US Politics, May 2020 — I will never lie to you. You have my word on that.

Kayleigh McEnany ftw

When someone tells you this on their first date, it makes you wonder.

Still think we should have gone with “Bringing light inside the body”

The usual embarrassment of riches.

from last thread:

She doesn't think America is the worst country in the world? Clearly, she is unfit to lead America.
― but also fuck you (unperson), Saturday, May 2, 2020

Stace is the right 'demographic' and that's all 80% of libs give a flying fuck about. (except you fon't have to Believe Women if Joe Biden fingers them.)

And yeah, what country's worse?

Republic of Congo would make a good run at that title.

Myanmar has been undertaking an internal genocide lately, so I hear.

The Uighurs of People's Republic of China might want to have a vote on that, as well.

El Salvador's been having some troubles, too.

Stace is the right 'demographic'

what exactly do you mean?

what exactly do you mean?

He's being coy about her being a black woman from the South. After 2018 mid-terms there was a lot of talk about the importance of that demographic to Democratic victory. The fact is, Stacey Abrams probably would appeal mightily to that demographic, but not for superficial reasons. She can talk to them in a way that proves she knows their issues from their point of view.

She can talk to them in a way that proves she knows their issues from their point of view.

Their issues don't matter to Morbius. He has two priorities:

1) Shitting on the Clintons and the Democratic Party writ large
2) Grudgingly admitting that Republicans are bad, when pressed

3) Not giving a shit what you think

"grudgingly" fuck yourself up the ass

only took you .05 milliseconds to contradict your previous post

I contain multitudes

(srsly, those kinda 'gotcha' posts are beneath anyone with pubic hair)

I guess you can file this under my "grudging" hatred of the POTUS and Republicans

NIH cuts funding of joint Chinese-US study of transmission of viruses from bats to humans because Trump hates China. Pure lunacy. https://t.co/Zvhvlcfm9n

— Doug Henwood (@DougHenwood) May 2, 2020

Lol @ somehow "go fuck yourself up the ass" not being a childish post

Katie Hill got dumber after leaving Congress

In a million years I never thought I’d be crying watching this, thinking how much better we’d all feel if Bush were president today. Wtf. https://t.co/SSR3ieZEFP

— Katie Hill (@KatieHill4CA) May 2, 2020

oh so that's why he's trending

.@Acosta: You say you had "broken tests" from Obama -- the coronavirus is a new virus, so how could the tests be broken?

TRUMP: "We have broken tests. We had tests that were obsolete. We had tests that didn't take care of people." (None of this makes sense.) pic.twitter.com/r7oobJNFU2

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 30, 2020

Pompeo on TV right now incoherently ranting. A clip was played showing Trump believed the Wuhan virus was manmade, and asking Pompeo if he agreed.

At first, he offered comments in support of this view. Then, when informed that the scientific consensus was that it was not made in a lab, he said he had no reason to disagree with their assessment. When the perplexed anchor asked if he was actually saying he didn't believe it was made in a lab, he made several evasive statements that seemed to say "yes" without actually saying it.

Spent the rest of the time talking about how the Chinese government concealed the severity of the virus, which isn't new news to anybody, perhaps is only new news to him since Donnie didn't read the intelligence briefings saying this exact thing in January.

Fuck us

The absolute state of the libertarian party pic.twitter.com/pHKjW23pYo

— liz (@pseudocia) May 2, 2020

lol OF COURSE they had it at the Rosen in '16. I-Drive fucks.

Got a letter from my congressman (Paul Gosar) today, opened and read it. It said he's a fucker:

"When the dust settles and America comes through this crisis on the other side, I look forward to discussing how we can hold Communist China accountable for their role in unleashing this plague on the world."

Isn't that the guy whose entire family made a campaign ad against him?

guess it didn't work

Yup
I just scrolled hos Twitter feed and man I shouldn't have cuz now I'm mad. Fucking scumbag.

dobby and paul gosar can go fuck of

pompeo is so sweaty and squirrelly

*off

Just tryin to sidestep the whole "US knew about it in Jan and Trump ignored it" news.

When this is done we won't be in any position to talk shit to nobody

it’s not his response in January that bothers me, it’s now, purposely limiting resources and rejecting any kind of national plan to guide us and help us

i'm bothered by both

nothing groundbreaking here but it is a wild ride:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/05/11/how-greenwich-republicans-learned-to-love-trump

a reminder that Perlstein will publish his Reagan book this fall

oh man, I will read the hell out of that

good morning!

“Concast” should open up a long overdue Florida Cold Case against Psycho Joe Scarborough. I know him and Crazy Mika well, used them beautifully in the last Election, dumped them nicely, and will state on the record that he is “nuts”. Besides, bad ratings! #OPENJOECOLDCASE

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 4, 2020

Ah, "Concast," Trump's dreaded secret police!

good luck USA

Is it too late to change the name of this thread to "used them beautifully, dumped them nicely"?

I was unaware that there was a already a pre-existing conspiracy theory that Morning Joe had killed a staffer and then I saw the comment for Trump's tweet.

it's just too late in general

he did use the shit out of them during the last election and they slavered over him like dogs, it’s true

i’m pretty much for anything that would get those two absolute nitwits off the air but I’d still feel weird about it if Trump’s twitting is what actually does reopen a cold case and puts Joe Scarborough behind bars

There is no cold case.

Yea her death was ruled accidental.

Tbf there were plenty of libs behind the SCARBOROUGH KILLED HER theory when Scarborough County was on the air

ye gods, if anything Scarburro was dorkier and more noxious during the Dubya era.

He was horrible. I found it hilarious that he somehow became a sympathetic figure

moving to NYC to become a minor media celeb puts you in different circles than righting radio, and resistance dorks have done180s on worse folks

re “cold case” — yes sorry for the misnomer. even so, Lock Him Up

rightWING radio

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/01/gilead-gets-emergency-fda-authorization-for-remdesivir-to-treat-coronavirus-trump-says.html

Gilead? where have i heard that name before...?

Conspiracy theorists don't like Gilead, but not for the reason you think!

(China ties)

donald trump believes 1.) joe scarborough murdered an intern and got away with it and 2.) this is just some kind of embarrassing piece of blackmail, doesn't change the fact that he is a dupe and a dunce.

oh yeah and 3.) it is comcast's responsibility to re-open this alleged murder investigation, not the state of florida or the u.s. justice department.

Dan S's fears largely confirmed by internal CDC projections.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/04/us/coronavirus-updates.html

If you have any friends or family that are reachable and not completely gone, the message to hammer home is "we are not on the back side of this".

Even one of my anti-Trump friends suggested we were this morning.

The only hope I have from this news is that Dems in Congress seize on it and push for monthly stimulus. Trump and his aides has already been backing away saying it's possibly not necessary.

Now is the time to cut monthly checks and extend the fed unemployment through Oct

Trump was on Morning Joe all the time during the early stages of his candidacy, even when it was abundantly clear that his only strategy was stoking race hate. fuck him.

oy, that nyt news is horrible.

xpost also really need to establish automatic triggers for stimulus that is tied to unemployment rate because if the glory of God finally shines upon us in November and we get rid of Trump, a Republican-controlled Senate will suddenly start to care very much about deficits and will never in a million years sign off on any new aid packages.

oy, that nyt news is horrible.

― Fuck the NRA (ulysses), Monday, May 4, 2020 12:54 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

normalizing a new 9/11 every day to own the libs.

Trump was on Morning Joe all the time during the early stages of his candidacy, even when it was abundantly clear that his only strategy was stoking race hate. fuck him.

Yes

Costco is limiting how many steaks shoppers can buy.

freedom under siege

also, 'cornering the steak market' entrepreneurship under siege

donald trump believes 1.) joe scarborough murdered an intern and got away with it and 2.) this is just some kind of embarrassing piece of blackmail, doesn't change the fact that he is a dupe and a dunce

He only believes #2

xpost also really need to establish automatic triggers for stimulus that is tied to unemployment rate because if the glory of God finally shines upon us in November and we get rid of Trump, a Republican-controlled Senate will suddenly start to care very much about deficits and will never in a million years sign off on any new aid packages.

otm

sad to say, right now is the probably the peak of republican empathy on this issue. this is how they do their best to help, with a GOP administration and senate. as soon as they're no longer officially in charge, heightened deaths will be a good thing for republicans, as an example of incompetent democratic leadership. it's fucked up all too probable

"y'all were told to save between 6-9 months of monthly bills up for emergencies. This is an emergency."

assuming the executive branch changes hands, anyone—be they R or D or a serious media person just delivering Hard Truths—who suggests that we really have to tighten our belts what with all this deficit should be immediately and in no uncertain terms be told to [ redacted] themselves immediately. and anyone who gives this advice one iota of thought other than to point and laugh and shame should also be written off forever. period.

Otm

Everyone uses money every day. Because of this everyone thinks they understand what it is and how it works. Almost none of them understand what money is or how it works.

Truly believe nobody on Earth fully understands modern global economy

the best framework for me parsing “”the economy”” is the realization that Nancy and Chuck will always have more in common with those obscenely wealthy Greenwich, CT MAGA assholes than they do with 99% of the folks who will go to the polls and vote for a Democratic candidate in November. they have an unspoken solidarity that I’m doubtful the working and poor masses will ever achieve in this country.

this sort festered under the surface for me when Obama was in office, but I think it’s all v much out in the open now. and the degree to which one cares, or is inclined to do anything about it, is directly tied to that person’s level of comfort/ wealth.

