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

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.

lol @ preemptively blaming Manchin for failure to enact policy that Biden has never suggested and has no interest in pursuing. Sure is convenient to have a fall guy like that, huh?

The detour into 'if you cancel student debt then people who've paid their student loans off will be mad'-land is some top shelf shelf aimlessing tho.

best thing would have been to brand the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines the “MAGA” and the “America is Great Because America is Good”. leave it to the two pharmas to decide which will be which. then pay Trump $$$ to pump the MAGA vax on Fox and at rallies, even let him claim he personally oversaw its development in the lab.

we would have been at 90% by June

as you read this, ask yourself, what should joe biden have done differently

The setbacks for Biden last week came from every direction. Inflation last year hit a 40-year high. The Supreme Court blocked his vaccine-or-test mandate for employees of large companies while upholding the mandate for health-care workers. He struggled to defend against criticism that his administration had no plan to make coronavirus testing easily available and that it was providing confusing guidance about dealing with the omicron variant. Talks with the Russians aimed at avoiding war in Ukraine broke off with no apparent progress.

And then there was the issue of voting rights.

The president traveled to Atlanta to pump for two pieces of long-stalled voting legislation, the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. Instead of being welcomed by allies, he found voting rights activists in Georgia choosing not to show up. Their absence was embarrassing for the White House while unhelpfully highlighting the lack of a strategy to enact either bill.

Biden’s speech in Georgia was rhetorically red-hot, as when he said, “Do you want to be the side of Dr. King or George Wallace? Do you want to be on the side of John Lewis or Bull Connor? Do you want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?”

A week earlier, Biden had won praise for a tough speech on the anniversary of the assault on the Capitol in which he repeatedly called out Trump, though not by name, and issued a vigorous defense of democracy under threat.

The Georgia speech prompted a far different reaction. Republicans panned it, and while many Democrats praised Biden for the forcefulness, even though some of them suggested he had gone too far with his words. The speech was meant as a rallying cry for the Democratic base, demonstrating Biden’s passion on the issue. As a piece of rhetorical persuasion, it appeared to have the opposite effect by hardening the opposition.

On Thursday, Biden met with Senate Democrats, having called for a change in the filibuster rules to help ease passage of the legislation. Before he even arrived, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) delivered a speech on the Senate floor outlining again her firm opposition to changing the rules, a position she shares with Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.).

Her speech erased any doubt about the fate of the legislation. Leaving the meeting with the senators, Biden told reporters: “I hope we can get this done. The honest to God answer is, I don’t know whether we can get this done.” The Senate will vote next week with the outcome seemingly preordained.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/sundaytakebidenfirstyear-presidency/2022/01/15/57c5fbfe-7610-11ec-bc13-18891499c514_story.html

Biden and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week

Firstly, to Aimless and everyone else asking what could be done: there's plenty that could be done, but politicians don't give a flying fuck about citizens (much less undocumented people) of this country, only about growth growth growth growth growth and fattening donor wallets, not to mention their own.

In any reasonable country with any sort of moral compass, people would be getting paid to stay home, and anyone working in *Actually* essential industries would be getting triple pay AND hazard pay, tests would be available everywhere all the time, and so on and on and on.

The US government has the money to do this, just not the will.

Founded on enslavement and death, and will probably end that way too, despite what leftists have been warning and suggesting for years.

“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.

― Legalize Suburban Benches (Raymond Cummings), Saturday, January 15, 2022 6:11 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Anarchy is good, actually, and what you are describing is disorder. They're not the same. Anarchists love sitting through boring meetings, reading obscure theorists, smashing bank windows, and beating up fascists.

Disorder is not surprising when the social contract has been irrevocably broken, and anyone with any sense understands that this is so. There is no collective, there is no community, and there is no "us" or "we" the people, and *that isn't the fault of the people, because they're simply responding to conditions outside of their control.*

I wish this weren't so, but it's what I see when I walk anywhere in my city, and it's what I hear from friends elsewhere, too.

there's plenty that could be done, but politicians don't give a flying fuck about citizens

so what you're saying here is that what you believe "could be done" first entails changing the entire system and everyone who runs it. ok. but that "could be" seems rather remote in the time scale required to do much about a virus that is infecting 700,000 people a day.

You're literally caping for a government that has said to its citizens "get back to work or die, you motherfucking unwashed plebes"

Sure is convenient to have a fall guy like that, huh?

I think that if you examined your own posts over the past year that you are quite willing to designate your own convenient fall guy and assign blame just as readily. my fall guy at least has the attribute of having publically and proudly obstructed what your fall guy has proposed.

anarchy is not good, actually

Seriously, though, Aimless, what I cannot comprehend is how after nearly two years, it seems like not much has changed. Placing the onus of that on Sinema or Manchin or Biden or any number of republicans or anti-vaxxers or whatever is convenient scapegoating for what is, at its core, *a massive failure of the US government to educate, protect, and care for its citizens*. Saying, "well that's not the way the system works" doesn't change the absolute immensity of the US government's failure.

anarchy is not good, actually

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Saturday, January 15, 2022 10:35 AM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Whatever, lib

Well if is really their best efforts than as we say “good luck USA”

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

― Van Horn Street, Sunday, January 16, 2022 12:15 AM (four hours ago)

worse than this guy?

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

just checking - you believe that no countries or territories are handling their pandemic response better than the US, or that none of them are handling it differently?

You're literally caping for a government...

I am describing the situation as I see it, not approving of it or the results. I fail to see how calling Harris's response a 'totally incompetent faceplant' amounts to literally caping for the government. I do see a hell of a lot of unspoken assumption that this pandemic and the havoc it is causing could all be cleaned up and solved in a calm, rational manner just by summoning the correct balance of political will, scientific know-how and fiscal policy, and all that stands in the way is a bunch of venal and incompetent politicians.

My basic point isn't that venal and corrupt politicians aren't a problem. They are. The republicans are almost uniformly venal and corrupt, but having marginally fewer venal and corrupt democrats doesn't exactly amount to a ringing endorsement of that party.

My point is more that, in the case of this deadly pandemic, the nature of the problem means the solution is not as simple as installing a better social system run by better people. That would go a tremendous distance toward solving dozens of social ills we all suffer, but it doesn't solve a raging pandemic that throws out variants like omicron. That's just reality, as demonstrated by looking at every nation and culture on earth that is trying to deal with this virus.

You may now all resume correcting my many flawed ideas.