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

The R and the D prosecutors could decide what to do, if anything, of course.

another guilty party skates

Rep. Matt Gaetz likely to avoid charges in sex-trafficking probe as federal prosecutors recommend against them, people familiar say https://t.co/kfshVa01RL

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) September 23, 2022

Do you think this is what prosecutors are trying to do?

sorry, my point probably got lost or buried, which is that we should be focused like a laser beam on winning votes, not locking people up. the latter is often antithetical to the former. you can't win political battles by legal means, but often it seams like it's the only solution that occurs to us.

Charles Koch should get all his money taken away.

Given how much attention has been focused on Gaetz, that decision is very surprising.

He asked for a pardon for it too

Given the fact that this DoJ has been leak proof, and they have stayed true to their policy of not making overt investigative announcements within 60 days of an election, I have serious skepticism about the sources in this reporting. https://t.co/GHesa5cP21

— Mueller, She Wrote (@MuellerSheWrote) September 23, 2022

All worrying about today's WaPo claim that "prosecutors recommended against charging" Matt Gaetz - it's actually good news; it's by @DevlinBarrett who wrote that FBI found "no grand [Jan 6] conspiracy" the week before the 1st seditious conspiracy charge 1/https://t.co/sTZbl5NaPC

— capitolhunters (@capitolhunters) September 23, 2022

lol the reporter who wrote the story retweeted that Mueller She Wrote tweet. Any attention good attention.

Stolen valor dude gets his budget snipped:

The House GOP campaign arm is slashing a near-$1 million ad buy meant to target Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) — essentially walking away from what could have been an easy pickup for the party.

The move comes a day after an Associated Press report that Kaptur’s opponent, JR Majewski, lied about his resume, including claiming that he deployed to Afghanistan. Majewski beat out two state legislators in a May primary contest for the northwest Ohio district.

today in Republicans pic.twitter.com/hdupOA6Qin

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 23, 2022

Thing about this guy: he served.

It was nothing spectacular. But he served. He spent a couple months loading planes in Qatar. They don't make movies about Air Force logistics guys, but he served. That's more than a lot of people did.

He could have ran on that record.

1/ https://t.co/ya3orlZTJN

— Stonekettle (@Stonekettle) September 23, 2022

but he served. That's more than a lot of people did.

jackoffmotion.gif

I only bring a carry on when I fly I am a hero

He could have ran on that record.

Yes, he served without any special distinction and later he was perfectly happy to lie his head off to convince people he was some kind of hero. Which says more about him?

That's guy's thread is pretty reasonable, lest anyone think it was some blanket defense. I mean:

Nothing wrong with loading planes.

Absolutely nothing wrong with being just a logistics guy.

But Macho Studs like him, they've spent so much time calling anyone who wasn't a SEAL Sniper Ninja Door Kicking Green Bean Beret a pussy, that he's embarrassed by his own service.

3/

— Stonekettle (@Stonekettle) September 23, 2022

it's reasonable, but that stonekettle guy is tiresome to me

I didn't think it was a blanket defense but he's the guy at work who was totally a Delta SEAL operator bro, totally, fuck off with any genuflection toward "service."

that guy is indeed a veteran

I know people try, but it's probably impossible to truly thread the needle of "honoring" veterans while condemning US imperialism. a lot of people didn't "serve" because they didn't want to kill innocent people for no reason

majestic Majewski:

GOP congressional nominee @JRMajewski made a Fleetwood Mac/Cranberry Juice TikTok parody (since-deleted but saved by me from his Parler) in front of the Qanon "Qs" painted on his lawn in 2020. (Majewski has repeatedly denied being a Q follower.) https://t.co/mBa6Z4W8EO pic.twitter.com/dS2xwzqhgx

— andrew kaczynski (@KFILE) May 9, 2022

Fleetwood MaQ

Fuck the Prussian fixation on “honoring” people in uniform.

Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies

now they're using it for fundraising

New email from the National Republican Senatorial Committee asks supporters where they want Republican governors to “ship” migrants next. pic.twitter.com/E0Ly5Rubl1

— Roger Sollenberger (@SollenbergerRC) September 23, 2022

The governor has brushed off the claims, saying all of the migrants got on the plane voluntarily.

“It is opportunistic that activists would use illegal immigrants for political theater,” his office said in a statement.

(that's a DeSantis quote, not Abbott)

Fuck the Prussian fixation on “honoring” people in uniform.

The growth of prayerful veneration of "the troops" is one of the most many disturbing trends of my political lifetime.

It is so gross! Contrast that with my childhood neighbour Gene, who came back from WW2 with a Purple Heart and nobody apart from his family, who never brought it up, knew about it until he died.

I know people try, but it's probably impossible to truly thread the needle of "honoring" veterans while condemning US imperialism. a lot of people didn't "serve" because they didn't want to kill innocent people for no reason

― rob, Saturday, September 24, 2022 9:35 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

qft

it doesn't work to criticize anyone for participating in us imperialism to whatever degree they need at a certain time in their lives imo but i pretty firmly believe that there is no honor in serving in the us armed forces, period.

