Vaccines, Infrastructure, and Kids In Cages: US Politics April 2021

Cop and suspect are dead.

oh man Capital Police not having a good year

Robert Contee of the Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police Department has just said at the briefing outside the US Capitol that the attack by a man driving a car at Capitol Police officers “does not appear to be terrorism related”.

so he's white

hm

Whoa. MLB announces it is pulling this year's All-Star game and the amateur draft from Georgia. pic.twitter.com/QqJzR3lAcy

— Lindsey Adler (@lindseyadler) April 2, 2021

so he's white

Well there must be some reason they're dismissing the terrorist angle. If it was Europe the first reaction to a car being driven at people who are then attacked by knives would be to assume it's an Islamist attack.

"terrorism" is a highly elastic term that has been stretched so far that it has lost most of its meaning. if, for example, the attacker was socially alienated and politically disaffected, but this attack was purely a demonstration of that fact rather than an attempt to change anything in any particular direction, does that make it "terrorism"?

awesome (re MLB)

Tremendous!

wow that seems uh...pretty big

hit 'em where it hurts, in their bank accounts

Does the all-star game really bring in much revenue for the area? Doesn’t seem that devastating - 29 cities survive its absence every year

OK I'll take a symbolic hit as well

Er, I mean the other 29 mlb teams, plus all other cities

Symbolic hit though, hell yeah!

Now we have this whole third contingent of suburban evangelical libertarian anti-mask Trumpoids — a good many of whom have moved here recently from out of state, fleeing "Taxifornia" or whatever — and they are huge assholes who basically hate everyone, including the established party people. They have no governing philosophy beyond never raise taxes and pwn the libs, they're terrible at government, and they're big on social media theatrics. Not a promising evolution.

yeah good way of putting it - while you could argue GWB ultimately did more evil (which I myself would've argued until Covid hit) there at least seemed to be some semblance of humanity there. I never felt like Bush hated America. they at least pretended to care about what's true and what's false. idk to what extent we have Facebook to blame, or if the combination of 9/11 and a black president just caused half the country to lose their minds, but it does seem the right has passed the point of no return and it genuinely makes me scared about what the future of this country is going to look like.

The All-Star game is worth tens of millions in added revenue, which isn't chicken feed, but major cities generate billions in economic activity. A lot of it is prestige. This is bad publicity and it is tied directly to the actions of GA republicans.

also wrt to the BLM game cancellations last year individual athletes and teams (as a collection of players, not management per se) now know they can really fuck shit up by just refusing to play

it's a big deal. sports boycotts were a big part of the electoral backlash to north carolina's anti-trans stuff IIUC.

it's also honestly kind of surprising

I have no doubt it took a lot to get Manfred to do it.

also there's the fact that MLB isn't known as a "progressive" league like the NBA nor are they desperately trying to overcorrect the way the NFL is

What a week! (Given it's Brown sharing this and she has her sources, I'm inclined to thing the Daily Mail is on to something.)

"Gaetz's arrest is said to be imminent after the alleged victim, who has not been named, testified before a Florida grand jury this week saying she had sex with the conservative Republican before she turned 18, https://t.co/GJvXjxKQiq has learned. " https://t.co/Lci46QovWC

— julie k. brown (@jkbjournalist) April 2, 2021

Wow, that's made my day.

I'm just gonna get on the record and say it: I never liked that guy

if just one of these evil motherfuckers ever experienced any consequences it would be great

Countdown to rumor that it was George Soros’ daughter/ a plot to entrap

The rumor won't save him from prison, but it will reassure the hopelessly conspiracy-addicted that the deep state exists. otoh, the hopelessly conspiracy-addicted are gonna reflexively protect their beliefs no matter what, so they are not in play.

Georgia might not be done getting slapped around — apparently NJ (where I live) is offering tax breaks to studios to stop filming in Georgia and start filming here.

