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

Hard times for Rowdy Rudy!

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

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

"Accidentally"

true or false:

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

— David Roberts (@drvolts) May 6, 2021

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

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

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

good to have you back, though

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

Dems are doomed to lose house says Eric Levitz :

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

At present, only one of those things is happening

xp <3

This Elie Mystal piece from The Nation is excellent.

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

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

...

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

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

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

...

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

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

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

idgi

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

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

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

He has a '67 Corvette as well, Karl

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

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

man, could my dad drive a car!

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

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

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

— John Whitehouse (@existentialfish) May 7, 2021

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

But he made 61 references to the Blessed Virgin Mother

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

Probably should have tried harder to emulate this

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

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

that was one of the weirdest, worst days

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

good thing they got rid of all the wasteful government spending

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Dennis Welch (@dennis_welch) May 5, 2021

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

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

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

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

But were there any Zamfir sightings?

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

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

Wow America is super racist

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

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

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