The Fall of Roe v Wade: US Politics, June 2022

It would be great if this 20 minutes (at least) were played incessantly in prime time.

AMERICAN HORROR STORY: ELECTION

"The call is coming from inside the polling place!!"

January 6 committee has obtained previously unknown film of Trump and family at time of riot

Filmmaker Alex Holder will sit for a deposition on Thursday and has provided the select committee ‘raw footage’ taken on the day of the Capitol attack

thursday.

Wasn’t it already known that he was watching the coverage on TV all day and guffawing?

Please let it be something like footage of Junior and Roger Stone doing rails.

Serious question: how are we just finding out about this filmmaker now?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/21/jan-6-committee-hearings-live-updates-day-4/#link-XH7CJMEFFNCG7G4HJGZPI2WXLI

A spokesperson for Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) has disputed accusations from the committee that the senator was directly involved with a conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election. At the Tuesday hearing, the committee published transcripts of text messages that investigators say show a Johnson staffer asking a staffer for Vice President Mike Pence if the senator could present fake elector certifications during a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021.

“The senator had no involvement in the creation of an alternate slate of electors and had no foreknowledge that it was going to be delivered to our office. This was a staff to staff exchange. His new Chief of Staff contacted the Vice President’s office,” Johnson press secretary Alexa Henning wrote in a tweet Tuesday afternoon.

Henning did not contest the authenticity of the text messages, saying instead that Johnson was not involved in the “creation” of the fake elector certificates themselves. Henning’s statement does not contest the committee’s core claim, which is that Johnson lobbied the vice president to accept fake elector certificates in an effort to subvert the 2020 election.

wow, gonna be some big consequences for Johnson for THIS one!!!!

This might be the most unhinged tweet of the year

I spent Juneteenth all day in the hot sun hoeing and pulling weeds and thinking about what it would have been like to have been a slave. At the end of the day, I thought about what it would be like to be an aborted baby. I got to see the sunrise and the sunset.

— Steve King (@SteveKingIA) June 21, 2022

hey look i've spent my fair share of time wondering what it would be like if Steve King had been a aborted

https://frinkiac.com/video/S04E21/Ddi26wG-kx8zE4TFor4GLgk0iYk=.gif

It's not too late for someone to abort Steve King.

https://i.imgur.com/3vap2Ge.png

Worst vs. Worst Lean Into AL Senate Race:

The Alabama election pitted one of Donald Trump’s loyalists against the candidate the former president actually endorsed.

And today's testimony by conservative officials who are still threatened, and so are their families, for not backing the coup---the Arizona Speaker of the House ffs---should be a reminder to Senator-elect Britt, who used to seem smart when she worked her ass off for
Senator Shelby and his later generations of constituents, that it isn't enough to "support" Trump, unless that means going allll the way, babe.

(Although obvs lots of ppl have no prob w that.)

Just lose yourself, as the planet dies, jump in and looose yourself.

Too obs on the internet again, sorry.

From the guy who literally wrote the book on where the GOP bodies are buried:

Okay is no one goes to jail behind this shit I'm renouncing my citizenship.

— Rick Perlstein (@rickperlstein) June 22, 2022

Narrator: No one is going to jail behind this shit.

At this rate no one's even going to trial.

Regardless of whether a few people here or there face any kind of sanction, the party behind the whole thing is going to be rewarded in November with control of one or both houses of Congress and will promptly resume dismantling the constitutional order (such as it is). And there’s literally nothing we can do about that in the near term.

And then the answer to any lingering questions about January 6 will be, “the people have spoken.” (GOP being big fans of electoral legitimacy when they win.)

“If he is the nominee, if he was up against Biden, I’d vote for him again” — Rusty Bowers on Trump, who he also said orchestrated an illegal and unconstitutional scheme to steal the last election. https://t.co/i5R4yTSP2K

— Sam Stein (@samstein) June 22, 2022

Yeah so this is the whole problem

Guys, Susan Collins is preparing a vigorous head-shaking in the general direction of the worst of these guys, what more punishment could they possibly deserve you monsters?

