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

It's kind of astonishing to me that the *entirety* of the Republican message on the infrastructure bill is "Roads and bridges! Roads and bridges!"

I'm sure that Fox News will eventually stop booking Pete, but in the meantime, he'll keep doing this:pic.twitter.com/6ONqZY8WWu

— Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen) April 4, 2021

neither roads, nor bridges

One obvious rejoinder to the roads and bridges thing is that roads and bridges already have a dedicated funding source in gasoline taxes, which can only be spent on roads and bridges, where most of the other things the bill is talking about don't. (Well, airports and ports do through user fees, but not at the same level as gas taxes.)

This is a Halloween costume. pic.twitter.com/3gARoLSxEq

— Richard M. Nixon (@dick_nixon) April 4, 2021

a candidate for gabbneb

She. Put. Her. GPA. In. The. AD. 🤣 pic.twitter.com/nYsZrN7cwP

— DR. KRUPALI 🇺🇸 (@krupali) April 4, 2021

a candidate for gabbneb

🐦[She. Put. Her. GPA. In. The. AD. 🤣 pic.twitter.com/nYsZrN7cwP🕸
— DR. KRUPALI 🇺🇸 (@krupali) April 4, 2021🕸]🐦

(physically removes opponent's king from the board on first move) Checkmate. (leans back in chair, crosses arms, smirks)

imo if your king isn’t on the board it cannot be threatened by an opponent’s piece and is therefore invincible. She played herself

maybe she should just go fuck herself instead

anyone who brags about their grades (lol) or where they went to school (lol) or their IQ score (looooooool) is tied for the dumbest person in the universe

read down the replies, looks like it's a photoshop

makes sense. turning point USA are some of the most hitler-esque youth that i know of, but even they are smart enough to not put their logo on that

lol if it’s a shop it’s uhhhhh pretty racist

the replies suggest the quote is real, she just said it with her mouth instead of putting on her ads

well, who can really know what actually happened these days. it's kind of like right and wrong, truth or fiction. toss it all in the wash, it doesn't really matter and these things are just unknowable

what sery kim originally said was indeed racist:

https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/02/politics/sery-kim-endorsement-texas-candidate-chinese-immigrants/index.html

I'm kind of surprised that News corp/Fox has not had more blow back in their other media properties by people just not wanting to deal with a business that supports their news organization. I suppose money is money, but you got to figure if say Lebron James just flat out quit doing any media or business with Fox Sports and their entertainment business over say their media's right wing propaganda money maker, it would not take long for that to become 'a thing'.

Indeed, why can’t athletes just fix everything for us?

lebron james.....doesn't do any business with fox sports

Fox News is iirc its own entity now, no longer affiliated with the larger (and basically nonexistent) Fox Corporation.

See how they’re suffering already? The Australian government had to take broadcast rights away from the public broadcaster, AND give a $30 million untendered grant, AND then another $10 million bonus for no reason, just to show women’s football exclusively to a fraction of the previous unrestricted audience. Lebron has Rupert on the ropes.

xp

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/bernie-sanders-senate-budget-committee-b1825305.html

they call him the idea man

No idea what the trends are on this but I’m constantly struck by the range and quantity of objectively successful people who enjoy some of the highest living standards in human history who are nonetheless consumed by bitterness.

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) March 30, 2021

Might as well collate this Gaetz story from circa 2013 itt:

U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz accused of creating sex game with 'points' for sleeping with staff

More details now revealed:

Matt Gaetz's Florida sex game included a 'Harry Potter' challenge and 'extra points' for sleeping in sorority houses, a female Republican tells Insider

Anyone who had sex with a certain conservative woman "won the whole game regardless of points," she said. That woman was known as the "snitch," a nod to the "Harry Potter" game of Quidditch. The GOP source said she "heard specific references of Gaetz being involved and scoring points." She declined to name the woman to protect her privacy.

Another way to obtain points was to have sex with "virgins," ABC reported this week, citing a source

Lawmakers who participated publicly bragged about it, even among their female colleagues; some male legislators who didn't participate jokingly lamented the fact that they abstained, the Republican said.

Some - to me - quite good and surprising picks in here and, after a quick scroll through, no immediately glaring omissions either, although I'm sure they'll come when I think on it a bit more.

