Where Are We Runnin’? - American Politics Thread, May 2022

Mods, feel free to retitle if someone comes up with something funnier/more appropriate

Lenny Kravitz isn’t running for office as far as I know, but anything’s possible

Good morning!

Where’s the end of Matt Gaetz’s political career?

TOLEDO, OHIO — @TedCruz and I at Northwest Baptist Church getting warmed up for rally. Pastors over politicians and backboards over bricks! pic.twitter.com/NLm6X0IhvF

— Josh Mandel (@JoshMandelOhio) April 30, 2022

these people are creepy and are organizing

There’s a boot camp tomorrow in Jefferson City, MO for new “center-right” school board members to “prepare for your upcoming fight.” pic.twitter.com/qlJQ0XFitf

— Blythe Bernhard (@blythebernhard) April 30, 2022

a story in 3 parts pic.twitter.com/hsgPEHjbOh

— Matt Binder (@MattBinder) May 1, 2022

HahahahahA

The House has already passed Roe v. Wade into law. To also pass it in the Senate we'd need to expand our majority by two seats in order to work around Manchin and Sinema and exempt it from the filibuster. So that's our marching orders for midterms: flip at least two Senate seats.

— Palmer Report (@PalmerReport) May 3, 2022

Only 2

Oops, you elected two more senators who never vote for anything we need them to. Insert $25 or more to try again.

What’s the plan when the guys who’ve been loudly talking about ignoring elections for some time do just that?

Fundraise off of it.

Also gotta keep the house. Pretty sure that bill expires at the end of the term if the Senate doesn’t do anything.

yep

Is Nancy Pelosi still campaigning for Henry Cuellar in Texas or

Should the GOP take the majority, look for a federal ban.

And a ban on gender affirmation medical care, interracial marriage, gay marriage, pornography….

Really great how we’re witnessing the takeover of an entire country by the most despicable, hypocritical pieces of shit to ever walk the earth.

Alito's opinion makes it clear he'll shit on "unenumerated" rights though he hints Loving is safe.

Have media organizations dispatched personnel to random midwestern diners to take the nation’s pulse yet? Because that’s what we need now

I love the originalist argument that there’s no historical basis for reproductive rights and gay rights. Like, no shit, Sherlock. (Tho of course you can make a strong case that they proceed directly from rights that are enumerated.)

“Sorry, you didn’t have rights in the 1700s, so we can’t give them to you now.”

There's no depth to their hypocrisy of course, but I'd be curious how McConnell and Thomas would go after Loving. Interracial marriage also has 94% approval in a recent gallup poll, which I checked after Senator Cracker made his "just thinking out loud" comments about overturning it, so yeah I'm not entirely reassured either

Thomas will look under every rock for a constitutional justification for Loving, which, of course, is an example of...results-oriented jurisprudence.

Are we absolutely sure he doesn't want his marriage invalidated?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnzskbZ7xdk

Loving v Virginia, it's right there in the title

I've said it before, but you have most likely spent your whole life in a historical hiccup.

You came in at the beginning of civil rights and now you're watching the end.

So it's reasonable to think that America is turning upside down.

But it's not.

It's turning right side up.

— Absurdistwords (@absurdistwords) May 3, 2022

a terrible take.

It is true that the Warren Court was a historical aberration after 180 years of anti-democratic reaction.

Should the GOP take the majority, look for a federal ban.

Which is really outside of Congress's constitutional powers, but you can bet this Court would find the support.

i'm sick of these anti-democratic, defeatist takes on civil rights. keep fighting for something better.

Honey, I work for the local party. I'm not being defeatist. I'm pointing out the obvious.

I'm not referring to you, Alfred.

sorry

That entire Twitter thread is absolutely true. America is a deeply right-wing country that spent the last 50-60 years — only 1/4 of its history! — begrudgingly granting various groups of people rights and then fighting to claw those rights back. I don't see this ending well at all.

The implication is that America's backslide on civil rights is inevitable - I do not agree with that. This could have been avoided. Trump almost didn't win in 2016.

also the idea that America has a natural "right side up" state and it's batshit conservatism - that doesn't have to be America's fate. We are not tethered to that.

(and no worries alfred - sorry if i sounded snippy! i admire the work you do in local politics)

It was extra bleak to watch the news break between pictures of the Met Gala.

Tbh, while I am pessimistic, I’m more on crut’s side of things.

60% of people support abortion in the US
70% of people support gay marriage
94% of people support interracial marriage

The takes about this being a deeply conservative country have much basis in reality, but they overstate their case— the US is a pretty centrist to center left country being held hostage and brainwashed by a conservative, fear-mongering few who will stop at nothing to maintain their hold on power.

my point being that I don’t doubt that things will get worse, but I’m not too certain about them never getting better.

Who the fuck are the 6% who don't "support interracial marriage"?

there are more than that, they're probably just embarrassed to say it, even in anonymous polls.

in my church in the 90s, i think almost everyone opposed interracial marriage. maybe they changed their mind somewhere, but they were all adults at the time.

white evangelicals are fucking creeps, for real

Crüt otm here. There are some very specific factors that led us to this point, it was far from inevitable. Bush v Gore. Citizens United.

As to the Tweeter’s thesis, history’s baseline is harsh and violent repression. Pretty much all of it as far as I can tell.

President Joe Biden steers into midterms focused on abortion rights: “At the federal level, we will need more pro-choice senators and a pro-choice majority in the House to adopt legislation that codifies Roe, which I will work to pass and sign into law." https://t.co/y3njdIotVe

— Zach C. Cohen (@Zachary_Cohen) May 3, 2022

The numbers on interracial marriage support are pretty remarkable. As recently as 2013, it was only 87%. Karl's 90s acquaintances had lots of company (~50%); it was 4% in 1958.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/354638/approval-interracial-marriage-new-high.aspx

the US is a pretty centrist to center left country being held hostage and brainwashed by a conservative, fear-mongering few who will stop at nothing to maintain their hold on power

If this were true, then fear-mongering wouldn't be such a reliable, proven way to get and hold power.

in my church in the 90s, i think almost everyone opposed interracial marriage.

With biblical support, no doubt *rolls eyes*

i think part of what we're finding out is just how locked out of power most americans and american opinions are. there's a powerful, distributed apparatus that makes that so. it doesn't really hinge on people's political opinions i don't think. they play into it but the outcome is not making things more equal, it's the opposite. i also don't really think trump is some kind of hinge point here. i think the issue is our material reality depends on the kind of exploitative mindset that gop is a haven for.

i do think things could change for the better, but there's going to need to be something more vigorous and organized than what exists now, that's for sure.

President Joe Biden steers into midterms focused on abortion rights

Not trying to deflect at all but I can’t help but consider it: at any point did Biden take a stand for voting rights, even as far as he’s ‘taking a stand’ for abortion rights here?

Mindy Moderate of Maine:

“If this leaked draft opinion is the final decision and this reporting is accurate, it would be completely inconsistent with what Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh said in their hearings and in our meetings in my office.”

A trusted source tells me overturning Roe is unpopular by 60 to 30% in swing states and most swing districts. Let's see how the Dems can figure out how to fuck this up.

— Rick Perlstein (@rickperlstein) May 3, 2022

Look I'm practically bursting with concern I don't know what else you want from me

i also think that what's going on is less, women's rights are going a step back, or gay rights are going a step back, and more, one way to tighten the chain and eke out a few additional points of economic "growth" is to strip away more rights from powerless people.

the idea that the civil rights era is over because of a SC decision doesn't take into account that the President who got to tip of balance with 3 picks was not elected by a majority and was defeated after making the picks

the US is a pretty centrist to center left country being held hostage and brainwashed by a conservative, fear-mongering few who will stop at nothing to maintain their hold on power

If this were true, then fear-mongering wouldn't be such a reliable, proven way to get and hold power.

― but also fuck you (unperson), Tuesday, May 3, 2022 8:13 AM (twenty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

You are missing the "being held hostage" part.

i also think that what's going on is less, women's rights are going a step back, or gay rights are going a step back, and more, one way to tighten the chain and eke out a few additional points of economic "growth" is to strip away more rights from powerless people.

― the cat needs to start paying for its own cbd (map), Tuesday, May 3, 2022 4:41 PM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

also it's a huge problem that most people are on the brink economically and have to work inhuman amounts in order to keep afloat. the ability to "pay attention" to rights is extremely curtailed. no civic culture can take root in that, so we end up with craven, power-hungry vultures on both sides of the aisle who simply like to grease different wheels in order to tighten the chains around our necks. and more well-off liberal people get to play self-serving outrage games about how evil wheel x is while they all look the other way or directly contribute to the faithful humming of wheel y.

^ ^ ^

I didn't really make clear my point above, but being "held hostage" means being kept on the brink of utter financial ruin or in bitter destitution, a state where it is much easier to blame an Other than actually think about the complexity of the systems keeping so many people in their place. It's "raising the flag while we do it to 'em again."

Good thread. I agree with a lot of the analysis so far.

xp absolutely, and one of the biggest Others out there is femininity. a big strike against that is a huge win for conservatives ideologically speaking. but again the real effect of that is to make power imbalances even more entrenched (just using a very old recipe that has been out of fashion for a while and may not have as big an effect as say trade law and military spending and a huge amount of stuff that democrats LOVE, but hey, it amps up an old violent faultline and that's always good for the gop).

The draft opinion does a lot to make explicit that reproductive rights, lgbtq rights, basically all non-white-male civil rights are very much tied together — and in opposition to the "deeply rooted" traditions of the country. It ought to be a huge rallying cry, I hope it is.

i hope it is too.

i imagine it will also be one for the GOP and those who are trying to build the white nationalist theocracy, too. they smell blood. if they're cruel and heartless enough, and they stick together, they can do it too.

