US Politics June 2021 - "Where we're going, we don't NEED bipartisanship"

At least the upside of 2024’s constitutional crisis will be that we might finally wrap up this whole America situation.

The Biden-affiliated militias will need their own Punisher skull symbol.

“I’m not ready to destroy our government,” Manchin said last month. “I think they will come together, you have to have faith that there’s 10 good people.”

patriot news hourly: BREAKING: Socialist Manchin implies that there are at least 40 evil Republican senators; not "good people"

Manchin will write another voting rights bill that lets Mitch McConnell personally draw the maps for all 435 House districts in order to forge bipartisan compromise.

Just tried to get into a Ron Desantis press event in Miami and they literally had military personnel with FL Department of Law Enforcement documents with my photo and information waiting to stop me. This how terrified Ron Desantis is of criticism. pic.twitter.com/KDBoMld484

— Thomas Kennedy (@tomaskenn) June 7, 2021

Agitators are indispensable to washing machines' ability to clean dirty laundry. No wonder Desantis want nothing to do with them.

Conservative media outlet Newsmax, a favorite of former President Donald Trump's, rejected embattled Republican U.S. Representative Matt Gaetz's request for a job, a spokesperson for the website said on Monday.

Gaetz contacted Newsmax early this year, a source at the outlet said. That was around the time that news broke Gaetz was the subject of a federal investigation into possible sex trafficking of a minor.

Investigators are seeking to determine whether Gaetz had sex with a 17-year-old, according to news reports and a law enforcement source who spoke with Reuters. He has not been charged with any crimes and has repeatedly denied wrongdoing.

Spokespeople for Gaetz, a vocal Trump supporter, had no immediate comment about any Newsmax job rejection.

"Newsmax has had no plans to hire Rep. Gaetz," said Brian Peterson, a spokesperson for the website.

A source familiar with Newsmax's policies said: "Earlier this year, (Gaetz) reached out and said he might leave Congress early and was interested in TV work."

i would've thought hiring gaetz would be a good formula for maximum news. false advertising, newsmax.

I’m left wondering if the The Adults just don’t believe that the GOP will do these things? or just not care?

Or are they secretly rooting for it bc hey, why govern (hard!) when you can point to the crazies on the other side and pluck the chickens

Joke’ll be on them when Qcongress executes them all at Gitmo.

― Van Halen dot Senate dot flashlight (Boring, Maryland), Sunday, June 6, 2021 5:44 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

i'm kind of blown away by by how opaque this seems to be for so many people. this is a crucial role democrats play for the interests of power, and it's a great situation for them to be in. they have excellent scapegoats and the roles are locked in. they're only going to be rewarded for it when republicans take office. i mean it will look like they lost but materially they won't have lost anything. the people executed will be poor, maybe tilted more toward one definition of "degenerate" over another.

its true and its good to harp on the Dems for this but ultimately America was just built to be taken over by a hostile minority party against the "big tent" moderates. give Manchin all the shit you want, dude certainly deserves it, but he comes from a heavily conservative state, one which any other Democrat would never win, the problem isn't necessarily him it's that this country gives all the power to those who represent the least amount of people and the GOP has gamed the system so that everything but judges & tax cuts would require 60 votes

xp

i'm honestly stunned that newsmax turned him down

My hope is that means there are enough rumblings about the validity of his investigation that he's even untouchable for them...

maybe we can manchin coked up and confident and then sell him on this crazy idea: he becomes the key person to help abolish the filibuster, he gets all the infrastructure shit he wants for WV, and in 4 years he gets to retire from the senate at age 76 to enjoy his immense wealth, and, uh, his family i guess

xxxpost It also reflects that the vast majority of Americans I suspect are, through dint of disposition or indoctrination, literally conservative, even the ones who are not Conservative. It's tied into the country's endemic contrarianism.

xp

i didn't even look up manchin to make sure that he's fabulously wealthy. he just is. i know he is. they all are, except for like 3

I have to remind myself Manchin voted to impeach Trump (twice!) and voted against confirming Barrett.

maybe we can get Manchin eaten by a shark and the resultant flesh used to make a new Manchin that we can program

people turn that noses up at uploading themselves into VR and flying like a bird for the rest of their conscious existence, but 1) it's not here, and 2) birds get to shit on everything

It also reflects that the vast majority of Americans I suspect are, through dint of disposition or indoctrination, literally conservative fucking idiots... It's tied into the country's endemic contrarianism.

The claim that no one but Manchin could win in WV is somewhat specious. It’s been less of a one party state than a lot of the country and even in the depths of Jim Crow liberal populists managed to win seats in the south.

Centrists like Clinton and Biden eat shit - Manchin’s schtick is more “populist” than “centrist,” which is the eternal argument for trying to run progressive populists in red states instead of troops and former CIA wet team guys who get slaughtered.

