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

tell him any of the several dozen things he just got wrong

That’s colin robinson right

NEW: Dems broadly see Harris/Buttigieg as the future of the party beyond Pres. Biden.

They also see their pol. fortunes diverging in the first 10 mos of Biden’s presidency.

A party anxious about its future sharpens its scrutiny. W/@CleveWootson:https://t.co/44QxSf38DN

— Sean Sullivan (@WaPoSean) November 13, 2021

Hmm, funny coincidence

look butti mie to judge

everybody's already numb to 1/6, i know (which is why trump knows he'll get out of it), but every once in a while i think it's good to approach stuff like this fresh

On New Year’s Eve last year, then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows reportedly emailed then-Vice President Mike Pence’s top aide a detailed plan on subverting Joe Biden’s election victory.

According to an upcoming book by ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl, former President Trump’s lawyer Jenna Ellis outlined a multi-step strategy in a memo sent to Pence’s top aide as part of an effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election results amid Trump pushing election fraud falsehoods.

In the memo, Ellis instructs Pence to send back the electoral votes from six battleground states that Trump baselessly claimed that he had won on Jan. 6, the day of the joint session of Congress certifying Biden’s electoral victory.

Ellis wrote that Pence would give the battleground states a deadline of “7pm eastern standard time on January 15th” to submit a new set of votes.

Ellis added that if any state legislature failed to meet that deadline, “no electoral votes can be opened and counted from that state.” In that case, Ellis wrote that neither Biden nor Trump would be left with a majority of votes, meaning that “Congress shall vote by state delegation.” Ellis claimed that scenario would lead to Trump being declared the winner of the 2020 election because Republicans control the majority of state delegations with 26.

Meadows reportedly sent Ellis’ memo to Pence’s aide on Jan. 1. The next day, Trump aide John McEntee issued another memo to Pence’s chief of staff Marc Short that falsely asserted in its title that “Jefferson used his position as VP to win.”

Days before the Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6, Trump told his supporters at a rally in Georgia that he hopes Pence “comes through for us.”

“”I have to tell you I hope that our great vice president comes through for us. He’s a great guy. Of course, if he doesn’t come through, I won’t like him quite as much,” Trump said.

ABC News also noted that in a sit-down interview with Trump and Karl on March 18, the former president didn’t push back on a report from the New York Times detailing a phone call Trump had with Pence on the morning of Jan. 6 in which the then-president tried pressuring Pence by reportedly telling him: “You can be a patriot or you can be a p****.”

and yet it's 10 months later and the house investigation miiiiiiiiiight be juuuuuuuust about to get started, pending several more appeals and possibly the supreme court, and if that goes through, we will have the luxury of the house democrats illuminating exactly how awful everything really, just before their results and "findings" go absolutely no where in congress, valuable only as a supposed political cudgel against the GOP in the midterms

And then they'll lose the house and the GOP will day-one disband the 1/6 commission and all likeminded investigations and then, within a week, get the ball rolling on all kinds of bullshit, like banning Big Bird, burning books, making it illegal for men to be not masculine, calling for the jailing of Pelosi, Clinton, AOC, Schiff, Biden, Harris, et al., something to do with whatever this Brandon shit is, making masks illegal, making covid mandatory, making voting illegal unless you vote GOP, making Joe Rogan speaker of the house, putting Trump on every denomination of currency ...

If midterm elections were today, 51% of registered voters say they’d support the Republican candidate in their congressional district, 41% say the Democrat—the biggest lead for the GOP in the 110 ABC/Post polls that have asked this question since November. https://t.co/iDWaUnOtPQ

— Terry Moran 🇺🇸 (@TerryMoran) November 14, 2021

fuck that. they probably think the Democrats 'caused inflation' on basic food and other goods because they passed a stripped down infrastructure bill to spend money over the next ten years (which afaik hasn't even been signed yet), and think that the Republicans will somehow bring down the price of gasoline at once by going all-in on selling oil and gas leases that might be developed after about five years. ignorance bites.

I was waiting for the light rail yesterday and a guy hollered "Let's Go Brandon!" into empty air apropos of absolutely nothing (like, the train wasn't even delayed or too crowded or anything, literally nothing was wrong) and then looked around all pleased with himself. Is that a thing now, people just yelling "Let's Go Brandon" in public places all by themselves?

For anyone who needs to hear it. @VP is not only a vital partner to @POTUS but a bold leader who has taken on key, important challenges facing the country—from voting rights to addressing root causes of migration to expanding broadband.

— Jen Psaki (@PressSec) November 15, 2021

My "the VP definitely isn't planning on running for President in 2024" t-shirt has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my t-shirt.

Seems bad to have to put out a tweet like this

I was waiting for the light rail yesterday and a guy hollered "Let's Go Brandon!" into empty air apropos of absolutely nothing (like, the train wasn't even delayed or too crowded or anything, literally nothing was wrong) and then looked around all pleased with himself. Is that a thing now, people just yelling "Let's Go Brandon" in public places all by themselves?

― Lily Dale, Sunday, November 14, 2021 9:49 PM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

look it took conservatives a decade to learn a second joke after "I identify as an attack helicopter" of course they're gonna beat this one into the ground

also the numbers for Biden look fucking awful maybe he should try to pass one of the massively popular policies he campaigned on

maybe he should try to pass

I don't think he hasn't tried. But there's this separation of powers thing in the US government that means the president can't pass bills just because he wants to pass them. You can look it up.

