Enough With The Cutesy Titles, People Are Dead: US Politics January 2021 pt 2

There was a Politico article last month about Biden's media diet, and it mentioned David Brooks and Thomas Friedman as favorites of his. Since then, I've been hoping that he would have staffers who would slip him columns by Jamelle Bouie and Ezra Klein, but if Brooks is advocating for killing the filibuster, then that's good, too.

In a saner world, this might even sound like a noble principle. Rather than the simple majorities that allow legislation to pass the House narrowly, the Senate is there to cool the passions of the rabble, and ensure that legislation consists of things with broader support than 50%+1. Theoretically, needing to get 60% would require legislators to craft bills that have bipartisan support and that benefit a wider portion of the people.

not to mention, in this world, the 50 democratic senators represent 41 million more people than the 50 republican senators (roughly 56% of the total population).

I don't believe a word.

I mean, I believe they *said* it

How differently would these Cabinet confirmations be going if it were 51-49 GOP instead of 50-50? Would the whole Cabinet just go unconfirmed? (Austin right now has 86 yea 2 nay.)

Schumer's spine appears to have grown in...

Majority Leader Schumer rejects Minority Leader McConnell's demand to preserve the filibuster: pic.twitter.com/BuUvg8M2EU

— The Recount (@therecount) January 22, 2021

Schumer isn’t getting rid of the filibuster. He’s telling McConnell he’s refusing to give up the option. Low bar for competence but sure.

So now Republicans filibuster the organizing resolution and then...?

They do the futterwacken.

the bipartisan House Problem Solvers Caucus

lol I heard an interview with one of these dorks (GOP division) the morning after the inauguration, and one of his unity-promoting suggestions was to have a bipartisan investigation into 2020 election fraud, just to prove one and for all that there was no fraud. You know, a suggestion totally in good faith to win over the handful of remaining skeptics.

Oh, that will put their minds at rest?

But who will front such an initiative?

Is it too late to resurrect Strom? well-liked on both sides

My favourite terrible fact about Pete Buttigieg (that I learned the other day) is that his husband still has a thirst trap picture of Mayor Pete in front of the Holocaust Memorial up on his Instagram.

― scampish inquisition (gyac), Friday, January 22, 2021 12:30 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

too good

I really don't understand the fascination with his husband? He seems like a previously-unfamous Andy Cohen.

i don't know anything about his husband, it's just the thirst trap picture at the holocaust memorial that makes me go ewwwww. oh and him sniffing at the stripper pole. idk they seem like avatars of a kind of respectability homosexual culture that i despise.

map how many Chastens are there in your nabe

chasten is kind of cringey, i guess. he is probably a nice guy though.

i bet they have nothing nice to say about rupaul for example. and rupaul is like queen of the strivers. sorry, just baselessly bitching about my favorite love-to-hate guple.

xp lol, i don't know a single guy named chasten. i've met some in-the-closet chasetens for sure. oh, and an out gay 60-something formerly-straight-married business professor at a state college here who was/is a big fan of mayo pete and went to the mayo pete campaign event in utah. i saw a big picture of that someone posted on fb - so many depressing gays in one room.

Anyone who voluntarily goes to serve empire in an unjust war isn't a nice person, and neither is anyone who would tolerate that in a romantic partner.

They're both horrible creeps.

I had several gay friends/acquaintances tell me "you don't like Pete? I didn't know you were homophobic" and that is why I no longer speak with those former friends/acquaintances because life is way too short to spend with people that stupid

I mean I know I'm just flogging a dead horse, but seeing as how the *idea* of flogging would probably give Chasten and Pete the vapors, I will continue to do so.

hahahaha

(I did say "that's funny, I knew you didn't like Black people" before peacing though, signed #1 Petty Warrior)

DJP, yeah, a dear friend who's queer and Black told me that he basically cut off half the white gays he knew over their cheerleading of Pete.

My mom didn't understand why I disliked him. I'm pretty certain it's because she wishes I was like him.

(I did say "that's funny, I knew you didn't like Black people" before peacing though, signed #1 Petty Warrior)

― Hello Nice FBI Lady (DJP), Friday, January 22, 2021 5:03 PM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

ice cold

I'm not a huge Pete fan, but some of the hate seems a little OTT. He seems like an avatar for what people don't like about neoliberalism/meritocracy/Dem establishment.

he's terrible but he also seems like he might be the least bad transportation secretary we've ever had (which granted is a very low bar).

