i saw mommy kissing santos (george)

I'm thrilled to be joined on the Science Committee by my Republican colleague Dr. George Santos, winner of not only the Nobel Prize, but also the Fields Medal - the top prize in Mathematics - for his groundbreaking work with imaginary numbers. https://t.co/RJQ7eP8n8x

— Congressman Bill Foster (@RepBillFoster) January 20, 2023

ok I'm actually starting to come around on this guy

I know everyone is talking about how George Santos wrote a fake wiki that said he appeared on Hannah Montana, but I’m obsessed with his alleged movie that starred three of the actors from Batman and Robin. pic.twitter.com/x7ugThowYA

— Collin Murr (@CollinMurr) January 21, 2023

Surprised no one has made the obvious connection between George Santos and George Soros.

this is like some Tim Heidegger shit

INDEPENDENTS DAY BY STEVEN SPILBERG

thanks for new username Anthony

Hello

If his politics weren't toxic and harmful (just by association) I would be enjoying the lolz more. It would be a comedy gold mine.

a real movie, with a completely different cast: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invasion_(film)

I think Santos is a perfect culmination of the Trump years, specifically w/r/t how the US blithely assumed "checks and balances" would protect us from bad-faith actors but, it turned out, were often useless because it didn't account for a group in power becoming craven evil-doers--I assume due to some naïve belief in the American people not electing such folks, or something. ("The system will regulate itself.")

Despite Santo being entirely fictional, he's sitting there in Congress, with no consequences beyond embarrassment, because the only check involves getting his fellow craven evil-doers to voluntarily give up a bit of power by expelling him.

naïve belief in the American people not electing such folks, or something

Reading backwards, recently, I realize I had something like this naïve belief circa 2015.

It's not that I believed the American people to be good (in a moral sense) or serious (in an intellectual sense). Nor was it that I believed institutions and norms would save us. After all, I sit (and type) on Virginian soil that has soaked up plenty of blood from 400+ years of fundamental disagreements about institutions and norms.

It's more that I underestimated humans' capacity to have adolescent nihilism last into adulthood.

The old right wing was cravenly evil, but at least it wore the trappings of an ideological foundation. It made claims to a higher purpose, albeit misguided and disingenuous.

This new stuff (Trump, Boebert, MTG, Santos, Crenshaw, Gaetz, Hawley) is just a middle finger in the air. Owning the libs uber alles.

The old right wing was cravenly evil, but at least it wore the trappings of an ideological foundation. It made claims to a higher purpose, albeit misguided and disingenuous.

I go back and forth about this, and was thinking about it recently after reading a recent Nixon biography. Was it preferable when right-wingers presented themselves like respectable politicians who paid lip service to things like civil rights or tolerating dissent by keeping their hatred coded, even when we knew they were bullshitting? Or is it "better" that the mask is off and there's no pretense about being anything aside from what they are, i.e., hateful shitheads?

it definitely seems to be better in terms of electing Democrats. on the other hand we are fighting a culture war about fuckable M&Ms right now

It's a dileM&Ma.

_The old right wing was cravenly evil, but at least it wore the trappings of an ideological foundation. It made claims to a higher purpose, albeit misguided and disingenuous._


I go back and forth about this, and was thinking about it recently after reading a recent Nixon biography. Was it preferable when right-wingers presented themselves like respectable politicians who paid lip service to things like civil rights or tolerating dissent by keeping their hatred coded, even when we knew they were bullshitting? Or is it "better" that the mask is off and there's no pretense about being anything aside from what they are, i.e., hateful shitheads?

It's a dileminema. Will the real George Santos please stand up?... Are we going to have a problem here?... y'all act like you've never seen a gay republican before...

Yeah I think on balance it’s probably a bad thing. Do we get an anti vaxx/pro horse drugs movement without Trump?

Frogbs, you say "horse drugs" like that's a bad thing

It was definitely preferable when they kept their hatred coded. The rise in hate crimes against all kinds of marginalized people is proof that letting it out of the bag has been downright awful.

They used to sell souvenirs from lynchings in this country.

Not really sure what your point is there, unperson— I, too, know the history of lynchings and racism in the US, and it is pretty demonstrable that those times never ended, but certainly became less absolutely pervasive when vocal, outspoken racism was considered uncouth at best and career-ending at worse for politicians. In recent years, it’s become normalized in ways that it hasn’t been for years, and you can see the results of that normalization of discourse.

i agree with table

outward displays of hate and racism seem to also be contagious.

xxxpost yeah, there was this naive belief not even that long ago that racists would wear the label as a badge of honor, and anybody who couched their hate in dog whistles and coded language in an attempt to shift the center of the debate (see: "argument to moderation" fallacy) to greater normalize what kind of hate is acceptable...was a small minority. which is why lots of well-meaning but hella naive people thought this shit was a thing of the past.

we saw troubling signs before Trump of people who were starting to feel a wee bit more comfortable saying things that would not have flown a decade earlier and not receive the same level of punishment that would normally be meted out. You had the New Hampshire Police Commissioner proudly call Obama the n-word and press actually gave this piece of shit way too much attention beyond the "old white racist cop is racist, house should be set on fire, back to sports and weather" treatment it deserved. The Bundys militantly usurping land that wasn't theirs, obtaining a platform to say horribly racist shit that got national press coverage, and also desecrate Native American land, and having this seen as a valid, harmless 'first Amendment protest' by the jury. Geraldo Rivera stated that Trayvon Martin was wearing "thug wear" (a fucking HOODIE) and that was why he got shot, and nothing material happened to his career.

all this shit bubbling up and then these assholes miraculously get an Islamophobic, white supremacist President, and finally make them feel comfortable saying how they really felt and jut amplify the targets on people's back. idk that this wouldn't have happened years later if Trump hadn't gotten elected, but lord did he accelerate it.

even David Duke couldn't have done for racism what Trump managed in office.

