“It’s a little too quiet” - US Politics February 2021

"You're quitting! You're a quitter! You're not fighting!” he exploded at the senior adviser. Flynn then turned to the president, and implored: "Sir, we need fighters."

hearing this in the voice of Anakin Skywalker in Ep III

lol

Zero in on any urban center you can think of. Blue surrounded by a sea of red. Has it always been like this?

It has been like this for the entirety of my life; not sure what it was like before I was born.

Dems playing nasty:

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee on Tuesday announced the launch of advertisements aimed at eight House Republicans who voted against Trump’s impeachment that accuse them of siding with supporters of QAnon.

The targets of the ads, which claim the GOP lawmakers “stood with Q, not you,” include House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and seven others whom the DCCC says are vulnerable in the 2022 elections.

The DCCC said that the 30-second TV ads and digital spots will play across local broadcast and cable stations in the lawmakers’ districts and that the version attacking McCarthy will also air in Washington.

QAnon represents a sprawling set of false claims that have coalesced into an extremist ideology that has radicalized its followers, some of whom participated in the attack on the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6. Trump was impeached by the House for “incitement of insurrection.” Ten Republicans voted with Democrats for his impeachment.

The DCCC ads claim that QAnon “took over the Republican Party” and “sent followers to Congress.”

I think the QAnon stuff (which, btw, autocorrect recognized here and capitalized like that for me!) is so batshit insane we just assume everyone knows how batshit it is. But I bet a lot of folks, Republicans included, just have no idea, and that those ads could be effective.

people like my mother who don't know the inner-workings of QAnon and are just reading these theories as if they're individual thoughts by the posters are usually reacting "what in the FUCK are you talking about? are you nuts?", so it's a pretty good attack idea

Holy crap, are good things possible?

NEWS: The first USPS reform bill of the 117th Congress has been introduced.

Sens. Brian Schatz (D-HI) and Steve Daines (R-MT) will sponsor the "USPS Fairness Act" that would forgive USPS's defaulted retiree healthcare obligations.

— Jacob Bogage (@jacobbogage) February 1, 2021

only if the filibuster is nuked

Zero in on any urban center you can think of. Blue surrounded by a sea of red.

And not just BIG urban centers. Look at Maryland. It's not just Baltimore and the DC suburbs that are blue, it's Hagerstown and Salisbury.

An ad campaign should just be posting 8chan posts and saying 'really?'.

The "sea of red" has about 11 people per square mile in it is the thing, of course.

Anyway allow me to reiterate my demand to reorganize the country into a confederation of autonomous city-states supported by heavily roboticized home farmlands

nailed it pic.twitter.com/vBhd6wAln4

— Philip Bump (@pbump) February 2, 2021

Expected it to say Magnited

NYTimes suggests the Biden administration needs to appoint a “reality czar” to deal with misinformation and extremism. https://t.co/jVNWNJ3e1C

— Seth Fiegerman (@sfiegerman) February 2, 2021

lol can’t imagine this backfiring the next time a Republican wins

“Start snitching”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/capitol-rioters-may-be-ready-to-start-snitching-on-each-other

should I even read the byline

xpost

“Start snitching”

"You're gonna make some U.S. attorney a rich man!"

Seems like that's that:

News: @Sen_JoeManchin says he will vote for the budget resolution in the Senate later today, clearing the way for Democrats to pass a Covid stimulus package by simple majority through the reconciliation process. pic.twitter.com/HSGmZoQlaL

— Gabe Fleisher (@WakeUp2Politics) February 2, 2021

hell yeah

my drag name is reality czar

Lol

A "reality czar" is a terrible idea for lots of reasons, but the most obvious is that there is no voice of authority that people detached from reality will accept. Obviously not Joe Biden, not any Democrat, not the MSM, not scientists, or Nobel Prize winners, or academics, or local mayors, nobody. There's no one they will listen to if that person challenges whatever their worldview of the moment is.

I love how all these right leaning Tweeters are handwringing certified armchair economists

guess we don't have to defund Manchin's butt anymore

https://assets.newatlas.com/dims4/default/0a1a160/2147483647/strip/true/crop/1368x1080+0+0/resize/1216x960!/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnewatlas-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2Farchive%2F1970s-nasa-space-art-2.jpg

west virginia, 2022

I haven’t read “Our Universe” in ages

ha holy shit that's good news and i assume everyone in WV is getting a jetpack
'
lol xpost

I haven’t read “Our Universe” in ages

My friend. (I've seriously considered getting a copy again to replace the one that went away decades ago now...)

