US Politics, January 2022 — a pro-God, pro-family, pro-bitcoin state

Thinkpiece I won’t write: People who venerate Greta Thunberg vs. People who venerate Kyle Rittenhouse and What It All Means.

Wow I just now learned Greta and Kyle have the same birthday. That’s a bad piece of story writing, way too on the nose.

the simulation is clipping

The woman in Virginia who threatened to bring loaded guns to school to fight a mask mandate for her kids was charged with making an oral threat on school property and released on $5000 bail. Glad to see her face some consequences even if it's just a misdemeanor, it's more than I expected. https://www.dnronline.com/news/coronavirus/luray-woman-charged-for-making-gun-threat-at-school-board-meeting/article_90b72230-abd9-5205-bb99-a2578f9285bd.html

My sister teaches in that district. Crazy. She was more surprised that the board actually kept a mask mandate than by the loaded-gun threat.

Long past time to end the tradition of never issuing charges against 'respectable' white people who openly commit misdemeanor crimes.

Or sorry, she’s in the district next door, in Winchester. Her board did keep masks by a 4-3 vote.

Yeah Pistol-Packin' Mama is in Luray, where... actually she got what she wanted, because the schools won't be requiring masks anyway.

I suspect she'll have some kind of community service or suspended sentence or something. Sad.

She’ll run for office

At first I thought she had a good chance at appearing on stage at CPAC or the Republican National Convention, but it looks like she apologized and tried to walk it back almost immediately.

So she'll be ostracized by both sides in a rare moment of national kumbaya.

ugh

These are honestly incredible numbers for Manchin. If you want to know why he is the way he is, it seems to be working. #WVSen https://t.co/P5Utp9HHYC

— Eric Michael Garcia (@EricMGarcia) January 21, 2022

they’re both p much equally rotten to the core but this right here is why Sinema strikes me as downright bizarre. defiant villainy.

yeah Manchin is terrible but WV is very much not a swing state. Arizona is and that's why I think what Sinema is doing is much worse. the real problem, as I'm sure you've heard, is that the Senate is ridiculously undemocratic

surely Lorne can pony up some cash and put Michaela Watkins on a plane to NYC tonight to make me and so many other people happy this week https://twitter.com/search?q=%23MitchPlease&src=trend_click&f=live&vertical=trends

Sinema censured by Arizona Dems--That'll Learn Her!

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/sinema-faces-democratic-party-backlash-blocking-voting-rights/story?id=82375185

Posting this only because of the framing of Bari Weiss as a "prominent woke liberal."

If, like me, you have been longing for a prominent woke liberal, other than Bill Maher, to finally have the scales fall from their eyes & see the total insanity that has been the response to COVID especially in schools, you’ll want to watch this clip of @bariweiss several times!! pic.twitter.com/54QzZPoBlE

— John Ziegler (@Zigmanfreud) January 22, 2022

Bill Maher and Bari Weiss are also in my "please get launched into the sun" category. Despicably human beings with noxious ideas.

I’m sure this will convince Luntz focus group members he’s not ANTIFA.

.@POTUS to U.S. Conference of Mayors: "We shouldn't be cutting funding for police departments. I propose increasing funding." pic.twitter.com/ygyPNeIMiE

— Mediaite (@Mediaite) January 21, 2022

Feel like once a month Bill Maher goes viral and because of some bullshit Bari Weiss is talking

fuck bill maher imo

^ brings us back to the fundamentals

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/maga-emails-arizona-trump-2020-election-1287447/

The technology was complicated, but the plan was simple: Scan mail-in and absentee ballots in populous Maricopa County, remove the “invalid votes,” and recertify the state’s 2020 election count, surely declaring then-President Donald Trump the rightful winner.

This scheme to subvert the election outcome in Arizona is laid out in newly released emails obtained by Rolling Stone. Sent in early December 2020, the emails cover a critical moment when the post-election push by Trump and Republican allies to find fraud and overturn the presidential election was in full swing.

The emails show how a group of fringe election sleuths pressed state legislators on a plan to disrupt the 2020 election certification and potentially change the vote count in a battleground state that helped deliver Joe Biden the presidency. The emails also reveal that several Trump advisers, including campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis and legal adviser Bernie Kerik, were included in the discussion.

Ellis and Kerik played influential roles on Trump’s legal team after the 2020 election, and their work extended beyond Arizona. Ellis appeared at public hearings, sometimes alongside Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, and amplified baseless claims about election fraud in frequent media appearances. Kerik played a more behind-the-scenes role, emails and other records show, assisting the Trump campaign’s fruitless search for election wrongdoing. The select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection has subpoenaed Ellis and Kerik.

I didn't know that #resistance types had started calling Press Secretary owns "Psaki bombs"

That's been going on for a year:

https://www.washingtonian.com/2021/01/29/jen-psaki-now-has-a-twitter-hashtag-psakibomb/

Press secretary fandom is embarrassing, no matter who's in the White House.

He's throwing Tony Snowballs!