“If the candidate’s personal wealth wasn’t the source of the loan, then what was?” he asked. “The only other permissible source would be a bank, and they would require collateral… If a bank wasn’t the source… the only alternatives are illegal sources.” https://t.co/7t4FeQe5pO

— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) January 25, 2023

He had a rich uncle no one knew about

He was in a movie "“startting Uma Turman," he's got loads of dough.

resiidualls

this is a classic ILX thread title in that I already automatically think of it anytime I see his name

this is like when you're pumping gas and you want the meter to land on exactly $40... he just ordered very carefully.

The vast majority of congressional campaigns never recorded a single disbursement of $199, just below the level requiring preservation of receipts.

Santos reported 40 of them... Those included eight charges of exactly $199.99 at an Italian restaurant in Queens and another $199.99 charge at a Miami-area hotel where rooms do not usually go for less than $600 per night

In fact, his campaign accounted for roughly half of all expenses by all campaigns that cost exactly $199.99 — a statistical improbability.

I think about this thread title several times per day

Those included eight charges of exactly $199.99 at an Italian restaurant

A bottle of red, a bottle of white

All depends upon your appetite

Meet me any time you're inclined

To spend exactly $199.99

omg

maybe it's a prix fixe menu

Anthony works in the Goldman Sachs
Savin' his pennies for someday

lol

Here in DC there are lots of spaces that are just close enough to the Capitol to be convenient, but just far enough away to be legal for fundraising. Occasionally for work, I see requirements for government contractors to have X amount of office space within Y miles of a given customer.

If I were a wealthy and/or smart person, I would rent as many of these spaces as I could afford to, and sublease them to needful entities.

I would also open a restaurant that was really good at charging precise amounts to stay under campaign finance limits.

See above for why I am not a wealthy person

So he has stepped down from his committee assignments. It's a half measure at best, not sure who this is really going to please.

Santos, because now he gets a paycheck to do literally nothing.

And the committee assignments will still appear on his resume.

His resume says he's a Senator

to be fair his resume also says he was the first werewolf aboard the international space station

if george santos were a werewolf, so many things would make more sense. he'd be a hero, even

He's getting ready to change his name again

heh, siena college did a poll and it revealed that not only does everyone in santos' district hate him, but also that the voters in the district are also full of shit. makes sense!

[Siena College] did a poll and Santos currently clocks in with 7% favorability and 83% unfavorability, which is fairly poor. Even with Republicans he’s at 11%.

Generally when you poll the constituents of incumbent politicians you poll ‘approval’ rather than ‘favorability’. But I think we can likely infer that his approval is fairly low too.

But there’s more!

Then there’s ‘Should George resign?’ 78% of his constituents say “yes”.

Was it right for Kevin McCarthy to put George on Committees? 71% say “no”.

Maybe it will all blow over since voters aren’t paying much attention? Sorry, George. Fully 81% are following the Santos new “very closely” or “somewhat closely.”

Perhaps the most entertaining part of the poll is asking people how they voted. First, 89% of respondents said they voted, which means a significant percentage are liars. But it gets better. 24% said they voted for George Santos, which again means that a whole lot of them are liars or in denial. (Santos won with 54% of the vote.) 17% say they voted for another candidate. 15% refused to answer. (Who can blame them?) Notably 45% said they voted for Democrat Robert Zimmerman which is almost exactly the percentage of the vote he got. Of the 24% of voters who admitted voting for Santos, 31% say they’d still vote yes even knowing what they know now. 63% say they would not have. (What’s wrong with that 31% of the 24%?)

sorry, that's from here: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/santosmentum-78-of-constituents-say-he-should-resign

i think george santos has earned the benefit of the doubt and deserves a seven thousandth chance

dude really needs to start some gas stove culture war shit right now, that's his only way out of this

I mean I'm kind of curious what exactly it is Republican voters don't like about him. I mean I guess we all know what it really is but is this guy really more dishonest than the guy they all wish was president right now?

nobody tells george santos what to do!

In a chaotic scrum, Rep. George Santos told me “Nobody tells me to do anything I made the decision on my own that I thought best represented the interest of the voters.”

I asked if he made the decision on his own or if it was a request of Speaker McCarthy pic.twitter.com/CBTRR8Pitu

— Rachel Scott (@rachelvscott) January 31, 2023

Owww

On of the weirdest things about Santos is how much he always seems to be loving it, just bare supressing a shit-eating grin in that scrum. He reminds me of John Early's character in Search Party.

https://www.axios.com/2024/03/23/house-republicans-chaos-majority-motion-vacate

headline good: Republicans livid as chaos threatens to cannibalize House majority

final paragraph better: “Amid Friday's chaos, disgraced former Rep. George Santos announced he's leaving the Republican Party to run for Congress in New York as an independent — saying the GOP was too embarrassing.”

chaos-muppet undefeated