuck about him, it's like I've driven a red-hot nail straight into his fat ass, and he'll say a whole bunch of crazy bullshit in response, so let's definitely do that." Come on, look at the way he smiled when he said it; Biden loves to poke at Trump because he's such an easy mark.

also people on twitter think the word "former" is a vicious dunk

Blaming Biden for not answering "better" is asinine. Beutler's complaints are about real problems, but he is ranting. If Biden had indulged himself in a rant of the same kind, it would not have helped. Having watched Trump and the media for the past five years, I'd say there's literally NOTHING Biden could have responded which would have made a scintilla of difference about ANY of those problems.

yeah but little digs are fun: "I'd like to thank the former president for his brief, guest-starring role.." etc.

Right. Saying publicly you never think about Trump is probably the best way to drive Trump crazy, so there's no real downside to it. Beutler seems to be mistaking SAYING it for doing it, when it's just a bit of trolling.

“Donald who?”

“Mr. President, about Trump …”

“Hold on, Amy…” *grins, takes out iPhone, cues up Jay-Z’s “The Takeover” and lets it play as a bewildered press corp looks on*

"that's a 1% percent growth rate over 4 years average, and that's LAAAAAAAAME"

'm not sure how he's supposed to respond. Maybe "Fuck him and his mother" would work.

I would pay so much money.

Thanks, @JoeBiden. pic.twitter.com/0iHwTLv7fB

— DCCC (@dccc) December 2, 2021

they tried. give dccc an 'e' for effort. but an 'f' for fucking stupidity

Sorry if a story about this has been posted here recently and I missed it

https://theweek.com/foreign-policy/1007579/biden-nearly-ended-the-drone-war-and-nobody-noticed?fbclid=IwAR11IBmjFNYAKEX-WgSt98YAwQE3dpMxZCJqMTMWTTwNmp2LxBbD-kk23OI

The thing about people not paying attention to this change now is that people mostly were not paying attention before either.

Breaking: people don’t know

People are clowning on this but "make your argument in a transparently stupid way to get people to share the underlying accurate point" works and is better than the Dems can usually manage to do pic.twitter.com/F79yBL41Qg

— Michael Tae Sweeney (@mtsw) December 3, 2021

Biden should follow up with a stat about how much gas prices have fallen in the last month that's 40%ish exaggerated to get all the fact checkers to run stories about how it "only" fell 20 cents instead of 30

— Michael Tae Sweeney (@mtsw) December 3, 2021

this was a trump move. i don't think the DCCC did this deliberately, but it's gotten >100x more retweets than they usually get.

it's gotten >100x more retweets than they usually get.

forgive me for being 'that guy' but I am unconvinced that retweets are a sound measure of the political thinking of average voters. whatever the DCCC tweets doesn't come within 1000 miles of changing their feelings about how much they pay for gas, one way or the other.

Coming in a little late on this but "everyone anti-abortion votes firmly Republican already" is Catholic erasure.

I do not forgive you xp

xp - not just Catholic erasure but untrue in a lot of ways https://news.gallup.com/opinion/polling-matters/318932/black-americans-abortion.aspx

We in the 'legal across the board no questions asked' are a distinct minority no matter how you cut up demographics.

in the legal across the board realm*

🎵 Real men of genius 🎶 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/man-sentenced-threatening-hang-6-members-congress-didnt-get-trump-rcna7377?fbclid=IwAR3L5VAI-5AglfiQZ5GlvWixUqwcHzvFCWMpsKHJaKePDTolF9i2_FY_G9I

Re: "everyone anti-abortion votes firmly Republican already"

Lots of people navigate the morality of abortion short of "legal across the board no questions asked." But are there actually people who otherwise don't identify as Republicans and don't support other shit Republicans do but are anti-abortion and vote Republican just because of abortion?

i'm sure there are, it's a big country

If the right can crank up the culture war machine and frame the midterms as a single-issue abortion election I've got a number of extended family members and an ex-gf that would probably hold their noses and vote R.

Going to be hard to do that if Roe is already repealed at that point.

There are definitely people who are single-issue voters and that issue is abortion, Idk if they would vote non-R without that issue or if they would just choose a different issue to care about. Of course like crut said, there are some of every possible thing out there.

Anecdotally I'm sure it's a thing. I just have no idea if it's statistically notable, otherwise-liberal people voting R strictly on the basis of abortion.

Going to be hard to do that if Roe is already repealed at that point.

It's going to be just as easy for the Rs to run on "if you vote for Dems they will make abortion legal again." But I think/suspect the margin of advantage is slimmer on that one, as Americans have never really had a right granted and then rescinded before, let alone something that in essence impacts a majority of citizens. I'm not sure how people will react. Possibly some of the aforementioned folks sympathetic to anti-abortion arguments might, when faced with the reality of a ban, get galvanized. Or maybe they will be cool with it. Obviously there are plenty of places where abortion is massively restricted today and I don't get the sense that it's been a particularly productive rallying cry. Similarly, there are only a handful of states, blue or no, that have enshrined the right to abortion in advance of what is likely to happen. Will more follow suit? Who knows.

really good piece by brian beutler here

good inflation

CORRECTION: That chart left off October's data. Here's the corrected version. (No change to the overall story.) https://t.co/FZTW3bvx7L pic.twitter.com/0cczON2RCo

— Ben Casselman (@bencasselman) December 3, 2021

really good piece by brian beutler here

― skull. kneel. kneel. kneel. kneel. (Karl Malone), Friday, December 3, 2021 12:13 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Agreed, that is good

also incredibly depressing! but at least says the things

afaics, the core problem with the democratic party is that it doesn't function as a party, if one compares it not just to the republicans, but to to literally any other political party in any country earth. party discipline is non-existent. any democratic politician can vote in any way on any piece of legislation and suffer zero consequences within the party.

their "whipping" is a joke. until that deficiency is rectified, one may safely disregard any pundit whose prescription consists of "the democratic party must define its policy objectives and how they will achieve them, so that voters can understand and believe the party will deliver on them". only a unified and disciplined party can operate in that way.

tell that to Nancy Pelosi, who keeps her majorities together very effectively

they also seem to be unusual internationally in that they are the biggest party that does not want the ball.

So Alfred, when DeSantis secedes Florida from the union, you gonna go with?

Florida governor Ron DeSantis is either openly preparing for a break from the federal government or he wants his followers to *believe* he is. Either way, it's extremely dangerous for the future of the United States.

🧵

— Brandon Friedman (@BFriedmanDC) December 3, 2021

That seems like a whole lot of speculation and doom forecasting.

Good to see Seth a Brandon back on the thread.

*Abramson (autocorrect)

who is Brandon Friedman

seth abramson's alt

De Santis wants to be president of the entire US and get the fuck out of Florida.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_defense_force

it's not a big deal

former Sen. Purdue (R-GA) is set to primary current GA gov Brian Kemp (R). he didn't take the bullets for trump's attempt to overthrow the GA alerts, so now he will be punished

" the GA alerts"

the GA election results

reading through the washington post's recounting of the 7 days between Trump testing positive and finally admitting it and going to the hospital, and it's a weird, almost acid flashback (never had one) to the constant recklessness of that era, just like a stupid soap opera every fucking day.

it starts right after that amy coney barrett ceremony in the Rose Garden. the one that was already being called a super spreader event, even live as it was happening (probably on a version of this thread), because there were hundreds of conservative elites in close proximity in the Rose Garden without masks on. remember that? well, it was just after that - that evening - trump tested positive for the first time. it was a rapid test. they followed-up with another rapid test and it was negative. they should have followed up with a normal (PCR) test, of course, but shockingly, they chose to embrace the version of truth that was most convenient, which was for trump to just go on like nothing at all happened, no masks, meeting hundreds of people and becoming his own super spreader event, just after hosting a super spreader event for a supreme court nominee. (?!?!)

Several White House advisers who attended the Barrett event said attendees were never told that Trump had received a positive test after the event. The advisers, like some other people contacted by The Post for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to share candid details.

Meadows says in his book that he “instructed everyone in his immediate circle to treat him as if he was positive,” but he did not tell aides in Trump’s immediate orbit that Trump had received a positive test, according to several former senior Trump officials who said they should have been alerted.

Neither Pence — who attended the Rose Garden ceremony Saturday — nor his team was told that Trump had tested positive that day, according to a former senior administration official with direct knowledge of the matter. Pence continued to interact with Trump in the following days.

pence gets screwed again! oh mother!

the next day, trump meets with the troops, his favorite, the generals love him

Later, after Trump’s hospitalization, the president seemed to blame the Gold Star families for possibly giving him the virus.

“They tell me these stories, and I can’t say, ‘Back up, stand 10 feet away,’ you know? I just can’t do it. And I went through like 35 people, and everyone has a different story,” Trump said in an interview on Fox News, referring to the Gold Star event. “They come within an inch of my face sometimes, they want to hug me and they want to kiss me. And they do. And frankly, I’m not telling them to back up. I’m not doing it, but obviously it’s a dangerous thing, I guess, if you go by the covid thing.”

the next day, trump, having tested positive and negative, noticeably looking and feeling like shit but still not wearing a mask or taking any precautions whatsoever, walks a some public event about his administration's handling of coronavirus and takes on a more serious tone.

As he introduced Adm. Brett Giroir, the White House coronavirus testing coordinator, Trump joked, “Good luck. Hope you don’t test positive.”

Trump came in contact with roughly 30 people that Monday, according to The Post’s analysis.

a few days later, trump and biden had that one debate where trump was being the worst fucking person ever and every single person in the world hated it, it was excruciating, it was childish, annoying, not funny, predator-like.

Once inside the debate hall — which had an audience of about 80 people — many of the guests on Trump’s side, including his family, refused to wear masks. That was in violation of the debate rules that requested masks for all attendees. They even declined masks offered by doctors from the Cleveland Clinic, which was overseeing the debate’s testing protocol.

The debate, which began just after 9 p.m., was fiery from the start, with Trump repeatedly interrupting Biden and Wallace.

At one point, Trump mocked Biden for his insistence on mask-wearing. “I don’t wear masks like him,” Trump quipped. “Every time you see him, he’s got a mask. He could be speaking 200 feet away from them, and he shows up with the biggest mask I’ve ever seen.”

Alyssa Farah, the former White House communications director, told The Post that at the time, she had asked senior staff, including Meadows, when Trump was last tested before the debate. But Conley and Meadows told her not to share with the public when Trump was last tested and declined to tell even her, she said.

Trump’s Sept. 26 positive test, she said, “was clearly withheld from me because I would have been among the senior staff who were around him. I was constantly in proximity. I should have been contact traced.”

“It just demonstrates a disregard for the well-being of others,” Farah said.

Farah is talking shit on him, chief of staff John Kelly, others - I can't think of another modern-era politician that has had so many of his inner core staff turn on him so quickly? this was like 2 years ago!

anyway. it goes on and on like that. it's exhausting just to read. you can see why the press loves trump. we got the batman (1989) joker politician that we deserve

I mean, not surprised but still! Insane.

The center right will never, never, never abandon him if he wins votes.

Esp for the core right, not for being covid mary. All of them think it’s cool, since he survived it. even if they caught it from him, afaict.

Yeah for lots of people this is exactly what they wanted / want / voted for.

The finger-pointy "See? SEE?" stuff, while understandable, is changing zero minds and moving zero votes.

in other fun Trump news

Trump: If I didn’t fire Comey, they were looking to take down the President of the United States… I don’t think could’ve survived if I didn’t fire him pic.twitter.com/AHxYyPBZA6

— Acyn (@Acyn) December 6, 2021

ever get the feeling that we're not really a legitimate country anymore

It’s like decker is the president and joe estevez is the secret agent. Everything is backwards

I can't think of another modern-era politician that has had so many of his inner core staff turn on him so quickly? this was like 2 years ago just last year!

christie?

christie's inner core staff is whatever tv outlets keep hiring him to appear on their shows, over and over and over and over, trying to brute force the magic of the good ol' uncle chris christie on whoever turns on 24/7 news

lol donald trump was still the president less than a year ago

I can't think of another modern-era politician that has had so many of his inner core staff turn on him so quickly? this was like 2 years ago just last year!

