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

"Believing that Taiwan has a right to its own sovereignty" is irrelevant to US saber rattling and ratcheting up Cold War II: Electric Boogaloo, which was the subject of the Politico article I was referring to.

I'm neither Chinese nor Taiwanese, I have no say in their internal or foreign affairs. I'm an American citizen, though, and thus have some interest in our empire, our nationalism, our military industrial complex, our foreign policy. What I do oppose is the United States potentially going to war over Taiwan and the MIC selling ever more weapons to Taiwan, which is the endgame of the people "hardening" US policy toward China.

Accepting that there are other great powers and that we don't get to dictate terms to the rest of the world is not being a 'tankie.'

many xps bulb

you're right, i had not watched the ads! but they line up with the description in the article:

Desperate to retain control of Congress in November in the face of stiff political head winds, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has become the latest party entity this election year to aid a Trump-endorsed Republican in a primary against a candidate who has resisted the former president. The $435,000 investment calls Gibbs “too conservative” in ads and highlights his connection to Trump — a winking message meant to boost his appeal to conservative primary voters.

The calculation: Come November, a far-right GOP nominee with polarizing positions will be easier to defeat. But some Democrats have voiced alarm that their party would elevate the kinds of Republicans they have argued present a threat to democracy and would punish the rare GOP official who joined their stand against Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob. Not only is it risky, they said, but wrongheaded.

but, after watching, i agree that "Democrats funding trump candidates" is not a good way to describe what's happening. it's weird. they are spending money to support Gibbs (or at least to make Meijer's re-election more difficult, as andy the grasshopper mentioned), but they can't say "we want Gibbs to win", and i guess they also don't want Meijer to win, so they can't say that. so instead of a positive statement about either of the two republicans, all the DCCC can do is make a sort of double-negative, two wrongs make a right kind of play where they "insult" the far-right guy for being too conservative. it's all so weird, and it also insults the intelligence of anyone watching. either they fool the republican primary voters, or they get caught trying to fool republican primary voters. maybe they wouldn't be in this situation if they stopped trying to run ads in republican primaries that require multidimensional fluency in order to make sense of in the first place, lol

🚨MANCHIN says he’s reached agreement with Schumer on a reconciliation deal that deals with climate, energy, tax and health care. pic.twitter.com/v3fRxP5n70

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) July 27, 2022

lmao "inflation reduction act" they should have called it that months ago

'affordable fossil fuel energy'

in fact, he'll even sell you some

lol

Did no one see this part of his statement? Of course this is a windfall for oil, coal and NG. You can call it whatever you like but it's not green. pic.twitter.com/R3VAdjYDK2

— Avant-guerre (@Pruit_Igoe) July 27, 2022

A little good news

Teen bullied by Matt Gaetz raises over $200,000 for abortion rights funds

“He’s probably afraid,” said Julianna, referring to Gaetz not replying to her comments or campaign. “Last time ‘Matt Gaetz’ and ‘teenager’ were trending it didn’t exactly go well for him.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/27/matt-gaetz-texas-teen-abortion-rights-funds

The Dems have used this tactic before, at least as far back as 2010. Before Trump they would just say the candidate was “too conservative” or the most pro-life or whatever. Sometimes it works! I don’t know why people are mystified by what’s on here.

because the candidates they are boosting might win and if they win they will have a good shot at ending democracy

While putting the 1/6 hearings on in prime time and scolding you if you don’t treat them seriously enough.

This whole “Dems funding GOP ads” thing only reinforces my belief that television advertising is one of the worst facets of American politics. Millions of dollars poured into out of context sound bites, half truths, innuendo and bullshit.

Because only old conservative fucks watch prime time teevee.

xxxpost I mean why are people on this thread arguing that this is not a deliberate tactic

ah sorry, iswym.

.@leahstokes, who worked with Democrats on climate piece of reconciliation package, tells me of green activists worried about permitting part of Manchin/Schumer deal: "Yes there will be some difficult tradeoffs, but it's going to be 10 times as much good stuff as bad stuff."

— Joshua Siegel (@SiegelScribe) July 27, 2022

:shrug:

i mean if the net is 40% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2030 that seems good. 40% is a smaller number than e.g. 50% but it's 40% more than we're going to get from the 2023/4 congress.

watch sinema tank it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqfL6_6qEJY

ha

So McConnell and republicans said they wouldn’t pass chips if reconciliation was alive.