(Of course 18 years is a hilariously short period of time to even think about a canon and even tho it is essentially a click-bait article, it seems like it would be of interest here).

http://www.vulture.com/2018/09/a-premature-attempt-at-the-21st-century-literary-canon.html🕸

🐦[Damian Lillard didn’t used to hold back💀 pic.twitter.com/p0Yvt3eFUJ🕸
— r~ steph curry’s burner acct~ (@fymroo) May 8, 2020🕸]🐦

preemptive apology as i am not spotify savvy, but there was a series of old school hiphop compilation albums from the early 90s called /street jams: hiphop from the top/ and they really gave me an education back in my junior high cassette walkman days.

part one🕸
part two🕸
part three🕸
part four🕸

there was also the slightly more "new school" oriented (i.e. post-run d.m.c.) but equally as great rapmasters🕸 series. i had like five of them, but i never knew just how many volumes there were. according to discogs, there were at least nine volumes (!!).

https://reverb.com/item/35773270-japan-casio-fujigen-eg5-1984-grey-guitar-with-a-cassette-player?show_sold=true🕸

Also, this stuff still resonates...

🐦[Biden could end up with 306 or 290 Electoral College votes and a popular vote margin of over 5 million. If Trump got this, it would be seen as a big and decisive win. https://t.co/LE290cLc3o🕸
— Tom Wright (@thomaswright08) November 4, 2020🕸]🐦

Trump loses popular vote but manages an EC win, GOP parties like it's the biggest mandate ever. Dems win popular vote even bigger and manage a likely similar EC victory, it's all *tug at collar* aiiiiie we better not screw this up.

what am I looking at here?

ILX's most consistent poster.

#oneveryoddthread

good morning!

what?

It’s called a digest. Now we don’t need to go anywhere else!

#onethread
#onepost

he's getting ready to make a deal

West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin said he does not support Biden's infrastructure bill as written. He does not support a 28% corporate tax rate and says that 25% is more appropriate, reports @elwasson.

Manchin was appearing on the WVMetroNews' program, "Talkline."

— Nancy Cook (@nancook) April 5, 2021

let's call it 27% and then hire antifa to do the catering

yeah Froggy wants a-courtin'.

Lol at Talkline (cf Simpsons' "Smartline").

Some actual good news

FUCK YESSSS. Everyone you made your voices heard. Gov. Hutchinson has vetoed the bill.

— Chase Strangio (@chasestrangio) April 5, 2021

He explains that the bill is creating new standards of legislative interference in the decisions of families and physicians.

— Chase Strangio (@chasestrangio) April 5, 2021

why are you making me google governor hutchinson

oh fuck wow, that is good news I was *not* expecting

of course...

Gov. Hutchinson recognizes that General Assembly will likely override. This is not over. Arkansas has a simple majority override. We have to flip a lot of votes. Keep up the pressure folks. We need to protect trans kids!

— Chase Strangio (@chasestrangio) April 5, 2021

What I think you're seeing here (and maybe I'm wrong, I can't look into the dark souls of these people) is that the struggle between the true-believing loons and the traditional cynical business-suit-wearing "I just don't wanna pay taxes" people within the GOP is not over. The difference between "happy to spout vile anti-trans BS to cynically win votes" and "actually believes they were put in office by The Lord God to enforce genital determinism" may not look like much, but here it is, the difference. Human rights for trans people are not a threat to capitalism, and business-suit Republicans have no reason to alienate tons of people, including some rich people, unless it's to protect capital. Democrats relocate shoe factories too.

Human rights for trans people are not a threat to capitalism

*phew!*

one for the c&p over and over thread

some leftover gaetz schmutz
https://www.orlandoweekly.com/Blogs/archives/2021/04/02/heres-the-creepy-voicemail-from-matt-gaetz-and-joel-greenberg-left-for-florida-rep-anna-eskamani

:)

Earlier this week, the Times broke the story that Gaetz is being investigated for having a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl and violating laws against sex trafficking in the process. The story has since been confirmed by multiple outlets, as well as Gaetz.

https://media2.fdncms.com/orlando/imager/u/blog/29073527/screen_shot_2018-08-21_at_10.31.16_am.png

nightmare material

Matt Gaetz is an extremely dumb motherfucker who, in a just world, would not have been trusted to do a single damned thing, ever.

and yet, somehow he has failed upward at every step

tbh a driving motivation for me to accrue wealth and power is to have the resources to partially inoculate my kids from their inevitable fuckups

The only photo more frightening than that one:

https://i.imgur.com/93dlDpx.jpg