While I won't dispute that our country is overpopulated by idiots, I do think that gives cover to how awful a lot of these people are. The most strident and vocal conservatives I've encountered in my life are rarely stupid, just incredibly selfish. They don't give one shit about anyone else and want to empower any one who ensures them that they can keep every penny they have and that those pennies will never get shared with the less deserving.

But every time that’s an option they circle the wagon for the most conservative candidate they can find because they can avoid governing.

I do think that gives cover to how awful a lot of these people are. The most strident and vocal conservatives I've encountered in my life are rarely stupid, just incredibly selfish.

I consider emotional intelligence here, too. Anyone who can't see beyond themselves in such a way is a fucking idiot.

The temerity of some of these people to call themselves Christians is the most laughable part of the whole thing.

the really laughable part is that their vote counts just as much as yours or mine (more, probably)

Yeah, the veil of Christianity is disgusting and abhorrent on multiple levels, but I guess I just don't feel like hand-waving them off as stupid people who don't know any better is helpful at all. These aren't stupid people, they know exactly how to organize and who to pressure to make sure they get "their" politicians in power.

it's true, their organization skill is off the charts! particularly the weekly meetings. they are always meeting up and talking!

I just mean evangelicals in general are very good at making sure they get their candidates in the right place at the right time, but whatever.

billionaires, cops, and evangelicals must be the three most organized/ effective political groups in the U.S.

prob doesn’t hurt that a Venn diagram of their primary material objectives overlap big time

jvc, I guess that I just don't think we're talking about the same people.

Apropos of nothing in particular: I had one chance to interact with Joe Manchin in a private, off-the-record setting with a bunch of other reporters, back when he was governor of WV. (2010ish?) My very strong impression, which I remember to this day, is that he's a moron.

— David Roberts (@drvolts) June 7, 2021

moron labe

the vast majority of Americans I suspect are, through dint of disposition or indoctrination, literally conservative, even the ones who are not Conservative

The indoctrination is absolutely key. The official story always fails in its job of adequately explaining what people see, feel and experience, but until it fails catastrophically most people muddle along with it as the default, because replacing it requires too much thought and effort.

Even when ordinary unthinking people end up rejecting the rosy official story because it totally failed them, its replacement is often whatever opportunistic set of ready-made explanations first falls in their path. This is why we get stuff like QAnon.

An observation I had from working in government is that most people ARE conservative in their default settings in the sense that they like stability and they don't like change. Even if the status quo isn't great and they bitch about it, it is also known and comfortable. My experience was that it didn't matter if people were nominally liberal or conservative in, say, their presidential voting patterns — most of them were likely to be instantly suspicious of anything new or unfamiliar, whether that was parking meters where there didn't use to be (the horror!), food trucks, bike lanes, whatever.

It gave me an appreciation for the built-in advantages that conservatism has as a worldview. Change is harder, persuading people to try new things (like, universal health insurance) is hard, and while progressives will be in general more open to change, that is a matter of degree.

instantly suspicious of anything new or unfamiliar, whether that was parking meters where there didn't use to be (the horror!)

OH FUCK OFF! pic.twitter.com/1iM3oibI9X

— Laurence Fox ✌🏼🇬🇧✌🏼 (@LozzaFox) June 7, 2021

^ those traffic lights have been there for five years, and Fox received 1.9% of the vote for Mayor four weeks ago

putting the lol in lol fox

infinite infrastructure week ends its latest go-nowhere negotiation, just in time to start its next go-nowhere negotiation

Weeks-long discussions between the White House and GOP negotiators led by Sen. Capito are officially done as talks shift toward a bipartisan Senate grouphttps://t.co/X7FsmhWetb

— CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) June 8, 2021

🎉

Voting machines in Texas are going to default to straight ticket GOP unless you solve three riddles.

AOC on fire on Chris Hayes' show, hinting at the stories emerging in the last couple days about the Koch brothers' contributions to Joe Manchin's coffers.

Yeah, that'll really show him.

Joe’s press release is just going to say “duh.”

Maybe he’ll extend that to “what are you gonna do about it?”

In case you missed it -

The Senate tonight approved a bill w/ overwhelming bipartisan support that included $10 billion in lunar lander contracts likely to go to Jeff Bezos' company Blue Origin@TonyRomm https://t.co/mHqyYf7KEa

— Jeff Stein (@JStein_WaPo) June 9, 2021

At least we've got our priorities straight. The ironic thing is that it's never been cheaper or easier to fake the moon landing. Be funny if the real landing gets increasingly dismissed as fake, and Amazon's fake landing gets embraced as real. That seems to be the direction we're heading in.

You just know that Bezos and Musk have at least humored the idea of mounting a giant laser on the moon and making it their own Death Star, just because it would be "cool" and/or allow them to blow up the earth.

unrelated to recent events, but I'm teaching a pension class this week to students in Panama and it has unintentionally turned into a discussion on how terrible the US is economically, especially to its elderly. this wasn't even me sharing it either, this was them talking about "wow that sounds terrible".

i have no disagreed with them at any point

Yeah, my parents just got unbelievably fucked