― more difficult than I look (Aimless), Monday, December 6, 2021 10:55 AM (forty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I know Trump voters don't really think critically about anything but it's fucking wild how quickly everyone who works with him turns on him the instant it doesn't benefit them anymore. even in Trumpworld you go from being a national hero to a fucking loser the instant you tell the truth about a single thing. how fucking willingly naïve do people have to be

haven't finished reading this yet, but it is hard to read, knowing that the future bad event - the 2024 coup - is being telegraphed so far out, from 4 years out, and you can just see it coming. similar to the impeachments and how the failed outcome was known by all for months before it happened, and how the attempt to overturn the 2020 election was in plain view from mid-november 2020 all the way to January 6.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/01/january-6-insurrection-trump-coup-2024-election/620843/

Technically, the next attempt to overthrow a national election may not qualify as a coup. It will rely on subversion more than violence, although each will have its place. If the plot succeeds, the ballots cast by American voters will not decide the presidency in 2024. Thousands of votes will be thrown away, or millions, to produce the required effect. The winner will be declared the loser. The loser will be certified president-elect.

The prospect of this democratic collapse is not remote. People with the motive to make it happen are manufacturing the means. Given the opportunity, they will act. They are acting already.

Who or what will safeguard our constitutional order is not apparent today. It is not even apparent who will try. Democrats, big and small D, are not behaving as if they believe the threat is real. Some of them, including President Joe Biden, have taken passing rhetorical notice, but their attention wanders. They are making a grievous mistake.

“The democratic emergency is already here,” Richard L. Hasen, a professor of law and political science at UC Irvine, told me in late October. Hasen prides himself on a judicious temperament. Only a year ago he was cautioning me against hyperbole. Now he speaks matter-of-factly about the death of our body politic. “We face a serious risk that American democracy as we know it will come to an end in 2024,” he said, “but urgent action is not happening.”

For more than a year now, with tacit and explicit support from their party’s national leaders, state Republican operatives have been building an apparatus of election theft. Elected officials in Arizona, Texas, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and other states have studied Donald Trump’s crusade to overturn the 2020 election. They have noted the points of failure and have taken concrete steps to avoid failure next time. Some of them have rewritten statutes to seize partisan control of decisions about which ballots to count and which to discard, which results to certify and which to reject. They are driving out or stripping power from election officials who refused to go along with the plot last November, aiming to replace them with exponents of the Big Lie. They are fine-tuning a legal argument that purports to allow state legislators to override the choice of the voters.

By way of foundation for all the rest, Trump and his party have convinced a dauntingly large number of Americans that the essential workings of democracy are corrupt, that made-up claims of fraud are true, that only cheating can thwart their victory at the polls, that tyranny has usurped their government, and that violence is a legitimate response.

Yeah, it's a truly alarming/appalling read (although not really anything we don't already know).

Even as these efforts foundered, the Trump team achieved something crucial and enduring by convincing tens of millions of angry supporters, including a catastrophic 68 percent of all Republicans in a November PRRI poll, that the election had been stolen from Trump. Nothing close to this loss of faith in democracy has happened here before. Even Confederates recognized Abraham Lincoln’s election; they tried to secede because they knew they had lost.

I don’t ask this question with any sarcasm: beyond all of us contacting our senators and representatives and pushing them to get voting legislation passed at a national level, what can we do?

Tweet?

The Gellman piece is really good and yeah nothing exactly new, but very diligently compiled. This is going to be the most telegraphed coup in history. Maybe we can get an HBO series depicting the whole thing before it actually happens.

The cable news channels can all design their coup coverage logos way ahead of time, get their coup analysis teams in place.

Maybe sign up some former coup plotters or deposed autocrats to talk about coup logistics, it's good to get some voices of experience in there.

Maybe we can get an HBO series depicting the whole thing before it actually happens.

the premium cable channels could fight for the rights to air it in real time as it happens, similar to how the prestige obituary writers tussle over who gets to write up the deaths of the most famous people

lol what is this account

You are not welcome anyway. Too much virus.

— Chen Weihua （陈卫华） (@chenweihua) December 6, 2021

he's the only person who should be allowed to tweet since heroically tweeting this one year ago

This is the most racist and ignorant US Senator I have seen. A lifetime bitch.

— Chen Weihua （陈卫华） (@chenweihua) December 3, 2020

Except the senator was a state senator from Tennessee, not a US senator.

marsha blackburn is a u.s. senator

good lord

Nothing close to this loss of faith in democracy has happened here before. Even Confederates recognized Abraham Lincoln’s election; they tried to secede because they knew they had lost.

A minor quibble, but recently I saw a description of the election of Rutherford Hayes wherein the outcome could only be agreed upon by making a compromise in which governors from the Democrat party were allowed to win several southern states in exchange for allowing Hayes (R) to take the White House. (Can't recall the source sorry.)

Democrat party

were you reading Selected Writings of Bob Dole?

and, yes, you're right about the Tilden-Hayes race. The South never accepted their loss. The rebel soldiers, some of them, had wistful dreams of guerilla war in the mountains and hills. That's what happened: the South kept on fighting using electoral and legislative means.

what's being attempted in the USA today is nothing like the horse-trading that went on after the razor-thin election of 1876. today it's more a matter of deliberately falsifying or ignoring legitimate election results to ensure the perpetual continuation of one party in power. iow, a reactionary coup d'etat enacted into law by corrupted legislatures, guaranteed by corrupted election officials, and ratified by a corrupted judiciary.

xpost

Right, and I remember now that I saw it in the review in the Guardian of the biography of Ulysses Grant by the guy from Fox News. Some interesting stuff there about the origins of the Klan Act too but that's probably the extent of it.

Apparently upstate SC was one hotbed of Klan activity, a depressingly unsurprising perspective on my home state.

Weren't the presidential elections almost all decided by undemocratic state legislatures back then? I think it's not so much that we have less faith in democracy than back then, and more that what's happening now is so egregiously against the progress of the past century for those who have been paying attention.

If I read an honest history of that era it would probably make me want to swallow a 12 gauge. I couldn't stomach the part of Cold Mountain where he got into a really vivid description of the banal brutality of a plantation in Georgia. I'm weak, I know.

Stage legislatures stop deciding elections slowly over the course of the 1820s as the franchise expanded, hence the contested 1824 election.

Devin Nunes is retiring. He was in line to be Ways and Means chairman in the House Republican majority

He is “rumored” to be taking a job with the Trump media start uphttps://t.co/GhQEoyb3Ua

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) December 6, 2021

Of course.

love these numbnuts retiring as though they are ageing blacksmiths whose knees have finally given out and not demonic pillsbury doughboys who are just going off to make more cash as Politics Knowers for a shouty show

including a catastrophic 68 percent of all Republicans in a November PRRI poll, that the election had been stolen from Trump

The situation is obviously bad but I do wonder how this translates historically. I kind of doubt that a majority of Republicans have considered any Democratic President legitimate post-Truman.

The percentage of Republicans who didn't think Obama was even eligible to be President topped 68 IIRC.

plus https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/12/almost-half-of-republicans-indulge-the-stolen-election-delusion/265949/

On the flip side, Russiagate had a lot of Democrats convinced Trump hadn't actually won.
2000 was an openly stolen election, I would hope a significant percentage of Democrats recognized that.
2004, Diebold+Ohio voting irregularities.

Question for people more statistically inclined than I: predictions and polls have been egregiously, recklessly wrong or at least pretty inaccurate/unreliable for the past few years, so why should I put much faith in many of the political poll people claiming this or that? Hope for the best but plan for the worst remains a perennial strategy regardless.

I would suggest a slight emendation: work for the best and plan for the worst.

Yeah, fair enough. Though some days it's hard enough work just keeping it together in the face of so much bullshit.

(CNN)Republican Rep. Devin Nunes of California announced Monday he'll leave the House in the coming weeks to become CEO of the Trump Media & Technology Group.
"I'm writing to let you know I've decided to pursue this opportunity, and therefore I will be leaving the House of Representatives at the end of 2021," Nunes said in a letter to his constituents.
Moments after his statement, the Trump Media & Technology Group released its own saying Nunes would be its chief executive officer.

Thank fucking god. The lapdog will be rewarded for his blind loyalty

Jen Psaki somewhat mockingly asks reporter at the White House Daily Press Briefing if the US should be sending out rapid #COVID19 tests to every household.

In the UK you can order 1 pack (containing 7 tests) everyday. https://t.co/ErnSsiLxxl pic.twitter.com/L7ruKWdy5n

— Matt Karolian (@mkarolian) December 6, 2021

I really do credit the 2000 election with completely disabusing me of my remaining faith in the US as a democracy. I'd already been into punk for years, and had been arrested that summer during a protest against the RNC here in Philly, but the brazen nature of that particular incident converted me into someone who simply doesn't believe that democracy exists in the US.

That doesn't make the Atlantic article less troubling.

In Austria they have free Covid test kits that you drop off at local grocery stores, pharmacies, etc. Test results online in 24 hours or less. Absolutely idiotic we can't do that here.

The situation is obviously bad but I do wonder how this translates historically. I kind of doubt that a majority of Republicans have considered any Democratic President legitimate post-Truman.

Yeah, it's hard to know how much the polling numbers are just measuring "not my president" partisan signaling, versus genuinely believing in a specific set of false claims. And I think a lot of people don't even draw those kinds of distinctions when they think about politics, so I'm not sure if you could design a polling question that would get around it.

That said, what's happening at the level of state legislatures is genuinely worrisome.

well the good news is the mean average american's opinion is pretty much unchanged

this is a pretty striking visual https://t.co/2mk8F3d9sZ pic.twitter.com/edgtI3865D

— ethan winter (@EthanBWinter) December 6, 2021

"Doubted the vote was counted accurately" seems like useful wording (vs. asking whether the election was "fair" or "legitimate"):

The 2000 data point isn't perfect because that was still mid-controversy, the consistent question wording hadn't been developed, etc. But comparing 2020 to other years is still pretty nuts https://t.co/YcevVJCaXl pic.twitter.com/ILoaoPOOvL

— David Byler (@databyler) December 6, 2021

I'm always suspicious when lunatics sound sensible:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/house-republicans-crenshaw-freedom-caucus/2021/12/07/75b2df20-578d-11ec-a808-3197a22b19fa_story.html

... Crenshaw said there are two types of members of Congress: “There’s performance artists, there’s legislators.” Freedom Caucus members, he said, are performance artists because they’re the ones who “get all the attention.”

“They’re the ones you think are more conservative because they know how to say slogans real well,” he said. “They know how to recite the lines that they know our voters want to hear.”

...

On Twitter, Crenshaw also lashed out at a conservative anti-Trump group, the Lincoln Project, after its Twitter account shared a clip of the Houston event and tagged caucus members Gosar, Greene, and Reps. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). Boebert also was not in Congress when Trump was in office.

“I didn’t mention a single person by name,” Crenshaw said. “. . . You’re also a bunch of grifters, for the record.”

"You’re also a bunch of grifters, for the record"

would have been a decent thread title

"We lost, by the way."

https://hips.hearstapps.com/hmg-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/images/gettyimages-645750020-1488222430.jpg

Looks like the war on Christmas is now bearing arms...

The Boeberts have your six, @RepThomasMassie!

(No spare ammo for you, though) pic.twitter.com/EnDYuXaHDF

— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) December 8, 2021

Santa better watch the fuck out at that house

Santa is perched on the edge of the property in his camo with a truck full of heavy artillery, ready to rain vengeance on anyone who dares cross the perimeter of christmas

We had to destroy the house in order to make it jolly.

I have to admit that I often feel really bad for the kids of these people.

who, us or the armed faction of the house? i feel really bad for everyone

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfE-z0RN7n0

"Got your 6" lol theyre all such wannabe GI Joe dorks

they're very representative of gun-owners, as far as i can tell. everyone played a little bit of call of duty and kicked a little ass at the gun range a few times so now they think they're ready to carry out a Rainbow Six mission in real time

if someone ever told me "i got your 6" i would turn around and face them directly, so that my 6 was their field of vision, but their 6 was MY field of vision. i would then start to walk backwards

Keep calm and carry on.
I got your six.

The kid of a rep from Colorado is wearing a Packers jersey instead of a Broncos jersey which I can only read as a statement of support for Aaron Freedom Rodgers

Then again, now that I zoom in, the other kid is wearing.... a Raiders shirt? What political statement does that make? "I support billionaires extorting huge piles of cash from any city they can snooker"?

