Enough With The Cutesy Titles, People Are Dead: US Politics January 2021 pt 2

.@mtgreenee, is this you harassing @davidhogg111 weeks after the Parkland shooting, that my daughter was killed in & he was in? Calling him a coward for ignoring your insanity. I will answer all of your questions in person. Get ready to record again.pic.twitter.com/aQjL74x7kh

— Fred Guttenberg (@fred_guttenberg) January 27, 2021

Jfc, yes, I knew MTG was a terrible human being already, but I was not prepared for how angry that video would make me. An abhorrent human being.

Senate President Pro Tem Patrick Leahy will open today’s Senate session at 10:30; LIVE, C-SPAN2

— Sen. Patrick Leahy (@SenatorLeahy) January 27, 2021

I hope this thread is correct

☀️ Punchbowl AM: The ghost of 2009

Dems controlled all of govt. it took them forever to pass obamacare bc they first waited for Rs to support. then they squirmed

They later regretted doing too little too late. unemployment went to 10%. they lost the majority

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) January 27, 2021

Nice

Thune, 60, said he’d make his announcement "at some point in the future.” Johnson, 65, said he didn't think he had to decide "for a while." Grassley, 87, said he would make his announcement in "several months." Shelby, 86, said, "I'll let you know." Murkowski says she’s running

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) January 27, 2021

Nice bag of euphemisms

re the jake sherman thread, i hope so too. i think we all do lol.

i keep wanting to call my senators but they're the worst gop trash

"I am running for the border first, and reelection second," said Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy.

this sounds like he's gonna pop into a Taco Bell

he would

it's truly insane that Chuck Grassley even thinks there needs to be an announcement of running for a SIX YEAR TERM at 87

can we put the Dairy Queen tweet on his tombstone as his epitaph

xpost Never underestimate the restorative powers of infant blood.

Isn't that a Dem thing?

Ugh no blood libels for anyone, please.

hard to believe it's a battle to sell the american public on getting the same level of healthcare afforded a shitheel like Richard Shelby. we are truly the most acquiescent creatures to ever walk on two legs

if Thune doesn't run (maybe even if he does) Noem is going to run for his seat and given how fucked up SD is, she will win, and the prospect of her in the Senate is much worse than Thune, who sucks, but doesn't suck as much as she does.

i suppose it's theoretically possible that a Dem could win that race but unlikely

As recently as 2005, all four Dakotas senators were Democrats. But yeah, hard to imagine going back to that any time soon.

what the hell happened there? is it oil/gas money?

that, FOX news, Obama, racism.

I was in SD last year and was in a restaurant with a TV and there was an opinion thing running where someone was talking about it being time to bring Kaepernick back and at least two tables of old white people next to me almost had fucking strokes, they started twitching, shaking their heads, "no, absolutely not, no way!" while eating their pancakes.

there's also been increasing suppression of Native voters.

Yep, https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2019/10/04/for-some-native-americans-no-home-address-might-mean-no-voting

Going back to MTG, I was depressed to read this story (posting the cached version so you don't get paywalled). I knew she ran unopposed but I hadn't looked into what happened and why.

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:cQALuaMJU7IJ:https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/10/17/kevin-van-ausdal-qanon-marjorie-greene-georgia/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

(I'll note that this guys sounds like he was completely the wrong person to run against her, and I think that story is probably not giving his domestic issues nearly enough weight. Women don't divorce people and get restraining orders out of the blue like this, not when there's a baby, so I'm suspecting that his punching a hole in the wall was not some outlier in his behavior)

Yeah, that story about MTG's opponent is depressing, though, even taking into account his shortcomings. Sadly, I think we're going to see a lot more of that type of thing. I've mentioned it on other threads, but recently even local candidates for the district school board of all things have had racist zoom bombers, death threats mailed to their houses, cars broken into, etc etc (and I live in a very blue city in a very blue state). There is a very real thread of terror aimed at progressive (and basically any Democrat) candidates of all stripes right now and I don't know that it's being discussed yet just how deep that runs.

(nb I know the guy running against MTG was Republican, I guess I could expand that to say a thread of terror against any non Q candidate)

the guy in the story was running as a Democrat, not a Republican.

Yeah, I think I was conflating his story with a different guy that was a primary candidate that got scared off as well.

at any rate, I imagine by the time 2022 comes around someone will be better prepared to challenge her and she'll be out (if she's not forced out before then, which frankly is probably unlikely unless she breaks the law). At least by then, anyone running will know what they're up against.

I mean, I don't know. This is where my cynicism kicks in and I think she was voted in because of the violent bullshit she's spewed, not despite it.

agreed, but without Trump in the picture things may be very different

When MTG originally declared her candidacy in 2019, she was running for Lucy McBath's seat in GA-06, but GOP leadership eventually persuaded her to run in GA-14 instead. Presumably the idea was that she couldn't win in a swing district, but would have much less trouble in redder territory.

right but it remains to be seen whether or not that is in fact the direction the GOP is going to run in or if this stuff is going to peter out now that the entire country doesn't revolve around a conspiracy boomer

"I think she was voted in because of the violent bullshit she's spewed, not despite it."

she was voted in because no one ran against her.

fuck I mean, I probably could have moved to georgia and run against her and won, and I shouldn't ever hold elected office anywhere.

magic the gathering

Trust me, I absolutely understand that she won because she was unopposed. But I don't think saying literally any wet blanket could have beat her really undersells what she is pushing and how many people were buying it. It's a dangerous assumption to make that she can be brushed aside so easily. I absolutely hope she is, but coupled with Boebert, it's not like she's a singular outlier.

ugh, "but I do think saying.."

Congress needs to get serious about America’s debt. We are $27 TRILLION in debt thanks to Washington's out of control spending & inaction on the debt limit. We must act now to put the U.S. on a fiscally successful path. Read more in my letter here: https://t.co/WoMJWydPYv

— Rick Scott (@SenRickScott) January 26, 2021

lmao that ratio

I agree that Congress needs to get serious about America's debt......to marginalized communities and the exploited labor class

"Well, Trump is gone now, guess I finally have a chance to take a look at the ole' budget spreadsheet, haven't broken it out in years...HOLY SMOKES!"

oh so let's allow the former CEO responsible for the biggest Medicare fraud in American history pontificate about debt

fuck I mean, I probably could have moved to georgia and run against her and won, and I shouldn't ever hold elected office anywhere

i promise you she's a rock star in her district

folks,, this is GOP 2024 frontrunner energy

Since we're doing old videos of Marjorie Taylor Greene harassing people, here's her from before she was elected, in Feb 2019, turning up in Congress to try & get @IlhanMN & @RashidaTlaib to retake their oaths on a Bible & not a Quran:
(h/t @ehananoki)pic.twitter.com/YMr7InKYqZ

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) January 27, 2021

Boebert for veep plz.

So Mitch is in Mar-a-lago today? FFS!

they've just got so much more wild-eyed intensity and authenticity than pampered try-hards like Bachmann or Palin could ever muster

people really feel that and respond to it

xpost

covid hotspot, florida

idk if it's been discussed yet but it looks like some pretty good climate-oriented EOs were signed today