US Politics, March 2024: The house of illuminati will NOT be holding any other event in the foreseeable future.

Runners-up: "returning to the bomb-throwing days of his youth" and "you can crawl slowly, or you can crawl quickly" from https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/01/mchenry-johnson-house-gop-00144277

"¯\_(ツ)_/¯ $500,000,000,000?"

coming back to this early February article

https://www.axios.com/2024/02/02/biden-obsession-morning-joe-msnbc-media

I've been reading about television news programs and presidential viewing habits forever. iirc, LBJ insisted on having multiple tvs turned on simultaneously, one for each of the three network newscasts, because they all occupied the same time slot and VCRs weren't invented. Biden isn't "obsessed" with morning joe, he's trying to gauge how well he's getting his message out and using that show to take his measurements. Every president does something similar. They also have aides who do clippings of NYT and WaPo stories which get analyzed for the same purpose. It's SOP.

The Axios story doesn't mention that Obama loved David Brooks. Which explains a lot.

GOP gubernatorial candidate in Missouri, looking good:

McClanahan sued for defamation, arguing, as the Riverfront Times put it, “that what appeared to be a cross-burning was a mere ‘Christian Identity Cross lighting ceremony’”.

“While he acknowledged he was a ‘honorary’ member of the local Ku Klux Klan,” the site added, McClanahan “said he’d never been a full-fledged member”.

Maybe pedantic but wasn't the House of Illuminati UK news?

yes, but the horror belongs to the world

We've got enough bad stuff over here. We don't need your off-brand Wonka clusterfucks.

Biden isn't "obsessed" with morning joe, he's trying to gauge how well he's getting his message out and using that show to take his measurements

He's also asking his staff about things said on the show, and having folks who appear on the the show talk to his staff. So he's gauging what to do in part by how the former Republican who hosts the show views things. He's just gauging how his message goes out to these former Republicans whose idea of bipartisanship is when Biden bends over backwards on immigration border policy to try to give Republicans what they want.

yes. he is, at that. we might want to ask him about that. my point was that calling it an "obsession" was just click-baity, uh, let's say "malarkey". joe would approve.

xp Is he counting on people not knowing about what Christian Identity is?

It wasn’t a concentration camp, it was a dedicated work facility.

Mindfulness camp

A classic for the "no matter how bad you think it is, it's worse" file: Rolling Stone investigates the insane amount of prescription drugs White House staffers were taking under Trump.

Also, a good debunking of a bullshit poll.

so this week is pretty key to watch, forgive me for reposting this entire Heather Cox Richardson post but truly we are living in historic times

This week seems likely to be packed with news.

Today, Vice President Kamala Harris spoke about the crisis in the Middle East with strong words for both Hamas and Israel, calling for a ceasefire of at least six weeks, the return of hostages, and increased aid to the Palestinians. Such a deal is on the table. According to the U.S., Israel has agreed to it, and negotiators are waiting for a response from Hamas leaders.

Benny Gantz, a centrist officer in Israel’s war cabinet, is in Washington, D.C., where he will meet tomorrow with Vice President Harris and national security advisor Jake Sullivan, and on Tuesday with Secretary of State Antony Blinken. He did not have authorization from hard-right prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the visit. As growing numbers of Israelis are voicing dislike of Netanyahu, polls show that Gantz could command enough support to become prime minister if a new vote were held immediately.

This evening the U.S. Supreme Court indicated it will issue an opinion tomorrow. Marc Elias of Democracy Docket commented that it is “[v]ery likely the case involving Donald Trump's disqualification under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.”

Also today, former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley won her first primary, winning 62.9% of the Republican vote in Washington, D.C. Trump won 33.2%. This victory makes Haley the first woman in history to win a Republican primary. It also illustrates that Trump’s support is terribly soft. Over the weekend, Haley picked up the endorsements of Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Susan Collins (R-ME).

Headed into the week, Tuesday, March 5, is so-called Super Tuesday, when voters in fifteen states and one territory will vote for their choice for president. Those states are Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, and Virginia. In American Samoa, Democrats will vote on Tuesday, Republicans on Friday.

It seems likely that Super Tuesday will shift so many delegates into Trump’s column that he will have virtually locked up the Republican nomination.

But that timing poses a real problem for the Republican Party. Trump has to post a bond to cover the $83.3 million he owes writer E. Jean Carroll no later than Friday, March 8. His lawyers have been trying to get out of this requirement, asking for a “substantially reduced bond.” This suggests that he might have trouble covering the amount. And after he comes up with this sum, he still has the $454 million to pay in the civil fraud case against him in New York.