Maybe he supports the gay player?

He prob just likes the pirate logo.

Raiders coach (Gruden) was fired by the woke mob.

^^ yup can't imagine it goes any deeper than that

Rep. Boebert looks remarkably satanic in the pic. It must have been deliberately chosen by her enemies to mak... oh, nvm.

Late with this, but...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGlx_Kq8qe0

Also love how local MAGA chuds are all pissed at Crenshaw for being a traitor and RINO and shit.

RINO? More like a CYCLOPS.

Crenshaw said. “. . . You’re also a bunch of grifters, for the record.”

The stopped clock is supposed to be right more than once a day.

Former military stopped clocks stay on military time maybe.

Hard to believe this is real, so ... grain of salt?

Meadows' PowerPoint of the coup has been leaked. This is incredible. I'm about to head on with @stephmillershow to discuss as we read through this https://t.co/00zb5k7BNl

— Mueller, She Wrote (@MuellerSheWrote) December 9, 2021

I mean, this is insane stuff, that this even exists.

And not to let the pendulum of crazy swing the other way (on the same side), but:

how is this tiktok from Capitol rioter Jenna Ryan real

how pic.twitter.com/S9QK1yHTu7

— j.d. durkin 🌱 (@jd_durkin) December 8, 2021

tom wambsgans!

Thanks for the window into bizarro-world, but... all I can see in the powerpoint is "we think we're right and the election is in fact being stolen," in which case - if you genuinely believed it, you would want to do something about it, right? You'd want to get the truth out.

Of course they're deluded insane people and are practicing motivated reasoning, but the principals appeared to believe it was so and acted accordingly.

It's not like it says "we know we lost, how do we hide the truth?"

Maybe that's not an interesting difference for folks here but it's still a difference

"It's not a lie if YOU believe it" has basically been the entire manifesto of Trumpworld

Right, but a true smoking gun is "we know this is bullshit but let's say it anyway,."

"We believe we're right and here are the talking points" is not a smoking gun.

The defense will continue to be "we thought we were defending democracy and election integrity." The leak changes zilch, is what I'm saying.

When we thought Bush was stealing the election we worked to combat that. When we thought Trump had stolen the election we worked to combat that.

These clowns - and they are, of course, clowns - can wrap themselves in the same flag.

So until the smoking gun is "yeah I know this is bullshit but let's push it anyway" my reaction will be (snooze)

Donald J. Trump was winning by a
significant margin across all key
states Nov 3 evening.
• Vote counting stopped in key
states where Smartmatic software
and either ES&S or Dominion
machines were used.
• When reporting resumed a
massive spike occurred that favored
Joe Biden and exceeded the
counting capabilities that were on
hand in many cases.

god, even a cursory, fleeting glance at the news on election day would tell you that everyone expected trump to be ahead in the voting counts at first, and then for the mail-in ballots to gradually overtake him in many key states. i mean, i know meadows knows that, i know the entire GOP knows that. maybe even most of their voters know that, deep down. but it's really cruel to exploit your own voters on total misinformation

As I believe the old saw goes, cruelty is the point.

btw, i don't know if any of this is real. that tweet above, the show the person is going on to reveal the "Leak" - i've talked before about how the left-wing version of the right-wing media echo chamber just doesn't work. this seems like the kind of shit that goes on the attempt to be on the left-wing echo of the right-wing media echo chamber, and doesn't work for people on the left, because it just seems grifty.

however, this does go a long way toward explaining things

https://i.imgur.com/uewoIg5.png

^that's from the purported Meadows powerpoint, in case people are skimming^

Air Gap Myth
Bad QR Codes
Scytl Server in Frankfurt
High Level View

If there's an argument to be made for the smoking gun-ness of this, it's that this is not merely a powerpoint for how to contest an election, it's a powerpoint for how to overturn an election. Specifically, the "options for Jan 6":

The final part of this power point is the most damning since it proposes that a VP takes a power that they do not have... pic.twitter.com/hfAB9jCVIk

— Jeff Mayers (@TimeLordJeff) December 9, 2021

Sorry, don't know how to post specific slides, but here are some other scary ones

... how about: pic.twitter.com/ndtRB4VVZW

— John Thornton (@JohnT15) December 9, 2021

Wackadoodle. pic.twitter.com/cTlgJG7HiR

— Vote, Organize, Do Good🐥 (@MelissaHBuckner) December 9, 2021

So ... calling in the national guard to "secure" the election? Which is to say, secure it for the (then) current president until the "legitimate" votes are counted.

the person who posted it has over 150K followers and is going on a show later today to do the big reveal, which also has another 150K followers. people who follow the original poster are people i respect like Renato Mariotti, etc. so i guess it's probably real.

but man, i think, just a terrible look to hype your leaked document without saying where you got it from, and then hype your appearance on some unknown podcast later that evening as your reveal moment. if it's real, then it's very important, and if that's the case, shouldn't this be in the hands of a legit media outlet so i don't have to worry about sharing it and making an ass out of myself?

i'm like 85% sure it's real, because the real people who are doing this stuff are complete dumbasses and these slides appear to come from the same minds.

but 85% is not enough certainty to share something like this, for me, sorry

the only thing that gives me pause is all the China stuff. Like really?

From a sociological standpoint it's truly been fascinating to witness one man's pathological lying and inability to accept a defeat infect the brains of tens of millions of people in an ""advanced"" 21st century nation and have tangible manifestations in the real world.

god, even a cursory, fleeting glance at the news on election day would tell you that everyone expected trump to be ahead in the voting counts at first, and then for the mail-in ballots to gradually overtake him in many key states. i mean, i know meadows knows that, i know the entire GOP knows that. maybe even most of their voters know that, deep down. but it's really cruel to exploit your own voters on total misinformation

― my hands are always in my pockets or gesturing. (Karl Malone), Thursday, December 9, 2021 10:54 AM (fifty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I still think it's fucking crazy that everyone knew Dems were more likely to vote by mail and Trump responded by doing everything in his power to SLOW DOWN THE MAIL so he could claim fraud. Like he just telegraphed it to everyone that this is what he was gonna do, and then 30% of the country believed he was right anyway.

"but imagine all the amazing punk music that's going to come out of all this, dude"

xp

xp well the poor performance of the USPS just goes to show that government can't be trusted to do anything

*nods while drinking black coffee, as a person who knows nothing about coffee would do, as a person who knows absolutely everything about coffee would do as well*

this seems pretty otm

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/09/opinion/joe-biden-political-time.html

has Domininon filed suit against Meadows for $65 billion yet? Because if they haven't, they will

lmao

Are there *too many* jobs right now? A Fox News investigation pic.twitter.com/QukCIur772

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 9, 2021

Lol that entire channel should quit.

well, "lmao" but it's working:

REPUBLICAN CONSUMER SENTIMENT IS WORSE THAN AT THE HEIGHT OF THE GREAT FINANCIAL CRISIS

Since it's such an extraordinary chart, I broke it out for the blog. Republicans view right now as worse than March 2009 https://t.co/ByidCkxisy pic.twitter.com/AQMs87gFJF

— Joe Weisenthal (@TheStalwart) November 15, 2021

while simultaneously our ports are busier importing consumer goods than they've literally ever been...

For all the talk about how screwed up our West Coast ports are, port of Long Beach said today it will process more than 9 million TEUs by the end of the year. Previous record was 8.1 million in 2020. They're now at 8.6 million. pic.twitter.com/gExxvvRuaG

— John Kingston (@JohnHKingston) December 9, 2021

and UI claims are at a 52 *year* low after the faster recovery in history

From nearly 900,000 initial weekly UI claims at the beginning of the year to less than 200,000 today – the lowest since 1969.

Unprecedented recovery.https://t.co/i6jX1Pn2oF

— Brian Deese (@BrianDeeseNEC) December 9, 2021

*fastest

well, "lmao" but it's working

Tbf, fuck Joe Biden, know what I'm sayin'? Trump 2020!

REPUBLICAN CONSUMER SENTIMENT IS WORSE THAN AT THE HEIGHT OF THE GREAT FINANCIAL CRISIS

It's all because of the milk.

"However, Black Friday firearm purchases reached an all time high..."

It totally helps that every time I see an msm channel they are talking about inflation as welll

Strikes me that as literally every single damn thing gets turned into a partisan political question, surveys like the consumer confidence one become a lot less valuable because the answers for a big chunk of the population will be determined strictly by political party line.

Being reported by internet people that metadata on that powerpoint is January 12th, 2021, which may imply it was altered after the fact.

"Wait, if I say I have 'consumer confidence', will it make Liar Biden look good?? Then put down that I have ZERO confidence!! Lets go, Brandon!!"

I'm sure there's at least some of this going on

The smoking gun in the Mark Meadows PowerPoint is clearly the last slide, which reads simply, "The End", placing the entire thing firmly within the realm of deliberate fiction.

And in the end
The votes you fake
Are equal to the lies
you make

"Wait, if I say I have 'consumer confidence', will it make Liar Biden look good?? Then put down that I have ZERO confidence!! Lets go, Brandon!!"

I'm sure there's at least some of this going on

Less a conscious decision than just the way partisanship works.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/business/economy/survey-trump-economy.html

After the last 20 years, I'm more surprised that anyone has confidence in good economic times ahead rather than constantly waiting for shit to go bad.

The top decile have been raking it in hand over fist since 1990, but are still a bit nervous. The 1% are sitting pretty and are mostly well-hedged against all foreseeable outcomes. The billionaire class are buying super-yachts the size of oil tankers and have binders full of people who see to it nothing whatsoever can touch them, short of an direct asteroid strike.

https://www.insider.com/matt-gaetz-steve-bannon-army-patriots-shock-troops-take-control-2021-12

"We're going to operationalize the performance to go right after the people who are imposing the vaccine mandates, who are enriching themselves, and who are selling out the country," Gaetz added.

Bannon then went on to suggest to a nodding Gaetz that there should be a "theory of governing" before elaborating on what his plan would be if Trump were to be president again.

"It's fresh and it's new. This is Trumpism in power. That's when we went to the 4,000 shock troops we have to have that's going to man the government. Get them ready now. Right?" Bannon said. "We're going to hit the beach with the landing teams and the beachhead teams and all that nomenclature they use when President Trump wins in 2024 — or before."

Bannon went on to suggest that these 4,000 shock troops would then become "political appointees."

It is unclear what Gaetz and Bannon meant, specifically, with references to an "army of patriots" and "shock troops."

Forget just "shock troops," wtf is up with "when President Trump wins in 2024 — or before" ?

We're going to hit the beach

lock up your daughters

It's fresh and it's new -- this from a man who's been in an advanced state of decomposition for about 6 years.

“it’s unclear what”

“Perhaps they’re just speaking figuratively there, who can say”

Both of these c***s should be in prison

at this point I'd settle for at least a good beatdown

Forget just "shock troops," wtf is up with "when President Trump wins in 2024 — or before" ?

I don’t mean to see alarmist or doomy or whatever, but I have been trying to say for months now that this shit is serious, and many writers have made the case far more coherently than I have.

They are doing this thing. Whether it works or not depends on how everyone else responds now. They are doing it in plain sight, just like they did the last one in plain sight. Only this time, they know exactly how flat footed everyone was, and they’ve eliminated any glimmer of conscience from their own party while replacing the election officials with their own toadies, across the country

But surely they won’t do that!

is our only hope if it keeps going like this

Fool us once, shame on this damn country, fool me twice, well, fuck, fuuuuuuck

Feel like maybe this fucked up story should be boosted over here instead of just the latest Ye thread:

https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/kanye-west-publicist-pressed-georgia-election-worker-confess-bogus-fraud-charges-2021-12-10/?fbclid=IwAR1TOdBVuwHXx3ZY5_OdvKo2DxNPw64mzi5j5i1MeO-lRu1d5cRQ11SkYhM

For those who passed their quota of free Reuters articles, here's a more extensive version of the same article.

WHTC: Two election workers break silence after enduring Trump backers’ threats

Free story idea: How to really get reimbursed for at-home rapid covid tests.

til: the federal BCBS plan requires not just documentation of payment for tests, but documentation of a doc ordering them. 1/2

Blows up the idea that you can just order some tests and get reimbursed.

