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

That’s powerful stuff, KM.

one of his classic communiques involved how he shouldn't have to pay for sidewalk repair because fuck people in wheelchairs and with other mobility issues -- they can either take a different street or drive a car.

First part was horrifying because Trump was all of the above. Second part just that sequence of - we say it because we heard it, we defend it because we said it, we embrace it because we’ve defended it - explains so much of how people like Trump, backed by media like Fox, can exert so much power over people that it’s like mind control.

i was alive in early 2017. there were a series of blockbuster stories and public crises unfolding in plain daylight, back in early 2017. some of them were petty (crowd size at inauguration), some of them were indisputably important and urgent (flynn, the muslim ban). even the crowd size stuff was a bit more than petty - the reason we were transfixed is because we suddenly had a president who was lying to us. we've always had presidents who lied to us. but this time we as a country elected someone and ASKED him to lie to us (i was inspired by an old interview yesterday, check it out below)

Thank you Karl. That bothered me about that article. We almost immediately had a travel ban targeting countries with heavy Muslim populations, reports of the CBO defying the injunction against it, and Bannon calling the press the "opposition party".

Never mind the chilling af way he dismissed acting AG Yates, by saying she "betrayed the country".

the willingness of basically every conservative in the country to defend literally everything the man did and said was maddening. so many times I'd think "surely this is a bridge too far" and all you'd get were furrowed brows for 48 hours before "well the fake news is really just trying to take him down, why don't you talk about the GOOD things he's doing?". like, I voted Biden, and was actually quite excited to do so, but I still think he sucks in a lot of fundamental ways, and won't defend him on a bunch of issues. it's weird that virtually no Republicans I knew treated Trump like that. they all saw Trump as an extension of themselves.

well this is disgusting

https://medium.com/@lindseyboylan4NY/my-story-of-working-with-governor-cuomo-e664d4814b4e

xpost even the REpublicans that didn't *like* him still preferred him to us 'pathetic libs' so they'd defend a guy they didn't even like cos he '0wned' us

Cruz said it was “really creepy” that a reporter captured a picture of his dog forlornly staring out a window, and “even more creepy” that his wife Heidi was photographed on the beach “in her bikini” by paparazzi.

“I will tell you, that she is pissed about. All the rest of it, she’s fine,” Cruz said, adding: “Heidi is smoking hot, so I looked at the pictures and said, ‘Man, you look great.’”

Contributed without comment.

shout out to the cable news watchers ITT

This is a good glimpse at ... how no real people actually watch cable news https://t.co/wEZMtuT0a6

— Ben Smith (@benyt) February 24, 2021

(xpost) Not commenting on his wife here at all...Cruz is clearly trying to paper over his spinelessness re his wife five years ago. He'll probably casually make mention at some point of how much his dad was a staunch anti-conspiracist and lover of JFK.

imagine what he would have said had a reporter caught a picture of his wife staring forlornly out of a window and his dog on a beach in its bikini

i too was very glad it clarified that Heidi was the name of his wife and not ......... the name of his dog

the financial health of cnn relies upon nobody telling stanley where italy is

guessing it will be in the last place he looks?

Episode 3 will feature Stanley Tucci discovering the perfect bolognaise while explaining why including a $15/hour minimum wage is critical to the well-being of the American populace

it's weird that virtually no Republicans I knew treated Trump like that. they all saw Trump as an extension of themselves

Having the right enemies fyw

fuck this pink imperialism
https://www.autostraddle.com/heres-why-bidens-latest-lgbtqi-memorandum-should-be-ringing-alarm-bells/

I need a good autostraddle

Yeah, Left, that's a perfect example of shifting blame and responsibility from the offenders to the victims. Pretty reprehensible.

‘Get used to me’ — Louis DeJoy says he will stay at the USPS for a ‘long time’

https://i.imgur.com/0KmB0Hn.jpg

not if he dies on the toilet

Beware the Ides of March DickJoy

Where's Ted Kaczynski when you need him?

That's the smug smile and confidence of a white man who has never faced consequences his entire life.

otm

I have to admit that given the havoc this schmuck has wreaked upon the USPS, I honestly kind of want him more dead that almost any of the other people I want dead. We want our mail, fuckface.

