American politics 2016: Lawyers, Guns, and D-Money

you just get the feeling these people wake up burning with rage that people around the country are living in a "liberal" way and are happy and successful.

Kinda like these guys are the best example of ressentiment you're gunna get outside of a 19th-C Continental philosophy class.

you just get the feeling these people wake up burning with rage that people around the country are living in a "liberal" way and are happy and successful.

That's not a feeling. They don't wake up feeling that way, per se, but usually after a couple of coffees or maybe some hair of the dog, oh, they absolutely do.

reading and listening to white hot resentment on fox news and whatever online sources they read doesn't help ones sense of general well-being either.

If you're interested in the NC situation I strongly recommend following Rep. Graig (yes Graig, not a typo) Meyer on Facebook, who is one of the people spearheading efforts to strategize against the GOP in NC (and hopefully providing some ideas for other states).

I had never previously heard of Meyer. Senator Jeff Jackson, whom I linked to earlier, is (I think) the future of the NC Democratic Party and a generally good person to follow. Except he's from Charlotte which is always the kiss of death with regard to statewide politics here.

This isn't unprecedented. In fact a Democratic legislature attempted to pass nearly identical legislation against a Republican governor in the 90's. Figures it took a Republican majority to actually be successful at it.

I'd say that anything can happen here but it's predicated on a large enough disaster to completely undermine civil society - a nuclear/dirty bomb attack that kills tens or hundreds of thousands, a Great Depression 2.0 that leads to open rioting across the country.

For now the institutions remain healthy enough that Trump and the GOP can't have their way and in some ways there are still enough Republicans cognizant that anything they do now can be done to them down the road.

oh shit

http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/311506-reid-dnc-was-worthless-under-wasserman-schultz

a few months too late but hey

‏@mtaibbi
Alan Dershowitz Threatens to Leave Democratic Party: Dems Cross Fingers In Hopes He Means It

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/312243-harvard-law-professor-i-will-leave-democratic-party-if-they

NC GOP law stripping gov of power has been temporarily blocked by the courts

are the various last minute actions the NC congress took actually illegal or just very sleezy?

That line is what we have judges for

If they're determined to be discriminatory = illegal

New worries about Chuck Schumer:

But the job that Reid had in mind for Schumer when he anointed him as his successor isn’t the one Schumer will actually be doing. “Schumer would be a very good majority leader under President Hillary Clinton, and that’s what he thought he was signing up for,” says one prominent Democratic strategist, noting how aggressively Schumer waded into several Democratic Senate primaries in 2016. “He made the calculation that he wanted to win the Senate with people who were easily tamable and then he could be a majority leader like LBJ, just ramming things through.” As a minority leader with a Republican in the White House, however, Schumer will have a very different task — and there’s concern among some Democrats that he might not be cut out for it. “Chuck will go to the ramparts on an issue when it’s polling at 60 percent, but as soon as it gets hairy, he’s gone,” says one senior Democratic Senate aide. “Chuck wants issues to have no negatives, but it’s the Trump era. He’s looking at polls ­showing 60 percent for the Carrier deal” — in which Trump persuaded the company to keep a furnace plant in the U.S. in exchange for $7 million in tax breaks — “and thinking to himself, Maybe we should support that."

count on it

Interesting that DT has rebuked the House GOP for gutting the Office of Congressional Ethics.

Very mildly, though.

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 37m37 minutes ago
........may be, their number one act and priority. Focus on tax reform, healthcare and so many other things of far greater importance! #DTS
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Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 41m41 minutes ago
With all that Congress has to work on, do they really have to make the weakening of the Independent Ethics Watchdog, as unfair as it
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I thought he had given up Drain The Swamp?

I think he tried to, but big dumb Gingrich opened his big dumb mouth.

unfair as it ............may be

Any chance any Republicans will bolt and vote against that when the full House votes on it today?

why would they do that

It looks even more sneaky and underhanded than usual, and Lord God Trump criticized it. I don't really think it'll happen, I was just wondering what ILX's other political tacticians thought.

Except he didn't, and there's no reason to believe Republican politicians care about what Trump says.

why would they do that

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, January 3, 2017 10:14 AM (one hour ago)

You knew the answer to this question before you asked it, right?

time for a new thread buddies

What a charmer Jeff Sessions is/was.