BURNPIT: U.S. Politics, August 2022

Ha, remember when that asshole was one of Greenwald's pet causes?

No, but I'm afraid to check.

Yeah, scroll back in the GG thread and you'll find it. I can't remember whether he managed to rope Taibbi into defending the scumbag with him, but he was all in for a little while.

https://english.alarabiya.net/News/gulf/2022/08/02/US-approves-sale-of-Patriot-missiles-to-Saudi-Arabia-THAAD-system-missiles-for-UAE

Business as usual. Tell me again how Biden is too tough on Saudi Arabia

get rid of all the gerrymandering and we've got ourselves an election folks!

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/generic-ballot/

don't know what thread to put this but it's quite good

Wow. Sandy Hook parents' lawyer is revealing that Alex Jones' lawyers sent him the contents of Jones' phone BY MISTAKE.

"12 days ago, your attorneys messed up and sent me a digital copy of every text" Jones has sent for years.

"You know what perjury is?" the lawyer asks.

— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) August 3, 2022

There's a dedicated Alex Jones thread trending, it's already there. Alex yelling "there's your Perry Mason moment," evidently unaware that it actually was one, was epic.

New — As Sinema stays mum, business groups and Rs lobby her to sink or change reconciliation bill. She asked a business group yesterday about whether the 15% tax provision was “written in a way that’s bad.” “It gave me hope,” official says. w/@arogDC https://t.co/fFNCGoKk40

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) August 3, 2022

"Is this written in a way that's bad?"

A question a child might ask, but not a childish question.

For fucks sake if she tanks this

Narrator: She did indeed tank the bill, but wore a fabulous dress while doing so.

seems like the main thing she wants is to drop the carried interest fix, which sucks but isn't outside the realm of possiblity

“I haven’t seen that,” @SenFeinstein replies when I ask about Kansas voters overwhelmingly endorsing abortion rights.

I then explained.

“Oh, I did see that,” Feinstein said. “It didn’t surprise me.”

— Matt Laslo (@MattLaslo) August 3, 2022

jeez. so she was the only one who wasn’t surprised by the magnitude of the margin and turnout in Kansas, while also not hearing about the result, while also being 168 years old

No wonder she’s a senator, that’s outstanding and hard to pull off all at once

She was with John Brown in Bleeding Kansas

McConnell Reclaims Senate Majority After Convincing Dianne Feinstein She’s Always Been Republican https://t.co/pxQFnYFZbp pic.twitter.com/ngN4NfalO4

— The Onion (@TheOnion) August 1, 2022

yeah but

fwiw, in the Meijer/Gibbs primary with the DCCC ads "criticizing" Gibbs for being way too conservative and too aligned with Trump, Gibbs ended up winning, 52% to 48%. close one

let's see if the Dem's gamble pays off

I think the following propositions are true:

1. Dems should absolutely not be spending money to boost fascists.

2. The Republican voters would have selected these people anyway.

RNC links up with ‘Stop the Steal’ advocates to train poll workers
Recordings of recruitment “summits” show party officials working with Cleta Mitchell and other leaders of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election

"2. The Republican voters would have selected these people anyway."

it's unclear if that was the case. I think those ads boosted turnout for Gibbs, he was polling behind Meijer until recently.

Every time I see Cleta Mitchell’s name I think of the Seinfeld episode with Mulva.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/will-3-pro-impeachment-house-republicans-survive-tuesdays-primaries/

Meijer, the scion of the eponymous Midwestern grocery chain family, is hoping his sizable financial advantage can save him. As of July 13, Meijer had raised $2.8 million, dwarfing the $484,000 Gibbs had brought in, and Meijer has used that money to both criticize President Biden and attack Gibbs. Meijer has lambasted Gibbs for recently moving to western Michigan from California (although Gibbs is originally from Lansing), and he’s also portrayed Gibbs as the Democrats’ “handpicked candidate” in light of the DCCC’s recent ads. Meijer has also benefited from about $3 million in outside spending, according to OpenSecrets. But with no recent polling to go on, Meijer’s fate in this race is unclear.

vs. the Dems 450k of ads that just "threw the election to Gibbs"

Meijer's district was just redistricted and he voted against the Voting Rights Act

And further, Meijer voted against the voting rights bill. This new district connects really important communities here in Grand Rapids and along the lakeshore, especially communities of color that have historically been disenfranchised from voting, even here up until recent times, and then gerrymandered out of districts where their voice can really matter. So that was another really impactful vote. To see him vote against the Voting Rights Act bill I think was really disappointing to a lot of people.

https://michiganadvance.com/2022/02/01/breaking-scholten-seeks-2nd-challenge-against-meijer-in-new-3rd-congressional-district/

Kind of sick of this bs that he's "the right kind of Republican" and we shouldn't have encouraged the psycho. . . they're all psychos

Every time I see Cleta Mitchell’s name I think of the Seinfeld episode with Mulva.

Every time I hear the name "Pat Cipollone" I get "Mista Dobalina" by Del tha Funkee Homosapien stuck in my head... glory hallestupid! Mr. Cipollone, Mr. Pat Cipollone... I don't mind it really.

Kind of sick of this bs that he's "the right kind of Republican" and we shouldn't have encouraged the psycho. . . they're all psychos

― a (waterface), Thursday, August 4, 2022

otm

The DCCC should have spent the reverse fake attacks ads on Meijer instead

Just like the mainstream press has called the late Jackie Walorski a moderate.

