US Politics: July 2020 - "Denigrating this Luxury Avenue"

I know it's not the first time Trump has called Ryan a RINO, but it's still funny to me to imagine Ryan, a self-described movement conservative whose views defined the GOP mainstream for 30+ years, now finding himself excoriated by a Republican president as not a true Republican.

tbh i think y'all are underestimating just how much america hates women but hey what do i know

I don't think Sarah Palin being a woman cost McCain any votes in 2008. Her being a fucking idiot, maybe (ofc it was a different time, now I don't think even that would matter).

does this add up to one real job? i'm skeptical

Post-congressional life
In March 2019, Ryan joined the board of directors of Fox Corporation, the owner of Fox News Channel and the Fox broadcast network. He has since joined the faculty of the University of Notre Dame as a professor of practice for the 2019-20 academic year as a guest lecturer in political science and economics.

uuuuuuugh, imagine literally getting lectured by paul ryan

feels like a long time since we heard from Palin, and yet still too recently

i was just on her wikipedia, trying to figure out if she was doing sponsorships for online poker yet. not yet!

finding himself excoriated by a Republican president as not a true Republican.

Well, excoriated by Trump as not Trumpy enough, but yes, it is to lol.

The greatest thing Biden's ever one is laugh in Ryan's face and call bullshit on twenty years of Ryan's grifting.

*done

I did not know much about Karen Bass before this week. She seems great - except for the comandante en jéfe gaffe. Politico says she's trying to walk back that comment. I would like to see more of her.

Because I'm not completely insane I'd forgotten about Benghazi completely; for that reason alone I'd rather Biden not pick Rice, so I don't have to fucking hear about that every day for however many years

i think my favorite contender is Val Demmings; I was unfamiliar with her until the impeachment hearings, I thought she was incredibly impressive there.

GOP unemployment plan is to cut it to $200 weekly? WTF. I thought they were shooting for 70%? I was certain this would be more like $400.

absolutely insane lobotomy-level headline

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-not-solve-coronavirus-crisis/2020/07/26/7fca9a92-cdb0-11ea-91f1-28aca4d833a0_story.html

"One question still dogs Trump: Why not try harder to solve the coronavirus crisis?"

is that the one question? is it?

white house propaganda email subject line:
"If You Climb on Top of and Beat an Innocent Stranger's Car, You're a Violent Criminal Who Deserves Prison"
what a time to be alive

is that ... a reference to the man who was murdered in austin on friday?

that's the subtweet but the "reference" is to a non-newsworthy twitter event discussed in a piece in the hot garbage wrapper that is the Washington Examiner, which I'll refrain from linking to here.

I am also not advocating for Haley in any way but if she can elected in this state, she can get elected anywhere imo.

Also if you genuinely think she's as equally reprehensible as Cotton, I submit this for your consideration (sorry if it was already posted):

And, if necessary, the 10th Mountain, 82nd Airborne, 1st Cav, 3rd Infantry—whatever it takes to restore order. No quarter for insurrectionists, anarchists, rioters, and looters. https://t.co/OnNJmnDrYM

— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) June 1, 2020

220, 221 - whatever it takes

Their deaths cannot come soon enough.

the longer it goes on the more this resembles the climate crisis, where we know exactly what we need to do but have decided that the short term stock market/GDP hit & inconvenience is just not worth the horrible long term consequences, including a much larger hit to the economy than just paying everyone to stay inside for 6 weeks

the super depressing thought i keep having is that if we have failed this hard on covid19 (in the United States), then that is very, very bad news for climate change. possibly the biggest issue with getting politicians/people to take meaningful action on climate change is that the consequences are long-term. and even when there are huge, acute, climate-related events - like Sandy - it can't be blamed 100% on climate change. i've always thought that it was near-impossible to convince conservatives to do anything about climate change, because they're the kind of people who won't vote for marriage equality until their own child tells them they're gay. anything that's not literally right in front of them, staring them in the face, they just don't believe or care about.

but here, we have a big obvious challenge that is happening in real-time, every day. and the same exactly fucking people - GOP and their faithful followers - are acting exactly the same! it is fucking incredible, the ignorance. there is ZERO hope that they will ever do anything useful for anyone living in the future. they can't get their act together to prevent their own loved ones from dying!

Isn't it possible that the visibly awful consequences of fucking this up will help us deal with climate change better?

Well, and here we are: 36 percent approval.

President Donald Trump took steps last week to convey a new seriousness about the coronavirus pandemic, calling on Americans for the first time to wear masks to help stem its spread while also acknowledging that things are likely to get worse before they get better. But that sudden change in tone hasn’t improved his standing with voters on the subject.

Rather, in a new Morning Consult poll tracking public opinion on the pandemic, voters gave the president his worst marks yet, with a record-high 59 percent disapproving of his handling of the spread of COVID-19 and an all-time low of 36 percent approving. The July 23-26 poll surveyed 1,994 registered voters, with a margin of error of 2 percentage points.]

