US Politics September 2023 - education-getting, income-having, Bible-readin church-goin MOTHERF*****

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqLjBJPi1Jw

12ft worked reliably most everywhere for a long time but lots of places are finding ways of keeping it from working.

It doesn't work on WaPo which is really annoying since I don't want to pay them any money. I do pay NYT already but I do that primarily for access to their cooking site.

Peter Navarro (what an asshole *that* guy is) unanimous contempt of congress guilty verdict is in. Granted, his defense barely made a defense, and fellow guilty congressional scofflaw Steve Bannon has yet to face justice. But still.

lol Navarro's lawyer called his client's loss "an important step in the direction of a successful appeal." That's one way of looking at it.

NYT and WaPo can be read by disabling javascript.

Archive.ph is the best way to circumvent paywalls that I've found. For a while, I used Pocket, but it doesn't work with some sites.

Is this “yo, Joe Biden is super OLD, dawg” week in the media or something

It doesn’t help to have Mitch glitching out

Glitch McConnell

Lil' Glitchy McConnell

pelosi's passing the torch on to the next generation sometime in the future, for now running for re-election in 2024

does that have a big impact when she is no longer in a leadership position?

Presumably she's around to unofficially whip

nah, i'm just kinda lightly burning her. i guess she'll hold onto the house seat as long as humanly possible, feinstein/mcconnell style

she also seems far more lucid than a lot of other politicians in her age bracket

jfc sounds awesome

this sucks, but it's perhaps a sign that she thinks dems are going to retake the house in 2024.

I was about to post the same thing.

Jeffries will be speaker, though.

"Unofficially whip"... sounds kinky

Pelosi is a big fundraiser for the party, regardless of whether she's handing over leadership (which she is).

Pelosi is a big fundraiser for both parties.

Republicans will assuredly demonize any prominent Democrat leader and then use that to fundraise. The more effective the leader, the more the Republicans will insist they are Satan incarnate. Pelosi just fills that slot atm.

Hey, I got no prob with it, they can waste all the time they want calling her the devil. Speaking of time wasters, the Mike Lindell deposition footage in here is absolute gold:

I keep tabs on a lot of the lawsuits filed after the 2020 election. Yesterday, I noticed a new filing in former Dominion exec Eric Coomer's defamation suit against MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell.

Coomer filed a motion for sanctions against Lindell, because Lindell has been… pic.twitter.com/N80tzSlmPB

— Chris Dehghanpoor • chrisd9r.bsky.social (@chrisd9r) September 8, 2023

I managed to get through a couple of those video clips -- winning sanctions against that gibbering asshole will be pretty easy imo.

I did appreciate it as a preview of what could befall Trump. Even setting aside the combative self-defeating bluster, what seemed to irritate him the most was just having to be there to answer questions. It doesn't matter how much money you have, you have limited time, and fighting off several civil and criminal lawsuits at once takes up a lot of your time.

I watched too many of those. I don't know how I'll sleep at night without a my pillow

No luck for Meadows.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/09/joe-biden-2024-election

well this is kinda fucked up

https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe9d3cdf4-1c01-491c-9588-3f380bfb2cbf_1232x942.png

the NYT wrote a long story about it. No surprise.

We’re a few years away from Republicans going full Khmer Rouge Year Zero and murdering people who have glasses

Make America Blind Again

Looking forward to Blue Oyster Cult becoming relevant again with the "(Don't Fear) The Reader" public service announcement campaign.

The "If Books Could Kill" guys just reviewed God and Man at Yale by WF Buckley Jr. It's surprising (not really) how little the conservative gripe against higher education has changed since then. It really boils down to, "They are teaching ideas that do not conform exactly to mine."

The other thing is that the anti-intellectualism of the fascist (that’s what conservatives are to me now, sorry not sorry) campaign against universities is that it is coming at a time of crisis for universities that has little to do with any of their gripes with the university. But because the university is in crisis, they can claim that as a mantle for destroying the university.

(Fwiw, the crisis in universities is caused by the current labor market, a population collapse in college-age students, and an increasing reliance on third-party educational models within the university system).

blech, i am tired, apologies for grammar in that post

Hofstadter is rolling over in his grave

(Not at your grammar, tabes, xp et al)

(Fwiw, the crisis in universities is caused by the current labor market, a population collapse in college-age students, and an increasing reliance on third-party educational models within the university system).

And also by fairly large drops in public funding of public universities since the '80s, which fueled the tuition run-ups and concomitant rises in student loan debt etc.

Yeah, but I sort of take that as a given at this juncture— like many things , the affordability crisis in public education is one caused by conservatives, which then allows them to conveniently claim the ineffectiveness (due to cost) of public education

What I have seen in my lifetime is universities adopting a for-profit business model as the preferred way for them to prosper.

Highly, highly recommend this entire 7-minute interview with a MAGA lady who's a City Council member in Franklin, Tenn., and is currently running for mayor. She posted an IG shot of a big group of (quite attractive) women who she claimed were some kind of Executive Women's Group from Franklin who are supporting her. But lots of women in the photo say they don't know she is, they don't support her, they don't live in Tennessee and the photo was taken in Chicago in 2016 when they were all brought together for a fashion shoot. Anyway, it's ... quite something. Her campaign manager is a treat, too.

https://x.com/NC5PhilWilliams/status/1701353220725932042?s=20

The resulting news story is here: https://www.newschannel5.com/news/newschannel-5-investigates/appalled-women-say-maga-mayoral-candidate-ripped-off-their-images-to-claim-them-as-supporters

Oh, here's the embedded tweet:

MUST WATCH: This call from @HansonforMayor - asking about the pic she posted of "supporters" who say they don't know her - is one of the more unusual phone calls I've ever received.
Franklin, Tennessee, this is one of your candidates for mayor. (Details in story below.) https://t.co/WcG4lcPrG3 pic.twitter.com/ZMBscTk5gh

— Phil Williams (@NC5PhilWilliams) September 11, 2023

Talk about the brazen post-truth era ...

I love his glance at the camera when she says they’re running a “highbrow campaign.”

Franklin isn’t quite a podunk town either, it’s the county seat of the wealthiest county in the state, home to Marsha Blackburn, our governor, and bunches of batshit crazy millionaires.

Yeah I love that she says “highbrow” twice and both times you can tell she’s reaching for another word but can’t find it.