US Politics, April 2024: "Are You Better Off Today Than You Were <Checks Notes> Four Years Ago?"

iirc this was the kind of thing the Obama admin was pretty terrible about

thanks, Newt!

Democratic Congresses are unlikely to overturn rules from Democratic presidents, and the same with Republicans. So the CRA is only useful when a president from the opposite party comes into power with a unified Congress to reverse their predecessors’ rules. During their presidencies, Bush and Obama showed little interest in using that power.

It took Donald Trump to break this reluctance. As president, Trump signed 16 CRA resolutions overturning Obama administration rules, 15 of them in his first year in office. “This is Newt Gingrich’s knife against the throat of the administrative state that Trump weaponized,” said Segall.

i'm still mad about the old genocide that nobody here gave a shit about. i'm not on to the new genocide yet but i'll get there!

"Brown University researchers, in a report released Monday, draw on U.N. data and expert analyses to attempt to calculate the minimum number of excess deaths attributable to the war on terrorism, across conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia and Yemen — impacts “so vast and complex that” ultimately, “they are unquantifiable,” the researchers acknowledge.

The accounting, so far as it can be measured, puts the toll at 4.5 million to 4.6 million — a figure that continues to mount as the effects of conflict reverberate. Of those fatalities, the report estimates, some 3.6 million to 3.7 million were “‘indirect deaths” caused by the deterioration of economic, environmental, psychological and health condition s. Brown University researchers, in a report released Monday, draw on U.N. data and expert analyses to attempt to calculate the minimum number of excess deaths attributable to the war on terrorism, across conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia and Yemen — impacts “so vast and complex that” ultimately, “they are unquantifiable,” the researchers acknowledge."

but sorry new news only from now on promise! just ignore that above. heck, everyone else did.

also ignore my pathetic cut & paste abilities. heck, everyone else did!

but more currently:

"More than 355,000 Russian personnel have been killed and wounded in the Ukraine war, according to the UK MoD."

https://www.euronews.com/2024/03/03/russia-likely-suffered-at-least-355000-casualties-in-ukraine-war-uk-mod

#lockheedmartinforpresident

Nah Scott yr good… go Bears!

Nah Scott yr good… go Bears!

I was talking with my brother this morning, who's very online and furious about Gaza and the general apathy about it in the public. I had to give him a whole lil TED talk about how American voters have shown over and over they do not give a shit about foreign affairs except/unless/until American lives are directly implicated on a daily basis, and even then it's variable. (By "don't give a shit" I mostly mean it's not a vote-swaying issue for them.)

I don't think Americans are unique in this, although our sense of separation from most of the rest of the world is probably more pronounced thanks to the oceans and all.

People have been pulling up the old pro-Iraq War writings of pro-Israel libs like Josh Marshall. They just wait for their bad takes to be forgotten and then claim they were on the correct side all along.

of course it's not vote swaying. Dems are horrible on this issue but Republicans are way worse.

I'd say that's a little backward, the parties can be/are horrible on it because most voters don't give a shit. To the degree Biden has moved rhetorically at all, it probably has mostly to do with there happening to be an important bloc of Arab-American voters in Michigan, which for this year anyway is an important state.

People on the right also mostly don't care about any of this, but they are happy to hate on anti-war Ivy League longhairs because that's in their DNA.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/04/24/us/elections/nikki-haley-trump-zombie-votes.html

Ballots cast for candidates who have suspended their campaigns are sometimes called zombie votes. This phenomenon is hardly new.

In fact, a review of contested primaries since 2000 reveals that sizable shares of the electorate routinely chose someone other than the eventual nominee, even after all other serious contenders had dropped out. ...

The zombie vote in this year’s Republican primary has actually been low by historical standards. In Democratic and Republican primaries going back to 2000, roughly a quarter of voters picked a candidate other than the eventual nominee even after all the other serious contenders had exited the race.

Write-in votes not counted yet in PA but there are signs of an Uncommitted showing:

But the spike in write-ins on the Democratic side greatly overshadows GOP write-ins, likely reflecting, at least in part, the work of the Uncommitted Pennsylvania movement. The group had set a goal of getting 40,000 “uncommitted” votes statewide. Biden won Pennsylvania by a little more than 80,000 votes in 2020.

By Wednesday Uncommitted Pa., by its own calculations, said the 67 counties across the state had reported 57,951 Democratic write-in votes for President, which would represent 5.7% of the total vote and nearly three times the number of write-ins cast in the 2020 presidential primary.

i was one of them

Worthwhile pod ep from two leftist academics with Columbia/NYU history:

https://goodbye.substack.com/p/campus-crackdown-and-an-assessment

Today, we talk about everything that’s happening on campus from Columbia to NYU to Berkeley. Tyler talks about the responsibilities of faculty in these moments and what he thinks is driving a surprisingly strong faculty response to the arrests in New York City. We also talk about how to process the instances of antisemitism at these protests and Jay talks about some of the difficulties that have arisen with the leaderless activism model over the past decade or so

Oops, wrong thread.