I will be happy even if it just ends up seeing Gaetz get his due punishment, but I’ll say that he strikes me as the type to be more than happy to name names in return for some leniency. But maybe I’m getting the cart ahead of the horse.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/7e/56/93/7e56933f68d79c9fd77d507a94f1187c.jpg

Man up Mr. Congressman, it is Mann Act time!

I'm thrilled people are treating GA like the apartheid state it explicitly seeks to become, but it's also important not to reduce this to one state: https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/voting-laws-roundup-march-2021

Stunning new data from @brennancenter: 361 bills to restrict voting rights introduced in 47 states as of March 24

That’s up from 253 restrictive bills as of Feb 19, a 43% increase in a month

55 restrictive bills in 24 states moving through legislatureshttps://t.co/77myHbs9qo pic.twitter.com/hzSuKda4J8

— Ari Berman (@AriBerman) April 1, 2021

boycott USA

I just got spooked by the thought that Matt Gaetz gaetz out of the charges and truly becomes the successor to Trump.

I'm thrilled people are treating GA like the apartheid state it explicitly seeks to become ...

good on MLB for moving the All-Star game, but please let's not equate the state of Georgia with the GOP hacks in its legislature... Warnock and Ossoff didn't elect themselves (y'all are welcome btw)

what I see here looks like the state GOP pandering to its Trumpist base and in the process earning tons of bad press and handing its opponents everything needed to continue mobilizing non-GOP voters ... even if the new voting laws are strictly enforced, African-American turnout in 2022 will exceed that of 2020 if Abrams is in the ballot

Warnock and Ossoff didn't elect themselves (y'all are welcome btw)

thank you

Warnock and Ossoff have made a world of difference. thx GA voters.

GA did us a better turn than fucking Maine did.

let's not equate the state of Georgia with the GOP hacks in its legislature

Sorry, that was imprecise of me. By "state of Georgia" I meant "State of Georgia." I lived there seven years and have closer family there still, so I swear I'm not one of those "red states are evil" dummies.

Georgia lawmaker Park Cannon, who was arrested after knocking on the door where Gov. Brian Kemp was signing the law restricting voting rights, says she is now facing 8 years in prison after being charged with 2 felonies. https://t.co/8f1UV57qwc

— Taniel (@Taniel) April 2, 2021

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/03/us/politics/trump-donations.html

The guy in hospice who ended up donating $500/week to the Trump campaign because of this scheme... jfc

When I snooped on the public records for people in my town who donated, I recognized a woman who had many recurring payments to the Republicans. Strongly suspect she didn't realize she was giving away money her pension every month.

Wow. Just simple scammers, through and through. Utterly uncomplicated.

That shit is sinister. My 90 year old grandma with virtually no short term memory left had like $4000 a month in recurring church donations. There’s an entire industry based around scanning senile people.

Fwiw act blue usually defaults to recurring donations too, although I assume it’s easier to cancel them assuming you notice. The whole small donation industry is a cesspool.

I was going to say "wait I give to Act Blue all the time and I don't think it defaults to recurring" but looky here

https://support.actblue.com/donors/contributions/i-thought-i-made-a-one-time-contribution-but-its-recurring-what-happened-and-how-can-i-stop-it/

It seems that it's up to the individual campaign; Act Blue gives the campaign an option to make recurring the default, and yeah, they shouldn't. (And if you find that a candidate you like has set it up that way, honestly, there are many many many other equally deserving candidates, contribute to them instead.)

Act Blue is way more insidious about the mailing lists than the donations, imo. I ended up on a million lists after making donations for 2020.

For a while I got emails from the previous president. I unsubscribed after the election, but now I'm getting a ton of emails from other Republican accounts, they just go straight to my spam folder.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/02/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-campaign-contributions-478943

Giving back the money will surely stop the GOP from trying to link centrist Democrats to AOC.

I called Medicare the other day, the number my mom wrote down. It immediately said there was a thing we could win, and then when someone pulled picked up, they said we won. My mom immediately said no and then they hung up on us. I soon realized my number had gotten the number wrong, by a digit. I’m sure that if any number that resembles Medicare, but off by a single number, is a scam. I kind of want to call that # back and chew them out