Turning On The Giant Faucet Of Bullshit - US Politics February 2025

Since November, like many others I'm sure, I had a lot of anxiety about his second term and had nightmarish visions of how it would go down. Somehow it is significantly worse than I imagined but also completely unlike any scenario I could have predicted. While, yes, he is definitely following up on things he promised to do, it's just done in such a sloppy, scattershot, chaotic way that I couldn't have imagined the pieces of it - Musk most obviously, but so much else is just baffling to me.

Idk, somehow it feels like both a slow motion crash but yet also a speed run towards irreparable authoritarianism.

Meanwhile transportation funding is now going to be prioritized to places with higher rates of birth and marriage. (Which not coincidentally de-emphasizes urban areas.)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-04/department-of-transportation-memos-tie-funding-to-birth-rate-marriage-policy

Just a fleet of empty buses circling suburban neighborhoods with three SUVs in every driveway.

Holy Shit, Nancy Mace Is Trash-Flavored Trash:

https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lhgxogdqxt2o

Idk, somehow it feels like both a slow motion crash but yet also a speed run towards irreparable authoritarianism.

― Maxmillion D. Boosted (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Wednesday, February 5, 2025 1:31 PM (twenty-five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is much worse than i thought it was going to be.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/05/business/media/lara-trump-fox-news.html

cool cool

xp - holy shit, and is that Boebert clapping like a moron when she says it? I can't quite tell.

lol that’s the least worrisome news so far like Fox has any integrity

To the Lara Trump news^^^^

My dad who watches fox (but only the real news parts!) was visiting this weekend and getting news from his son who had actual emails that he could look at. I guess it had an effect because apparently when they got home my mom asked if he was gonna watch fox and he told her he’s trying to wean himself off of it

hi us pol thread, the british history podcast guy (an american) just posted this on bsky, is it of interest?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3l8vWfaFVMU

I already cannot see the U.S. as having any right to view itself as the Police force of the Globe.
Reelection of this felon amd his ideas of how he should be behaving to the rest of the world including casual mention of intended war crimes should ideal put a permanent full stop/period to that being able to repeat.
Would be great if a more egalitarian world set up would come out of that but that might just be a dream.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaTbI7FCLl0

Russia 1992/US 2025 but this time the people stripping the country for parts aren’t sent from the Clinton administration

It feels like some kind of national suicide. And Biden idiotically not dropping out, preventing us from putting forward a strong candidate, feels like complicity. I am so horrified right now. This was alll preventable

the national dem apparatus is absolutely responsible

first, do no harm

So basically it's Trump throwing shit out, walking it back almost immediately, to distract from whatever the fuck Musk is doing.

Ref, the USPS reversing the Chinese/Hong Kong package thing in less than 18 hours and admin officials already walking back the Gaza comments.

Not to downplay what Trump is trying to do either, or excuse any of it, but that stuff is kind of what I'd expect with him spewing shit that gets walked back or blocked. It's the Musk piece that absolutely terrifies the shit out of me.

This has been observed before but: Flight 93 and half the passengers are rooting for the terrorists

https://i.imgur.com/4Q6yrHx.jpeg

Apparently some brave soul in the State Department building flew the flag upside down.

Not to downplay what Trump is trying to do either, or excuse any of it, but that stuff is kind of what I'd expect with him spewing shit that gets walked back or blocked. It's the Musk piece that absolutely terrifies the shit out of me.

― Maxmillion D. Boosted (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Wednesday, February 5, 2025 3:54 PM (twenty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

The Musk piece is designed in part so Trump’s wild ideas won’t get stopped in the future

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:mtr3pwmbnirvyp3robuicd57/bafkreiasfg6yvykr7huezgrrmtvyznnaaevdbjzbyyxy4cctanrtwl2qti@jpeg

Tho it feels too little too late

'Finally he's gone too far!'

Norm Ornstein has a good list of ways Senators in particular can fuck shit up within the bounds of decorum.

Senate Democrats need to use every tool at their disposal to throw wrenches into the works of the plans of Trump, Musk, and their GOP cultists in Congress. Doing so will also underscore how serious the threat is to our system, thereby forcing media to cover it. Here are some of the ways to use the rules to delay and discomfit the GOP majority; no easy action or votes.

Insist that the Journal of the Senate be read at the onset of every day’s business, soaking up time otherwise spent on legislating.

Deny unanimous consent to every action. The Senate operates by unanimous consent, and getting around it is time-consuming and uncomfortable.

Refuse to allow committees to meet when the Senate is doing business on the floor.

This is the relevant portion of Senate Rule 26: A committee may not meet (or continue a meeting in progress) on any day (1) after the Senate has been in session for two hours, or (2) after 2:00 p.m. when the Senate is in session. The Senate routinely waives this rule via unanimous consent. Deny it.

In Rule 14, there is a requirement that every bill is to be read in full three times before passage. That is routinely waived to include only reading a summary. Require the full reading, especially with omnibus bills.

