U.S. Politics, November 2022: “I don’t know, you hear the same things I do”

^^yes!

👍🏽

So here's something darkly humorous...the Respect for Marriage Act is being referred to as the "same-sex marriage bill" but it also has repercussions for interracial marriages. Which means Mitch McConnell voted against protections for interracial marriage...while being in one. If I though this would provoke even one minute's conversation in their house, I'd be laughing harder, but his wife knows the rules of the game as well as he does.

It's crazy to look at the debris of House GOP speakers from molester Hastert through Boehner and Ryan and now McCarthy and how badly they controlled their caucuses. Hastert may've been the best only because Bush gave the orders.

DeLay was the real power in the Hastert years

And fucking Schumer didn't do this in 2018 like Pelosi did.

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/12/12/us/politics/12dc-nancy/12dc-nancy-superJumbo.jpg

And she ripped up a sitting president's speech in front of the camera for the world to see. I mean.

I don't love Pelosi but she was legit. Politics is hard, and she was good at it.

A dissenting opinion from Perry Bacon Jr.: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/17/nancy-pelosi-speaker-era-failure/

thanks for the dm armond

Every time I forget myself and think something like, "oh well at least Armond isn't praising the works of Dinesh D'Souza," I remember ... oh yeah, it doesn't matter:

Sick of the Parkland Puppets yet? Why their ubiquitous presence on TV news shows? Who's their publicist? Obviously not just being picked up off the street, no 16-year-old has quick access to network news producers. Clearly, some PR exec is handling these Alt-Left kids. pic.twitter.com/wJEjcuKKgo

— Armond White (@3xchair) February 20, 2018

OK, stop.

Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert, a renowned conservative firebrand whose combative style helped define the new right, is likely headed to an automatic recount in her bid to fend off a surprisingly difficult challenge by a Democratic businessman from the ritzy ski town of Aspen.

The Associated Press has declared the election in Colorado's 3rd Congressional District too close to call. AP will await the results of a potential recount to call the race. With nearly all votes counted, the incumbent Boebert leads Democrat Adam Frisch by 0.16 percentage points, or 551 votes out of nearly 327,000 votes counted.

That’s so ridiculous close!

Good luck Frisch and USA

Eh, that was also the margin in Bush-Gore in Florida, right? And recounting the entire state didn't make up the difference. That's a lot of votes to flip in a recount.

Lol

Biggs is a no. Gaetz is a no. Good seems to be a no. At 221, he can lose three. Lots and lots of twists and turns expected between now and then. https://t.co/E22vXHb7jG

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) November 18, 2022

Biggs Wasserman has seen enough

Eh, that was also the margin in Bush-Gore in Florida, right? And recounting the entire state didn't make up the difference. That's a lot of votes to flip in a recount.

a full-state recount would have given Gore the win.

which Gore, master tactician, insisted wasn't necessary

and, it being Florida, 18 counties didn't conduct the recounts required by law.

Yes, right, but still — that was millions of votes, is my point. Changing a 500-vote margin in a House district race seems really unlikely.

I'm happy for Boebert to be made nervous. I just don't think she'll lose.

agree

she seems like the kind of person who might respond to a close win by not running next time tbh.

She'll eventually become western Colorado's answer to Sarah Palin.

which Colorado needed

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/11/18/house-dems-leadership-roles-pelosi-00069334

“Dems in Array”

... of shapes and sizes

Lauren Boebert’s Rival, Adam Frisch, Concedes Their Colorado House Race

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/18/us/politics/lauren-boebert-colorado-frisch.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

NEWS: AG Garland has appointed a special counsel to determine whether Donald Trump should face charges in Jan. 6 and Mar-a-Lago probes.

Details TK w/ @joshgerstein

— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) November 18, 2022

Too bad Ken Starr kicked the bucket, this is right up his alley

it took Garland 23 months to appoint a special counsel for Jan 6

more negativity:

i get that the legal system is slow and the federal government is like a giant ship that is very slow to change course

but fuck, remember january 6? anyone here remember seeing january 6 when it happened? was it not completely obvious to everyone in the fucking world, jfc

i swear the hide tag does not work, sometimes, and i can't prove it. i think it happens most often when i put the tags a line above or a line below the parts i meant to hide? or maybe i'm just incredibly bad at using the hide tags.

anyway, it's simply magical and an overall good time that a special counsel has been appointed days after trump announced he was running for president again

Sorry the whole hide tag division got fired for their posts in the ILX slack.

also, as greg sargent wrote today,

Among Democrats, the conventional reading of the incoming GOP House majority goes like this: Republicans will commence investigations with the care and judiciousness of a toddler throwing spaghetti against the wall. Most won’t stick. But if Republicans turn up something to damage Joe Biden’s presidency, they will have accomplished their mission.

That is no doubt one GOP goal. But there’s a less obvious way that Republicans can wield House probes to political advantage. If they can confuse voters — and seduce the news media — into treating any and all congressional oversight as inevitably politically motivated, they will succeed in a whole different fashion.

This goal — which entails obfuscating the basic distinction between oversight conducted in good faith and in bad — will be within reach for Republicans, due to a peculiar situation. The House select committee examining Donald Trump’s coup attempt will release its report before the end of this year, and might make criminal referrals. Those findings will be debated well into next year, while Trump is running for president.

Which means that for House Republicans, the goal of next year’s investigations will not just be to let a thousand Hunter Biden probes bloom. It will also be to discredit revelations produced by Democrats about Trump.

awesome timing to wait until the day after it was confirmed that the GOP will indeed take the house!!

If they're smart enough to know what they're doing, sure.

Prosecuting a former President has no precedent, and is fraught with risk. There was also a lot not initially known by the public about what happened on that date that slowly got disseminated during the hearings, not to mention there was a concurrent investigation of Mar-a-Lago.

Given the sensitive nature of things I'm ok with the timing of it results in something. Big if.

In re discrediting investigations overall, we've already been through bogus investigations with the Benghazi hearings and the House "Russiagate" probe. That didn't stop the Jan. 6 committee from having some impact.

FWIW, it has been pointed out that the guy they appointed, Jack Smith, once indicted a CIA Officer (and secured a conviction) for mishandling national defense information. And my man Renato tweeted that he thinks this might delay the investigation by weeks, not months, if at all.

The Bush Administration carried out an illegal rendition and torture program and faced no consequences--in fact, one of those involved later was made head of the CIA. So, I am very skeptical that Trump will face any real consequences for his many crimes.

wow, the special counsel is kind of intimidating

https://i.imgur.com/nad076J.png

donald j trump you are hereby sentenced to getting punched in the face by that guy

They could put that on pay per view.

https://d32qys9a6wm9no.cloudfront.net/images/tvs/backdrop/47/dba535d7c7576238b6cca58e8e08b01d_706x397.jpg?t=1636102095

I slept with him1

!

kinda has a Hunt for Red October vibe

dude looks a lot like Silas Weir Mitchell tbrr

kinda wild to learn Alfred slept with Rob McElhenney via this thread!