We. Would. CRY.: US Politics, July 2022

Pete seems to be the only one capable of getting traction online

Your memory of the primary campaign is fading. Pete displayed all the gravitas and voter appeal of a half deflated pool toy. Journalists toyed with him for a week or so, then moved on. Not one voter cared.

He seems to have stepped up his game since then

he did well in that fox bit that was getting passed around a week or so back.

but, like, has he accomplished anything of note at Transpo? (genuine question)

maybe he should have been vp

Not one voter cared

He came in close second to Bernie in Iowa and NH and he hadn’t run a national campaign before. Seems like memories are a bit hazy.

ugh jesus christ. he's a ghoul, older and deader in spirit than even biden. which i guess means he has a chance from the dem pov.

respect to him for giving us the "you've been on the front lines of corporate price fixing" moment

Though he may not be as emotive as some of his Democratic rivals, @PeteButtigieg shows the editorial board a flash of the passion that he says propels his campaign. See more this Sunday on a special 2020 endorsement episode of @TheWeekly. Full transcript: https://t.co/ooUhuoRBV9 pic.twitter.com/6qXKtgA0WF

— New York Times Opinion (@nytopinion) January 16, 2020

Axios normally publishes short, bullet-point bullshit, but this long piece about Trump's plans for 2025 is long, detailed, and fucking terrifying. If he wins, he will be the last American president to be elected instead of chosen.

― but also fuck you (unperson), Friday, July 22, 2022 1:42 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

I saw Swann this morning talking about it as I flipped channels, and, yeah.

― Malevolent Arugula (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, July 22,

Oh, and the quote about holding up Reagan's second term as a model of hiring practices, or anything else---!

Does that mean 45 has Alzheimer’s?

Can someone explain to me why this man isn’t doing time yet?

https://www.salon.com/2022/07/24/matt-gaetz-says-women-look-like-a-thumb-shouldnt-complain-about-abortion-rights/

It is important that we only bring cases to court we know we can win, you see. It is important we keep our w-l records at 100%, you see, for optics *touches nose thoughtfully*

I liked (hated) his explanation for paying teenage girls lots of money is that he’s “generous”.

the voters in the first District of Florida can be counted on to hold matt gaetz accountable. he will hypothetically pay for his whole sex trafficking thing by hypothetically losing his house seat to some other maniacal asshole who will invent new crimes to excite the people. that will show gaetz, who will never be on tv again, i'm sure, after hypothetically being voted out of office by people who live around Pensacola.

I remember in middle school a girl coming back with just the absolute trashiest “Destin FL Spring Break” beach shirt and knowing that was all I’d never need to know of that region.

They call it the Redneck Riviera for a reason.

Lol the arbiter of tastefulness of spring break tshirts hath spoken.

I should think the tourists there are mostly from ohio, maybe ohio to blame.

Inbox: @SteveDaines will oppose the same-sex marriage bill. “I believe marriage is between a man and a woman." Adds in a statement: "..it’s another attempt by Speaker Pelosi and the Democrats to distract the American people.."

— David M. Drucker (@DavidMDrucker) July 25, 2022

It's true -- Nancy Pelosi heads the Senate Democratic Caucus.

...and it's a never-ending Rock Block of the Nuge between the rants

Somebody pointed out that Republican politicians are the modern equivalent of drive-time shock jocks. Can’t remember where I read the piece that made this argument, but I think about it all the time. https://t.co/H1Qw6MhwPT

— Paul Constant (@paulconstant) July 25, 2022

Shock jocks, pro wrestlers, bad stand-up comics ...

JD Vance staking claim to the MAGA frontier of being anti-divorce. Three years away from reactionaries rejecting germ theory and fully embracing bad humors as the source of illness.

"It's the miasma"

“He’s a moderate on phrenology.”

Hillbilly Phrenology

damn JD’s wife must have one foot out the door

with a 6-3 majority, the U.S. Supreme Court has elevated Bill DeFrance to his preordained position as America's Thought Leader

Bill DeFrance, superintendent of Eaton Rapids Public Schools in Michigan, has moonlighted for years as a high school soccer referee. When religious schools compete, he has listened as coaches intone team prayers before and after a game. Still, he has never seen a public-school coach lead a prayer.

But in light of the Supreme Court ruling, and pending guidance from state officials, DeFrance said he is open to the idea of coach-led prayer.

If the Michigan Department of Education or the Michigan High School Athletic Association “said they’d like to work … about how you can incorporate prayer into sports events for kids, I’d certainly take it to the [school] board to say, ‘We could help pilot this; we could try this,’ ” DeFrance said. (A spokesman for the state athletic association emailed The Washington Post, saying: “This is strictly an individual school district issue in Michigan. We have no part in this decision-making process.” A spokesman for the Education Department wrote in an email that his agency “has not sent any guidance to local school districts on this issue at this time. We have made a request of our state attorney general’s office for a review of the decision.”)

If done well, DeFrance added, coach-led prayer could yield advantages for his district’s 2,000 students, serving as a way to learn about other cultures.

