US Politics, May 2023: May 1 never happened

I was at a school board meeting last night where a woman read quotes from Frederick Douglas on free speech, and claimed that her free speech was being infringed because the board had not acted on her emails demanding that a book about a trans girl be banned from the schools.

lol

Nikki Haley in New Hampshire this morning:

"Everybody know about Dylan Mulvaney? Bud Light? That is a guy, dressed as a girl, making fun of women."

She's at Politics and Eggs, not a red meat crowd; no applause for a line that gets some elsewhere.

— David Weigel (@daveweigel) May 24, 2023

These dumbasses, the cynicism and stupidity are so intertwined I can't tell if they're honestly stupid, dishonestly playing stupid, stupidly being cynical, just cynical, etc.

“Everybody knows”

More from Gaetz, who rejects any debt limit compromise with the White House: “I think my conservative colleagues for the most part support Limit, Save, Grow, & they don't feel like we should negotiate with our hostage.”

Default would almost certainly throw US into recession

— Joseph Zeballos-Roig (@josephzeballos) May 23, 2023

gaetz forgot you're not supposed to call it a "hostage" out loud

Good morning!

Re: the Gorman complaint, can it be disallowed on the basis of the complainant saying her poem was by Oprah?

Look we all know she meant "Black lady I saw on TV," it's not like there's that many of them.

These GOP clowns, demanding all sorts of cuts yet refusing to get rid of tax loopholes and, predictably, demanding more money for the military and law enforcement. They never operate in good faith, but the current iteration really sets the standard for shamelessness.

not sure where to post this, but some Federalist Society lawyer is trying to move in next door to me. i want to die. he clerked for Scalia

iirc the best strategy is to tackle them at the earliest opportunity.

i wonder if somehow mccarthy will lose his speakership over this. due to the hostage situation internal negotiations with the freedom caucus in january, only one Under the new House rules passed Monday, a single republican can bring a motion to vacate" his office.

perhaps not during the current hostage situation with the debt ceiling, but after the fallout

The house GOP seems happy to own this, and Biden should just let them. I feel like the lesson from doing this idiocy over and over is that it always blows up in the Republicans’ faces, so they should just let that happen. Even if it means going to default.

whoops, weird copy and paste typo in my last post

i have no idea if she knows something, but this gives me some hope

Why would anyone act like Kevin McCarthy has votes right now?

He hasn’t done the work. He doesn’t have the votes for his current proposal in the Senate. He doesn’t have the votes in the House. He doesn’t even have the votes in *his own party.*

& GOP are starting to feel that

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) May 24, 2023

It's funny, I have heard McCarthy boast of the 15 or whatever votes it took for him to land the speaker gig, like it was a show of tenacity or something. But people like AOC, they see it more like it, probably really is, a guy scrambling for votes without knowing the outcome, which is a pretty undisciplined thing in Washington.

Noticed one repeated line in McCarthy’s press conference pic.twitter.com/lEY2wLst8e

— Acyn (@Acyn) May 24, 2023

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Faz7z4YUsAAPcrJ.jpg

“The off-ramp here is to solve the problem, to spend less than we spent last year," McCarthy told reporters Wednesday. "That’s not that difficult. They still want to spend more. You cannot do that. No household will do that.”

great gop political message - your household is not going to have any money. and we'll make sure the government won't help you either. and also some households are going to go ahead and spend more money, like our own households

if my roof is leaking I will spend the money to fix my roof before my possessions are ruined and I have nothing of value

that's the thing these bozos always miss in a metaphor, they assume the value given by government is neutral and not essential to stabilizing the rest of the system. or they resent that it's the case and would rather things crumble

Also the rather foolish notion that dispensing money is the same thing as setting money on fire. In fact, when you spend money you actually put it into circulation so that other people can use it.

I regularly hand money to people other than myself. Then they do the same thing with it! Magical.

Yes, but if we give it to the gubmint, the gubmint will give it to someone undeserving.

...which is, paradoxically, probably better for the economy!

Poor people spend their money almost immediately. They have to pay rent and buy grocerie. So that money goes right back into the hands of the powerful.

You know who doesn't immediately circulate cash back into the economy? Rich people.

it's almost like that lapsed child tax credit helped get the economy to where it is now

Worth watching.