"if"

Cruelty and heartlessness is a given, but don't underestimate their stupidity, greed and ability to fuck things up. I don't take any of their successes as inevitable or irreversible.

i agree that their stupidity may fuck it up for them. it's happened before. but i think lately they've learned that they can just overwhelm the people who are calling them ignorants bigots by sticking together and never, ever, admitting anything they did was wrong or could be wrong.

voters are untethered from public policy (democracy is barely holding on), the politicians are untethered from the consequences of their actions, and everyone involved has an interest in turning up the volume and the heat, from the social media networks to the non-social media networks to the primary opponents to the primary incumbents, the tens of millions of people who have had an abortion in the u.s. who are attacked as criminals by the 60 or 70 million white evangelicals. some of the people being treated as murderers are white evangelicals themselves -- they see preventing abortions now as a way to atone for the thing that the evangelists are constantly telling them is murder.

my point is, it's the wild fucking west out there right now, and as crazy as it might seem, notions of being "right" or "wrong" or "obviously way the fuck wrong", or "stupid" or "ignorant" or "soul-sucking" or anything like that, they seem to matter less and less with each passing week. i'd point to mass resistance, getting in the street and taking up space and being loud, but i hope we can do that before 2024 because i'd assume that Cotton's calls to use the military to beat back protestors of police brutality will become more popular, and even in the 2020 incarnation, the proud boys and their ilk were all over the country acting as paramilitary for the cops. anyone who participated in any of that on the ground knows that. it was creepy as fuck, and it happened across the country. that's going to get stronger if trump wins, maybe even stronger if desantis wins.

we can't think for a second that they won't slam on the gas and run you over some more, on any issue they can - LGBTQ+, CRT, anything that involves acknowledging what white people did and still do. they think the U.S. is god's chosen people, or the army for israel, or whatever, and they are big fans of the old testament. the old gods lost. the old tribes were annihilated. their cities were destroyed. they flip through church weekly glossy pages talking about the Jesus who returns with a flaming sword of vengeance. "ripped jesus". they are fucking dumb, and bigoted, and ignorant. but there's 70M of them and they'll give you creepy as fuck pentecostal fake smile as they run you over

From there, if this doctrine of no right being a right but for those explicitly defined in the Constitution, one need only look to the Christian dominionist agenda of the groups that put these justices on the bench to see where it would lead. As true as it might be to say, “if they come for Roe tonight, they’re coming for marriage equality tomorrow,” there are plenty of people they have come for already, from trans kids seeking health care to people giving birth in jails to sex workers sharing harm reduction information to criminalized survivors of intimate partner violence. If you are today feeling for this first time like the government is demanding control over your gender and sexuality and bodily autonomy, you are, sadly, in large company. But that also means that there are countless people around you who already know that freedom, certainly now and maybe always, will not come solely from what the law can recognize. Either the law must be pushed to recognize those rights, or, those rights must be won despite the law.

https://newrepublic.com/article/166286/abortion-rights-roe-wade-alito-supreme-court

It occurred to me for the first time last night - if Biden & Congress don't stop this shit there's a very real possibility his presidency doesn't even make it to 2024. Am I crazy?

Are you talking impeachment? That'd be a long shot.

A conviction would be a long shot. The Republicans can justify starting one on the basis that the Democrats did it to Trump.

I'm talking the Court (in tandem with other institutions that have fallen under the control of Christian fascists) engineering a coup that doesn't look like a coup - a recall election, something along those lines.

i thought it was a foregone conclusion that if the GOP takes the house in 2022, particularly with any significant numbers, they'll impeach. very well might go to pass too, but wouldn't pass the senate, i don't think

xpost oh never mind

re: the supreme court, they're not going to do a coup pre-2024. better to just let it play out as everyone knows it's going to, and then vote 5-4 that what happened was legal

link within that new republic article: https://www.mississippifreepress.org/20042/to-rule-history-with-god-the-christian-dominionist-war-on-abortion-part-i/

really good.

i realize i've posted a lot of complete dogshit over the last 18 years so grain of salt

I mean, this is one of those days where I say to myself, "Karl's chicken little stance is certainly bearing out here."

looool, ooooof. i know, i know.

i'm going to try to do something more productive with my time. i will say, in an attempt to separate myself from the bizarro right-wing mirror images of myself (doomsayers), that i very much want to be completely wrong. being completely wrong is a very satisfying outcome in my belief system

hard to be too much of an optimist about what the Dems will do but I think even they gotta know they'll get destroyed if they just sit on their hands here

It’s unsettling just how appropriate a thread title this is as the month advances.

this is your fault, raymond! ;)

US Politics, 21st century:

‘Summoned to the Bench’

Not everyone in dominionist Christianity was pleased with Trump’s choice of Kavanaugh. In a monthly prayer call led by the NAR group Intercessors For America that Right Wing Watch reported on in 2018, Philip Jauregui, an allied attorney with the Alliance Defending Freedom and partner at an Alabama and Mississippi law firm, compared Kavanaugh to Absalom—the biblical son of King David who attempted to usurp his father’s throne.

Jauregui declared that God had already chosen a nominee to fill Kennedy’s seat: Amy Coney Barrett, whom he referred to as “the anointed one” and “the one that God loves.”

“Lord, we ask you in the name of Jesus, would you please let us see President Trump and Amy Coney Barrett Monday night, glorifying you?” prayed the ADF-allied attorney, who is also president of the Judicial Action Group, an Alabama-based judiciary-focused lobbying group.

Barrett is a Catholic member of the ecumenical religious community known as People of Praise. Its founder, Kevin Ranaghan, is a Catholic deacon and a leader of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, a Pentecostal sect of Catholicism that believes in and practices spiritual gifts. The Catholic sect, which dates back to the 1970s, has deep connections with NAR figures such as Engle, who often shares stages with like-minded Catholic clergy and teaches that God wants a reconciled Christianity to join forces and build his kingdom.

During the 2018 prayer call, Right Wing Watch reported, Jauregui “asked God to do whatever it takes—including waking up Trump, Melania, and Mike and Karen Pence in the middle of the night and sending angels their way—to keep them from settling on the wrong nominee.”

“And so we say, Absalom, you cannot have it, in the name of Jesus. And you should better leave right now. The longer you stick around, you endanger yourself by opposing God Almighty,” Jauregui cried. “And I’m speaking to the spirit … that would try to usurp and steal the throne from the anointed one. You can’t have it. We bind you, spirit of Absalom, in the name of Jesus, and we tell you, get out now or you will be destroyed.”

In Engle’s July 2, 2018, newsletter days before news of Trump’s pick broke, though, the NAR leader’s ministry had already made room for the possibility that Trump might choose someone other than Barrett to replace Kennedy.

“There is a mystery of course, that comes with the prophetic, but this much is for sure: The Ekklesia of God is being summoned to the bench! Let us not miss our day of visitation,” the newsletter said. “It’s time to wage war in the heavenly realms according to the revelation we’ve been given. … It’s time to partner with the cloud of witnesses and the angelic armies unto a Third Great Awakening and the shifting of our courts.”

from part 2 of the misssippifreepress thing i linked to earlier.

this sounds dumb, but in order to understand their belief, you have to suspend your disbelief. you have to be able to hear the words "the Ekklesia of God" and not flinch. your eyes cannot flinch at that. you have to maintain a certain facial expression and take that seriously

have any of you ever attended a school where they invited a hypnotist for "fun"? it's clear how it works - anyone who isn't willing to play along is kicked out at the beginning. the hypnotist's first task is to figure out who is playing the game

I misread that at first as "Summoned to the Beach."

I’m doing my best now to not make a dumb joke at Wavves’ expense

JD Vance won the primary

him vs Tim Ryan.

oh gee, what will the good people of Ohio decide to do?!?!!

well let's see, let's start off with who is who is the most racist. then we're going to check off the "cruelty" column. of course, both of these now fall under the heading "white ohio christians". you also get a +25 if you're a reaaaaaaaaaaaal piece of shit

damn, jd vance checks ALL of these boxes!!!!!!

*JD Vance takes a giant shit in a box marked "heathens"*

*JD Vance's polls improve +8 overnight with cryptofucks*

*great news for the economy, stocks fall -2.5%*
*we're all dying, again, stocks rise 3.4%*

Hillbilly NFT

This district went to Trump by 16%. Kudos to Glanville for running an amazing campaign against a far right opponent. Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind. https://t.co/FrxHZcH39N

— Aaron (@BobbyBigWheel) May 4, 2022

Tim Ryan's pretty racist too, it will depend on whether being 'tough on China' or Mexico sells better.

obv there are much more important things going on but something about the fact that when my time is up JD Vance will still be a United States Senator makes me just want to walk into traffic

probably has to call himself J.D. so people don't mix him up with Jack Vance

his name is Jank Dirk, he just won't say it

tim ryan is no great shakes but he did pledge to eliminate the filibuster if elected so

kinda thinking of changing my name tbh

Judge Dredd
Just Deal
Jah Dude

haaaaaaaaaaa

no, you are the true J.D.

Vance is a Jarn Dorf

xp

If nothing else, the Democratic Party is blowing up my phone

Oh yeah, the pleas for cash are coming in hot and heavy.

As much of a losing proposition as it is, the Dem party where I live just need people to run. So many uncontested seats.

This is the weirdest way to remind everyone that you fucked a literal teenager. pic.twitter.com/MxJlPkHvLO

— Ari Drennen (@AriDrennen) May 4, 2022

Overthrowing republican government in favor of a Herschel Walker/JD Vance/Tommy Tuberville triumvirate.

Needs more football players, maybe a lineman

Sing it with me folks

Whoa oooh oooh oh
Howie Long est time

He's PST I think

Because I have been married for many years, and because Gaetz is too stupid to capitalize the first letter of a product name, I literally just had to Google "bumble match."

Fuck I forgot Dr. Oz might be in the Senate too

Next pandemic we’ll have President Oz, shilling green coffee beans as a cure

Is it the Senate, or a terrible late-period Match Game panel?

House Majority Whip says that when he calls Rep Henry Cuellar his friend, he really means it. He praises Cuellar for building bridges, rather than hurling insults or avoiding colleagues pic.twitter.com/t5lOQbYA1M

— Jack Herrera (@jherrerx) May 4, 2022

Holy fuck do not search Madison Cawthorn right now

so the FL Bankers Assoc is having a dinner for Ron DeSantis tonight at this downtown Tampa hotel where I’m staying for work. wonder how fast they’ll have me forcibly removed if, should we have the unlikely occasion to cross paths, I cordially extend him the option of sucking my dick from the back?

Tampa is nice this time of year, sorry

A new hit against me just dropped.

Years ago, in this video, I was being crass with a friend, trying to be funny.

We were acting foolish, and joking.

That’s it.

I’m NOT backing down.

I told you there would be a drip drip campaign.

Blackmail won't win. We will.

— Madison Cawthorn (@CawthornforNC) May 4, 2022

Like the video is blurry enough just say it ain’t you. Have you learned nothing from the Trump years

why is every day of this idiotic man’s life a fraternity hazing event

Just cousins bein cousins

what's the new video? Just the groin grope?

looks more like a video rated .5 stars on a gay porn tube because it’s too short and all you see is ass

How is he not naming names about who invited him to the coke orgies at this point?

in other words it’s clearly supposed to be a smear, a homophobic smear.

i hate Cawthorn but the logic driving this group’s campaign against him is equally fucking reprehensible

I’ve seen enough. Our next president.

https://frinkiac.com/img/S11E16/709960.jpg

I don't like him at all, but straight guys who have male friends who are mostly gay have been big in my life

This is the accurate take and why I’m only partially joking about him being a better candidate now than DeSantis, at least:

The video seems very bad, but there’s a pretty stunning lack of knowledge in bro culture from progressives on here who never left the quiet dorm. That doesn’t mean Cawthorn isn’t a shit head — he is! But a lot of people on here have no ability to understand fratty bro culture.

— Tyler Dinucci!! (@TylerDinucci) May 4, 2022

I admit, I have made little effort to understand fratty bro culture.

in other words it’s clearly supposed to be a smear, a homophobic smear.

i hate Cawthorn but the logic driving this group’s campaign against him is equally fucking reprehensible

― we need outrage! we need dicks!! (the table is the table),

tabes, I think you're missing the point. The leaks are not for you and me. The leaks are meant for donors and colleagues as evil as Cawthorn. Calling them homophobic is description, not criticism.

Fraternity culture is all about domination and submission, it makes perfect sense that certain homosexual acts happen in fraternities, whether consensual or not.

