US Politics, December 2019: Profound procedural deficiencies

cover for Pence to eventually say he's prayed really hard and very gravely, sadly, must gladly accept the sacred duty of being the carved wooden doomsday statue leader of the party

ah duh thanks

xpost

nytimes subhed is a real classic of the genre: 'a crossroads for a nation in tumult'

stfu nytimes

This may seem kinda facile (or perhaps it's already a thing people have already pointed out in quarters I don't frequent) but it hit me like a bolt from the blue this evening: the GOP is a pack of dogs, well-trained to respond to their master's voice (which is all about the timbre and the intonation and has nothing whatever to do with the actual words employed) in lieu of any pesky autonomous impulses. And, like well-trained dogs, their range of tricks is fairly limited and predictable. Like if you confronted one of them with this observation, you could pretty easily predict how they'd react (No puppy! No puppy! You're the puppy!). I don't know how effective it would be, ultimately, but it might not hurt to hit that rhetorical nail hard and frequently on the off-chance that Trump fans don't like thinking of themselves as mangy curs broken to their master's will. Plant whatever seeds of doubt you can and see what sprouts imo.

Or grow weed

No offence, but based on Australia and the UK it's this kind of "well these people might mean well but they're all just a bit stupid, let's enlighten them" hubris which gets you smashed at the ballot box. Labor (Aus) and Labour (UK) rolled through the campaign with an attitude of "it's self-evident how much these ideas are better than the Libs / Tories, we're explaining them carefully so you can see we know what's best" and the respective electorates just shrugged a "fuck you, smug lefties" and voted in their own perceived interest. I am deeply left wing in my politics but I wince every time my side makes this mistake, over and over and over.

"enlightening" them is def a waste of time. now demoralizing them otoh...

Yeah they need a few decades of being beaten

at the ballot box i mean of course

Yeah, my train of thought has precisely zero to do with getting republicans to see the error of their ways. That shit ain't gonna happen. It's not about getting them to suddenly adopt a moral code but rather shoving their nose in the fact that they've happily fastened fancy rhinestone-studded collars around their necks and they're such good boys, who's a good boy, who's a good boy

Humiliation doesn't work because your opinion doesn't count. Demoralizing doesn't work. "Deplorables" is merely the shining example.

^otm

Oh cool 2016 relitigation time

I mean when you get to the point where you realize a solid 33% of the country are evil pricks you kind of run out of options

And if they won't change, you can change the number of teeth in their mouth...

At the ballot box of course

Help more minorities get to the polls

esp in swing states

^otm

A far left magazine, or very “progressive,” as some would call it, which has been doing poorly and hasn’t been involved with the Billy Graham family for many years, Christianity Today, knows nothing about reading a perfect transcript of a routine phone call and would rather.....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 20, 2019

Reaching new levels of “not mad”

He won't be reading ET again.

WTF is ET.

Of course, teens don’t vote because they’re busy with their Pokémon and vaping and premarital sex

Premarital sex among teens is way down, not least because of Pokemon and vaping. That is, they don't leave the fucking house to socialize or go to parties. They also seems to be driving much less, so maybe Dems should get a big Drive Your Teen to Vote carpool going. Perhaps Juul could give out free swag.

even when I was a teen we didn't have much sex as adults claim; solo trips to McDonald's were more exciting.

knows nothing about reading a perfect transcript of a routine phone call

can't get over this

USA Today published a massive story on life in an ICE or ICE-contracted facility (FT: one of the reporters is a buddy):

For the past year, much of the nation’s attention on immigration issues has focused on how the Trump administration polices the southern border and how Border Patrol agents treat migrants arriving there. But away from that spotlight there is a separate detention system overseen by ICE that has continued to grow with far less scrutiny. It is now a $3 billion network of 221 facilities, the largest of which are operated by private companies under government contract. Combined, those facilities detain more than 50,000 women, men and children who wait months or years for immigration court proceedings.

Two-thirds of detainees have no criminal records, ICE records show. About 26% are detained solely because they are requesting asylum in the U.S. That is why ICE policy mandates that immigration detention be civil in nature - an administrative hold on detainees as they await deportation or their next hearing - as opposed to a punitive, corrective prison system. But the USA TODAY Network review found that the ICE system operates in many ways like a prison system; detainees wear red and orange jumpsuits that sometimes read “inmate” on the back.