I say this as an extremely comfortable, healthy, white male who does very little other than vote

It is true enough that no matter how low in society your origins are, when you have risen high enough in the power structure, you acquire personal interests that align with maintaining the power structure. Only genuine idealists can resist that realignment and override their personal interest to seek the good of others at your own expense. Idealist politicians do exist, much more than e.g. idealist business owners, but the erosive forces in Congress upon one's ideals are steady and wearing.

eh, there are very few true idealists, and even fewer who cannot afford such a stance. but aimless is not wrong. "knowing" who is an ally takes a fuckton more than an address, tho keep it in mind.

the greenwich story is so gross i couldn't read it all, plus it's looooong as fuck, and i really think i know how they do. ay part of the "30%" live in greenwich. they also live in burbville. they live in the fuckin sticks. do they live in teh hood, i dunno. their circumstances steer the %s in some places more than others. at the core they're the same self-absorbed shitholes. don't be too surprised. greedy fucking shitbags are pretty universal imo.

“Quite frankly, Mother Nature is not a thinking enemy intent on inflicting grievous harm to our country, killing our citizens, undermining our government or destroying our way of life,” he told Congress in 2011. “Mother Nature doesn’t develop highly virulent organisms that are resistant to our current stockpiles of antibiotics.”

That’s Trump’s top official for public health preparedness, Robert Kadlec, who has been busy getting contracts for his former company and not disclosing it on ethics documents filings. Also cut emphasis on pandemics earlier to focus on bioweapons. https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/before-pandemic-trumps-stockpile-chief-put-focus-on-biodefense-an-old-client-benefited/2020/05/04/d3c2b010-84dd-11ea-878a-86477a724bdb_story.html

Nature is healing

Good morning!

it may well have been a naturally occuring virus that escaped from the virology lab. it's most certainly not a bioweapon.

but i don't trust the reports that it "definitely wasn't" one of the strains of bat coronaviruses they were studying there. like, who knows? very little is known about this virus.

it's the cubic model, jake

The White House is relying on a "cubic model" that predicts deaths will magically go to zero in two weeks.

It was created by a Trump econ advisor who also co-authored "Dow 36,000," which published just before the dot-com crash https://t.co/bArQ2z1Nj8 pic.twitter.com/343AHH76E8

— Eric Umansky (@ericuman) May 5, 2020

...Here I can’t help but note a basic point. Hassett is not a health care economist, let alone someone at the crossroads of behavioral economics and epidemiologists. Indeed, his record as an economist is rather notorious.

Perhaps Hassett’s biggest claim to fame is coauthoring a 1999 book entitled Dow 36,000: Dow 36,000: The New Strategy for Profiting From the Coming Rise in the Stock Market. The book argued that traditional metrics for evaluating stock prices were outdated and that the stock market was dramatically undervalued. The Dow, then a bit over 10,000, would rise to 36,000 over the next three to four years. These are the kinds of predictions one often hears at the top of a bull market. And indeed the market hit its peak within months of the book’s publication and continued to fall for almost the next four years. Needless to say, that was two and a half market collapses ago. 21 years later the Dow stands at 23,749, though it did approach 30,000 before the COVID19 collapse.

...Anyone can make a dumb prediction. Few have made ones of a more high-profile and quickly discredited nature. And for Hassett it’s rather par for the course. His is a DC GOP think tank (sinecured) economist who has generally paid no professional or reputational price for being wrong about virtually everything for decades. The decision to put such a person in charge of creating a predictive epidemiological model in the midst of a national crisis based on no professional or academic expertise whatsoever defies all logic. But then, who are we kidding? The President put his son-in-law, who’s only professional accomplishment was nearly bankrupting his real estate family after he took the reins after his father went to prison, in charge of epidemic crisis response.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/covid-36000

hassett and his co-author did a reading for dow 36,000 at the bookstore i worked at in '99 -- it was laughable even before the crash

i don't even care about the dumb DOW prediction so much as...why is that guy in a leadership position on coronavirus??

why is a reality show host the president of the united states? Wheeeeeeeeee

Forget it Karl, it's Donnietown

President Donald Trump exploded at the Lincoln Project via Twitter early Tuesday morning after the anti-Trump conservative political action committee put out an ad that criticized his response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“A group of [Republican In Name Only] Republicans who failed badly 12 years ago, then again 8 years ago, and then got BADLY beaten by me, a political first timer, 4 years ago, have copied (no imagination) the concept of an ad from Ronald Reagan, ‘Morning in America,’ doing everything possible to get even for all of their many failures,” Trump tweeted at nearly 1 AM ET.

He described the group as a “disgrace to Honest Abe” and called out each of its members by name.

“They’re all LOSERS, but Abe Lincoln, Republican, is all smiles!” he tweeted.

One of those members includes George Conway, the husband of White House adviser Kellyanne Conway, whom Trump suggested was somehow responsible for her spouse’s actions.

“I don’t know what Kellyanne did to her deranged loser of a husband, Moonface, but it must have been really bad,” Trump wrote.

check out that last line. wow, fuck you, yet again

how could someone work for a man who trashes their spouse? if my boss called any of my loved ones "moonface" i would quit immediately.

I wouldn't quit. My boss would be fired for saying it.

It's a game Kellyanne and her husband play. As long as they keep cashing checks from somewhere, they are happy to amplify the WWE style "feud" they've got going. It's all bullshit.

Still waiting for some quality Ides of March action from folks in this administration.

Trump Administration Signals It Will Wind Down Virus Task Force

The White House is telling staff that it plans to wind down the coronavirus task force even as the crisis rages on. It’s not clear if it will be replaced.

mission accomplished

there was a kellyanne conway tidbit in that recent new yorker article on Greenwich, CT (which is quite good imo - it serves as a kind of lite overview of grand shifts in republicanism and conservatism over the last 50 years) that i hadn't heard before:

When Trump took an early lead in 2015, most of the political and financial world ignored him. Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a professor at the Yale School of Management, attended a salon that summer at the Connecticut home of Larry Kudlow, the business commentator who now leads Trump’s National Economic Council. “It was a lot of very deep-pocketed Republicans from Greenwich and New York,” Sonnenfeld told me. “Not one person had a pleasant thing to say about Trump.” Sonnenfeld urged them to take Trump’s chances seriously, but a fellow-guest, who worked for a super pac supporting Ted Cruz in the primaries, disagreed. “She said, ‘I’m a lifelong expert on the psychographics of women’s voter behavior, and I can tell you that Donald Trump will never get two per cent of Republican women voters,’ ” Sonnenfeld told me. “She got wild applause. That was Kellyanne Conway.” (Conway, now a senior adviser to Trump, called this a “specious, self-serving claim,” adding, “I don’t know ‘Professor’ So-and-So.”)

Trump has threatened to primary the virus

that article is also a good reminder (to me at least) of the futility of thinking of "shame" as something that could possibly hold republicans back or make them pause. it is truly irrelevant to them. i like the description of the rich Greenwich republicans pride in building tall walls around their homes that runs through these paragraphs:

n the early years of this century, the economic divisions that would come to define America in the age of Trump became evident on the lush back roads of Greenwich, in a sign so subtle that it was easy to miss. Many of the new estates going up were no longer surrounded by the simple stone walls, stacked to the height of a farmer’s hip, that crossed the New England landscape. Instead, the builders introduced a more imposing barrier: tall, stately walls of chiselled stone, mortared in place.

The fashion for higher walls had little to do with safety; Greenwich has one of the lowest crime rates in America. To Frank Farricker, who served on the town’s planning-and-zoning commission, they symbolized power and seclusion. “Instead of building two or three feet high, people got into six-footers—the ‘Fuck you’ walls,” he said. When nearby municipalities noticed the trend, they treated it like an invasive species; they rewrote zoning rules to prevent the spread of what stonemasons took to calling “Greenwich walls.”

The walls were products of one of the most extraordinary accumulations of wealth in American history. In much of the country, the corporate convulsions of the seventies had entailed layoffs, offshoring, and declining union power, but on Wall Street they inspired a surge of creativity. Since the seventeen-hundreds, Wall Street had focussed mostly on funnelling American savings into new businesses and mortgages. But, in the last two decades of the twentieth century, financiers and economists opened vast new realms of speculation and financial engineering—aggressive methods to bet on securities, merge businesses, and cut expenses using bankruptcy laws. U.S. stock markets grew twelvefold, and most of the gains accrued to the wealthiest Americans. By 2017, Wall Streeters were taking home twenty-three per cent of the country’s corporate profits—and home, for many of them, was Connecticut.

The Internet allowed financiers to work from anywhere, so some escaped New York’s higher taxes by relocating their offices closer to where they lived. Newspapers took to calling Greenwich the “Hedge Fund Capital of the World.” The dealmakers earned vastly more than the industrial executives they had replaced. In 2004, Institutional Investor reported that the top twenty-five hedge-fund managers earned an average of two hundred and seven million dollars a year.

Nine of those top managers lived or worked in Greenwich, led by Edward Lampert, who in 2004 earned an estimated $1.02 billion after orchestrating the merger of Kmart and Sears. Lampert was not one to dress like a gardener; just offshore, he docked his yacht, a two-hundred-and-eighty-eight-foot vessel that he had named Fountainhead, for Ayn Rand’s individualist fable. (Trump has said that he identifies with the book’s hero, Howard Roark, a designer of skyscrapers who declares, “I do not recognize anyone’s right to one minute of my life. . . . No matter who makes the claim, how large their number, or how great their need.”) So much individual wealth accumulated in southern Connecticut that tax officials took to monitoring the quarterly payments of a half-dozen of the richest taxpayers, because their personal earnings would affect how much the entire state was able to spend on public services.

Around town, Morgan Stanley executives no longer competed to wear the cheapest wristwatch. (The current chairman and C.E.O., James Gorman, is celebrated on watch-enthusiast blogs for a rare Rolex that can sell for seventeen thousand dollars.) Jack Welch, who succeeded Reginald Jones at G.E., retired in 2001 with a record severance package of more than four hundred million dollars. One of Jones’s friends, the investor Vincent Mai, was dismayed that many business leaders put short-term interests ahead of long-term vision. “The culture changed into grabbing as much as you can, as quickly as you can,” Mai, the founder and chairman of the Cranemere Group, told me. “Restraint just seems to have gone out the window.”

