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

Reclaim
Fucking
Klanland

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4595085-rfk-jr-trump-vp-2024-campaign🕸/

Hey, remember Madison Cawthorn? Asshole right-wing House member? Wheelchair? Well, apparently he rear-ended a cop in a fit of road rage today:

#breakingnew 🚨🚨Former Republican Congressman Madison Cawthorne who was tailgating me, just rear ended a FL State Trooper‼️ Im SHOOK 🤯😡😳 I was driving on i75S towards Miami in the left lane and this black tinted sports car was tailgating me relentlessly. I accelerated ahead… pic.twitter.com/IfS2EUg1oC

— Alethea⸆⸉ (@Women2Dc) April 15, 2024

If that tweet doesn't load for you, here's the text:

Former Republican Congressman Madison Cawthorne who was tailgating me, just rear ended a FL State Trooper‼️ Im SHOOK 🤯😡😳 I was driving on i75S towards Miami in the left lane and this black tinted sports car was tailgating me relentlessly. I accelerated ahead and moved to the right lane in front of a tractor trailer to let the car by. 5 mins later the highway comes to a complete stop, I swerve to the side so no one rear ends me and slow to a halt. Suddenly the car door opens and a man in a wheelchair rolls out. At the same moment I have to navigate around his car and I look ahead to see the officer exiting from his rear ended vehicle holding his neck in the left lane as well. I pulled over to the right shoulder lane and stopped to ask if everyone was ok and to offer assistance. I couldnt believe my eyes. It occured to me that former CONGRESSMAN CAWTHORNE from NC was the black CAR that stormed by me in an angry road rage tantrum. I spoke to the cop to see if he was ok as he was quite stunned & kept reaching for his neck. He said he was ok, asked if I was a witness, (I wasnt, I must have been 30 seconds behind) and I gave them water as i didnt know what else to do after he thanked me for stopping.

As I drove away & replayed the surreal scene in my head I realized it was the same car who was erratically & aggressively driving behind & then around me. Unbelievably scary & upsetting to see 🥺

(Happened at 4:32pm heading South on i75 towards Miami around the Big Cypress Reservation)

I was wondering what became of him (but not enough to google it)

And him being an asshole driver is about right.

His eyepatch didn't help.

That’s a jock strap

Florida Wheelchair Man

lol checking court records to see if he was cited

lol the Broward County clerk of court is supposedly "exceeding reCAPTCHA quota"

BREAKING: Clarence Thomas was in the car with Cawthorne, current whereabouts unknown

21st Century OJ & AC

do chaired ppl drive cars from their chairs, so can just roll out when you stop

Jeez, brilliant move:

I'd completely missed this new completely cynical alliance in the making https://t.co/IkJEVE99su

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) April 16, 2024

(Saying that about whoever coordinated it, not the guy saying it)

take the last train to schnecksville

"Genocide Joe" scans nicely with "Suicide Blonde."

Seeking leniency at sentencing, Jan 6 defendant Israel Easterday’s attorney argues Easterday “did not fully understand” the Confederate flag he carried amid mob. And he acknowledges Easterday deployed chemical spray at police

Yeah, they should totally show leniency, based on the legal premise of "my bad."

Over a year old but still lol: Capitol rioter's lawyer cites work as his 'family's primary cow milker' as proof he's not a threat.

https://www.rawstory.com/capitol-rioter-2659208256/

I have had two people today wonder aloud why traffic is so bad in lower manhattan and if there is an “event” so we’re all doomed is what im saying

“That’s TODAY?” They ask, amazed.

Well, we're the only nerds following this shit.

didn't realize the trial was gonna be around 6 weeks long and that Trump is required to stay for all of it...even if nothing comes of this that's pretty significant and is gonna turn him into more of a whiny bitch than he already is

and it allows the Biden campaign to keep attacking him

I don't even want to link it directly, but cool to see a sitting senator (Tom Cotton) openly advocating for vehicular manslaughter against protestors on X.

The coward went back and edited the tweet.

He's such a dick. Road rage by proxy. (Not that they needed the prompting, getting stuck in gridlock traffic and missing flights tends to raise the temperature even more than usual.)

lmao they're really gonna try to do this again

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

Maybe this time they will elect Trump Speaker, just so he has an excuse not to show up in court.

he'll be the Sleeper of the House

Serious question: is there any other point to removing another speaker besides a few members of congress drawing attention to themselves? It doesn’t seem like it’s helping anyone’s cause aside from that.

The point is these people dont want government to work at all, so anything they can do to make that happen is good

^^ otm

When they don't have power, the entire point is for them to grind things to a halt so they can screech to their base about the failed and ineffective Dems in power.

That's been the strategy since at least Dubya.

was it ken buck that recently said something like 'Give me one thing I can take to my voters, one thing that we've actually done?' and everybody just looked at their fingernails

The voters want the chaos too; it's why they elected these moron nihilists.

Republicans are as miserable as leftists and centrists are, their lives suck just as bad, they just have convinced themselves that these problems they have are caused by liberalism and not the policies they themselves voted for.

like the idiots who say things like "if you didn't have to pay Social Security/Medicare taxes, the money you saved would allow you to retire more comfortably and you'd be able to afford healthcare without insurance"

The voters want the chaos too; it's why they elected these moron nihilists.

.@RepThomasMassie promises there are MORE GOP votes to remove Mike Johnson now than there were with McCarthy.

And if Dems save him? “He goes further in the hole with Republicans. He becomes toxic to the conference. For every Democrat who comes to his aid he’ll lose 2-3 more Rs.”

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) April 16, 2024

Rep. Massie says he won’t trigger the motion to vacate but he’ll vote for it when it comes up. He’s “pretty certain” more Rs will vote to oust Johnson than McCarthy. “This will get called and he will lose the vote.”

“There’s no sustainable solution where Democrats save him.”

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) April 16, 2024

And why would they?

Hmm, what would happen, constitutionally, if half of congress just quit or died? Would nothing get done until they refilled their ranks?

Not sure I buy this. I’d guess that MAGA ppl want Trump to rise to power and all their political bad guys to be vanquished and pwned. That’s not the same thing as chaos.
― tobo73,

It's not zero-sum; it can be both. We can go back to 2010 where the NYT and other publications interviewed voters who wanted legislators to gum up the works.

xp - The constitution leaves it to the congress to devise the rules under which it operates, so it depends on what rules have been adopted. They can change.

fyi, usually at the start of each new congress the proposed rules are brought to the floor as the first order of business after electing a house speaker and a senate majority leader. The rules were drawn up by the Rules committees of each chamber and whichever party controls each chamber controls that committee and gets to tailor them to suit themselves.

So even if there were, say, 20 members of congress left, they could change the rules to say that 20 members of congress is all that is needed to pass laws?

The rules are always going to define a quorum, so (theoretically) if the membership of congress somehow fell to the point where a quorum was no longer possible, then voting on legislation would (theoretically) be suspended until a quorum was achieved. But I doubt this problem will ever arise outside of imagining it.

So if a congress, for example, constantly churned through speakers and barely participated in its constitutional duties, while wasting time on bullshit and theater, there's no remedy or way around it until the next election?

bingo!

I nominate myself for speaker

lmao

Biden says if Trump's Truth Social stock 'drops any lower he might do better under my tax plan than his'

— Danny Kemp (@dannyctkemp) April 16, 2024

oh snap

Relatedly, this is amazing.