They passed chips

Dems revived reconciliation hours after chips passed.

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) July 27, 2022

Oh good, a NEW third party! For realsies this time!

LOS ANGELES, July 27 (Reuters) - Dozens of former Republican and Democratic officials will announce on Wednesday a new national political third party to appeal to millions of voters they say are dismayed with what they see as America's dysfunctional two-party system.

The new party, called Forward, will initially be co-chaired by former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang and Christine Todd Whitman, the former Republican governor of New Jersey. They hope the party will become a viable alternative to the Republican and Democratic parties that dominate U.S. politics, founding members told Reuters.

Party leaders will hold a series of events in two dozen cities this autumn to roll out its platform and attract support. They will host an official launch in Houston on Sept. 24 and the party's first national convention in a major U.S. city next summer.

The new party is being formed by a merger of three political groups that have emerged in recent years as a reaction to America's increasingly polarized and gridlocked political system. The leaders cited a Gallup poll last year showing a record two-thirds of Americans believe a third party is needed.

The merger involves the Renew America Movement, formed in 2021 by dozens of former officials in the Republican administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Donald Trump; the Forward Party, founded by Yang, who left the Democratic Party in 2021 and became an independent; and the Serve America Movement, a group of Democrats, Republicans and independents founded by former Republican congressman David Jolly.

So...no actual Democrats, then. Maybe the Forward party's logo could be four capital Fs, in a kind of X pattern...?

new national political third party to appeal to millionstens of voters

No Labels

Are you socially liberal but fiscally conservative but also maybe a bit of a transphobe and also you don't really like the way your darlings Cody and Ambyr are being taught to villainize white people in school and you keep seeing posts on Nextdoor about gangs prowling around in your subdivision and oh shit you're just going to vote Republican anyway.

yes i am

But wait, remember how Trump was embarrassing?

I can't believe Manchin switched positions. For whatever reason he did, I am glad. It truly feels like the end of the world, although I suppose everyone has said that for at least 100 years.

F-word Party

what a breath of fresh air they will be
💨

Remember that RT upthread, of Yang reminding us that Lincoln (REPUBLICAN) and Johnson (DEMOCRAT) were a winning thing, baby---John Legend: "And what happened then?"

pretending to have covid so you can recover from a face lift is so me https://t.co/PkYLpeEgxG

— Bʀᴀɴᴅᴏɴ (@bjbjonez) July 26, 2022

It truly feels like the end of the world, although I suppose everyone has said that for at least 100 years.

people have been saying this since forever, only it feels really real this time

I've taken to responding to my doomscrolling brother's pronouncements of our imminent demise (mostly because of climate, but other things too) by saying, "Well, probably not in my lifetime." What else is there to say to it really?

"Well, probably not in my lifetime."

what your brother probably says to this, or what i would say to it at least, is "it's already happening in our lifetime"

so much data, coming so fast

Not species extinction tho — I mean, our species in particular. That's where he sees it all going. And he may be right! It's just that I expect to perish well before we get there. I've tried to argue that if you really believe that, it should be kind of comforting because then none of the rest of the angst-producing stuff (COVID, Christian nationalism, abortion crackdowns, Joe Manchin) really matters. He doesn't find this reassuring, for whatever reason.

(But also, humans are amazingly adaptable. We'll survive way longer than we should, probably dragging it out through generations of unrelieved misery and suffering. Speaking of which, sorry for the diversion, on with the politics.)

oh, gotcha.

i don't think humans will go extinct, at least not in the next 10,000 years. that's kind of a weird place for him to go, though, because if climate change reduces a global population of 8 billion down to about 1 or 2 billion people, that's not going "extinct", but that's also very bad.

at any rate, though,, to generations of unrelieved misery and suffering! *raises a glass*

We'll survive way longer than we should, probably dragging it out through generations of unrelieved misery and suffering.

Worth remembering that human life only got materially better than "subsistence farming peasantry" within the last 200 years. Before the mid-1800s, even rich motherfuckers had no appreciable technological advantages over their poorer brethren. All work was physical and arduous — the only perk of being rich was you could pay someone else to do it for you. Modern technological existence and leisure is a bubble, and when it pops it'll just be humanity going back to "as you were" status...except it'll be a lot hotter outside.