Yes I do think that’s possible. But Republicans will stand in the way of it guaranteed, which is why they need to be completely obliterated as a political force, like Germany did with Nazism. Maybe in 50 years some yahoos will start cosplaying as gun-toting Tea Partiers. But until then we have to eliminate them from the equation. They need to be afraid to show their faces for the open derision they’ll encounter just for being Republicans.

xpost

well KM the good news is that apparently most countries outside of the US do take this kind of shit seriously, so who knows. if there's a major breakthrough to be had on climate it is absolutely not coming from the United States of America

I read a long article about how Taiwan (a country with much less resources than ours) basically quashed this right away through a rigorous system of testing, tracing, and mask wearing, and I kept thinking about how something like that would never fly here. people would rather have 100 strangers die than wear a mask to Home Depot

Taiwan takes clear and present existential threats seriously. The USA only has boogeymen, comparatively speaking.

in some ways I actually admire Americans' stubborn distrust of government if only as a contrast with Canadians being gutless goodie-goodies who fucking love to follow rules, but I must admit this worked out in our favor this time

xpost

Isn't it possible that the visibly awful consequences of fucking this up will help us deal with climate change better?

I've said the same.

The fact is that the Republican Party was rebranded as the party of the petrostate a while ago, it became clear to me during the W years. ExxonMobil, which not long ago was the most profitable company in the world, is one of the main backers of a long-running campaign of disinformation on this issue. The climate crisis also puts the lie to whole free-market fundamentalist "greed is good" ideology.

While I do agree that there are fundamental issues of human psychology that hinder the struggle for effective action, America would seem to be a special case in this regard. The other countries that even make noise about leaving the Paris Agreement are mostly petrostates.

I was just reading this interview with George Lakoff about how framing could significantly affect the debate over the climate crisis. Interesting, his claim that even the term "climate change" reflects right-wing framing.

Doesn't Taiwan also have a bit of recent-ish history of authoritarianism tho? Just playing devil's advocate.

i kept looking at Vietnam and their ZERO deaths, thinking that of course they must be suppressing what's actually happening.

but then, read this:

https://ourworldindata.org/covid-exemplar-vietnam

here's their timeline for developing COVID-19 testing, for example:

Development timelines of diagnostic test kits:

February 7, 2020: Test kit developed by Hanoi University of Science and Technology. Testing method: RT-LAMP (reverse transcription loop-mediated isothermal amplification). Cost: US$15. Testing time: 70 minutes.
March 3, 2020: Test kit developed by Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology. Testing method: real-time RT-PCR (reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction). Cost: less than US$21. Testing time: 80 minutes from receiving a sample.
March 5, 2020: Test kits developed by Military Medical University, commercialized by Viet A. Cost: US$19–$25. Testing method: RT-PCR and real-time RT-PCR. Testing time: over one hour (quicker than the two-step Charité protocol) but has testing capacity four times the number of samples as the CDC kit.26 The Viet A test has been certified by the European Union and other authorities and is now being exported to other countries, although WHO certification is still pending as of May 2020.27
April 28, 2020: Production and launch of the RT-LAMP kit and RT-PCR kit28,29 commercialized by Thai Duong company.

similar timeline in US:

Feb 7: this isn't happening. but no one is allowed from china
March 3: this is going away
March 5: states will take care of this right?
April 28: we are the greatest at having low mortality

Vietnam also has a healthy distrust of any claims coming from Beijing. They weren't taking any chances.

tbf losing to vietnam is a treasured american pastime

We did not lose! It was a tie.

another thing that sucks about America's response is that we genuinely got lucky in that we had a several month head start before it really started manifesting itself here and it made zero difference

we could have our first COVID case here TODAY and still bungle it just as badly as we did

The realities of all of this really hit me this past week when my 15-year-old son, who has a lot of anxiety issues and has been having a really hard time in isolation, started crying when he found out his high school's summer band camp was canceled because we're in the middle of a damn hot spot. He was looking forward so much to seeing other kids again. He started pounding his fists on the couch saying, "Why are people being so stupid? Why don't they take it seriously?"

that's awful tipz. Hope the fellow sees better days ASAP.

this is 3% the size of the pentagon budget just passed by the senate https://t.co/PkQIxvmeGT

— Georgia (@nationalparke) July 26, 2020

Thanks, Morbz. Yeah, it's been rough. He's had his first ever full-blown anxiety attacks during all of this, had to talk him through a few.

maybe I'm wrong about this but I think Trump's extreme whininess about literally everything is the one thing that connects him to the idiots who vote for them and I don't think anyone else is gonna be able to replicate that

― frogbs, Tuesday, July 28, 2020 1:12 AM (five hours ago)

this feels right, but we've also seen a lot of state-level Republican grifters weaponise grievance politics in the last three years

Isn't it possible that the visibly awful consequences of fucking this up will help us deal with climate change better?

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Tuesday, July 28, 2020 4:44 AM (one hour ago)

Oh yeah, absolutely

Whoops, start at this link instead

http://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/509237-kaepernick-fauci-to-receive-robert-f-kennedy-human-rights-award

Sticking it to him, in the parlance of Seinfeld.

"You gave them an award for spite?!"

loooool

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/trump-canceled-first-pitch-with-yankees-but-yankees-reportedly-hadnt-even-invited-him-2020-07-27

↑↑ More Seinfeld!

"I wasn't even really invited..."
"That's what makes this so difficult."

This is Michael Scott-esque https://t.co/5eCrv8Chkc pic.twitter.com/vUATYHBG0a

— Benjy Sarlin (@BenjySarlin) July 27, 2020

"a longtime standing offer"

Randy Levine GUILTY

A little surprised that people think that global climate catastrophe can be stopped. Like, I'd laugh at the naivete if it wasn't so dire.

If you have young kids, tell them to settle in a place that has access to fresh water.