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

Yeah, as soon as I posted that I knew “space” should’ve been included

the thing people misunderstand about the War Against the Machines is that it all started with humans trying to shoot skynet satellites out of the sky

There's a PBS documentary series currently being broadcast (narrated by Henry Louis Gates, Jr) about the Reconstruction and the events coming out of it that effectively reads like a contemporary news report.

We're regressing. The period of 1990-2015 effectively reads like a recapitulation of the period of 1890-1910, the heyday of tycoons like Morgan, Rockefeller and Carnegie, big business consolidating into monopolistic 'trusts', and open corruption and bribery in Congress and state legislatures.

How is portraying 1/6 as a false flag squaring with the celebration of Ashli “Horst Wessel” Babbitt?

I think the idea is that the FBI guided the true believer rank-and-file into storming the building and therefore she’s still an innocent victim of the tyrannical state.

how do they square a false flag operation which trump promoted for weeks beforehand, to the point that there are posts in mid-december 2020 here referencing 1/6, planned out with his staff, attempted to run over the justice department with a plan for a coup sealed by pence, and then stood there the day of and got everyone riled up and watched in glee all day as his supporters overran the capital, etc etc etc (there is so much)?

how do they square all of that with it being a false flag operation, unless it was trump who led the entire effort?

they don't need to square the facts. they only need to ignore them completely, announce the new party line, and the followers will obediently forget the existence of whatever doesn't square and fervently accept the new version as true, because they are nothing if not fervent and obedient followers who can only recall whatever they were told most recently by their leaders.

^^^

The joke that conservative "belief" is "whatever makes liberals angry, updated daily" has never been more true.

yeah I mean look KM you know probably better than anyone that there is no squaring up anything in today's GOP. I thought of Covid as the one thing that might be a "come to Jesus" (lol) moment for conservatives, since they all parroted the same lines about how it was just the flu, how only terminally ill people were gonna die, how it was all gonna go away by the summer, etc. etc., and thought surely as the bodies start stacking up and as the PEOPLE THEY KNOW start dying horrible deaths that surely they might realize that they were actually wrong about something. instead we find out we are at the point where they are literally willing to die rather than admit this.

so 1/6 is just...whatever the fuck they want it to be. it was antifa. it didn't happen. it was infiltrated by the FBI. the media made it up. the people who were there were just patriots trying to cosplay for a day. it wasn't actually dangerous. whatever makes 'em feel better.

https://i.imgur.com/38lYPgN.jpg

oh, i hear you, haha. yeah, i guess i meant that question rhetorically. it is a big conundrum, though, trying to figure out how to deal with a giant swatch of the country that is like this. facts are out of the question, persuasion is pointless, being nice and polite is maybe the best of worst options but imo often means white people forgiving other white people for being horrible fucking racists all their lives and trying to bring down the rest of the world into their scum.

honestly it feels like that part in battlestar where you realize the extent of the Cylons reach

xp

GIANT SWATCH OF A COUNTRY

SWATCH!

meant swath

does Ohio have a space program?

GOP=Swatch Dogs & Diet Cokeheads

Of course...

Kyle Rittenhouse's attorneys have filed legal docs, asking that the $2 million raised by right-wing organizations to bail the teen out after his arrest be given to Rittenhouse and/or his mother.

But Lin Wood says the money belongs to his group. https://t.co/UdFtcCich0 pic.twitter.com/14X8Adr7MH

— Stacy St. Clair (@StacyStClair) November 22, 2021

they could...give it to the families of the people he killed...

hahaha, sorry. that would mean treating other people with a shred of respect and dignity

The New Yorker piece on Rittenhouse painted a portrait of a kid and his family just way, way over their heads, being taken advantage of left and right (but mostly right, if you get my drift), by extremists and grifters and lunatics and the like. Just being pushed and pulled by the worst elements of society, without the sophistication or savvy to navigate that world. I'm not sure how any of us could handle that, tbh, but he just seemed and seems so ill-prepared for this all. Which I suppose one might expect from a kid that brought an assault weapon to a protest just to, you know, see what's up, protect a few parking lots, that sort of thing. Just virtually (and appropriately, for someone that shot three basically random people) aimless.

Here we go https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/11/22/politics/roger-stone-alex-jones-subpoenas-january-6/index.html

Predictably Roger Stone got his presidential pardon and immediately went on a crime spree.

Charlottesville conspiracists guilty of state conspiracy charges, large punitive damages awarded. jury deadlocked on Federal conspiracy charges.

smh this morning hearing some msm reporters talking about the dems have a problem with messaging regarding the economy, then they go on to talk about Biden not doing enough to end worldwide inflation. next segment they bring on a repub congressman to talk about the shutting down of the keystone pipeline having to do with gas prices being high and don't challenge that idiotic theory. ffs!

That's apparently one of their new talking points.

kind of aggravating something as simple as how gas prices work = something the media and Dems themselves don't challenge enough.

like if you want to blame the sitting Prez for gas prices (which is stupid in any situation, regardless of who is in office), point out the highest gas prices occurred on Dubya's watch, and ask if it was his fault then or not.

like quite literally the same thing happened when Obama took office after Dubya. gas prices had become artificially low because gas exceeded $4/gallon in 2008, it was the Great Recession, unemployment in double digits, nobody could afford to fuckin drive places, so it went under $2/gallon.

Economy recovers under Obama, prices spike back up as demand increases, and everybody blames Obama even though it's a sign of recovery and the prices didn't stay that high forever, as the shale boom lead to a huge decrease in gas prices around the 2012 election.

it's like anticipate the goddamn fingerpointing and go on the offensive for once.