The money physically redrew Greenwich, as financiers built estates on a scale once favored by Gilded Age railroad barons. The hedge-fund manager Steven A. Cohen paid $14.8 million in cash for a house, then added an ice rink, an indoor basketball court, putting greens, a fairway, and a massage room, ultimately swelling the building to thirty-six thousand square feet—larger than the Taj Mahal. In a final flourish, Cohen obtained special permission to surround his estate with a wall that exceeded the town’s limits on height. It was nine feet tall.

also a good reminder (to probably only me, again) that these are the actual power brokers in our society. almost all national politicians belong to that class. they either emerge from that class, aspire to it, or frequently bend to the will of it. i do think that the servitude is less extreme and total on the left, in general. it's hard to think of any national politician on the right that is anything but a craven fucker from hell on a mission to pass down wealth to their shitty families and friends. but there are plenty o democrats in Greenwich, too

i think it's weird that politicians from the middle of the country do the bidding of the east coast elite

that's only because you listen to what they say. what they do is the truth.

“You are like a tumor in my brain which is getting larger and larger each day.”
"The brain is the true erogenous zone."
This 1991 erotic thriller by @sallyquinndc based its hunk hero on a young Anthony Fauci.
Warning... this post is totally NSFWFH: https://t.co/E1A4cTho6k

— Carlos Lozada (@CarlosLozadaWP) May 5, 2020

god, back in the day i would have looked for an old photo of fauci and then photoshopped in some glistening abs

these days, i'm just tired

relying on a "cubic model"

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/NTQj-ZJWRHdQo-W8GTrfpQeIilo=/0x2:528x354/1400x1050/filters:focal(0x2:528x354):format(gif)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/47077626/timecubeflierimg.0.0.gif

President Trump told me and @ebonybowden that 'DC will never be a state' because Republicans aren't 'stupid'

'You mean District of Columbia, a state? Why? So we can have two more Democratic — Democrat senators and five more congressmen? No thank you'https://t.co/N3u1P34yGe

— Steven Nelson (@stevennelson10) May 5, 2020

saying the quiet part loud: a life

and look -- he's learned to say "Democrat" instead of "Democratic" like a good Republican.

big news guys

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/president-unraveling/611146/

after three and a half years, peter wehner has seen enough

eventually you just gotta call it

isolated
constipated
defenestrated
soon to be ass-

Clinton/Obama/Reid nominated slowly and let the GOP stall and block dozens of nominees. Trump/McConnell are not only filling every seat, they are double-dipping by getting Republican judges to take senior status and then replacing them. https://t.co/ymYK8dB8ux

— Sigh Hersh, Hostile Witness (@Ugarles) May 5, 2020

a pity an Obama-appointed judge accepted the complaint!

Ohio has set up a website for companies to report people who refuse to work during the pandemic, so that they don’t keep getting unemployment benefits. https://t.co/VLCgQB205U

— Chris Opfer (@ChrisOpfer) May 5, 2020

ohio.snitch

it's cool how the pandemic has made it clear that american capitalism is essentially a version of communist totalitarianism where the bosses are the heroic figures

Bosses are the vanguard of the proletariat tbh

We need a revolutionary government with show trials. https://t.co/nejsxtozJ1

— Doug Henwood (@DougHenwood) May 6, 2020

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzRhcjOG1es

well done

so i guess he decided on the No Masks at the Mask Plant strategy. or they all decided

such leadership skills, leading by example

why worry about infection at the mask factory? I mean what's the worst that could happen

let's go cubes

So @jimtankersley talked to Kevin Hassett about the whole "cubic model" mess, and long story short, I'm pretty sure Hassett owes @NateSilver538 $538.https://t.co/wRDLk6KgyG https://t.co/cP6zsdVEuU pic.twitter.com/43ml5VHBjw

— Ben Casselman (@bencasselman) May 6, 2020

maybe somebody on the staff's read Thomas Bernhard.

i don't know why i am continually astonished at the depths of incompetence in this administration. using the cubic trendline to "smooth out the volatility"??? jeeeeeezus

Kushner's most recent screwups highlighted in Washington Post and NY Times thanks to a whistleblower volunteer:

The coronavirus response being spearheaded by President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has relied in part on volunteers from consulting and private equity firms with little expertise in the tasks they were assigned, exacerbating chronic problems in obtaining supplies for hospitals and other needs, according to numerous government officials and a volunteer involved in the effort....The document alleges that the team responsible for PPE had little success in helping the government secure such equipment, in part because none of the team members had significant experience in health care, procurement or supply-chain operations. In addition, none of the volunteers had relationships with manufacturers or a clear understanding of customs requirements or Food and Drug Administration rules, according to the complaint and two senior administration officials...Supply-chain volunteers were instructed to fast-track protective equipment leads from “VIPs,” including conservative journalists friendly to the White House,

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/kushner-coronavirus-effort-said-to-be-hampered-by-inexperienced-volunteers/2020/05/05/6166ef0c-8e1c-11ea-9e23-6914ee410a5f_story.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/05/us/jared-kushner-fema-coronavirus.html

Instead of having actual government employees do the work, Kushner had his financial scene buddies use their own private emails and such while working out of a FEMA office

From the NY Times article on Kushner's volunteers task force:

Trump allies also pressed FEMA officials directly: A Pennsylvania dentist, once featured at a Trump rally, dropped the president’s name as he pushed the agency to procure test kits from his associates.

Few of the leads, V.I.P. or otherwise, panned out, according to a whistle-blower memo written by one volunteer and sent to the House Oversight Committee. While Vice President Mike Pence dropped by the volunteers’ windowless command center in Washington to cheer them on, they were confused and overwhelmed by their task, the whistle-blower said in interviews.

“The nature and scale of the response seemed grossly inadequate,” said the volunteer, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity and, like the others, signed a nondisclosure agreement. “It was bureaucratic cycles of chaos.”

I'm starting to hate Kushner as much as his father-in-law.

Once Trump is out of office, the Congress is going to have to actually do some work and change the rules on some of this sh!t. Non-elected family members of a President should not be able to waltz in and take over any of the crap the Chump has had the Kush doing.

It is not surprising though, these people don't believe in government unless it something they can bilk for cash. In reality, the drown the government in the bathtub types, really Trump is their ultimate President.

abolish the Presidency
abolish the Senate
abolish Republicans
abolish politicians who have served for more than 10 years
abolish millionaires from holding office
abolish billionaires
allow drive-through voting

"abolish politicians who have served for more than 10 years"

Bye Bernie, we hardly knew ye.

we'll let him Cyrano a young budding politician who is struggling to find his voice. sort of like a ghostwriter

The partisan gap in the latest CNBC battleground state poll shows a divide between delusion and reality:

Is it safe to go to a:
Nail salon: 77% R; 9% D
Dine-in restaurant: 70% R; 5% D
Bar: 52% R; 4% D
Large sporting event: 37% R; 2% D

Is the economy in a recession?
50% R; 89% D

— Brian Klaas (@brianklaas) May 6, 2020

eek

I'm starting to hate Kushner as much as his father-in-law.

Once Trump is out of office, the Congress is going to have to actually do some work and change the rules on some of this sh!t.

not going to hold my breath on this one. Republicans would never do it for ideological reasons, Democrats will never do it because they never do anything.

I would rather go to a baseball game with thousands of other people (not 40k but maybe 10k?) than step foot in a nail salon or get my hair cut.

xp re: to poll
"It's merely a flesh wound!"

Recently realized that the Democratic party is perfectly summed up by a joke Norman Finkelstein once told me, about a man who is such a schmuck that if there was a worldwide schmuck competition he would come in second

— Shuja Haider (@shujaxhaider) May 7, 2020

Good morning!

Ah! Well, nevertheless,

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/07/us/coronavirus-states-reopen-criteria.html

A visual demonstration of how dumb a cubic polynomial fit is with this data:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EXWWy7eUYAAlDw-?format=jpg

Why is the cubic polynomial fit dumb? Seems to approximate the existing data pretty well?

Is it because you don’t expect the # of USA cases to fall off?

learned something from Roy Cohn I guess

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/06/trump-pence-pentagon-point-man-disloyal/

Why is the cubic polynomial fit dumb? Seems to approximate the existing data pretty well?

Oh sweet! That means we can stop distancing cos then new infections will just even out!

For nearly three years we have been building a juggernaut campaign (Death Star). It is firing on all cylinders. Data, Digital, TV, Political, Surrogates, Coalitions, etc.

In a few days we start pressing FIRE for the first time. pic.twitter.com/aJgCNfx1m0

— Brad Parscale - Download our Trump 2020 App today! (@parscale) May 7, 2020

much to lol at there, but "Political"...?

Trending in Canada
Death Star
12.5K Tweets

I assume 90% of those are gifs of Alec Guinness saying "I fear something terrible has happened"

there is a disturbance in the Farce

James Carville's a piece of shit who should be devoured by hogs, but this clip amused me:

Carville on Trump: "They’re a pack of grifters. His campaign manager got two condos, a Ferrari, a yacht, a Range Rover and they’re all just fleecing the campaign. This is all about making money and they’re going in there and giving him fake polls."pic.twitter.com/rigtoZHt5w

— PoliticsVideoChannel (@politvidchannel) May 7, 2020

like a crumblin' empiah, right before ya eyes

One of Trump's valets tested positive for COVID-19.

lol these people are so fucking stupid

For nearly three years we have been building a juggernaut campaign (Death Star). It is firing on all cylinders. Data, Digital, TV, Political, Surrogates, Coalitions, etc.