Sleeping in bed together naked? Exaggerated moaning and actual dicksucking? I mean come on, this kid is gay as the day is long and also a total fucking piece of shit! The problem isn’t the first part but the last part! Even some left types seem gleeful! It’s fucked!

in other words it’s clearly supposed to be a smear, a homophobic smear.

i hate Cawthorn but the logic driving this group’s campaign against him is equally fucking reprehensible

― we need outrage! we need dicks!! (the table is the table),

tabes, I think you're missing the point. The leaks are not for you and me. The leaks are meant for donors and colleagues as evil as Cawthorn. Calling them homophobic is description, not criticism.

Republicans engaging in homophobia against their own?! Shock!

It's not clear from what you wrote, unless I misinterpreted it. That's why I couldn't stand when libs felt a need to posture on Twitter last week. "I hate Cawthorn BUT no one should attack him for wearing women's clothing," etc.

Read the room, ladies and gents. This is intraparty civil war.

This is North Carolina's atrocious GOP establishment attacking an atrocious man.

Whoever is leaking this is kind of fucking up bc the coke orgies story probably would’ve been forgotten in a week, people on the left probably assumed he just made it up and people on the right could easily convince themselves it was actually the Democrats, those sick fucks. Now everyone knows the story is true and if he loses re-election he’ll probably start naming names, unless they have more on him I suppose. Based on the story about his ex-wife it seems pretty clear the dude is really easy to manipulate if nothing else.

I know this is all reprehensible, but "sleeping in bed together naked" is a fantasy of mine

My favorite late-period Elton John tune.

Madison Cawthorn Says 'Blackmail Won't Win' After Nude Thrusting Video Leaks

Nude Thrusting Video

Ron Johnson Says 'Blackmail Won't Win' After Nude Thrusting Video Leaks

Ted Cruz Says 'Blackmail Won't Win' After Nude Thrusting Video Leaks

Tom Cotton Says 'Blackmail Won't Win' After Nude Thrusting Video Leaks

“Nude Thrusting Video Leaks”

Headline writer having a blast here

“Love will will, blackmail will lose”

Will WIN

Jeez

6-87: Senate rejected Sanders (I-VT) motion to instruct their negotiators with the House that semiconductor manufacturing companies receiving federal aid in the science and tech research funding bill don't block their employees from unionizing and outsource their jobs. pic.twitter.com/wPSf6M3s7F

— Craig Caplan (@CraigCaplan) May 4, 2022

"Nude Thrusting Video Leaks" would have been a great thread title.

Thrusting but never busting

Let that please not be the title of the thread the month Roe v. Wade goes down

I mean come on, this kid is gay as the day is long and also a total fucking piece of shit! The problem isn’t the first part but the last part! Even some left types seem gleeful! It’s fucked!

the thing that really needs to be talked about is his handwriting

This was written by a sitting member of Congress pic.twitter.com/xXqxnTmj06

— Matty £. A. (@poloshot) May 5, 2022

idk, unless his penmanship has been like this since the 2nd grade, going after a person's handwriting after being in a car accident is weak.

Young people learn to type

i guess i didn't really consider that the accident may have affected it

PS: Key Bump Y/N?

xp unless that post was about misspelling "adversaries"

Things are totally normal here in Texas

Abbott said Wednesday that Texas would consider challenging a 1982 Supreme Court decision requiring states to offer free public education to all children, including those of undocumented immigrants. https://t.co/mkp3oMbw4g

— Austin Statesman (@statesman) May 5, 2022

Alfred, I understand what’s going on, the issue is that while the smears aren’t for you or me, we’re still exposed to them due to the nature of the media environment. It’s not shocking, of course, and perhaps I’ve gotten mushy or something, but I still find it upsetting.

Not really sure why you’re going so hard on quibbling with me about this, but to be jonest I truly don’t appreciate it.

And in fact, I don’t really understand what you’re saying. That because it’s intraparty civil war that it doesn’t matter? That because the homophobic quality of the attacks is mere description rather than criticism that they shouldn’t concern us? I find that line of argument appalling, to be frank.

I apologize. I'm thinking as a Floridian pummeled by what my state has done to us in the last six weeks. I have to choose what appalls me. As a writer once said, there's an awful lot of nadir out there. I'm done with the quixoticism of shaming Republicans. I know you didn't do this, but I want it on the record.

obv I can't tell you what you should be appalled about

Tampa is nice this time of year, sorry

Thanks, and obviously much empathy for you. Things are certainly more grim from your standpoint, so I get yr perspective— big ups to you

Susan Collins a NO on D bill to codify abortion rights. Says it’s too broad and “doesn’t protect the right of a Catholic hospitals to not perform abortions. That right has been enshrined in law for a long time.” She voted against similar bill in Feb. The bill will stall next week

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) May 5, 2022

starting to think she might not be very smart

i can't believe i owned susancollins2020.com for a year before the election and didn't do jack shit with it

although, i owned a fake donaldtrump website for a while and it got a total of 131 views, 128 of them from me

I think forcing to catholics to perform abortions, in full clerical garb on an altar, with incense & candles burning... was the whole point of Roe V., right?

So if the bill made exceptions for catholic hospitals, she'd sign?

I think we have better odds on changing the pope’s mind than her doing jack shit ever to help this, maybe even if he did.

i won't be satisfied until i get another incredibly boring and self righteous one hour speech from susan collins which leaves the actual decision just out of reach for the first forty minutes

hurt me susan

i want you to bore the living hell out of me

“In an interview with the San Antonio Report, Clyburn downplayed the significance of abortion among his party’s base.” #TX28 https://t.co/Syf2iakd9K

— Waleed Shahid (@_waleedshahid) May 6, 2022

hurt me susan

― Bruce Stingbean (Karl Malone), Thursday, May 5, 2022 7:29 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

i want you to bore the living hell out of me

― Bruce Stingbean (Karl Malone),

She'll whip you with a Kazuo Ishiguro novel?

'WE SHOULD NOT DEFUND': In new letter to ⁦@SpeakerPelosi⁩ obtained by @NBCNews, nearly 20 House Democrats — many vulnerable — call for a vote on legislation to boost police funding https://t.co/jwmjfA150n

— Scott Wong (@scottwongDC) May 6, 2022

In an effort to address rising crime rates

luv how this is taken for granted

Despicable.

“Cutting to the bone only weakens any profession; it pushes good people out, diminishes overall quality, and fuels a race to the bottom. That’s especially true in law enforcement,” the lawmakers wrote.

Maybe public school teachers? Does that make sense? No, that can’t be right.

Cops as teachers.

Starting to think they shouldn’t let Joe speak in public.

Good news:

In a sign that federal labor officials are closely scrutinizing management behavior during union campaigns, the National Labor Relations Board said Friday that it had found merit in accusations that Amazon and Starbucks had violated labor law.

At Amazon, the labor board found merit to charges that the company had required workers to attend anti-union meetings at a vast Staten Island warehouse where the Amazon Labor Union won a stunning election victory last month. The determination was communicated to the union Friday by an attorney for the labor board’s regional office in Brooklyn, according to Seth Goldstein, a lawyer representing the union.

Such meetings, often known as “captive audience” meetings, are legal under current labor board precedent. But last month, the board’s general counsel, Jennifer Abruzzo, issued a memo saying that the precedent was at odds with the underlying federal statute, and she indicated that she would seek to challenge it.

In the same filing of charges, the Amazon Labor Union accused the company of threatening to withhold benefits from employees if they voted to unionize, and of inaccurately indicating to employees that they could be fired if the warehouse were to unionize and they failed to pay union dues. The labor board also found merit to these accusations, according to an email from the attorney at the regional office, Matt Jackson.

Steve Schmidt going ham on John and Meghan McCain is quite the spectacle.

https://steveschmidt.substack.com/p/no-books-no-money-just-the-truth?s=r

yeah this is way outside the usual dirt:

During my final call with the lobbyist, as she heard my young kids crying in the background, she told me that she wished that they could die so that I could share the depths of pain she felt when John McCain called her a “good friend” during his news conference denying the relationship. Twenty minutes later, John McCain called me panicked – he insisted that I apologize to her, or else his campaign would be over. I told John to “fuck himself,” and yet again, against my better judgment, I returned to the campaign trail.

You see, when I was 36 years old, I did not understand the difference between integrity and loyalty.

O RLY

wonder if he’s just sad he fell out of the news cycle after the lincoln project crap blew up

he probably has a book coming out, right?

oh, he’s specifically tweeted that he does _not_ have a book coming out. just the substack. lol

i can't wait to read cindy and meghan mccain's rejoinders on their substacks

he seems the most angry at all about meghan mccain. has she just been making fun of him on the view for the last 10 years or something? i missed some of that drama on account of it involving either a steve schmidt or meghan mccain

this kicked off yesterday after Meghan McCain liked a tweet that said that ran a pedo ring

that he (Schmidt) ran one

damn, i always forget that conservatives are having a moment with pedophilia right now, circular firing squad

tbf the other project lincoln guy might have been

My god can we just bring back Mr. Choppy already?

Political hatchet men turning the blade on everyone they ever collected a paycheck from is one of my favorite sports.

A winning message.

We need to get away from the idea that every kid has to go to college. Normalize treating trade school as important as a 4-year degree.

— Congressman Tim Ryan (@RepTimRyan) May 8, 2022

It is tho! There is more honor in being a tradesperson than having a fucking mba

It is = it should be

college is a scam but i wonder if tim ryan is addressing the actual problem by proposing free trade school oh wait

I totally agree….but why do I have the sneaking suspicion that this refrain from the gop and Sensible Centrists Dems just amounts to more misery for normal ppl?

Many's the day I wish I'd become a union plumber or HVAC repairman.

At a moment when public education receives less dough than ever from state capitols and academics like me get pummeled daily, getting to the right of the GOP on education is precisely what we need.

Look, kidding aside, I've been saying the same thing for years. My electrician is better educated and has more honor than an MBA (any "College of Business" is a racket). But I'm not running for Senate -- yet. Floridians, you're on notice.

I think trade schools are good options, and at the same time I always bristle at the right's embrace of CTE because it goes hand-in-hand with their contempt for higher education more broadly. I'm sure in their mind there's limited risk of trade schools going woke on them.

People go to college because there are fewer and fewer jobs that provide a living wage you can get without a four-year degree. that won't change until companies stop listing it as a basic job requirement. Once "trade schools" have the same prevalence in job listings as a bachelor's degree the institutions that award them will start charging exorbitant tuition too. And it'll still be used a quick and legal way to weed out the majority of applicants in a market with far more applicants than jobs.

I'd also force companies that hired college grads to pay the student loan debts of their hires. They're the ones that chiefly benefit from the education, so they should be paying the cost of it.

I wish I'd become a union plumber

And you get paid while you're training, rather than paying for it

My late stepdad was a union electrician (Int'l Brotherhood) and made a boatload of money, more than I'll ever make

i work for a trade school and we are working directly with employers to remove degree requirements. they have to play along, they don't really have a choice in this market xx

The trades suck, don't pay particularly well (outside of some heavily unionized states) and destroy your body. Every single plumber/HVAC/electrician I grew up around (because my father and grandfather were roofers before going into more general contracting) had awful back and knee problems - sometimes multiple surgeries (and sometimes not, because surgery is expensive and it's not really a gold plan insurance included with your job kind of world). 99% of the time I hear someone pining about the glories of the trades, they themselves have a college degree and work in air conditioning.

