US Politics, January 2022 — a pro-God, pro-family, pro-bitcoin state

Post your personal salvation/dealing with in-laws/crypto hacks here.

Good morning!

give us this day our daily bitcoin

Transubstantiation of the Body of Christ was the original NFT scam

The Bored Ape is my shepherd, I shall not want

what a stupid place and time to be aliv

It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a hacker to crack my cold wallet

tf is Matt Damon doing hawking crypto on the teevee. theyre just going to keep fucking this chicken until we all have no choice huh

VC and IPO cash can buy a lot of Damon. "Fortune favors the brave" is basically going straight after the 'here, hold my beer and watch this' crowd.

I saw that same ad multiple times at the movie theater over the last couple months, it's terrible and sucks to be subjected to it as a captive audience

my favorite accidental radio advert exposure is still "NOW YOU CAN INVEST YOUR IRA IN CRYPTO!" which is... i don't know waht it is other than extremely amusing. to me.

does anyone here enjoy laughing mouths

oh you

Few things are more cringe-inducing than talking to a good friend you haven’t talked to for a while and hearing them say “hey, you into bitcoin?”

Twitter has nuked Marjorie Taylor Greene's personal account, which was the one she was using to spread anti-vax propaganda, racism, and all the other things she stands for. Her "official" account, RepMTG, still exists but it's pretty anodyne.

“hey, you into bitcoin?”

In re the origin of this month's thread title, it's interesting to have a candidate for high office specifically endorsing bitcoin when the crypto marketplace abounds with choices. His opponents should brand him as "anti-competition, anti-capitalism and anti-American".

I prefer the term "beeyotchcoin"

MTG banned from Twitter now lmao

no, the rep acct is still up

Yeah but her personal one is gone

(I thought you were updating unperson’s post)

If the next presidential election reveals the U.S. hurtling toward possible violence and autocracy, should Canada try to intervene? https://t.co/4GcnQskumH

— The Globe and Mail (@globeandmail) January 2, 2022

Sure, why not, we're out of ideas here. Bring on the Canadapocalypse.

That's like the US invading China to stop the Uyghur oppression.

In terms of unlikelihood, I assume you mean.

Correct, and not-gonna-work-itude

Interesting observations here and in the responses. Guess the Bot Army is on the move.

Anecdotally, the level of bot activity when discussing January 6 is higher than anything I have seen since 2016.

— Hunter Walker (@hunterw) January 3, 2022

I, for one, welcome our new robotic overlords

Meanwhile in the category of who-fucking-asked-you:

I want Hardball fans to know how I appreciate your faith in me. 2022 could be a great time to show what we’ve learned. I tried to warn we were headed too far left.

— Chris Matthews (@HardballChris) January 2, 2022

if only we would have listened to chris matthews

ugh, FP'd him

That tweet got promoted to me by the Twitter algorithm because the algorithm thought it was about baseball.

You reap what you sow.

he's a sow

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

didn't Chris Matthews have an on-air freakout when Bernie won a couple primaries? like openly speculating that he was about to get sent to the gulag?

Guillotines in Central Park

yeah he compared bernie winning the nevada primary to france falling to the nazis in 1940. he’s a real piece of work.

Time has proved him right though, hasn’t it?

yeah I def feel like Biden is cratering because of how far Left he’s governed

He should at least purge his admin of Maoists

Time has proved him right though, hasn’t it?

― Chappies banging dustbin lids together (President Keyes), Monday, January 3, 2022 1:52 PM (twenty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

It hasn't proved him left.

I keep thinking of all these other assholes that have vanished back into their shadow dimension. Scott Pruitt, Rex Tillerson, the Overstock guy, John Kelly, Steve King, Wilbur Ross, Erik Prince, Paul Ryan, Rick Perry ... do they all just travel the backroads working as consultants, doing speaking engagements, planning coups, etc?

Yes

Erik Prince is probably creating a private army for someone in the Middle East.

They also likely spend a lot of time in boats and at golf resorts being feted by just the worst people currently alive

not exactly holding my breath

https://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2022-01-03/schumer-vows-action-on-rules-change-by-martin-luther-king-day-if-gop-keeps-blocking-voting-reforms?utm_source=usn_tw

was gonna post the news yesterday but thought eh

The problem is, even if he does it, does that become the trigger for Manchin to switch parties, and now we have GOP majority and no filibuster? Like, that could happen by the end of the month.

I don't think Manchin is interested in changing parties, but who knows

The man loves power. As a Republican his venality would have no compensation.

The problem is, even if he does it, does that become the trigger for Manchin to switch parties, and now we have GOP majority and no filibuster? Like, that could happen by the end of the month.

"what, me worry?" -- stephen breyer

Let it be.

I don't know, surely Manchin could negotiate some sweet deal with McConnell. But maybe he has other reasons for not wanting to switch, maybe being a "Democrat" is important to him on some level, who knows.

iirc he doesn't leave the party, the party has to leave him

He could just pull a Lieberman and go indie.

we need Mystique from the X-Men

Schumer can't change the rules without 50 + 1 votes. If Manchin votes against it, the filibuster stays. No need to bolt the party in order to sabotage the rule change.

But think how much fun it would be to do it that way.

i'd like to bolt his neck, Frankenstein's monster-style

I would like to feel his sensuous fingers over mine on his manly yacht

Me and the boys

I'm Only Happy When It's Gay // LGBTTQQIAAP+ // Fall 2021

I keep thinking of all these other assholes that have vanished back into their shadow dimension. Rick Perry ... do they all just travel the backroads working as consultants, doing speaking engagements, planning coups, etc?

I had completely forgotten about the existence of Rick Perry until his name popped up in the news a couple weeks ago as the suspected author of a text message pushing for a strategy to undermine the 2020 election.

i recently recalled that michelle bachmann ran in the GOP primary, it's crazy the amount of insane shit you forget due to, well, everything else

Rick & Michelle level crazy & jaw-dropping stupidity seems like such a quaint throwback in 2021. love that for them

schumer has no expectation that bluff will work, and is doing it so he doesn't have to continue working on BBB. nobody wants the ball.

Probably overly-optimistic, but I thought this was good. Particularly the point about how all the gerrymandering by the GOP turned out to be mostly a bust - I hadn't heard that before (but clearly, I'm not the most politically plugged-in person).

https://www.salon.com/2022/01/03/democrats-need-not-despair-6-reasons-to-be-hopeful-about-the-2022-midterms/

To be clear, much of this optimistic outlook is speculative or contingent. It could very well be that 2022 is an extension of 2021, where Democratic demoralization keeps snowballing, leading to Republican sweeps in the midterms. If that happens, we may be looking back on these days and seeing an inexorable path to fascism.

schumer has no expectation that bluff will work, and is doing it so he doesn't have to continue working on BBB. nobody wants the ball.

lmao

Durbin just told us that BBB is paused until after the senate deals w voting rights. That pushes work on the bbb until the last few weeks of January.

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) January 4, 2022

https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Eeyore?file=Profile_-_Eeyore.png

Xp

Eeyore.png

Rick & Michelle level crazy & jaw-dropping stupidity seems like such a quaint throwback in 2021. love that for them

Bachman going after Perry about HPV vaccines a foreshadowing of what was to come

I love the part of the political cycle where it’s straight up ass covering time

Time has proved him right though, hasn’t it?

― Chappies banging dustbin lids together (President Keyes), Monday, January 3, 2022 1:52 PM (twenty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

It hasn't proved him left.

― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, January 3, 2022 2:16 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

show some respect, politics thread, this is a quality riff

Bachman going after Perry about HPV vaccines a foreshadowing of what was to come

The kicker on that was that it actually was a solid corruption story - Perry's former Chief of Staff just happened to be working for Merck as a lobbyist.

Graft being the only way Texas was going to enact an actual public health measure.

In a statement released late Tuesday afternoon, the former President confirmed that he would no longer be hosting the news conference at his oceanfront club and would instead air his grievances at an upcoming campaign-style rally in Arizona.

The airing of the grievances, Seinfeld 101.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/05/politics/trump-cancels-press-conference-january-6/index.html

lol:

A person familiar with the situation told CNN that Trump decided to call off the event due to the news media's apparent lack of interest in covering it live on Thursday. Had the former President gone through with the news conference, he would have been competing with a series of somber tributes organized by congressional Democrats at the US Capitol. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are also slated to deliver remarks on Thursday.

The same source said Trump slowly realized that most, if not all, of the major news networks were not going to carry his press conference live or send their top reporters to Palm Beach to cover it.
The former President was also facing pressure from outside advisers and Republican lawmakers to cancel the news conference and instead keep a low profile on Thursday.

almost as if there's a very specific and predictable way to make this guy go away

a lesson the media absolutely refuses to learn because of those sweet sweet clicks

I dunno sounds like the media learned it for this event?

this board on the other hand

Well I mean he's an authoritarian thug trying to overthrow the government who already came kind of close to doing it once, we can't entirely not pay attention to him. But obviously not covering his press conferences and rallies — or at least not carrying them live — is the right call.

there may be a slight difference between posts on this message board and coverage in national mass media

not certain of that, but I have a sneaking suspicion that these things might be different

If he did the presser at Four Seasons Total Landscaping, you know darn well they'd cover it

sure, because that shit was pathetic and weird and, in a dark sense, hilarious.

Nowadays he'd be lucky to get three seasons

I dunno sounds like the media learned it for this event?

― A Pile of Ants (Boring, Maryland), Wednesday, January 5, 2022 11:01 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

also sounds like Trump stuff doesn't really get the hateclicks it used to. maybe conservatives still see him as their leader but everyone else is free to just tune him out now

I posted that for one and one reason only: "the airing of the grievances."

If he performed a feat of strength it would be news

Fukuyama not happy:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/05/opinion/jan-6-global-democracy.html

He just can't help himself:

On the eve of Jan 6 anniversary, Trump in a new statement calls on "MAGA nation" to "rise up and oppose this egregious federal government overreach" citing "talk" of potential vaccine mandates for students

— Will Steakin (@wsteaks) January 5, 2022

people are indeed talking about the "potential" school covid vaccine mandates (that already exist).

Oh, and warning, DeSantis content, but boy

Here is a second angle of Ron DeSantis struggling with breathing problems during his event today. The longer this clip goes on, the worse it gets. pic.twitter.com/J9Jr55x8Py

— MeidasTouch.com (@MeidasTouch) January 5, 2022

Well that "ignoring him" thing lasted just long enough for him to whip up another batshit statement to get the attention back. And it seems to be working.

Hah didn't he say at a rally recently that people should have the vaccines and he was so pleased to have invented them? He did get booed so I guess now he's back to being anti vaxx

His blathering and whining and complaining should be ignored. His commands to his followers and minions to "rise up" should, imo, not.