Just before one detainee died in Florida, he “vomited feces,” according to a death report written by ICE. Two others detainees died elsewhere after being taken off life support without consent from their relatives. Death reports also show detainees died of pneumonia, heart attacks and internal bleeding. In several instances, the cause of death remains “unknown.”

A central theme identified by government inspectors was the failure of guards to grasp the difference between running a prison and an immigration detention center.

Prisons are designed to be corrective or punitive in nature; immigration detention centers are not. The introduction to ICE’s detention standards, which have been in effect in different forms since the creation of the agency in 2002, makes that clear: “ICE detains people for no purpose other than to secure their presence both for immigration proceedings and their removal.”

Poor ET.

to be fair E.T. knew nothing about perfect calls

gonna think about "vomiting feces" whenever a Dem candidate says we need to keep ICE going

A top evangelical Christian magazine on Thursday called for President Trump’s removal from office over a lack of morality and the action he took as part of the Ukraine pressure scheme, which is at the center of the impeachment inquiry.

Christianity Today editor Mark Galli admitted that he believed Democrats “have had it out for him from day one” and condemned the impeachment process in the House, which he felt didn’t give Trump “a serious opportunity to offer his side of the story.”

if only trump had a chance to offer his side of the story, i wonder what he thinks about all this?!!?!?!?!?

did christianity today endorse anyone in 2016?

Franklin Graham out today excoriating CT as a bunch of libtards (paraphrased)

radical holy shit, i just checked the internet for the first time and it turns out that trump has constantly offering his side of the story since the mid-70s

I also know nothing about reading a perfect transcript of a routine phone call. I feel great shame but honestly it's great to get that off my chest finally.

We already have a perfect transcript of Jesus, and it said Trump was 100% Not Guilty.

Did trump learn CT was 'progressive' by reading this thread? I think so.

Perfect calls are so rare, it's understandable that most of us can't truly comprehend this one.

so now it's the transcript that's perfect, not the phone call? so hard to keep up.

Well yes, they were all perfectly captured. No typos or flubbed lines.

Upon reflection, we really should all stop interrupting the president every time he starts to speak. Let him get a word in edgewise, whaddaya say.

Why do these people even have sense organs when all they need to assess the world around them is their imagination.

it's just like, what does he think about stuff? i don't know, and i want to find out

He is an enigma inside of a half-deflated beanbag wrapped in a side of bacon.

tbf bacon is perfect

TRUMP BACON isn't.

His brand would be like the pig ears they sell at pet stores.

Kind of amazed he didn't try to capitalize on the Bacon Craze in some way.

Pretty sure he named his kid Bacon, iirc.

Occasionally I will remember outrageous things that happened from the past three years that, in another era, would have been permanently seared into the public consciousness but which get utterly lost in the shuffle of day after mindmeltingly insane day.

Like this. I just remembered that this happened.

https://www.washingtonian.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/AP_19015023184999-2048x1365.jpg

In what world should I ever have forgotten that that happened.

But that doesn’t mean he actually IS bacon. Xp

Someone will need to compile a multi-volume compendium of these moments so that when we recount them for future generations they won't just assume it's the dementia talking.

this is what i was worrying about before:

And Mr. McConnell was entirely unmoved by Ms. Pelosi’s tactics, delivering a speech on Thursday evening in which he appeared barely able to contain his amusement at what he regarded as the speaker’s missteps.

“I admit, I am not sure what leverage there is in refraining from sending us something we do not want,” Mr. McConnell said with a wry smile from the Senate floor. “But alas, if they can figure that out, they can explain it. Meanwhile, other House Democrats say they would prefer never to transmit the articles. Fine with me!”

i'm sure he's overstating his advantage just to be a dick, but this is what i meant by a strong possibility that democrats would never get any sort of concession from the GOP/trump on this. their strategy depends on either 1) more damning evidence coming to light in the following days/weeks, and/or 2) trump freaking out and digging himself into a bigger hole somehow.

and sure, both of those things could happen, i hope they do! but there's also a good chance that this will end with pelosi weakly submitting the articles without any significant concessions. either way, trump/GOP are going to crow about how they won and are exonerated and all of that, but they'll be more convincing if this ploy doesn't work out

Someone will need to compile a multi-volume compendium of these moments so that when we recount them for future generations they won't just assume it's the dementia talking.

if i ever get rich i'll pay some sad person to update doonaldtrump.com

Hamberders