My childhood copy is in my son’s hands now. (So I can visit it at least.)

Ned, do it. Buy one. Even though the science has shifted it’s still awe-inspiring.

Reality Winner for reality czar

Those Ted Cruz quotes far upthread just establish what we already knew. His ambition to become president is limitless. He watched Trump in action and he'll move rapidly and forcefully to occupy the now-vacant Trump space in politics before anyone else can fill it. He won't be hindered by any shred of decency or morality. He'll dump any quantity of poison into the well of society if it gets him one inch closer to the pinnacle of power.

His great weakness is his pride at being able to speak and write coherently. This will forever keep him locked out of the hearts of Trump's followers. Shhh. Don't anyone tell him.

Cruz wants less to "be President" then be "Terrible Emperor of Godworld"

he probably just wants his daughter and her friends to stop calling him a 'spineless pussy' and an 'ambulatory blobfish' in their text chains

Cruz has the small problem that everyone hates him.

haha, that axios thing is crazy.

The meeting had come entirely off the rails.

Byrne, backing up Flynn, told Trump the White House lawyers didn't care about him and were being obstructive. "Sir, we're both entrepreneurs, and we both built businesses," the former Overstock CEO told Trump. "We know that there are times you have to be creative and take different steps."

This was a remarkable level of personal familiarity, given it was the first time Byrne had met the president. All the stanchions and buffers between the White House and the outside world had crumbled.

Byrne kept attacking the senior White House staff in front of Trump. "They've already abandoned you," he told the president aggressively. Periodically during the meeting Flynn or Byrne challenged Trump's top staff — portraying them as disloyal: So do you think the president won or not?

At one point, with Flynn shouting, Byrne raised his hand to talk. He stood up and turned around to face Herschmann. "You're a quitter," he said. "You've been interfering with everything. You've been cutting us off."

"Do you even know who the fuck I am, you idiot?" Herschmann snapped back.

"Yeah, you're Patrick Cipollone," Byrne said.

"Wrong! Wrong, you idiot!"

this is really good, though. this is like the coen brothers wrote the meeting

xpost Thankfully, his behavior suggests that he sees this as a quality to perpetually nurture.

seems like a nice guy, I mean, he raised his hand

in the usual Republican fashion, he did so to hit somebody, but

later, in the same meeting, Byrne strikes again:

Byrne, wearing jeans, a hoodie and a neck gaiter, piped up with his own conspiracy: "I know how this works. I bribed Hillary Clinton $18 million on behalf of the FBI for a sting operation."

Herschmann stared at the eccentric millionaire. "What the hell are you talking about? Why would you say something like that?" Byrne brought up the bizarre Clinton bribery claim several more times during the meeting to the astonishment of White House lawyers.

looool

this is like being in the Mirror Match in Mortal Kombat and both fighters kill each other

i'm sorry, just one more:

"How exactly are you going to do this?" an exasperated Herschmann asked again, later in the conversation. Newman again cited the 2018 executive order, which prompted Herschmann to question out loud whether she was even a lawyer.

Then Byrne chimed in: "There are guys with big guns and badges who can get these things." Herschmann couldn't believe it. "What are you, three years old?" he asked.

byrne and herschmann are a legendary comedy team

Byrne asserted that he was six years old, and that his Power Wheels was bigger and faster than Herschmann's

Couldn't help but feel that Herschmann did more than a few dialogue rewrites before anonymously sourcing his story.

I love how nobody in the room including Trump had any idea who Byrne was or why he was there. Also the detail about him scarfing all the appetizers.

lol here's a selfie by Byrne in that exact outfit at the White House

https://www.sltrib.com/resizer/eNJ4V9nJZqJZT23qDb7hAPK463I=/1024x650/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/sltrib/CZE6QRVNEBFGLD5IPCHSAN6TDE.jpeg

this is good

This IS a bipartisan agenda. https://t.co/7yN97X8ii8

— Ronald Klain (@WHCOS) February 2, 2021

I'm trying not to hope.

https://imgur.com/4mJSn9x

NEW: Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has removed all members from the Pentagon's advisory boards in a sweeping effort to oust a series of last-minute appointees by former President Donald Trumphttps://t.co/yPCJossWnN@laraseligman @connorobrienNH, first reported by @nancyayoussef

— Dave Brown (@dave_brown24) February 2, 2021