March 8 is also the day that Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel steps down. The only people running to replace her are Trump loyalist Michael Whatley and Trump’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump, who hope to be co-chairs. Trump’s senior campaign adviser Chris LaCivita is running to be the RNC’s chief operating officer.

So Trump could clinch the nomination and control of the RNC just as it becomes crystal clear he has devastating financial and legal problems.

Also this week, far-right Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán is scheduled to meet with Trump at the Trump Organization’s property at Mar-a-Lago.

And Congress still must pass several appropriations bills. Meanwhile, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) has suggested Democrats will protect House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) from a vote to oust him if he will bring up for a vote the national security supplemental bill that provides aid to Ukraine.

Thursday, President Biden will deliver the State of the Union address.

I’m already tired just thinking of it all, but this week might well provide some new clarity on a number of major issues.

"Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Susan Collins (R-ME)."

btw why are these fascist traitors not dead yet

It also illustrates that Trump’s support is terribly soft.

Huh

yeah I don't know that the votes of 2,000 Republicans living in DC say much about Trump's support nationally

From unperson's link:

The most likely circumstance is that we are not far off from where we were in 2020, which means it will come down to a handful of swing states and a few hundred thousand votes across them, and that this will be close and hard fought.

Yes. This is the obvious situation, and it's why I'm not personally spending a lot of time on polls no matter whether they make me feel good or bad. No poll is going to either save or condemn us, it's going to be very close and we won't know the results until we know the results. Not that nothing can change things one way or another over the next eight months, but so much of how people feel about both of these guys is baked in already.

When the NYT/Sienna poll shows me at 12%, you better believe it is flawed.

Only 5% even know who I am.

— Dean Phillips (@deanbphillips) March 3, 2024

I know exactly two DC Republicans. They are really tetchy, even nervous about admitting their shameful secret. I can't really imagine how they feel or how they would vote. I guess maybe if I moved to Alabama or some such.

i feel like heather cox richardson writes like 700000 word essays all the time which always make it seem like stuff will be more important than it ever turns out to be, because the world is stupider than she understands.

"The World Is Stupider Than You Understand" would make a great name for an album.

Honestly this is just a normal week - shit is wack all the time now

“I’m already tired just thinking of it”

Same, Heather, same! And I have been for ages

https://apnews.com/article/north-carolina-donald-trump-endorsement-governor-cf9092cc8c10d0f2106aacedc63fd8af

At a rally Saturday in Greensboro, Trump compared Robinson, who is Black, to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the famed civil rights leader. Trump referred to Robinson as “Martin Luther King on steroids.”

Trump said Robinson wasn’t sure how to respond when Trump compared him to the legendary civil rights leader, telling him: “I think you’re better than Martin Luther King. I think you are Martin Luther King times two.”

mlk on steroids people

Mlk was low energy

https://fastsdxl.ai/share/g9xmtbrzdv2p

Imagine what King might have accomplished if he could've just powerlifted and chokeslammed his detractors

Every day and in every way for the past eight years (minimum), the world has revealed itself to be stupider than I could have ever understood it to be

My nephew tells me, he and all his first time voting college freshman friends, most of whom come from liberal east coast suburbs, are planning to vote for RFK jr. because Biden is supports war criminals.

Lol

Supreme Court unanimous in allowed Trump back on the ballot

No surprise, but disappointing.

XP do they know RFK jr. is also pro-Israel?

XP do they know RFK jr. is also pro-Israel?

It's not about knowing things. It's about feeling things, maaaaannnnn. You vote with your heart. If you weren't so old and jaded, you could see.

unfortunately a large number of people i know have decided to not vote at all, as a protest against the democratic party supporting genocide

(i did ask if they planned to vote for things on the ballot besides president, which seemed to be a surprise and did lead some people to agree that ok, they would go vote, but not for president)

but a lot will happen between now and november, and i expect the guy whose arrogant incompetence directly led to the death of hundreds of thousands in this country (covid) to keep doing horrible things and motivating young people to get out there and vote against him

Those people who are anti Biden because of foreign policy matters, where do they generally stand on Ukraine?

The great thing about people who "protest" by not voting against the most odious criminal the US political system has ever shat out is that they will remain pure of heart, so you can't possibly hold anything horrible that might happen after the election against them, because they only did what they did out of the purity and goodness that glows within them like E.T.'s heart-light. If you can't see the glow, it's just because you're as corrupt as the system itself, and they feel sad for you.

It’s amazing the lengths to which you will go to blame voters who are voting their consciences and not politicians, who aren’t representing their constituents’ interests or desires.