They all wound up dead early (because working class men) or had to go to work for Lowe's or Home Depot when they aged out of being able to climb up a ladder into an attic to work for eight hours in 105F heat.

.@POTUS strongly believes in the Constitutional right to protest. But that should never include violence, threats, or vandalism. Judges perform an incredibly important function in our society, and they must be able to do their jobs without concern for their personal safety.

— Jen Psaki (@PressSec) May 9, 2022

Meet 5/9--the new 1/6

Every single plumber/HVAC/electrician I grew up around (because my father and grandfather were roofers before going into more general contracting) had awful back and knee problems

Yeah, my uncle was an independent handyman for the last 20 years or so of his career. He was a big guy, and by the time he got to age 60, it got really hard for him to do the work — climbing ladders, getting under porches, etc. He basically had to retire early and go on disability, which was not much of a retirement. His oldest son had to move in to take care of him until he died.

I do think you can do all right at the levels a couple above where my uncle was, he wasn't a skilled electrician or anything like that. But it's true that almost all of the trades are hard and physical work, and outside of union jobs don't have great benefits.

As my grandfather said, "Of course work sucks — that's why they have to pay you to do it."

all jobs under capitalism require sacrificing some part of your body or soul to constant repetition and degradation.

there's education and then there's institutional education as it exists in the united states, two very different things that very very occasionally coincide.

all jobs under capitalism require sacrificing some part of your body or soul to constant repetition and degradation.

― the cat needs to start paying for its own cbd (map)

like bad sex

--Bob Marley

bahd sex

Not all jobs under capitalism carry similar risks of heatstroke or ‘cutting off a finger.’

well, you can get an MBA and cut figurative and occasionally literal fingers from the working class

Outside of the 'trades' (i.e. construction trades), there are plenty of other occupations that would fit in well with vocational education - i.e auto repair, small engine repair, electronics, piano tuning, etc. Somebody has to know how to actually make the wine and fix pumps and shit like that, beyond the college-educated folks and the horrendous debt that many of them accrue

So yeah, I think trade schools are a great idea for those who don't feel drawn to a tradition 4 year education.. Germany has a great apprenticeship program that's very popular, we could use something like that

Whew, we can all relax

Senate Minority Mitch McConnell on national abortion ban: “I will never -- never -- support smashing the legislative filibuster on this issue or any other.” via @StevenTDennis https://t.co/t8ZIJhpP3m

— Zach C. Cohen (@Zachary_Cohen) May 9, 2022

The problem with fetishism of manual labor by non-manual laborers is that the weight of this coughcough better choice inevitably falls on the already economically disadvantaged. It's not going to be Tim Ryan's child shuffled into the 'vocational track' in school or encouraged to give money to a for-profit trade school afterward.

trade schools don't teach that pesky critical thinking stuff either, here in WI the GOP types love them and fund them like crazy while the state university system gets cut and downsized

New Course: CRT & The Art of F-450 Maintenance

.@SpeakerPelosi: "I want the Republican Party to take back the party to where you were when you cared about a woman's right to choose, you cared about the environment. Here I am, Nancy Pelosi, saying this country needs a strong Republican Party. Not a cult." pic.twitter.com/h12SSFQKdk

— The Hill (@thehill) May 9, 2022

It’s rough because not everyone can move out of the physical part of the trades, but I have family who have both been union and then went into management to run a union shop (construction trades) and a close friend who ended up moving into a salaried position after being in the machinists union for a number of years

there’s also going into a union role as opposed to a union-represented role because there’s a need for instructors, reps, etc

that still leaves a large number of people that fall into the cracks, but with union representation you end up with better rotation within a role, etc, that minimizes the chance of rsi and so on, and a chance to file grievances

got to listen to my dad complain a little recently about how his former coworkers went to a job fair to recruit and didn’t push people into the union training as aggressively as he’d like, and that felt nice

xp is there another political party anywhere on Earth whose leaders say they "need" a strong opposition party. It sounds as deranged as the Joker saying he and Batman need each other. Of course what she feels she needs it for is to form a coalition to keep her own party's base in check.

Most people currently alive have never heard of Republicans formerly caring about the issues she cites, unless she's talking about Nixon's era when they were slightly more indifferent to them.

it’s a pretty common trope in british politics actually, though usually deployed smugly after some spectacular bout of self-immolation by the opposition

The main one I can think of is Conservatives/Republicans as stewards of the land/conservationists whereas now they’re all climate change cynics/deniers.

Good morning!

Pelosi fucking sucks but I feel like she says that stuff to troll Republicans sometimes

Nah. Paul Campos otm:

I think what Pelosi was trying to convey was something like "we need a neoliberal party to check the excesses of a genuine social democratic party." (The excesses being taxing Nancy Pelosi et. al. at "unreasonable" rates).

The problem is that we already have the former party. She's the legislative head of it in fact. What we don't have in any form anywhere is the latter. Instead we have a theocratic authoritarian ethno-nationalist party that considers the neoliberals to be the equivalent of Stalin and Mao.

...or Che Quevara!

Desantis is mad today about college students wearing Che Guevara (which he can’t pronounce) tee shirts. Meanwhile, FL has an affordable housing problem facing crisis levels that he doesn’t seem to care about. pic.twitter.com/snic7lBFVD

— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) May 9, 2022

Such is the state of the modern day conservative that I can come away from an obit like this thinking, she seemed fun...

NEW YORK (AP) — Midge Decter, a leading neoconservative writer and commentator who in blunt and tenacious style helped lead the right’s attack in the culture wars as she opposed the rise of feminism, affirmative action and the gay rights movement, has died at age 94.

Decter, the wife of retired Commentary editor and fellow neoconservative Norman Podhoretz, died Monday at her home in Manhattan. Daughter Naomi Decter said her health had been failing, but did not cite a specific cause of death.

Like her husband, Midge Decter was a onetime Democrat repelled in the ’60s and after by what she called “heedless and mindless leftist politics and intellectual and artistic nihilism.” Confrontation energized her: She was a popular speaker, a prolific writer and, as she described it, “the requisite bad guy on discussion panels” about the cultural issues of the moment. Her books included “Liberal Parents, Radical Children,” “The New Chastity” and the memoir “An Old Wife’s Tale.”

In 2003, she received a National Humanities Medal, cited as one who “has never shied from controversy.”

Calling herself an “ardent ideologue,” she faulted affirmative action for causing “massive seizures of self-doubt” among Black people. She attacked gays as reckless and irresponsible, and alleged that they had removed themselves from “the tides of ordinary mortal existence.”

Feminism was her special target. “The Libbers,” as she called them, “had created a generation of self-centered and unsatisfied women ‘hopping from marriage to marriage,’ resenting their children for limiting their personal freedom and pressuring themselves to have careers they might not have wanted.

The real agenda of feminism was to leave a woman “as unformed, as able to act without genuine consequence, as the little girl she imagines she once was and longs to continue to be,” Decter wrote.

Her opinions were not left unanswered.

The poet and activist Adrienne Rich once wrote that Decter suffered from “a strange lack of information about the unfilled needs, let alone the enormous destructiveness, of the social order which she so admires.” Responding to a 1980 article by Decter about gay people, Gore Vidal remarked that “she has managed not only to come up with every known prejudice and superstition about same-sexers but also to make up some brand-new ones.”

Decter, Vidal added, “writes with the authority and easy confidence of someone who knows that she is very well known indeed to those few who know her.”

In her early years, Decter did not uphold tradition; she challenged it. Born Midge Rosenthal in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1927, she was the youngest of three girls and, apparently, the loudest. “Annoyingly talkative” was her family’s consensus, she recalled, underlined by “a certain note of turbulence.”

As a teenager, she acted out, 1940s style — cutting school on occasion to smoke, swear, drink “gallons” of Pepsi and talk about boys and sex. She dreamed a liberal dream. Visits to relatives in Brooklyn left her longing for the “bustle and the smells and the variety” of a big city. She dropped out of the University of Minnesota and transferred to New York’s Jewish Theological Seminary.

In 1948, she married Jewish activist Moshe Decter and for a time lived in leftist paradise, Greenwich Village. Her decision to divorce her first husband had a similar ring to the words of an imagined suburban housewife (“Is this all there is?”) in a book Decter would very much dislike, Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique.”

“Divorce begins in that moment when one looks into the mirror and says, ‘Is THIS all there is going to be forever?’” Decter wrote in her memoir, published in 2001.

She doubted the modern wish to “have it all,” but Decter managed a full life of family, work and material comfort. She was married more than 50 years to Podhoretz and had four children, two with each husband. (All four worked in journalism and son John Podhoretz eventually became editor of Commentary). She wrote for several publications, from The Weekly Standard to The New Republic. She was an editor at Basic Books and executive editor at Harper’s magazine, where she helped work on what became Norman Mailer’s award-winning book “The Armies of the Night.” She founded the anti-Communist “Committee for the Free World” and was a member of the conservative watchdog Accuracy in Media.

Her turn to the right, like her husband’s, was personal and political. She and Podhoretz were longtime Manhattan residents who had socialized with Mailer, Lillian Hellman and others from whom they became bitterly estranged. In her memoir, Decter accused her leftist opponents of not simply disagreeing with their country, but wishing for its downfall — an attitude she feared would spread to her own family.

“Living as I had been, and where I had been, I had been subjecting my own children to danger: the danger they would be worn down and jaded before they ever had the chance, or the spiritual wherewithal, to take on the chills and spills of real adulthood.” she wrote.

“Put those feelings and ideas all together, and they amounted to what would one day come to be called neoconservatism.”

I only learned about her existence reading about her in Vidal essays.

I imagine she’s in straight Christian heaven now, appointed as a celestial servant of rush Limbaugh’s golden mansion

You reap what you sow bitch

DeSantis signed into law House Bill 395, designating 7 November as Victims of Communism Day... DeSantis signed into law House Bill 395, designating 7 November as Victims of Communism Day.

Florida is one of a handful of states to adopt the designation, but is believed to be the first to mandate school instruction on that day.

The instruction will begin in the 2023-2024 school year, DeSantis said, and will require teaching about Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong and Fidel Castro, as well as “poverty, starvation, migration, systemic lethal violence, and suppression of speech” endured under their leaderships in the Soviet Union, China and Cuba respectively.

Educators in Florida are banned, however, from teaching students about racial issues, including the history of slavery, if it makes them “feel uncomfortable”, according to DeSantis’s recently signed Stop Woke Act.

STOP THE WOKE, Y'all

stwoked

Chris Smalls is making good trouble and helping inspire a new movement of labor organizing across the country. Let’s keep it going. pic.twitter.com/oHMuVqf6TS

— President Biden (@POTUS) May 11, 2022

credit for this stuff, and for not getting us into a nuclear war

Hahaha!

A state judge struck down new congressional districts in north Florida on Wednesday, saying that Governor Ron DeSantis, who drew the lines, had made it harder for Black voters to elect the candidate of their choice...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/11/florida-election-congressional-map-ron-desantis-judge

NEW: "The public views inflation as the top problem facing the United States – and no other concern comes close." https://t.co/EgdzfEDyPG pic.twitter.com/ZunGMPBDil

— John Gramlich (@johngramlich) May 12, 2022

20% believe gun violence is 'not a problem at all'? wtf

Obviously the real problem is the economic structure that makes at least half the country so vulnerable to simple price fluctuations, but when you're drowning it's hard to view the larger perspective.