I'll stan for Pierre Salinger, who was also a piano virtuoso and the defense lawyer for both Catwoman and the Joker on the old "Batman" TV show.

I'm gaga for Dee Dee!

Adam Johnson:

This cartoon pathologizing is, of course, necessary to dehumanize and dismiss those calling for Covid mitigation measures, for which they gain nothing and, indeed, suffer just like everyone else. Otherwise, how does it make any sense? Surely it can’t be because other, similarly developed countries have employed many such measures to some success? Surely it can’t be because public health advocates and disability activists see the staggeringly high 866,000 death toll in the U.S. and think, “Perhaps our ‘fuck it’ approach isn’t perfect and could use some tweaks.” Maybe it’s because the cliche that “Covid will be endemic and we’re all going to get it so who cares” isn’t actually based on any science, but rather a vague hope from politicians eager to Go Back To Normal and force everyone back to work because anymore social spending is off the table.

https://thecolumn.substack.com/p/covid-isnt-a-human-being-it-doesnt

Worth the read (Pareene):

https://newrepublic.com/article/165053/biden-quits-covid-fight

yes to Pareene piece.

Also-

https://prospect.org/coronavirus/fire-jeff-zients/

epidemiologists pleaded with the Biden COVID team to ramp up rapid-test production and distribution back in October, to head off needless infection and death at December family gatherings. The Biden team sloughed them off—and given the nature of the request, that almost certainly means Zients was responsible for the rejection...

Zients’s failures are not only a result of his passive refusal to use the immense powers at his disposal to combat the crisis. They are also the result of intentional actions to head off effective strategies. Zients instructed Republican Vermont Gov. Phil Scott, for example, against enacting a mask mandate, despite the policy’s high favorability and effectiveness. ZIENTS ISN’T A PUBLIC-HEALTH EXPERT: He’s a former corporate executive whose track record bolsters the worst possible impulses for a Biden appointee in command of the federal government’s resources. He cut his teeth at Bain Capital, the private equity firm Barack Obama ran against in 2012, which has erased pensions and health benefits for tens of thousands over decades of leveraged buyouts. Then he made a name for himself running a pair of management consultancies, where he advised CEOs to be blunt with their employees: “The social contract is never coming back, and your employees know it.”

These fuckin people

Actual twitter news blurb that popped up next to my feed that I think sums up the state of things:

Viewers react to Monday’s segment of Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle where host Laura Ingraham responds to actor Kate McKinnon’s impression of her on Saturday Night Live.

The Impression Reaction Response Angle

uhh there's some weird stuff going on with tax returns this year, both i and my partner are basically at zero despite 1 w-2 and the normal arrangement where you get several hundred dollars back from the feds (our state returns are the usual). i'm too dumb to look into the surely byzantine details but if this is true for everyone filing the democrats are sooooo fucked, and rightfully so,

My husband and I owed a few thousand last year and changed all sorts of things to make sure that didn't happen again this year ... so yeah, pretty much I'll vote Trump if I owe a single penny.

It gets really blurry when you got money that wasn't really money, technically speaking, but was actually a tax credit.

Instead of getting yr usual chonky refund, you will be told that you already got it, and you already probably spent it. Probably on weed.

I’m hoping Psaki tells everybody that, in just those words tbh

Non-taxed weed!

there were changes to the withholding formula for 2021. btw getting a huge refund is bad.

I’m getting a bit less back from the IRS this year, but my salary increased, so maybe that accounts for it.

btw getting a huge refund is bad.

"You're giving the government a zero-interest loan!" is how conservatives usually say this. Not that they're wrong.

Yeah harbl otm; I'd vastly rather have accurate withholding, resulting neither in a refund nor a bill. If it were just income tax vs. withholding I'd probably be pretty close most years.

But everyone's situation is different. If you do stuff like have children, buy a house, give to charity, or have investments, it's going to be more complicated. This is not exactly news in 2022, is it? I think it has pretty much always been so.

I just didn't notice because in 50 years I have bought exactly one house and had two children. For the vast majority of that time I didn't have enough money (or a complex enough situation) to dread tax filing.

(two children that I know of)

well it's easy to adjust the withholding if you anticipate more deductions! i try to get as close as possible to 0 refund every year but i love this stuff, i'm strange.

i wish i could get a deduction for my cat, she is expensive lately

Kurtis Blow is right there with you.

David Dayen re obscure draft bills

the Ocean Shipping Reform Act of 2021 would for the first time in over two decades re-regulate an ocean carrier cartel that made an astonishing $150 billion in profits last year. It got 364 House votes, and there’s a Senate companion. There’s practically nothing else on the legislative side that would have as much impact on inflation as bringing down shipping rates and getting exports moving

https://prospect.org/politics/democratic-pivot-build-back-better/

i've lived in three countries and i had never received a tax refund or bill until i moved to the US. it's insane.

As a freelancer in the UK I've had a couple of refunds, but that's only as a result of a bad year following a good one, or the weird timing of advances.