“I could see some real interesting things like, ‘Okay, Bill, you’re Hindu, you lead the prayer this week,’ and give some background about why Hindus pray,” he said. Plus, “I do think sometimes having a little bit of a spirit helps you to play.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/07/26/school-prayer-kennedy-church-state/

Thought Leader Christi Fraga, a school board member in Miami-Dade, is also very interested in learning about other religions

Fraga still does not understand why it’s okay for the district to recognize LGBTQ History Month, with school-hosted events and celebrations, but not do something similar about prayer. Although she is running for mayor of the city of Doral and plans to leave the school board in November, she intends to continue her education advocacy — bolstered by the Supreme Court ruling, she says it may be possible to introduce more religion classes into public schools.

“I would love to see there be the ability to implement more religious teachings,” Fraga said. “There’s lessons that are taught right now in school that maybe certain families do not believe in, [and] students have to sit there and listen to what history has brought us to.”

Why not, she asked, also offer lessons on the Christianity, the “religion that has formed our nation”? As well as “the different types of religion,” she added.

i imagine these "oh yeah, other religions too, because i'm open-minded, right?" utterances to be read in the kind of sped-up, micro machines guy voice that plays at the end of commercials for products that might actually kill you

like the “other economic systems” section of my junior high economics class. they took up all of one day’s teaching iirc. i can still remember the phrase “command and control economies”

Thought Leader Amy Kruppe is an expert at identifying which religions are popular with people in her community.

Amy Kruppe took over as superintendent in Hazel Park Schools, Mich., seven years ago. When she arrived from Illinois, she was surprised to find that school board members opened meetings with prayer — sometimes inviting “a man of the cloth” to lead proceedings.

“I said, ‘Wait a minute, this is not constitutional,’ ” Kruppe said. “But their feeling was it was important to them as an organization” — so to this day, the board opens its meetings with Christian prayer, Kruppe said.

Over the years, Kruppe has come around to the idea. There have never been complaints, apart from hers. She said coaches in Hazel Park also lead prayers at games, “and no one says anything about it.” She noted that Hazel Park, a district of about 3,200 students, is about 50 percent White, 50 percent Black and, as far as she can tell, nearly 100 percent Christian.

https://i.imgur.com/PoOuJ9I.png

weird! somehow she incorrectly identified half of her own county as Christians when it turns out that, given several million different varieties of Christianity to choose from, 50% of the county's inhabitants said "NONE". but i'm sure a lot has changed since 2010

i sentence all of these people to live in reformation-era central europe

like the “other economic systems” section of my junior high economics class. they took up all of one day’s teaching iirc. i can still remember the phrase “command and control economies”

i'm pretty sure my school system didn't even bother going that far. our history classes never made it past reconstruction by the end of the semester - we would always just barely hit a paragraph about "jim crow" and then it would be summer. i think the only other economic system i ever learned about was subsistence

I had some decent labor history in my AP History class, and we covered the civil rights movement pretty well. The greatest weakness of the narrative I received was the utterly dishonest notion that all of "those problems" — racism, sexism, labor exploitation, pollution, etc. — had been solved and were in the past.

They picked a photo to show what Biden has done to her. It's beyond the party now.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/25/opinion/kamala-harris-joe-biden.html?searchResultPosition=1

I’m out of articles and am not going to ask anyone to share the piece youn linked to. What’s the summary - is it basically that she’s in a tough spot?

it’s saying they basically have no relationship and she hasn’t been prepared to assume the reins of power should biden cark it

(Thanks)

https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2022/07/the-white-guys-playbook-for-discounting-women

Perhaps he picked her as his running mate just to shore up the black woman vote.

Probably but shoring up your coalition/countering your obvious weaknesses should be the only consideration in picking a VP anyway. Old? Pick someone young(ish). Black? Pick honky Joe Biden.

No doubt, but post-election the VP should be an asset as well.

Someone probably suggested that but someone else heard "asshat" and figured they had enough of them.

"We were hoping she would be a credit to her race, but . . . "

I remember rumblings of Harris becoming a sort of undocumented immigration czar or something (with trips to Honduras, El Salvador), but I don't know if anything concrete has come out of that

That is one of the impossible tasks they have pinned on her.

Well, Kushner handily solved the Middle East crisis, so the bar has been raised

The Cheryl Rofer piece Alfred linked is thoroughly otm - the Times piece is a barely-disguised sexist hit job.

“I cannot be killed. I am invincible!” — Ashli Babbitt https://t.co/QU5ruJbqcq pic.twitter.com/SsCSFYrGbe

— The Onion (@TheOnion) July 25, 2022

Rep. Adam Kinzinger on Tuesday called Democratic efforts to bolster election-denying candidates in Republican primaries “disgusting,” accusing Democrats of taking too lightly the threat Kinzinger said those candidates pose to U.S. democracy.

“I think it is disgusting,” Kinzinger, one of two Republicans on the House special committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, told CNN on Tuesday. “Look at Darren Bailey in Illinois, an election-denier. [Illinois Gov. J.B.] Pritzker spent tens of millions of dollars so that Bailey would win. Yeah, Pritzker has a little bit of an advantage right now. Good Republican year, Bailey may win.”

I'm no veteran strategist, but I'm pretty much in agreement.. bummed that my little $25 donations were probably misspent on these whackjobs

Thanks for that link. A good test case could be comparing coverage of Beto O'Rourke:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/24/us/texas-governor-campaign-abbott-orourke.html