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

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

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

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

good thing they got rid of all the wasteful government spending

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Dennis Welch (@dennis_welch) May 5, 2021

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

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

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

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

But were there any Zamfir sightings?

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

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

Wow America is super racist

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

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

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

Whhyyyyyyyy wooooonnntttt theeeeereeseeee peeeeeeeooopppleeeeee diiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

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

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

lindsey graham otm i guess?

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

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

preferably in Thunderdome

WE DON'T NEED ANOTHER TARIFF

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

MASTER
BLASTER

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

good luck usa

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

fuckin' white fragility in action

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

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

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

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

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

xp

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

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

Wow America is super racist

― rob, Friday, May 7, 2021

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

— Jonathan Chait (@jonathanchait) May 7, 2021

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

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

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

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

Lindsay is talking about himself.

Looks like the woman was a troll?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mastriano believed that this was a miracle, and

deepsigh

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

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