God Has Abandoned Us: U.S. Politics November 2023

I ain't afraid of no ghost ... bus.

fuck this whole 'just throwing it out there, people are saying' strain the American body politic

people are saying Republicans kill kittens for fun! that's what I hear, everyone is saying it.

But a handful of judges have found that some rioters could not face weightier charges because they had no clue what was happening in the Capitol and therefore couldn’t have intended to block certification of Biden’s victory over Donald Trump.

"Gawrsh, all I did was get on board a bus from Indiana that was painted I LOVE TRUMP, wearing a STOP THE STEAL shirt and carrying zip ties and bear spray. I had no clue what was going on."

Sounds good to me, case dismissed.

Also, it goes without saying but Clay Higgins is an absolute moron.

Wray: Can you explain what a Ghost Bus is?

Higgins: You're leaving a place you know where you're independent and on your own and, in a lot of cases you're going to your house where you grew up with your parents or your friends, and, so there's this transaction mentally that's occurring where you're going from one place toward another but you're not there yet, and while you're traveling you're in this kind of cocoon that's just really dark and weird and surrounded by strangers and you most often have your headphones on and you're trying to shut all that out but usually have trouble sleeping so you're up but you're tired. There's an emotional character to that and there's an emotional character to you getting a cheeseburger at 2:30 in the morning. And the way the lights are and if it's been raining. Ghost Bus has a completely different connotation in England and in Europe. There it's just about shitfaced people piling onto the ghsot bus to get home after a night of heavy drinking.

ha

Roy: One thing. I want my Republican colleagues to give me one thing. One. That I can go campaign on and say we did. Anybody sitting in the complex, if you want to come down to the floor and come explain to me, one meaningful, significant thing the Republican majority has done pic.twitter.com/RGc4FTAelt

— Acyn (@Acyn) November 15, 2023

Ghost buses in the sky

Lol

Sorry if this was already posted, but Trump's plans to use the Insurrection Act to deploy the military after his enemies and other assorted changes to the Constitution are absolutely chilling:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/11/05/trump-revenge-second-term/

He may seem like an utter clown and buffoon, but consider that even being out on supervised release for 91 criminal charges, and convicted of sexual assault and on trial for all manner things, he is still leading the polls in 5 swing states.

Lots of low-info voters, or people who - for whatever reason think that a second Trump term is fine.

Would love to see WaPo change their tagline from "Democracy Dies in Darkness" to "Democracy Dies in Broad Fuckin' Daylight."

I'm really starting to think most polling is utter hogshit

I don't pick up numbers I don't recognize on my cellphone... and I rarely listen to rando voicemails left there either. I can't be alone in this. Are they still just calling landlines and hoping they get some bored person who will talk for a few minutes? Like 1993 style?

I wish the wheels of justice turned a little faster

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/11/15/nevada-false-electors-trump-investigation-00127369

They turn slowly but grind exceedingly fine.

The polls were accurate this year! The problem is now people made saying that because the democrats lived up to the polling numbers in elections this year that means…Biden’s polls are inaccurate.

the problem is Trump doesn't officially have the nomination yet, many of the polls have over 10% "undecided" responses still, we're over a year out, state-level polling aggregated is more valuable than national and it's not yet being done frequently enough by high enough quality pollsters, and there are still plenty of other factors like how Trump's various trials are going to impact him later on the campaign trail, or how Kennedy's independent campaign will impact things. if some of the economic news continues to look better than expected, Biden is also likely to rebound from some of the negative noise that's currently impacting him.

the polls that were accurate in previous Presidential elections weren't the ones that were run a year before the election.

Does the RNC have any kind of contingency plan for Trump splitting the vote/support in the multiple scenarios where he's not or makes himself unable to be the official (R) candidate?

Oh for sure the RNC definitely has very smart and well-thought-out strategies for any eventuality. lol.

I think polls are stupid but my gut tells me that they are directionally correct. again this will hinge on GOTV efforts.

Are they still just calling landlines and hoping they get some bored person who will talk for a few minutes? Like 1993 style?

that nyt swing state poll used a mix of landlines and cell phones. but it's true that the response rate is minuscule.

"...The former president reposted a message that called for a citizen's arrest of Judge Arthur Engoron and Letitia James."

2024 FUCK YEAH

The polls were accurate this year! The problem is now people made saying that because the democrats lived up to the polling numbers in elections this year that means…Biden’s polls are inaccurate.

― deep wubs and tribral rhythms (Boring, Maryland), Wednesday, November 15, 2023 2:10 PM (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

well yeah the fact that Ds continue to decisively win what should be close elections, particularly in swing states, is a good indicator that Biden's poll numbers probably are not gonna wind up being correct. I mean again, we're a year away and I don't think polls this far out have ever really been predictive, its really just all vibes at this point. once the public at large has to hear Trump speak again I guarantee those polls will start looking different.

