US Politics, April 2024: "Are You Better Off Today Than You Were <Checks Notes> Four Years Ago?"

Lake 2024: You're My Present This Year

Incest, Lake & Trumper

lol

Pictures At An Atrocity Exhibition

A lot of online right-wingers think the inbred-as-fuck Habsburgs and Romanovs were the peak of Aryan genetic purity.

Their blood was so pure it did not clot!

seems like pure aryans should be out singing Wagner on an icy crag, not hanging out in a chatroom idk

Jamelle Bouie on Trump's abortion speech (gift link)

The Man Who Snuffed Out Abortion Rights Is Here to Tell You He Is a Moderate

Donald Trump does not speak from conviction. He does not speak from belief or at least any belief other than self-obsession. He certainly does not speak from anything we might recognize as reason; when he’s holding forth from a podium, even the most careful students of Trump the rhetorician will struggle to find the light of complex thought.

You should think of Trump instead as a purely instrumental speaker. It does not matter to him whether a statement is true or false. It does not matter if one statement contradicts another, in the same speech or in the same paragraph or in the same sentence. What matters to Trump is whether the words serve the purpose at hand. He will say anything if it’s what he feels an audience wants to hear or if it moves him one step closer to a personal or political goal.

Trump’s fundamental disinterest in the truth value of his words is the only context that matters for his comments on abortion Monday morning. In a direct-to-camera statement on Truth Social, the former president told his audience that he does not support a national ban on abortion. “My view is now that we have abortion where everybody wanted it from a legal standpoint,” Trump said. “The states will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both, and whatever they decide must be the law of the land. In this case, the law of the state.”

...

If you’re not inclined to put Trump’s abortion comments in the context of his habitual disregard for the truth, then you should at least put them in the context of his political coalition, which is dominated by forces and constituencies that want nothing less than the criminalization of abortion, the constitutional protection of fetal life and state regulation of bodily autonomy for the sake of patriarchal gender norms.

Trump embraced this movement and its demands as president, and there’s every reason to believe he’ll do the same with another four years in office. Put another way, when has Trump ever bucked anyone who defends him, supports him and showers him with praise?

We do not have to speculate about Trump’s relationship to abortion and reproductive rights as leader of the Republican Party. He is, after all, a former president of the United States. We already know what he wants, what he’ll do and what he’ll sign. Trump landed a major blow against legal abortion during his first term. If given a second, he will land another.

Arizona Republican Reps. Juan Ciscomani and David Schweikert react to the Arizona Supreme Court ruling reviving an abortion ban that traces back to the 1800s. Both represent swing districts up for grabs this fall. pic.twitter.com/0G5Ry5oxws

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) April 9, 2024

yeah, this is a big 'dog catches bus' moment and it's fun to watch them squirm

was thinking that exact thing earlier today

The man will say anything to stay out of prison, and could care less what the consequences are.

David Schweikert and Juan Ciscomani are abortion extremists who are now masquerading as moderates

And Kari Lake, who praised the 1864 law in her race for Governor in 2022 (it's on video), has done an about-face now that it is in effect. Like them she has no principles, the position will be whatever gets her elected

Life in Texas? Kinda shitty! (Rick Perlstein interviews an unnamed TX journalist.)

I was having beers with another guy and...We’re both Democrats, and we were both saying we figured we’d stay here until, you know, Texas decided to change on us. I’m not resigned yet, but I don’t feel very good about it. Watching this last election, and watching the final guardrails come off the system was not uplifting. And then, honestly, I think fellow Democrats’ refusal to really recognize how bad things are about to get is in its own way kind of depressing. Talking to a lot of people, and hearing them say, “Well, we didn’t do well in this election, we’ll keep coalition-building and hope for better in the future!” It’s like, we might be about to see public education as we know it not exist anymore—it feels like we ought to have more alarm bells ringing than we do.

Arizona GOP just voted unanimously to block Dem attempt to repeal the abortion law. And assholes like Joni Ernst going all in on supporting it, too: "I am a mom; I am a brand-new grandma. and I support life. Senate Republicans, the GOP, and President Trump really worked hard to overturn Roe v Wade. So, we returned that back to the states. That is the law of the land with that Supreme Court decision. So, the states are handling that. But again, we worked very hard to get this result." These goons can't help themselves. Very "he admit it!" meme.

