Where Are We Runnin’? - American Politics Thread, May 2022

"talking" ... I can't see him getting 10 Republican votes, or Manchin & Sinema

It's so dumb the GOP can't even get behind universal background checks/closing the 'gun show loophole.'

All the lobbying money should be behind it - it pushes people to buy new, it's a boon to gun store owners (if you want to sell a gun you take it to a shop and have them do the background check/transfer it, free $25-50 for the shop for doing one sheet of paperwork and a phone call). But they're absolutely shit scared of how their voters would respond.

than I have ever seen since Sandy Hook.

Yes! they want to talk! and talk and talk! until the heat dies down and then they'll do fuck all. So it will all be just like after Sandy Hook.

but that was just talk. this time, it's talk with a little bonus ingredient they like to call "can-do"

man and so much legislation and change happened in the wake of sandy hook too, things are finally looking up

the reality is that the Republican party has no future in power if any part of their current base becomes alienated. they cannot win squat unless they maintain the full allegiance of the gun nuts, white supremacists, dominionists, anti-abortion fanatics and neo-nazis, so the party is captive to the worst elements of the population. meaning the big business community is now captive to them, too.

time was when the Republican party confidently thought it could control its fringe, win elections, throw them a few bones and run the country as they pleased. now the fringe controls the party and no one has the courage to jump off the fascism train.

“Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” — Benito Mussolini

What’s a Mussolini?

Maggie Smith's tea partner

Worth $500 on Jeopardy.

A hard read but an important one.

https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/texas-leaders-children-uvalde-shooting/?fbclid=IwAR1JEcVZw_hF9ACRKjlp4iPGFdios6VwozJkqWMkUPELecFGk3U8_i22JYQ

sometimes i get caught in thinking about how we digest major news before it happens. you may have occasionally seen the first few run-on sentences of posts on the subject that usually end, several posts later, with me declaring that i'm going to get off the computer today and get to work on something more worthwhile.

just curious, though. when this SC roe v wade overturning comes out this summer (in late June, i expect?), does anyone think the decision's "rollout" and the public response to it will be any different than if it hadn't leaked in full months earlier? will the public response to the official decision be less passionate and raw because we've all been coping and adjusting and preparing for this new world for months now? will it be more passionate and raw because we all know what complete bullshit this is, that it goes against what most people in this country except for white christians want, and because there has been time to prepare a response to the decision that everyone knows is coming? or it will be about the same?

(please don't get hung up on adjectives like "passionate" and "raw", please don't let semantics get in the way of what i think i'm clearly trying to get at, please substitute other words or ideas so that the question makes any kind of sense)

I think it'll be plenty passionate and raw or whatever adjectives you prefer. Not least because in a lot of states — depending on how exactly the opinion is worded — it's going to set in motion the enactment of automatic abortion bans. So you'll have both the big-picture raw passion over the core issues, but also a whole lot of fervor in individual states as various kinds of restrictions are put in place and abortion clinics are forced to cease operating.

If anything, I think the leak has better primed everyone on all sides for all of those fights.

yep, that's how I see things over here

NEW: K-pop group BTS will join press sec. Karine Jean-Pierre at 2:30 p.m. ET for today's briefing, "where the Grammy-nominated musical group will deliver brief remarks," according to a White House official. https://t.co/ydQFimPtiX

— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) May 31, 2022

Calling out the BTS Stan Army is honestly not a bad midterm strategy.

K-Corn Pop

The House January 6 Committee admitted temporary defeat, of a sort, to a panel of three Trump-appointed DC circuit court judges, who have temporarily blocked their efforts to obtain the Republican Party’s email-marketing data from the company Salesforce. Their intervention will make it impossible for the committee to obtain proprietary information—about how (and how well) the RNC used lies about the 2020 election to raise money and mobilize would-be insurrectionists—ahead of scheduled public hearings in June

https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/29/politics/january-6-committee-rnc-data/index.html

Someone else start the June thread

The Fall of Roe v Wade: US Politics, June 2022