— Austin Frakt (@afrakt) December 7, 2021

The idea is that the Trumpublicans win the House and Senate, they make Trump speaker of the house, then they impeach Biden and Harris. Et voila, the big guy is Presidetn again!

Impeach and convict.

conviction in the senate requires more votes than the Rs could possibly win in 2022, so its yet another pipe dream that could only be embraced by idiots or by con artists selling it to idiots

New stickers I saw on the back of an SUV today "I DON'T CO-PARENT WITH THE GOVERNMENT!". Some of the sloganeering now is so oddly worded, I kinda have to think or look up what exactly they are pissed off about now. In this case I guess it is about vaccinations in schools, but who the fk really knows anymore.

something something tyranny something evolution abortion something something vaccines masks something something research

I agree with Sotomayor (and the other three, incl. Roberts, the "gotta have standing to sue" man) that upholding TX Rando Bounty Hunter provision is the end of constitutional review: if one private citizen. anywhere, trashes the Federal rights of another private citizen, in the state with such a provision, whut can we do?
In other news: Capitol attack panel obtains PowerPoint that set out plan for Trump to stage coup It's not Fox News, but he does like visuals, so hey:https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/dec/10/trump-powerpoint-mark-meadows-capitol-attack

I’ve heard several parents at school board meetings use the “co-parent with the government” line, it’s part of the talking points I guess. Also hilarious because of course you DO co-parent with the government if you are sending your kids to public schools for 8 hours a day.

I say that line every time they tell me my kids need to wear a seatbelt

And not work 12 hours a day in a sweatshop. I'll raise my kids the way I want!

they better not find out what "in loco parentis" means

I’d like to see the overwhelmingly Republican courts wiggle their way out of this jam, ah well, nevertheless

If states can shield their laws from review by federal courts, then CA will use that authority to help protect lives.

We will work to create the ability for private citizens to sue anyone who manufactures, distributes, or sells an assault weapon or ghost gun kit or parts in CA. pic.twitter.com/YPBJ00vN6z

— Office of the Governor of California (@CAgovernor) December 12, 2021

The stupid thing is that, if the five justice majority is already prepared to negate Roe v Wade altogether or else down to whittle it down to a useless stump via other legal challenges, then allowing this 'Texas Two-Step' evasion of federal court review to stand just buys them completely unnecessary set of future headaches, such as this CA threat over gun rights.

I’m sure they’ll be extremely troubled by a headache when they strike this down.

Something tells me that those five justices aren't exactly the brilliant legal minds they were painted to be during their confirmations. They're hacks, bought and paid for by handing them the sinecure of a lifetime appointment to a cushy job in which there is no higher authority able to strike down their hacky, poorly formed opinions. They become forever untouchable as soon as they're seated. The only price is they must live up to the implicit demands for fealty they acquiesced to when they were nominated.

Fuck them and the horses they rode in on.

Huh, I'm amazed CA is actually doing it. Of course, I wouldn't put it past the SC to find a way to allow the abortion one while stopping the gun one.

They won't have to stretch far from their standard practice - there is no second amendment for choice or healthcare.

Exactly

TBF, 2A does not cover people who illegally sell or manufacture guns, but the SC has an interesting way of bending reality and interpreting the constitution in novel ways

haven't looked into it but i suspect this might be prohibited by federal statute and a court might not have to reach the 2A question

The most recent “implied” right is political spending by corporations. Can a state make corporate political spending illegal, a state based mccain feingold, and allow personal civil suits with universal standing granted by statute.

Fed election law is not my practice area- how would federal election law impinge on a state reversal of citizens United? Figure its too much of a thicket of existing fed law, but concept is to Allow suit of any corporation violating such state law

Obv im looking for implied const rights treasured by right.

US politics, update:

Former US Senate candidate and first Maine resident to catch COVID Max Linn found dead in hot tub after being sued for pulling gun on former aide during cryptocurrency disagreement https://t.co/Q238V2UFwU

— Nathan Bernard (@nathanTbernard) December 13, 2021

That headline is a hilarious mess. Like, did that all happen the same day?

of course - he was a colorful candidate

Covid/Gun/Crypto/Hot tub death is like the EGOT of old white drunk guys

The screenplay is literally writing itself

Dont worry a tight 10 page new yorker article will be turned into a 10 part miniseries for amazon

Covid/Gun/Crypto/Hot tub death is like the EGOT of old white drunk guys

― Chappies banging dustbin lids together (President Keyes),

Someone excelsior this, I have to go to work and don't have time to find the thread.

something something St. Peter request denied

Will anything come of this? Who knows, probably not. But at least shit is getting aired.

NOW: the hearing to consider contempt referrals for Mark Meadows is underway. I'll be live tweeting...

— Mueller, She Wrote (@MuellerSheWrote) December 14, 2021

(Whole thread is packed with revelations.)

Actually, whole thing is here, for other masochists:

https://www.c-span.org/video/?516687-1/january-6-committee-sends-mark-meadows-criminal-contempt-referral-house

apparently Lin Wood is holding a lot of dirt on his co-conspirators. This is an amusing read on the right-wing circular firing squad:

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/the-heroes-of-the-voter-fraud-obsessed-qanon-universe-are-turning-on-each-other

I'm a little surprised that fox allowed these images to air side-by-side

lol pic.twitter.com/AZJzbTP7Z9

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 14, 2021

so much for student load forgiveness, great timing idiots!

Psaki said. “A smooth transition back into repayment is a high priority for the administration.”

loans too even

the people love to smoothly transition back into paying several hundred dollars a month

Passed a digital billboard on the highway yesterday that cycled through a few random ads, including a flash of a "Trump Won, 120 million votes" billboard. Don't know the exact number cited, but it was something like that. No idea where the number came from, don't care. The whole thing was equally silly and distressing.

Yeah Josh, I saw a similar thing driving back over Thanksgiving weekend.

While I'm absolutely happy to see more 1/6 dirty laundry being aired and more people proven to be directly connected, I just can't shake the feeling of, "so what? what's going to change?", which is probably not helpful... I mean, it seems that even as they find incontrovertible evidence, what's going to happen? The Dems are going to say that they don't want to recommend charges in the name of "unity" or some such bullshit.

I did see something from Rick Perlstein, who understands these GOP nuts as thoroughly as anyone, citing Cheney specifically as more or less Ahab to Trump's white whale.

I could actually see Cheney not stopping until the Former Guy is in jail. https://t.co/HDHhuSUXcL

— Rick Perlstein (@rickperlstein) December 14, 2021

The important part of that tweet thread is Perlstein's observation that worry about the Republic doesn't worry her: this is a clash of anti-democratic dynasties.

yeah, seems like a real enemy of my enemy is still my enemy situation but maybe there's a MAD situation there

Which evil fuck am I rooting for here

Megatron.

Ahem.

Truly, I would root for the big robot dinosaur that attacks the city

Or Cobra. Or Cobra, old lunch!

Whatever ultimately results from the 1/6 hearings, I hope it's bipartisan in nature. I hope that both sides remember to reach across the aisles and embrace one another in the spirit of brotherhood.

There’s gonna be a bipartisan motion to do jack shit

Good shit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8eZ7yuGJFo

Well, it's the agreement to do jack shit that really matters.

“Truly, truly, our republic is on the brink of collapse”

“In washington, a bipartisan motion to do jack shit passed overwhelmingly today, with every single evil fuck voting in favor.

In other news - billy eilish hosted SNL and Kate McKinnon wasted NO time in making her break character in the first skit!!!”

Even more for the masochists:

https://rules.house.gov/

A sobering read:

Today @EquisResearch is releasing the 2nd part of a 2020 post-mortem, focused on WHY some Latino voters shifted to Trump & what it means for the current moment.

The report is ~100 slides. A summary (and the full deck, for the brave) is at the link.https://t.co/dQdSehe9PW

— Carlos Odio (@carlosodio) December 14, 2021

Hispanic liberals approved of family separation more than hispanic conservatives?

I guess it probably depends on who they are talking about. Mexico is not Cuba is not Venezuela.

I didn't read too much into it, but it seems like a lot of people have bought the bootstraps Kool-Aid.

oh you have no idea

It's a strange thing because in some ways, buying into it is part and parcel of assimilation into regular US culture. It makes sense that people of all types buy into it.

But that people are fooled into thinking that bootstraps culture will save them from white supremacist fascists who want to kill them? I dunno. It's fucking heavy.

They think they are white supremacist fascists.

They want to be them. They are them.

I grew up and live among these people. They have reached the place where they want to be, which means telling complainants to go fuck themselves.

and....voter fraud!

Three Republican residents of the hedonistic Florida retirement haven The Villages have been charged with casting multiple votes in the 2020 presidential election, according to local reports. Click Orlando identified the three as Jay Ketcik, 63, Joan Halstead, 71, and John Rider, 61. Each of them have reportedly been charged with casting more than one ballot in the election—a crime that could land them in prison for as long as five years. Ketcik allegedly voted by mail in Florida while also casting an absentee ballot in Michigan; Halstead is accused of voting in-person in Florida and as an absentee in New York; and Rider allegedly voted in Florida and an unspecified out-of-state location. Ketcik and Halstead reportedly turned themselves in to police, while Rider is said to have been arrested at a Royal Caribbean cruise-ship terminal in Port Canaveral. Click Orlando states that it’s not known who the trio voted for, but all three are reportedly registered as Republicans in Florida, and Facebook pages that seem to belong to Ketcik and Halstead show posts supporting Donald Trump.

Totally, Alfred. I get it. It's just...really heavy.

I’m enjoying the idea of someone getting arrested while in a cruise ship queue.

Getting arrested for voting fraud, yet.

I've always maintained that Biden actually beat Trump even more dramatically badly, but there was widespread pro-Trump fraud that was successful

Do I have any evidence to support this? No, no I don't.. it's up to them to prove otherwise

The Uncle Leo defense: "I'm old! I was confused!"

I thought the circumstances of the 2020 election being under pandemic conditions forced the security levels and protocols etc to be higher than they normally were anyway so the idea of fraud of a non republican nature seemed far fetched. I thought t hd guaranteed a level of fraud in the next election and went ahead and was true to his word about at least that.

uncle leo is fine really. i thought "orlando clicks" was a person at first. i was obv confusing the name with ornaldo bloomps.

WTAF?! @POTUS just hosted a "democracy summit" and yet no one in his administration has reached out to these college students & others who are on a hunger strike in DC, literally starving, to persuade him to prioritize the #FreedomToVoteAct. What is going on?! cc: @LetsUnpac 1/ pic.twitter.com/ZRoNB9JuqF

— Jennifer Cohn ✍🏻 📢 (@jennycohn1) December 14, 2021

DC files civil suit re January 6th

https://www.npr.org/2021/12/14/1064220978/washington-d-c-attorney-general-files-1st-civil-suit-over-jan-6-capitol-attack

ahhaha, that asshole who started my hometown's chapter of the Proud Boys is named in the suit! i hope it ruins him financially forever.

holding a democracy summit in a country that is very publicly losing its democracy was a mistake as well

appears that senate is giving up on build back better, now focusing on voting rights. sure

i was just reading about that. on BBB possibly getting pushed back to 2022. who says they're focusing on voting rights?

isn't Manchin the primary problem with both of these things?

focusing? that I can believe. changing the filibuster rules to allow it to pass, not so much.

can we just fast forward to the 2024 coronation of Trump as Padishah Emperor of the Known Universe?

Very optimistic of you to think we will even have a functioning country left to govern in 2024, tbh.

changing the filibuster rules to allow it to pass, not so much.

Why does the filibuster have any effect on voting rights? Manchin isn't voting for it.

what's especially chilling is knowing that we're only here (50-50 split) because of the Georgia senate races, which Trump single-handedly fucked up

Pelosi, says lawmakers/Capitol staff shouldn't be prohibited from trading stock: "This is a free market, we are a free market economy, they should be able to participate in that."

— Mariana Alfaro (@marianaa_alfaro) December 15, 2021

this party really knows how to shoot itself in the face.

So good that the CPC caved on the bill that accelerates climate change, no one could have foreseen BBB being torpedoed.

what's especially chilling is knowing that we're only here (50-50 split) because of the Georgia senate races, which Trump single-handedly fucked up

Karl OTM, the alleged "majority" only exists on paper and it only exists because of those races.

