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

MyPillow guy also hit with is own $1.3 billion defamation suit.

where’s the qualmsley return?

xxpost god why can't people just move on. kinda clingy imo.

BREAKING: Lawmakers in Virginia, which historically has used the death penalty more than any other state, have given final approval to a bill ending end capital punishment. https://t.co/JKyryFXW2j

— The Associated Press (@AP) February 22, 2021

Coinciding with future attorney general Merrick Garland saying he'd had it with that shit.

a bill ending the end of capital punishment?

So...the former president is reacting to the Supreme Court's decision to give his tax returns to NY prosecutors with his usual dignity and equanimity.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Eu2kiObXcAYhegW.jpg

what's nice is that he can't order any federal officers to do anything about it now so his words lose a lot of weight when he can't tap Barr on the shoulder

they'll have to include emergency funding for wahmbulances in the new covid relief bill

I still think Trump is actually dead

certainly dead inside

my main reaction to the first 5 sentences of that (after which i tapped out) is that he's finding it easier to acquire and consume amphetamines in the privacy of mar a lago than he did in the whitehouse

Also makes clear what a favor Twitter did to his rhetorical style, the incoherence and random capitalization are easier to digest in short bites. String it all together like that and it just read like a crazy email to City Council from a guy with piles of junk in his yars who's convinced the codes enforcers are conspiring against him.

in his yard obv

Where exactly do these statements get released? Does he fax them to media outlets? I'm kidding, but without an online platform, I don't know where they go.

..who try to take down their political opponents using the law as a weapon...

Paging Hunter Biden

somebody's obviously correcting his sentence construction

Probably that little paperclip guy

so he attaches the message to the leg of a raven and then sends it out where does it go from then?
Can't trust any of these new fangled electronic services which might refuse your trade like

ha ha, there were always occasional releases that would slip out in unmodified Trumpese from the White House, but caek otm

Where exactly do these statements get released? Does he fax them to media outlets? I'm kidding, but without an online platform, I don't know where they go.

― clemenza, Monday, February 22, 2021 6:36 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

not sure - not only did he get booted from social media platforms, but his campaign got booted from the platform he had been using to send email press releases

There were media before there was online and somehow the marriage of mutual interest between them and political figures always got consummated.

Ewwwww

Why does he keep saying his 75 million votes is "the most votes ever for a sitting president" when ... Biden got more than that? I mean is he... you know what never mind.

i go through the same thing every single time he does it, believe me. it's fucking crazy

Well, he did win with less votes before...

I got the most votes for a losing President ever. So I should be President

He also was the sitting president to receive votes in an election during the highest year number ever.

75 million votes! amazing!!

He's also the sitting President with the highest son ever.

74.2, 75, whatever! - it was amazing, all these millions of votes!

He also had the highest LDL count of any President in history

It only took 100 years, but Taft has been dethroned...

Well that's alright, then.

Pres. Biden: "I promise you, the day will come when the memory of the loved one you lost will bring a smile to your lips before a tear to your eye." https://t.co/JOonqkv1Qb pic.twitter.com/wbe2Dgoril

— ABC News (@ABC) February 22, 2021

What happened to the Official Seal on Trump's letterhead, "office of the former president"?

re: biden and candle light vigil: I did not watch this time, it's nice and all, I liked Catholic camp too, but can we like, actually pass a relief bill now?

not needed! nobody else will die of covid from this moment forth. all shall live long enough to laugh lovingly at the memories of the half million dead. so mote it be!

You heard the man: live laugh love, bitches

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/immigrant-children-camp-texas-biden/2021/02/22/05dfd58c-7533-11eb-8115-9ad5e9c02117_story.html

First migrant facility for children opens under Biden

Lol just coming here to post the twitter version of that.

It's "just temporary" ...

As a practical matter, ICE is now letting more unaccompanied minors across the border (per Biden's directives), and they do actually have to go somewhere. Legally the government can't just give a 16-year-old a bus ticket to Baltimore or whatever. But keeping them in jail is obviously not a good option either. I'm not sure what should be done in the short term, but they ought to be working on a better, more humane system in the near term. The absence of that is what will keep the detention centers open. And keeping the detention centers open allows them to not think about a better, more humane system, because they have a place to stash them. Not great.

“It is a step backward...” It is. What is the step forward for children in custody?

To get them out of custody obv. But our system is so fucked up that it's hard to get to that point. (Highly recommend "Tell Me How It Ends" by Valeria Luiselli on this.)

As a practical matter, ICE is now letting more unaccompanied minors across the border (per Biden's directives), and they do actually have to go somewhere. Legally the government can't just give a 16-year-old a bus ticket to Baltimore or whatever. But keeping them in jail is obviously not a good option either. I'm not sure what should be done in the short term, but they ought to be working on a better, more humane system in the near term. The absence of that is what will keep the detention centers open. And keeping the detention centers open allows them to not think about a better, more humane system, because they have a place to stash them. Not great.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Tuesday, February 23, 2021 1:46 PM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Blerrrggghghg to ALL OF THIS HORRIBLENESS. I mean tipsy otm.

It's my understanding that the process of minors applying for asylum REQUIRES them to arrive unaccompanied at the border and surrender to agents. It doesn't work if there's an adult with them or if they have a parent or guardian resident in the US. I mean, it SUCKS, but that's what we've got. Let's un-get it though yes.

I interviewed a guy last week who had been put into deportation (for the infuriating reason that someone hit his car, and while giving an accident report to the responding officer, the guy had to acknowledge he didn't have a driver's license). He was whisked into the black hole of ICE while his wife and kids tried to keep track of where he was. The upshot was he spent about 5 weeks in ICE jail in two different states, and by forking over all the family savings (and the savings of other family members and friends) to hire a lawyer, he was finally released and had to take a bus back from Louisiana to Tennessee. He's now back doing exactly what he was doing before, working as a cook, but minus what little cushion the family had. The thing he kept repeating about the whole system was, "It's just a business."

Which is too kind, obviously. It's a fucking racket, and a deeply inhumane one. But it's so administratively and bureaucratically entrenched that dismantling it would be very hard even for an administration that really wanted to.

:((((( I worked with a middle-schooler whose brother was coming without documents from Guatemala iirc?, and was only a couple of hours away from NYC in a car when they were apparently detained & sucked into the maw of ICE. They took him all the way to CHICAGO, like a 14-hour drive away!! I tried to find him free legal services but my resources were all NYC-based and I think the family got their own lawyer first. It was so scary and awful.

ICE world really is its own subterranean system. It's like being captured by goblins.

The violence of borders is despicable, dismantle it all now afaic, I truly don't care about "how difficult it would be."

Clearly.

tuesday mornng challenge:

without googling, without using your computer, without looking at the news, and without breathing, who said this:

“Here’s a suggestion: Just don’t be assholes,” he said. “Just, you know, treat each other as human beings. Have some degree, some modicum of respect.”

hint: it's one of the biggest assholes