Wow Democrats just laughed at Marjorie Taylor Greene when she asked them to abide by decorum of the House pic.twitter.com/2jrLFyAEWg

— Acyn (@Acyn) May 24, 2023

lol

This link works: https://t.co/9PzIJkseYI

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) May 24, 2023

DeSantis' links have crashed all day.

of course announcing your presidential campaign on spaces was a dumb idea, but nothing will ever beat the time in 2015 when Bobby Jindal put a hidden cam in a tree to record himself telling his kids he’s running for president and they were completely underwhelmed pic.twitter.com/e3OdFJMkgB

— keyvan (@still_oppressed) May 25, 2023

really wish people would stop pretending that trump's fake twitter spaces thing was actually funny. every joke is right in the screen shot, no extra jokes added.

From that Jindal stunt to the commercial DeSantis filmed of his reading Trump's books to his kids in 2018, these GOP people are sociopaths.

I'm not sure I've ever seen the occupant of the Chair openly mocked like this before. pic.twitter.com/QJweFzzKLS

— Jamie Dupree (@jamiedupree) May 25, 2023

really wish people would stop pretending that trump's fake twitter spaces thing was actually funny

We also want to lay down a marker once again and tell you that the anger in the House Dem Caucus right now is palpable. Many rank-and-file Democrats feel as if they’re going to be asked to vote for a package that is slanted toward GOP demands with little for them in return

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) May 25, 2023

Stewart Rhodes sentenced to 18 years for seditious conspiracy.

lol the palpable anger of the House Democrats. Oooooooh they’re gonna have steam pouring out their ears when they… line up and vote like Biden needs them to vote.

I mean, what's the alternative? Let their Republican "colleagues" drive the economy off the cliff?

Sure, say that instead of blowing smoke about how mad they are about cutting social spending now and how hard Biden’s going to have to work to get their votes.

I mean, what's the alternative? Let their Republican "colleagues" drive the economy off the cliff?

This is absolutely 100% what the Dems should do.

Biden could just cite the 14th Amendment as requiring debts to be paid and then Republicans would have to challenge that in court.

McCarthy is out talking to press constantly. White House doesn’t have anyone doing that , just answering questions at press briefings . This is not helping to establish a narrative about what is happening nor is it helping the Dem congress members who Biden expects to vote for his secretly created giving in to extortion deal if it happens

Yeah, idgi.

This is absolutely 100% what the Dems should do.

I can't tell whether you're serious.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/05/24/debt-ceiling-negotiations-house-democrats/

House Democratic lawmakers are voicing frustration over President Biden’s approach to negotiating a debt ceiling deal with Republicans, worrying that their priorities are not being championed aggressively enough and that Biden hasn’t more forcefully pushed back publicly against Republican demands.

This is absolutely 100% what the Dems should do.

If the end result of negotiations is a package of cuts and freezes that are disastrous for households under the median income, then they may as well let the Republicans inflict that disaster unaided. A fig leaf of a few mostly symbolic cuts would be acceptable.

Sure seems like that since Klain left as Chief of Staff, Biden's new chief of staff Zientz has been instead pushing the narrative to be bipartisan and give in to Republican demands and to go right-centrist and not aggressively push for Dem values.

Just got another 'This Link Works' email from Uncle Joe

"Hey, did I tell you the one about..."
"Yes, yes, you did.. that's a good one, haha."

This is absolutely 100% what the Dems should do.
I can't tell whether you're serious.

― immodesty blaise (jimbeaux), Thursday, May 25, 2023 2:21 PM (forty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I am 100% serious. Why give the Republicans a fig leaf? Let the Republicans take sole responsibility if they want to take people's benefits so bad that they are willing to tank the economy to do it.

Until 2011, the debt ceiling and the budget were completely and totally unrelated issues - the former completely ministerial.

The human toll of a default would likely dwarf that of the Republican cuts, even if they got them in full.

Let the Republicans take sole responsibility if they want to take people's benefits so bad that they are willing to tank the economy to do it.

The problem here is that the president is a Democrat and vast swaths of the voting public blame the president for everything that goes wrong, allowing the House nihilists to avoid most of the fallout.

The problem here is that the president is a Democrat and vast swaths of the voting public blame the president for everything that goes wrong, allowing the House nihilists to avoid most of the fallout.

This has almost always been true in the past, but the midterm election results show that a portion of the public may finally be wising the fuck up.