This is one of those instances where I type 3-4 thoughts and then immediately delete them.

I don't know, being flip is about all I have in my tank right now without dipping into pure pessimism, so I think that's the more healthy route for now.

It's just massively depressing to know this is what we all saw happening in real time but also hearing the horrifying new little details like what the electors have faced, but still feeling so fucking doubtful that a single consequence of note will result. Not to mention, as frogbs points out, even the most horrified Rs this week will still vote for him again in a heartbeat, because power.

let's hear Rusty Bowers full explanation

“If he is the nominee, if he was up against Biden, I’d vote for him again,” Bowers said. “Simply because what he did the first time, before COVID, was so good for the county. In my view it was great.”

oh

wait...sorry, i was c+p'ing that from the article. because Trump was so good for the ..county? one of those horrible things where it really could be a typo, or it really could just be Rusty Bowers putting "the county" (i'm assuming he'd be talking about Maricopa, where more than 60% of Arizona Tea drinkers live) above the entire country

he means Trump was so great at delivering a massive tax cut for rich people, not much can beat that

also these clowns know that if they stray from MAGA their voters might actually hunt them

imagine if there were that kind of abject fear among our elites over idk universal healthcare or raising the minimum wage

It's not that Trump was so good, don't you see, it's that if he were up against Biden, a demented Communist that eats the few babies he does not allow to be aborted or trafficked, then really, what choice is there?

when the US has been a hybrid fascist-feudal entity for a century, at least there will be a pretty patient and thorough time capsule of what the fuck happened for people on other continents to consult... is how i break it down to an extent

in a century, there won't be countries, just 'discs' of land that haven't yet become uninhabitable

small discs, so you could call them "compact discs"

we were hoping for flying cars and a robot that automatically makes toast when we wake up. instead we got compact discs that we live on

sorry, onethread

even after my cynicism reached peak levels in the first couple of years of the Trump admin, i’d comfort myself with the notion that once boomers cease to be the primary political force in this country that they’d take a lot of the poison with them. demographics, destiny, etc. not really sure about that these days tbh

ditto. Self-absorption, hatred, and lack of accountability will just rally around a more youthful avatar.

MAGA really revealed that there are a sufficient number of death-cult conservative hatemongers in young age groups to sustain future generations

Our university's student government association reeks with the presence of neo-Trumpers, Trump wannabes, and who, according to one of our reporters who has a poli-sci class with this winner, want an SGA executive branch that's "benevolently authoritarian."

not to bring crypto into this but there's going to be a generation of young angry people who were ripped off but also love joe rogan, and they are not about to be leftists

still feeling so fucking doubtful that a single consequence of note will result.

This, plus the fact that a sizable chunk of the US population thinks that that is the proper outcome.

gop and their money/media networks have (perhaps correctly) surmised that anything with a whiff of capitulation on this is going to damage their brand among their replacement voters

even after my cynicism reached peak levels in the first couple of years of the Trump admin, i’d comfort myself with the notion that once boomers cease to be the primary political force in this country that they’d take a lot of the poison with them. demographics, destiny, etc. not really sure about that these days tbh

I felt this too, and yes it's completely wrong. the shitlord/assholes at the back of the schoolbus/hollow earth approach of the new GOP ensures new blood for their ranks forever, unless somehow the internet stops working

i hope i don't come off as flip. the desolation of this moment is so so so deep tbh

i just spent 3 weeks with my WSJ reading dad who always reminds me that he voted for Kasich and this is exactly where they all are. all he cares about are environmental regulations and trump was his perfect vessel for that

Look, I hate to take Perlstein's implication a step further, but really, there *ARE* things that people of sound mind could do. We don't talk about them much on here, and it seems frowned upon to even mention them, so I restrain myself.

Instead of despair, canvass for your local politicians, y'all.

^^^

otm, and if you are in a solid blue area, donate to help other races.

(I mean, lol @ me being one to talk about not despairing, but one hard won lesson of the last few years is that despair is never a useful tool, no matter how alluring)

Moreover, I got a beard trim and haircut this morning. I got no time for despair.