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

https://hotair.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Sinema-1110x740.jpg

I drink your milkshake!

dang, I have those same earrings

me too

The ring is what nails it.

it's america's favorite quirky indirect murderer!

amy siskind is not a credible source on anything.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/8/16/1788737/--Resistance-grifter-Amy-Siskind-finally-gets-her-comeuppance

Meanwhile, they're talking about medical marijuana in Mississippi. Click thru for pix of legislators inspecting the goods.

Mississippi’s Senators are passing a (unlit) fat doobie around the chamber to understand how big a “marijuana joint” is. Blackwell says 3.5 grams is like 2ish joints a day. Tate Reeves says it’s 11 joints.

— Lee Sanderlin (@LeeOSanderlin) January 13, 2022

then they went out to play hacky sack in the quad and listen to Phish

blackwell's used to smoking the fat doob's i guess. reeves is on the low end, but i mean, for some people that would be true. joints can be any size.

this person is right: https://www.quora.com/How-many-joints-can-you-roll-with-2-5-grams-of-weed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6swlPoUHd1Y

Vice President Harris to Americans who can't find a COVID test: "Google It [...] I mean, really, if you want to figure out how to get across town to some restaurant you heard is great, you usually do Google to figure out where it is."

WATCH: https://t.co/mePRdhxPMO pic.twitter.com/itamlCIFjg

— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) January 13, 2022

"Fuck You You're On Your Own" is a risky midterm slogan but it just... might... work.

definitely going to win big against "you're special"

what the fuck is her problem

JUST IN: DirecTV plans to drop @OANN, dealing a major blow to the conservative channel that’s been criticized for spreading misinformation and had a loyal fan in former President Donald Trump. https://t.co/BFQvDPacbp

— Evan Rosenfeld (@Evan_Rosenfeld) January 15, 2022

i wish someone would have asked the VP to go on her phone right there and find a testing place close by with availability.

Haha someone on that thread said the same thing

luv 2 see the executive branch not just throwing reelection under the bus but like actually duct taping it to the road to ensure that it gets thoroughly mashed

oh no there's another clip. they gotta stop putting her on tv until they figure out what's going on.

.@craigmelvin asks if it’s time to change admin’s strategy on Covid, Harris says:
“It is time for us to do what we have been doing. And that time is every day. Every day it is time for us to agree that there are things and tools that are available to us to slow this thing down” pic.twitter.com/8I52Q43050

— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) January 13, 2022

that sounds like a George W Bush quote

Probably Harris should have asked @craigmelvin how he thinks the administration's strategy on covid should change and how he'd make that happen. Chances are he'd have no idea what should be done or realistically could be done.

pic.twitter.com/XgO3fVNvPg

— chas (@scabellumpedum) January 13, 2022

It’s not that dudes job!!! Wtf? Xp

all we are is dust in the wind dude

- veep Kamala Harris

holy shit we are in trouble

prompted by thinking of how terrible of badly harris would get her ass kicked, and how i keep reading all these little media pieces trying to make harris 2024 happen seem even halfway plausible

fuck man, fuck

It’s not that dudes job!!! Wtf?

You and the interviewer both seem to think there must be something really effective that they aren't trying. What is that based on? No one anywhere is solving this virus by some new bit of strategizing that we just haven't been smart enough to emulate. wtf do you expect them to do differently?

otoh, Harris did an amazingly bad job of communicating that reality. She face planted in the worst possible way. It was painful to watch. It was totally incompetent communication.

No one anywhere is solving this virus by some new bit of strategizing that we just haven't been smart enough to emulate.

what about the ones who are doing it with old bits of strategising

You and the interviewer both seem to think there must be something really effective that they aren't trying.

Had they paid people to get vaccinated, we'd be in a much better position.

If only Milo was in charge.

lol what would he do? worse?

this is such a massive fuck you after spending the election promising PLANZ. but, as others have noted, it’s probably a good thing for the Democratic Party to just start leveling w folks: there’s not much we’re “allowed” or even would want to do if we could. start bootstrapping, plebs.

anyway, not my problem. they want to keep feathering the nests of the already safe and comfortable? cool guys thanks I guess

Yes, I believe most of us would do much worse.

vhs that’s a stupid thought experiment bc we’re not in charge of policy and also communication isn’t an essential part of our public-facing jobs

Good communication, bad communication, when a significant percentage of this country refuses to get a vaccine or wear a mask or basically do anything you ask them to do, you might as well not say anything.