In a few days we start pressing FIRE for the first time. pic.twitter.com/aJgCNfx1m0

— Brad Parscale - Download our Trump 2020 App today! (@parscale) May 7, 2020

he's not wrong at calling this a kleptocracy

"In a few days we start pressing FIRE for the first time."
*death star explodes*

I get that the fact the DS got blowed up twice is the key self-own here, but before that happened they used it to commit genocide, which seems also relevant

It is firing on all cylinders? Would have thought a juggernaut Republican Death Star would have better than an internal combustion engine.

This shit is too on-the-nose to even function as self-parody anymore. Is there a word for an allusion that's actually just a word-for-word transcription? Because we're nearing that point, I feel.

before that happened they used it to commit genocide, which seems also relevant

Don't worry; that'll be self-directed, too. Fox News hosts are starting to encourage their (largely 60+) viewers to go outside and catch COVID-19 to "build herd immunity."

Fox News' Pete Hegseth calls for people to go out and get infected by coronavirus: "Now that we are learning more, herd immunity is our friend. Healthy people getting out there -- they are going to have to have some courage." pic.twitter.com/PCSHm9yUAW

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) May 7, 2020

so much courage

Herd immunity: you first

herd immunity: where some humans are asked to become animals

Guinea pigs are not herd animals.

Forget about overpraised healthcare workers, Fox News' Pete Hegseth knows who the real heroes are: the people who have been told that this virus is 5 to 10 times more deadly than influenza, that it is estimated that on average one infected person will infect 5 more people who in turn will each infect 5 more, and who have seen the charts showing that in a few short weeks the virus went from a couple of daily deaths to being the leading cause of death in the USA ahead of cancer or heart disease, and yet are capable of rendering their minds totally blank to all these facts and act as if they did not exist, so they can wander around infecting each other. Heroes, indeed!

He also says this while he broadcasts in isolation from a home camera.

In February 2019, Hegseth said on Fox & Friends that he didn't think he had washed his hands in ten years. He explained: “I inoculate myself. Germs are not a real thing. I can't see them, therefore they're not real.” He later claimed that he was joking.

I actually misread his name as Hogsbreath.

christ what an asshole

🚨🚨 SCOOP --> WASHINGTON (AP) — Justice Department is dropping criminal case against ex-Trump adviser Flynn, according to court filing obtained by AP.

— Mike Balsamo (@MikeBalsamo1) May 7, 2020

Thus saving President Trump the political embarrassment of issuing Flynn a pardon.

can he be re-prosecuted once we have a real administration?

(i'm fully aware biden will probably pull a 'we will not prosecute the former administration' shit to 'move the country forward' or some crap)

Prepared to be wrong on this, but I suspect this isn't the end of the Flynn case.

It's so hard not to read this as a signal for Barr and the DOJ that they will fully support Trump should he choose to ignore the results of an election.

do we think trump can parse 'signals' or that people go to the effort to signal anything to him

idg why they're going through all this rigamarole? trump suffered no political damage from pardoning a literal war criminal; why would he be squeamish about using one on flynn?

it's not a signal to him, but for him, a signal to the rest of us that there's no line they won't cross. xpost

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/07/trump-valet-positive-coronavirus-test-242619

hmm

i'm thinking trump's pandemic response pushes him from "among the worst u.s. presidents" to "the very worst u.s. president"

i really thought he couldn't possibly beat Bush II for a long time but... this is pushing it

and close to the worst Speaker

"Pelosi has run the House by fiat for close to two months, and there hasn’t been a single word of protest as she locks every other member of the Democratic caucus out of policymaking and hands them take-it-or-leave-it legislation to rubber stamp." -@ddayenhttps://t.co/ow623Vj6tv

— “Ideas That Are Lying Around” (@_waleedshahid) May 7, 2020

yass queen etc

But but guys she clapped weird at Trump.

it's not a signal to him, but for him, a signal to the rest of us that there's no line they won't cross. xpost

― soaring skrrrtpeggios (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Thursday, May 7, 2020 5:18 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

this is the corniest part of trump, the fact that he is the most X-TREME president in history. in reality, he has been furthering the GOP's longstanding project to undermine american society for the benefit of short-term profits.

Fucking Barr saying on the news that the Flynn case had to be dropped because it presented two standards of justice in America based on political partisanship right after a story where Ahman Aubrey's father said basically the same thing based on the color of one's skin. Barr is such a disgusting creep. If there were any real justice, he would be in jail.

he can get COVID too. actually maybe him first

these people will be folk heroes for the right for my entire life and nothing bad will ever happen to them.

https://www.bisnow.com/atlanta/news/retail/for-georgia-restaurants-and-retailers-its-not-landlords-that-cause-the-pressure-104166

The first of 40 U.S. Bad Axe Throwing venues to reopen since widespread shelter-in-place orders were issued across the country was in Atlanta on Friday.

Bad Axe CEO Mario Zelaya expected business to be bad, maybe 10% of the hundreds of customers he would expect to see throw axes and drink beer on a typical weekend. “That was the worst-case scenario, especially with all the marketing we did,” Zelaya said. “The reopening weekend was a disaster. We had two customers all weekend."

Marc fucking Thiessen, WAPO's token right-wing piece of fucking shit, with a think-piece on how businesses that reopen early will need protection from a "pandemic" of lawsuits. These people are like a slurry of food poisoning shits.

Bad Axe CEO Mario Zelaya expected business to be bad, maybe 10% of the hundreds of customers he would expect to see throw axes and drink beer on a typical weekend.

sorry WTF is this business please?

excited too be frog marched out of my apartment to Bad Axe Throwing and forced to drink beer for the economy

you drink beer and throw axes idk what so hard to understand /s

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

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

http://media.tenor.com/images/8bac0a047428051d4c7bb15a4867dc75/tenor.gif

in the grip of the most stressful and extended period of quarantine in a century, what your average untrained american needs is drugs and a sharp weapon to throw.

rona ain't thinning the herd we want thinned so *shrug* why not

can a kind ilxor please complete this joke for me, i haven't had enough coffee yet:

what is needed for Bad Axe Throwing is legal protection from the "_____ " of lawsuits it may face in the near future

logjam?

blapcrease

murkflow

hen fap

henfap

goddamnit

lol

sharp upt(r)ick

“whirling axestorm”

buttload

choppy legal waters

there it is

what is needed for Bad Axe Throwing is protection from the choppy legal waters that may emerge from their very, very dumb customers.

a second member of the white house inner circle has covid:

A member of VP Pence's staff has tested positive for COVID-19, per an administration official. The staffer is not with Pence on Air Force 2, which is en route to Iowa right now.
(h/t @HansNichols)

— Peter Alexander (@PeterAlexander) May 8, 2020

Amazed they haven't found a bearded guy and claimed he was a returned Jesus yet

Mike Pence caught on hot mic delivering empty boxes of PPE for a PR stunt. pic.twitter.com/IduvGhiPwj

— Matt McDermott (@mattmfm) May 8, 2020

except that didn't happen:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/davidmack/mike-pence-empty-boxes-debunk

Way to go, Jimmy. Provide more fuel to the Fake News fire. Sick of this shit.

whaaa? that sucks. sorry, i try not to be fooled by these things. i don't know why i assumed the jimmy kimmel show was trustworthy, sadlol

is that what provoked trump to lay into kimmel and colbert the other day? that tweet was notable because he used dumb insult nicknames for kimmel and colbert, but then also referred to "nice guy" jimmy fallon. another late night jimmy who fucking blows

i heard hitler only has one ball
boo, sick of this slander against hitler, fake news

Those axe throwing bars look like someone made a chain out of the mandatory fun you have to do at corporate training days. They couldn’t figure out how to monetize trust falls.

axe throwing bars and escape rooms are all the rage

let's combine the 2

America is basically the worst Escape Room now.

Paula Reid
@PaulaReidCBS

BREAKING: President Trump just said "Katie" is VP staffer who tested positive. Katie Miller is VP spox & wife of WH adviser Stephen Miller. Entire West Wing has now been directly or indirectly exposed to COVID-19.

1:30 PM · May 8, 2020·Twitter Web App

BREAKING: President Trump just said "Katie" is VP staffer who tested positive. Katie Miller is VP spox & wife of WH adviser Stephen Miller. Entire West Wing has now been directly or indirectly exposed to COVID-19.

— Paula Reid (@PaulaReidCBS) May 8, 2020

please, oh please oh please oh please let stephen miller die

xp lol Cow_Art, we must follow the same people on twitter :)

alright, just a little further

As much as I want every single one of these shit-bags to suffer from the Coronavirus, I keep thinking about Trump going to the mask factory without a mask. What if a fucking mask factory has to shut down because our asshole president brought it there.

My head hurts at the stupidity of everything. Last night I did my yearly "Should I move to Canada?" googling.

people who should die from coronavirus (excerpt)

trump
pence
stephen miller
betsy devos

as a starter kit

mark meadows is contemptible fucker too, add him on. and mulvaney can obviously eat shit til he dies

America is basically the worst Escape Room now.

every room is an escape room

and the only escape is to another room

which is also an escape room

whoa

that was super lame of Kimmell. He's usually above that crap.

eh can't really fault him for people editing his stuff out of context and passing it off as real

that said the joke is dumb precisely because it's exactly the sort of thing this administration actually does

exactly, a whole lot of story truth going on in that 'joke'

axe throwing bars and escape rooms are all the rage

― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Friday, May 8, 2020 11:20 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

let's combine the 2

― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Friday, May 8, 2020 11:29 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

"escape the axe" would be a great thrash metal song title

The pandemic is an escape room that the US government is trying to smash their way out of with an axe.

Katie Miller (@VPPressSec), seen here chitchatting with members of the press yesterday(!), tested positive today for COVID.