From a thing on Biden’s disapproval ratings

Additionally, 46 percent of respondents said the stock market is doing “not so good” or “poor” despite one of the market's best years in decades, according to CNBC, as the S&P 500 completed the year up 26.89 percent.

Well yeah but it’s not the BEST YEAR EVER.

C'mon, man!

maybe the phony stats he recites made DeSantis cry.

Maybe people with a portfolio of zero see that big goose egg and wonder if things are so good then why is it still zero. Probably Biden.

i think if america would repent they'd be paid back 10 fold

maybe the phony stats he recites made DeSantis cry.

he is fully vaxxed

I don't know about the booster.

If you don't have the booster, you ain't fully vaxxed though

From a thing on Biden’s disapproval ratings

idk how you take a poll like that though - presumably many of those 46% are conservatives just answering "strongly disagree" to everything, and many others might just say "poor" because of inflation or whatever. the stock market affects very little in the day to day lives of the 99% but when one party crows about it all the time it creates those dumb biases.

Every 'how we doin' poll is filtered so strongly by the broader culture war that it's meaningless (or just repeats the partisan divide we can see by the vote totals we can see every four years), that one's just funny because it's not an abstraction about "how is the economy doing." You can see the line go up but based on which side of the culture war the respondent identifies with today the line is actually going down.

I'm only posting this for the screenshot.

Greene says she was banned after tweeting at Dan Crenshaw. She suggests some sort of collusion between Crenshaw and a billionaire to get her banned. She says she is talking to attorneys about a potential lawsuit pic.twitter.com/EBBY80DEeD

— Acyn (@Acyn) January 5, 2022

Amazing to me the amount of entitlement conservatives feel in regard to their right to use social media in any way they like, regardless of the corporate policies governing their access, which they agreed to abide by. If a Chik-Fil-A posted a sign "No Shoes. No Shirt. No Service." they'd rush to defend its right to eject those 'dirty hippies' who ignored the sign.

they should support nationalizing big tech

“Haha read the terms of service, their platform their rules” is not a gotcha because there can be and is a bunch of other relevant statute, ie it’s not generally true.

And to the extent it is true, a document designed to serve and protect a private company that is enforced in a completely inscrutable way is not actually great imo.

(Especially when those companies play a central role in civic society haha fml)

Ugh I spent way more minutes than it was worth knocking down misrepresentations of Section 230 the other day, 95 percent of the people talking shit about it have no idea what it actually says or does. My favorite was a guy who said it was part of the DMCA and so the "Fairness Doctrine" applied, which is wrong in at least three different ways.

If MTG can convince a judge in court, with with discovery of the relevant facts, and Twitter's lawyers making their company's case, then that's fair enough. I happen to think the policy she breached was not inscrutable and was designed to protect more than the corporate interest. Especially when those companies play a central role in civic society! You appear to disagree.

I’m not saying anything about Twitter (my employer btw) banning MTG.

I’m saying your “read the TOS” gotcha is feeble and that’s a good thing.

Why won't she just join Trumpster or whatever it's gonna be called, they'll never ban her

I think the fundamental confusion a lot of these jerks (and others) have is that just because social media has further democratized politics (and other fields), for good and for ill, giving a broad platform to big-mouth nobody would-bes that's big enough to help win elections, does not mean that these social media platforms are an actual tool of our erstwhile democracy. That is, Twitter etc. helps Greene (et al.) inflate her self-worth and get elected, amplifying this particular asshole into a national supervillain, but people like her confuse the platform for a lever of power they wield when in fact they are the one lending power to the platform. If you don't know what the product is then you are the product, and so on.

Has anyone successfully sued a social media company for banning them?

woah caek have u met Jack??

Are you trying to lure caek into saying he doesn't know Jack? Because that would be a feeble gotcha.

xp I have met zero employees irl on account of the novel coronavirus!

ahh I'm the same at my job I started a year and a half ago

Kamala is just not very good at this

January 6 will be remembered by history as a momentous date because it is sir rowan atkinson's birthday. wishing a happy 67th to mr. bean

— lauren (@NotABigJerk) January 6, 2022

Anyone see any caravans massing at the border lately? Asking for a friend.

Twitter seems to largely have liked Biden's just-delivered speech, but I'll feel better when there are more arrests of big names than big names giving speeches.

Biden remembers the violent imagery of Jan 6, including the first time a Confederate flag was waved in the Capitol. (Biden is currently standing about 30 feet from a statue of Alexander Stephens, the vice president of the confederacy.)

— Grace Segers (@Grace_Segers) January 6, 2022

America mang

Trump derided the members of the House select committee on Jan. 6 as “totally partisan political hacks” and suggested that their focus should be on his claims — not based in fact — that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

“In actuality the Big Lie was the Election itself,” Trump claimed.

the fake lie is big news

this Michael Harriot piece is really great putting this in historical perspective

https://thegrio.com/2022/01/06/in-this-country-mobs-rule/

i haven't really seen too many arguments countering the "don't amplify trump" consensus on the left. i don't think i agree with josh marshall here. it's worth grappling with even if we disagree.

...
This prompts a broader question. It’s become doctrine for many right-thinking people that people shouldn’t “amplify” what Trump is saying. That only does his work for him, we’re told. This is the logic that got him booted off social media. But if what Benjy says is right, this state of affairs, which has clearly driven Trump to distraction, has also proved almost the best of all possible worlds for him. Trump’s supporters hear his message loud and clear: through NewsMax, OANN, talk radio, Facebook and to a significant degree on Fox News. But for the rest of the political world it’s muffled. So the horror and craziness of Trumpism recedes from public consciousness while people are focused on the day to day imperfection of the Biden presidency.

This hasn’t made Trump any weaker. His hold over the institutional and electoral GOP has only intensified since leaving office. The very small number of elected officials who refused to support the Big Lie have mostly been drummed out of the party. Trump’s Big Lie propaganda has become unassailable in heavily state-legislative-gerrymandered states where it will matter most. In short, the “don’t amplify” doctrine has allowed Trump to speak freely to his supporters and intensify his hold over the GOP, while keeping the incendiary messages that mobilize a majority of the country against him largely off mainstream airwaves.

All of the upside and none of the down.

...

At it’s worst, this “don’t amplify” doctrine is part of a species of liberal myopia which posits that the American right only exists as an outgrowth or effect of decisions made by or within mainstream or progressive media. If it is not acknowledged, “amplified” if you will, it all but doesn’t exist. Or, if it does exist it is without enough substance or sustenance to avoid dying on the vine. This is all the most risible folly.

I’m not saying we should rush to get Trump back on Twitter or other social media or that networks should cover every speech live. Journalism is about making choices. Private companies are responsible for the speech they carry on their platforms. But most of “don’t amplify” doctrine is based on myopia, a feel-good if well-meaning misunderstanding of how both journalism and political power work.

...

Look what we got by not amplifying Trump

Good piece, thanks.

Remember when “fake news” meant something else for a week, when it referred to all the actual fake news about Hillary Clinton that was floating around Facebook and elderly email forwards?

Yes, I got whiplash from how fast that was turned around.

This hasn’t made Trump any weaker.

Reporting Trump's every brain fart in the MSM and all over Twitter didn't make Trump noticeably weaker either. The support of the entire conservative political apparatus, comprised of the wealthy and all their foundations, think tanks, FOX, OANN, hundreds of AM talk radio blatherers, lobbyists and spin doctors, and huge donations to candidates at every level, combined with the highly politicized evangelical churches and quasi-religious organizations like Focus on the Family are the backbone of Trump's power.

The MSM and liberal punditry keep trying to figure out how to bring Trump down through the means at their disposal. Those means are not powerful enough so long as Trump keeps his own power centers in line behind him. They exist in a parallel world of their own, wholly apart from the rest of us.

the entire "mob attacking the institutions of democracy and our police friends" point is 0.0000000% persuasive with conservatives because their honest, true, first reaction is "why didn't you say anything when black lives matter was doing that everyday across the country", and the conversation immediately blows up because they will not believe a single thing you say, no matter how you do it or what your sources. because they all just KNOW that BLM was so violent and that the cops were so decent and fair. it's like sticking your finger into a stargate portal

sorry, that was out of context - i was watching biden's speech, the part where he's talking about the horror of watching people assault the cops and the capital and all that

Karl and Aimless both otm.

NPR and the Washington Post are changing exactly zero minds about 1/6. If you're paying attention to those outlets you are already on a side. The people whose minds need to be changed have already decided those outlets are the opposite of what they need to pay attention to.

Also true that the knee-jerk conservative response is "whatabout" re the alleged antifa rampage that had dozens of cities in flames, with a summer of ruinous looting, all summer.

One tires of hearing/saying this, but it is still the case that you can't reason people out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.

I don't know the solution for any of this and in darker moods I also kinda don't think there is one.

That could be dangerous, and I’m surprised he hasn’t tried it yet (if he did, I missed it).

i think he's actually been trying that one for a while, i think i remember some crazies in arizona talking about it

I think the “don’t amplify” thing has its positives but it may lead to complacency on our side as we underestimate the burbling on the other side, and our complacent response emboldens them.

I’ve been reading John Ganz’s reflections on a similar right wing attack on the French legislature in 1934. A couple days later the left parties and trade unions assembled a much larger peaceful counter protest. The lack of such a response or organizational capability here in the US emboldens the right that they were on the right track. Heck they had no consequences for invading state capitols with armed militias in 2020.

Also the French government responded to the crisis with major social legislation like the 8 hour day and paid vacation, while our government is obviously incapable of that.

Well, if you want to get more obviously historic, look no further than the rise of he who Godwin suggests not naming. The long and short of it is, if someone tries once, they will try again, and ignoring a persistent problem just allows them to gain strength. Whether our current problem person is gaining strength is up for debate, but given the GOP has mastered the art of power as a political minority (a la the aforementioned party) he might be as positioned as well as he needs to be.

At the moment of silence for the Capitol Police officers who died, there were only two Republicans who showed up.

Rep. Lynn Cheney. And her father. The 80 year old former Vice President.

An extraordinary image of where this country’s politics are right now. pic.twitter.com/IJ2YS2y2yN

— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) January 6, 2022

Makes sense. Dick Cheney knows a lot about watching other people die at the behest of an executive branch employee.

Meanwhile lol Kristof.

https://www.opb.org/article/2022/01/06/nicholas-nick-kristof-oregon-governor-candidate-qualification-ruling/

xxxpost at least the H man saw jail time.

So proud of my state.

TL;DR: Rep. Albio Sires is retiring from the House. Sleazeball Senator Bob Menendez held that seat before Sires. Menendez's son is running to replace Sires. He'll almost certainly win.

