Why is everyone so mean?? US Politics: September 2022

KM, you don't remember that part from the Sermon on the Mount?

"And do not open your door to the undocumented, for they need too many handouts; rather, let them be cast into the outer darkness, where there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth."

yeah, there are also lots of sirens and protesters in the background too. as usual, with these kinds of things, everyone will see this in the same way that they already did. i don't see this changing much. i don't know anything about donors and what they think or why they do what they do. they have a ton of money -- they probably fucking suck. i do think it's good to open up this topic to other people who can make this argument more persuasively and also not use a command and conquer background

xpost Christianity only works when you pull all the jesus/forgiveness/tolerance bullshit out.. it's all about leviticus and smiting the sinners

Biden’s doing pretty well up there!

I only caught the last few seconds, but that was lit like a scene from The Purge.

Biden: “i know it’s been hard…”
pres camacho interrupts: “and erverybody’s shit is _eeMOtional_.”

I was like hoping he’d do fireside-y vershes of this in march-april, but better late than “whatever?” i guess. Feel like we had a lot of whatever.

Yeah, it was fine. He had COVID cough. But we're not the target audience -- it's made for replay in independent markets. Obama or FDR himself couldn't convince Republicans in 2022 they're sick motherfuckers who should die.

🐦[This backdrop looks sinister lol pic.twitter.com/RRf5lJfECs🕸
— rt if you think that sounds true! (@lib_crusher) September 2, 2022🕸]🐦

Command & Conquer cutscene

democracy

— President Biden (@POTUS) September 2, 2022

Can't believe the Biden people hired the Gravel Teens

awww that's cute

Onion Biden woulda tweeted "Chinese Democracy"...

https://i.imgur.com/lHNOybP.jpg

Too long, too complicated, why is Biden taking my money, you have no response because he is a communist thief.

But we could have built a bomb with that interest

Dropkick Murphys guy making some solid points at a festival in Pennsylvania:

Ken Casey of the Dropkick Murphys goes on an epic rant against MAGA grifters with no lies detected and the Boston accent is the chefs kiss pic.twitter.com/jrFUFu3K67

— Wu-Tang Is For The Children (@WUTangKids) September 3, 2022

Didn't he go into the crowd a few years back to kick some MAGA dude's ass? Or am thinking of Mike Ness?

That was Ness. DMs wrote the letter to Scott Walker about how they ‘literally hate you’ when he tried to use one of their songs in 2012 or 2016.

I think it was DMs, too! 2013:

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

Near the end of its March 13 show at Terminal 5 in Midtown Manhattan, the veteran Celtic punk band invited fans onstage — as per tradition — to participate in an encore rendition of “Kiss Me I’m Shitfaced.” Fans continued to pour onto the stage as the group transitioned to another classic, the anti-white supremecist ditty “Skinhead on the MBTA,” then a cover of AC/DC’s “TNT.”

That’s when things got a little ugly.

According to several blogs — and caught on video from the scene — a large man with a shaved head began to flash the Nazi salute, with a bent arm shooting straight out from the chest. Founding bassist-singer Ken Casey moved toward the guy, shoved him aside and began a pile-on that ended half a minute later with a torn shirt and one less skinhead onstage.

He took back the microphone and screamed, “Nazis are not f—ing welcome at a Dropkick Murphys show!” and the crowd went wild.

OK, yeah, I was close. Back this past March some neo-Nazi group started using some DM song, and after the cease and desist the DM guy outright gave them a time and place to meet so he could kick their ass:

I’ll be down M Street park on Saturday at 12:30 walking my dogs if you’ll are looking to discuss

— Dropkick Murphys (@DropkickMurphys) March 24, 2022

What causes a man to start fires?

All I know is, don't blame this guy

https://www.antiwarsongs.org/img/upl/billy_joel.0.jpg

I can't take it anymore!

an old friend took me to see DMs and Rancid last summer— we had some fun, but the DMs fans looked about the same as Blue Lives Matter scumbags, judging from their shirts and the cars they drove. Shit, a Suburban full of already drunk assholes parked next to me during the tailgating time, and it was covered in Trump and cop-humping shit

Ken otmfm

"The water in Capital City isn't safe to drink, and there's been a mysterious menacing plane circling overhead for hours" is either a pretty good opening scene for a dystopian novel or just life in Mississippi right now

— Joshua Benton (@jbenton) September 3, 2022

xpost to table, if anything that's what makes it more notable. As someone asked on one of the DM twitter threads, what does it say when your music attracts these sorts of people? But of course the band can't help it if knuckleheads latch on, and there's not much they can do to stop it besides break up. What they can do is call them on their bullshit, or (sometimes literally) punch back. Most bands are preaching to the converted. Some generally leftier acts like Springsteen (who attracts his share of GOP assholes, from cops to name politicians) or Pearl Jam might say something broad or relatively diplomatic. But the Dropkick dude actually challenges these assholes to fights. Beyond that ... man, I'd hate to hate my fans.

