U.S. Politics January 2023: Kevin McCarthy's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Life

the elevator clip, the fact that he was trying to be clever by saying that everyone who voted for him would have to ask for him to resign, and then the regular English language confusion of answering a question which implies a double negative. that is good stuff

older building like that prob gas xp i think the northeast prob has a higher than average gas stove occurrence i was surprised by how dominant electric is nationally seems like in ny/boston etc theres way more gas even in inexpensive housing

Gas stoves by income

(yes, I have a microdata set now, it's only going to get worse for the gascucks from here) pic.twitter.com/x2ZIsY2D5O

— Matt Bruenig (@MattBruenig) January 12, 2023

He's like the human embodiment of the Knights and Knaves logic puzzle. Santos is a habitual liar. He is asked if he won't resign, and he answers "no." Will he resign?

makes sense i guess if it correlates with housing age which would also makes sense since the electric stove is a relatively recent invention xp self

“have you, not, at last, no shame?”

“…no?”

All NYC apartments I’ve lived in have had gas stoves. That’s maybe 5 different apartments.

lol tracer

yeah its like totally standard, which makes sense most buildings predate electric stoves so theyre all set up for gas when its time to buy a new stove you get a gas one and hook it up xp

garland has appointed a special counsel to probe biden's classified documents scandal

the difference between this and trump's maralago documents scandal doesn't matter, it doesn't matter that karl rove held up a whiteboard on fox last night explaining the differences between the two cases. just the fact that there is a probe into biden's version of fucking up the handling of classified documents is enough for most people to hold them as equivalent, "everyone does it" and "democrats are the same as republicans". well played

Garland did the right thing

Don't know anything about this guy, but this is a good ad for a red-state Democrat. Not much chance of flipping Mississippi I'd guess, but not a bad tack. (And yeah, he's one of those Presleys.)

Mississippi deserves leaders who fight for our families, children and workers rather than themselves and their rich friends. We deserve leaders who will never forget where they came from or who put them in office.

That's why I'm running for Governor of Mississippi. pic.twitter.com/hyQzrLX0X1

— Brandon Presley (@BrandonPresley) January 12, 2023

i had a hood fan in new york that just blew back into the room if you turned it on while cooking it would blow into your face

got your hood fan revoked

I wish Mr. Presley well but I'm not sure it's a good time for Brandons

His approval rating's up too.

Garland did the right thing

oh, i agree! i guess my post heavily implies that it was wrong. no, i think garland had to do it. i guess i'm just looking ahead to trump's 2024 campaign and how he'll be able to fend off any mentions of maralago classified documents with 'joe biden does it too'. but if anything is ever going to bring him down for real, it wasn't likely to be handling of classified docs anyway, and i doubt many voters care too much about it in the first place.

I don't watch CNN, but a friend told me Tapper, Blitzer, etc. were salivating even as they repeated the two cases are TOTALLY DIFFERENT.

My guess is the Average Person doesn't care, regarding this discovery and Trump's as part of the venality that comes with working in the Oval Office. If they hate Trump, it's not because he purloined documents.

Nettleton is just about 10 miles from here so Presley is Local Boy Done Good. He's the only Democrat left here who has anything resembling a statewide office, though it's only the top 1/3 of the state. His story is full of dramatic personal bits. His uncle was Lee County Sheriff, killed in a shootout with a kidnapper in 2001. He (Brandon) got a grip on bad eating habits and lost like 200 lbs. in the aughts, which is why he looks so different in some old photos. He's enormously popular around here because he's the one state official visibly working to benefit individuals rather than business interests -- refusing utility rate hikes, making actual huge dents in spam/telemarketing calls (I get about 1/100th of the calls I used to), and the biggest thing, he spent the last 10 years getting rural Northern Mississippi fibered up for broadband. I won't say he did it singlehandedly but he was the public face of the movement, getting a bill passed that allowed rural electric utilities to create ISP spinoffs and helping them navigate the red tape for federal funding for fiber installation. It was as big a deal as the TVA getting electricity to MS homes in the 1930s imo, and the work is just about done. My broadband bill keeps going down every year because there's actual competition.

I don't know if a Dem can win statewide office in MS -- if Brandon Presley can't, I don't think it can be done.

Let's go Brandon!

i wish him well.

i find the biden documents scandal dispiriting. it not only makes it impossible to prosecute trump for the document theft, it makes it harder to hold him to any kind of account for january 6. just looks really bad for democrats

Eh whatever. Yes, to the right it becomes part of the canon of Democratic scandals/hyopcrisies. Rational people can tell the difference. And most people didn't care much about Trump having documents and won't care much about Biden. It's not like confidential documents at Mar a Lago were ever going to be a tipping point.

it makes it look like the fbi raid was political

it doesn't make it impossible to prosecute Trump, it makes it impossible to prosecute Trump in the court of public opinion. Garland's already proven willing to do something unprecedented in his investigation of Trump, and he seems not very likely to let public perception guide what he's doing.

it certainly gives some obvious talking points to draw comparisons with Trump, but it's not clear how a completely separate case makes it impossible to prosecute. Maybe they both broke the law!