Imagine - had those races gone otherwise, there wouldn't even be this stupid useless de jure majority / de facto minority situation. And we wouldn't even have had this small reed of hope to cling to that a slim majority could be used to make life even a little bit better for anyone anywhere.

As it stands, something about it seems insidious and perniciously a little worse. Like, with a clear Republican majority we wouldn't have been clinging to that slender reed of hope, we would just know that everything sucks and is going to continue to suck

The Onion in November // how it's going pic.twitter.com/0DFzhjDIlR

— Thor Benson (@thor_benson) December 15, 2021

Yeah, I think that's one for the 'is the US a dystopia?' thread. When The Onion headlines begin to prognosticate the near future...

"It's funny, because it's true."

i don't know, the humor of the onion headline was that it was so obviously going to be true, i thought

like, they can start doing the stolen 2022 and 2024 elections because you know that's going to be true

i know it isn't chainposting about the permanent residency republicans occupy in my mind, but it's even more pathetic!

NBC News: Senate expected to shelve Build Back Better bill, moving forward aggressively now on voting rights

— Jesse Rodriguez (@JesseRodriguez) December 15, 2021

if they were serious about passing voting rights, I might even support this shift, but clearly they are not going to get anywhere with that either

i don't know, the humor of the onion headline was that it was so obviously going to be true, i thought

"aggressively"

it’s Elon Musk’s tweets we’re just living in em

If Build Back Better is off the table, so is the Child Tax credit, right?

Today's could be the last.

"Hillary 2024? Given the competition, she may be the Dems' best hope" (@TheHillOpinion) https://t.co/Owszrc2jDF pic.twitter.com/7efnuJQqsZ

— The Hill (@thehill) December 15, 2021

Oh hell yeah

Sure, why now my.

Why NOT

*screams*

Sure, at this point, why the fuck not?

I dunno, trying to even imagine what this country is going to look like by 2024 feels kinda like a fool's errand anyway, this speculation just feels extra fucking absurd right now.

fwiw, that "why the fuck not?" was not meant as any kind of endorsement, but rather an exasperated "sure, why the hell not get crazy as the world continues to burn thing".

She would be a better candidate than Harris or Mayo Pete, to be fair.

The trainwreck if she managed to beat Trump this time around, holy fucking shit.

lol i clicked through and it turns out not to be discussing it as a realistic possibility. i just have no desire to think about her is all.

xpost to milo - ^^ that part might be fun

If you click on that link, the terrorists win.

If we want to kick full societal collapse into overdrive, Hillary '24 would demand a Bernie '24 third party bid.

Knowles / McConaughey '24

why not

Why not, indeed?

fuck no

If you mean Harry Knowles, I'm listening

The trainwreck if she managed to beat Trump this time around, holy fucking shit.

― papal hotwife (milo z), Thursday, December 16, 2021 2:03 AM (eleven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

holy shit

she did beat him by 2.7M votes last time, but unfortunately the votes of rural americans count more than everyone else's

beat him again, beat him soundly, beat him with a stick

There's a WaPo story today about Kentucky Trump supporters begrudgingly accepting and respecting Biden's visit post hurricane. More or less what you might expect, but I caught this bit:

“He needs to come,” she said, before adding, “But is he coherent?” She recalled that Biden referred to the tornado that swept the area as a hurricane, and she blames him for rising gas prices and the persistence of covid.

It's less that this person buys into the "Biden has dementia" BS, or that he has anything to do with gas prices, but then blaming Biden for *the persistence of covid*? I mean, how do you even counter *that*? There are godddam vaccines, masks, recommendations out the wazoo. But blaming Biden for the morons that won't follow his safety protocols, because lol let's go Brandon, what can you even say?

"is he coherent?"

i can no longer travel in rural areas because the only answer to that is an immediate "donald trump. donald trump has NEVER been coherent. where were you with your concerns of coherence then, you, you, kentucky fried...chicken. bawk! baaawk!!"

whatabout

it is a "whatabout", it's true. not good form.

but when the self-described "hard right conservative" dipshit neighbor kid came to my place a few weeks ago and started asking if i was offended about the very allegedly racist thing that joe biden had said that day (regarding Satchel Paige), the only thing i could say was "did you care this much about the president's racism when donald trump did stuff 100x worse, every single day, for every single day of his entire life? it makes me think that you only care about racism when you think it could help you win an argument"

a little bit after that he described himself as a "...centralist..." and i realized that i was talking to Vincent Adultman from Bojack Horseman

Also of course the Satchel Paige thing was not what they made it out to be, just such bad faith nonsense. Joe Biden HAS said racist things, we know that, but that wasn't one of them.

Biden definitely meant to say "great Negro League pitcher" so not racist but generally not a mark in the "still coherent" column.

coherent for him--dude has a stutter and has stumbled over his words for years

And he hasn't had a press conference in months.

Conservatives also suddenly are super concerned about "our Afghan/Kurdish allies"

I'm not saying he's particularly coherent (or particularly not racist). It's just the stuff that gets picked up on is so dumb.

I do not have super strong confidence in the president's mental faculties, but that's been true of presidents as often as not in my lived experience.

^^^^^^^

We could use someone with more fire in their belly right now. Time for Pres. Kamala?

xpost what's happening in Afghanistan right now is completely tragic and everybody seems to have moved on. Biden can eat shit if he's unwilling to address it.

xp
Not that Kamala has demonstrated that she would behave any differently...

ha i'd rather have gavin newsom run in 24 than kamala (because she'd lose and he wouldnt. they both suck.)

I love his hair.

So depressing that people from both parties want a ton of things in common, and neither party seems capable of delivering any of it. The GOP is all-in on this trollish, racist, accelerationist platform of "fuck it all - as long as my taxes are low," and the dems seem content to whine about it.

So depressing that people from both parties want a ton of things in common, and neither party seems capable of delivering any of it.

You forgot the part about delivering piles of cash to their own bank accounts, which is the sole job of politicians in this absolute sham of a country.

ha i'd rather have gavin newsom run in 24 than kamala (because she'd lose and he wouldnt. they both suck.)

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Thursday, December 16, 2021 1:39 PM (twenty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

you mean kimberly guilfoyle's ex husband?

You forgot the part about delivering piles of cash to their own bank accounts, which is the sole job of politicians in this absolute sham of a country.

This x 1000. I think in all the legitimate concerns about authoritarianism and collapse of democracy, it's easy to lose sight that we're really up against corruption more than anything else. The entire Trump enterprise is a galactic-sized Exhibit A obv.

The saddest part is the pathetically low amounts of money that it takes to get them to sell us out.

Ok, the sellout is the saddest part, but that is sad too.

And if you happen to be a dominant industry in a state without many people, you can buy pretty much buy the whole governing apparatus. (Something Biden and Manchin could both attest to.)

buy buy buy

lol

https://t.co/0RNyLSKLQb pic.twitter.com/541rjKcgTy

— 'Weird Alex' Pareene (@pareene) December 16, 2021

no difference, could be Feb 7, could be never

Build Back Whenever

You forgot the part about delivering piles of cash to their own bank accounts, which is the sole job of politicians in this absolute sham of a country.

This x 1000. I think in all the legitimate concerns about authoritarianism and collapse of democracy, it's easy to lose sight that we're really up against corruption more than anything else. The entire Trump enterprise is a galactic-sized Exhibit A obv.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Thursday, December 16, 2021 7:17 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

only in the u.s.: class war staring you right in the face your whole life, and you call it "corruption"

I don't think the two are mutually exclusive— in fact, I'd say they have a pretty direct relationship.

only in the u.s.: class war staring you right in the face your whole life, and you call it "corruption"

probably England and Canada too tbf

I don't think the two are mutually exclusive— in fact, I'd say they have a pretty direct relationship.

Well yeah. Corruption is the means by which the war is waged.

e.g. the insane levels of interest rates allowed to be charged by scammy loan operations, which used to be illegal but now in many places are not, because the industry bought friends in legislatures and Congress.

hilarious to look back at bidens covid plan and read page after page of stuff he didnt even try to do pic.twitter.com/3NZq11Kn5w

— trevb (@trrvvb) December 16, 2021

Yeah I’m in stitches over here

How much of that stuff do you actually wish the Biden administration had done, though? The single most important thing, vastly more important than any other factor in reducing the toll of COVID, was getting hundreds of millions of doses of vaccine into arms. That was not a triviality, and the administration correctly made it the highest priority, and got it done. Biden also, over a lot of political objection, instituted vaccine mandates for federal workers and the military, which is more millions of people.

Glad he did all that instead of paying restaurants to put up more plexiglass.

Turning on student loan payments, turning off $300 a month per child direct payments, enacting the largest Medicare premium hike in history while preventing seniors from receiving dental and vision benefits & increasing interest rates all at the same time is pretty, pretty dumb.

— Warren Gunnels (@GunnelsWarren) December 16, 2021

pretty, pretty dumb

Goes without saying that every single Republican in Congress is overjoyed to strangle all of those ideas in their crib, making them the 'pretty, pretty dumb' faction par excellence.

Yes, it does go without saying. But you did anyway.

But it's the Dems, and Biden specifically, who could do something about these issues via executive action. He just doesn't want to because he doesn't care, and neither do most of the Dems.

Biden's stimmy - the one where $2000 became $1400 - could have included $1500 checks for getting the jab and we'd have 80% of the population vaxxed.

I support it. How would it have worked -- a reward for getting the vaccine?

My ideal president would've pulled an FDR and found a novel extra-constitutional solution for requiring the vaccine in every workplace and get enough jabs in arms until SCOTUS stopped it.

Why would you ever do something unpopular (forcing needles into arms) when you could do something universally popular (giving people money)?

He and Trump did give people money -- and it helped, as we know. How would this have solved our vaccine problem?

... how would cutting checks to people for getting the vaccine have helped recalcitrant people get the vaccine?

Yeah, I mean milo, arguing what he could have done doesn't make a whole lot of sense when it's what he's doing that is super fucked.

"Doing your own research" is a lot less fun when your neighbor is showing you his sweet new six burner grill.

we absolutely should pay people to do things that are good for public health. we should have paid people to stay home, and we should pay people to take time out of their working day to get and recover from vaccination.

I'm not sure what we're arguing about anymore. #ILX

we should have paid people to stay home, and we should pay people to take time out of their working day to get and recover from vaccination.

exactly

there are literally infinity things they could have done in a world where their primary concern wasn't protecting the interests of the ruling class.

right, but my ideas that will never happen are the best.

next months' thread title

MY GRAMMAR IS FAILING. i've been working the same stupid document all day, going nuts over here,apologies.

If it wasn’t for that meddling Senate parliamentarian…

BREAKING — The Senate parliamentarian ruled against Democrats’ plan to offer work permits to undocumented immigrants, rejecting yet again another Democratic effort to pass an immigration program without Republican votes, sources familiar with the guidance tell CBS News.

— Camilo Montoya-Galvez (@camiloreports) December 16, 2021

and another one

News: The Parliamentarian has rejected Democrats' third immigration proposal, offering millions of immigrants deportation protections and work permits. Likely the end of the road for helping unauthorized immigrants through reconciliation. W/@aduehren https://t.co/4yPXLt2j9e

— Michelle Hackman (@MHackman) December 16, 2021

The Dept of Education did a report on Biden's ability to cancel student debt so Biden just redacted the entire thing, how is this real lmao pic.twitter.com/bFIbf4nFmo

— Holding Biden Accountable (@WaitingOnBiden) December 17, 2021

That seems wild. Idk if there's precedent but come THE FUCK on.

Some context:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/what-biden-cant-do-on-student-debt-and-what-he-wont-do

On April 1st, in an interview with Politico, Ron Klain, Biden’s chief of staff, was asked whether Biden planned to cancel student debt via executive action. Klain said that the Department of Education was preparing “a memo on the president’s legal authority. Hopefully we’ll see that in the next few weeks. And then he’ll look at that legal authority, he’ll look at the policy issues around that, and he’ll make a decision.” A few weeks passed. Then a few months. Biden’s press secretary, Jen Psaki, was asked several times—in June, in August, in October—whether the legal review was finished, and what it had concluded. “I don’t have an update on that,” she said.