Sorta

no def not, those antisemite wingnuts have been a fringe issue forever, they are never going away, I remember them at abortion protests in the 80s and Iraq protest in the 90s, shunning/ostracization/disavowal is the only answer to their trolling

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/25/israel-gaza-ceasefire-adam-smith

Protesters calling for Israel to cease fire in its war with Hamas who have disrupted US public events and infrastructure are practicing “leftwing fascism” or “leftwing totalitarianism”, a senior US House Democrat said, adding that such protesters are “challenging representative democracy” and should be arrested.

“Intimidation is the tactic,” said Adam Smith of Washington state, the ranking Democrat on the House armed services committee. “Intimidation and an effort to silence opposition … I don’t know if there’s such a thing as leftwing fascism. If you want to just call it leftwing totalitarianism, then that’s what it is. It is a direct challenge to representative democracy now.”

"Adam Smith" is a little much

I thought he was dead.

These guys have to bark for their AIPAC treats

Same people who were calling Vietnam protesters commies, just the same shit over and over.

If we let Tom Cotton handle the problem, presto! No more protestors!

the best part of that article is when he nearly backs into acknowledging which side he's on:

But he said: “You go back to the civil rights movement, they expected to be arrested, they knew they were violating the law. And also … you have to enforce the law. You have to make clear … that this is about more than just the issue. You know, they can be heard, but then other people get to be heard.

Other people *have* been heard. That's why they're protesting!

"Sometimes you have to sic the dogs on people--so that everyone's speech is equally audible."

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/04/25/new-york-times-biden-white-house-00154219

“I love that guy,” Biden said of Pitchbot, before a subtle parting shot at the Times on a frequency only Times staffers might hear. “I should do an interview with him.”

Considering there is an opinion piece up right fucking now called, "Every Day in Court Improves Trump's Chances in November" and contains like the one below, I'm not sure the Pitchbot even needs to exist any longer.

The Manhattan courtroom will be the setting for Mr. Trump to play the role of a familiar American archetype: the wronged man seeking justice from corrupt, powerful forces. The former president is good in this role, and that’s no small thing.

Adam Smith, my congressman!

Maybe I can write Jayapal and request as her constituent that she send goons to break his kneecaps with a tire iron

Xxp and that is demonstrably untrue with actual facts! His poll numbers are declining!

The former president is good in this role

This is where it goes off the rails. Trump is whiney, arrogant, sneaky, and a windbag. This only plays well to people who have stayed on the Trump train even after the Jan 6 coup attempt and his daily lies about the 2020 election. He could appear on the courthouse steps, claim to be a combo plate of Jesus and MLK, Jr. and they'd just nod along and buy more DJT stock.

Trump is whiney, arrogant, sneaky, and a windbag.

And those are his good points!

A leaky windbag by all accounts.

The leaky-ist, many people are saying...

the article about Trump's fundraising talks about this, having him being the center of attention does bring a lot of donations in, but it's not clear how that translates to actual votes. sure this stuff appeals to his base but he still needs a good chunk of moderates and undecideds to win and sitting in court all day for a crime he is clearly guilty of probably isn't helping

Aren't a fair chunk of those donations going directly into his pocket anyways?

and his fundraising is puttering this time around 'cause your racist meemaw's bank account was cleaned out from all the previous donations

sputtering

That too.

I am kinda curious what observable effects(if any) will come from the RNC using their fundraising apparatus mainly as a legal defense fund for Trump’s cases. I know the crowd they try to soak has near-infinite money, but how does that flow of donations change over the next 6 months? All those funds aren’t being used in any state races, to the extent that those aren’t already locked up in gerrymandering

so crazy that they let that big dumb orange fox in the henhouse like that. he is going to bleed the RNC dry and build the biggest mansion in...where do they build big mansions in Russia? Melania would know.

if the RNC just becomes a slush fund to pay Trump's legal fees, the big donor moneybags can always switch to funding super-PACs, where they can wield more influence.

ha i was like "how will we know and when" on this rnc issue, and i got rabbit-holed into

https://www.opensecrets.org/political-parties/RNC/2022/expenditures?name=republican-national-cmte

which has been fun to flip through, though i don't know the first thing as to its accuracy/veracity.

Great stuff, but it only goes up through 2022, so not very up to date.

obv- so how do we know and when, because i thought it was fait accompli

democracy officially ended yesterday

it was on life support before. it was put to bed yesterday.

i expect every know it all to know it all, again, in response, but it's weird that it happened and no one even mentioned it

but then again, it happened and i didn't know what to say either. sometimes you just have to have your oatmeal and continue

Even partial immunity is definitional tyranny so i don’t understand a single trumpist take. anyone who mentions founders republic or constitution—wtf? i mean i do understand that they do not give an actual fuck about any one one of those things, but why nobody with juice says this or gets it mainstreamed, at least in my world, is beyond bizarre.

and for a piece of real human garbage like trump who hasn’t and won’t and cannot ever deliver anything remotely heroic in ANY sense of the word. the objectives are monstrous, and the cause is comically revolting.

i know this is bland basic restatement of like 9 years of trump related hell, but how the fuck are we still here?