Use the filibuster on every bill and confirmation. Draw a page from the Mitch McConnell playbook; raise the bar to 60 on legislation and use all the delays that can come with filibusters on confirmations. It is a regular misconception that filibusters have been taken away from confirmations. In fact, the cloture barrier has been moved from 60 to a simple majority. But even if these confirmations can pass ultimately, they can be delayed significantly by exploiting the rules.

Use the hold to block many if not most confirmations. A hold is simply a senator indicating he or she will deny unanimous consent to move forward on a confirmation, but it has been respected for many decades as a norm blocking action. Holds are no longer anonymous, but that is not a barrier. This something applied more than once by Senate Republicans during the Biden presidency; it was not just Tommy Tuberville and military promotions. Rand Paul, Tom Cotton, Josh Hawley, among others, used blanket holds to protest Biden policies or just to gum up the works. Kudos to Hawaii’s Brian Schatz for showing how it is done, with today’s blanket hold on State Department nominees over the hostile takeover of AID. It should be done by others for Treasury, Justice, Defense, Education, and other departments.

xp - Yeah, probably, but really all they can do right now is make some noise and try to gum up the works a little, so it's better than sitting quietly.

Good luck!

But in interviews on Wednesday, several Arab and Muslim American leaders or activists who voted for Mr. Trump stood by him. Some doubted that he would follow through on his Gaza proposal while also crediting him for the recent cease-fire, a product of collaboration between the current and previous administrations.

Mayor Amer Ghalib of Hamtramck, Mich., a Democrat who endorsed Mr. Trump last year, said on Wednesday that he did not believe the United States was prepared to force Palestinians out of Gaza.

“It’s all just talk,” Mr. Ghalib said as he waited for a call from the White House.

And Rabiul Chowdhury, a founder of Muslims for Trump, was willing to give Mr. Trump the benefit of the doubt, seeing him as a strong negotiator.

“Democrats and extreme left are trying to kind of use this to ignite our community, but we’re not falling for that trap — they’re still the worst in our eyes,” Mr. Chowdhury said. “We are finding our alliances through MAGA folks.”

There are many areas, he added, “where MAGAs and the Muslims align.”

the condo/casinofication of gaza is pure hogwash, I'll agree with that

the idea that Donald Trump is president of the united states is also hogwash but here we are

there are internal documents from the Israeli government with similar proposals iirc

I don’t trust my instincts anymore about what is just talk and what is a serious threat.

Not a bad strategem.

Sometimes it's the small things that help you get through the day, Daily Beast headline:

Mitch McConnell, 82, Taken Away in Wheelchair After Falling Twice

too bad he didn't fall into Musk's wood chipper

No, make it slow and painful

I know there's a lot to absorb right now but in case you're wondering, the FCC is up to bad shit too.

https://reason.com/2025/02/05/how-the-fccs-warrior-for-free-speech-became-our-censor-in-chief/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/05/cia-reported-buyouts-workforce-donald-trump-administration

Wild style

This reminds me of when kanye west bought that architecturally significant house in malibu and ordered that all the wires and plumbing be ripped out of it for no clear reason, just an artistic instinct

I don’t trust my instincts anymore about what is just talk and what is a serious threat.

― treeship 2, Wednesday, February 5, 2025 3:59 PM (forty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Same

Like take this cia thing. It’s insane.

Mayor Amer Ghalib of Hamtramck, Mich., a Democrat

the same piece of shit who prohibited Pride flags in Hamtramck

I live in hell:

https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/miami/news/lt-governor-jeanette-nunez-expected-to-be-named-interim-fiu-president/

It feels like some kind of national suicide. And Biden idiotically not dropping out, preventing us from putting forward a strong candidate, feels like complicity.

Biden-as-Fisher-King a very distressing aspect of all of this

I know there's a lot to absorb right now but in case you're wondering, the FCC is up to bad shit too.

I appreciate the care in this, tipsy. Probably a good time for me to find a line between the doomposting thread and this one. Actually it would be a good time to not look at the internet altogether but I seem unable to do that

I don't buy the complicity of Biden.. it seems clear to me now that Harris was just not the candidate for this election cycle
No, it wasn't a blowout but with hindsight, it seems like the return of Trump was almost an inevitability.. pains me to say that

It would not have hurt to have had a more normal nomination process — one that wasn’t beset by a scandal about Biden’s team hiding his condition. These were all completely avoidable marks against the democrats.

I agree with that

That it wasn't a blowout - that it was close (much closer than it was presented last November) - makes it feel like stupid mistakes might have doomed the world to this.

But who knows, and maybe it doesn't matter. Bring on the White Horse Prophecy.

I'm on team doesn't matter. But if the circumstances of last year recur (senescent president, egomaniacal toddler with cultlike hold on a large chunk of voters distributed just so, decent but imperfect backup candidate, events and economic conditions as they were) the lesson is um learned, I guess?

imo it does matter that the national democratic party stands for so little that they were unable to convince enough people to keep these nihilist wreckers out. a lot of people knew this flavour of chaos was coming but the democrats could not get them to look beyond whatever ancillary financial benefits they'd deluded themselves were coming their way and that's a problem. mammon is king and it's not good enough to say, hey we are the superior judges of mammon distribution