Considering that we know just how bad it might (will) get under Trump, I tend to agree with unperson. Imho, knowing that you voted your conscience will be of scant comfort or utility under a fascist regime.

whenever i wanna really satisfy my conscience i consider self immolation, that way other people don't have to suffer an obvious bad consequence for sake of my conscience. so far i settle for voting though.

shitty post

Keep pets and children away from your self-immolation.

FPed Hunter for that

i like you but i welcome that.

It’s amazing the lengths to which you will go to blame voters who are voting their consciences and not politicians, who aren’t representing their constituents’ interests or desires.

Dude, I say this with all the kindness I can muster: fuck your conscience. Voting is not praying. It is a utilitarian calculation based on maximum localized benefit. Joe Biden has done some things I don't like. He has also been a vastly better president than any other in my lifetime. Allowing the worst president in modern American history a second term, for any reason, is fucking inexcusable.

John Stockton, arguably Gonzaga's most famous alum*?, is staunch anti-vax/COVID-is-a-hoax so MAGA should know not to friendly fire on one of their own.

*(Not counting Bing Crosby who dropped out after his junior year)

Maddock's wife is former co chair of the Michigan GOP and is also facing state charges in the fake elector scheme.

There's a Gonzaga High School in DC, btw.

Named not for Lauren McHuckabee Greene's undocumented nanny, mind you.

But for Italian Cattholic saintAloysiusGonzaga, A Jesuit martyr.

its genuinely crazy to me that in the national divorce its the libs who got to keep the NFL. like who would've seen that coming

I’d encounter right-wing dumbasses doing the stereotypical nerd “sporps ball” thing like 15 years (you should be doing manly shit like sharpening your EDC switchblades and decorating your Glock holster) but didn’t expect it to become the norm.

And meanwhile they've made an icky fetishization of girls' high school sports, so that they can beat up on trans kids.

which somehow never results in being fans of any female professional athletes

Lol yeah I used that line on a relative who was complaining about trans swimmers - “if this is such a big deal, name one other female swimmer”

yeah I never realized people cared so much about Ivy League women's swimming

The same motherfuckers have been bitching about Title IX for decades.

It was nice of Jonathan Martin at Politico to wait until the 29th to publish the stupidest thing I've read all month.

Why Hasn't Biden Called Chris Christie?

Gee, I don't know, why wouldn't the incumbent Democratic president call a Republican whose own run for his party's nomination topped out at 3%, whom every Democratic voter loathes, to "help" with his campaign? And then Martin tries to drag other losers in, too, like Mitt Romney and Susan Collins.

good morning!

These people are still living in 2004 or something, when Kerry asking McCain to be his running mate was thought of as a genius move

Why? How about...because everyone who's had their tongue up Trump's ass at any point in the past eight years should be drummed out of polite society for the remainder of their natural lives? And that their half-hearted efforts to distance themselves from him now should be met with derisive laughter?

I don't think Romney ever bent the knee did he? I mean he's still garbage but I'll give him a little credit for that.

He wanted to be secretary of state, remember?

https://arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-bostonglobe.s3.amazonaws.com/public/WEZYRWFXHUI6NDF2ZSQ4PAVP6E.jpg

I've never forgotten the gleeful malice of Trump's grin in that photo. The only time he looks delighted is when he's humiliating a foe or eating a KFC thigh.

I do remember, idk if that's really kissing up to him the way everyone else did, more like "there's gotta be one responsible person in there"

https://static.texastribune.org/media/images/2016/02/26/Trump-Fort-Worth.jpg

NJ institutions vanquished by Andy Kim: Bob Menendez, Tammy Murphy, Phil Murphy, and now, the county line https://t.co/jONjLUx78U

— David Nir (@DavidNir) March 29, 2024

A federal judge has struck down the 'county line' in NJ elections.

Andy Kim is cutting a fucking swath through the state. It's pretty incredible.

damn, that seems like a huge deal

i don't really understand what that is; is it some kind of gerrymandered NJ criminal nonsense?

It's basically a thumb on the scale that each county party machine could exercise for their preferred candidate.