Oh. She's the one without the mask. Right there on the right. pic.twitter.com/Mmbl3Zs1x4

— Jeffrey Wright (@jfreewright) May 8, 2020

Sorry to be the one to say this, but looks like she lied.

"White House spokesperson Kayleigh McEnany said Friday that the documents had not been approved by CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield. The new emails, however, show that Redfield cleared the guidance."

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/cdc-report-reopen-white-house-1.5562558

Dr. Anthony Fauci now going into “modified quarantine” after being in close proximity with the White House staffer who was positive, @jaketapper reports. Fauci joins CDC’s Dr. Robert Redfield and FDA’s Dr. Stephen Hahn who are also in quarantine as a result.

— Alexander Marquardt (@MarquardtA) May 10, 2020

"Modified quarantine" = "oh, well, we hate your guts anyway, get out."

look at this hardman in north carolina who needs to bring a giant wooden gun on his meatball footlong run

yeah what the shit, it’s made of wood pic.twitter.com/75Fv81H6jt

— jimmytwohands (@jimmy_two_hands) May 9, 2020

people were really clamoring for haircuts from the woman responsible for this. huh

.@SenTedCruz got his first haircut in months today at the Far North Dallas hair salon of Shelley Luther, the owner who defied local and court orders to keep business closed during COVID-19 outbreak. https://t.co/v72J2CYDfY pic.twitter.com/iq66jv9qjG

— Dallas Morning News (@dallasnews) May 8, 2020

bravo to anyone who can hold a sharp instrument and stand over Ted Cruz in a prone position without succumbing to the most natural instinct

is that why the haircut is so bad

They had to keep each hair six feet apart

Good morning!

look at this hardman in north carolina who needs to bring a giant wooden gun on his meatball footlong run

meanwhile, black men get shot and killed by the police for carrying cell phones that get mistaken for a gun.

"mistaken"

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/10/opinions/why-dont-editorial-boards-call-for-trump-to-resign-lockhart

also here's a contender for worst URL of 2020:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/rosie-odonnell-reveals-shes-helping-michael-cohen-with-his-spicy-trump-tell-all-book

so, #obamagate is a thing that we're going to have to hear about for a while. possibly a long while.

don't think it's a scandal? that's because you read the fake news, and that means you aid and abet the enemy of the people.

stupid white people are the kindling that's set America on fire

Wish they themselves were on fire

The problem with Obamagate is that it's impossible to explain to anyone who doesn't have brain worms. If the DOJ attempts any kind of real action, I would expect it to blow up in their faces very quickly.

wtf is obamagate?

It's a bullshit attempt to paint the Obama administration as the real criminals based on ???

Because it was OBAMAGATE, and he and Sleepy Joe led the charge. The most corrupt administration in U.S. history! https://t.co/PTzFvvITh3

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 11, 2020

wasn't just obama! was also biden! leading the charge!!!

sleepily

definitely what the american people need right now

while talking to my mom last night she mentioned how she initially fantasized shooting DT, which then evolved into him just having a massive stroke so as to prolong his misery That's my mama!

he's also tweeted OBAMAGATE about 30 times today and yesterday

christ what an asshole

And he hasn't even gotten around to the "leaked" audio of Obama calling his (Trump's) COVID-19 response a disaster, or whatever phrase he used. I guess that'll be next week's fixation.

I'm pretty sure that's exactly why he's doing it now

At this point I'm less pissed about Trump making this shit up than I am the legions of maga-idiots that will not stop talking about it and the media that will start reporting on it as if it's actually a thing. Predictable and obnoxious.

yeah I'm already seeing the "Trump accuses Obama of biggest scandal in political history" headline in a few places, either these idiots never fucking learn or they're all in the tank for him

it's just unacceptable that this is the president

What are the odds that the Coronavirus task force was dissolved ahead of the media learning that there was an outbreak in the WH?

christ what an asshole

^epitaph

not to get all sic here but there's no need to share his tweets

A reminder that may not be obvious: amplification on social networks has monetary value. Twitter’s algorithm counts it as engagement even if you shared a tweet to criticize it or mock it, and uses that signal to amplify the tweet further. Only RT what you would pay to promote.

— Anil Dash 😷 (@anildash) March 1, 2020

Do not reply to, retweet, or quote a tweet from a fascist unless you would give them your money. Apparently some people would rather make that gift than change their behavior online, and I don’t know what to do about that.

— Anil Dash 😷 (@anildash) March 1, 2020

how hard is it to take a screenshot and include it in an image, that's what i do when i can't resist the urge to dunk on one of these bozos

sorry ya'll

i have been trying to do the 'copy + paste the text of the tweet only' thing lately, but every once in a while in the heat of the moment i loose my cool and BLAMMO!

I don't think that Dash argument really applies to someone as famous as trump, but definitely for the bottom-feeding chem-trails enthusiasts that he retweets

pre-emptive defense of calling any attention to trump's tweets, via embed or otherwise:

...sometimes the news he is making is ON twitter, so i'm interested in what he actually said. there's a separate discussion to be had (which probably has been had many times here) about the importance of what he says on twitter. should it be completely ignored? most of the time, yes. every once in a while, though, he does publicly command his army of trolls and non-journalist media to carry out an attack, and i don't think we should pay attention to it

every once in a while, though, he does publicly command his army of trolls and non-journalist media to carry out an attack, and i don't think we should pay attention to it

uuuuugh, i meant we SHOULD pay attention to it, on occasion

i'm just going to dangle my legs out of the Self-Own trashcan, where i belong

i'm just tired and hate his stupid face and all of the stupid things he says which add nothing of value to my experience of life

^now that's an irrefutable argument

leadership

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EXwoLNaXsAA6EEJ?format=png&name=large

lol

they used to say he was a germaphobe?

once a month, I think about how I learnt of Donald Trump as a kid from an American newspaper comic strip which featured him semi-regularly as a fatuous, incurious, repugnant, destructive, acquisitive, bloviating, stupid oaf with no capability for respecting other beings, who was utterly contemptuous (if not abusive) of women, and whose primary characteristic above all else was a massive, misplaced confidence in his own judgment

i'm just tired and hate his stupid face and all of the stupid things he says which add nothing of value to my experience of life

― mellon collie and the infinite bradness (BradNelson), Monday, May 11, 2020 11:02 AM (one hour ago)

yeah

how about this added value:

"transition into greatness"

I don't think that Dash argument really applies to someone as famous as trump, but definitely for the bottom-feeding chem-trails enthusiasts that he retweets

― dip to dup (rob), Monday, May 11, 2020 1:56 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

well it doesn't apply now. could have done with it around july 2015.

https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/trump-ends-coronavirus-briefing-female-reporters_n_5eb9c144c5b6a0e85a758f36

Can't spell snowflake without white supremacy.

Can't get to that huffpo page in plain link, private browsing, or via Outline - what's the salient issue?

I posted The Guardian's report to the rolling 'is this racist?' thread:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2020/may/11/you-should-ask-china-trump-terminates-press-conference-after-clash-with-reporter-video

Donald Trump's press conference on coronavirus testing ended abruptly after a terse exchange with two female reporters. Asked by CBS's Weijia Jiang about his focus on international comparisons rather than US deaths, Trump snapped: 'Don’t ask me, ask China that question'. After being asked by Jiang, who is Asian-American, why he had directed the remark at her, Trump cut off the CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins as she asked a question and walked away from the podium.

It must infuriate him that nobody else cares about his insipid obamagate tweetstorm

imagine what this fool is going to be like in a month when US numbers are over 150k.

He's going to be like what a great victory, many people said we'd be over 200k, fake news! Then we'll get over 200k...

Trump is trying really hard to make "transition into greatness" the slogan for whatever he's trying to convince his knuckle-walking hordes is going on, but in typically half-assed fashion, he forgot to lock down the domain first.

Can't get to that huffpo page in plain link, private browsing, or via Outline

Dude I cut off all the Facebook hkdu?/ojlknrliudlid8nkjh garbage are you never satisfied?

yahoo asked me to clickthrough three screens, then from there to individually click on, individually read and individually approve the privacy policies, on nineteen external sites, of:

Active Agent AG
Amazon
Atlas / Facebook
dataXtrade GmbH
DoubleClick / Google / Adx
eBay
Ensighten
Flashtalking
Forensiq LLC
Jivox Corporation
Mediametrie
Microsoft
Pixalate, Inc.
PopWallet
Qriously
Quotient
Unruly Group Ltd
White Ops, Inc.
zeotap GmbH

Even if I had been prepared to approve these nineteen separate privacy policies, once I'd reviewed them, just clicking on them seemed like a awful lot of effort to go to merely to find out what the link was about, at all, let alone read the article.

I tried two other methods of getting to the link in good faith, assuming that you'd posted it as being worthy of awareness, but neither of those worked either.

In giving up after all these attempts, I wasn't berating or holding any individudal itt responsible for this. But by this stage, it was genuinely easier to ask what the article was about. It almost certainly took pom much less time to reopen, copy and paste three sentences than it had already taken me to attempt to simply open the link. (ta pom!)

I gotta say I admire your stance sic and it influences what I do online.

(tbc I think of asking what a link is about, if that link isn't public per se and the URL doesn't indicate, as just general conversation. I nearly always try and give context for links, but eg a few months ago quoted & linked a Pet Shop Boys interview in the Hun that I had read in private browsing, but others couldn't reach it, or chose not to, & asked for a full C+P. fair fucken 'nuff! I would have gone back and copied the specific relevant excerpts in full, but someone did the whole thing before I saw the requests.

(ppl posting links that actively attempt to turn ILX into a monetisation factory for an enterprise that has hugely contributed to gutting journalism worldwide, and is actively working illegally to manipulate electoral democracy every day, is a completely different matter that is frustrating in general, and mindboggling when linking to journalism on politics threads.

(bummed that stevie thinks they're both me being personally prissy or w/e, huuuuugs to Matthew!)

