US Politics May 2021: Joe Manchin's Choose-Your-Adventure Book

traditionally this is known as 'The Servant Problem'

paying all them line cooks to sit home smoking blunts.

lol fuckin' seriously, everybody smoked weed at the restaurants I worked at. I smoked with my kitchen manager in his truck after Cinco De Mayo once.

there was also fucking going on, on the expo table, so...

I think it's less the blunt-smoking than the non-making-me-a-burger part that the right finds so infuriating. The notion that no one wants to work their shitty jobs for shit pay is enraging.

But anyway that's what Biden is trying to respond to, to keep the payments available. Which probably won't work here, at least. They already slashed the max unemployment period in half. (On top of also refusing to expand Medicaid, of course. Our state has kept billions of dollars of assistance from poor people out of sheer contempt for them.)

"closely watched" VA Gub "race" pace does have *some* inneresting assspecks, esp if you're into a truer/already bluer Southern state, and for inst:Virginia Republicans eschewed holding a state-run primary and instead opted for what organizers described as an “unassembled convention,” with about 30,000 pre-registered Republicans voting at nearly 40 sites across the commonwealth on Saturday. Is this or will this be a thing, where you guarantee honest voting process by running and rolling yr own? And can Democrats do it too, or is that sure sign of sketch?
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/05/10/youngkin-virginia-gop-nomination-governor-486854
(Also, as you maybe more likely saw, Newsom recall is going nowhere in polls)

Yeah the VA GOP thing was meticulously engineered to exclude Ms. Trump-in-Heels, and it succeeded. Cute how they had to institute ranked-choice just for this purpose and this purpose along.

Democrats hereabouts have no interest in that process, nor do they have a need to.

I can't speak for other states. Perhaps there are state races where there's a fear of, e.g., a Berniecrat winning vs. an establishment candidate? These things seem highly situational.

* along = alone

The NV Democrats fiasco probably has some establishment people looking to ensure that doesn’t happen elsewhere.

fwiw I did have several friends who in 2009 who spent an entire year gaming the unemployment system so they could smoke weed and play video games all day. obviously I was cheering them on with every check they received but these people do exist

where do I sign up for that

in FL you'd be homeless doing that real fast, considering up until recently, it was capped at $275/week. and very few people get that maximum!

the one time I was on it, I got $68 a week lol

guess that settles that!

Dr. Fauci rejects Rand Paul's claims: "Senator Paul, with all due respect, you are entirely, entirely and completely incorrect that the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain of function research in the Wuhan Institute."

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) May 11, 2021

leave out the 'due respect' part next time, and replace it with "you little bitch"

In 'shockingly old when you learned' crossover I was least in my 20s when I realized that you can provide someone with the amount of respect they are due and that amount can be zero.

in FL you'd be homeless doing that real fast, considering up until recently, it was capped at $275/week. and very few people get that maximum!

I think these guys got $200 a week which is plenty in Manitowoc. my rent was $100 a month!

anyway tbf there really weren't a whole lot of jobs; occasionally they'd land shitty 3rd shift factory jobs that they'd actively try to get fired from

Great Recession was my last time on unemployment... good times, even without the extra covid booster

Wow. Just...wow.

Gayle King, CBS news anchor: "Tell us about your dating situation."

Stacey Abrams, Nobel Peace Prize nominee: "I haven't been focused on that this month. I've been focused on saving democracy."

— Victoria Brownworth (@VABVOX) May 11, 2021

If you listen closely when she's on the air you can hear the wind whistling through Gayle King's empty skull.

NEW: Biden will nominate Rahm Emanuel as U.S. ambassador to Japan https://t.co/E36sTDHiWa

— Axios (@axios) May 11, 2021

Obviously this could be much worse, but just how does this guy do it?

King's question is terrible, but also, come on, anybody can be a Nobel Peace Prize nominee

There are about 150 more impressive ways to characterize Stacey Abrams

Rahm must have inherited Epstein's little black book.

"How far away can we ship this motherfucker?"

that occurred to me too, but that's got to be a desirable gig for the professional unelectable politician class

Walter Mondale served as ambassador to Japan under Clinton. It’s a fun gig.

what're you gonna do about it, joe

NEW: This weekend, Joe Manchin said the John Lewis Voting Rights Act “has to be done.”