I've seen the Murphys several times. The demographic is overwhelmingly young, white, male and drunk. At least in Atlanta (and Chattanooga), I've not seen many/any skinheads or other obvious right-wing types.

Mid-Atlantic big Irish Catholic energy has a lot of fashy energy I guess— Philly show felt like an Irish cop convention, and they all left before Rancid took the stage

A bunch of mooks at a show with two bands heavily indebted to Oi! does not surprise me. SHARPs and Nazis were fighting throughout the Rancid show I saw in 1997/8.

Maybe this is overblown, maybe not

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/senator-discusses-hushed-efforts-change-us-constitution/story?id=89048487

I would not say "overblown". Realistically it's hard to pull off, but the two-thirds threshold for simple amendment of the constitution has been met many times and this provision sets the very same threshold for writing a wholly new constitution from scratch. Everything would be up for grabs.

The efforts of billionaires like the Kochs to solidify state legislatures into instruments for pursuing a hard-right extreme agenda have been very successful on the whole. With organizing in depth and in secret, the far right could pull this off and *poof* there goes any semblance of the last 250 years of agonizingly won expansion of rights.

Special Master granted, can't tell if this matters or not though

Well, the DOJ saw everything already. And it will be appealed, so drags out the clock. But I saw this bit of potential context:

Apparently, Trump is concerned that truth about his taxes and health gets out. Weighing in favor of the special master is that:

"the seized materials include medical documents, correspondence related to taxes, and accounting information"

— Michael McDonald (@ElectProject) September 5, 2022

this seems potentially shitty

A Trump-appointed judge gave Trump more than his lawyers asked for today, putting any of DOJ’s criminal investigation of the former president relating to the seized documents on hold temporarily.

Now, to see if — and, if so, what elements of this — DOJ appeals.

— Chris “Subscribe to Law Dork!” Geidner (@chrisgeidner) September 5, 2022

Ugh, that’s what a fool believes

Democrats who voted to confirm Judge Aileen Cannon after Trump had already lost the 2020 election: Carper, Coons, Cortez Masto, Feinstein, Hassan, Jones, Kaine, Leahy, Manchin, Murphy, Rosen, Warner.

— Gregory Hays (@aristofontes) September 5, 2022

Seems like a ruling that will get reversed, but if it gets to SCOTUS who knows? There's a nicely monarchial appeal about extending executive privilege in perpetuity.

I wonder what her rationale was for "temporarily" suspending the DOJ investigation? Does she even know the breadth of the investigation or what parts of it may have no close connection to the warranted Mar-a-Lago search?

/5 By the way you’re seeing a lot of “the judge shut down the criminal investigation.” Not so. The judge shut down, for now, review of documents seized from Mar-a-Lago. The criminal investigation existed before that and will continue on other channels as before.

— HatMaster (@Popehat) September 5, 2022

So, the Law Dork misinformed his Twitter followers? Shocking! And here I was all set to subscribe to his newsletter.

warning: don't read politico. but don't read daily beast either. don't read at all, just to be safe

normal email

The new German owner of Politico sent an email to his closest executives asking if they should meet up to pray for Donald Trump’s re-election, according to a report. Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner sent the message in the weeks leading up to the 2020 presidential election, according to The Washington Post, a year before his company’s acquisition of Politico in October 2021. “Do we all want to get together for an hour in the morning on November 3 and pray that Donald Trump will again become President of the United States of America?” Döpfner wrote, inspired by an article about the Trump administration taking legal action against Google for abuse of market dominance. Döpfner went on to argue that Trump had made the right call on five of the six biggest issues of the last century—including pursuing peace in the Middle East and “defending the free democracies” from Russia and China—only falling short on climate change. “No American administration in the last 50 years has done more,” he added. When asked about the message, Döpfner initially denied it existed, going so far as to say: “It has never been sent and has never been even imagined.” When confronted with a printout of the email, he explained that he may have sent it “as an ironic, provocative statement in the circle of people that hate Donald Trump.” “That is me,” he added. “That could be.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/politcos-new-owner-mathias-dopfner-invited-colleagues-to-pray-for-trumps-re-election

It is possible I was a troll

It has never been sent
~murmurs in the jury of his peers
It has never even been imagined
~some cheers of support, rising action
It was an ironic, provocative statement
~chants of “MVP” begin to fill courtroom
That is me. It could be
~plaintiff, judge and jury carry him out of the courtroom on their shoulders

Where is the best place to read news/analysis nowadays?

Always lots o' links on the Reddit politics thread.

Seriously, recommendations are welcome.

Politico is where I typically go simply because I don’t have a limited number of articles.

lol pic.twitter.com/vbNW3oTKYn

— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) September 6, 2022

I'M A DEMOCRAT WHO THINKS BIDEN'S ANTI-DEMOCRATIC RHETORIC HAS GONE TOO FAR!!!!!!

...hi i'm zach

I'M A DEMOCRAT WHO THINKS BIDEN'S ANTI-DEMOCRATIC RHETORIC HAS GONE TOO FAR!!!!!! and I'm an alcoholic