A businessman who once ran for senate in Arizona ... has challenged former President Donald Trump to a live debate at the latter's upcoming rally and offered to donate $1 million to charity if the former president accepts.

"I look forward to seeing you on January 15," McCarthy said, "Although I know you won't do it because you're a little bitch."

McCarthy is then shown exiting his truck and using a flamethrower to torch a "Make America Great Again" hat.

Trump ain't doing shit for "charity." If he offers to just hand him a brown paper bag of unmarked bills he might get somewhere.

"Stop with your fundraising, stop establishment-candidate endorsements," McCarthy continued. "Stop pushing this gene therapy, the sauce." It's not immediately clear what McCarthy was referring to.

Current GOP platform:

https://cdn3.whatculture.com/images/2014/02/The-Thing-1982.jpg

Current Dem platform:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fP-0-dEHhA

Covid:

https://www.slashfilm.com/img/gallery/the-thing-monster/intro-import.webp

^ soon to be elected to the Tennessee state senate

Dem platform for the past few decades:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7QP9Zqge4s

this is good?!

Very interesting section from Biden's speech.

At ~35 second mark, he notes that car prices are too high and that there's two solutions:

1) Invest more, to bring more capacity to the sector

2) Make everyone poorer so demand goes down. pic.twitter.com/9UhmxSaV9N

— Joe Weisenthal (@TheStalwart) January 7, 2022

the world is terrible, etc. but can't imagine previous D presidents saying that.

On the Ted/Tucker interview:

Rather than truly defending himself, Cruz meekly tried to explain away his repeated comments, and that same host wasn't having it. The host literally began the interview by calling Cruz a liar - repeatedly - and Cruz didn't even directly dispute the premise.

Squirmin' Ted!

The two contradictory Ben Garrison cartoons on Jan 6th, drawn a year apart, are really something aren't they ...

were they drawn a year apart? I think they were like a month apart!

this is good?!

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Friday, January 7, 2022 2:19 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

the world is terrible, etc. but can't imagine previous D presidents saying that.

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Friday, January 7, 2022 2:20 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah Biden is not good but that's quite out of context if you listen to the whole sound bite

It’s time for dem propaganda imo, they should do a biden and obama presidents in a car getting coffee every week or something, it would skew to olds and moderate knowlittle charisma lovers and it has uh, cars.

lol that Nicholas Kristof entered the race for Oregon gov without having even met the basic three year residency requirement. Dude apparently even voted in NY in 2020.

I don't think Democrats want Joe talking off the cuff any more than absolutely necessary.

Isn't that why yesterday's speech happened so early?

Unless he's chatting with Jay Leno about his sweet, sweet Corvette

The beauty of my propaganda is that I would not let any off the cuff stuff hit his socials. It would be fake as fuck like a buddy flick

the barack and joe and kamala and pete potlock tweet irl is propaganda i guess, sure

Fuck yeah, “America Is Already Great II: Electric Boogaloo”

The United States is the only major economy in the world where the economy as a whole is stronger now than before the pandemic.

— Secretary Marcia L. Fudge (@SecFudge) January 8, 2022

those kinds of empty pronouncements are like shouting into the Grand Canyon in hopes of hearing an echo. nobody anywhere pays any attention to them. except maybe milo.

They *are* kinda absurd though.

Like, yes, nothing has Fundamentally Changed. And yes, things are pretty good if you’re a property owner &/or invested in equities. But that isn’t going convince anyone with (and *especially* without) that kind of portfolio who still voted for Trump. And for people whose lives don’t reflect this Majorly Strongly economy, I feel it just seems like a cruel joke. Or more likely—background noise. Which, tbf Aimless, I presume is your primary point.

All that to say: what’s even the purpose of several staffers spending (no lie) probably hours of a working day crafting this message? Like I’m sure it will be a talking point on CNN or MSNBC or savaged on Fox. But who’re the folks watching? Focus-grouped abstractions based on data that really is a sliver of a snapshot of reality just annoy everyone who’s not a materially comfortable and consistent dem voter (<-which tbf describes me by p much every metric)

sorry y’all I took a delta 8 gummie pls ignore

Will, those are fair points, gummie or not

The Secretary of HUD tweeting out something like that is ludicrous and craven, and if anything shows how laughable the Dems are— the country is struggling, many people are starting to reevaluate their relationships to work and consumption, and yet since there is economic "growth," none of that matters. Growth of what? Who benefits? Are we okay with 1000s of people dying every day if some very wealthy people are becoming more wealthy, and the rest of us can still afford goods and services? Sick and rotten place.

will - how many mgs are we talking here

asking because i own the uncontested guiness book of world records on that, with somewhere between 60-100 mgs on some evening in 2021

I hope you're not suggesting we can't trust everything Secretary Fudge says.

asking because i own the uncontested guiness book of world records on that, with somewhere between 60-100 mgs on some evening in 2021

Double or nothing!

Us politics

yea that’s not a good thing man pic.twitter.com/AFRTBL78BB

— Mac (@GoodPoliticGuy) January 8, 2022

Somehow nobody mentioned Lin-Manuel.

Watched 2 focus groups w/moderate voters last night, put on by a liberal group.

Moderator asked 1st group (five women) about Jan 6th. Long pause followed, before one of the women asked what he meant. Invoking "Jan. 6" didn't immediately mean anything, even days after anniversary

— Alex Roarty (@Alex_Roarty) January 11, 2022

2 focus groups w/moderate complacent, pig ignorant voters

“Democracy is under assault!!!” would be a more effective rallying cry if the Democrats governed as if democracy was under assault.

otm

Maybe this year will set the template going forward. Even once we're fully ensconced in the Christo-corporate authoritarian state, they will allow touching little memorials to democracy every year on Jan. 6. Sort of like Labor Day.

Christo-corporate authoritarian state

I think most Americans will be relieved to have somebody else do the voting for them

this is an actual question from Harvard's Center for American Political Studies survey. come on https://t.co/Krx5Vx9bZK pic.twitter.com/MxaE8HDMxC

— Rachel Cohen (@rmc031) January 11, 2022

Q: Do you believe we should observie CHRISTMAS, where Santa and the elves celebrate the birth of Baby Jesus; or should observe cold, atheistic 'holidays' that promote paganism and a breakdown in family values? Y/N, pick one

Better question: Do you think white people who are suddenly freaked out about Critical Race Theory despite never having heard of it until a year ago are A.) racists, B.) political opportunists, C.) Confused and misled by Fox News, or D.) All of the above?

Harris's new comms director lol

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FIg5_-1WUAkzpa-?format=jpg&name=large

12 year old tweet, but as relevant today as it was yesterday morning

Democrats regain Alcee Hastings' seat and their 222-seat majority -- and a progressive winner at that:

Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, a healthcare executive who won a crowded primary by a slim margin, was elected on Tuesday by a majority of voters in Palm Beach and Broward counties, taking a seat in Congress left empty by the death of U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings. By comfortably beating Republican Jason Mariner, Cherfilus-McCormick, 36, becomes the first Haitian-American to be elected to Congress from Florida and becomes the first Haitian-American Democrat to be in the U.S. House of Representatives. She received about 78% of the vote....

....Cherfilus-McCormick is expected to join a growing voice of progressive Democrats in the U.S. House. As a candidate, she campaigned on a “People’s Prosperity Plan,” a stimulus proposal that she hoped would give $1,000 monthly stimulus checks to adults making less than $75,000 a year. In an interview with the Herald, Cherfilus-McCormick said she supports proposals from other progressives in the House, like U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, to push for regular income checks. She has said she supports a Medicare-for-all type of healthcare policy, and was supportive of initiatives pushed by President Joe Biden to open up more opportunities to access capital for Black business owners.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/election/article257204012.html

hey did you know campaign websites stay up longer than they probably should pic.twitter.com/YbUdXxi9B2

— David Sitrick (@davidsitrick) January 12, 2022

"Critical race theory" has become a stand-in for "things that make white people even vaguely uncomfortable."

^^ yep, whole depressing story on This American Life about it. Anything that gives a white person even the slightest whiff of discomfort is "critical race theory" and being banned from schools all over the place.

It's only cool to own liberals.

"Critical race theory" and also the classic "pornography"

Legislators in Iowa are really outdoing themselves — they’re arguing YA books about growing up on a reservation or books about police violence against black people are also ‘porn,’ since they now take ‘porn’ to mean anything that makes them slightly uncomfortable. pic.twitter.com/RM6GHrWpaT

— Madeline Marsanne (@MadelineOnMars) January 9, 2022

I get what you all are saying, but criticism/fear of "critical race theory" is quite simply anti-Black racism (plus other racisms); even acknowledging the paper-thin justification of "discomfort" feels overgenerous to me: https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/calls-to-ban-books-by-black-authors-are-increasing-amid-critical-race-theory-debates/2021/09

A senior administration official argued to @davidalim and @adamcancryn that sending N95 or KN95 masks to Americans would make little difference because "half the country won't wear any mask” https://t.co/BK0cvHaCRg pic.twitter.com/ebcmYqyCvr

— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) January 12, 2022

the paper-thin justification of "discomfort"

I wouldn't call it a justification, more like a pretext.

Also, they are clearly learning in some districts that simply screeching "CRT! CRT!" at board meetings is working, so why not just keep banning?

anyone ITT considering sucking it up and running for school board or other local elected position?

As penance for sins? Maybe.

NYC doesn't have school boards but I did run (unopposed, no one wants this job) for a very bottom level seat in the Dem party machinery and--surprise!--we spend all our time fighting the corruption and stagnation in the county party structure. Good times.

The far right believe in electoralism (along with violent suppression of dissent)!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/01/08/far-right-school-boards/

A little slice o' life on this very topic: https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/28/us/minnesota-school-board-transgender-hate/index.html

anyone ITT considering sucking it up and running for school board or other local elected position?

I had in the past, but not after watching a close friend get elected to a local school board. Even in a very liberal district and setting aside the stress of dealing with the pandemic, her description of it has been "nightmarish" - multiple rounds of death threats leading to the entire board's houses requiring security oversight, months where she spends 50-60 hours per week on this unpaid, volunteer gig. Don't get me wrong, I am thankful daily that she is fighting the good fight and advocating for the right things, but I know I could not deal with what she's had to go through.

NYC doesn't have school boards but I did run (unopposed, no one wants this job) for a very bottom level seat in the Dem party machinery and--surprise!--we spend all our time fighting the corruption and stagnation in the county party structure. Good times.

― Ima Gardener (in orbit), Wednesday, January 12, 2022 2:03 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

thank you for your service (not a joke)

i'm starting to think about taking one for the team assuming we're a democracy by the time i'm a citizen.

surprise!--we spend all our time fighting the corruption and stagnation in the county party structure. Good times.