He said the bill deserves universal support because elections should be accessible, fair and secure. “This is ridiculous.”

But Manchin, who’s pro-filibuster, hasn’t explained how to pass it. pic.twitter.com/JrdlLp0Eq3

— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) May 10, 2021

Douchey! Details even worse than I'd noticed: https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/ej-montini/2021/05/10/doug-ducey-sham-election-audit-exposes-threats-cowardly-governor/5014127001/
Also:
PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey on Tuesday signed legislation purging infrequent voters from a list of those who automatically get a mail-in ballot each election, ignoring protests from Democrats and prominent business leaders who said the measure would suppress the votes of people of color.

The Republican governor acted hours after a tense debate in the state Senate, during which Republicans tried to silence Democrats who said the bill would perpetuate systemic racism.
https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-arizona-race-and-ethnicity-bills-elections-f66f8b032bd081092715f55dc1195134

"...the bill would perpetuate systemic racism..."

In the state where they're searching for bamboo fiber ballots, because, you know CHY-NAH

These days I'm honestly surprised the GOP doesn't just say outright 'yes, that's the point.' Don't know why they're still at all coy about their full-bore embrace of villainy.

suddenly, much of the world began to heard a soft but distinct evil cackling noise whenever republicans spoke or acted. those that heard it heard the same thing. but many of the people couldn't hear it at all. WIS -2, LCK -1

Speaking of embrace of villainy, this is some Monty Burns shit.

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/552958-tennessee-cuts-off-300-federal-unemployment-supplement

Mississippi's doing the same thing: https://mississippitoday.org/2021/05/10/gunn-end-mississippi-unemployment-federal-300/

Yep. Won't be a red state left with 'em.

Oh they're embracing the shit out of it

Texas’s population boom should be a boon to Democrats. But Republicans are reaping the gains. https://t.co/vN9a5MqpMy

— Senator John Cornyn (@JohnCornyn) May 11, 2021

The article he links is very good and accurately describes what it's like for me living in a big liberal city that's been gerrymandered to hell.

But he takes exactly the wrong lesson from it

Cornyn’s habit of sharing sub-headlines like that without any commentary is so weird.

Quite a quote from Ilhan Omar (from here):

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E1MMQDfXoAIDsPS.jpg

2024 election's gonna be...fucked up. State legislatures will not recognize Democratic votes.

hell yeah omar

since court packing seems like it will not happen (guh), really hope Clarence Thomas and Alito die in the same hot air balloon accident. this week.

the destruction of SCOTUS really might just wind up being the worst legacy of the Trump admin (eventually surpassing "transforming the GOP into saying it was what everybody knew it was for many decades")

It's just crazy to see how the GOP is still bending over backwards to prove loyalty to Trump, I don't get it. I mean, yes, obviously on some level they anticipate his cultists to be big primary voters, but it's just so weird to see them hitching themselves to such an albatross this late in the game. The Democrats couldn't wait to distance themselves from the one term failure stink of Jimmy Carter and he wasn't impeached twice and effectively deplatformed. It's bonkers.

Just wait until they take back the WH and congress and *they* expand the court, and pack it with even more lunatics.

It's just crazy to see how the GOP is still bending over backwards to prove loyalty to Trump, I don't get it. I mean, yes, obviously on some level they anticipate his cultists to be big primary voters, but it's just so weird to see them hitching themselves to such an albatross this late in the game. The Democrats couldn't wait to distance themselves from the one term failure stink of Jimmy Carter and he wasn't impeached twice and effectively deplatformed. It's bonkers.

― soaring skrrrtpeggios (jon /via/ chi 2.0),

It's possible that conservatives have long been not-so-secret fascists and opposed to democracy since 1964 and Trump finally gave them a Moloch to worship?

what happens if Trump dies? serious question

Depends on how humiliating and/or hilarious his death is imo

It's possible that conservatives have long been not-so-secret fascists and opposed to democracy since 1964 and Trump finally gave them a Moloch to worship?

Sure, but they don't need him to pursue that shit anymore, clearly they are doing an excellent job at the state level without him. I get that he opened the door, but it seems like he's outlived his usefulness.

I think it's less about Trump himself and more that Trump revealed that you can more or less get away with a lot of things that were previously considered unthinkable, and so Republicans want to ride that wave as far as it will take them.