20% believe gun violence is 'not a problem at all'? wtf

20% believe it's a "small problem". it looks like about 4% believe it's "not a problem at all". that seems about right to me - i'd say at LEAST 5% of the country are the ones who not-so-secretly harbor a desire to shoot someone before they die

not sure if this absolutely scandalous situation and incredibly frightening has been discussed here, but you'll be glad to know the government is on top of things

Just called Sen. Feinstein’s office to ask about plans for addressing the infant formula crisis, and they had no idea what I was talking about.

— Lila Byock (@LByock) May 12, 2022

yes, but not enough gun violence could also be seen as a problem

xp

The committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob has subpoenaed five Republican members of Congress, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), after they refused to cooperate with the panel’s inquiry.

Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), who chairs the select committee, said Thursday that the panel has subpoenaed McCarthy and Reps. Mo Brooks (Ala.), Andy Biggs (Ariz.), Scott Perry (Pa.) and Jim Jordan (Ohio).

They'll continue to stonewall because they know there won't be any serious repercussions for them by doing so.

Oh for sure. The question is what happens when they ignore the subpoena. I’m guessing it will be unprecedented, both sides will be shocked, and somehow it will be up to the upstanding voters of the United States of America to make their voice heard clear in an election, at which point hundreds of others of new problems will be more pressing. Just like all those lawsuits against trump which are definitely going to end with some real consequences at some point


btw trump sold the old post office pavilion that he converted into a hotel for wannabe fascists to suck his dick. It was obviously a gigantic conflict of interest from day one, no one even bothered to pretend, the contract even had a clause saying that it could not be used for anything that would provide a political benefit, etc etc. It took 6 years but they finally Settled earlier this year. I’m too lazy to look up the settlement on my stupid phone, but it was peanuts and had absolutely ZERO value of deterrence. After the settlement costs and other meaningless bullshit, trump is estimated to have made about $100M in profit on the sale. All while doing the illegal things in plain sight and bragging about it.

That’s how I expect the Jan 6 commission’s subpoenas to work out, more or less

feels like a microcosm of US politics that prominent democrats are not aware of the problem while republicans are aware of the problem and are immediately trying to use it to call for genocide pic.twitter.com/6zlNCjjKNZ

— flglmn (@flglmn) May 12, 2022

That's a dumb tweet the way it's arranged. I put on boots to wade into Nehls' Twitter feed and, maybe I'm wrong, but it looks like he was responding to the Byock tweet, not getting ahead of it.

obviously nehls is not responding to byock? it's two tweets about the same thing.

American baby formula should go to American babies.

— Troy Nehls (@SheriffTNehls) May 12, 2022

Thanks -- just after lunch too.

Troy Nehls favors strict government control over which babies get formula and which babies don't? I'd love to hear more about this new government program for ensuring all American babies get all the infant formula they want or need! Sounds wonderful!

personally i'd like to hear what the democrats plan to do about this one.

Feinstein has all the formula cause it’s the only thing she can eat these days

Give baby food to illegals.

Dianne Feinstein gave birth in 1957 https://t.co/d0gnzuLeFy

— Nausicaa Renner 🪱 (@nausjcaa) May 12, 2022

i'm a shitposter not a logistics expert but this seems ... minimal

Here are the steps the White House just announced to help relieve the baby formula shortage: Increased flexibility for the WIC program, calling on the FTC and state AGs to crack down on price gouging and allowing more imports of baby formula --> pic.twitter.com/FLUOZAqK1s

— Kevin Robillard 🇺🇸 (@Robillard) May 12, 2022

Yikes, if one of the main responses includes “calling on state AGs”, that’s worse than nothing. Almost a third of those state AGs are aligned with the guy who hates immigrants so much that he wants their children to die first

Who hates immigrants so much that their children dying first is not only something he has thought about something he believes is common sense and a good political tactic to highlight

Just killing the children is the moderate position

Meanwhile Steve Schmidt has serious crazy-guy-with-a-sign-with-too-many-words-on-it energy.

I meant it pic.twitter.com/9MWlmDdXQz

— Steve Schmidt (@SteveSchmidtSES) May 12, 2022

https://frinkiac.com/img/S05E09/889487.jpg

oops
https://frinkiac.com/img/S05E09/889487.jpg

tl,dr something about trade federations

In THIS household
We are NOT AFRAID of anyone
We HOLD THE LINE
We are not taking ONE FUCKING STEP backward
We are sick of the BULLSHIT
And we will beat your ass

Yikes, if one of the main responses includes “calling on state AGs”, that’s worse than nothing. Almost a third of those state AGs are aligned with the guy who hates immigrants so much that he wants their children to die first

― Bruce Stingbean (Karl Malone), Thursday, May 12, 2022 3:27 PM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

the immigrant thing is a distraction intended to flood the zone with shit and i regret posting it here. the problem is not: do we give formula to one group of babies or another. it's: stores don't have enough formula to feed even a small fraction of babies.

In THIS household
We are NOT AFRAID of anyone
We HOLD THE LINE
We are not taking ONE FUCKING STEP backward
We are sick of the BULLSHIT
And we will beat your ass

And that's OK. And here's why.

Many XPs. FWIW, Troy Nehls was the corrupt & racist sheriff of my home county in Texas.

Fun Fact: my Mom had an encounter with him after he was brought in to deal with a multi-part pileup she was in heading to work one afternoon. Apparently the car that instigated the wreck had a Hispanic passenger with priors, and Nehls himself tried (and failed) to lean on my Mom and others to say they saw him throw drugs out of the car after their search turned up nothing.

Corporate greed is at the heart of the baby formula crisis America's parents are facing. Just five months ago one of the leading manufacturers of baby formula — Abbott — spent $5 billion on stock buybacks for wealthy shareholders, despite safety and production issues.

— Ron Wyden (@RonWyden) May 12, 2022

Mr. Choppy for the executives and board of Abbott IMO

Better: force them to eat baby food at bayonet point for the rest of their lives.

let's think outside of the box. inside the box, democrats are going to get absolutely destroyed in the mid-terms. that wasn't preordained, even though people have been saying it since Biden won the primary. but now, on their current path, having seen how they've responded to criticism and the experience of failing and are now doing....nothing? nothing at all??...it is time to get outside of the box.

here is my idea. they need to just start lying their asses off and reinventing the past. for example, BBB. that was a massive failure. the good news is that americans have NO idea what BBB is. i estimate that it's around 2-4%, tops. and those 2-4% definitely already know who they're voting for. the solution: don't worry about BBB! that didn't happen! if they get asked about it, just fucking lie. say you don't know what it is. better business bureau? but that's still there! why would we need to pass a law to create one? see? it's easy. just lie. THEN, try your do best to do ONE thing that is remotely fucking helpful for anyone, ever, and then if it happens, hold a parade and hire the blue angels to buzz the audience and then have little popsicles float down with tiny umbrellas. the kids will love, the adults will love it. just do stuff like that. forget about policy, forget about BBB, forget about saving lives or stopping fascism or any of that stuff, just ascend to the land of make believe and hold court there. "you take the earth -- we'll take the clouds" should be the slogan

THEN, try your do best to do ONE thing that is remotely fucking helpful for anyone, ever, and then if it happens, hold a parade and hire the blue angels to buzz the audience and then have little popsicles float down with tiny umbrellas.

and we should be iterating on the good ideas and expanding on them indefinitely. i look at my suggestion above and see that it's not going to work. it involves the democrats doing something remotely fucking helpful first, and then trumpeting that fact. so let's do away with the helpful part. let's just start with the parade and the popsicles with umbrellas. maybe THAT's the helpful thing that democrats can really do. and then tell the people about that, let them see what democrats do

remember when they stopped the eviction moratorium and jen psaki said it's ok because they were encouraging lawyers to represent tenants in eviction court? everything they do has that same energy of "we'll just ask people to follow the rules"

I get how Manchinema have blocked legislation, but it would help if the DNC and Senate/House reelection campaigns, with their considerable cash, would pay for vulgar mendacious attack ads aimed at the GOP.

as usual i've been following along with josh marshall as he tries to figure out what the hell is going on. lately he's been going on about the idea of running on the idea of getting 52 senators - explicitly telling voters that if they can get them to 52 votes (or 53, possibly, hopefully not more than that), then they "will" abolish the filibuster and codify Roe (too little too late, possibly, with that, but at least something concrete). on an abstract level i think this would be great. i would absolutely love to get a list of legislation that WILL be passed if the Democrats can gain a couple members to offset Manchin and Sinema (both of whom should wreck themselves before they wreck themselves). i think that really would be a powerful motivator in races across the country, to have that guarantee to Democratic voters that THIS time, they're pledging to do x y and z, that they know they'll need to abolish the filibuster and they have at least 2 members who choke on shit, so they need 2 more. it would be energizing to have some of reconnection between cause and effect.

however -- back in real life, which fucking blows, that's a terrible idea. it only makes sense to the 73,516 people in this country who even know how many senators there are, or how many votes are needed to pass something, or that it's technically 50 but in reality it's 60, or how many senators the democrats have right now, or who joe manchin or sinema are, or how long a senate term is, or how long a supreme court term is. even if you could somehow get that message out, "we need your help to get to 52, and that's what when we'll do these things", the natural response among the vast majority of people who don't know and are just guessing is "but if you already have 50, and you already have 50, why do you need 52?", and if you explain why well, because we actually need 60 because of this thing that sounds like it's a 1920's theme bar, but we need 50 votes to end that, and 2 of the votes are..." NOPE!! you already lost!!! it's too complicated!! lol

and that's before you even get to the gerrymandering in the house which forces Democrats to win several percentage points more than 50% in the national election in order to maintain a majority. good luck explaining that one.

I think republicans understand this. what is the most complicated issue they present to their base? what is the most complicated thing they ask them to understand?

xp

i'm on day two of zero meds (after tapering) and i am cranky as fuck, i'm sorry

honestly i think the most complicated issue they present to voters is stuff like "should i tolerate people who kneel during the national anthem?" people rightly criticize that as culture war bullshit, but that is an ethical dilemma that comes close to overloading the systems of their patriotic fascist base, one which can only be resolved by looking at each other and nodding along as they all listen to big daddy tell them "no, the people who kneel are bad americans and they are lying about racism"

explicitly telling voters that if they can get them to 52 votes (or 53, possibly, hopefully not more than that), then they "will" abolish the filibuster

Approximately five people would believe this.

cue film of Joe Biden promising people $2k if they elected Warnock and Panera Boy

this is definitely the party that just needs a little more help getting over the finish line

Pelosi continues backing Cuellar: "I’m supporting Henry Cuellar, he’s a valued member of our caucus. The FBI has said he’s not under investigation."

"He is not pro-choice, but we didn’t need him" to pass abortion-rights legislation in the House

— Natalie Andrews (@nataliewsj) May 12, 2022

this has to be the last 8 months with Pelosi at the helm, right? assuming Democrats even hold onto the house? if they lose, obviously she's done and hopefully she'll just move on to being an incredibly rich private citizen and living her dream life while everyone else gets fucked.

but if they somehow hold on, if there is anything resembling a god in this universe, if they vote for Pelosi again, they don't deserve a single vote for the rest of this century

Approximately five people would believe this.