Apart from the fact that I'm a reporter and can't very well run for office and keep doing my job, this kind of bullshit is what makes me averse to party politics of any kind. (Or ever identifying myself as "a Democrat.") BUT I have a lot of respect for those willing to put in the work to make it better.

At the moment the reform movement within the county party is still growing, and until we pass a certain tipping point, we don't have the numbers to force the leadership to deal with us, so it's kind of like asking people to sign up to suffer strategically lol. In December 2020 there was a zoom meeting that lasted TWELVE HOURS because they kept pretending to have technical issues and disappearing for hours to try to wait us out of casting a vote on something. And then months later they nullified our vote anyway by hiring a pet parliamentarian who turned out to be married to the chairperson iirc?

Now I've volunteered to be one of the people who calls innocent souls in my election district to try to convince them to run for a seat and petition their neighbors to get on the ballot in 2022. I'm feeling a little bit uninspired but I will try to do it for democracy!!!

Our county Democratic Party here went through a maybe similar change a decade ago, during the Obama era. We're in a very red county, and the local Dem leadership at that point was old Yellow Dog Democrats — left over from when Tennessee was still a majority-Democratic state — who hung around hoping to get appointed to boards or whatever. They were forced out over the course of a few years, and we've had a succession of local Dem leaders who are younger, smarter and much better organized than the local GOP at this point — not that that's hard to do, since the local GOP just coasts on assuming that they'll win most races (which they will) and engaging in dumb intramural fights among themselves. That difference hasn't really added up to shifts in electoral outcomes so far, but the Democrats are arguably making some inroads.

New Quinnipiac poll

Biden's approval: 33% (!)

Generic House ballot: GOP+1

59-33% say Trump should NOT run for president

57-34% say there WASN'T widespread voter fraud in 2020

70% say economic is “poor” or “not so good”

58-37% say US democracy is in danger of collapse

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) January 12, 2022

Kinda seems like actually governing would make Democrats/Biden more popular since people generally still can't stand Trump or GOP conspiracies.

worrying that it's so low but the Dems actually do seem to sometimes respond to things like this so whatever, put the pressure on. I would vote "disapprove" too

The 33-37% group there points to the MAGA core basically being the same arch-reactionary group that's comprised the GOP base since the '50s and isn't expanding even with this dogshit Administration in charge. You probably would have had 20% agreeing that Eisenhower was a commie spook in 1956.

IIRC Phyllis Schlafly launched her career by calling Eisenhower a pinko.

Yeah that was a big Bircher thing.

well he did visit Europe

and had a mistress

Almost shirked his duty for a dame.

a traitor to his ass

In orbit, my hat’s off to you.

we've had a succession of local Dem leaders who are younger, smarter and much better organized than the local GOP at this point

I've lived here for 10 years and never had the chance to vote for a single progressive candidate, the only choice was Dem machine people who put in their time. The first wave of challengers to them was white socialist types NOT from the community, which is something I personally didn't support in this context. I am SO HAPPY to have a real choice of young Black progressive leaders to vote for in more districts!! Sadly my city council member is not one of them.

Kyrsten Sinema ran from the kids who wanted to ask her questions & ducked into the bathroom because she thought it was illegal to film there.

Sinema asked police to charge students with felonies — so that they’d be “held accountable.”

Accountable!https://t.co/hjLo39m980

— Jordan Zakarin (@jordanzakarin) January 12, 2022

we don't have the numbers to force the leadership to deal with us, so it's kind of like asking people to sign up to suffer strategically lol. In December 2020 there was a zoom meeting that lasted TWELVE HOURS because they kept pretending to have technical issues and disappearing for hours to try to wait us out of casting a vote on something. And then months later they nullified our vote anyway by hiring a pet parliamentarian who turned out to be married to the chairperson iirc?

Dem machine politics in Philly are like Philly itself: dirty, nasty, and laughably corrupt, at every level.

this CDC director kinda blows, doesn't she?

CDC in general has not made life easy for those of us trying to navigate this thing responsibly. Under Trump at least you could blame it on deliberate obfuscation, now it just looks like indecisiveness and bad messaging.

maybe top physician/Scientists are not necessary the best people to run this large operations? IT should be a scientist sure but someone who's strengths are communication and coordinating which is not really in the wheelhouse of someone who spends most their time in a lab.

yes

https://newrepublic.com/article/164988/rochelle-walensky-cdc-covid

and yes https://www.statnews.com/2021/11/08/rochelle-walensky-cdc-faltering/

she was a bad choice, and she's not being helped at all by the white house.

not sure the white house is helping anybody at this point

I think Biden is contagious.

.@craigmelvin asks if it’s time to change admin’s strategy on Covid, Harris says:
“It is time for us to do what we have been doing. And that time is every day. Every day it is time for us to agree that there are things and tools that are available to us to slow this thing down” pic.twitter.com/8I52Q43050

— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) January 13, 2022

Meanwhile: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/13/us/politics/republican-presidential-debate-dispute.html

I don't know if it really matters whether we have presidential debates, everybody on all sides always ends up mad about them and I don't know if there's any evidence of them affecting the vote much. But as a symbol of mutual commitment to a larger project of democratic governance, it at least acknowledges the legitimacy — or existence, anyway — of the other side.

every quote i've ever seen from an anonymous biden admin. official has been a giant disaster. they're scaring themselves out of simple, popular solutions in fear of annoying some, and instead offering twisted technocratic solutions that piss off everyone.

i'm not surprised by this cowardice, but that doesn't make it any less infuriating

Man the GOP is such a bunch of crybabies.

why don't they just say that one day it will just disappear like a miracle xp

But as a symbol of mutual commitment to a larger project of democratic governance, it at least acknowledges the legitimacy — or existence, anyway — of the other side.

I would be way more concerned about whether the other side's legitimacy and existence were being acknowledged... if they ever shut up for a single. goddamn. second.

Seriously the "other side" has all the flags and MAGA hats and boat parades and "Let's Go Brandon" bumper stickers and the single most-watched channel in the history of television and and and. AND they're shoving it in my face all the time about how much they're being silenced and oppressed and forgotten.

No solution being forwarded here or any larger point, I'm just... tired.

As for the other stuff I generally agree but personally don't think a non-cowardly Biden or a non-incompetent Biden admin would be doing all that much better, because (see above)

RNC pre-emptively requiring "candidates" (lol plural, there will only be one) to refuse to participate in debates is how you know trump is running again.

can't wait

2024 election gonna be wild imo

It would be great if the RNC were punished at the ballot box for all their anti-democracy bullshit. But.

Maybe there's more money in being inelectable cunts than being in power, I dunno. Before he got elected the Trump campaign had strong Springtime For Hitler vibes.

The Republicans don’t need to “win” majorities per se they can use the existing anti democratic/ anti majoritarian aspects of our existing system such as controlling the Supreme Court and the Senate. They’ve shown this for thirty plus years now. What we are heading for is entrenched minority rule.

Actually we are already there.

Yeah, we're most of the way there already, between the Senate's inherent Republican bias, the House gerrymandering, and of course SCOTUS. The presidency is the one thing they can't reliably win even with the Electoral College, hence all the efforts to even further skew the scales on that front.

And the tyrannical minority has, ahem, accomplices in the alleged majority so we r fuct

-Bob Marley

In my rhetoric class last semester I already started using my rhetoric of science component to analyze how government officials use rhetorical lessons from Gorgias to Andrea Lunsford as a way to explain the impact of COVID.

The CDC did not hold up well in November 2021.

getting a lot of "end of the empire" vibes between this, the "tyranny of the majority" comment, and the proposed ban on teaching students that Nazis were actually bad

On the other hand:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Founder of far-right Oath Keepers militia group Stewart Rhodes, 10 others charged with seditious conspiracy in Jan. 6 Capitol attack

— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) January 13, 2022

thats cool and all but until charges get pressed against Trump I still think the system is irreparably broken

Fox News anchor Sandra Smith: "When you go back to the warning to Mitch McConnell, why would you do that in this moment in a midterm election year?"

Lindsey Graham: "Are you not listening?!"

Smith: "I am!"

Graham: "It’s not a warning." pic.twitter.com/frcO04RsF0

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) January 13, 2022

the shit Trump must have on this guy

None of which would surprise any of us even half paying attention.

If Russian hackers are breaking into complex cybersystems, how hard would it be to find that "\users\lg\MyPictures\NAMBLA" folder on his home PC?

There's enough reason to dislike Graham without even going there

otm

Graham can handle our dislike and happily keep his senate seat. But he knows that if his reputation ever 'went there' he'd lose that cushy job.

At this point in history, I'm no longer 100% certain it even would cost him his job.

Jon OTM - I was thinking something similar.

what is the 'warning' graham gave to mcconnell?

He'll slap him silly.

I think it's just some vague admonition that Mitch better play nice with kingmaker Trump

He said if Mitch doesn’t suck trumps ass like he himself loves to do, he wouldn’t back him for party leader in the senate.

And the subpoenas are a flyin’

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei's website publishes animated video of operation to eliminate Trump pic.twitter.com/p9ZxKsgL0k

— RT (@RT_com) January 13, 2022

I wonder if the Republicans in Congress will vote to censure him?

based

“Hacking………….. 100%”

THREAD on Sinema:
Sinema's behavior has made no common sense to me. Surely she knows too that she would lose in the 2024 Democratic primary. Why would she do it?

I have info from an inside source who lives in AZ and has a direct connection. With his permission am sharing.

1/

— Amy Siskind 🏳️‍🌈 (@Amy_Siskind) January 13, 2022

Would love to see her fall on her face in a presidential primary.

not different really than all those moderate dorks who ran in 2020

she totally shit on Biden and the dems in her little speech yesterday. it's crazy

She will find some way to cash in on being a maverick at odds with her party (using the McCain template). Sure, she will lose a Democratic primary, which may very well produce a Republican Senator. But then she can write a book, become a ubiquitous cable commentator or, heck, endorse a line of wee backpacks.

The end result of this is all the same - she helped torpedo anything like even modestly progressive legislation. She can stay in Congress and kill desperately needed (but still inadequate) reforms. Or she can let a Republican have her seat, who will... wait for it... kill desperately needed (but still inadequate) reforms. Either way, mission accomplished.

Laughing crying emoji

https://hotair.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Sinema-1110x740.jpg

I drink your milkshake!

dang, I have those same earrings

me too

The ring is what nails it.

it's america's favorite quirky indirect murderer!

amy siskind is not a credible source on anything.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/8/16/1788737/--Resistance-grifter-Amy-Siskind-finally-gets-her-comeuppance

Meanwhile, they're talking about medical marijuana in Mississippi. Click thru for pix of legislators inspecting the goods.

