US Politics, January 2022 — a pro-God, pro-family, pro-bitcoin state

Rick & Michelle level crazy & jaw-dropping stupidity seems like such a quaint throwback in 2021. love that for them

Bachman going after Perry about HPV vaccines a foreshadowing of what was to come

I love the part of the political cycle where it’s straight up ass covering time

Time has proved him right though, hasn’t it?

― Chappies banging dustbin lids together (President Keyes), Monday, January 3, 2022 1:52 PM (twenty-three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

It hasn't proved him left.

― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, January 3, 2022 2:16 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

show some respect, politics thread, this is a quality riff

Bachman going after Perry about HPV vaccines a foreshadowing of what was to come

The kicker on that was that it actually was a solid corruption story - Perry's former Chief of Staff just happened to be working for Merck as a lobbyist.

Graft being the only way Texas was going to enact an actual public health measure.

In a statement released late Tuesday afternoon, the former President confirmed that he would no longer be hosting the news conference at his oceanfront club and would instead air his grievances at an upcoming campaign-style rally in Arizona.

The airing of the grievances, Seinfeld 101.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/05/politics/trump-cancels-press-conference-january-6/index.html

lol:

A person familiar with the situation told CNN that Trump decided to call off the event due to the news media's apparent lack of interest in covering it live on Thursday. Had the former President gone through with the news conference, he would have been competing with a series of somber tributes organized by congressional Democrats at the US Capitol. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are also slated to deliver remarks on Thursday.

The same source said Trump slowly realized that most, if not all, of the major news networks were not going to carry his press conference live or send their top reporters to Palm Beach to cover it.
The former President was also facing pressure from outside advisers and Republican lawmakers to cancel the news conference and instead keep a low profile on Thursday.

almost as if there's a very specific and predictable way to make this guy go away

a lesson the media absolutely refuses to learn because of those sweet sweet clicks

I dunno sounds like the media learned it for this event?

this board on the other hand

Well I mean he's an authoritarian thug trying to overthrow the government who already came kind of close to doing it once, we can't entirely not pay attention to him. But obviously not covering his press conferences and rallies — or at least not carrying them live — is the right call.

there may be a slight difference between posts on this message board and coverage in national mass media

not certain of that, but I have a sneaking suspicion that these things might be different

If he did the presser at Four Seasons Total Landscaping, you know darn well they'd cover it

sure, because that shit was pathetic and weird and, in a dark sense, hilarious.

Nowadays he'd be lucky to get three seasons

I dunno sounds like the media learned it for this event?

― A Pile of Ants (Boring, Maryland), Wednesday, January 5, 2022 11:01 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

also sounds like Trump stuff doesn't really get the hateclicks it used to. maybe conservatives still see him as their leader but everyone else is free to just tune him out now

I posted that for one and one reason only: "the airing of the grievances."

If he performed a feat of strength it would be news

Fukuyama not happy:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/05/opinion/jan-6-global-democracy.html

He just can't help himself:

On the eve of Jan 6 anniversary, Trump in a new statement calls on "MAGA nation" to "rise up and oppose this egregious federal government overreach" citing "talk" of potential vaccine mandates for students

— Will Steakin (@wsteaks) January 5, 2022

people are indeed talking about the "potential" school covid vaccine mandates (that already exist).

Oh, and warning, DeSantis content, but boy

Here is a second angle of Ron DeSantis struggling with breathing problems during his event today. The longer this clip goes on, the worse it gets. pic.twitter.com/J9Jr55x8Py

— MeidasTouch.com (@MeidasTouch) January 5, 2022

Well that "ignoring him" thing lasted just long enough for him to whip up another batshit statement to get the attention back. And it seems to be working.

Hah didn't he say at a rally recently that people should have the vaccines and he was so pleased to have invented them? He did get booed so I guess now he's back to being anti vaxx

His blathering and whining and complaining should be ignored. His commands to his followers and minions to "rise up" should, imo, not.

