Retire, Breyer: another September 2021 US Politics thread

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?

may the lord open

In perfect seriousness I am taking these walking abominations 100% at their word and their words show who they are and what they really want.

Maybe it was old, but no less indicative: “However, once a child does exist in your womb, I’m not going to assume a right to kill it just because the child’s host (some refer to them as mothers) doesn’t want it.”

"child". fuck, it's not even a fetus at 6 weeks, it's an embryo.

we should also stop leading with the "but there are many good reasons for abortion, such as rape, incest, or the mother's health" argument in defense of abortion because it doesn't matter what fucking reason someone wants an abortion. they're legal, and the reason doesn't matter, and if we engage on that field alone we insinuate lack of support for other reasons, or suggest that if we made this exceptions in the law, an abortion ban would be a-ok.

just say it - women should be able to get them for whatever reason, it's their damn body. I'll leave the "when does life begin" argument to philosophers.

Unfortunately, because our Beltway press consists of cowardly prisses, there's no reason to get an abortion unless your brother rapes you.

philosopher kings say life begins the moment the chosen sperm wins the race. all other sperm and "the forgotten trillions of masturbation" were not sanctified by the holy spirit, therefore not a child.

we should also stop leading with the "but there are many good reasons for abortion, such as rape, incest, or the mother's health" argument in defense of abortion because it doesn't matter what fucking reason someone wants an abortion. they're legal, and the reason doesn't matter, and if we engage on that field alone we insinuate lack of support for other reasons, or suggest that if we made this exceptions in the law, an abortion ban would be a-ok.

yes, i saw Tim Faust and others mention this yesterday. let me see, here:

This is well-intentioned but it’s all Bill Clinton-ass bullshit. Abortion is boring. It’s a simple medical procedure. Sure, it’s for people in extreme situations, but abortion is also for people who like to fuck and simply don’t want to get pregnant pic.twitter.com/jFvGpUnx74

— kill 🇵🇸 tim 🇵🇸 faust (@crulge) September 7, 2021

it was a nice reminder. i think "abortion is boring. it's a simple medical procedure" isn't a great thing for a man to say, but what do i know

i'm in favor of people not calling it a "painful decision" when they don't know whether the person's decision was actually painful. maybe it would be less painful if people didn't act like it's more justified in the two dramatic circumstances listed above. also "assailant planted his seed"? barf emoji

notes app screenshot definitely a man, maybe marc loi

Yeah, "the infant", "planted his seed" just shut the fuck up Mr Pro-Choice

Marc Loi. wow.

takes me back

wait if you click the image there are 2 more poorly written nightmare scenarios

i'm pro-little Cathy one is THE WORST

https://msmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Cathy-Comic1.jpg