Mississippi’s Senators are passing a (unlit) fat doobie around the chamber to understand how big a “marijuana joint” is. Blackwell says 3.5 grams is like 2ish joints a day. Tate Reeves says it’s 11 joints.

— Lee Sanderlin (@LeeOSanderlin) January 13, 2022

then they went out to play hacky sack in the quad and listen to Phish

blackwell's used to smoking the fat doob's i guess. reeves is on the low end, but i mean, for some people that would be true. joints can be any size.

this person is right: https://www.quora.com/How-many-joints-can-you-roll-with-2-5-grams-of-weed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6swlPoUHd1Y

Vice President Harris to Americans who can't find a COVID test: "Google It [...] I mean, really, if you want to figure out how to get across town to some restaurant you heard is great, you usually do Google to figure out where it is."

WATCH: https://t.co/mePRdhxPMO pic.twitter.com/itamlCIFjg

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) January 13, 2022

"Fuck You You're On Your Own" is a risky midterm slogan but it just... might... work.

definitely going to win big against "you're special"

what the fuck is her problem

JUST IN: DirecTV plans to drop @OANN, dealing a major blow to the conservative channel that’s been criticized for spreading misinformation and had a loyal fan in former President Donald Trump. https://t.co/BFQvDPacbp

— Evan Rosenfeld (@Evan_Rosenfeld) January 15, 2022

i wish someone would have asked the VP to go on her phone right there and find a testing place close by with availability.

Haha someone on that thread said the same thing

luv 2 see the executive branch not just throwing reelection under the bus but like actually duct taping it to the road to ensure that it gets thoroughly mashed

oh no there's another clip. they gotta stop putting her on tv until they figure out what's going on.

.@craigmelvin asks if it’s time to change admin’s strategy on Covid, Harris says:
“It is time for us to do what we have been doing. And that time is every day. Every day it is time for us to agree that there are things and tools that are available to us to slow this thing down” pic.twitter.com/8I52Q43050

— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) January 13, 2022

that sounds like a George W Bush quote

Probably Harris should have asked @craigmelvin how he thinks the administration's strategy on covid should change and how he'd make that happen. Chances are he'd have no idea what should be done or realistically could be done.

pic.twitter.com/XgO3fVNvPg

— chas (@scabellumpedum) January 13, 2022

It’s not that dudes job!!! Wtf? Xp

all we are is dust in the wind dude

- veep Kamala Harris

holy shit we are in trouble

prompted by thinking of how terrible of badly harris would get her ass kicked, and how i keep reading all these little media pieces trying to make harris 2024 happen seem even halfway plausible

fuck man, fuck

It’s not that dudes job!!! Wtf?

You and the interviewer both seem to think there must be something really effective that they aren't trying. What is that based on? No one anywhere is solving this virus by some new bit of strategizing that we just haven't been smart enough to emulate. wtf do you expect them to do differently?

otoh, Harris did an amazingly bad job of communicating that reality. She face planted in the worst possible way. It was painful to watch. It was totally incompetent communication.

No one anywhere is solving this virus by some new bit of strategizing that we just haven't been smart enough to emulate.

what about the ones who are doing it with old bits of strategising

You and the interviewer both seem to think there must be something really effective that they aren't trying.

Had they paid people to get vaccinated, we'd be in a much better position.

If only Milo was in charge.

lol what would he do? worse?

this is such a massive fuck you after spending the election promising PLANZ. but, as others have noted, it’s probably a good thing for the Democratic Party to just start leveling w folks: there’s not much we’re “allowed” or even would want to do if we could. start bootstrapping, plebs.

anyway, not my problem. they want to keep feathering the nests of the already safe and comfortable? cool guys thanks I guess

Yes, I believe most of us would do much worse.

vhs that’s a stupid thought experiment bc we’re not in charge of policy and also communication isn’t an essential part of our public-facing jobs

Good communication, bad communication, when a significant percentage of this country refuses to get a vaccine or wear a mask or basically do anything you ask them to do, you might as well not say anything.

from what i can tell vaccine outreach works and is a much better use of time and resources than complaining about antivaxxers

what do i know though, if i were joe biden i'd be handling this pandemic much worse

I'd really like to know what vaccine outreach would work a year+ into having vaccines available. For example (keeping it local), the whole Chicago public schools mess. The teachers walked out because (among other reasons) they didn't feel safe. One reason they're not safe is because so few of their students are vaccinated. And then the teachers go back and *some kids* staged a walkout, because *they* don't feel safe. Good for them, I guess, but why aren't *they* getting vaccinated, then? I did a quick search and found this from a few days ago:

At Manley Career Academy High School on Chicago’s West Side, only 10% of students are fully vaccinated against COVID-19. That’s a sharp contrast with Lane Tech High School on Chicago’s North Side where 83% of students have received both doses of the coronavirus vaccine.

Even at the district’s regional vaccination hubs – created to make COVID vaccines more accessible to students — rates swing widely from 56% at Theodore Roosevelt High School on the Northwest Side to 19.6% at Chicago Vocational Career Academy on the Far South Side.

Which begs a couple of questions, not just "how do we get the other 90% of kids at Manley to get vaccinated," but "what the hell, Lane Tech, you're being held up as an exemplar of privilege and even *you* have 20% unvaxxed!?" Like, what isn't being done or is not being done right? Honest question, I have no idea. There have been clinics, there have been mass vax sites, there have been pop-ups, and so on. I'm volunteering at a booster clinic in an hour or so, and they emailed us to help spread the word, because not all of the appointment slots have been taken!

I stepped away from political podcast listening as of yesterday (hiatus) but something someone said on one of the last ones really struck me, paraphrased a bit: “what we lack right now in American society and culture is any sense of order, and when we’re missing order, people get nervous.”

This feeling in my view predates the pandemic somewhat but feels right. There’s a very real sense of anarchy.

Case in point:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said one of his biggest regrets in office was not speaking out "much louder" in March 2020, when former President Donald Trump advised the nation to stay home to slow the fast-spreading coronavirus.

DeSantis, a close ally of Trump, said he was involved in the early days of the White House's pandemic response and had been offering advice to the President. But he was surprised when Trump made the decision that led to much of the US economy shutting down.

"I never thought in February, early March, that (coronavirus) would lead to locking down the country," the Republican governor told the hosts of the conservative podcast "Ruthless" during an episode recorded Thursday. "I just didn't. I didn't think that was on the radar."

Related, I think the/a problem is, no surprise, the hard march over the last few decades toward "states rights" as an all encompassing conservative/right wing mantra. It's made red states redder and stronger (and stronger willed), blue states more insular/isolated, and exaggerated and amplified regional politics. So, yeah, some sense of anarchy is definitely in play, underscored by states (and the Supremes, among others) actively working to undermine the federal government. When Roe is overturned or kneecapped this summer we'll get an even clearer picture of what jigsaw puzzle anarchy in this country really looks like.

Good morning!

Where’s the congressional Trump subpoenas?

Ooh, a subpoena, I'm so scared

what about the ones who are doing it with old bits of strategising

I have no idea who they are and what they're doing. enlighten me.

Yeah no one could have ever predicted a new strain after there had already been more then one strain. How about not abandoning the testing program they were talked about setting up? Contacts tracing? What about being on the same page as your CDC? Do you really think they are doing the best job possible when this is what they fucking ran on?

So like half the country won’t get vaxxed but there is a whole other half trying to do the right things and they don’t have all the tools that should be available.

Had they paid people to get vaccinated, we'd be in a much better position.

As you may recall, quite a few governors pursued this policy last June and July, using federal funds that were provided by a relief bill passed by the Dem Congress. They all abandoned the policy when it became clear that whatever marginal increase in vaccination rates it inspired had been exhausted.

But maybe you were thinking about bigger sums than were already tried. Let's make it $5K per each newly vaxxed holdout. Only problem is that if you want to increase the bounty to that level, first you'd need Congressional approval, including our dear friends Manchin & Sinema, or else you need republicans breaking ranks.

Next you'd have to deal with the massive political fallout among tens of millions of the already vaccinated, angry that the anti-vaxxer jackasses all raked in a huge pile of loot as a reward for being anti-social jackasses while they were never paid a dime. If you try to deal with that by giving everyone $5k, see problem number one, above.

lol @ preemptively blaming Manchin for failure to enact policy that Biden has never suggested and has no interest in pursuing. Sure is convenient to have a fall guy like that, huh?

The detour into 'if you cancel student debt then people who've paid their student loans off will be mad'-land is some top shelf shelf aimlessing tho.

best thing would have been to brand the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines the “MAGA” and the “America is Great Because America is Good”. leave it to the two pharmas to decide which will be which. then pay Trump $$$ to pump the MAGA vax on Fox and at rallies, even let him claim he personally oversaw its development in the lab.

we would have been at 90% by June

as you read this, ask yourself, what should joe biden have done differently

The setbacks for Biden last week came from every direction. Inflation last year hit a 40-year high. The Supreme Court blocked his vaccine-or-test mandate for employees of large companies while upholding the mandate for health-care workers. He struggled to defend against criticism that his administration had no plan to make coronavirus testing easily available and that it was providing confusing guidance about dealing with the omicron variant. Talks with the Russians aimed at avoiding war in Ukraine broke off with no apparent progress.

And then there was the issue of voting rights.

The president traveled to Atlanta to pump for two pieces of long-stalled voting legislation, the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Instead of being welcomed by allies, he found voting rights activists in Georgia choosing not to show up. Their absence was embarrassing for the White House while unhelpfully highlighting the lack of a strategy to enact either bill.

Biden’s speech in Georgia was rhetorically red-hot, as when he said, “Do you want to be the side of Dr. King or George Wallace? Do you want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? Do you want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?”

A week earlier, Biden had won praise for a tough speech on the anniversary of the assault on the Capitol in which he repeatedly called out Trump, though not by name, and issued a vigorous defense of democracy under threat.

The Georgia speech prompted a far different reaction. Republicans panned it, and while many Democrats praised Biden for the forcefulness, even though some of them suggested he had gone too far with his words. The speech was meant as a rallying cry for the Democratic base, demonstrating Biden’s passion on the issue. As a piece of rhetorical persuasion, it appeared to have the opposite effect by hardening the opposition.

On Thursday, Biden met with Senate Democrats, having called for a change in the filibuster rules to help ease passage of the legislation. Before he even arrived, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) delivered a speech on the Senate floor outlining again her firm opposition to changing the rules, a position she shares with Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.).