Gotta wonder what kind of conservative takes light rail. Public transit is for lib sissies

Gotta wonder what kind of conservative takes light rail. Public transit is for lib sissies

Presumably his insecurity about this was what caused his outburst. They're like small children, you know? Take them out of their comfort zone and they start screaming and stomping their feet in the middle of the store aisle.

Haha ok

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Democrat Beto O’Rourke, former Senate and presidential candidate, says he will run for Texas governor in 2022.

— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) November 15, 2021

Here ends the McConaissance.

If Abbott gets primaried by some nutcase Beto could win

^^^

If Abbott gets primaried by some nutcase Beto could win

i'd bet on the nutcase in winning in TX

can't see him winning but I like Beto and think he's a better media presence than 95% of the Democrats getting coverage today

btw re: Biden's flagging approval ratings, has the man received a single positive headline since his first month in office? feel like Trump, despite garnering overwhelmingly negative coverage, would at least get a respite when he read an entire State of the Union speech off a prompter or started bombing the Middle East. Biden ain't even getting that. I guess the media's doing their job!

If Abbott gets primaried by some nutcase Beto could win

Nope. In that case, the nutcase wins. O'Rourke is either going to flame out in the Democratic primary, or lose the general election badly. How do I know? Because in his opening video message, he's talking about "pushing past small and divisive politics." Loser talk. We are in a "crush your enemies, see them driven before you" period in American politics, and sadly, only one party seems to know it.

What if he punches out a camel on camera?

btw re: Biden's flagging approval ratings, has the man received a single positive headline since his first month in office? feel like Trump, despite garnering overwhelmingly negative coverage, would at least get a respite when he read an entire State of the Union speech off a prompter or started bombing the Middle East. Biden ain't even getting that. I guess the media's doing their job!

as far as the MSM is concerned Biden sucks because he is not out at the ports loading trucks himself therefore this whole supply chain thing is his fault.

yeah its amazing that not one Dem outside of certain progressive house members seem to see it that way, given how overt the GOP has been about it the last 5 years. in my state the Republican governor lost the election and as his final act signed a bill stripping a whole bunch of powers from his own office. they're currently drawing up districts for which Democrats would have to win like 70% of the vote just to win an equal # of seats. this is all-out warfare and its becoming more and more obvious that Democrats only really want to function as controlled opposition

If Abbott gets primaried by some nutcase Beto could win

Beto would lose to an actual case full of nuts as long as it was a Republican and owned a gun.

leahy exit stage right

Sen. Patrick Leahy, the longest serving Democrat in the Senate, announces his retirement.

"It's time to come home." pic.twitter.com/QSvw9qFpCM

— Zach Purser Brown (@zachjourno) November 15, 2021

Beto’s “we’re coming for your ARs” line from his Presidential run means I have a better chance of being elected governor.

none of you have yet realized that by "nutcase" I mean Matthew McConaughey

Gotta wonder what kind of conservative takes light rail. Public transit is for lib sissies

a woman whose mask said GOVERNMENT MANDATED MUZZLE approached me while waiting for a train on the same light rail system last week, and demanded to know what one was supposed to do if they had come onto "the platform that is heading the wrong way"

wait for an earthquake to turn the platform the right way

Just walk onto the train backwards. You'll be fine.

We were in Salem MA last week at night and some nu-metal looking jackass came riding down the pedestrian mall on his mountain bike yelling “let’s go Brandon” while blaring some anti-vax anti-masking rap track from a boombox

He seemed very pleased with himself indeed

This was my intro to the meme, my wife had to explain it to me

Imagine if you saw someone step through a past time portal, like “hey man, I’m visiting from 2005 for a few hours, what it do”

I think I’d be inclined to say “you should probably just go back, you’ve already seen too much”

I don't even know this meme, and i am pretty fluent in memes. I guess that means I'm paying attention to the good memes and not the bad ones.

I've had to explain Let's Go Brandon to a few people, and the reaction is always, "Wow, that's even dumber than I expected."

the clip is like straight out of the Simpsons tho

Imagine being named Brandon.

“Why are all these right wing randos talking like suburban soccer moms at inappropriate times?”

Imagine being named Brandon.

― I'm a sovereign jizz citizen (the table is the table),

apparently there are boys named Troy

there's a house being built across the street from me and the pickup driven by one of the crew and parked in front of my house every day has a "Let's Go Brandon" bumper sticker.

Between this and the rise of "Karen", rough time to have the first name that randomly gets memified.

it will be there on the mt rushmore of conservative joeks well after I’m gone, along with “i identify as a ____”, “Hanoi Jane”, and uhh I guess there’s another one but it’s slipping my mind rn

As undeniably stupid as it is, I'm almost awed that in this instance the GOP constituency has chosen to lean more in the direction of restraint rather than their usual full-bore dick-waggling lunacy.

i saw some comedian point out that they are basically censoring themselves in order to keep this inside joke going, like the original chant was worse in my opinion so have at it dorks

sometimes I fantasize of a lib-less world, and conservatives basically having America to themselves, with us all shipped off to Mars or some shit, and I enjoy thinking about what they would do to tear themselves apart within the first 60 days.

going with "technology failure"