That veneration of The Troops was a direct outgrowth of various dynamics during the post-Vietnam era, mainly the conversion to an all-volunteer military, and the need to throw a veil of glamor over military service in a decade when the generation targeted for recruitment mostly held the armed forces in contempt. But also the swift growth of conservative reaction within the generations too old to have been drafted into the Vietnam war.

that being said if i meet someone who looks back fondly on their military service and they are contradictorily empathetic, caring, and progressive in their way, i don't know how much good it does to push back on their experience, though i think that if they're being really truthful about it they would acknowledge how fucked up it really is. xp

I had an uncle who was an apolitical jock in college, drafted to Vietnam, and came back very radicalized left and outspoken politically to this day.

Have an uncle, he’s still alive.

Thanks, I’ll take one.

Again, any border issues are best understood as the Republican Party realizing that not changing any immigration laws helps them politically so they refuse to do so https://t.co/decG2xRJj0

— Aaron (the Give Smart guy) (@BobbyBigWheel) September 25, 2022

^solid truth. but this truth will never reach enough voters who might vote differently because of it.

Thanks, I’ll take one.

The whole migrant thing is a fraud. First, you defund the part of the government that handles the legal cases to the point there is now a 10+ year case back log. Secondly, these same racist f'cks are the ones who own the construction, agriculture, hospitality and other businesses that LOVE having a workforce that work for cash off the books and outside the OSHA and social security overview.

And anything else, blame the other side. Why change anything?

It's the most shameless hypocrisy, anybody who's walked past a construction crew in a lot of parts of the country knows who's doing a lot of our hard labor. (I overheard a funny conversation here on a street crew that was three Mexican guys and a white guy. The Mexicans were giving the white guy shit for being lazy, he was trying to convince them he could "work just as hard as a Mexican," and they were laughing at him.) I drive through the rich neighborhoods in our city and see nothing but small crews of mostly Latinos doing yardwork, landscaping, home repairs. But of course, that's the order some people want to keep (and/or aspire to).

There are for sure hard-core racists in the GOP coalition who are freaked out about becoming a majority-nonwhite country and buy into all that rancid replacement theory stuff. But there are also a lot of people who just think this immigration thing seems to be working fine right now, a deportable workforce is a compliant workforce.

"The election of the first woman prime minister in a country always represents a break with the past, and that is certainly a good thing"

Probably they had that statement left over from the French election, in case Marine won.

Meanwhile, here's a hot bad take for you.

New York libraries have waded into America’s culture wars by directly lending 25,000 books to non-residents since spring, including thousands of students living under the bans https://t.co/bcvVxZOOF6

— POLITICO New York (@politicony) September 26, 2022

I cited the article yesterday; didn't even see the tweet this morning.

my brother works for the Brooklyn library!

The program is great. It's just the framing in that tweet that's bad, mindlessly amping this up as a "culture war" fight rather than an effort to circumvent censorship. (Also they don't really have to "slip" through red state bans, the bans are on school materials. The books are still legal, we're not to that point yet.)

On Twitter, I pulled out the paragraph about how the Oklahoma town most het up about this used to be a sundown town. Nice folks. Salt of the earth and whatnot.

First of a couple of Jan. 6 revelations(?)---more details anyway:

As allies of then-President Donald Trump made a final push to overturn the election in late-December 2020, one of the key operatives behind the effort briefed then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows about his attempts to gain access to voting systems in key battleground states, starting with Arizona and Georgia, according to text messages obtained by CNN.

Phil Waldron, an early proponent of various election-related conspiracy theories, texted Meadows on December 23 that an Arizona judge had dismissed a lawsuit filed by friendly GOP lawmakers there. The suit demanded state election officials hand over voting machines and other election equipment, as part of the hunt for evidence to support Trump’s baseless claims of voter fraud.

In relaying the news to Meadows, Waldron said the decision would allow opponents to engage in “delay tactics” preventing Waldron and his associates from immediately accessing machines. Waldron also characterized Arizona as “our lead domino we were counting on to start the cascade,” referring to similar efforts in other states like Georgia.
Pathetic,” Meadows responded.

The messages, which have not been previously reported, shed new light on how Waldron’s reach extended into the highest levels of the White House and the extent to which Meadows was kept abreast of plans for accessing voting machines, a topic sources tell CNN, and court documents suggest, is of particular interest to state and federal prosecutors probing efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Significance of initial claim here has been argued about, but it's tip of the iceberg ov connections, more details, one of the v. few Trump-related books I want to read (niece Mary T.'s was fairly amazing or startling)

The White House switchboard dialled a phone associated with a January 6 rioter after it was clear the deadly Capitol attack had failed to prevent the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, according to a new book.

The book from former Republican congressman and House January 6 select committee adviser Denver Riggleman says the connection was an outgoing call routed through the switchboard at 4.34pm, and it was answered by an unnamed rioter who allegedly has since been charged by the justice department with a role in the storming of the Capitol.

Riggleman’s book, titled The Breach, was reviewed by the Guardian in advance of its scheduled publication on Tuesday, and it has already become controversial after the select committee decried the work as an incomplete account that lacked information to which he was not privy once he left the panel’s inquiry in April.
But in describing his work for the investigation and how he led a team analyzing call detail records, Riggleman offers previously unreported details about the White House calls around January 6 as well as the contacts around Trump’s political operatives, including Roger Stone and Alex Jones.
...Riggleman also details other instances of connections between the White House and people connected to the Capitol attack, writing that before January 6, the president of an organization known as Latinos for Trump – closely connected to the Proud Boys group – also received a call from the White House.

Denver Riggleman: another one for the "Government People with Pseudo-Pynchon Names" file.

it's weird how meadows didn't mention all that in his book