Her speech erased any doubt about the fate of the legislation. Leaving the meeting with the senators, Biden told reporters: “I hope we can get this done. The honest to God answer is, I don’t know whether we can get this done.” The Senate will vote next week with the outcome seemingly preordained.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/sundaytakebidenfirstyear-presidency/2022/01/15/57c5fbfe-7610-11ec-bc13-18891499c514_story.html

Biden and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week

Firstly, to Aimless and everyone else asking what could be done: there's plenty that could be done, but politicians don't give a flying fuck about citizens (much less undocumented people) of this country, only about growth growth growth growth growth and fattening donor wallets, not to mention their own.

In any reasonable country with any sort of moral compass, people would be getting paid to stay home, and anyone working in *Actually* essential industries would be getting triple pay AND hazard pay, tests would be available everywhere all the time, and so on and on and on.

The US government has the money to do this, just not the will.

Founded on enslavement and death, and will probably end that way too, despite what leftists have been warning and suggesting for years.

“what we lack right now in American society and culture is any sense of order, and when we’re missing order, people get nervous.”

This feeling in my view predates the pandemic somewhat but feels right. There’s a very real sense of anarchy.

― Legalize Suburban Benches (Raymond Cummings), Saturday, January 15, 2022 6:11 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Anarchy is good, actually, and what you are describing is disorder. They're not the same. Anarchists love sitting through boring meetings, reading obscure theorists, smashing bank windows, and beating up fascists.

Disorder is not surprising when the social contract has been irrevocably broken, and anyone with any sense understands that this is so. There is no collective, there is no community, and there is no "us" or "we" the people, and *that isn't the fault of the people, because they're simply responding to conditions outside of their control.*

I wish this weren't so, but it's what I see when I walk anywhere in my city, and it's what I hear from friends elsewhere, too.

there's plenty that could be done, but politicians don't give a flying fuck about citizens

so what you're saying here is that what you believe "could be done" first entails changing the entire system and everyone who runs it. ok. but that "could be" seems rather remote in the time scale required to do much about a virus that is infecting 700,000 people a day.

You're literally caping for a government that has said to its citizens "get back to work or die, you motherfucking unwashed plebes"

Sure is convenient to have a fall guy like that, huh?

I think that if you examined your own posts over the past year that you are quite willing to designate your own convenient fall guy and assign blame just as readily. my fall guy at least has the attribute of having publically and proudly obstructed what your fall guy has proposed.

anarchy is not good, actually

Seriously, though, Aimless, what I cannot comprehend is how after nearly two years, it seems like not much has changed. Placing the onus of that on Sinema or Manchin or Biden or any number of republicans or anti-vaxxers or whatever is convenient scapegoating for what is, at its core, *a massive failure of the US government to educate, protect, and care for its citizens*. Saying, "well that's not the way the system works" doesn't change the absolute immensity of the US government's failure.

anarchy is not good, actually

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Saturday, January 15, 2022 10:35 AM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Whatever, lib

Well if is really their best efforts than as we say “good luck USA”

Yes, I believe most of us would do much worse.

― Van Horn Street, Sunday, January 16, 2022 12:15 AM (four hours ago)

worse than this guy?

I have no idea who they are and what they're doing. enlighten me.

just checking - you believe that no countries or territories are handling their pandemic response better than the US, or that none of them are handling it differently?

You're literally caping for a government...

I am describing the situation as I see it, not approving of it or the results. I fail to see how calling Harris's response a 'totally incompetent faceplant' amounts to literally caping for the government. I do see a hell of a lot of unspoken assumption that this pandemic and the havoc it is causing could all be cleaned up and solved in a calm, rational manner just by summoning the correct balance of political will, scientific know-how and fiscal policy, and all that stands in the way is a bunch of venal and incompetent politicians.

My basic point isn't that venal and corrupt politicians aren't a problem. They are. The republicans are almost uniformly venal and corrupt, but having marginally fewer venal and corrupt democrats doesn't exactly amount to a ringing endorsement of that party.

My point is more that, in the case of this deadly pandemic, the nature of the problem means the solution is not as simple as installing a better social system run by better people. That would go a tremendous distance toward solving dozens of social ills we all suffer, but it doesn't solve a raging pandemic that throws out variants like omicron. That's just reality, as demonstrated by looking at every nation and culture on earth that is trying to deal with this virus.

You may now all resume correcting my many flawed ideas.

by looking at every nation and culture on earth that is trying to deal with this virus.

I have no idea who they are and what they're doing.

sic, if I didn't know you just like trolling people for fun, I'd say go fuck yourself, but since it's all in fun, I say haha good one!

My point is more that, in the case of this deadly pandemic, the nature of the problem means the solution is not as simple as installing a better social system run by better people. That would go a tremendous distance toward solving dozens of social ills we all suffer, but it doesn't solve a raging pandemic that throws out variants like omicron. That's just reality, as demonstrated by looking at every nation and culture on earth that is trying to deal with this virus.

So pumping money into public health infrastructure instead of the MIC, commanding that companies make vaccines open-source or risk losing government funding, and utilizing what little social net remains to help people stay fed and sheltered aren't things that the current government could have done or could be doing? The problem with so much of what you argue on here, Aimless, is that you take this clear-eyed view that can often be correct in its diagnosis— I know we agree about many things, for example— but then you wave away the idea that maybe things could be done differently as insanity or something that could never happen, *even though it easily could.*

Anarchists love sitting through boring meetings

speak for yourself

go fuck yourself

just checking - you believe that no countries or territories are handling their pandemic response better than the US, or that none of them are handling it differently?

Brad, I don't do meetings either, don't worry.

https://i.imgur.com/BBO6LMj.jpg

can anyone tell me where the meetings are held

*even though it easily could.*

the difficulty I see in that "easily could" is that the only things I see as easily changed are things I have control over. I do have control over my imagination and I can *easily* imagine all those things being done and how beneficial they would be if they were done. when what is required to happen escapes my personal control, my ability to make changes in other people's actions or the way reality is constructed begins to involve ever more complicated and ineffectual gyrations. My sphere of influence is sadly limited.

question for table and Brad - what is the distinction between anarchy and disorder, and I guess in general I've never really understood what people who are anarchists envision for what an anarchic society would look like? basically libertarianism at a large scale?

Society by chore wheel

question for table and Brad - what is the distinction between anarchy and disorder, and I guess in general I've never really understood what people who are anarchists envision for what an anarchic society would look like? basically libertarianism at a large scale?

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown),

same question

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/robert-paul-wolff-in-defense-of-anarchism

It has been 15ish years since I really re-read this but part III (Beyond the Legitimate State) is a good case for an anarchist vision IIRC.

Also: Anarchy Poll and Discussion Thread

I just can’t think how anything will ever get actually done in an anarchist version of complex modern industrial society—and I’m sympathetic to their viewpoint. Anarchism has indeed actually happened in a pre-industrial agrarian setting.

Thanks, all.

Sometimes I think this board needs an in-person fight club, just to ease some tensions.

Nah, kidding. But man, there’s a lot of frustration to burn, it seems.

Imagine this place when Trump gets re-elected.

Better thread titles

Wow you really think hed beat hilary again

just checking -

sic is just a guy askin' questions

I agree that we’re not currently seeing anarchy but, rather, a devolved sense of stasis that has many wishing for anarchy instead. The net result of there being no illusions about a “greater good.” Biden’s pleas on behalf of one sound particularly feeble to opponents AND constituents.

Sometimes I think this board needs an in-person fight club, just to ease some tensions.

i did a lot of work organizing this and the results were horrible, just fucking terrible

The 200,000th Thread Anticipation, Celebration, & Physical Fights Thread

thanks for the links will check them out

i will fight you on those links
it's time to blow off some steam and duke it out

Capitalism and Covid has left us alienated and atomized. We need to organize into One Big Fight Club.

it's all one thing

Karl, wanna fight again

let's do it

but here's one thing about biden. i posted that long excerpt from the washington post earlier, about joe biden's no good terrible bad week. there are some things he could have done better - i was expecting someone to launch into a tirade on his covid response, including the embarrassing recent episode where some reporter asked psaki something like "hey why don't we have free covid tests, like other wealthy countries" and she's like "as if", like clueless, and then a week later they were all saying "d'oh!" and working on plans which led to the recent announcement that free tests would be available starting on the 20th. wow, that was dumb.

but in general, he is in a very, very bad spot. what's he going to do about manchin or sinema? so sick of reading backseat drivers that think they could talk to joe manchin in the right way and change his mind. it's very clearly joe manchin and sinema vs 48 other democratic senators. you can imagine a handful of other democratic senator assholes who are also in their pool but don't speak up, but i can very realistically point to the fact that new democratic candidates have an anti-filibuster litmus test -- the winds are completely in the direction of getting rid of it, and the only thing holding it up is manchin and sinema. biden just made a complete ass out of himself, the other day, trying to make it happen. dude is fucked! he's in a pickle!

it's not like I want him to run in 2024, that's for fucking sure. but good lord the anti-biden stuff is exhausting sometimes, his admin has been far to the left of obama's afaict, and no that's not total anarchy but neither is anything else

If that Wolff essay is the best expression anyone can offer of how anarchism might work at the societal level ... I mean, "utopian" doesn't even begin to describe it.

Humans are social animals, we function through collective organization, we always have. A little bit of anthropology and sociobiology would go a long way toward more sophisticated thinking about our realistic options as far as self-government goes.

Also, the economic model Wolff suggests is ludicrous.

Only extreme economic decentralization could permit the sort of voluntary economic coordination consistent with the ideals of anarchism and affluence. At the present time, of course, such decentralization would produce economic chaos, but if we possessed a cheap, local source of power and an advanced technology of small-scale production, and if we were in addition willing to accept a high level of economic waste, we might be able to break the American economy down into regional and subregional units of manageable size. The exchanges between the units would be inefficient and costly — very large inventory levels, inelasticities of supply and demand, considerable waste, and so forth. But in return for this price, men would have increasing freedom to act autonomously. In effect, such a society would enable all men to be autonomous agents, whereas in our present society, the relatively few autonomous men are — as it were — parasitic upon the obedient, authority-respecting masses.

Yes this is definitely something that could ever happen in any way and would certainly be a good thing if it did.

I'm not an anarchist and I'd say that Wolff isn't rejecting "collective organization" at all but economic organization is, uh, pretty much always the falling apart point of anarchism and why there's often a focus on social issues/personal autonomy within a left-wing framework (and thus why tankies call them liberals).

sic is just a guy askin' questions

you asked me to deliver research to you; I was clarifying on what topic.