The Debt Collective activists developed a theory: that the lawyers at the Department of Education had already written their memo, that they had advised Biden that he did have the authority to cancel debt, and that the Administration was keeping the memo quiet because they didn’t like its conclusions. But this was mere speculation. So Gokey, one of the organizers, submitted a request through the Freedom of Information Act. If a memo had already been drafted, then he asked the Department of Education to send it to him. On August 20th, he got the results: dozens of pages of e-mails among Department of Education officials, including a seven-page memo called “The Secretary’s Legal Authority for Broad-Based Debt Cancellation.” The memo’s contents were redacted—in hot pink, for some reason—but it was proof that a memo existed. “I really felt this version was excellent,” the general counsel at the Department of Education wrote, on April 5th. Three days later, the word “draft” was removed from the memo’s header. This all seemed to vindicate the activists’ theory.

After reviewing Gokey’s documents, I asked both the White House and the Department of Education whether the department’s internal legal review was complete, but I didn’t get a specific answer. Nor is it clear whether, if Biden’s lawyers do conclude that he has the authority to cancel a large (or unlimited) amount of student debt, he is willing to use that authority. “The Department of Education is continuing to work in partnership with colleagues at the Department of Justice and the White House to review options with respect to debt cancellation,” a spokesperson from the Department of Education told me. A White House official told me that the President “continues to look into what debt-relief actions can be taken administratively” but that “these steps take time.”

bilk bucks better!!

When the volume of needs within the national hierarchy of legit needs is creating a mess

How did people with college loans (which can be refinanced, restructured, or deferred) jump the line and decide they were the most oppressed group?

— THEE Audacity (@ArrogantNBlack) December 14, 2021

it seems to be pervasive. very irritating. they think they're so smart! it's a variation of hillary's "breaking up the banks won't end racism" non-sequitur

Those people should be thrilled that Biden won’t do anything.

Opinion | Economically anxious white Americans feel excluded from Washington. Is it any wonder they invaded the Capitol Building?

— New York Times Pitchbot (@DougJBalloon) December 18, 2021

lollll v good

White House reportedly on lock down due to a bomb threat.

harris is getting embarrassing.

no

who's feeling embarrassed?

It's really too bad she didn't just stay in the Senate, she seemed to have a Markey-like willingness to accommodate the left of the party and you don't have to be a good politician to keep getting elected Democratic Senator from California.

there is a lot of misogyny directed at her, like every woman politician. she isn't embarrassing and she didn't need to stay in the Senate.

There is a lot of misogyny directed at her! But she's also just not very good at politician things like speaking in public or inspiring people.

She should have stayed in the Senate because she won't ever be President unless Biden dies in office. Lecturing desperate people in Guatemala is the endpoint of her political career, where she could have been a Senator of the most important state for 40 years.

Being VP is a terrible, thankless job - you have to own the disappointments of the Administration and have zero ability to accomplish anything. That's one reason why HW Bush is the only VP in modern history to make the immediate leap between VP and President without bullets being fired.

there *is* a lot of misogyny directed at her, which is bad!

also, she’s a cop who supported and in some cases enacted a lot of regressive “tough on crime” policies to appeal to moderates and is very bad at politicking on the national level at a time when Democrats desperately need good messaging, which is also bad!

xxp lol

I think the general public is mostly moderate and doesn't think of her as a cop fwiw

"But she's also just not very good at politician things like speaking in public or inspiring people." I think she is good at speaking in public and inspiring people.

I don't imagine any woman will be elected president in my lifetime in this country

Feels like 90% of the time I see her name these days it's bc of dumb, ginned-up controversies that don't actually matter.

I think she is good at speaking in public and inspiring people.

The 2020 primaries say otherwise.

Mayo Pete got someone to make a movie about him ffs, the bar was low.

I guess bomb threat might have been a false alarm? Fake news.

xp so you haven't really been interested in hearing what she has to say

I heard her loud and clear when she was scolding those desperate people and when she apologized to Israel for not being properly deferential to their desire to commit ethnic cleansing. I'm glad she and Biden were "deeply troubled" by federal agents whipping refugees before the Administration sent them back to Haiti, tho.

But she doesn't need you to like her (you like all Democrats) or me (who inherently dislikes all Democrats until proven otherwise) and she's a complete failure thus far at catching the people in the middle.

who do you like though?

The people of the Burgerville Workers Union.

You met any?

I'm impressed by how angry you always are milo, really

Very angry to say she could have been a decent Senator from an important state for the rest of my life and it’s too bad she chose otherwise.

who do you like*? Is an important question

*that has a chance in hell of winning

Rare good news:

The Senate confirmed President Biden’s 40th federal judicial nominee early on Saturday morning, the most judges confirmed in a president’s first year in the last 40 years.

In a pre-dawn mad dash before leaving Washington for the holidays, lawmakers confirmed 10 district court judges, bringing the year-end total to 40 and notching an achievement not seen since former President Ronald Reagan. It underscored how the White House has set a rapid pace in filling vacancies on the federal bench, even besting the records set by the Trump administration, which maintained a laser focus on reshaping the judiciary.

The milestone came as a welcome victory for frustrated congressional Democrats whose legislative agenda continues to hit roadblock after roadblock, including their attempts to pass Mr. Biden’s signature social safety net, climate and tax bill, and their efforts to bolster voting rights and overhaul immigration.

The Senate confirmed 18 circuit and district court judges in President Donald J. Trump’s first year in office, and 12 in President Barack Obama’s inaugural year.

ah well, nevertheless

BREAKING: Manchin says he’s opposed to Biden’s Build Back Better tax and spending plan.

“This is a no on this legislation,” @Sen_JoeManchin says on Fox News Sunday.

“I just can't. I've tried everything humanly possible. I can't get there.” pic.twitter.com/iNUnH3Ds3F

— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) December 19, 2021

What a great place to share that news.

xpost I saw somewhere else that of those three dozen or so judges appointed by Reagan, something like 3 were women. I think 30 of the 40 Biden appointed were women.

if the Democratic Party had an ounce of self respect they’d pull him in a room and explain how they’re going to make his daughter testify before Congress re EpiPen pricing

If you punish him and he re-parties to GOP, i cannot feel good on that. Never seem much commentary on how likely that could be, bit it would suck.

To me the punishment MUST come but it cannot be now as far as i can see.

Someone explain me why the real game should not be working 1000% to flood money/position to one GOPer to switch to INDY/Dems, somehow someway. That might take away manchin’s presidency and perhaps create some movement?

Like, this tactic to be somebody’s game right in the admin or party somewhere, right? I would guess it’s hard to outgraft GOP tho.

(Yes i am v ignorant of this aspect of the game for sure.)

if he defects he loses all his juice as The Most Important Man in America

but he is a spiteful little shit and is quite clearly doing the bidding of his biggest donors so maybe he doesn’t actually care that much about being feted by the likes of Bret Stephens

Put him in a wheelchair. And I don't mean that as a political metaphor.

This motherfucker wasted months making them gut the hell out of this bill and got Biden to guarantee it would pass only to fucking kill it on Fox News?? I just can’t anymore with this shit

tbf if it wasn’t him it would have been someone else

I'm with unperson, but I also want those wheelchairs then rolled off the edge of fucking cliff.

maybe he’ll meet an untimely demise in a hellish yachting accident

It’s occurred to me that the passing of certain living politicians will be met, increasingly, with “good fucking riddance.” That’s happened in the past year or two to some extent, but the response to Colin Powell’s death was met with a surprising amount of both-sides-ism from people with short memories.

We’re at a fervor pitch in this country where some passings will be met with actual parties, and no one will feel inhibited about celebrating.

fever pitch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9t4-zDem1Sk

The Squad was right.

for some reason I'm reading Hugh Hewitt's take on Manchin and the demise of Build Back Better humanity, and i want to die. god i fucking hate him

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/white-house-statement?fbclid=IwAR24dwS2SJcfeGSiosv004qNoCDKFnFaUmlXXYlzX3PX8KeJUWLRW6G0SMA

So can they get some of this through piecemeal---? Still require his vote? All bridges gone? They could turn to voting rights act, but he's not gonna for anti-filibuster carve-out, is he? Once he's officially Republican--or Independent, always caucusing w Repubs, he'll be starting over as just another footsoldier, no longer with the fabulous "bargaining power."

Karl, not reading Hugh Hewitt ever is an important part of my self-care regimen

I'm not sure I see Manchin switching parties, given he votes with Biden/Dems 97% of the time (if the chart I saw is accurate). He's in the senate until at least '25, but he likely loses a chunk of his power when the Dems lose the Senate in '22, so you'd think he'd want to use that power to get shit done now rather than prevent shit from getting done, because in a couple of years he won't have the sway to do either, really.

So can they get some of this through piecemeal---? Still require his vote?

The Compromise of 1850 Part II

There’s nothing he appears interested in doing, though, aside from blocking legislation that would hurt him, his donors, his daughter, etc..

you'd think he'd want to use that power to get shit done now rather than prevent shit from getting done, because in a couple of years he won't have the sway to do either, really

Genuine question: what has Manchin ever expressed an interest in actually accomplishing as a legislator (except for keeping his daughter rolling in pharma cash and himself in coal industry payoffs)?

xpost with (ugh) milo

This would be a good time for Biden to use executive authority to cancel student debt and reschedule weed so blue checks have something to tweet aside from ‘vote harder next time!!!!!!’

lol

xp to Josh

I think 538 massaged the data a bit to make it look like Manchin votes with Dems 97% of the time.

https://projects.propublica.org/represent/members/M001183/votes-against-party/115

Has Jayapal issued a statement about getting played?

Executive authority, recess appointments, hmmmm

Senator Manchin has betrayed his commitment not only to the President and Democrats in Congress but most importantly, to the American people.

My full statement:https://t.co/jfmxVCrhuy

— Rep. Pramila Jayapal (@RepJayapal) December 19, 2021

Excellent.

The nicest possible way to call Manchin a liar, a cheat, and a plague on our whole society.

Really worth highlighting Manchin is taking direct aim at the climate provisions of BBB in particular

Says "the energy transition my colleagues seek is already underway" but moving too fast could hurt US energy production

Meanwhile, planet is warming catastrophically ...

— Jeff Stein (@JStein_WaPo) December 19, 2021

Feels like watching LARPers reenact the fall of Rome in real time.

“These filthy plebeians simply can’t comprehend our patrician morals”. *kicks slave*

so fucking crazy that we have such a narrow window to avert total disaster and we can't do anything about it because the deciding vote is a guy whose only issue is fucking coal production

and you can't even punish them at the polls for it because the other party is comprised of people like this

Sarah Palin says ‘over my dead body’ will she have a covid vaccine shot https://t.co/jHibCcBe77

— The Independent (@Independent) December 19, 2021

Could Dem party somehow ruin Manchin to his own constituents? I don’t think they even can, effectively.

So i still would think the only way to get Manchin is to buy a gop conversion somehow, while being consistent with him. Then once elections are done, could the dem senators pull him from his chairmanship of energy?

Somehows doing far too much work

So i still would think the only way to get Manchin is to buy a gop conversion somehow,

If this was realistic (it's not), you're just trading President Manchin for President Murkowski.

When you have no mechanism (by choice, historically) to enforce party discipline, adding more members of the party who oppose your supposed agenda isn't going to help.

Sarah Palin says ‘over my dead body’ will she have a covid vaccine shot

I accept these conditions.

amusing how everyone is sounding the alarm about the fall of democracy in 2024 when right now we are in a situation where the party with complete control can't pass broadly popular policies while its basically a given that the other party, who do not have a single stance with net positive approval, will take control next year with like 47% of the vote

also there's this:

West Virginia is
50th in public health
50th in childcare
48th in employment

They support Build Back Better by a 43 point margin.

This has nothing to do with his constituents. This is about the corruption and self-interest of a coal baron.

— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) December 19, 2021

Ilhan Omar otm, this guy needs to go ASAP

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/12/19/statement-from-press-secretary-jen-psaki-4/

This is surprisingly spicy but will make no difference

Just as Senator Manchin reversed his position on Build Back Better this morning, we will continue to press him to see if he will reverse his position yet again, to honor his prior commitments and be true to his word.