Anyone who voluntarily goes to serve empire in an unjust war isn't a nice person

This is overly condemnatory in that it assumes only bad motives could result in such an action. Most volunteers are 18 year olds fresh out of high school, who were educated to think of the USA as God's gift to the world and our military adventures as noble pursuits. They usually find out different only after they are shipped out to a war zone. What makes Pete's service particularly disgusting in my view is that I'm certain he did it in order to have that military service on his resume when he eventually ran for office.

pareene on manchin

https://newrepublic.com/article/161013/dont-worry-joe-manchin

Wait, so does this mean that Mayor Pete and McConnell are married now? Federal-level machinations are so esoteric to me.

I'm not a huge Pete fan, but some of the hate seems a little OTT. He seems like an avatar for what people don't like about neoliberalism/meritocracy/Dem establishment.

Dude is, at best, indifferent on racial issues and it's arguable (as many have) that his tenure as South Bend mayor shows he was actively hostile towards his Black constituents/employees, often while smiling to their faces and claiming to have their backs.

someone asked me why Pete wasn't all that good and I gave reasons and they snidely said "other than that Mrs Lincoln, how was the show"

beat him to death with his own fedora

jaymc, I was very "eh who cares" about Buttigieg until I read this: https://www.theroot.com/mayor-pete-s-invisible-black-police-1840727624

Every fan of Buttigieg (I refuse too call him by his first name) I know is Hispanic and hates dating their own ethnicity.

traister largely otm here, particularly "Things fall apart and yet the center can hold. It holds and holds and holds" and "In his contest, questions not just of identity but of ideas were put to the side"

https://www.thecut.com/2021/01/biden-america-is-back-indeed.html

I want Biden to have his FDR-size presidency, to take the best ideas, the smartest people, the propellant energy they provide, to make this nation better, more just, more equitable; to provide more dignity and opportunity and protection for more people. And then what I want to give him credit for is stepping aside to let them take us forward. I want to believe that this could be what’s ahead: a remaking and not a restoration. I need to believe in a future in which the real drivers and laborers and perfectors of our democracy actually become its leaders.

But … we’re not there yet. So in the meantime, I guess this is my dream: the American Dream. In which the video ends with the ordinary white guy as the hero of the story.

I'm grateful that the career of Buttigieg demonstrates how glib, articulate gayness doesn't protect you from racism.

Finally, he strikes me as the sort of person who would order the most expensive glass of pinot noir at a Cheesecake Factory.

lmao

haha burn

wow, harsh but fair

Alfred heard the console say "Finish him", and he wasn't going for no Babbality

oof

The Buttigieg superfan I stopped talking to was also 100% in the tank for Joe Kennedy, decrying Markey as an out-of-touch fool who ignored most of the state of Massachusetts. I stopped talking to him shortly after Kennedy's campaign produced a list of MA cities Markey hadn't cited as locations of his accomplishments since he became senator as evidence that Markey only cared about Boston without noticing that three of them were underneath the Quabbin Reservoir and hadn't existed since the 1930s: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/07/27/metro/kennedy-hit-markey-ignoring-towns-dana-enfield-prescott-there-was-just-one-problem/

I showed him this link and his response was "so what if his campaign made a mistake, it's the candidate who counts" and I was like "... you know the candidate picks the people who put together the campaign and that Kennedy picked people who are dumb as shit?" and then hit "hide" on Facebook

the weirdest was my progressive gay friend who was obsessed with Tulsi Gabbard for a long time. her anti-LGBTQ+ remarks from the past weren't the deal-breaker, her voting against impeachment for Trump was

Thanks for the new screenname map.

This thread has become a case study in why the gay threads never get any posts anymore.

Good mourning!

I showed him this link and his response was "so what if his campaign made a mistake, it's the candidate who counts" and I was like "... you know the candidate picks the people who put together the campaign and that Kennedy picked people who are dumb as shit?" and then hit "hide" on Facebook

I seriously wonder if some people think candidates are *assigned* campaign officials

Every fan of Buttigieg (I refuse too call him by his first name) I know is Hispanic and hates dating their own ethnicity.

― meticulously crafted, socially responsible, morally upsta (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, January 22, 2021 5:43 PM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i also appreciated this devastating burn-by-association

xpost where's the lax(ative) returns?

No Babbality
I like the way you work it
No Babbality
I got to bag it up

This thread has become a case study in why the gay threads never get any posts anymore.

― avatar of a kind of respectability homosexual culture (Eric H.), Friday, January 22, 2021 5:59 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

because of hyper-curated, incredibly frail senses of individual specialness that are injured when touched? yes, true.