― papal hotwife (milo z), Thursday, May 12, 2022 5:32 PM (seventeen minutes ago)

*raises hand *

Biden's a dying mephitic pustule, but putting the FDR bullshit aside I think he wants to believe he can be a great prez. His age and Senate-based insolence aren't helping on the other fronts though.

I have a long screed I might put up inspired by Karl.

*slow clap begins to build*

LONG! SCREED!
LONG! SCREED!
LONG! SCREED!
LONG! SCREED!

We need to stop thinking about these lying motherfuckers not doing anything or actively wanting to kill us and start forming more real networks of solidarity and mutual aid. I’m over it— there’s nothing that the politics of the US can offer except pain, so moving to the ground level (and I do NOT mean on political campaigns of any sort) of community work is the only thing that will possibly help others and make things more tolerable.

i do feel fatalistic (obviously, i know) about the midterms, though, and i did not feel that way last fall, even after BBB was obviously failing. last fall, i thought there was like a 85% chance of republicans taking the senate. i now see that as 99.999999999%, due to the total lack of a coherent response from democrats since then, and also because right now (again, i lean toward marshall's view on this) they are being handed the ultimate political wedge issue with abortion, something that 70% of the country disagrees with - and critically, i don't think many of those 70% people really understand how fucked up it really is and what it portends - and...what are they doing? they're doing some things, sure, but they're certainly not taking advantage of something that is not only a moral obligation to fight against but also a HUGE political advantage, one that they did nothing to deserve, one that happened despite of their inaction over the years, even.

xp

Biden might be desperate to protect his legacy no matter what it takes but that doesn't mean Coons, Tester, Shaheen and Kelly are.

All of them should get shot into the sun

Coons, Tester, Shaheen and Kelly

is that your list of silent filibuster-filibusterers, beyond manchin and sinema? i don't follow them closely enough to know that they think, but wouldn't surprise me. but i think it's more likely that they would throw their weight behind the "reform the filibuster" moderate position, bringing the indefinite jimmy stewart goes to washington-style talking filibuster back. which, yes, would have been a cool, good move back in the 2000s, but now is a pathetic half-step which would not stop what's happening from happening

Those are just the people I remember saying various forms of not being on board with abolishing the filibuster in the last couple of years. Maybe some have softened, maybe not, but the equation changes when it's something they'd actually have to go through instead of having Manchinema to hide behind.

Even if they did some kind of one-off reform to 'codify Roe,' it's not like the party can point to actions they've taken to make anyone believe it would have teeth when it's inevitably side-stepped by or completely demolished by the Supremes. The problem with Marshall's idea of explicitly saying they're going to do something as a sales pitch to voters is the long history of Ron Howard's narrator stepping in to say "they did not, in fact, do anything."

And they’re not going to.

The problem with Marshall's idea of explicitly saying they're going to do something as a sales pitch to voters is the long history of Ron Howard's narrator stepping in to say "they did not, in fact, do anything."

oh, for sure. they're not going to do that. i think he's offering it up as an alternative to what is really happening (nothing) and the criticism that surrounds it. from the TPM reader mail posts, it seems he gets a lot of stuff from people like me who are just completely fed up with democrats and ready to burn it the fuck down. he's obviously not going to agree with that, and i'm glad that there are people out there who actually retain some sense of optimism that we are not, as we appear to be, completely fucked. that's not a winning strategy either. i don't think it's a realistic idea, with this group of senators and this democratic party, to be open with voters about the situation and the numbers and what they need and pledges about what they "will" do if they get 52 senators. it's a great idea but they are way too cowardly, and you have fucking chuck schumer and nancy pelosi running the show and they're at the U2 show with bill gates this weekend, sorry. but i also don't see a lot of other good ideas that have a remote chance of actually happening, either

which is why we're 0.000000000001 seconds to 99.9999999999% midnight

also, i agree the immigrant "angle" on the baby formula stuff may well be flood the zone shit, or have that effect, but am i the only one who feels a _little_ bit weird that it's just commonplace and expected for republicans to dehumanize anyone who isn't a white christian and casually suggest that maybe their babies aren't as worthy of life? is the proper response to just ignore it?

INBOX: ⁦@GovAbbott⁩ slams ⁦@JoeBiden⁩ ⁦@POTUS⁩ for providing baby formula to undocumented immigrants during a national shortage #txlege #tx2022 pic.twitter.com/OGhLYVl1Q5

— Evan Smith (@evanasmith) May 12, 2022

Reading this thread, I have never been more firm about a decision than to skip Charlie Crist's speech to my crew of local young Dems.

I really hope Beto loses it during a debate and Tommy Udos Abbott off a high stage into the pit.

You should go there and boo him. What a complete fucking joke that a former republican is supposed to the guiding light for democrats, in this time, right now. And didn’t he lose to fucking Marco Rubio? Are the democrats in FL trying to lose?

I’m serious: are they trying to lose? It appears from the outside that they’re throwing the election. Someone put Oliver Stone on this one

maybe the thinking is there is no way anyone is going to beat DeSantis, so Charlie Crist and Nikki Fried and all of the other democratic candidates are irrelevant

Annette Taddeo, the candidate who flipped a red district in 2017, is my pick and will bow out because Crist has the $$. My local group was told we will get no more money because the national party has given up on Florida to concentrate on Arizona and Georgia.

When he last spoke to us in May 2021, I said to him, "Congressman, don't confuse my honesty with impoliteness, but what makes you think someone with your record can win in 2022?"

Nice! What did he say?

omigod

We met at a park on the Saturday before Mother's Day during the vaccine honeymoon. He wore a shirt and tie and the smallest buckle shoes I've ever seen -- they could've been keychains. He said, "Alfred, take your glasses off. Let me look you in the eye." Then he delivered a speech about his Greek mom: how she taught him to stand against injustice, etc., and as a former governor himself he understood how to handle bigots like DeSantis.

It was most unconvincing, and everyone left making fun of him not two minutes after his departure. We even had state rep candidates whom his staff hadn't told him were running for office. He couldn't name them!

Val Demings a few months ago, however, was far more impressive. The first Democratic woman elected to the Florida legislature 20 years ago grabbed her hands and said, "Don't abandon us. You can win with the Cuban vote."

I am really sorry. For all of us, but especially you, trying to decide whether or not to remove the glasses and look at him in the eye

President Biden will urge states and cities to use unspent money from last year’s $1.9T Covid relief package to fund crime prevention programs and hire police officers. https://t.co/aWLTOesHww

— NBC News (@NBCNews) May 13, 2022

Slap in the face in more than one way, to entirely different groups of people, some of whom overlap.

ffs

My mom is one of those 5% of people over 65 who have NOT gotten vaccinated. She knows she’s on a death sentence and I guess I’ve made my peace with that, since I did scream at her several thousand times and she may have listened to a small fraction of what I said.

But fuck, can we just use the money that was allocated to covid to help prevent covid, not just for the sake of people who aren’t fools but also, more importantly, for the fools who aren’t taking precautions?

And if we do give that money away for other purposes, maybe it could go to literally any other group than cops?

He thinks that will help in the midterms? He’s doing well on unions and he seems to understand the situation with Ukraine/Putin (ie, that crushing Russia is not a viable victory condition), good for him on that.

However, I hope he goes to catholic hell for trying to give covid relief money to cops (who, from the first day, did NOT wear masks around BLM protesters. They took pride in being as being as antagonistic as possible in every way, including allying with proud boys)

No money for schools, public and accessible health care, public and accessible mental health care, anti-poverty initiatives, anti-displacement initiatives, free universal preK, nothing.

And acting as if Covid is over and still not a major threat to many lives.

I mean at least they’re not pretending to actually care about anything except ruling over the vast majority of people with the iron fist of a fascist mercenary army, but yknow, it really makes me question why anyone should ever pay attention to the “vote blue no matter who” crowd ever again.

And despite that, if there were even a small chance that doing so would help the democrats to avoid a landslide defeat in the midterms (and in 2024 - they won’t have to do the steal stuff because they’re on the way to just winning) I would say well fuck, go for it. When the odds are stacked against you and the leadership is so clearly clueless and wrong, you support anything that actually might help.

But no — there is ZERO chance that asking red states to take the covid money and using it on cops helps, anywhere. slap in the face

xp

Mr Choppy then launch the basket of heads into the sun

I live in Missouri and now I’m not voting for Biden

Nice job you cruel old man

what's wrong with condensed milk? that's what I grew up on and I'm 14 feet tall

NEW POLL: Madison Cawthorn's approval has hit a key bump in the road.

We find Republican voters nationwide disapprove of Cawthorn by a -41-point margin. 69% of voters agree he should resign from Congress.https://t.co/B5Iw1skbcx

— Data for Progress (@DataProgress) May 12, 2022

Nice

Doesn't really matter what 'nationwide' republicans think... it's about his district

man I was really hoping they’d ride with this one.

Kevin McCarthy after the coke orgy interview

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

This guy is blocking press from entering the Mastriano/Barnette rally in Philly. He won’t answer any questions or make eye contact. pic.twitter.com/LTWuHlDMSg

— Colby Itkowitz (@ColbyItkowitz) May 14, 2022

Lol I just drove past this place

wait, so if he won't eye contact, but he's the main guard for the event...

i admit i played a little too much metal gear solid when i was a kid, but i'm pretty sure his "cone of vision" is "very narrow"

ok, these are the heavy hitters they bring in when needed

A few of you have wondered why we didn’t just walk around the guy telling us we couldn’t get into the Mastriano/Barnette rally. When we tried they brought out all these guys to stop us. pic.twitter.com/sz2e52E10X

— Colby Itkowitz (@ColbyItkowitz) May 14, 2022

I had no idea Warminster was now Philly

Like sorry, to say that this event took place “in Philly” is nonsensical.

All of them ghouls...

https://www.businessinsider.com/buffalo-shooting-gop-lawmaker-says-shooter-was-fed-false-flag-2022-5

https://thumbs.gfycat.com/MealyDishonestBadger-size_restricted.gif

"Fed boy summer has started in Buffalo," Rogers tweeted

The fuck? Does she think she's Pusha T?

well fuck

https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/15/politics/fetterman-health-pennsylvania-senate-campaign/index.html

By "fed boy" maybe she was thinking of well-fed white teenagers.

is this real life

Oz: When you go to bed at night, put your head on that soft pillow, you’ll know Oz will be doing exactly what you want him to do if you were there next to him pic.twitter.com/M1lkJgqzmU

— Acyn (@Acyn) May 17, 2022

Soft pillow, hard pass

good morning!

Take the blue pill(ow) with Dr Oz!

absolute nightmare, with completely grim implications for the country at large

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/far-right-idaho_n_628277e2e4b0c84db7282bd6

Ehh, Idaho has kinda always been like this (Ruby Ridge, anyone?). I guess the normalizing of extremist views is something we're all dealing with, but Idaho is a place unto itself

Interesting angle buried in there on how the influx of California conservatives' cash is changing the socioeconomic context.

