US Politics, December 2019: Profound procedural deficiencies

I'm not gonna say that we're past the point where the increasingly-popular trend of rejecting observable reality might potentially be reversible buuuuuut it might be worth proceeding as if it were.

Need an update on the number of flushes Trump did today

I'd like a golfing update, too. Is he getting enough golf in these days?

Didn't he dial it back after his surprise routine physical?

hope he has a routine physical on live TV sometime soon

18 holes, 15 flushes, 5 children

I could visualize this better as a graph.

18 holes, 15 flushes, 5 children, 1 cup

dropping the kids off at the pool

he *will* need a TV show when this is over

if this is over

With all the holes on a golf course, he could alleviate the toilet problem.

he'd need pretty good aim and a very understanding caddy

As always (but even more so lately), I am trying to imagine anyone who did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016 - either because they voted for Clinton, or they didn't vote at all - observing Trump for three solid years, and opting to vote for him in 2020. I can't make the leap.

Some alt-right teenz who weren’t old enough to vote last time around, but yeah, it is hard to imagine otherwise. And the alt-right teenz are outweighed by cool left-leaning teenz, anyway.

was hearing some number-crunch prognosticator put his bottom-line reelection count at 47%

Of course, teens don’t vote because they’re busy with their Pokémon and vaping and premarital sex

As always (but even more so lately), I am trying to imagine anyone who did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016 - either because they voted for Clinton, or they didn't vote at all - observing Trump for three solid years, and opting to vote for him in 2020. I can't make the leap.

I agree and I think he's probably not going to win in 2020 but you've still got the incumbent advantage + the clear intent to solicit foreign meddling + next level voter suppression + the electoral college to worry about

i think the main issues wrt beating him are:

a) yeah: his popularity is low but the people who like him love him - he has a very energized base.
b) republican voters aren't going to vote for a democrat.

so he can do similarly well as how he did last time and if democrats have issues bringing out their voters again he can still win

Eh I could fathom some heretofore non-voters and maybe some initially squeamish Republicans—and I’m talking some real dumbasses here—who may have been inducted into the cult of trump since his election. but I’d imagine this is a tiny group of folks and would (hopefully) have no effect on the election. Like if you added all the op ed Never Trumpers to surviving McCain family members

I believe than young dumb people frequently replace dead dumb people

https://i.ibb.co/kB8wxLV/FB-IMG-1576798721814.jpg
guy names that start with ag

Libs taking any whiff of good news and turning it into hyperbolic freakout shockah

freakout yes, hyperbole no

Of course, teens don’t vote because they’re busy with their Pokémon and vaping and premarital sex

...and getting killed in school shootings.

Have to say that however illusory and probably short-lived...watching Dems hack the rules and give McConnell a taste of his own shithead medicine is immensely gratifying

Xxxpost Not voting to impeach does not even remotely make him effectively a dictator anymore that it exposes impeachment as an ineffective partisan tool. I'm fairly sure the Founding Fathers would be shocked if we told them no President had been removed from office using that tool.

They designed something that was meant to work in the 18th century and in today's polarized era, I doubt anybody will be removed from office.

I think all of us agree he is attempting to erode the rule of law, instituting echo chambers by naming unqualified loyalists, and violating the independence of several non-partisan institutes, but his success has been mixed, and he's been stymied multiple times. Yeah the problem is bigger than Trump. No shit.

But, bad as things are, a "dictatorship" is not imminent.

WHOA: Christianity Today, an evangelical Christian magazine, just called for Trump's removal from office: https://t.co/ar9dvjOroA

— Jack Jenkins (@jackmjenkins) December 19, 2019

CINOS!!!

that's kind of surprising... i'm guessing Franklin G doesn't have anything to do with CT?

I hate to be this guy but Xity Today has been pretty progressive for a minute now, which is how evangelicals will react to this.

cover for Pence to eventually say he's prayed really hard and very gravely, sadly, must gladly accept the sacred duty of being the carved wooden doomsday statue leader of the party

ah duh thanks

xpost

nytimes subhed is a real classic of the genre: 'a crossroads for a nation in tumult'

stfu nytimes

This may seem kinda facile (or perhaps it's already a thing people have already pointed out in quarters I don't frequent) but it hit me like a bolt from the blue this evening: the GOP is a pack of dogs, well-trained to respond to their master's voice (which is all about the timbre and the intonation and has nothing whatever to do with the actual words employed) in lieu of any pesky autonomous impulses. And, like well-trained dogs, their range of tricks is fairly limited and predictable. Like if you confronted one of them with this observation, you could pretty easily predict how they'd react (No puppy! No puppy! You're the puppy!). I don't know how effective it would be, ultimately, but it might not hurt to hit that rhetorical nail hard and frequently on the off-chance that Trump fans don't like thinking of themselves as mangy curs broken to their master's will. Plant whatever seeds of doubt you can and see what sprouts imo.

Or grow weed

No offence, but based on Australia and the UK it's this kind of "well these people might mean well but they're all just a bit stupid, let's enlighten them" hubris which gets you smashed at the ballot box. Labor (Aus) and Labour (UK) rolled through the campaign with an attitude of "it's self-evident how much these ideas are better than the Libs / Tories, we're explaining them carefully so you can see we know what's best" and the respective electorates just shrugged a "fuck you, smug lefties" and voted in their own perceived interest. I am deeply left wing in my politics but I wince every time my side makes this mistake, over and over and over.

"enlightening" them is def a waste of time. now demoralizing them otoh...

Yeah they need a few decades of being beaten

at the ballot box i mean of course

Yeah, my train of thought has precisely zero to do with getting republicans to see the error of their ways. That shit ain't gonna happen. It's not about getting them to suddenly adopt a moral code but rather shoving their nose in the fact that they've happily fastened fancy rhinestone-studded collars around their necks and they're such good boys, who's a good boy, who's a good boy

Humiliation doesn't work because your opinion doesn't count. Demoralizing doesn't work. "Deplorables" is merely the shining example.

^otm

Oh cool 2016 relitigation time

I mean when you get to the point where you realize a solid 33% of the country are evil pricks you kind of run out of options

And if they won't change, you can change the number of teeth in their mouth...

At the ballot box of course

Help more minorities get to the polls

esp in swing states

^otm

A far left magazine, or very “progressive,” as some would call it, which has been doing poorly and hasn’t been involved with the Billy Graham family for many years, Christianity Today, knows nothing about reading a perfect transcript of a routine phone call and would rather.....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 20, 2019

Reaching new levels of “not mad”

He won't be reading ET again.

WTF is ET.