Retire, Breyer: another September 2021 US Politics thread

realizing that millions of people watch him on a daily basis and take him seriously explains a lot. i mean, look at that. holy shit dude. and people are looking up to him and listening to him! i'd "looooooooooool" but these guys really are like the people who spray their teeth in mad max

definitely just going to stereotype here and say that alex jones and his viewers are just really dumb. they got to biology and got stuck in the pH section and just decided they would never understand anything through that method. "the old knowledge". so they just started huffing paint thinner

their last memory was talking to the guy at the gas station who had a hookup for whippet crackers

He's still refusing to get on Gavin McInnes's level and put a butt plug in on air.

If you plug up, it helps with the horse dewormer diarrhea.

Rebuilding our crumbling physical infrastructure – roads, bridges, water systems – is important. Rebuilding our crumbling human infrastructure – health care, education, climate change – is more important. No infrastructure bill without the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill.

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) September 2, 2021

Some days, the only thing that gets me through is knowing that people like Alex Jones will someday die. Maybe not soon, maybe not before he does incalculable damage to the minds of his followers, but someday. Someday it'll absolutely happen. I mean, yes, some other slavering beast as bad as him or worse will probably burst out of his corpse when he goes, just sloughing him off like the remains of a cocoon of evil, because that's the world we live in now, the one where you think things can't get worse and then they somehow exceed the limits of human imagination, but then I guess at that point I can just take solace in my own impending mortality. There's always a bright side!

The realization that "people" on the whole are actually bad, untrustworthy, susceptible to misinformation to the point that it seems like they actually crave it, and so fucking selfish all the time. it may be obvious and known for a long time -- i've seen the intro to fellowship of the ring, i understand how "humans" work -- but i didn't understand the degree of it until trump, and then especially with covid. i get so angry because at one point i was very much an Idealist, and i guess i'm dumb enough to think that it's still a good thing. but when believing in "people" goes away, so does everything else. the thought of public service becomes a joke. public health becomes a joke. climate change, the possibility of every doing anything about it - lol, are you kidding, after a year and a half of covid? we have ZERO chance. everything just goes away when faith in humanity goes away. ironically, i think this is part of what probably drives people to religion

This hit me right in the feels. I'm still grappling with the philosophical position that people are bad but I would respectfully suggest that if this is anything more than a hot take, it might help to take a step back, I'm sensing a certain amount of confirmation bias at work here.

Consider that little more than a generation ago we were able to create the EPA, protect endangered species, mostly stop acid rain and the growth of the hole in the ozone layter, enact affirmative action etc etc.

I think the main trends which make our present moment seem particularly hopeless are the predominance of social media and the GOP in effect becoming the party of the Christian petrostate. Social media is a mixed bag but it's pretty clear it's mostly in the wrong hands right now. Aside from all the egregious conniving and platforming of disinformation, I think that from the positive side, social media has actually made it clear that even in America most of us are actually pretty progressive. This in turn has elicited a hysterical reaction from the right and especially the evangelicals.

I have high hopes that in terms of media we're close to the bottom now, there is significant room for improvement. Sadly though our dysfunctional political system now seems stretched to breaking, and our physical environment also is sorely ailing. (...Sorry I was trying to be hopeful again but I seem to be working on digging a little hole for myself at this point.)

If you plug up, it helps with the horse dewormer diarrhea.

― papal hotwife (milo z), Saturday, September 4, 2021 5:27 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Point of order: a butt-plugged Alex Jones would very swiftly explode like a shit-filled firework on the 4th of July.

the worms gotta come out somehow

The legislative party in Texas is dominated by White politicians, specifically White men. The Texas Tribune reported at the start of the legislative session in January that all but five of the 100 Republicans in the state House and Senate were White, while 13 of the 100 were women. In a state whose population is about 40 percent Hispanic, just two of the Republicans in the state House were Latino, two Asian and one is Black.

just a bunch of white guys banning abortion against the will of their own people

just before a congressional sphincter explodes from wild pressure

Bash (Dana, asking obvious questions years too late): Congressman, do you think that voters should trust House Republican leaders with the majority in the next election?

Kinzinger (Adam, R-IL): Yes, I mean, look, I’m a Republican. I would like to see actual Republican values in the majority.

All I can say right now is, my party has to embrace truth. We have to have a full reckoning of what happened on January 6, and we have to turn away from conspiracy. I think, if we're going to be in charge and pushing conspiracy and pushing division and pushing lies, then the Republican Party should not have the majority.

But if we're going to be the party that actually tells truth and fights for real conservative values, and doesn't masquerade conservatism as some anger future, then, certainly, we should have the majority.

