And Sleepy Joe Will Get The Credit: US Politics January 2021

Speaking of Sidney Powell, sort of curious how this most erratic lunatic of a lawyer will handle a real lawsuit that demands a response greater than flinging her own shit.

I'm sure she'll have no trouble finding good representation lol

By flinging her own shit, were I to guess.

xps is this a gift for them? Did impeachment actually gain them anything last time? I mean, they should still do it just to uphold some sort of "law and order" and theoretical decency, but politically I'm not sure they gained much. Dems are generally not scared of being primaried compared to the right, the pitchforks don't seem as sharp.

Can't/shouldn't people start going after Lin Wood with defamation suits too? I assume that wholesale online charges of pedophilia isn't protected by free speech.

threab

As a comms person this is really important to me.

Language becomes policy! If we say we have a "terrorism" problem (even a white one), lawmakers will give us "counter-terrorism" solutions. All of those will expand policing & surveillance that will ultimately harm us.

(more 👇🏽)

— Lea Kayali (@LeaKayali) January 7, 2021

xpost Actually, I just saw that Lin Wood is representing Powell!

It's a gift in the sense of putting crazy asshole Republicans on the defensive at exactly the point they would be gearing up to try to gut anything Biden sends their way. Which doesn't mean they won't try, of course, I'm not imagining any kind of "coming together." But their brand just got hammered in a way well beyond usual partisan warfare.

L. Lin Wood, a lawyer who has worked alongside Powell on post-election lawsuits and who says he is representating her in connection to defamation matters, called the lawsuit an attempt “to censor speech or try to intimidate people from telling the truth.”
“I haven’t seen the lawsuit, but I don’t have any concerns about Dominion,” he said in an interview.

And every time one of these GOP assholes runs again, the ads directly linking them to actual riots and death and sedition are at the ready. "Do you want more years of this?!"

And yet the Dems are sitting at home making demonstrative, finger-wagging statements while they wait for Pence to do something. We are well and truly fucked and every sitting member of Congress should get primaried into oblivion for this absolute failure. We're almost 48 hours out from the sitting president inspiring an armed insurrection that threatened every sitting member of Congress and, as noted above, 1-2-3 in the line of succession and absolutely fuck all has been done beyond hand-wringing. Maybe start thinking about impeachment mid-next week? Christ. The inauguration is going to be a disaster given the implicit approval this move has gotten so far.

These last few months have confirmed to me that as a Democrat, even winning feels like losing

Giuliani can represent Wood, Powell can represent Giuliani, and that's what they meant by Will the Circle Be Unbroken.

Xpost tbf Jon, you can't just waive the impeach wand and get everybody in the House to participate at the drop of a hat. Middle of next week is a relatively fast start for impeachment proceedings compared to the norm.

winning kinda feels like losing because we're still talking about donald trump and his pathetic circle of ghouls. fully support the democrats terminating donald trump with extreme prejudice but at some point the spotlight does need to shift off this desperate shithead and onto the democrats' full-court press of legislation to get food onto people's tables and build a future that rewards hard work no matter what kind of work that is and provides for those who can't, no matter who you are or where you came from. djt will do everything he can to make the entire conversation only about him, even out of power. the presidency wasn't enough. an insurrection wasn't enough. he has to bend the entire universe to gaze at him, praise him, etc. fuck that and fuck him. let DAs take care of him

I just want his vocal cords and arms seized. Eyes too, no blinking morse code. Let fucker be the dude in Johnny's Got His Gun so he can't communicate anymore

You think any of that will actually happen? Lol

Ok ok maybe just his arms only then

Here's Bret Grote, of the Abolitionist Law Center:
"Understand that the 25th Amendment will not be invoked, any impeachment articles will not be acted upon, no Republican congress members will be formally censured let alone removed.

After the chaos recedes from the news cycle the framing of yesterday's events as a new Fort Sumter moment will steadily and predictably move from the margins further into the Republican mainstream and become the new political orthodoxy of the party in quick order.

The Biden administration will understand what happened as a further justification for seeking to govern from the right and prevent structural change and any redistribution of wealth and power, not that it is in need of justification for doing what it has promised and what he was put in power to ensure. The rich will continue their plunder, and the plight of the poor - and their numbers - will grow. The liberal variant of capital makes concessions to and apologies for those who attack it from the right, especially when they are overt white supremacists and it is happening in this racist country. No reason to think this will change."

Xpost tbf Jon, you can't just waive the impeach wand and get everybody in the House to participate at the drop of a hat. Middle of next week is a relatively fast start for impeachment proceedings compared to the norm.

I know it doesn't happen instantly, but this just seems like the massive threat that requires at least the facade of immediate action. Fast track something so people feel like there is movement. Even if it's mostly for show, start the public statements from the floor and hearings immediately, even if the actual procedural shit takes more time. I don't know, I'm just angry this morning because I don't feel like anything is being taken nearly as seriously as it should be.