from what i can tell vaccine outreach works and is a much better use of time and resources than complaining about antivaxxers

what do i know though, if i were joe biden i'd be handling this pandemic much worse

I'd really like to know what vaccine outreach would work a year+ into having vaccines available. For example (keeping it local), the whole Chicago public schools mess. The teachers walked out because (among other reasons) they didn't feel safe. One reason they're not safe is because so few of their students are vaccinated. And then the teachers go back and *some kids* staged a walkout, because *they* don't feel safe. Good for them, I guess, but why aren't *they* getting vaccinated, then? I did a quick search and found this from a few days ago:

At Manley Career Academy High School on Chicago’s West Side, only 10% of students are fully vaccinated against COVID-19. That’s a sharp contrast with Lane Tech High School on Chicago’s North Side where 83% of students have received both doses of the coronavirus vaccine.

Even at the district’s regional vaccination hubs – created to make COVID vaccines more accessible to students — rates swing widely from 56% at Theodore Roosevelt High School on the Northwest Side to 19.6% at Chicago Vocational Career Academy on the Far South Side.

Which begs a couple of questions, not just "how do we get the other 90% of kids at Manley to get vaccinated," but "what the hell, Lane Tech, you're being held up as an exemplar of privilege and even *you* have 20% unvaxxed!?" Like, what isn't being done or is not being done right? Honest question, I have no idea. There have been clinics, there have been mass vax sites, there have been pop-ups, and so on. I'm volunteering at a booster clinic in an hour or so, and they emailed us to help spread the word, because not all of the appointment slots have been taken!

I stepped away from political podcast listening as of yesterday (hiatus) but something someone said on one of the last ones really struck me, paraphrased a bit: “what we lack right now in American society and culture is any sense of order, and when we’re missing order, people get nervous.”

This feeling in my view predates the pandemic somewhat but feels right. There’s a very real sense of anarchy.

Case in point:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said one of his biggest regrets in office was not speaking out "much louder" in March 2020, when former President Donald Trump advised the nation to stay home to slow the fast-spreading coronavirus.

DeSantis, a close ally of Trump, said he was involved in the early days of the White House's pandemic response and had been offering advice to the President. But he was surprised when Trump made the decision that led to much of the US economy shutting down.

"I never thought in February, early March, that (coronavirus) would lead to locking down the country," the Republican governor told the hosts of the conservative podcast "Ruthless" during an episode recorded Thursday. "I just didn't. I didn't think that was on the radar."

Related, I think the/a problem is, no surprise, the hard march over the last few decades toward "states rights" as an all encompassing conservative/right wing mantra. It's made red states redder and stronger (and stronger willed), blue states more insular/isolated, and exaggerated and amplified regional politics. So, yeah, some sense of anarchy is definitely in play, underscored by states (and the Supremes, among others) actively working to undermine the federal government. When Roe is overturned or kneecapped this summer we'll get an even clearer picture of what jigsaw puzzle anarchy in this country really looks like.

Good morning!

Where’s the congressional Trump subpoenas?

Ooh, a subpoena, I'm so scared

what about the ones who are doing it with old bits of strategising

I have no idea who they are and what they're doing. enlighten me.

Yeah no one could have ever predicted a new strain after there had already been more then one strain. How about not abandoning the testing program they were talked about setting up? Contacts tracing? What about being on the same page as your CDC? Do you really think they are doing the best job possible when this is what they fucking ran on?

So like half the country won’t get vaxxed but there is a whole other half trying to do the right things and they don’t have all the tools that should be available.

Had they paid people to get vaccinated, we'd be in a much better position.

As you may recall, quite a few governors pursued this policy last June and July, using federal funds that were provided by a relief bill passed by the Dem Congress. They all abandoned the policy when it became clear that whatever marginal increase in vaccination rates it inspired had been exhausted.

But maybe you were thinking about bigger sums than were already tried. Let's make it $5K per each newly vaxxed holdout. Only problem is that if you want to increase the bounty to that level, first you'd need Congressional approval, including our dear friends Manchin & Sinema, or else you need republicans breaking ranks.

Next you'd have to deal with the massive political fallout among tens of millions of the already vaccinated, angry that the anti-vaxxer jackasses all raked in a huge pile of loot as a reward for being anti-social jackasses while they were never paid a dime. If you try to deal with that by giving everyone $5k, see problem number one, above.