Need to start planning for a post-grid-collapse ILX. Anyone good with homing pigeons?

people have been saying this since forever, only it feels really real this time

― a (waterface), Thursday, July 28, 2022 7:40 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I mean ours is the first generation to have all the information in the world at its fingertips which I am pretty sure is making us the most anxious generation in history

i feel fine

i might spend some time alone

Good morning!

Worth remembering that human life only got materially better than "subsistence farming peasantry" within the last 200 years. Before the mid-1800s, even rich motherfuckers had no appreciable technological advantages over their poorer brethren. All work was physical and arduous — the only perk of being rich was you could pay someone else to do it for you. Modern technological existence and leisure is a bubble, and when it pops it'll just be humanity going back to "as you were" status...except it'll be a lot hotter outside.

― but also fuck you (unperson), Thursday, July 28, 2022 9:55 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I don't think modern technology is going away but yeah I think it's important to get some perspective. despite everything going on this is still probably the best time in human history to be alive. this isn't just my opinion it's the fact that the world population has gone from 2.5 billion in 1950 to nearly 8 billion today, which is not something that happens to a species unless conditions are really good. I think about this a lot too, for example when watching Get Back it occurred to me that this was all happening at a time when there were literally less than half as many people on the planet as there is today. And a lot of these people are young and learning to adapt to a world that seems to us like it's spiraling out of control.

I think people feel this way in large part because human emotion is so relativistic - we're at our happiest when we get something (material or otherwise), at our most despondent when things are being taken away from us (either real or in our imaginations). There is something profound in the fact that Donald Trump and Elon Musk are two of the most miserable fucks on the planet despite having been granted every single advantage life could offer. They are the pinnacles of a system that is fundamentally unsustainable and as such every dose of reality they get feels like a personal attack. One of the greatest joys in life is parenthood and they are unable to experience any of that joy because of how poisoned their brains have become. If/when the societal collapse comes (and I'm with KM here, I think we're sort of in the middle of it) my hope is that it at least can wash away some of that poison.

Modern technological existence and leisure is a bubble...only made possible by the mass uptake of fossil fuels aiui.

so far, but yes aiui also

Not quite the same thesis, but I've been meaning to read this for years after encountering his argument that coal amplified democracy in the West (because coal workers worked near one another and formed unions, etc.) and oil undermined it: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/232680/carbon-democracy-by-timothy-mitchell/

i was talking with my parents about roe v wade and while they are very depressed about it they told me they think america is in a very different place now than then in terms of support networks for women who want abortions and the social stigma attached to it. back then you still needed to be married (and heterosexual) to get a hotel room together in a lot of places. for instance. things were very very old school in a way that few of us have ever experienced. so yes it’s bad yes it’s a clawback, but there’s more of “us” than there used to be imo. and maybe this is wishful thinking but conservatives wouldn’t be this active, they wouldn’t be this hellbent on seizing structural consolidation of gains if they weren’t scared as hell of being made totally irrelevant by the next generation of young people who have zero sympathy for their necrotic politics

Drugmakers are waking up to the reality that Democrats’ revived budget reconciliation bill has a shot at enactment, and are waging an intense lobbying campaign on Capitol Hill and over the airwaves in a last-minute attempt to bring it down...

And I'll bet they succeed in some fashion... Glaxo, Perdue lobbyists are always first in line

https://thecolumn.substack.com/p/during-record-heatwave-nyt-wapo-atlantic

"Remember that RT upthread, of Yang reminding us that Lincoln (REPUBLICAN) and Johnson (DEMOCRAT) were a winning thing, baby---John Legend: "And what happened then?""

yes, this was John Legend's greatest moment, it utterly redeems him for being 1) boring and 2) married to Chrissy Teigen

re: extinction, I try to avoid doom shit, and I also dislike this guy for a whole variety of reasons, but for some reason Medium keeps pushing him on me. I relented and read this one and actually agreed with it. I suspect what we'll ultimately wind up with in 100 years time (maybe less) is something like the Jackpot in William Gibson's 'agency' novels.

https://medium.com/eudaimonia-co/the-age-of-extinction-is-here-some-of-us-just-dont-know-it-yet-7001f5e0c79a

Sorry if this has been shared already

Marc Short, Mike Pence’s chief of staff, on Matt Gaetz.

I didn’t expect this strong of a response. pic.twitter.com/i4SN89Thpk

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) July 25, 2022