Like I know we all hate "doomposting" or whatever, but nothing good is going to come of any of this

Republicans appointed this guy to a commission in charge of overseeing Holocaust sites for a term that goes through 2023. He was previously fired from the White House for giving a speech to neo-Nazis. https://t.co/eVp1aJtWtR

— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) January 8, 2021

Tbf, part of me is just exhausted of four years of Twitter statements that threaten action and get followed up with exactly jack shit. I don't want this to be another in that line.

Impeachment is happening. The procedure is happening.

FWIW, asshole George Conway tweeted this morning that there are 67 votes to convict.

it's right i do hate doomposting

I feel like we might be allowed to be angry and upset this week about an armed insurrection without being scolded for "doomposting". And, forgive me if I'm exactly trusting that number from George Conway.

i also at this point in human history have a very low tolerance for predictions of the future

all right i'm not scolding anyone, i'm out

And, forgive me if I'm exactly trusting that number from George Conway.

typos will destroy us all in the end

lol

I would like a congressional inquiry as to whether the guy who tasered himself to death also shit himself in the process

With no disrespect to Bret Grote, that's exactly what I'd expect a Jacobin contributor to write. I'm sure he's right about some of those tendencies, but to repeat something I said the other day: There is no universal law of nature or politics that all parties always move relentlessly rightward. I know that's hard to keep in mind for those of us who have basically experienced that drift our entire lives, but it does not have to be that way.

Yes there will be attempts to frame this as Ft. Sumter, but I do not think that will become the Republican Party orthodoxy. Especially not once the full account of it all is out there. This was terrible, and I think the mainstream consensus view of it will be that it was terrible. And that by default helps the Democrats' agenda. (It is of course up to them to HAVE and PUSH an agenda.)

Haha, yes, def "not" trusting Conway's tweet.

Sorry Brad, not singling you out. I just get frustrated with this thread because it sometimes feels like certain posters are allowed to express frustration and others who are not. I mean, the spiral into deepfakes over the president's video felt pretty silly to me last night, but I'm not going to shame anyone for processing it. Just felt weird to get told not to "doompost" for being pissed about Congress dragging their feet.

Honestly, between the Georgia vote and the way the response to the riot is going to play out, the Democrats are ending this week in a much stronger political position than I would have thought was possible a week ago.

Not a good way to get to that position, but you can be traumatized by the terrorism and still understand the political calculus.

in the NYT today, real progress as he is finally isolated
http://i.imgur.com/42AO2Y4.png

i don't really see an impeachment vote next wedensday as congress draggin their feet, btw, the gears are slow

and we must throw our bodies upon the gears etc.

also i don't want any kind of performative response to this at all, i have no taste for political theater. just get him out

and potentially kick out his enablers too, idk there was talk about that

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cmgrd0RU4zE

I would laugh very hard if Hawley was thrown out of the Senate over this

The main thing that I feel might move the needle here is that Trumpists at this point have it in for republicans at least as much as democrats, largely thanks to POS POTUS, and everyone in the Capitol two days ago was equally under threat. As noted previously, many of these fuckers aren't going to waver on their positions until something affects them starkly and directly. Clearly, the Cruzes and the Hawleys didn't learn a goddamn thing but I can't help but feel like a lot of GOP congresspeople who've been going along to get along might finally be waking up to the nature of the rough beast they've been feeding for the past four years.

The Biden administration will understand what happened as a further justification for seeking to govern from the right and prevent structural change and any redistribution of wealth and power, not that it is in need of justification for doing what it has promised and what he was put in power to ensure.

(citation needed)

xposts

But the performative part is worthwhile! It's true impeachment will keep Trump center-stage for a bit longer, but not in a good way for him or his supporters, and it forces Republicans to defend Trump when they'd rather be issuing 6 press releases a day about the looming Marxist catastrophe of the Biden administration.

I too as a lay person look at "sometime next week" and hear my teeth grind into powder, even as I remember a year (!) ago the first impeachment was a result of months-long work. Fortunately, the only thing worth investigating here is how much federal property the insurrectionists destroyed and how the president's words resulted in four deaths.

There is no universal law of nature or politics that all parties always move relentlessly rightward

No. But there is a universal law that internet leftists will always claim that any leftward movement is either fascism in disguise, or not good enough. As demonstrated by several posters here on a more or less hourly basis.

Republicans haven't even really had a chance to start up their anti-President Biden beat yet, because they haven't acknowledged him as the winner. So they're even starting off behind on that front, on top of losing the Senate. This is all objectively bad for Republicans. It's OK to say so.

the house needs to impeach, throw it to the Senate and make those craven motherfuckers go on record for history and see who supported American fascism and who didn't

i would just like someone to face consequences for their actions for once and if it happens in any way shape or form i'm pretty happy considering we live in a completely failed state with no accountability to begin with

that's why i kinda roll my eyes at a block of text from the abolitionist law center about this, they don't care about impeachment and idk why they would even address it, the office of the president is inherently racist and evil!!! (and i agree with them!!!!!!!!)