No dude i'm not thinking you're being prissy about stopping the gutting of journalism, it's because f your efforts that i consciously try to strip links of all the FB bollocks. It's just, I thought I had done that here! I didn't have to click on any stuff to get to this story, iirc (certainly not three clickthroughs)

Will precis links in future tho, it's definitely a thoughtful process to get in the habit of

huuugs to stevie

huuuugs as ever gratefully received

No hugging in here this is the politics thread

rand paul.

https://i.imgur.com/yQwVKFk.png

(btw, his comment/question for fauci was, rather than saying "there's no evidence for immunity" for people who have had coronavirus, shouldn't we instead be saying "there's no evidence for non-immunity"?)

also, dr rand paul would like to reprimand those who have warned about surges in cases and deaths after re-opening up parts of the country. he says that most of the models have been wrong. also, he wants everyone to pledge, right now, that if the re-openings do NOT lead to surges in deaths, that they'll admit they were wrong.

he's turning into a werewolf

he proposed that each school district should have a different plan

sorry, i'll quit remote liveblogging the remote hearing. but interesting that lamar alexander (chair of committee) seems to hate rand paul's guts. at the end of his 5 minutes, fauci interrupted (which is rare) and asked to use the remaining 32 seconds of paul's time to address all the bullshit he just spouted. alexander granted the time to fauci, and also asked him to respond to a particularly dumb thing Paul was saying about never opening up schools again. then alexander grinned and laughed at someone else in his home.

you gotta feel for the libertarians out there, though. coronavirus is an especially time for their dumb ideology

especially ^trying^ time

don't apologize, I appreciate it and don't have to watch it this way

I'm FB friends with pizza-delivering Libertarian Sean Haugh and have sent out a couple of exploratory anti-Libertarian needles, but he's been pretty quiet during all this and hasn't taken any bait.

susan fucking collins is standing up for the dentists of the world. she wants them to go back to work. she has heard from some of her dentist friends that people that had mere cavities now are facing root canals.

harbl, over to you

lol i turned it off during susan collins

Tim Kaine, Senator from Virginia <<< Timothy Cain, anti-hero from a Cormac McCarthy novel pic.twitter.com/NZ9C0lOBXT

— Max Kennerly (@MaxKennerly) May 12, 2020

pat roberts says that fauci and crew are "like the fab four", although "it was the fab five, back in the day"

obviously he's referencing george martin as the 5th beatle there. or brian epstein. i guess.

'trump is increasingly isolated'

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/05/trump-eyes-campaign-shake-up

"Dr Fauci, who is your favorite beatle in three different categories: best overall songwriter (career), potential (as in who was capable of producing the most brilliant song in a short burst of creativity), and cuteness"

'mr. chairman, here's a clue for you all . . .'

the walrus was Fau

Donald Trump just doesn't understand: We have an economic crisis because we have a public health crisis — and we have a public health crisis because he failed to act. pic.twitter.com/hRrueGgx2C

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) May 11, 2020

(btw, his comment/question for fauci was, rather than saying "there's no evidence for immunity" for people who have had coronavirus, shouldn't we instead be saying "there's no evidence for non-immunity"?)

― porlockian solicitor (Karl Malone), Tuesday, May 12, 2020 11:33 AM (fifty-five minutes ago)

lmao, Dr Fauci, would you not disagree that we lack an absence of non-evidence about the unknown properties of non-immunity?

xp more like tim bain amirit

does susan collins have parkinson's?

Senators NOT wearing a mask while attending the COVID-19 hearing in person: Kelly Loeffler, Bill Cassidy, Richard Burr, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Mike Braun, Rand Paul.

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) May 12, 2020

Susan Collins has stupidsons.

She has this:
https://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/spasmodic-dysphonia

just want to document rand paul's actual words, because lol:

"The power over COVID-19 health policy, Paul said, “needs to be dispersed because people make wrong predictions. And really the history of this, when we look back, will be of wrong prediction after wrong prediction after wrong prediction.”

We’re opening up a lot of economies around the U.S. and I hope that people who are predicting doom and gloom and who are saying, ‘We can’t do this, there’s going to be a surge,’ will admit that they were wrong if there isn’t a surge, because I think that’s what’s going to happen,'” Paul said.

i'm going to go out on a limb and predict that the virus will do virusy kinds of things, like spreading

well Karl, keep in mind there are right right predictions, right wrong predictions, wrong right predictions, and wrong wrong predictions

"hahaha you thought a lot of ppl were gonna die but that didn't happen! bet you feel stupid now!!"

consistent with his beliefs that should Republicans never apologize, but Democrats need to apologize in advance for any counterfactual conditionals that Republicans state publicly, it's the same thing really so it's fair

Republicans should that is

"hahaha you thought a lot of ppl were gonna die but that didn't happen! bet you feel stupid now!!"

Why do Republicans have such a fear and hatred of erring on the side of caution where (other) human lives are concerned? 'Tis a mystery indeed...

how...?

Sen. Paul leaves coronavirus hearing and tells cameras: “here’s the other question and this is unprovable. I think New York would have lost the same amount of people whether we did anything or not”

“A lot of what happens with the virus is independent of what government does”

— Burgess Everett (@burgessev) May 12, 2020

why...?

wtf

fuck him.

Waiting for the question

here’s the other question and this is unprovable

Sen. Rand Paul, just a guy asking questions about things where no matter what you think the answer is, and however stupid his own answer is, he will claim that, "y'know, actually I could be right, and you can't prove me wrong."

the other question i have, and this is unprovable, is that if ron paul and his son would have never existed, the butterfly effect of the lack of their cosmic stupidity in the world would have prevented covid19 from happening at all

The House Dem bill establishes a Fed credit facility for debt collectors, tied to forbearance on debt collection payments. How about that. pic.twitter.com/WZ3X8jljpw

— graham steele (@steelewheelz) May 12, 2020

I didn't watch today, but this is a good exchange. Paul sounds sort of reasonable here, then Fauci completely knocks him down in a way that simultaneously gives lies to Paul's caricature of Fauci--no, actually I don't claim to know everything, which is precisely why I'm advising caution.

http://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2020/05/12/fauci-rand-paul-coronavirus-senate-committee-testimony-vpx.cnn

mookie, explain the debt collector tweet? I'm too dense to follow what that meant.

it means debt collectors will get paid by the government during this time because heaven forbid they don't have money flowing into their coffers.

is that bad? I have no love for banks and landlords, but I have to imagine we'd see less illegal self-help evictions being imposed on civilians who can't defend themselves, if these assholes were getting their money from somewhere else. I thought the idea was to increase cash flow?

Otherwise, what's to stop major rent hikes when this ends?

But idk... I'll see what those who are better versed have to say

If you want debt collectors to renounce debt collecting, it makes sense to pay them off for doing so. They are used to skirting along the edges of the law to make their collections already, so compliance was sure to be an issue without this kind of payoff.

Sen. Paul leaves coronavirus hearing and tells cameras: “here’s the other question and this is unprovable. I think New York would have lost the same amount of people whether we did anything or not”

“A lot of what happens with the virus is independent of what government does”

— Burgess Everett (@burgessev) May 12, 2020

In much the same way that I content that Rand Paul would've eventually gotten the shit kicked out of him by his neighbor whether it had been that particular guy or any other human being who happened to be living next to him.

Xpost I just see liberal Twitter exploding angrily about it, and maybe rightfully so, but...

People pausing their mortgage payments are facing huge balloon payments when mortgage payments resume, which for many is just kicking the foreclosure can down the street.

And eviction moratoriums don't absolve the tenants of that rent, just their being removed from the property. As soon as any moratorium was lifted, the landlords can just demand you pay all back rent or evict you.

If this bill WON'T help with that (and from reading it, I'm not sure how much it will), then I'm curious what proposal could help with this issue (seriously asking, not snarking? We know "the goodness of their hearts" is not an option.

Forbearance is not forgiveness - the bill isn’t asking collectors to renounce collecting, it’s paying them off to not do it temporarily.

Which is a handout because they’d just go under when people couldn’t pay their collections anyway.

I know it's not forgiveness, but no debt forgiveness bill for civilians would make it out of committee in the Senate.

I guess my question is, what alternatives are there that will protect consumers from adverse action or financial ruin that McConnell wouldn't immediately use to wipe his ass?

I support continued stimulus payments, but that may not still be enough to stop foreclosure or eviction, particularly for those whose unemployment has been held up for two months.

So there's got to be something else. This bill might not be it!

But right now, there are news reports of multiple landlords in Florida illegally locking citizens out of homes in a way to try to squeeze people into paying or illegally replacing them with someone who can. These tenants can call the cops who will force the landlord to let them back in, but the people impacted don't always know this, or might be rightfully scared to continue living in that home for fear of what other illegal things the landlord can do.

I hate landlords and the real solution is to banish landlords forever to the depths of Hell cos I hate them all, but short of that i want to find some way (if not this way) to leash the fuckers

icymi

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EXdU2ypXkAARPfO.jpg

an acquaintance said the bill's pretty good: Aside from the financial stuff, the most striking thing to me is the amount of detail on the public health side. It has tons of detail on various things like invoking the DPA for PPE, funding for testing and contact tracing, requiring the CDC to develop a plan for testing and contact tracing, requiring states to list testing sites, guarding against shortages of medical supplies etc. Some of these thing seem so basic, they have an implicit tone of "You stupid motherfuckers never thought to do any of this shit? Really?" Obviously Congress can't administer anything but it looks like the House is basically trying to take on the role the administration is supposed to be playing.

I know it's not forgiveness, but no debt forgiveness bill for civilians would make it out of committee in the Senate.

