Beware the Ides of March -- U.S. Politics March 2021

I admitted pot use and held a top secret clearance in my first post-college job. The primary thing they were looking for was to make sure I couldn't be blackmailed.

are you now or have you ever been a fan of Ned's Atomic Dustbin

feverishly scanning interns' credit card bills for purchases of Phish merch

"no i swear i only visit livephish dot com when i'm sober"

this administration's view on marijuana is just mind-boggling. like 75% of the country wants it legalized. it's already legal in a bunch of states and the ones where it isn't you can just get Delta 8 weed, which is basically just Bud Light (lol). it's already well-established that there's like no downside and a lot of potential upside. just fuckin' do it already

The SF-whatever questions are very slanted toward a specific answer. That answer is "I was around druggies for a while in college and so, yeah, I tried it experimentally a few times. I'm not hanging around those people anymore and I won't ever be tempted into their wicked ways."

They are definitely NOT looking for an answer like, "Yeah I had some completely legal edibles last year in Colorado (or California, or New Jersey, or the District of Columbia) and it was fine and I will probably do it again in a few years when it's legal in my state."

It sucks and it makes no sense but that is the current state of things.

You inhaled pounds of weed in college but you have lost touch with your connection = okay.

Indulging responsibly, from time to time, as an adult (when it is legal in your jurisdiction) = not okay.

I agree that it's dumb, but as Aimless said it's still federally illegal. That needs to go away so this nonsense won't happen anymore.

just fuckin' do it already

otm. it's just not on the radar of old, powerful people as an issue of immediate concern. maybe, if the cards fall right in the mid-terms, they'll manage it in 2023.

they're just trying to keep Dave Matthews Band from being played in the White House, they had to find a way

meanwhile, more state ballot initiatives are the path forward.

frame it as an economic stimulus issue idk ... wasn't that part of the rationale for cancelling prohibition?

tbf I am being swayed by the Dave Matthews Band argument

this starts off as an environmental justice /chevron story, but keep reading. this is fucking BONKERS

You know that free-floating sense that multinational corporations are above the law, able to buy their way out of consequences for even the most blatant, heinous crimes?

There's a (nearly) unbelievable, highly concrete example of it underway right at this moment.

1/ pic.twitter.com/KnIhSsTuwc

— Cory Doctorow (@doctorow) March 19, 2021

I appreciate you sharing that, just donated to the defense fund.

Sounds like a concrete real world example of the effects of getting right wing ideologues confirmed as federal judges.

i'm just xposting from A question about climate change/global warming.

but:

season 5 of Drilled gets into Ecuador vs. Chevron. Worth a listen if you've been reading this thread.
https://www.criticalfrequency.org/drilled

― Elvis Telecom, Friday, March 19, 2021 2:49 PM (twenty-five minutes ago)

i assumed the judge (Southern District of New York Judge Lewis A Kaplan) would be a trump or GWB appointee, but it was Bill Clinton, 1994

he was interviewed on chapo maybe a year ago and i fell into a rabbit hole looking at the bizarre "news" pages chevron has set up if you google them. like really weird stuff, i don't know who reads them. they have so much money. they are like a country. such a horrifying story.

xp oh yeah, that too. it's not a republican thing, at all.

er, not at all is not what i mean, of course it is. it's bipartisan is what i mean.

gotta make some concessions to newt and the gang in 1994 so that the democrats will do well in the mid-terms, though

xp

#ImpeachKaplan

seriously

Not trying to diminish how awful that is, but I mean, y'all know the history of Shell in Nigeria, right? It can be summed up handily with the following words: rape, mass killings, corruption, propaganda.

(It is stories like this that lead to the sort of despair about climate that I was going on about the other day)

And just the other day, CEOs of Royal Dutch Shell and Eni were acquitted on corruption charges. Wonder how that happened when the cases were locktight?

yes, i don't think anyone was comparing it to how bad shell is. chevron is making an example of him because he won a big case against them for doing bad things, after all.

xp that's true table, but i mean, the (good) lawyer is currently the only person in the United States who is being held in pre-trial detention for a misdemeanor? no better way to bring more attention (and accountability? ever?) to the larger disaster then to shine a light on an absolutely insane and well-documented thing that's happening right now, in the united states

Agreed. I guess that sometimes my cynicism gets the better of me, and I read such things and am horrified, but also like, "well of course"

donzinger has been interviewed on ch*po a couple times. absolutely wild case.

ISIS: we will release you on one condition: that you tell the world you paid $200 to have a doctor in a dirty fleece vest diagnose you with anxiety so you could get high

White House employee: *sweating*

— The Autism Tiger’s Pecs of LIES™️🐅 (@UnionSaltBae) March 19, 2021

This is elder abuse

INBOX: Feinstein Statement on Filibuster Reform pic.twitter.com/UVKqd6BZAI

— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) March 20, 2021

THREE DAYS. WOW.

I love it!

?

Oh without posts in the thread. Back to brunch I guess.

what will the Biden administration do about the crisis of the surging siege of the immigrant invasion on our Southern Border?? omg we're all going to die

they televised a fucking round table discussion sitting outside at the border FFS . this is so stupid

I can't find it now but there was a chart on Twitter showing that there were approximately 5x as many border crossings under GW Bush as under Obama, Trump or now Biden...and nobody gave a fuck about some "crisis" then.

ABC flew its entire roundtable to the US-Mexico border pic.twitter.com/GdLd2RU7qx

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 21, 2021

The only evidence of restraint I've ever seen on Trump's part is that he has yet to use the phrase 'white genocide' (retweet notwithstanding). How the fuck do these people consistently get away with such conspicuous dog-whistling?

It plays well with Red State rubes, particularly those in border states the GOP wants to hold on to.

seems to play well on the liberal main steam media too

. @OHPredictive poll
Sinema approval 39/40 (-1)
Kelly approval 49/38 (+11)

Amongst Dems
Sinema +20
Kelly +69
Looks like they didn't find her curtsey killing a $15 min wage as funny as she did. pic.twitter.com/SQ08Dtq0hW

— The Bearded Crank (@beardedcrank) March 22, 2021

IT'S A CRISIS!! OMG OMG

I don't understand the obsession with this whole "Why won't the White House use the word 'crisis?'" thing.

Crisis, kerfuffle, challenge, struggle, disaster, problem, issue, obstacle, situation, etc., it's all the same. https://t.co/9iWErt6aQd

— Parker Molloy (@ParkerMolloy) March 22, 2021

The crisis is that there’s a border

^otm

also these morans would argue with you about calling literal nazis "racist" but this must be called a "crisis" otherwise...?

"Why won't Liberal President X say this one word" is an old Fox trope by this point, but I guess what does Fox have besides old tropes.

Rod Stewart - `Old Tropes and Old Toupees

they're mad because people kept asking republicans to say "joe biden won". that was unacceptable, so now they must hit back twice as hard on the words that they want to hear

The correct response is “why won’t you say ‘Black lives matter’ or ‘stop Asian hate’- oh that’s right, you are for killing minorities”

unfortunately, i think if people respond that way on fox it immediately cuts away to a commercial for supplemental life insurance