How far away are we from one of these States just full on voting to say "Democrats can't have any say in government at all"?

Hi from Florida!

lol (but not really), I just meant even more openly and blatantly than the barely disguised ways they've been doing so far!

The situation in TN: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-04-05/tennessee-legislature-s-2024-session-is-a-lesson-in-extremist-politics

With a Republican governor and a supermajority in the state House and Senate, the party’s near-absolute control of the state allows lawmakers to pretend they are the patriarchs in a long-ago revolution. They act as if they need only listen to those who sound and look like them.

On a more personal level, two of my friends were on a Facebook thread today glumly talking about plans to leave the state with their kids because they don't want to bring them up surrounded by all this terrible shit.

I read those comments, tipsy. Grim.

Damn, that American Prospect piece.

Yeah, fucking bleak.

Another: “I also just finished a story about how domestic violence homicides are through the roof in Texas (even as overall homicide rates have declined), but we don’t have the infrastructure to really know how bad conditions have become. It turns out when you turn women into second-class citizens and make guns easily accessible, that doesn’t go well.”

Ha, I'm loving this new dance: The Arizona Squirm

“I oppose today’s ruling,” added Kari Lake, a Republican running to represent Arizona in the US Senate and a Donald Trump loyalist. Lake called on the state legislature to “come up with an immediate commonsense solution that Arizonans can support

“This is an earthquake that has never been seen in Arizona politics,” said Barrett Marson, a Republican consultant in Arizona, of the decision. “This will shake the ground under every Republican candidate, even those in safe legislative or congressional seats.”

omg they did it again. This feels like trolling at this point.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/10/us/politics/two-imperfect-messengers-take-on-abortion.html

https://i.imgur.com/ASnCh3D.png

truly, who among us is perfect

We need an abortionist president

Trump Modifies Abortion Messaging - and Why This is Bad for Biden

no offense to any NYC ilxors but I am hoping for another earthquake or meteor or something at this point

https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/power/2024/04/10/arizona-abortion-law-1864-william-claude-jones/

O.J. Simpson Dead, Bringing New Concerns About Biden

Until this second it never occurred to me that Biden might kill OJ, but now that you mention it, open the investigation now.

How long before Trump pays tribute

Just sayin', OJ was still alive under Trump ...

Tbf, OJ was definitely better off four years ago.

Trump scratching O.J. off of his Veep list

ten years ago we had hope, jobs, and OJ

I’d figure next GOP moves is to start bringing back indentured servitude laws from pre-1860 to start filling those open jobs they cannot fill.

That too cynical, they’ve only just started bringing back child labor.

...they should use child labor laws to fill those positions

Children building Teslas

It takes a village

it takes a pillage

Meanwhile, Jan. 6 penalties continue apace. This is one of my recent faves, a guy who must pay $32,000 to a German media company for destroying their equipment. Included in the evidence that led to the decision:

Haynes documented his activities in text messages he sent to associates. Alongside a photo
of himself standing in front of the debris, he wrote that “(w)e attacked the CNN reporters and the
fake news and destroyed tens of thousands of dollars of their video and television equipment here’s
a picture of me behind the pile we made out of it.”

lol

"Hey, come and take a picture of my crime, while I boast about it and provide further corroborrating detail."

The Supreme Court's third AND FINAL opinion of the day in Bissonnette v. LePage Bakeries. Per Roberts, a transportation worker need not work in the formal transportation industry to be exempt from the Federal Arbitration Act. It's unanimous! https://t.co/9XvyrzcuNi pic.twitter.com/RrDwfnsBOZ

— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjs_DC) April 12, 2024

Is that good, I genuinely do not know. I guess MJS is not expressing dismay at it.

He's got a follow up text calling it a victory for workers whose jobs involve transportation of goods

Amendment to Section 702 of FISA that would require the FBI to secure warrants before searching lawfully collected NSA foreign intelligence data for references to Americans, fell one vote short from passing.

FISA as a whole got extended for 2 years.