That Vanity Fair story published last month was something.

idk...Ruby Ridge = one family's armed standoff with the US Marshals; this piece = a range of explicitly white nationalist figures taking over the state GOP. Seems pretty different to me, even if, sure, there are precedents in Idaho that are discussed in the piece

Eric otm plus another interesting fact was that Idaho is the fastest growing state, obviously it's low-population but still

The article details how the coup is taking place in the most minor and formerly non-partisan of government positions. Systematic and awful.

The far right has studied in depth the means and methods of the post-Reconstruction south in establishing and defending Jim Crow and they are determined to follow that blueprint.

One thing's clear, the American remake of Years & Years will be a western.

on the one hand, yeah, he'll lie his face off. but on the other hand, why not let him?

Jan. 6 committee chairman Bennie Thompson says its “not our expectation” to call Donald Trump as a witness. He said it’s not clear Trump would enhance investigators’ understanding of the evidence they’ve already unearthed.

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) May 17, 2022

Spokane is also a Christofascist shithole, has become whiter and whiter as white supremacists and assorted shitheads move there from Seattle and other parts of the state.

My husband was put in a coma by Nazi skinheads there when he was a teenager because he is mixed-race, and that was more than 20 years ago.

Talking with his mother, who is white, it is pretty certain that she and all of his white relatives are completely in thrall to these monsters. Really sad shit, to lose one’s mom in such a way.

it is so far beyond idaho, and it is not a good idea to ignore it to reduce it to ruby ridge 2.0. if only it were just that

a repeat of ruby ridge as one of the main news events of the year would be an ASTONISHING and unexpected return to form, the kind where even the detractors have to admit that they didn't see that one coming

Also Rob, it is difficult to take seriously the downplaying of Ruby Ridge as a turning point in the state— that and the Aryan Nation HQ being there did a lot of PR for the white nationalist movement. That is, it wasn’t simply one family’s stand-off with the US govt— they were part of a connected, worldwide movement to advance the interests of Aryan people, and the events there did not happen in a vacuum.

the people who have, earlier, said that it won't be a coup, because it will be legal by that point, were correct. this is happening across the country - the replacement of "moderate" GOP people with the full-on christian nationalist fascist kind. i have not heard a story about it being effectively combated.

also, i do think trump will legitimately win the vote in 2024, or come very close again, just because of who the people are in this country. so they might not even need to rely on their local GOP mutant troll army to do anything too illegal

I didn't mean to reduce it a redux of Ruby Ridge - I was just using that historical example to draw inference about the political identity of a big part of Idaho: i.e., this didn't start yesterday, it's been around for quite awhile in one form or another. But yeah, the idea that wealthy assholes from CA are moving up there, even being actively recruited to move up there, is very disturbing... as is the takeover of the GOP.

sorry Andy, i'm not sure why i said it that way, i know you weren't trying to say it was on the same thing or anything like that. i put you in strawman land a little too quickly there, sorry!

i think for halloween this year i might go as a strawman and just let people have at me

there's a straawwwmaaaan
waiting in the sty

xp to table

True and point very much taken. tbf I was responding to what I thought Andy was saying: [inaccurate paraphrase deleted after reading his clarification], which I thought off-base after reading about such an alarming accumulation of legitimate state power. But you're right, it's wrong to dismiss RR as the work of loners.

xposts: sorry for bad posting blargh

apologies if this was already noted, I only saw it today

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/16/us/politics/biden-military-somalia.html

WASHINGTON — President Biden has signed an order authorizing the military to once again deploy hundreds of Special Operations forces inside Somalia — largely reversing the decision by President Donald J. Trump to withdraw nearly all 700 ground troops who had been stationed there, according to four officials familiar with the matter.

In addition, Mr. Biden has approved a Pentagon request for standing authority to target about a dozen suspected leaders of Al Shabab, the Somali terrorist group that is affiliated with Al Qaeda, three of the officials said. Since Mr. Biden took office, airstrikes have largely been limited to those meant to defend partner forces facing an immediate threat.

Together, the decisions by Mr. Biden, described by the officials on the condition of anonymity, will revive an open-ended American counterterrorism operation that has amounted to a slow-burn war through three administrations. The move stands in contrast to his decision last year to pull American forces from Afghanistan, saying that “it is time to end the forever war.”

he probably forgot

The Bolivarian Government of Venezuela has verified and confirmed the news published to the effect that the United States of America has authorized U.S. and European oil companies to negotiate and restart operations in Venezuela.

— Delcy Rodríguez (@delcyrodriguezv) May 17, 2022

I've seen enough: Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D) defeats Rep. Conor Lamb (D) in the #PASEN Dem primary.

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) May 18, 2022

That’s cool, this guy rocks

Mostly mentioning this because guy's name is literally Chesebro.

The suit also names as defendants James R. Troupis, a lawyer for the Trump campaign in Wisconsin, and Kenneth Chesebro, a Massachusetts lawyer who wrote a key December 2020 memo to Mr. Troupis proposing the fake elector scheme.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/17/us/politics/wisconsin-fake-electors.html

Another positive development:

I've seen enough: Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R) has lost renomination to state Sen. Chuck Edwards (R) in the #NC11 GOP primary.

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) May 18, 2022

lmao

I've seen enough.

you ain't seen nothin' yet

well, yeah

Good to hear.

Cawthorn to deliver concession speech wearing only cocaine, a key ring w/keys, and a wheelchair.

Fetterman got almost 60% of the vote, btw. Will a single journalist concede that his positions represent the Democratic mainstream? No, of course not.

Why is it necessary to "concede" what no one would deny? Everything on here

https://johnfetterman.com/issues/

looks to me like something 90% of elected Democrats, including the President of the United States, would sign on to. That sounds like Democratic mainstream to me.

(Except legalizing weed, which I do think Dems would probably be smart to whole-heartedly instead of half-heartedly adopt.)

Cawthorn finally going down, one of the only examples of a republican being held accountable in the last several years, and it’s because of cocaine and orgies, is one of the most bleakly funny things that has ever happened

Re weed, Tennessee couldn't even muster the outrage to ban Delta 8 this year, because the vape shops are making too much money. The weed war is effectively over, Democrats ought to declare victory and make fun of politicians who pretend to be worried about it.

seems like it's a similar situation here in Texas, at least in Austin. There are tons of stores that sell delta 8 and other weed-like products, and they were all panicking that they were going to be shut down immanently, but then the day came and it didn't happen, it's still being sold everywhere.

In #OR05, progressive Jamie McLeod-Skinner (D) carrying Deschutes Co. (Bend) 70%-30% over Rep. Kurt Schrader (D). Looking very grim for the incumbent Blue Dog.

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) May 18, 2022

Cawthorn’s remaining term will be interesting.

honestly i think he ends up on newsmax. i know people always say that about various politicians, that they're headed to cable, but he's perfect for newsmax, and they definitely don't give a fuck

i love when the newsmax hosts just let the other person (giuliani, navarro, whoever) just go off as long as they want, and they even start laughing and look to the side at their producers as it gets more outrageous. even dogshit cnn hosts know not to do that

hi this is newsmax's Normal Kegger, and I'm your host madison cawthorn

today I will tell you about my visit to Hitler's House, where I learned how to bide a Reich

come on, everybody who goes to europe goes to hitler's house. you gotta go to hitler's house it's beautifu, just beautiful land

what, is it now illegal to go to hitler's house? is hiter's house banned? are we not supposed to admit that it happened now? isn't this what's wrong with america, the censorship of hitler?

god...i'm just gonna go to hitler's house to make a point, now, and maybe make my own little custom hitler button on the flight there...

Centrists are playing the long game getting creamed in the primaries - when the Democrats eat shit in November they can blame it on the "progressive wing."

I mean, they'd do that anyway but they'll have more fun doing it now.

i also find this really funny

I'm done.

I no longer believe the Republican Party can be saved. The vitriolic rhetoric is inspiring violent radicals.

I'm quitting the GOP. And I hope more do the same.

— Miles Taylor (@MilesTaylorUSA) May 17, 2022

that's the "anonymous" trump official NYT op-ed guy from 2018. he's HAD it!

Cawthorn finally going down, one of the only examples of a republican being held accountable in the last several years, and it’s because of cocaine and orgies, is one of the most bleakly funny things that has ever happened

and it wasn't even his cocaine or his orgies!!

it was some shit he most likely made up to seem cool on Warrior Poet Radio is the funniest thing

well, bizarro cool. qanon cool.

He should have just named Matt Gaetz

“Warrior Poet Radio”?

“Warrior Poet Radio”?

Nebraska last week, Idaho this week - GOP voters nearly tossing out secretaries of state *in places Trump won* bc they're so Lindell-pilled. https://t.co/gZIhpn8AJM

— David Weigel (@daveweigel) May 18, 2022

lurid/bleak profile. difficult to see this ending well tbh

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/05/13/madison-cawthorn-injury-profile-00032002

i started reading that and then realised i have no interest in this fuckhead

yeah I'm sure I've mentioned this before but in the pre-Trump era this is the kind of dude whose life goal would be to appear on The Bachelorette as the aggressive dipshit who gets kicked off two episodes in

xp fair. i don't feel like a better person having read it.

I didn't read it, I just looked at the pictures. He would've wanted it that way.

we already knew Cawthorn was deeply fucked up. it was impossible to miss. that article just adds more depth and dimension about how fucked up he is.

his despair would inspire me to have a bit more compassion for him, if he had not sought a position of great power and public trust while having zero awareness of what being in Congress actually meant, other than an ego boost, or grasp of how unprepared he was to fulfill his duties once he attained that position. he should have resigned immediately after he arrived.

Um, y'all are going to be surprised by this, but I read that and felt some sympathy for the guy, but mostly because it is clear he's in a lot of physical and psychic pain and instead of dealing with it, projecting it onto others. That sucks and has real consequences in the world, but I think it's possible to feel sympathy for the kid while decrying his method of dealing with his trauma.

Just my take, as someone who also had control over one of his basic bodily functions torn away through no fault of his own.

Not a lot of sympathy for people who take selfies at hitler’s bunker

Cawthorn's story is like Jason Street got his own series and the creative team decided to go in a dfferent direction

im putting together a team pic.twitter.com/OrstQBsunP

— hybrid creature (@cityafreaks) May 18, 2022

table otm, that being said i didn't read it as i have limited empathy abilities and need to save it for people who deserve it, politicians are not on my list

I can find sympathy for Cawthorn's accident, but not for going to a school that “exists to glorify God” and prepare “Christian men and women who will lead our nation and shape our culture” and then lying your way up the ladder of power and living your life like a totally un-Jesus-like asshole.

Yeah, Cawthorn didn't strike me at all as the type who'd hesitate to strip away certain peoples' right to, like, be alive given half an opportunity.

i thought Miles Taylor and McMullen and stuff were trying to start a new 'rational republican right/center party' last year, surprised he was still registered as a republican.

Unbeknownst to most, the historical Jesus was a total asshole.

Well, map, think of it this way: he won't be a politician much longer

We are putting Madison Cawthorn out of our misery, if not his.

Yeah, Cawthorn didn't strike me at all as the type who'd hesitate to strip away certain peoples' right to, like, be alive given half an opportunity.

Greg Abbott Energy

If this was me, I'd be so, "Listen you scrote-lookin' motherfucker..."