From a thing on Biden’s disapproval ratings

Additionally, 46 percent of respondents said the stock market is doing “not so good” or “poor” despite one of the market's best years in decades, according to CNBC, as the S&P 500 completed the year up 26.89 percent.

Well yeah but it’s not the BEST YEAR EVER.

C'mon, man!

maybe the phony stats he recites made DeSantis cry.

Maybe people with a portfolio of zero see that big goose egg and wonder if things are so good then why is it still zero. Probably Biden.

i think if america would repent they'd be paid back 10 fold

maybe the phony stats he recites made DeSantis cry.

he is fully vaxxed

I don't know about the booster.

If you don't have the booster, you ain't fully vaxxed though

From a thing on Biden’s disapproval ratings

idk how you take a poll like that though - presumably many of those 46% are conservatives just answering "strongly disagree" to everything, and many others might just say "poor" because of inflation or whatever. the stock market affects very little in the day to day lives of the 99% but when one party crows about it all the time it creates those dumb biases.

Every 'how we doin' poll is filtered so strongly by the broader culture war that it's meaningless (or just repeats the partisan divide we can see by the vote totals we can see every four years), that one's just funny because it's not an abstraction about "how is the economy doing." You can see the line go up but based on which side of the culture war the respondent identifies with today the line is actually going down.

I'm only posting this for the screenshot.

Greene says she was banned after tweeting at Dan Crenshaw. She suggests some sort of collusion between Crenshaw and a billionaire to get her banned. She says she is talking to attorneys about a potential lawsuit pic.twitter.com/EBBY80DEeD

— Acyn (@Acyn) January 5, 2022

Amazing to me the amount of entitlement conservatives feel in regard to their right to use social media in any way they like, regardless of the corporate policies governing their access, which they agreed to abide by. If a Chik-Fil-A posted a sign "No Shoes. No Shirt. No Service." they'd rush to defend its right to eject those 'dirty hippies' who ignored the sign.

they should support nationalizing big tech

“Haha read the terms of service, their platform their rules” is not a gotcha because there can be and is a bunch of other relevant statute, ie it’s not generally true.

And to the extent it is true, a document designed to serve and protect a private company that is enforced in a completely inscrutable way is not actually great imo.

(Especially when those companies play a central role in civic society haha fml)

Ugh I spent way more minutes than it was worth knocking down misrepresentations of Section 230 the other day, 95 percent of the people talking shit about it have no idea what it actually says or does. My favorite was a guy who said it was part of the DMCA and so the "Fairness Doctrine" applied, which is wrong in at least three different ways.

If MTG can convince a judge in court, with with discovery of the relevant facts, and Twitter's lawyers making their company's case, then that's fair enough. I happen to think the policy she breached was not inscrutable and was designed to protect more than the corporate interest. Especially when those companies play a central role in civic society! You appear to disagree.

I’m not saying anything about Twitter (my employer btw) banning MTG.

I’m saying your “read the TOS” gotcha is feeble and that’s a good thing.

Why won't she just join Trumpster or whatever it's gonna be called, they'll never ban her

I think the fundamental confusion a lot of these jerks (and others) have is that just because social media has further democratized politics (and other fields), for good and for ill, giving a broad platform to big-mouth nobody would-bes that's big enough to help win elections, does not mean that these social media platforms are an actual tool of our erstwhile democracy. That is, Twitter etc. helps Greene (et al.) inflate her self-worth and get elected, amplifying this particular asshole into a national supervillain, but people like her confuse the platform for a lever of power they wield when in fact they are the one lending power to the platform. If you don't know what the product is then you are the product, and so on.

Has anyone successfully sued a social media company for banning them?

woah caek have u met Jack??

Are you trying to lure caek into saying he doesn't know Jack? Because that would be a feeble gotcha.

xp I have met zero employees irl on account of the novel coronavirus!