She is a Bookchinist and I don't necessarily agree with her about some things, but my acquaintance Cindy Milstein does a decent job of thinking about what anarchism is and is not in this book: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/cindy-milstein-anarchism-and-its-aspirations#toc7

xps

Fair enough. I think a conundrum for the anti-state position is that while the state is obviously often (and everywhere) an instrument of oppression, it can also sometimes, certainly not everywhere, be an instrument of liberation. The idea of individual rights, e.g., is one that — at least in human history so far — has only ever been achieved to any degree with the power of the state behind it. In the U.S., the state enabled and slavery and segregation, but also ultimately dismantled them (and at gunpoint, at that).

So I'm much more sympathetic to ideas of the "just state" — plenty utopian in its own right — than I am to ideas of statelessness.

(My partner and Cindy used to live together— they often disagreed because Cindy was too positive, lmfao)

The idea of individual rights, e.g., is one that — at least in human history so far — has only ever been achieved to any degree with the power of the state behind it.

"Rights" are a creation by the state as a means of controlling populations, and exist, like law, on a field of pain and death.

oh cool this discussion again, I said everything I wanted to in the poll thread but

you can absolutely have effective organization without hierarchy, which is a lot of what "anarchy" is actually about, but it also involves lots of undoing of learned patterns and the inherent conflicts and contradictions (and inevitable hypocrises (sp?)) of trying to work for a better world while living in a dystopia

see also Deleuze & Guattari, rhizomatic vs. arborescent, etc.

"Rights" are a creation by the state as a means of controlling populations, and exist, like law, on a field of pain and death.

As theory, this is fine. As history and political science, I don't know how you get to rights without going through the state. Happy to see counter-examples.

it also involves lots of undoing of learned patterns and the inherent conflicts and contradictions (and inevitable hypocrises (sp?)) of trying to work for a better world while living in a dystopia

I'm all in favor of the undoing of learned patterns, but the most practicable vehicles for that are inherently state-based — e.g., public education. How do you get the undoing of learned patterns absent social structures designed to teach new patterns? And if your answer is that you're going to have new non-hierarchical social structures to accomplish this, I'm going to say that you're actually still talking about a state, you're just calling it something different. Any structure sufficiently organized to inculcate universal acceptance of behavior patterns is going to end up serving a state-like function, whatever you call it.

on what topic

if you are inclined, I'm asking you to identify public health initiatives not yet tried here that have a ghost of a chance of replicating their impressive success at stopping omicron elsewhere.

I'm literally saying that "rights" are an invention and don't actually exist, and yes, I do believe that.

I'm all in favor of the undoing of learned patterns, but the most practicable vehicles for that are inherently state-based — e.g., public education.

There are some lovely current examples of Indigenous communities taking their children out of colonial schooling frameworks and teaching them through traditional lifeways.

If I had kids, there is no fucking way I'd let them near public schools. I'd homeschool them.

"rights" are an invention

no argument about that from me. seems obvious.

and don't actually exist

invented things have been brought into existence. rights exist, just as money exists, by social convention alone. knowing this is true doesn't dissolve their reality.

Fair enough— but absent fealty to social convention, they do not.

If only there had ever been any other states other than the united ones we might have seen real world examples of how certaing things might be different, possibly even better but alas no way of knowing rly

Rights don’t exist unitil some people with more power than you start to take things from you and then you’re like damn why are these guys stealing my shit and forcing me to work for them for free.

I'd homeschool them.

Talk about anarchy.

Are anarchists just libertarians without a state to enforce property rights? Do they then active individually to act collectively to enforce justice, or do we get rid of that construction as delusion too, as with rights?

“act”

Rights don’t exist in any natural or inherent form, obviously. But the Enlightenment-era invention of the idea was overall a pretty significant step for individual autonomy. I don’t think arguing against rights advances any progressive or leftist agenda in any way.

If only there had ever been any other states other than the united ones we might have seen real world examples of how certain things might be different

sorry, deems. in the US politics thread we only glance briefly, if ever, at other states. we're buried up to our eyelids in USA-ness.

Anarchy is already present and influential in our lives via international relations. I would guess it has been one of the most destructive forces in human history (one country invading another), if not the most. Taking away the nations and competitions between tribes, individuals, groups, and daily life will still be too bloody. My reading of history is mostly that laws and govt have been built in response to violence begun by anarchic violence.

Conversations such as these would be so much more productive if everyone meant the same thing when they used the word 'anarchy'. Anarchism is not The Purge, fyi.

Gunna say this thread could be improved by more AnComms commenting…

OL OTM, it's amazing that this still has to be explained in a political thread in 2022 tbh

Anarchy is already present and influential in our lives via international relations. I would guess it has been one of the most destructive forces in human history (one country invading another), if not the most. Taking away the nations and competitions between tribes, individuals, groups, and daily life will still be too bloody. My reading of history is mostly that laws and govt have been built in response to violence begun by anarchic violence.

― Van Horn Street, Saturday, January 15, 2022 10:44 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

This very well might be the most idiotic thing I've ever read on ILX.

One Country Invading Another Is Anarchism is a pretty, umm, interesting interpretation of a philosophy whose nexus is "human beings have no inherent right to govern others"

I’m just saying that the viability of such a philosophy is put to test by international relations, to no success. Considering there is anarchy in the sense that there is no higher autority than a nation, by now we should have seen if actors are capable of enough benevolence and avoid the moral pitfalls of competition, war, dominance, they aren’t.

It’s a nice utopia tho. Won’t happen in the US or elsewhere for hundreds of years.

How is anarchy "a sense that there is no higher authority than a nation"? I'm not following you.

The concept of anarchy is seen as the cardinal organizing category of the discipline of International Relations (IR), which differentiates it from cognate disciplines such as Political Science or Political Philosophy. This article provides an analytical review of the scholarly literature on anarchy in IR, on two levels—conceptual and theoretical. First, it distinguishes three senses of the concept of anarchy: (1) lack of a common superior in an interaction domain; (2) chaos or disorder; and (3) horizontal relation between nominally equal entities, sovereign states. The first and the third senses of “anarchy”’ are central to IR.

From shorturl.at/egCHT

Except some research fellow's paper about anarchy in International Relations isn't really tied to anarchist political or economic philosophy, as anarchism works primarily against the state, whereas the paper you're citing is about states coming to agreement or relating with each without the presence of a higher authority.

You and some int'l relations experts might see states working together without a higher authority guiding them as "anarchy," but it is not.

Use the word you want really! Fact remains, lack of rules and laws between states has been disastrous, it allowed for hegemons to rip apart smaller actors. Also, most peaceful states are the ones that tend the most to international law.

most peaceful states are the ones that tend the most to international law

This part of the analogy at least I think is worth considering, in that nearly all of the protections available to less powerful people in countries with quasi-functional democracies derive from leveraging state power. The civil rights movement in the U.S. relied heavily on bringing federal power to bear on the states, and the federal government remains the de facto (if deeply unreliable) guarantor of protections against discrimination and exploitation. To see that function as solely a means of "control" of the populace is I think to really, deeply misunderstand American political history.

if you are inclined, I'm asking you to identify public health initiatives not yet tried here that have a ghost of a chance of replicating their impressive success at stopping omicron elsewhere.

Again clarifying for context - are you no longer saying that no other states have taken more effective measures against the spread of COVID than the United ones, or reframing it here that you only want to hear about ones that have “stopped omicron” in some absolute sense?

(or is this one of those “well it would work, but the US will not adopt it, so it doesn’t count” hedges?)

committed and thoughtful anarchists probably should #useotherwordsplease given how easy it is for the VHS’s of this world to strawman them into supposedly supporting “no rules” or “state warfare” etc

are you no longer saying that no other states have taken more effective measures against the spread of COVID than the United ones

That was your misreading of what I said rather than what I said, drawn from it, but adding your conclusions, which were not inherent, but imposed upon it.

To clarify, what I was attempting to communicate was that the failures of the federal government of the USA to obtain successful results against the spread of covid since January 22, 2021 were based in factors quite apart from the design of its strategy, in that its strategy followed a design very similar to that of other nations, apart from purely authoritarian nations able to govern by direct commands backed by sufficient force to compel obedience.

The US strategy may have placed its emphasis on slightly different components of its strategy than other nations, but it consisted of the very same components applied by other 'democratic' nations. I see its failures as not being strategic, as was implied by the interviewer's question to VP Harris, but were instead due to fundamental and systemic weaknesses in the present state of US society. So that other nations were able to obtain somewhat better results using the same set of tools, only because those systemic weaknesses were not present with the same force.

OK?

btw, your 'just needing clarification' seems like it always comes down to your wanting to make me agree with your premises, when I keep trying to get you to state what your conclusions are based on. iow, your turn to do some clarification. what's wrong with the US strategy and what do you think would be a better one to replace it with?

if your answer to "what's wrong" is merely 'it isn't working', that is insufficient. I could hand you a large square peg and ask you to fit it into a small round hole and no matter what strategy you used it would not work. My telling you you are failing at your task and suggesting you need a better strategy would be based in a wrong perception of the nature of the problem. You need to establish that the problem is susceptible to a better strategy, including its fittingness to the fundamental conditions of the problem.

tl:dr quit setting snares and start conversing

How would anarchists handle COVID?

(jk not a serious question)

committed and thoughtful anarchists probably should #useotherwordsplease given how easy it is for the VHS’s of this world to strawman them into supposedly supporting “no rules” or “state warfare” etc

― Tracer Hand, Sunday, January 16, 2022 10:42 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

why should i cater my language to this fucking unfrozen caveman liberal

it's hard sometimes living in the same world with people who aren't you

i believe tracer was making a joke

lol sorry i was more "mad at vhs" than i was "capable of comprehending tracer's post"

How would anarchists handle COVID?

(jk not a serious question)

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Sunday, January 16, 2022 3:06 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

a serious answer:

https://twitter.com/FromTheHeartPNW?t=CR1c_a2pZKQN7MALUAfbmw&s=09
https://www.instagram.com/fromtheheartpnw/?hl=en

Yeah. Also:

http://www.deanspade.net/mutual-aid-building-solidarity-during-this-crisis-and-the-next/

Stale News Break... pic.twitter.com/IeYQwOMjr9

— Insane Clown Posse (@icp) April 22, 2020

Juggalos and mutual aid/community networks have literally done a better job of caring for people.

We have a nice mutual aid center here — small, but growing. Obviously it's not a replacement for a functional public health system, or even a dysfunctional one, but it can fill some gaps.

Scale and how big things should be is a different conversation and I'm no expert about political systems. But if you start from the belief that no person is disposable and you're not going to accept a certain casualty rate as "the cost of doing business," you at least have a chance of ending up with a system that cares for people more than profits.

This has got to be one of the more vindictive US politics threads I’ve seen (not that I’m the expert on these dumpster fires, heh).