I'm just still bowled over by the pure chutzpah of saying he needs to raise rates because of an "unprecedented" drop in mail quantity at the exact same fucking time the USPS' website had a red banner at the top of every page about delays due to "unprecedented" volumes of mail being sent.

not if he dies on the toilet

― little johnny juul (voodoo chili), Wednesday, February 24, 2021 4:29 PM (thirty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

https://www.indiewire.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/BreakingBad_Hank.png?w=780

bowled over

boweled even

I'm just still bowled over by the pure chutzpah of saying he needs to raise rates because of an "unprecedented" drop in mail quantity at the exact same fucking time the USPS' website had a red banner at the top of every page about delays due to "unprecedented" volumes of mail being sent.

i've seen that banner (possibly as recently as yesterday), but i don't see it today.

Yeah, it's gone now, but I'm fairly confident that banner was up when it was being reported a week or so ago about him wanting to slow down delivery and raise rates.

It was def up yesterday

hmm. WONDER why it was removed this morning of all days?

Wayne Wonder demanded it?

I'm sure this is all leading towards some kind of villainous privatization scheme: The United States Postal Corporation (aka "MailCorp"), a partnership with Blackrock Capital and Morgan Stanley

Amazon Postal

I thought they used USPS in the difficult to get to places

aren;t there like loads of unemployed drones taht people need to think of . could be utilised to bomb people with post etc

yeah Amazon had USPS workers delivering on Sundays!!!

That's partially why Trump wanted to destroy the USPS... because they help Amazon deliver profits.

Yea USPS even says Amazon Delivery or some shit on their tracker for Sunday deliveries

It's a much more interesting story than "Biden said he'd do it and he didn't." Trump's un-confirmable man at DHS used the final days of the lame duck term to make deals that tied Biden's hands and let courts stop him from doing the deportation pause. https://t.co/FdJiw2V9zM

— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) February 25, 2021

there's the tax returns:

https://thehill.com/policy/finance/540463-manhattan-da-obtains-trump-tax-returns-report?

xp so much in that ICE story. feel like story should have led with the ultra vires/outside of authority point. like, in process, the ice director resigned, then the two weeks later their replacement resigned, then their replacement would not/did not sign, then cuccinelli signed "for agency" as acting deputy secretary. "but i asked the gc, i know i'm good!"

i'm not good enough at agency ad law to know how that stands tho i guess.

Didn't the tax returns already get leaked to the Times? Wasn't that a thing for, like, a week? Are these different tax returns? Or just finally formally in the hands of prosecutors?

Anyway, while they're in there they should just do the guy a solid and help him with the audit, it's been a while.

It's hard to believe the last-minute ICE deal will stand up given all the issues with the legality of Cuccinelli's authority. But what a clusterfuck. And of course even if Biden manages to override the deal with the union, I'm sure most of those Trumpy ICE officers have civil service protection that will functionally leave them in charge of the agency's operations.

Didn't the tax returns already get leaked to the Times? Wasn't that a thing for, like, a week? Are these different tax returns? Or just finally formally in the hands of prosecutors?

After a contentious debate on the Equality Act, which would extend civil rights protections to the LGBTQ community, Rep. Marie Newman (D-Ill.) on Wednesday raised a transgender pride flag outside her office — which happens to sit directly across from the office of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), one of the bill’s most vocal opponents.

“Our neighbor, [Greene], tried to block the Equality Act because she believes prohibiting discrimination against trans Americans is ‘disgusting, immoral, and evil,’” Newman, who has a transgender daughter, wrote on Twitter with a video of her hanging the flag. “Thought we’d put up our Transgender flag so she can look at it every time she opens her door.”

Greene, who lost her committee memberships by promoting false and extremist claims, quickly responded with her own video mocking Newman’s earlier tweet as she hung up a poster that said: “There are TWO genders: Male & Female. Trust The Science!”

“Thought we’d put up ours so [Newman] can look at it every time she opens her door,” Greene said.

us politics 2021

https://i.imgur.com/zVFuxGy.png

https://i.imgur.com/q5iWBZy.png