In the meantime, Senator Manchin will have to explain to those families paying $1,000 a month for insulin why they need to keep paying that, instead of $35 for that vital medicine. He will have to explain to the nearly two million women who would get the affordable day care they need to return to work why he opposes a plan to get them the help they need. Maybe Senator Manchin can explain to the millions of children who have been lifted out of poverty, in part due to the Child Tax Credit, why he wants to end a program that is helping achieve this milestone—we cannot.

xps

And just the other day I was wishing people would use the "corruption" word more.

But he’s not going to explain anything or talk to those people at all or even think about them, ever, and everyone knows it. So it’s a rhetorical threat. The only people who would even potentially tell Americans what is in the bill and how vitally important it is are the democrats, who were supposed to be selling the shit out of this all year. Some of them did, most of them didn’t. Maybe they had an idea that Manchin was going to fuck them and they didn’t want to spend precious time explaining that their legislation would actually help people when they knew it was probably doomed from the beginning

Maybe start a well-funded recall election process on Manchin. There must be some West Virginia union(s) who could act as the vanguard, so money could be funneled to them. If it gathered a ton of signatures in the first couple of weeks it might scare him into better cooperation.

he's popular there

the polls may show that west virginians generally liked what was in BBB, so you'd think the person who killed it would suffer. but no. that kind of direct cause and effect is no longer dominant. it's fucking crazy but it's true - it just doesn't matter. he's popular there, and if he suffers some kind of consequence, even a defeat, that doesn't mean another democrat is going to replace him

Ol' Joe Manchin, y'know, he jest makes me feel good. Can't rightly explain it. He's a stubborn cuss, but so'm I. Maybe thet's it.

it's like, if the good people of west virginia even understood ANYTHING at all about Manchin and who he is, how he operates (exclusively through lobbyists and K street), they'd know he's like a cartoon supervillain. but i assume they pay zero fucking attention and lack the cognitive dissonance function, like everyone else in this country

wail he sure does make those democrats mad, and that's why i know he's doing the right thing for west virginia! because he's making his own side mad and that means he's not just going to go along with what people tell him to do! mkay? now i'm going to inhale my dog's shit from this morning and tip-tap on my belly all afternoon!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

right now we are in a situation where the party with complete control can't pass broadly popular policies

Sigh. One more time: it is not "complete control."

If it were complete control, they could pass not just broadly popular policies, but even potentially controversial ones.

"Complete control" would entail not just being utterly blocked by one WVidiot, but also not having to use parliamentary jujitsu to get round the lack of a filibuster-proof 60 Senate votes!

I'm all for holding Democrats to a high standard, but they are legislators, not fucking wizards. The idea that they could just wave some magic wand of resoluteness and overcome Republican obstruction would already be ludicrous. Add the Manchin/Sinema axis of "moderate" foot-dragging and there really just aren't a whole lot of solutions.

They don't have to overcome Republican obstruction. Republicans can't obstruct them aside from the Supremes. They have to overcome Democratic obstruction... which is their party.

Pointing at the Republicans when you have the Presidency, Senate and House just doesn't really work to convince people to vote harder next time. It can make diehard Democrats feel better but no one else cares.

50 votes (with VP tiebreaker) is not "having the Senate" these days

because almost anything worth doing will be blocked by threat of filibuster, the obstructer-in-chief can be the parliamentarian, the Manchineman axis, or just the fact that you can't get 60 votes for anything meaningful

the majority is worthless if you can't do stuff with it

Which all just sucks because it's essentially inside baseball shit that your average voter isn't going to even try to understand. All most people are gonna see by election day next year is the the Dems were in charge for two years and got nothing done so why even turn out to vote for them again or maybe let's just vote for the other guys because they'll get stuff done and who even cares whether it's profoundly evil stuff that will directly harm us because it's the gittin' 'er dun that matters.

I think the problem is the pay for play nature of US politics. Pretty much all sides are organ grinder monkeys to their donors. Certain industries just buy up both sides, certain industries buy up more of one party or the other - but the overwhelming are bought and paid. They don't give a shit about anyone but who pays via campaign money and back door deals. The Democrats are just largely a cheap knock off version of the GOP, they just outside clowns like Manchin are not as much bought into the energy sectors ability to completely dominate certain areas of politics. (Good god, how many states do the energy sector just COMPLETELY OWN? 10-15 more?)

My guess is that you add in extreme nature of gerrymandering, you most likely do have 'some' house seats so bent for the Democrats there might be a handful where the politician 'might' actually represent their actual constituents compared to donors but they are so woefully outnumbers and out-spent by the corporate shills - their is not jack shit they can do.

And now you have so much sludge money floating around in these non-Party groups, that have money from wherever that pretty much even bend the system more crooked. Criminy there have been more than a few house seats in rural areas and some parts where Daddy pretty much went out and bought Junior into office doing it that way. It's profoundly sick and why this country is so fucted.

As it was said, money is like water - you dam it up one place it will find a new place to go and the last time they really tried anything to clean anything up was nearly 20 years ago with McCain/Feingold and it pretty much got invalidated (not that it was a real fix) but Citizens United ruling pretty much blew open the dam for money to flow.

I just think we are just fucked until shit until the cities burn and the shit really hits the fan.

I'd say the energy sector pretty much owns these states at least. They might have a few other industries that compete or share resources, but they get there way pretty much here.

Texas
Oklahoma
Kentucky
West Virginia
Alaska
South Dakota
North Dakota
Arkansas (fracking + Chicken + Walmart)
Louisiana
Wyoming
Montana
Kansas

BUT then you got states that are competitive like Ohio which are dirty as hell politically tied to this stuff.

50 votes (with VP tiebreaker) is not "having the Senate" these days

Again, that can make diehard Democrats feel better but no one else cares. As Old Lunch said, voters just see "my childcare tax credit expired, my drinking water still isn't safe, I pay $450 a month in student loans and my cousin is still in jail for selling weed even though my state legalized it two years ago."

Having 60 Senators didn't really help last time, either.

have been thinking baout that

During his tenure in the United States Senate, Barack Obama co-sponsored the 2007 Senate version of the Freedom of Choice Act (S. 1173). Responding to a question regarding how he would preserve reproductive rights in a speech given to the Planned Parenthood Action Fund on July 17, 2007, Obama declared, "The first thing I'd do, as president, is sign the Freedom of Choice Act. That's the first thing that I'd do."[4]

In a press conference on April 29, 2009, President Obama said that although he supports a woman's right to choose, passage of the Freedom of Choice Act was "not highest legislative priority."[5]

uhhhh let me be clear! i have better things to do!

49 Dems and 51 Repubs would be basically the same except for no judges and hearings about Hunters laptop and Biden’s daughter’s diary

Meanwhile, covid is starting to spread through said senate. Warren has it, Booker has it ...

With the average age of Democrats in Congress being 923 that shouldn't be an issue.

Meanwhile, covid is starting to spread through said senate. Warren has it, Booker has it ...

― Josh in Chicago,

I have it. And my sister has it.

Oh man, I’m sorry to hear that Alfred. Hoping it’s mild.

Hahaha. No.

Star Wars quote. I realized how tacky it looked in seconds

Hahaha oops.

Who ya gonna call? (Martini Police)

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

Big Star Wars III! Sister Lovers

Yeah I got my numerals mixed up---So Who Ya Gonna Call?

The fight for Build Back Better is too important to give up. We will find a way to move forward next year.

We're eight months into this pandemic, and Donald Trump still doesn't have a plan to get this virus under control.

I do.

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) October 16, 2020

Well, imagine where we'd be right now under a re-elected President Trump, is the horrifying scenario I evoke in response

You’re right, we wouldn’t have gotten this Build Back Better bill passed under Trump.

it was worse with trump

trump was much worse

life sucks now as well

This is a good, clear take

One problem (among many) with "vote for more Democrats" is that it doesn't matter how many there are if Democratic voters don't get to chose the party platform, and the party isn't willing to discipline representatives who break ranks  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ https://t.co/wIuz5flVNI

— Tovarisch (@nwbtcw) December 20, 2021

Manchin on WV radio saying he knew from the beginning he wouldn't support BBB, but let Democrats negotiate.

That he got to his "wits end" after staff (either White House or Senate) did *something* that angered him enough to just come out and say he was never going to get to yes

— Tara Golshan (@taragolshan) December 20, 2021

Men are so emotional.

wish the staff would have said something to get him to tell the truth about 6 months ago

so fucking infuriating that Dems spent months watering this bill down and decoupling it from infrastructure thinking Manchin would act in good faith only to find out that he never was gonna support this from the start, even though his own state supports the bill by an overwhelming margin. hope the man never knows a moment's peace for the rest of his (hopefully short) life.

Didn't Manchin literally deliver this version of the bill to Biden's desk saying it was the version he would support?? Twitter seems to think so.

it's pretty funny that the world is ending because petty asshole boomers get their feelings hurt tbh

My god:

"Two antiviral drugs now exist that could effectively keep people out of the hospital, but neither has been authorized and both are expensive. Both must also be administered within five days of the first symptoms, which means that people need to realize they’re sick and swiftly confirm as much with a test. But instead of distributing rapid tests en masse, the Biden administration opted to merely make them reimbursable through health insurance."

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/12/america-omicron-variant-surge-booster/621027/i

fuck i love me some reimbursements, especially through my health insurance!

so easy and convenient!

oh nice, health insurance, the thing i've had to change SIX TIMES in the last two years because the free market is so amazing and flexible!

If it's not authorized yet, I don't want it yet--- meanwhile, looks like the premise of ads I see all the time.

1. “In recent months, Manchin has told several of his fellow Democrats that he thought parents would waste monthly child tax credit payments on drugs instead of providing for their children, according to two sources familiar with the senator’s comments.” https://t.co/2tSLSQjwXG

— stacy-marie ishmael (@s_m_i) December 20, 2021

He’s like the unfrozen caveman Senator but from 1986

We really need some coalminers to go back to their roots and blow up some big-wigs' houses.

If we could just find a way to get him a kickback from drug sales

Point out to him that using it to buy Epipens from his daughter constitutes "buying drugs."

Thread:

If this is in good faith they should take the deal.

I am extremely skeptical this is in good faith, however. https://t.co/aUKUCS7JFF

— David “HINDSIGHT IS 2021” Walsh (@DavidAstinWalsh) December 20, 2021

you've got to be fucking kidding, the sticking point might actually be alleviating child poverty

Scoop: Manchin's private $1.8 trillion offer to Biden included pre-k for 10 years, ACA expansion, & close to WH climate spending #, per sources

But it EXCLUDED the Child Tax Credit - cornerstone of WH child antipoverty effort, per sources

W/ @tylerpager https://t.co/01TTtM3t4g

— Jeff Stein (@JStein_WaPo) December 20, 2021

i just can't stand the thought of 5-year-olds taking drugs and going hunting with my hard-earned tax dollars

Manchin doesn’t owe anyone his vote. But someone in his position owes the members of his caucus and a President of his own party a strong good faith effort to get to yes, to be candid, not to embarrass or humiliate his colleagues. He failed to do any of those things. And in his mind it was basically fine to put everyone through the wringer. But the first time the White House gave even the most delicate push back Manchin went berserk and blew everything up. That’s petulant and petty and just pathetic. And yet he has the vote. It’s in his power to do.

Manchin has been stringing this out intentionally for months. The deadlines and urgency were meaningless to him. As the President’s popularity dimmed he became more recalcitrant, throwing up a parade of contradictory and often nonsensical objections. The alternative to this was perpetual and indefinite coddling with no end in sight.

None of this changes the reality of the demise of serious climate action or a refundable child tax credit or universal pre-K or a bunch of other things. But it does illuminate the last year and makes clear that “getting tough” on Manchin wasn’t really a tool the White House had in its arsenal. Just putting out a press release that named him and made him feel bad and somehow made him think people would blame him for what was happening made him go postal. The only real argument here is whether the process of coddling Manchin starting in the first weeks of Biden’s presidency helped nurture and fructify the tender sapling of clinical thin-skinnism that has grown into this tall and broad oak tree of snowflakery we see on display today.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/prime/inside-the-manchin-blow-up/sharetoken/xHkBCoo2Ii6l

a snowflake oak tree

the tallest and most powerful tree in the forest of coal barons yacht motherfuckers

makes me wonder what kind of secret deal got struck between Manchin and McConnell a month or two back

oh sweet jeebus block that metaphor

SO FUCKING TIRED of this guy

and also "petulant and petty and pathetic"

Wow is this guy also going to ruin alliteration too?