Anarchism is quite compelling in the abstract, and I’d say in terms of more speculative/futuristic depictions of anarchist society that The Dispossessed by Le Guin is worth a read.

As someone who generally subscribes to deep ecology tho, anarchism seems to be of limited effectiveness to address our current era of the “anthropocene” (=great dieoff/extinction wave caused by human activity).

It’s difficult to see the difference between ancaps and libertarians in practice and imo the climate crisis is the ultimate failure of libertarianism. I’m hard pressed to imagine how ancoms would craft a much more robust solution to the crisis, other than starting with principles based more strongly on justice and equality. The US Constitution started with principles based strongly on justice and equality too, in principle.

Doh. You have reached the Department of Redundancy Department.

I guess sic wasn't interested in discussing his perceptions about the shortcomings of the US federal government's covid strategy after all. Funny, he seemed so eager there for a while, when he thought it was all about him proving something I said was WRONG.

It’s difficult to see the difference between ancaps and libertarians in practice

I had this thought too — the differences seem to be more about assumptions of human nature and priorities than anything else. Both start from a point of functional statelessness and build their visions based on what they think would be achievable from there. My own feelings about that are that we as humans did in fact begin with statelessness, and what we have now — the range of governing arrangements we have now — is the result. I don’t know that a theoretical clean slate is going to produce a whole lot of things we haven’t already produced, although obviously if you started NOW you’d have technological possibilities we didn’t have 1,000 or 10,000 years ago.

Oh ffs did I really just write a brief essay and then delete it. You’re OTM, I just need a personal moment.

(The gist of much of it was that The Dawn of Everything, mentioned in the pseudo-pseudoscientific books thread, touches directly on the discussion of state of nature as it relates to political philosophy and especially anarchism or direct democracy. I just started reading it tho.)

I want to read that, have had it recommended by several people (including my mom).

Is there a list somewhere of all January 6 rally attendees running for office, so it can be shared widely to encourage shutting these people out of public life?

This Twitter thread seems relevant to the ILX U.S. politics thread (I agree with Roberts throughout).

The argument about "how far left" the Dem Party has moved conflates two separate questions. One is where the party is ideologically-- that is, what it would do if given the power to act freely. The other is about the party's political posture, ie, how hard it is willing to fight.

— David Roberts (@drvolts) January 18, 2022

Is there a list somewhere of all January 6 rally attendees running for office, so it can be shared widely to encourage shutting these people out of public life?

this is something that would cost very little to put together, would have some actual use, and which some office in the Democratic Party HQ should absolutely do, after a meeting or two sorting out the optics (accusing somebody of putting together a "blacklist" is the obv response, oh noes Big Brother etc). so, to do those meetings, bids will have to be solicited from several PR consultants, and then a meeting or three will need to be had comparing the bids, and then a few rounds of emails from differing perspectives about which bid is best, which will be a delicate process, because one of the PR consultants is actually my cousin's business but that's not why I think it's the best one, he really has put together the best proposal if you really look at it. I know some of you don't see it that way, but I don't want to see him shut out just because he's family, that's kind of throwing out the baby with the bathwater if you ask me! so we can discuss that on the next Zoom, which my calendar shows for February 17, which I know is late, but Linda is out for two weeks, she had back surgery. but her input is important, esp insofar as she also likes my cousin's bid. Anyway, after we get all this sorted I know this list will be very impactful at the polls, when we release it, in March of 2023.

Lol

I feel like any five activists could do this by breakfast tomorrow. That’s what I meant.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/01/05/jan-6-protesters-run-for-office-526545

there's this, typical politico in that it sort of does a good job and then fails to do the obvious good thing

The Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol is remembered as one of the darkest and most shameful episodes in American history.

But at least 57 individuals who played a role in that day’s events — either by attending the Save America rally that preceded the riots, gathering at the Capitol steps or breaching the Capitol itself — are now running for elected office.

Rather than disqualifying them from public service, the events of Jan. 6 appear to have served as a political springboard for dozens of Republicans who will be on the ballot this year for federal, state and local offices.

It’s difficult to state with precision just how many of those who participated in the rally on the Ellipse, marched to the Capitol or stormed the building will be on the ballot in 2022 — in many states, candidate filing deadlines are months away.

But a POLITICO review of Department of Justice case reports, social media posts, news accounts and interviews with attendees found that last year alone, 11 Jan. 6 protesters were elected to offices ranging from state legislature to city council to school board.

This year, more than two dozen are running for Congress, state legislature or statewide office — including at least two protesters who actually entered the Capitol. At least five Jan. 6ers are gearing up for gubernatorial races, among them Doug Mastriano, a Pennsylvania state senator and a leading voice in the national movement to discredit the 2020 election results.

they did the research, they looked it up. but if you want a list of the 57 people they identified, you came to the wrong place. instead, they're just going to interview a handful of the 57 people to get funny quotes and you'll have to guess at the rest

honestly it's all a moot point, trying to identify people who participated and shut them out of public life. conservatives are at the point where it's more of a problem if you did NOT participate. they love the january 6 people. if you were one of the 10 house GOP reps who voted to impeach trump for it, you're out of the GOP. if they say a peep about january 6 or trump being a fascist, they'll be primaried by one of the dumbest people who have ever lived in wherever the district is located

can we get a list of the people who did NOT participate in Jan 6? the GOP would like that list so they can start sinking their rotten teeth into the last bit of conscious flesh they still recognize

they'll be primaried by one of the dumbest people who have ever lived in wherever the district is located

stating the obvious, but ...and they will be defeated by one of the dumbest people who has ever lived, handily, because apparently a third of the population is packed into these really hilariously shaped districts full of people who still bust their gut at the Ernest / Hey Vern movies

Karl is correct. Trying to shame J6ers will move exactly zero votes. The people who already like those candidates will still like those candidates. Perhaps even more! But they still only get to vote once.

The people who already hate those candidates will still hate those candidates. Perhaps even more! But they still only get to vote once.

You leave Jim Varney out of this

Seriously I am not sure I believe there are persuadable voters.

Like, who are these quasi-mythical creatures who have made it to age 18 not already knowing which of our two warring tribes they are supposed to belong to?

only half-joking btw

my neighbor is hypothetically one. he is 23 and introduced himself as a "hardcore conservative" that "likes to push buttons" but wanted to hear what a "liberal thinks" and then ten minutes later was trying to tell me that he was really a "centralist"

it's just dumb as shit out here

how is he after a couple beers

after he drinks all of my beers, and smokes all my weed, and is eyeing the last wine bottle I have? that's when he starts talking about how much he hates his girlfriend, and also when he apologizes (to me, not his girlfriend) the next day and commissions something from me in apology. so good, very transactional

the national anthem of the united states is the foo fighters

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_bQ9nzt9Xo

and intersectional!

xpost

come on students, veterans, and patriots of all stripes. please remove your hat and sing along to the national anthem of the united states.

♬♪♫♬♪♫♬♪♫♬♪♫♬♪♫
𝄆 It’s times like these you learn to live again!! It’s times like these you give and give again!! 𝄇
♬♪♫

I thought we had some poll recently that indicated most Americans don’t know or don’t care about Jan 6.

Yes, if you even give a shit you are already entrenched.

these people are such babies!

If you were going to ask which party deserves the perpetual "... in disarray" label, you'd pick the one that the top chart belongs to https://t.co/6gu6hvlGuP

— David Nir (@DavidNir) January 18, 2022

how do only 10 percent of Democratic voters have unfavorable views of the party? I've voted for Democrats my whole life and always had an unfavorable view of the party. (Tho I don't consider myself "a Democrat," maybe that makes a difference in surveys like this.)

I looked at the crosstabs, and the most significant gap (within Democratic voters) is among age groups: Democratic voters 65 and older approve of the party 90%-4%, while those between 18 and 34 approve 69%-18%.

https://civiqs.com/results/favorable_democrats?uncertainty=true&annotations=true&zoomIn=true&party=Democrat

Seriously I am not sure I believe there are persuadable voters

Dan Crenshaw gets upset at a 10 year old girl at an event and gets heckled by the crowd. “Don’t question my faith.” pic.twitter.com/EYEXYpXKIB

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) January 18, 2022

In other Crenshaw news, a guy I went to high school with (nice fellow then, religious, dabbled w/the Promise Keepers, sang a Three Doors Down song at the talent show & who is now an anti-vaxxer pushing the big lie) is running as Republican for Congress, and thanks to gerrymandered redistricting, has been moved from running for an open seat in a hard R district (wherein the primary <is> the election) to having to primary Crenshaw, who had already declined to endorse him in that other race.

hope your high school classmate and Crenshaw get launched into the sun.

"Hard R district" is kind of a double entendre these days

har dee hard r

Ha even when conservatives argue amongst themselves they still manage to both be wrong

which would you rather be forced to hang out with, that girl or dan crenshaw

hope your high school classmate and Crenshaw get launched into the sun.

― we need outrage! we need dicks!! (the table is the table), Tuesday, January 18, 2022 1:47 PM (fourteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

lmaooooo

10% of voters are potential swing voters and they’re all the rich white suburbanites who voted Republican in the VA governor’s race because of school mask mandates and making little Camryn feel bad by teaching about Jim Crow.

god that crenshaw video is some deep "are we having fun yet?" hell

I did lol when people in the crowd started yelling "let's go brandon" at dick fury

ok just watched that video and the one thing i dont get is the "let's go blah blah" ??? is it just their automatic reaction to anything they don't like now?

like i knew what the phrase means or whatever but how does it apply here?

I don't think you understand how conservative memes work

you got that right

Has Trump led a Let’s Go Brandon chant at a rally yet?

My first campaign ad, ‘37 Seconds.’ #JustLikeMe

I hope this ad works to not only destigmatize the use of marijuana, but also forces a new conversation that creates the pathway to legalize this beneficial drug, and forgive those who were arrested due to outdated ideology. pic.twitter.com/G0qKvmUGKD

— Gary Chambers (@GaryChambersJr) January 18, 2022

Do you want to IMPLODE the filibuster so the Dems can RAM their voting rights legislation through Congress?

— Ron Johnson (@RonJohnsonWI) January 18, 2022

finally -- he gets it!

lmao @ those results

Has Trump led a Let’s Go Brandon chant at a rally yet?

― papal hotwife (milo z), Tuesday, January 18, 2022 1:51 PM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

even if he does get the "joke" I think his spirit is too broken to do something like this

johnson is a moron but that how to get engagement

the democrats star in ramming speed, featuring congress as "speed"

Ramming Their Agenda, Book 1 of my DC erotica series.

When Sinema pegs Romney, oh man…

enough of the fanfic

If love is good, let's get to rammin'

hope your high school classmate and Crenshaw get launched into the sun

And take Three Doors Down with them