"My name is Dr Robinson" -- Dr Yashica Robinson after Chip Roy calls her "Ms Robinson"

Roy then talks over her before Robinson fires back by telling him "I am a physician and a proud abortion provider" pic.twitter.com/NTW5FM9cHa

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 18, 2022

"I have never seen that in a health care setting, ever. We don't put baby parts in freezers" -- Dr Yashica Robinson to Chip Roy pic.twitter.com/fOC0LrLkjD

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 18, 2022

the entire GOP strategy now is to be the biggest tool you can possibly be while there are cameras present

What a fucking asshole.

Yeah, Cawthorn didn't strike me at all as the type who'd hesitate to strip away certain peoples' right to, like, be alive given half an opportunity.

― Eggs Benedick (Eric H.), Wednesday, May 18, 2022 7:25 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is everyone who works for the state ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

literally every city in the country is fine with criminalizing homeless people. god i get so tired of partisan myopia in these threads.

I have quite a few liberal friends who make derogatory statements about homeless people. less than I did 4 years ago though so that's reassuring.

it's definitely not a partisan issue. we as a country just hate the poor.

I've worked with my fair share of design firms and developers that like to taut their progressive bonafides on social media but also sure love the fuck out of adding anti-unhoused, hostile design elements to their projects.

Yup. No park benches are allowed anymore without designing them to be impossible to lie down on.

Why does he look exactly like Madison Cawthorn https://t.co/d7vlO3Lzri

— Secular Talk🎙 (@KyleKulinski) May 18, 2022

xp - never mind being able to lie down, they don't even want to let people sit

The 5th Circuit just dismantled the SEC's power to enforce securities law. This decision is beyond radical. It is nihilistic. https://t.co/6X46t2f4vY

— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) May 18, 2022

i'm at the gilded age
i'm at the years of lead
i'm at the combination gilded age and years of lead

— frog "Joker's Secret" kosaric (@yurirando) May 15, 2022

The nostalgia, the crippling nostalgia …

Speaking in Dallas this afternoon, former President George. W Bush made a significant verbal slip-up while discussing the war in Ukraine.

He tried referencing what he described as the “wholly unjustified and brutal invasion” — but said Iraq, instead of Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/tw0VNJzKmE

— Michael Williams (@michaeldamianw) May 19, 2022

now that is a fucking gaffe

He's still got it!

Everyone in that room who laughed should be summarily executed.

that's your answer for everything.

not that there's anything wrong with that.

satire never had a chance

Meanwhile, here in Oregon we are in the process of trying to rid ourselves of Kurt Schrader, one of the worst Democrat blue dogs in the US House, but only 54% of the ballots in the race have been tabulated so far, because the elections office of the third most populous county in the state is run by a numbskull named Sherry Hall.

https://www.opb.org/article/2022/05/18/clackamas-county-votes-delay-ballot-counting-primary-election-2022/

Madison Cawthorn is taking his defeat as well as one might expect.

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

"The time for gentile politics as usual has come to an end."

I think you meant to write "genital politics"

fuckin yikes dude

“dark maga”

'it is time for Dark MAGA to rise' may sound like a supervillain in a comic book, but sadly there are millions out there for whom that kind of fantasy vision of the world is more real than the humdrum facts of daily life and there's a ton of "content" out there they can gorge on every day to feed that fantasy life.

As far as I can tell "Dark MAGA" just means pics of Trump with laser eyes

C'mon people, he didn't actually write that

shadow maga was right there!

https://www.isdglobal.org/digital_dispatches/dark-maga-the-latest-cycle-in-the-far-right-aesthetics-laundromat/

The aesthetics Dark MAGA combines are:

Vaporwave: characterised by synthetic beats, neon-tinted visual artwork and semi-ironic nostalgia for the 1980s and 1990s.

Fashwave: inspired by vaporwave, a music genre and visual style that incorporates neo-Nazi and fascist iconography and narratives into the vaporwave aesthetic.

and blah blah Nazi stuff

Oh this list is pretty precious:

Latest Instagram post from Madison Cawthorn who remains a member of congress for another 229 days.

What is the “dark MAGA” he references in his caption. Is there a “light MAGA”? pic.twitter.com/oARGdZwdT0

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) May 19, 2022

Dark Maga needs to go in the gritty reboot thread.

These guys love dark stuff:

The Intellectual Dark Web
The Dark Enlightenment

#onlydarkmagathings

Speaking of Carlson...

Okay, definitely lost my sympathy for Cawthorn and my lunch reading that IG post.

Yeah, I mean, if and when he ends up trying to murder a bunch of people, I don’t think anyone at all would be surprised, whatsoever. Kind of telling.

i don't think we need to cooperate with the the paramilitary fascist right's attempt at a rebrand.

He does know he lost, right?

Sure, it's part of his super villain origin story.

It'll be interesting to see if his fellow Legionnaires of DOOMAGA actually respond to his calls or texts

My guess is that he'll soon be hawking gadgets on QVC, but what do I know

Depends how big his email list is I imagine

whoa

I read in the news that this "Up-and-Comer" lost his "primary." Alas, perhaps he was just too repressed to advance in today's hot political climate.
My best, Kelly@TheOnion pic.twitter.com/uDwV6xBadX

— Stan Kelly (@KartoonistKelly) May 18, 2022

Here we go again...

SAN FRANCISCO - San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone said Friday that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is barred from receiving Holy Communion over her support for abortion rights.

Cordileone said in a letter to the California Democrat that she won't be admitted to Holy Communion at Mass. The archbishop said Pelosi ignored his warning in April to either repudiate her advocacy for abortion rights or refrain from using her religion to justify her stance.

I thought this had been settled by the Vatican

Meanwhile, banning contraception continues its march to becoming a mainstream Republican idea.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/birth-control-ban-abortion_n_6287a89ae4b01a50ab579e39?ier

this is a short thing on msnbc about christian nationalism. watch one minute in, though. paula white. it's from jan 6. many of you have already seen it, no doubt. but please watch one minute in. this, to me, is really what a TON (it is never all, it will never be all) of white evangelicals are really like. paula white is a very upstanding citizen and her clothes are probably new and she will attend some dinner party tonight and behave more or less "properly", and all that - but when it comes down to it, she wants everyone that is not a evangelical christian to die and go to hell, she wants everyone that is not cishet to burn eternally, and she wants it to happen as soon as possible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zx8tsompfiM

xp shit, sorry tipsy mothra. to try to connect this to what you just posted, i'll add, "oh yeah, and they want aaaaaaaall the white evangelical babies that can possibly be born to live, even if it means turning their country into handmaiden's tale.

i don't watch msnbc (or any other channel) and don't know Mehdi Hasan, i don't know if he's good or not -- he seems good to me, i'm glad he did this segment. i really wish there were more big ol' white cishet americans leading the charge on this. i understand why they're not, because if you're white in this country and you grew up in and around church, you are in an elite club with special protections, and that's true whether you were evangelical or not

watch at 5:55 - this is where it's leading. they will spill blood on the ground, and then they will say that it was will of jesus, all the way to their very last breath, you better believe it.

Yeah, to me the most alarming things I've read have been from people who are either evangelicals themselves or have spent many years closely observing/writing about the movement — people like David French, who I disagree with on lots of things, but who wrote this a month or two ago: https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/the-seeds-of-political-violence-are?s=r

Like, people who actually know this territory well are sending up flares saying, Christian nationalism is headed for bloodshed. At this point I can't really see how it's not. They're primed for it.

Moreover, if Christians know anything about the far right, they know it’s vicious. Silence is the safe course. For all the (legitimate) talk of cancel culture from the left, many Christians self-censor out of fear of the right. They know Michael Flynn is dangerous, but saying so out loud carries a cost. So they remain silent. They stay in their anti-left lane.

The proper response to fear and fanaticism is reason and faith. It’s demonstrating by word and deed that the response even to the worst forms of extremism on the left is not to stampede to extremism on the other side. But we have to know what we face, and what we face is an Christian subculture that is full of terrible religious purpose. The seeds of renewed political violence are being sown in churches across our land.

seriously, watch that clip at 5:55. there are thousands of people in that room cheering him on, and many, many more watching at home.

as the host notes, if an imam said anything 1/1000000000000000000000th as inflammatory, you know what would happen

and it is definitely NOT just that one guy. that guy is just a successful version of all the other people that are trying to be that guy. it's fucked up

has anyone here ever been part of a Christian service where they openly talk about the other denominations, politics, and how their name (and Jesus') is being defined and represented by some of the most extreme, dangerous people in the country?

(I'm not sure there's a more dangerous LARGE group of people in the U.S. then white evangelical christians. there are always people out of their mind on an individual level and in relatively small groups. I'm talking millions, tens of millions of people here)

i see discussions of it online sometimes, christianity today articles where they carefully, politely, minimally, and sporadically, mention this giant group of extremist goons that now represent Christianity. is this ever brought up during a sermon? I can only speak to my evangelical experience, which was a long time ago now, was already horrific, and has (as I always expected) only gotten worse and more extreme as time passes. Is there any Christian movement to make clear where they stand on things like White Christian Nationalism? Or rather, since there are always small movements and groups of people who do the right thing -- is there any movement that has been remotely successful to speak out against the largest and loudest voice of Christians, white evangelicals?

CASTLE ROCK, Colo. — "Thou shalt not kill" was not the message at a Castle Rock Church on Thursday night when it hosted a right-wing extremist group's election fraud meeting.

linked in that piece above, at least a normal-ass news station frames things like this this way. small comfort tbh

MAGA Christian nationalism is concentrated in the churches most removed from elite American culture, including from elite Evangelicalism.

The world-famous Holy and Apostolic Catholic Church was in cahoots with the original fascists and Nazis, too. The just can't seem to get their fill of 'em.

Wtf is "elite american culture"?

Non-flyover country

Too bad I had to unfollow the account on Twitter that was posting all that stuff about the Alioto-Opus Die connection because they felt compelled to post some fairly overt copaganda re the Young Thug case.

576 officers lost their lives in the line of duty in 2021. 

We passed a Senate resolution designating this week as National Police Week to honor the officers who put their lives on the line every day to protect our communities. One small way to recognize their courage.

— Amy Klobuchar (@amyklobuchar) May 21, 2022

I don’t know if “on a respirator in the COVID ward” counts as in the line of duty?

Which is higher, the number of cops who died of covid or the number of people who died of covid because the cops refused to wear masks

Looking like the worst cycle for Blue Dogs since 2010: Schrader, Cuellar, Bourdeaux at risk in primaries. Crist, Murphy, Cooper retiring. Golden, Gonzalez, O'Halleran, Spanberger at risk in general. That's almost half of the 19 Blue Dogs. https://t.co/DdbAFi3HhC

— Mike DeBonis (@mikedebonis) May 24, 2022

And when they lose they’ll blame “Defund the Police”

JUST IN: A federal appeals court has ruled that the 14th Amendment's bar on insurrectionists holding office may be applied to current/future political candidates. https://t.co/RPuI4duUSu

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) May 24, 2022

O rly

Not sure I would call Bourdeaux a blue dog. It's unfortunate that Lucy McBath is running against her in the primary since her district was rejiggered by the legislature.

xp don't worry, we're going to get a new (to us) definition of what insurrection actually is very soon

anyone who votes by mail