But that’s up to the party right now to determine. For me, I’m going to go out and tell the truth.

https://i.imgur.com/hyGbh5e.gif

you might wonder, what is he doing in the GOP?

he's being one of the most famous people in the GOP, that's what. that's the price of his heroism. he got a huge PR boost. if he becomes a democrat he'll just be another democrat, and that's if he's lucky enough to convince the dipshits in his district that he's not a tyrannical representative of satan

and he's one of the only republicans with any courage, whatsoever

anger future

it's weird to me that we can do a survey of americans and pretty much on every single issue there's at least a 20% portion that has the completely wrong. if it's 80/20, that counts as a landslide of consensus in the united states. on anything at all. but yet when it comes to 1/6 shit, republicans couldn't even make it that far.

there are 212 republicans in the house. 35 of them voted for the 1/6 commission:

Rep. Don Bacon (NE); Rep. Cliff Bentz (OR); Rep. Stephanie Bice (OK); Rep. Liz Cheney (WY); Rep. John Curtis (UT); Rep. Rodney Davis (IL); Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (PA); Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (NE); Rep. Andrew Garbarino (NY); Rep. Carlos Gimenez (FL); Rep. Tony Gonzales (TX); Rep. Anthony Gonzalez (OH); Rep. Michael Guest (MS); Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (WA); Rep. French Hill (AR); Rep. Trey Hollingsworth (IN); Rep. Chris Jacobs (NY); Rep. Dusty Johnson (SD); Rep. David Joyce (OH); Rep. John Katko (NY); Rep. Adam Kinzinger (IL); Rep. David McKinley (WV); Rep. Peter Meijer (MI); Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA); Rep. Blake Moore (UT); Rep. Dan Newhouse (WA); Rep. Tom Reed (NY); Rep. Tom Rice (SC); Rep. Maria Salazar (FL); Rep. Mike Simpson (ID); Rep. Chris Smith (NJ); Rep. Van Taylor (TX); Rep. Fred Upton (MI); Rep. David Valadao (CA); Rep. Steve Womack (AR).

16.5% of them. to do the bare minimum thing for accountability.

i hope this plus the TX abortion stuff will be enough to convince democrats to show up to the midterms for the first time in my fucking life

in better news, "boss of the year" amy klobuchar manages to still be in a higher tier than "post-sphincter explosion" manchin and sinema:

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) on Sunday called for the elimination of the filibuster after the Supreme Court let Texas’ ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy stand, leaving the second largest state in the country with virtually no access to legal abortions.

During an interview on CNN, Klobuchar was pressed on the lack of the 60 votes needed in the 50-50 Senate to codify the right to legal abortions.

Klobuchar first expressed gratitude for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) for vowing congressional action to codify Roe v. Wade into law.

After pointing out that there are some pro-choice Republicans in the Senate, such as Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Klobuchar argued that the solution to passing progressive legislation would be to nix the filibuster that has posed obstacles to Democrats’ legislative priorities.

“So, my solution to this, which is my solution for voting rights and so many other things, including climate change, where one side of the country is in flames, the other side of the country is flooded, with people dying submerged in their cars, I believe we should abolish the filibuster,” Klobuchar said.

but who will maintain the integrity of our collective national butthole? who will keep things regular? who will provide big business with the steady regulation environment that they need to make plans beyond the fiscal year? who will make the courageous stand against change? will it be joe biden? will it be a sub-manchin or sub-sinema democrat who has tacitly sued them for protection on the filibuster until now, but feels the need to take a stand for the status quo?

WILL SOMETHING BIG HAPPEN AND WE ALL JUST FORGET AGAIN?!

The battle, joined?

https://www.tpr.org/news/2021-09-06/justice-department-promises-to-protect-women-who-seek-abortions-in-texas?utm_campaign=npr&utm_medium=social&utm_term=nprnews&utm_source=facebook.com&fbclid=IwAR1o1voGj-Gq19KepbnoNFbylcivcClWXBd02s17PdzVngu4_7ZYeDn9UT8

Good work. The Texas law seems specifically designed to threaten and intimidate, so the FACE Act should apply and as a federal statute it should override state law. The fact that the threats do not consist of physical violence does not make them less threatening or less intimidating.

The fact that the threats do not consist of physical violence

i'm not sure sure about that. what kind of violence is it when you tell someone "if you drive her to that abortion clinic, i'll sue you and anyone else involved for $10K"? which, once that's known, is the same as "i'm watching you. don't mess up or i'll ruin your life"?

i know you're just making that point for the FACE act (which i know very little about). but just saying, i view the new TX law as extremely physically threatening in more than one way. there's no way empowering Texans (of all people, the fucking texans) to be anti-abortion vigilantes is not physical on some level.

a million conservative chuck norris figures keeping an eagle-eye out for young pregnant people who might be breaking the law is one of the creepiest thing, especially because all of them want to succeed so badly

it's hard to tell from the article but they are talking about about preventing people from physically blocking clinics, not about overriding the law

Maybe in that case the young pregnant couple can use 'stand your ground' laws and even up things a bit.

Kinzinger has integrity, and I admire him for that, but he's not going to not be a Republican. He could maybe be some kind of non-Republican Conservative with Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney and maybe Sasse.

how do i keep falling for these pump and dump schemes pic.twitter.com/iRjdgSIoyL

— Richie Deals (@allahliker) September 7, 2021

I was at the county fair yesterday, you'd think there was a political event going on. one couple was literally carrying a Trump yard sign around with them. there was also a teenager wearing a Trump flag as a shirt. another was carrying a sign that said "NO CRT IN OUR SCHOOLS!". plenty of Trump shirts and a few anti-Biden ones (BLM = Biden Likes Minors! Clever!!) also saw four people wearing shirts that said something like "That's a terrible idea!" and then on the bottom "What time?". What was interesting is that they were all different designs!

