US Politics, December 2019: Profound procedural deficiencies

I was in transit for about three hours today & was listening to the back and forth b/w the house reps, and the fucking republican gaslighting over and over and over and over again made it really hard not to swerve into oncoming traffic. It's nice that he has this pockmark on his 'official legacy,' but CHRIST, this is really where we're at and it is chilling.

House impeachment, in this case, is the equivalent of a verbal warning for a felony.

Yeah it’s depressingly underwhelming

whoa

can confirm @JakeSherman @apalmerdc scoop: Rep. Mark Meadows, one of Pres. Trump's confidants, will not seek reelection and expects to work closely with the president on the 2020 campaign, likely as a top surrogate/adviser, exact role TBD, per several ppl briefed on the talks

— Robert Costa (@costareports) December 19, 2019

that's a weird way to spell 'good morning'

When you've inexorably chained yourself to a train that's in the process of derailing, you gotta get to work stoking those engines so the inevitable crash is fucken EPIC.

Trump campaigned on freeing Palpatine, iirc.

Mark Meadows is such a dickhead. I assume his seat is pretty safe for the GOP.

It is.

11th District (Asheville, Hendersonville, Waynesville). The district of Mark Meadows (R), a strong Trump ally who previously led the Freedom Caucus, becomes less overwhelmingly Republican by absorbing all of Buncombe County (Asheville), a liberal area now split between the 10th and 11th Districts. Still, the district remains dependably conservative.

https://about.bgov.com/news/new-nc-redistricting-boosts-democrats-in-2020-elections/

that Debbie Dingell thing, jesus christ

Yeah, screencap every tittering motherfucker in that video and put them on a lifetime watchlist imo.

I mean more generally, anyone still attending a Trump rally at this point should be publicly shunned, possibly branded, whatever it takes to ensure that they aren't able to mix back into the crowd when/if the tide turns.

(It's hopefully apparent that this is angry hyperbole rather than a reflection of my genuine sentiments, but it honestly does concern me that we might collectively forget that these people have shown us their true stripes when they no longer have an orange king inducing them to make a public spectacle of their awfulness.)

I got banned from FB for a day for calling Kevin McCarthy a cunt

Good morning!

i find myself incapable of caring about trump's dingell joke. it just sounds like the same sort of lame riffing he always does, at his usual level of boorishness/offensiveness.

Yeah, Old News.

I dunno, for the sake of my mental + physical health I can't work myself into a lather that's proportionate to each day's degree of outrage but at the same time I don't ever want to be all '*shrug* whatevs' when the POTUS publicly jokes that the deceased spouse of a political opponent is in hell. It's not just not normal, it's way fucking abnormal.

His surviving spouse was quite upset by it.

if a Dem senator joked about John McCain being in hell we'd be hearing about it for the next 40 years

hopefully just everyone saying "that guy was correct"

I've gotten used to Trump seeing everything as transactional. Including doing normal president things like allowing funerals to happen for congress people.

All this is making me dig in for my 2028 bid to be the first Satanic President

xpost Yes, of course he does. He's a petty little bitch. But this 'lol your dead husband is in hell' thing is sort of a whole separate thing from that other thing.

i will vote for you, neanderthal. and if you need anyone to prepare the blood of the damned, stir the blood of the damned, drink it, boil it, pour it on people, whatever you need, please keep me in mind

^^ sounds like quality VP material to me

i do have experience as a VP. i successfully ran for VP of my school's chapter of the National Honor Society, under the campaign slogan "Pro-Zach: it'll make you feel better". of course, after the blood incident during the first meeting i was banned

Rep. Mark Meadows, one of Pres. Trump's confidants, will not seek reelection and expects to work closely with the president on the 2020 campaign, likely as a top surrogate

This makes me think they are going to implant Trump clone embryos in Meadows's gut and I cannot honestly say it's not a fate the man deserves

this might be old news to you all but i am shaken at the realization that Karl Malone is Zach Snyder

that was a secret, but now that my cover is blown i can finally reveal that yes INDEED i am working on the fountainhead, which is all about an architect who is trying to defend his artistic integrity

Finally we get the Snyder cut

The times have found us. Thank you for strong leadership and an empathetic hand @SpeakerPelosi. pic.twitter.com/1sBHXdr46d

— Rep. Debbie Dingell (@RepDebDingell) December 18, 2019

counterpoint from @steph93065, the 93,065th Steph on Twitter:

You betrayed your country today. May God bring you what you deserve.

— Steph (@steph93065) December 18, 2019

haha classic steph

You're thinking of steph93964. This is steph93065.

I know Steph #93,065 is probably a bot and it's perhaps unfair to put this on her electronic shoulders, but I never thought I'd live to see so many people, living under pretty goddamn comfortable conditions and without much else to explain away their behavior, so eager to be publicly identified as irredeemable monsters. What a country!

Oaky I don't love Pelosi or anything and I know what "optics" are but that photo gives me a surge of feelings, and a big part of it is the look on Pelosi's face and the sense of striding forward motion. It's powerful.

yeah. it's sad. i think it's reflecting back some of the dark feelings a lot of us are having lately too. maybe i'm just seeing what i want to see.

in other news, apparently giuliani has entered into a joint defense agreement Igor Fruman (of Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman fame).

Stick to basketball, Steph!

okay lol

Steph what can I do?

The more I think about it, the more I like the Dems move not to send the articles to the Senate yet. I mean, it's utterly meaningless in the grand scheme, but it shows some willingness to throw off tradition and play (rough) by a new set of rules. If nothing else, it seems to have riled Lindsay.

Consider the source, but I like to imagine Trump having thrombosis worrying about whether the GOP will have a chance to exonerate him in the Senate.

POTUS lawyers are looking at various options for proceeding if House doesn't send articles of impeachment to the Senate. POTUS doesn't want it to be left hanging that he was impeached and nothing was done by Republicans to defend him in the Senate.

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) December 19, 2019

damn

@SpeakerPelosi responds to @senatemajldr's complaining that the impeachment has been unfair, noting that while the Founders set up a system for a rogue president, "I don't thnk they suspected that we could have a rogue president and a rogue leader in the Senate at the same time." pic.twitter.com/U5FXg9c7NJ

— Oliver Willis (@owillis) December 19, 2019

Okay, I'll gladly eat any of the grumbling I've done in the lead-up to impeachment if it turns out Nance has been giving the GOP the ol' rope-a-dope all along.

*gloves come off, horseshoe inserted, gloves go back on*

At this point, I wonder why anyone thinks Pelosi wouldn't cheerfully and brutally shiv any political rival in her way

Her public posture the last week has impressed the hell out of me.

so is the shiv move to expedite or drag it out?

"rogue" sounds cool, can we do "asshole" instead

Email from the Trump campaign lacks some subtlety. pic.twitter.com/VuyA35JHD0

— Philip Bump (@pbump) December 19, 2019

um