Like, we're burning entire sections of literary theory just to describe the level of suck

the suck is beyond the borders of words

At a minimum, we should be clear at this point that the most important Dem opposition to Biden's agenda is a guy who owns a mansion and a yacht opposing a measure that has cut child poverty in half despite representing one of the poorest states in the country, because WELFARE

— Scott Lemieux (@LemieuxLGM) December 20, 2021

and whose only coherent political belief is that the future job prospects of 11,418 coal miners in WV are so important that the rest of the world can just fucking burn down for al he cares, because people there like that he supports coal, and that means he wins

at this point I'm willing to say Manchin is the most corrupt piece of shit in the country. I know Trump is more corrupt by sheer volume but at least he kinda has to be because he's five zillion dollars in debt. what the fuck does Machin want? can we not just bribe this fucker $20 million to vote yes then fuck off forever?

manchin is a piece of shit. need to just focus on voting in Fetterman in PA or anywhere else we have a slight chance of pickups so we aren't at this fucking 50/50 split.

Fetterman is exactly the sort of politician I like so I might be donating to him. Plus him and his wife resemble professional wrestlers which is always a plus

This won’t change anything but I enjoyed it.

https://umwa.org/news-media/press/umwa-statement-on-build-back-better-legislation/?fbclid=IwAR094nzlcfu9j61p2OWX5bxEQovK_f8kTxoJm3v3XB7jG8m9VF67aKBY8aQ

Those guys clearly want their drugs

So clearly, Manchin is not holding out for coal miner's jobs, they'd rather get relief from BBB. It's the mine owner's profits that he's concerned about. No surprise there.

But what the hell is this inexcusable leak from Biden's staff that he's whining about? I haven't heard anything said about him that isn't blatantly obvious & he's saying they've beaten him up like a bunch of playground bullies.

Supposed reason here https://www.politico.com/news/2021/12/20/biden-and-manchin-speak-525788

Petty baby

How dare you blame me for this thing I'm doing?

new thread title

We’re all looking for etc

“How far you blame me for this thing I’m doing?”: US Politics January 2022
“I can’t get there from here”: US Politics January 2022
“In the Fox News green room, they call me ‘Lil Yachty’”: US Politics January 2022

How dare

So what were they supposed to say if not naming him as the cause of the delay? Biden had to consult with his new puppy about it? Everybody already knows it's him and him going on fox news to blow it up further is just going to generate more threats against him. FFS even if that is how it went down, it would be like declaring yourself the grand marshal of the pride parade to spite someone for outing you in front of known homophobes.

My only wish for the holiday season is to see Joe Manchin get horsewhipped on live tv.

White House staff had given Manchin a heads-up on Thursday that the president was soon to put out a statement accepting a delay in the Build Back Better Act and that it was going to mention the West Virginia senator by name. Manchin objected, asking that either his name be left out or that he not be alone because his family had already been the target of abuse and he didn’t want to be singled out.

But the statement went out anyway, and contained only Manchin’s name. The senator then snapped at White House aides and told them that he was done negotiating. The West Wing interpreted that as meaning that current talks were done but could pick up again next year.

But Manchin meant that he was totally walking away — which he said publicly a few days later on Fox News Sunday, in a move that blindsided and outraged the White House.

Manchin’s office declined to comment.

With reporting from Burgess Everett

very weirdly written article

hmm yeah single-handedly killing a piece of popular legislation and dooming your party to massive losses in the midterms sure is a way to avoid people getting angry at you and your family full of oil and pharma executives

Still seeing scattered headlines/subheds re maybe next year.
xxxpost no, you got it w "how far," Raymond--first typo best thot.
Maybe I should save this for the covid threads, but something beyond "rhetoric" seems more and more likely:
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/12/21/fauci-fox-525826

Remember when Barbara Lee was the lone holdout vote in the endless war on terror, right after 9/11?

I'm sure Manchin sees himself in those heroic terms

Hear John Bolton with the mustache say, "Jeez, I can't find my knees"
Oh, fools and geriatrics hang on every word from this Tucker Carlson tool
But these visions of Joe Manchin, they make it all seem so cruel

A+

sad sad lol

you spend your entire life doing shitty things but not getting blamed for them, and then you prevent one teensy little bill that may save humanity and NOW ppl wanna point fingers at you?? NOT COOL GUYS

When you give the coal industry their own senators, it turns out you get pretty terrible people.

(See also the credit card industry etc)

one's prez now, the other is blocking relief to people now, who can judge

morbs feels

MAGA diehards are melting down over Trump's pro-vaccine push https://t.co/7UQzz3Mi1z pic.twitter.com/NAfmw4Bcxu

— Noah Shachtman (@NoahShachtman) December 23, 2021

Lol yes it's the ppl in favor of vax that are pushing fear and not the ones who are, y know, FEARFUL of it and say it's all part of a vast conspiracy to control the populace.

What fucking sucks is that anti vax assholes who survive this pandemic will feel totally justified in their stance and be insufferable about it.

uggggh totally

"two years of vaccine this, vaccine that, it was a giant conspiracy, but the REAL americans knew better and here I am today, no vaccine, where's the so-called virus." it'll be the new "global warming? well let me show you this SNOWBALL, ha ha ha"

The conspiracy that the government secretly wants the pandemic to continue, or that mitigation measures are nothing more than a pretext for authoritarianism, drives me crazy because it's actually the opposite! Literally nobody wants the pandemic to continue, and mask and vaccine mandates have been put in place specifically so that it will go away and we can all forget about it.

galaxy brain: the deniers want it to continue just so they can complain thuh freedoms are being oppressed

What do they think a REAL pandemic, fought with tactics from a non corrupt govt that genuinely is looking our for its citizens and wants to end it?? Like explain to the rest of us how that would look different from current situation

What fucking rules is that anti vax assholes who don't survive this pandemic will die.

The, um, recent Herschel Walker radio interview is just embarrassing.

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/herschel-walker-stumbles-badly-john-lewis-voting-rights-n1286559

The cynicism of the GA republican party reaches right down to its soles.

On a call with President Biden & First Lady Jill Biden intended for kids calling into NORAD to track Santa, a father ended the call by saying "Let's go Brandon," which is code for "F*** Joe Biden"
Biden replied, "Let's go Brandon, I agree."

— Jeremy Diamond (@JDiamond1) December 24, 2021

The point of the story being that, on a call intended to entertain children, some adult was such a huge asshole he told Biden to get fucked and Biden stuck to the intent of the call and refused to be drawn in.

Bits from latest Politico Playbook:
DEMOCRATIC FREE-FOR-ALL — “Maryland could be the best opportunity for Democrats to flip a governorship anywhere in the country next year. But first, the party has to navigate a crowded, diverse and potentially expensive primary to find their nominee,” Brakkton Booker and Zach Montellaro report. “Five of nine Democrats who have declared as candidate to succeed term-limited GOP Gov. LARRY HOGAN are people of color, bolstering the state’s chances it could elect its first non-white man as governor.”

THE PLIGHT OF A DEMOCRAT IN KANSAS — Democratic Kansas Gov. LAURA KELLY is trying to shift to the center ahead of a tough reelection fight next year, moving to the right of even the state Chamber of Commerce in opposition to vaccine mandates, reports AP’s John Hanna in Topeka. She’s also sparring with the Biden administration on some environmental issues. “Her attempt to stake out ground in the political center has irritated some fellow Democrats in the short term. But others argue the tactic could work for her if she also hammers home a message that Kansas now has a stable budget and its public schools are considered fully funded.” Golly, she's so damn left that being way over to the right vs. vax mandates only makes her centrist!
BIDEN’S TESTING FAILURE — “The Biden Administration Rejected an October Proposal for ‘Free Rapid Tests for the Holidays,’” by Vanity Fair’s Katherine Eban: “With omicron cases spreading like wildfire, the White House is finally taking steps to make free antigen tests available to all. But this fall, Vanity Fair has learned, it dismissed a bold plan to ramp up rapid testing ahead of the holidays. Frustrated experts explain how confusion, distrust, and a single-minded fixation on vaccinating Americans left testing on the back burner for so long.” A specialist recently said, on BBC, that antigen is only about 50% accurate. So maybe it's better for him to be tardy to this party (go to CVS etc for tests ffs).

THE INVESTIGATIONS — The big question for Fulton County, Ga., prosecutors as they weigh a possible criminal case against Trump, 11 months into their investigation, is whether he had a “guilty mind” beyond a reasonable doubt in pushing Georgia officials to overturn the 2020 election. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Tamar Hallerman reports that “legal observers are divided over how easy that task could be.” Some experts think D.A. FANI WILLIS already has enough proof and should be moving faster to charge Trump; others say she’ll have to clear a challengingly high bar.

TRUMP INC. — WaPo’s Douglas MacMillan and Jonathan O’Connell zero in on a dubious partnership currently at the center of Trump’s new media venture: “A Chinese firm helping former president Donald Trump take his new media company public has been the target of investigations by federal securities regulators, who say the firm misrepresented shell companies with no products and few employees as ambitious, growing enterprises, documents and interviews show.

“Arc Capital, an investment advisory firm based in Shanghai, has repeatedly helped create or finance companies with little or no revenue, no customers and office locations that point to P.O. boxes, according to a Washington Post review of regulatory and court filings.”

BEYOND THE BELTWAY

NOT SO PEACHY — Federal health officials on Thursday blocked Georgia Gov. BRIAN KEMP from imposing a Medicaid work requirement, which had originally got the go-ahead from the Trump administration. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Greg Bluestein writes that the move is “gutting the centerpiece of the Republican’s health care policy on the cusp of an election year,” and Kemp has pledged to sue. Work requirement is their centerpiece got it.

links in those and many other items here:
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2021/12/24/tis-the-season-of-year-end-lists-495550?nname=playbook&nid=0000014f-1646-d88f-a1cf-5f46b7bd0000&nrid=00000172-4d9a-d3ba-a9f3-6f9e04a20000&nlid=630318

Most frustrated people of 2021: dudes named Brandon

http://images4.fanpop.com/image/quiz/555000/555799_1300331356539_487_409.jpg

*swoon*

"The, um, recent Herschel Walker radio interview is just embarrassing."

everything about this guy, but primarily the fact that anyone is taking his brain damaged ass seriously as a candidate, is embarrassing.

So while Madison Cawthorn was in Russia, he met a man who invited him to a "cross-fit competition".

When Cawthorne arrived, the fake competition was a ruse to introduce him to his now ex-wife, who divorced him after 8 months.

Yeah, nothing suspicious at all.

— Steve Hofstetter (@SteveHofstetter) December 27, 2021

Trying not to get conspiracy brain again but this whole story is mighty odd

whomst amongst us has not gone to Russia and accepted a fitness challenge only as a ruse to be introduced to a woman we would later marry and then almost immediately become divorced from

I mean, you libtards are so out of touch with how real American heroes live

I'll bet you don't even eat in diners, you elitist snobs

sheesh

Having a freshman Rep marry a Russian operative is the lowest stakes conspiracy I've ever heard of.

Replacing your car wash competitor's air fresheners with fart spray has a greater impact.

Always wondered what you do in your spare time…

I'm not saying that it's even unlikely, I'm just saying what the fuck why would you even bother. He's dumb as a board, you could honeypot him at any time if he manages to not die in a coal rolling accident before the end of his second term.

Bwahahahahahaha

Seems the only appropriate response but of course it isn’t

January thread title - “No Federal Solution”

I'm not saying that it's even unlikely, I'm just saying what the fuck why would you even bother. He's dumb as a board, you could honeypot him at any time if he manages to not die in a coal rolling accident before the end of his second term.

Federal Solution sounds like a good name for a hardcore band.

D-D-D-Don’t need a cure
Need a federal solution

Cawthorn’s weird Russia stuff to me seems less significant in the sense of Le Carre hijinks than in illustrating what a shameless cadre of dupes and would-be grifters surround all of this. (By “this” I mean the current GOP but also just our whole political economy.) They figure out how to get elected and then they’re just looking for the best deal they can get. They’re mostly going to end in ignominy and obscurity, but they can be instructive along the way.

Our political reality is Shirer's 'Rise and Fall of the Third Reich' adapted about the US by the Farrely Brothers.

and written by David Sirota, complete with a bonus package of tweets