Joe Money, Joe Problems: the November 2021 U.S. Politics Thread

fortunately Donald Trump is not a rich person.

I think he's better understood as a celebrity than a rich person per se, for whatever that distinction means.

life is a movie

After agitating for the chance for weeks, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) finally visited alleged Jan. 6 rioters in jail Thursday night and compared them to prisoners of war, part of a months-long campaign to valorize the attack on Congress.

Though the vast majority of people facing charges for their actions on Jan. 6 are not in custody, a few dozen are behind bars. The Washington Post reported this week that 40 Jan. 6 defendants were being held in D.C.’s Correctional Treatment Facility.

Greene has taken the lead on campaigning for these detainees, and following her visit to what she dubbed the “Patriot wing” of the jail Thursday, she said “I was greeted by men with overwhelming cheers who rushed out to meet me with tears streaming down their faces.”

What followed built on the months-long effort to rewrite the history of the Capitol attack, turning it from a violent attempt to steal a second term for Donald Trump — in defiance of the results of the 2020 election — into a story of political persecution against simple patriots.

“It was like walking into a prisoner of war camp and seeing men who eyes can’t believe someone had made it in to see them,” Greene said.

I remember when right wingers cared about politicians appearing to be sympathetic to terrorists

This shit is only going to get worse.

so i guess MGT is for prison reform now?

or whatever her name is

“It was like walking into a prisoner of war camp and seeing men who eyes can’t believe someone had made it in to see them,” Greene said.

Summer of My German Soldier

Sure, for white "patriots", absolutely.

i'm guessing there will never be a "day" to remember all the people who died of covid, especially since the GOP went out of their way to make sure that so many more of them died than necessary. but i'd put the odds at 10:1 on a future US holiday dedicated to the 1/6 patriots

our very own Guy Fawkes day

“I was greeted by men with overwhelming cheers who rushed out to meet me with tears streaming down their faces.”

And, strange to say, they all called me "Sir."

just insanely reckless shit that is probably not going to end well for the GOP either. these people wanted to murder Mike Pence!!

i wonder what would have happened had he died that day

nothing good

I'm increasingly cynical that anything more significant than "fuck all" comes out of this.

i wonder what would have happened had he died that day

crackdown on antifa

i wonder what would have happened had he died that day

they would claim it as the biggest false flag ever and double down on the lunacy

if you would like to think about another bad thing, due to a surprise visit by the u.s. marshals all of these detainees were moved to a federal prison in pennsylvania because the d.c. jail's conditions are not so good if you don't enjoy living with feces all over. somehow no one noticed this before and the superior court inmates have to stay there still.

oh i'm sorry she visited the "central treatment facility," not the "central detention facility"

only one jail had people moved

well of course that happened

It seems impossible that Mike Pence could have died at the hands of the rioters, but the election results could have also been formally accepted by Congress at the same time. Because the US constitution specifies the exact day this needs to happen, when it didn't happen it would open a huge loophole for Trumpists to claim that Biden's election had not been legitimated.

Trump could then have declared a state of emergency and attempted to stay in place, with the support of more than 90% of his party. He would have continued to press his claim that the election was rigged. The amount of street violence this would inspire would have been used as further pretext to halt the transition of power. Basically a slow motion coup d'etat with an escalating police crackdown on the opposition.

There you have it. Next question.

here is a article. the inspection only occurred due to jan 6 defendants complaining (the complaints were legitimate but you know) https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/unacceptable-conditions-at-dc-jail-lead-to-plan-to-transfer-about-400-inmates-officials-say/ar-AAQfcM5

They’ve been told for decades that prisons are too soft and nice, clearly their conditions were the result of being imprisoned by Stalinist Joe Biden rather than just how jails are.

@RepSpanberger
⁩ sings the canary-in-the-coal-mine tune:

‘Nobody elected Biden to be FDR, they elected him to be normal and stop the chaos.’

nobody tell spanberger about the platform affirmed by the DNC in summer 2020!

two things about FDR were he was not normal and he liked chaos

FDR was the first Joker

Bruce Wayne was behind the Business Plot.

Henry Wallace was Harley Quinn

FDR smoked and liked martinis iirc

they trying to get the bills through tonight, for reals this time?

They share a love of convertibles and trains.

RIP democrats

all the progressives voted no so I'm guessing the bill sucks

that certainly may be true, but I think it's mainly because they insisted on doing reconciliation first and now it's been kicked down the road

I hate that I’m saying this, but …

At least something got done

for reals
https://www.npr.org/2021/11/05/1050012853/the-house-has-passed-the-1-trillion-infrastructure-plan-sending-it-to-bidens-des?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews

Embarrassing to ‘hold the line’ until McAuliffe ate shit and then capitulate.

https://www.inthepublicinterest.org/guess-who-slipped-a-pro-corporate-america-provision-in-the-bipartisan-infrastructure-bill/

I guess privatization doesn’t really matter that much when the seas are going to boil.

unfortunately it seems like the votes were there even without the progressives

that certainly may be true, but I think it's mainly because they insisted on doing reconciliation first and now it's been kicked down the road

― Muad'Doob (Moodles), Friday, November 5, 2021 10:37 PM (fifteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Right, passing the infrastructure bill meant giving away leverage on reconciliation. The "moderates" who have been threatening to torpedo Build Back Better put out a statement committing to vote for it pending a CBO score, which I guess is what convinced Jayapal to go ahead with tonight's vote, but...that's not a guarantee that they actually will.

Yeah, whatever the CBO score is, it will be enough for people who don’t want to do it to call it “irresponsible” and cry about inflation and debt.

https://www.inthepublicinterest.org/guess-who-slipped-a-pro-corporate-america-provision-in-the-bipartisan-infrastructure-bill/

xp just want to answer the link's question by clicking on the link: portman and manchin. the answer is in the 8th paragraph out of 11.

Senators Rob Portman (R-OH) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) slipped the requirement for value for money analyses on federally supported transportation loans into the bill in August. Maybe the fact that Manchin has received more campaign contributions from financial firms than any other industry—including from CBRE, a real estate firm actively pushing P3s—has something to do with it.

that's the only important paragraph in the entire piece. just want to shit on the media, real quick

VOTE KLEPTOCRATIC - "Vote with your wallet, we own enough of them to get what we really want and stop what we don't."

What I have concluded about this whole thing is that despite being a middle-aged person with an advanced degree who has lived in the United States my whole life I basically don't understand how Congress works at all. I'm lost. The House passed the bill? So does that mean... it's going to become law? Or is there still another round of Sinema-Manchin wrangling and maybe the whole thing goes down the tubes? And if something passes, is it this, or is it some highly mutated version of this? I feel like I've read 600 articles about provisions that are now not in the bill and I have no clue what's actually in it in the end. (I recognize that to some extent this is my own fault.)

The infrastructure bill becomes law when Biden signs it. To get it to his desk, he and Jayapal and the progressives extracted a written promise from the dickhead conservatives that the latter would offer their support to the second bill should the CBO give them an offer they can't refuse.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/06/us/politics/infrastructure-black-caucus-vote.html

The infrastructure bill becomes law when Biden signs it.

But has the Senate already signed off on this version? So, like, this is the actual bill?