Why is everyone so mean?? US Politics: September 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

gonna be so infuriating when the DOJ decides not to press charges on anyone

But think of the pile of remaindered books in 2030!

Pres. Trump will discover recycling.

Aw shit

Mike Franken was giving GOP incumbent Chuck Grassley a tough challenge. Then a conservative website published a police report filed by his former campaign manager.

No more Frankens. Or old white troops.

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

― an icon of a worried-looking, long-haired, bespectacled man (C. Grisso/McCain), Monday, September 26, 2022 2:58 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

He's also the Bigfoot erotica guy

the dudes who run @OccupyDemocrats are under fire right now for allegedly pocketing PAC funds and i'm screaming at the owners (now deleted) response pic.twitter.com/dO7cah9whF

— shoe (@shoe0nhead) September 26, 2022

Aw, will no one think of the poor meme-makers?

Retweet if you think Occupy Democrats should be in JAIL!!

lol

I thought their entire shtick was that they rip off existing memes and slap their logo on
and, yup, a couple images on their twitter account were popular retweets elsewhere a week ago

You can’t tell me this isn’t straight from an episode of VEEP pic.twitter.com/c4QQWStqUJ

— Bob (@tweetsbybob_) September 26, 2022

we'll have to plan to plan on that one

Well, I hope he has plenty of gas. https://www.texastribune.org/2022/09/26/texas-attorney-general-ken-paxton-subpoena-abortion-lawsuit/

Can you be a state attorney general and not understand how process servers work? Apparently, yes

"feared for his family's safety" my ass

Can you be a state attorney general and not understand how process servers work?

you can be a Republican in a state where the entire court system is stacked with your cronies and ride your "I was never served! I wasn't there that day and you can't prove that!" all the way to victory though

I mean, the dude is guilty of several felonies and is still running around doing whatever the fuck he wants after seven years so

reminds me of being a kid and misunderstanding baseball rules, just running around first base and trying to dodge the first base player so they wouldn't touch you with the ball before you could sneak past them

LOL

Not to be all lookist but why do so many Republicans look like they've been curing in a vat of gravy for several decades

because they have

guessing a lifestyle of just always doing whatever you feel like while simultaneously getting angry all day long at others doing the same eventually takes a toll