I was annoyed that none of the major news articles had an example of the ballot design. Here's an article with some pictures, and an image embed if it works:
https://www.njpp.org/publications/report/does-the-county-line-matter-an-analysis-of-new-jerseys-2020-primary-election-results/

https://www.njpp.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Monmouth-4th-District-Dem-Primary-Ballot.png

Lmao

The @jmart-to-Biden campaign press release pipeline https://t.co/OQYoju8GFV pic.twitter.com/OoKZKVjHn0

— Jacob Rubashkin (@JacobRubashkin) March 29, 2024

i guess that ballot is confusing but it's not that confusing to me. I wouldn't lay stuff out that way but I would assume people are not so dumb that they will just vote down a single line, but I also often assume people are smarter than they prove themselves to be.

do the columns have headings? Like, who supports the candidates? I get that the first column is the one people will gravitate toward, but that ballot design as shown is incomprehensible

the rows have headings. it's basically a normal ballot tilted on it's side

the row headings are just for the offices. But the multiple different columns are confusing, where it appears that some candidates are outliers, with no explanation in the graphic

"The seven county line candidates are in column one. The remaining six candidates are scattered across the other four, mostly empty, columns. There is no obvious logic as to why each of the non-endorsed candidates is in a particular column."

xp c’mon man they wouldn’t have made the ballot look like that (totally different from any other ballot I’ve ever seen) if it didn’t work to push the machine’s preferred candidates.

I would assume people are not so dumb that they will just vote down a single line

I bet people do this like 75% of the time if not more. Even if they do it 55% of the time, that is huge.

The 2020 primary also had a large number of contested races. In a few of those races, the county party organizations endorsed and awarded the county line to different candidates. This created an additional opportunity to examine the impact of the county line on electoral outcomes.

Democratic Party Primary Results
In the Democratic primary, four congressional districts and the U.S. Senate race were contested and included some counties that did not structure their primary ballots around a county line or county parties within the congressional district endorsing different candidates.

2nd Congressional District
Amy Kennedy won all eight counties in the 2nd Congressional district. However, Kennedy received a higher percentage of the vote in the three counties where she had the county line or no one had the county line than in the five counties where her opponent Brigid Harrison had the county line (see Figure 2).

Kennedy received 75% of the vote in Atlantic County, where she had the county line, and 50% of the total vote in the five counties where Brigid Harrison had the county line, a difference of 25 percentage points. Kennedy received 67% of the vote in Ocean County, where no candidates were endorsed or awarded the county line, and 63% of the vote in Salem County, where Brigid Harrison had the county party’s endorsement, but the primary ballot is not structured around the county line.

The County Line is a middling BBQ joint down the road from my house

Well now it’s illegal

lol

NBC News discovers that life in Florida...kinda sucks, actually.

Over to you, Alfred.

“ My little part-time job making $600, $700 a month went to paying either car insurance or homeowners insurance, and forget about groceries,” said Blaski, who was working in retail. “There are all these hidden things that people don’t know about. Make sure you have extra money saved somewhere because you will need it.””

Y’know hoss you can do some back of the envelope math and discover what it costs to live somewhere in like 30 minutes.

Happily, the House of Illuminati shall be consigned to the memory hole in just a few hours.

It live in our hearts forever though

The only part of the story on which I call bullshit is this bit, which can happen anywhere:

But she said the final straw was when she couldn’t find a surgeon to remove a 6-inch tumor from her liver that doctors warned could burst at any moment and lead to life-threatening sepsis. After being passed among doctors, she finally found one willing to remove the tumor. But when she called to schedule the surgery, her calls went unanswered and her messages weren’t returned. After months of trying and fearing for her life, she returned to Kansas to have the procedure done.

Y’know hoss you can do some back of the envelope math and discover what it costs to live somewhere in like 30 minutes.

They can deny global warming all they like at the FLA state house, the insurance actuaries really don’t care.

"Confederate flags at the gate and swastikas on the fish tank" for April Thread Title.

Could be shortened to "Swastikas on the fish tank"

#RejectedRambleTambleLyrics

Having grown up in Oklahoma, Smith considered herself a Republican, but as Florida’s politics shifted to the right, she said she began to consider herself a Democrat. It wasn’t until the past several years, though, that politics started to encroach on her daily life — from feuds between neighbors and friends to neo-Nazis showing up at a Black Lives Matter rally in her small town.

“When I first moved to Florida, it was a live-and-let-live sort of beach feel. You met people from all over, everybody was relaxed. That’s just gone now, and it’s shocking. It’s just gone,” said Smith, 61, who works as a graphic designer and illustrator. “Instead, it’s just a constant stressful atmosphere. I feel as though it could ignite at any point, and I’m not a fearmonger. It’s just the atmosphere, the feeling there.”

Huh - that's pretty interesting and a possible bellwether.

“For this pro-business, free state, I’m feeling it in the wallet, bad.”

Yup. More inclusive societies will always have the better economy. How's that "freedom" tasting?

The only part of the story on which I call bullshit is this bit, which can happen anywhere

Maybe it can, but does it? I don’t know of very many stories about people being unable to schedule lifesaving surgeries in Taxachusettes.

was promised cheezburgers in paradise maaaan. sold my remaining flip flop and got the fuck out of two songs at once.

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