Wouldn't be prudent, says a senator who doesn't understand how email works.

fuckin emails, how do they work

Travis McMichael GUILTY on all charges. https://t.co/gJeuFesKEU

— Katy Tur (@KatyTurNBC) November 24, 2021

Greg McMichael GUILTY on all charges EXCEPT count one, Malice Murder

— Katy Tur (@KatyTurNBC) November 24, 2021

Bryan posting the video was one of the greatest self-owns in legal history.

Phew

Oh thank fuck. After Rittenhouse I was sure this would end up being a stain on Georgia's legacy of struggling to join modern civilization.

The jury found Travis McMichael guilty of malice murder, four counts of felony murder

Can someone more legally inclined than I explain the multiple counts of murder, when there was only a single victim?

"Felony murder" is when you're committing some other felony (a bank robbery, an arson fire) and someone ends up dead. These assholes committed at least four other felonies on Arbery, and in the process he died. Hence, multiple counts of felony murder.

Ah okay, thanks

This guy wins today:

i called a conservative morning show and tried to name as many punk bands as i could before they caught on. pic.twitter.com/2D3KyTZQ1R

— Rob Dobi 👤 𝙾𝚗𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚎 𝙽𝚘𝚠! (@Robdobi) November 24, 2021

Not all heroes wear capes

I know, MADDOW, but...

72%???

"Nearly three-quarters of Arizona Democratic voters — 72% — want a Democrat other than Sen. Kyrsten Sinema as their U.S. senator. Only 26% say they would prefer Sinema."https://t.co/mHacgakP8m

— Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) November 23, 2021

yeah I know but that's not really how elections work

Unless she gets bored and quits, they're stuck with Sen. Sinema for another 5 years.

3 years

^^ best Bowie song imo

Charles Blow

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/24/opinion/guilty-verdict-ahmaud-arbery.html

Let's end the month with some enjoyable pointing and laughing: A colossal flop — fawning media can't save Chris Christie’s new book

It’s hard to recall a former politician who was showered with more free media attention than Chris Christie this month as he peddled his new book, “Republican Rescue.” Invited to appear on a carousel of shows, Christie was all-present as journalists lined up to interview him. CNN even dedicated an entire primetime hour to him, treating the in-your-face Republican as one of the most important political voices in the country.

Consumers aren’t buying it.

A senior publishing source with access to the industry’s BookScan tabulations tells me that “Republican Rescue” sold just 2,289 copies during its first week in stores, which constitutes a colossal publishing flop. That figure does not include digital copies of the book, but based on industry sales patterns, given Christie’s weak showing in stores he likely sold only a few hundred digital ones. (On Sunday, “Republican Rescue” was ranked 15,545th at Amazon’s Kindle Store.)

...

It confirms that the deeply unpopular former New Jersey governor remains, first and foremost, a media creation. For years, he’s been propped up by the press as a populist Straight Shooter, but he left office with an approval rating in the teens, and failed spectacularly when he tried to run for president in 2020. That explains why CNN’s Christie special was a ratings disaster, coming in a distant third place among the three cable news channels that night. (During the show, CNN’s Dana Bash never once asked Christie about the BridgeGate scandal that ended his political career.)

“He left New Jersey as the most unpopular governor since the advent of polling. But he’s still catnip to the national media,” noted Politico’s Matt Friedman.

Part of the avalanche of eager Christie coverage represent a relentless sub-genre of Beltway journalism that clings to the fantasy that there’s still a functioning faction of the Republican Party that can and will stand up to Trump’s erratic and dangerous behavior.

...

The larger point here isn’t that Christie’s book stiffed — lots of authors swing and miss, especially in an increasingly difficult media environment. What’s disturbing is how the media keep pretending Christie is somebody who matters in American politics. Not according to the new sales figures.

Despite the media’s reverential coverage of Christie over the years, the bully actually doesn’t stand for anything, which became obvious during his recent media tour. Out promoting his book, Christie made clear his incoherent politics revolve around his unending desire to be viewed as relevant. On that front, he’s fooled the press, but not most Americans.

Recall that last year, Christie, the self-anointed truth teller in 2021, did his best to get Trump re-elected. (He helped Trump prep for the debates, got Covid in the process, and was soon hospitalized.) After the deadly insurrection on January 6, Christie conceded that trying to overturn election results in America is a bad thing and wrote a book about how the Republican Party needs to reform itself and step away from Trump-era conspiracies and move beyond the 2020 election Big Lie.

So, he’s an unapologetic anti-Trumper, right? He views Fox News misinformation as a danger to our democracy, right? Nope and nope. Pressed during his media blitz, Christie said he might vote for Trump in 2024, and when appearing on MSNBC he refused to criticize Fox News, likely because he appeared on the network a few days later hawking his book by stressing to right-wing viewers how he supported Trump for so many years.

Americans see through Christie, yet the press worships him. They’ve been doing it for the better part of a decade, portraying him as an authentic Every Man, a master communicator, and that rare politician who cuts through the stagecraft and delivers hard truths.

"Chris Christie is someone who is magical in the way politicians can be magical," Time's Mark Halperin announced while appearing on “Meet The Press,” in 2013. And remember when ABC's Barbara Walters crowned Christie as one of her 10 Most Fascinating People, casting him as a “passionate and compassionate” politician who cannot lie?

Today, nobody cares about Chris Christie, except Beltway journalists.

The only honest response is laughter.

Which begs the question of why it's so difficult for people to see through so many other obvious charlatans

media is so hungry for "reasonable" or even remotely "moderate" voices on the right, that they take what they can find and run with it?

Christie does seem an order of magnitude less insane than other GOP mouthpieces and he's not overly antagonistic to the media so it's not a surprise that CNN is the only one who loves him

He can't be antagonistic to the media -- who would book him on Meet the Press?!