Right, which is why forgiveness and consumer interests are an irrelevant lens through which to view this. A bailout of debt collectors is about... bailing out debt collectors. Forbearance is a smokescreen to make it more palatable - but these are debts in collection. People have already had their credit ruined or been sued, not paying now hurts the collections agency much more than it hurts them.

ok, through that lens, this bill looks less rosy to me, so I get more now why the "meh" reaction.

Few bills are.

at what point is congress going to address education funding? my district (berkeley) already had to trim 2 million before all of this happened because the state is so stingy with money despite having had a surplus. Now they're looking at 6 million in cuts, which is frankly, going to be ruinous to the point where I feel like ditching public education for my incoming High Schooler now, which also makes me wonder why I fucking stayed living in this city for this long for the 'good school district'. There needs to be billions, if not trillions, flowing from the federal government to states earmarked for education.

t/s:

Were done playing by the rules.

vs.

Our entire lives, we've spent on buying some properties to feed our families, we don't see a profit leave be most of us are on a loss with the vigorous laws NYS passed last year.

why are you feeding properties to your family?

akm: it's all tied up in this red/blue Congress bullshit right now, where Republicans (half of them, at least) don't want money to flow out to blue states for being "irresponsible", ignoring the fact that that's where the pandemic tended to hit. Of course, bailing out airlines was the priority and not things like education, hospitals, essential services, and so on.

to paraphase Cuomo, just give us our fucking money back, you assholes.

i was reading the bill because i had questions about some of what Neanderthal was saying about the foreclosure forbearances. i did not read about rent payments. but with respect to forbearances it appears that the lender will be required to offer that the missed payments be tacked to the end of the loan, and that they not be reported as delinquencies to credit bureaus.

There will probably never be a COVID-19 vaccine, but it appears that a vaccine against bothsides-ism is being tested in the offices of the Washington Post.

As coronavirus roils the nation, Trump reverts to tactic of accusing foes of felonies

Read the whole thing. It's astonishing, for a "respectable" daily paper.

Lol

https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/12/politics/michael-flynn-case-judge/index.html

Bill "Skip Lipari" Barr probably shidding rn

ugh at the co-opting of "I can't breathe" by fucking LANDLORDS

Just saw a commercial for this on TV--it's quite real. Where to begin?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgvzUeEe9Bo

Where to begin?

by providing your credit card info! I WANT THAT

Good morning!

Like clockwork, even the NYT reporting on Kushner's comment about "postponing" the election as if he is actually someone responsible for that decision, thus giving it legs. The predictability is infuriating.

tbf John Roberts has yet to cast the deciding vote in a 5-4 decision whether or not Trump has to actually do what the Constitution says

My COVID posting has been minimal as of late--ran out of things to say--but I genuinely don't get this.

http://www.cnn.com/2020/05/13/politics/wisconsin-supreme-court-strikes-down-stay-at-home-order/index.html

I don't get it in a broad more than a specific sense: it seems that they're essentially saying no public health emergency can ever be serious enough for government-enforced regulations.

executive orders != laws passed by the legislature

xp the wisonsin supreme court is extremely right wing, the justices were ranting about tyranny during the hearing

really happy wisconsin voters elected jill karofsky to the supreme court april 7 to replace daniel kelly

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/497697-fbi-serves-search-warrant-on-sen-richard-burr-amid-stock-trading-scandal

that's an la times story, the hill is an absolute trash website that makes the world a worse place, and the la times just furloughed a bunch of reporters and needs subscribers. here's the la times story https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-05-13/fbi-serves-warrant-on-senator-stock-investigation.

it seems that they're essentially saying no public health emergency can ever be serious enough for government-enforced regulations.

You have to understand that some members of the Wisconsin Supreme Court see their job as adjunct to the leadership of the state GOP and Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce. They are not taking seriously the idea that they need to respect precedent, nor do they intend to treat their present ruling with any respect if a future Republican governor is in a similar position. What I've learned is that you have to stop treating their arguments as if they are arguments.

funny how they didn't distinguish between tyrants and dictators, i thought those judges were supposed to be highly educated

Sad little detail there at the end of the LA Times sorry that I didn’t know about:


Under the STOCK Act, lawmakers are required to disclose their stock market activity but are still allowed to own stock, even in industries they might oversee.

The law passed the Senate in 2012 in a 96-3 vote. Among the three senators to oppose the bill was Burr.

Busy night. Lots of happenings on the Flynn case as well. Looks like the DOJ withheld information from the judge pertaining to interviews they held in their search for a justification to drop the case.

Today's shower thought: The only language some people understand is violence... and I don't speak that language. This is very frustrating to me.

BREAKING FROM LAT:https://t.co/XSEeESGrXp

— Kimbriell Kelly (@Kimbriell) May 14, 2020

It’s happening?

Burr has stepped down from his position of chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. i'd like to say that should be expected, but honestly, these days, it's kind of surprising when the GOP is shamed into admitting mistakes

haha, xp

I'd bet McConnell's language & position toward Burr is going to get much harsher after Labor Day, which is when Burr's resignation would no longer trigger a 2020 special. At that point, it's an "the earlier he's out the better" situation for the GOP heading into 2022. https://t.co/LKleo2rROo

— Taniel (@Taniel) May 14, 2020

This is the result Trump wanted.

Burr at least feigned objectivity in that role, wasn't a Nunes-level idiot, was *relatively* sober

no doubt his replacement will be yet worse

what's the deal with a Repub winning Katie Hill's old congressional seat in CA?

Expected, I think.

If Burr resigned, would his replacement be appointed by the Democratic governor?

Hill was the first Dem to win that seat in eleventy-hundred years or something; naturally, the headlines have all been like "GOP win spells doom for Dem hopes in fall"

Hill was the first Dem to win that seat in eleventy-hundred years or something; naturally, the headlines have all been like "GOP win spells doom for Dem hopes in fall"

Politico was particularly absurd in this regard, I think, but they always are.

I mentioned on the CA politics thread that particular district CA25 is still a sore spot for many Angelenos as it's where the Rodney King trial was moved to, leading to the acquittal of the 4 officers charged and subsequent weeklong riots 28 years ago... it's def not the democratic stronghold that people assume it is, as rob notes above.

Yup. Not the end of the world or particularly surprising.

Levine brilliant on the burr stuff as per

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-05-14/senator-s-stock-trades-make-trouble

I believe that due to an obscure clause in the Constitution, all political disputes related to someone named Burr need to be settled by single combat, to the death

it is time to update the constitution to reflect the realities of our changing world: all duels must now be fought with medieval morning star weapons, and no armor

thanks for the clarifications, guyses

I mentioned on the CA politics thread that particular district CA25 is still a sore spot for many Angelenos as it's where the Rodney King trial was moved to

go to Simi Valley and surely
somebody
knows the address of the jury

pay a little visit
"Who is it?"
"Yo, it's Ice Cube. Can I talk to the Grand Dragon?"
then boom

wait, no: Grand Wizard

makes u think

Trump on coronavirus cases: "When you test, you have a case. When you test, you find something is wrong with people. If we didn't do any testing we would have very few cases."

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) May 14, 2020

Trump has cured cancer by banning cancer screenings

March 7:

“I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it,” the president went on. He started talking about his tour of the CDC he’d taken before his talk to the press. “Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president.”

They didn't call him sir????????

I think sic is trying to be cute perhaps, but:

TO MOST PEOPLE WHO DON'T LIVE HERE, SIMI Valley rhymes with “Rodney King.” The 1992 trial of four LAPD officers accused of beating the African-American motorist was moved from politically charged Los Angeles to this western Ventura County oasis of golf courses and man-made lakes. When the four cops were acquitted, Los Angeles went up in flames, and Simi Valley became synonymous with white racism, white flight, white cluelessness but, above all, white cops because of the high number of law-enforcement employees who called the town home. For every big city, there's a bedroom burg known for having a large share of its police officers living there — Riverhead on Long Island, say, or Novato in Northern California — but Simi's extraordinary population of those in uniform has made it a fabled Copland. If, as Andrew Kopkind wrote 35 years ago, Orange County was the Bavarian heartland of Reaganism, Simi Valley may well be its Prussia.

from https://www.laweekly.com/copland/

The Kopkind quote is rich as it did not foresee neither Reagan's presidency nor his library that would be established in currently CA25 Simi, a white-flight bookend of Nixon's OC.

House Democrats are significantly scaling back the student loan forgiveness provisions in their $3T coronavirus relief package, citing concerns about the cost: https://t.co/h56VehjUsK

— Michael Stratford (@mstratford) May 14, 2020

Slaaaaaay

https://static.politico.com/dims4/default/5d27878/2147483647/resize/817x/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic.politico.com%2Fa4%2Fc3%2Fef3927cf4dcab33da46e810d4003%2F200514-trump-ap-2-773.jpg

Are Dems in danger of spreading apathy among sectors of the electorate they need to vote for them if they don't fight for moneys they said they would.
Just really hoping people aren't going to turn around in November and think it's more of the same old same old.
I guess at least one side isn't a narcissistic psycho but still think they need a pull factor. & seen some really dodgy decisions made by the leadership.

less and worse make-up than Cesar Romero's Joker

more, I meant

I guess at least one side isn't a narcissistic psycho

wait, which side is this

🐦[House Democrats are significantly scaling back the student loan forgiveness provisions in their $3T coronavirus relief package, citing concerns about the cost: https://t.co/h56VehjUsK🕸
— Michael Stratford (@mstratford) May 14, 2020🕸]🐦

Hey look I found a tweet that perfectly encapsulates the current US ilx politics threads zeitgeist

It's a one party system pic.twitter.com/XF8DPEQWdr

— AlwaysAngryinNJ☭Prosecute ICE (@NJRedRev) May 14, 2020

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/jgxxvk/senate-votes-to-allow-fbi-to-look-at-your-web-browsing-history-without-a-warrant

Vote to remove this amendment failed by one vote. Thanks for not showing up, Bernie.

xp that's an odd response to the previous post. And it's not wrong.

this is a minor sideline item in the annals of 2020, but i just want to memorialize a very rare moment: mitch mcconnell has admitted he was wrong about something!!!!!