In other words, what Neanderthal said

they should prosecute them both, sentence them to the same cell, and then livestream it.

^^^

Trump calling Jack Smith an "unfair Savage" LOL

I'm a Document Purloiner, Get Me Out of Here!

feel like it should be more of an odd couple sitcom type scenario where theyre roommates going about their days in an apartment together

i find the biden documents scandal dispiriting. it not only makes it impossible to prosecute trump for the document theft, it makes it harder to hold him to any kind of account for january 6. just looks really bad for democrats

Yep, you're exactly the kind of person who would react this way. Have you considered sending an application in to CNN?

Didn’t give a shit about Trump’s documents, don’t care about these. It really makes life easier.

Giving people money: it works.

new paper: the 2021 Child Tax Credit — which from July to Dec 2021 gave qualifying families up to $3,600 per child in auto monthly payments — not only appeared to “reduced child poverty by half” it also notably “improved the mental health of adults in the lowest-income families.” pic.twitter.com/Pl4lNV4mGX

— talmon joseph smith (@talmonsmith) January 11, 2023

Normal non-addicted humans cannot be expected to tell the difference between different flavors of outrage. They will see #bOtHsIdEs and conclude #bOtHsIdEs.

As long as the #bOtHsIdEs talking point is out there, it is salient. I wish it wasn't, but it is.

Trump committing a clear and obvious federal crime did not move the needle at all I don't think this will either

Trump-endorsed nominees did very poorly in the most recent election, not sure how much of that is due to the document thing, Trump in general, or the shittiness of the candidates themselves. Beyond that, I don't really know what we are hoping for in terms of public opinion. If we are saying that committing obvious crimes didn't move the needle with the DOJ, that is provably false.

I suspect it was the plenitude of the accusations against Trump's, the public's general revulsion toward Trump which hasn't waned since 2020, and the shitty evilness of the candidates that turned the midterms.

what do you mean? do people think there is any chance the DOJ is actually going to do something?

Trump barely won in 2016, cost the Republican Party electorally in a big way in 2018, lost badly in 2020, staged a violent coup to steal the presidency immediately afterward, cost the Republican Party electorally in a big way in 2022, and yet the prevailing theory in this thread is that he's a viable candidate in 2024 and could even win, because...everybody else in America is dumber than the posters here? Am I interpreting that right?

I think the abortion issue probably had more to do with it than anything but yes in general the Republican party has gotten really fucking weird lately and some of their candidates have been straight up garbage. the January 6 thing might move the needle some but mishandling classified docs just doesn't strike me as something people actually care about. they're gonna try to manufacture another Benghazi. that's all.

lol, not to bring down the gas range thread, but the inevitable outcome is that Biden will be impeached and Trump will win reelection.

(I mean, I don't believe that, but that's the kind of up is down reality we are often dealing with.)

Biden’s going to be impeached three times just so Trump doesn’t have the record.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYp28tEAVvs

Biden should just accuse trump's deep state fbi for planting then.

multi-xps Because the primaries favor whoever wins the biggest chunk of the base and because of the strong anti-democratic bias of the electoral college in the general election, Trump still has a real chance to win in 2024 just as he won in 2016, with millions fewer total votes.

exactly, as tight of a spot as the Republican party seems to be in right now the system is massively rigged in their favor and will probably only get worse

lost badly in 2020

if Trump had done slightly better in like two states he would have won the election

I know it's fun to do the Eeyore "Trump's base will never" etc etc grousing, but as far as legal outcomes go, none of that is going to matter. Yes, optics are a thing, but Garland already did one thing that has probably gotten him death threats in even appointing a special counsel to investigate Trump's security breaches.

he's not going to say "well the Justice Department referred me potential criminal charges, and my special counsel also wants to bring charges, but lol Fox News says whatabout Biden, so class dismissed". there might not be any charges, but it won't be for that reason.

xpost nah, he'd have needed to take three of Michigan/Georgia/Wisconsin/Pennsylvania/Arizona, and two of those five he won by more than a percentage point.

election wasn't exactly a blowout, no (much like Trump's win wasn't), but he wasn't a whisper away from winning, either. everybody just panicked when early returns favored him even though Nate Silver literally warned everybody that would happen.

we can do this "every good thing is actually bad and Trump is inevitable hail the lizard people" thing again though if every body likes

but he wasn't a whisper away from winning, either. everybody just panicked when early returns favored him even though Nate Silver literally warned everybody that would happen.

― fentanyl young (Neanderthal), Thursday, January 12, 2023 3:48 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

its was like 30k votes across three states, sort of thing that different weather couldve swung

Also in the middle of a pandemic that had killed what 750k people?