County fairs are always political events, iirc

"NO CRT IN OUR SCHOOLS!"

damn straight! anything old enough to have a CRT screen is so outdated that it needs to be replaced. that's like showing a film strip accompanied by a 45 rpm record that dings when you should advance the strip to the next frame.*

*these existed

so here's something kind of interesting that i haven't seen talked about: Chik-fiI-A, official face-stuffing of the culture warring MAGA dipshit, is STILL not doing in-store dining. that's some pretty libcuck shit right?

also, got some inside intel from a friend who works for small company does some internal comms for them. apparently CFA inc has been putting as much pro-vax stuff out as possible, and there's going to be a big company-wide webinar about it this week. also also D@n C@thy, CEO and son of the late Tru3tt, is apparently cutting a video begging employees to get vaxxed while standing in front of a casket of an erstwhile employee who's recently dead due to Covid-19!?! this is probably not for public consumption (yet) but oh well. any lurkers who might be CFA corporate pls ignore.

said friend has also long been convinced that D@n is a secret on the DL lib

Based on the drive-thru lines, I think CFA might have figured out it's more profitable to not have indoor dining (as long as you don't mind making a dozen 17-year olds risk heatstroke for eight hours). Since the start of the pandemic I've wondered if we'll see a shift to little/no indoor dining space for fast food in car country.

Dropping Medicare eligibility age to 60 isn’t part of draft text from @RepRichardNeal.

Focus among D’s is on expanding Medicare to provide dental/vision/hearing benefits in varying years (correcting past tweet)

Vision: 2022
Hearing: 2023
Dental: 2028 https://t.co/nLIYiXlvhd

— Joseph Zeballos-Roig (@josephzeballos) September 7, 2021

xp

uh, think you meant to post that here:

Q is Joe Biden, another non-US Politics thread (Q Anon, Qanon, Q_anon, Joe Biden is Q)

any republican still talking about CRT in september is still fighting the last culture war (the one from march), but it's pretty hard to keep up.

I heard some talking head re: the texas abortion law (paraphrase): 'Eh, abortion is not so hot anymore, it's all about the vaccines, CRT and non-gender bathrooms.'

The Beltway consensus about the Texas abortion law: non-Texan GOP acting awfully quiet about it, secretly worried, thinking about 2018.

(NB: the Beltway sucks and is wrong)

"That said, however, let's make something very clear," Abbott continued, his voice gaining emphasis. "Rape is a crime, and Texas will work tirelessly to make sure that we eliminate all rapists from the streets of Texas by aggressively going out and arresting them and prosecuting them and getting them off the streets."

Since all rapes obviously happen out on the streets, Texans can finally breathe a sigh of relief

A trump get out the vote special

Trump, on Newsmax, claims the recall election in California is "probably rigged" (as if Democrats can't win elections there fair and square) pic.twitter.com/gPbSq0XHGN

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 8, 2021

Gov. Abbott in response to questions of rape & incest says that he will "eliminate all rapists from the streets of Texas by aggressively going out and arresting them and prosecuting them and getting them off the streets." I guess that takes care of that then. They're finally going to go out and arrest all those pesky street rapists, like the ones Trump said were coming in from Mexico. Then we'll know that every pregnancy is truly a gift from God.

Honestly I wrote a post but it was too bleak. Which is laughable under these truly bleak circumstances.

so they had the means to stop all rapes in their state this whole time but are now just deciding to do it? xp

Hey when a man rapes someone in the privacy of his own home, car, workplace, classroom, or anywhere really, he's just asserting his God-given right to control the bodies of all other lesser people, like the Good Lord intended. To stop it would be going against the will of God.

or anywhere really

To be fair, Abbott has vocally opposed the presence of rapists on streets. He's been clear about that.

Forcing them to stick to boulevards, lanes, courts, highways, footpaths, etc. seems like a common-sense compromise measure. Take the win, libs.

I think people are missing the far more sinister undertone to Abbot's comment about "eliminating" it. He's not going to stop it, he's just going to eliminate it as being a crime.

https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/d6a/dc7/4a5001b7beea096457f480c8808572428b-09-roll-safe.rhorizontal.w700.jpg

Right, the emphasis on "getting them off the streets" is promoting the idea that rapists are an easily identifiable group that they can just round up and arrest, like illegal immigrants. He's also implying that rape doesn't occur in homes or workplaces, just out on the streets. So basically, if you were impregnated by someone you know, it couldn't have been rape, you must've wanted that baby.

I'm pretty sure he was speaking specifically about the "rapist" from Mexico

xp It doesn't matter what the injured party wanted or didn't want. A man forcibly implanted some cells that reacted to other cells and now are holy in the eyes of God. The person whose body it happened to is irrelevant.

Didn't some Republican elected person just go on camera calling women vessels?