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) backpedaled on Thursday night after accusing former President Barack Obama administration of leaving President Donald Trump unprepared to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I was wrong,” the GOP leader told Fox News host Bret Baier. “They did leave behind a plan.”

“So I clearly made a mistake in that regard,” he added.

During a virtual Trump campaign event on Monday, McConnell had made the false claim about the Obama administration, which has been manufactured by Trump in an effort to shift blame for his own administration’s feeble response to the outbreak.

“We want to be early, ready for the next [pandemic], because clearly the Obama administration did not leave to this administration any kind of game plan for something like this,” McConnell said on Monday.

Former Obama administration Ebola response coordinator Ronald Klain and Obama administration deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes pushed back on the senator’s claim that same day.

“We literally left them a 69-page Pandemic Playbook…. that they ignored. And an office called the Pandemic Preparedness Office…that they abolished. And a global monitoring system called PREDICT…that they cut by 75%,” Klain tweeted.

Pelosi and Schumer are going to go down in history as being completely useless. They may as well be on Mitch's side. They are both pathetic. Come on death, take them out so we can move on.

okay

They may as well be on Mitch's side.

Gosh! If that's true, then my friends should've just voted for McCain and Romney in 2008 and 2012! Shit, they may even have gotten health care!

So did McConnell push this vote through yesterday because he knew at least two likely votes for blocking it weren't in attendance?

Great job to the 10 Democrats who voted *against* the Wyden-Daines amendment that would have prohibited FBI warrantless surveillance of web browser history. Special shout out to Bernie Sanders who didn’t show up to vote. It was defeated by *one* vote.

— jeremy scahill (@jeremyscahill) May 13, 2020

Great job to the 10 Democrats who voted *against* the Wyden-Daines amendment that would have prohibited FBI warrantless surveillance of web browser history. Special shout out to Bernie Sanders who didn’t show up to vote. It was defeated by *one* vote.

— jeremy scahill (@jeremyscahill) May 13, 2020

this is disappointing

yes, have to wonder if this doesn't fall in Schumer's lap w/r/t vote counting

I can't imagine this happened and they knew how many votes they had

just sloppy and unnecessary

i'm happy to spread the blame around. but bernie is also at fault, much as i admire him

the student loan issue is also atrocious. if we're entering a depression we can't have young workers saddled with hundreds of thousands of debt, it's insane.

yes, have to wonder if this doesn't fall in Schumer's lap w/r/t vote counting

I can't imagine this happened and they knew how many votes they had

― Yanni Xenakis (Hadrian VIII),

otm

Whatever plan the house comes up with has to go through the senate, right?

democrats who voted NO:

Carper, Thomas R. (D-DE)
Casey, Robert P., Jr. (D-PA)
Feinstein, Dianne (D-CA)
Hassan, Margaret Wood (D-NH)
Jones, Doug (D-AL)
Kaine, Tim (D-VA)
Manchin, Joe, III (D-WV)
Shaheen, Jeanne (D-NH)
Warner, Mark R. (D-VA)
Whitehouse, Sheldon (D-RI)

i'm surprised by Whitehouse. I thought he was relatively cool? maybe he's not

me too, surprised

can only hope this insider trading business is somehow the end of Feinstein

barely picked up any traction i feel like

do none of these people ever die

She'll be 90+ when her term ends, surely this is the last term.

can't kill 'em they were born dead

Whatever plan the house comes up with has to go through the senate, right?

Yes. Bills also must be signed by the president.

As for backing off on their first position on student loan forgiveness, I hear endless complaints about Democrats not knowing how to ask for more than they think they'll get as a negotiating tactic and pre-emptively conceding ground. Now, when they actually do propose a plan that the Senate would never agree to, but represents a strong opening position, I hear how useless they are because they didn't succeed in getting their opening proposal, uncompromised.

(scratches head) It's almost as if some people will always find a reason why the Democrats are bad, incompetent and corrupt, because this is an article of faith that cannot ever be contradicted, only confirmed, by the evidence, no matter what the evidence is.

there's a ton of political pressure on both side to push these bills through right now, and there's zero excuse for not including things like student loan forgiveness—*at least* as sacrificial pawns in order to preserve the next-least likely components

Maybe it's time to stop believing a faction of Democrats are exercising realpolitik and understand instead that they DON'T WANT things like student debt forgiveness

how is this guy still employed, and what the actual fuck

Excuse me what?? pic.twitter.com/OgPfi4v4z1

— Secular Talk (@KyleKulinski) May 15, 2020

but the leadership did include student loan forgiveness. then Pelosi counted votes. if you want to blame 'the democrats', then blame the remaining twenty or thirty 'blue dog' democrats, not Pelosi (who can count votes) or the bulk of the caucus. then primary the hell out of those blue dog democrats.

it so happens that my rep is a timid blue dog democrat named Kurt Schrader. he had a primary opponent to his left. guess who I just voted for.

Pelosi is not merely a vote counter. She has demosntrated the power to build party concensus around these things.

You know what she does if she thinks this is important? She calls your rep in and tells him how's he's going to vote, what their plan is for insulating him, and how she will make it worth his while. Stop apologizing for her priorities.

yeah this whole routine about Pelosi just innocently counting the votes is bullshit. to pretend she doesn’t have any kind of vision or agenda as Speaker is weird.

Let's stir the pot: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/5/15/21247994/nancy-pelosi-democratic-party-molly-ball

Many XPs

Nunes has a picture of Trump on his shelf? What a fucking toady!

If Pelosi is just a human abacus, perhaps the Democrats should consider stronger leadership.

I totally would. Who are the candidates?

I don't want a speaker who agrees with me -- that's not her job. I want a speaker who responds to constituent prodding.

Adlai Stevenson

Impeach fucker again, plz

https://www.npr.org/2020/05/16/857334790/president-trump-removes-state-department-inspector-general-steve-linick

Amash is out.

After much reflection, I’ve concluded that circumstances don’t lend themselves to my success as a candidate for president this year, and therefore I will not be a candidate.

— Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 16, 2020

I think it's good on the whole he is not running for President, but I have to admit that, as a non-libertarian, I see Amash as vastly smarter and more principled than most people who call themselves by that name, so I hope he stays high-profile because it will make other people who identify as libertarians be better and smarter.

It took him "much reflection" to reach that conclusion? The idea that maybe he's a bit slow on the uptake doesn't begin to cover it.

"I'm running"

"Hey you shouldn't"

"Wow, I never thought of it that way! Good lookin' out!"

One Easy Way for People Who Identify as Libertarians to be Better and Smarter (Number One Will Surprise You!)

It took him "much reflection" to reach that conclusion? The idea that maybe he's a bit slow on the uptake doesn't begin to cover it.

― A is for (Aimless), Saturday, May

It's PR boilerplate.

Surprised he didn't invoke his family in some way.

True libertarians don't have families. Children are nothing but takers.

Children are known as "Secondary Income Providers"

Having finished Tim Alberta's pretty good Trump book an hour ago, I summarized Amash as one of DC's few honest men about policies that kill people.

including those that kill indirectly?

no, directly.

He's sincere about who benefits from lower taxes.

I liked Don Lemon's line last week about Obama living in Trump's head rent-free. That head will be exploding for the next day or two.

http://www.cnn.com/2020/05/16/politics/barack-obama-commencement-speech-2020-hbcu/index.html

Peter Navarro was on with George Stephanopoulos this morning. When Stephanopoulos tried to pin him down on, uh, "Obamagate," Navarro mentioned Hunter Biden getting a billion dollars from the Chinese. Stephanopoulos said that wasn't true. Navarro: "Be that as it may..." That's a pretty good segue.

one. BILLION. DOLLARS.

wtf?

I thought I might have misquoted, but they put the transcripts online:

STEPHANOPOULOS: The vice president had an op-ed in USA Today in January, he warned in February, all through the month of February the president, President Trump, was praising President Xi of China. He was saying he trusted President Xi of China. He was saying President Xi of China was being transparent, that's why Vice President Biden says that the president was downplaying the threat from China.

NAVARRO: Yeah, well Joe Biden's has got 40 years of sucking up to the Chinese, including the eight years as vice president. And we know about the billion dollars that his son took from the Chinese.

STEPHANOPOULOS: That's just not factual, sir. That is not a fact. He did not take a billion dollars from the Chinese.

NAVARRO: Went into that hedge fund.

Be that as it may, I do think this election is going to be a referendum in many ways on China.

That last line is a big clue to how the Trump campaign thinks it can leverage xenophobia by linking the pandemic, the economic fallout, and bogus Biden scandals all to China in one big murky conspiratorial package, sold to the voters via a tangled web of bold lies soon backed away from, innuendoes, and rumor-seeding, that nobody can unravel.

Aka...OBAMAGATE!

the Hunter Biden billion dollar claim has been floating around since the Ukraine stuff broke. It's utterly absurd, and I'm surprised there hasn't been stronger pushback on it.

It's the same problem with a lot of this stuff - how do you pushback on stuff that's just completely made up but psychopaths keep repeating?

you don't, cos these aren't the people you could ever possibly reach

If they made it up re: someone else, there's a 99.9% chance they themselves or somebody close on their side is guilty of it.

I mean, both Ivanka and Kush have their fingers in a lot of Chinese pies.

Sounds delicious, tbh

he . . . does?

Yes, he's an unlikeable jerk.

But he's an unlikeable jerk that gets stuff done.https://t.co/R4sAOEDw6t

— Chris Cillizza (@CillizzaCNN) May 18, 2020

bad stuff

That offal triggered a discussion in the Trump reelection thread.