Seriously. Voted to repeal the ACA, anti immigrant, challenged the 2020 election, and so on.

well, seems like we all agree this was a baffling & futile waste of $450k

speaking of MI, glad to see Tlaib won

The Kansas earthquake and the possibility of a big climate bill show how Dems can galvanize young voters who are dispirited and disengaged. As the head of the Harvard Youth Poll tells us, abortion and climate are of disproportionate importance to them.https://t.co/bR8wK3E0G7

— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) August 4, 2022

"disproportionate" to what, exactly

body autonomy and burning to death in a fire take up a disproportionate amount of my brane space relative to, idk home ownership or buying diamond rings

what about Cure reissues

sorry. that "disproportionate" is a jarringly false note in an otherwise tepid hot take.

oh i know it's just like, people at WAPO doing the weebay face while looking at data makes me lol

is there a better explanation for pelosi choosing to go to taiwan, right now other than that she's doing it for her own prestige, given the strong possibility that she won't be speaker* after the mid-term? is there a diplomatic objective, greater business cooperation in southeast asia, trade, whatever, that's really pressing? is there some other reason? or does she just want a legacy international capstone project or something?

*side issue: if the GOP takes the house, of course she's out, but what are the chances of her being forced to step down if the Democrats hold the house?

and yes, i know china fucking blows, i know i know

She's been a China hawk her entire career.

chinese dissident communities also have no idea why she is doing this fwiw

I strongly doubt it was a decision made independent of the white house

pretty much the only support i've seen is from senate republicans. everyone else is just kind of like "??". her op-ed in the washpost explaining why she's going doesn't really shed much light, either. here's a "gift" link that should work: https://wapo.st/3cVzrLu

Maybe she's heavily invested in the Taiwan semiconductor sector.

Emotionally I mean, definitely not with her $180 million personal fortune.

xp moodles

i'm not sure about that! i haven't seen anyone in the white house offer much support. if anything they've just been offering apologies to China, since before it happened:

TAIPEI, Taiwan — The White House worked urgently to de-escalate tensions with China as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi met Wednesday with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen and other officials during a high-profile visit to the self-governing island against the administration’s wishes, hoping to head off a geopolitical crisis amid threats and military maneuvers by Beijing.

White House officials warned that China is preparing itself for possible aggressive actions in response to Pelosi’s visit beyond this week, and they reiterated forcefully that the Chinese Communist Party should not use the visit as a pretext to increase military activity in and around the Taiwan Strait.

...
Virtually all the senior members of President Biden’s national security team have privately expressed deep reservations about the trip and its timing, said a White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. They are especially concerned because U.S.-China tensions are already high, and Washington is seeking China’s cooperation on the war in Ukraine and other matters.

Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, spoke with his Chinese counterpart to defend Pelosi’s right to visit — as did other high-ranking officials — but even so did not think the trip was a good idea, the White House official said. Sullivan expressed concerns about Pelosi’s trip to multiple administration officials and asked for suggestions on how to dissuade her from traveling to Taiwan.

outside the box

Biden closes by urging voters to send Shapiro to Senate, and elect "that big guy" as Gov - reversing the offices Shapiro and Fetterman are actually running for

— Jonathan Tamari (@JonathanTamari) August 30, 2022

Correction: Biden referred to Fetterman as "that big ol' boy"

— Jonathan Tamari (@JonathanTamari) August 30, 2022

see it’s both sides really pic.twitter.com/yVJh5VnfuM

— Andy Downing (@andydowning33) August 29, 2022

pass. https://t.co/1XHwOkJYah

— Monica Lewinsky (she/her) (@MonicaLewinsky) August 30, 2022

We’ve terminated college accreditors that allowed colleges – like ITT and Corinthian – to defraud borrowers.
@usedgov will also publish an annual list of colleges that leave students with unmanageable debt so that students can avoid these programs.

— President Biden (@POTUS) August 29, 2022

seems good!

Those shitty for-profit colleges are/were all over Virginia. Virginia’s state laws were notoriously lax and during the 2000s they sprang up like weeds and died just as quickly after the Great Recession.

50 pro-worker actions by the Biden administration:

https://www.epi.org/publication/biden-first-18-months/

alaska's congressperson is a democrat

Breaking: Mary Peltola (D) defeats Sarah Palin (R) in the #AKAL special election.

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) September 1, 2022

I was waiting to see how that came out. A pleasant surprise.

What's the over/under on how long it takes Grizzly Mama to claim fraud?

whoa

was that expected??

it was ranked choice for the first time, so i think nobody really knew, but it seems like a surprise to me.

probably the begich (the other republican, who didn't make it into the run off) would have beaten peltola. but it was palin vs a democrat, and 50% (!!!) of begich voters refused to rank palin second.

Voters who went for Nick Begich split as follows in the final round of ranked choice voting:

50% Palin
29% Peltola
21% exhausted ballots

I recreated what we were shown here: pic.twitter.com/wikJGjdWcd

— Taniel (@Taniel) September 1, 2022

All three are running again in November, right?

alaska's congressperson is a democrat

Breaking: Mary Peltola (D) defeats Sarah Palin (R) in the #AKAL special election.
— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) September 1, 2022
― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Wednesday, August 31, 2022 7:07 PM (forty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

You love to see it

I really do

I know Palin is a god awful candidate but wow

damn, that is some good ol' fashioned good news, and i also love to see it

Lol

The amount of land mass represented by House Democrats just went up by 104%. #AKAL

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) September 1, 2022

Hell of a thread eh Joe

Police in Columbus, Ohio shot and killed an unarmed black man who was laying in bed today. They shot him within one second of opening the bedroom door. His name Donovan Lewis.

— Erick Bellomy 🏳️‍🌈 (@erickbellomy) August 31, 2022

Quite the trend in O-HI-O

Got A Thread For That: Ongoing U.S Police Brutality and Corruption Discussion Thread

Belongs here too

Yeah, but this thread's probably getting locked tomorrow.

Why is everyone so mean?? US Politics: September 2022