As I think I pointed out earlier, Trump actually seems fine staying quiet-too-quiet outside of his cult audience this time around. I don’t expect to see him at a single debate ever again.

eh I don't know if he could help himself from doing the presidential ones. not only is it a much bigger audience but the optics of appearing at a debate vs. people you're going to crush is a lot different than going up against the person you just lost against. especially when your entire attack line is that he's senile and can't speak or whatever

The last time I posted a missive from Salaita, I was shouted at by various users (even tho he was correct), so I anticipate being shouted at again here (where he is, once again, correct):

Consider for a second the moral assumptions inherent to a political philosophy that insists on voting for genocidaires rather than making genocidaires accountable to their victims. If we are obliged to reward violence with power, then we essentially resign ourselves to passive spectatorship of ecocide and dispossession. How can we conceive of a decent existence in a society that only allows for mechanical participation? After all that we’ve seen, how can we give even perfunctory license to the U.S. ruling class? Visualizing an outcome different than the current horror is exceptionalism in its most dangerous form.

American exceptionalism is primarily a set of national mythologies asserting that the USA is a unique force for good in the world. This self-image is inextricably tied to conquest both in the past and present. American exceptionalism, then, is also a narrative process about non-Americans and their ontological position in relation to the United States. The process renders much of the world’s population an exception to the dignity of political and economic freedom.

https://stevesalaita.com/genocide-joe-and-the-electoralists/

I agree with Salaita's post. Except:

Merely entertaining the idea of voting for Joe Biden is an insult to the thousands of innocent souls whose slaughter he endorsed. The least we can do is ensure that their memories supersede the same old liberal delusions.

The piece could've named chairing the Senate Judiciary Committee during the Thomas hearings, the crime bill, MBNA, the Iraq War vote, in addition to his acquiescence towards American exceptionalism and Israeli slaughter -- and I will vote for him because that's how our system's set up.

That's fine, you do you.

Exactly.

To live at all today is to insult others' existence

But I agree with the snippet too, aside from it being "passive" spectatorship

If there was a single ounce of ETHICS in the “Ethics committee”, they would have not released this biased report. The Committee went to extraordinary lengths to smear myself and my legal team about me not being forthcoming (My legal bills suggest otherwise).

It is a disgusting…

— George Santos (@MrSantosNY) November 16, 2023

(Headline is cut off there: he's not seeking reelection)

Alfred 100% OTM. I clung to the absurd "my vote is my voice" shit long into my 30s, to my discredit, and was disabused of it right here on good old ilx, but it's mystifying to me that people my age still can't get this. if you stay home, it doesn't matter. if you vote third-party, you're not actually voting, you're just giving that third-party candidate a warm feeling when they look at their numbers, which will be low, because this isn't a multi-party system. it's two. you're gonna get one. your vote indicates which of the two you believe will do less harm. that's the Democrat. nobody here, afaik, is arguing "the Democrats are secretly good." they're very un-secretly bad, terrible really, just not as bad as the party whose candidate openly embraces fascism and who, for example, puts laws on the books in Tennessee making it illegal for a man to have sex with another man. vote Dem, you get the party that will "tut-tut, now we mustn't" to that law instead of passing it. that's it. you don't get "good candidate." you're not gonna. ever. Americans aren't revolutionaries and they won't be getting their shit together enough to change the system, it may collapse under the burdens of its own failures but on the left we think solidarity is something to be avoided so don't hold your breath. you get "less bad." that's all anybody's vote means.

and that's how good cop/bad cop politics thrives, as long as the good cops can point to their mandate

I love how voting for Biden makes you morally complicit in genocide but letting Trump get re-elected is, in Salaita's eyes, totally consequence-free morally. He's very lucky that he's too stupid to realize that inaction is also a choice that moral consequences attach to.

There's also that.

well, if 160 million people vote, your vote counts for 0.000000625% of 160 million ?

Being held at gunpoint and being told that no matter what choice you make will lead to slaughter and that not making a choice will also lead to slaughter isn’t the best fucking thing in the world, and defense of it will always strike me as pathetic

The only alternative is suicide and that is also awful. Existing as a citizen of a wealthy nation involves some level of rationalization that your existence is harmful, there’s literally nothing getting around that and everyone here has very clearly done that because we are all here.

one of the two appointed 3 SCOTUS justices who reversed Roe v Wade and are presiding over a not very subtle rollback of protections for marginalized groups and enabling a christofascist state.

I don't like the system but I know one reality I can't live in again.

table, if you have like a ruling royal family ready to go for America that will free us from this unpleasant franchise, go ahead and set it up

DJP otm

(well, the other alternative is political violence, as we've also seen)

the only movement that gets people's attention involves buildings being set on fire/rioting and we've seen, unfortunately, how precious people get about property damage over human lives when that happens.

xpost

Looking forward to the army occupying our cities on and the executive order ending birthright citizenship on Inauguration Day 2025!

That was not a poke at anyone in particular our votes won’t matter lol

ya the best thing about trump II is nobody can go "i didn't think he'd eat MY face!"

maybe it'll just be "ay america has always been eating faces really, this is fine."

Apart from the selfish reason of not wanting to deprive friends, my nieces, and godson of my estimable company, I don't want my enemies to think they've won by forcing suicide.

I detest cheap sentiment