US Politics, May 2024: They Shoot Puppies, Don't They?

Here we go!

ace title

Good afternoon!

Dems are gonna help save Mike Johnson, which will make him even more unpopular with the far right kooks.. interesting to see where this goes

Love the title, well done

Republican leaders, including former president Donald Trump, had reportedly pressured the Georgia congresswoman to back down from attempting to remove Mr Johnson, concerned that a Republican power struggle would harm the party's prospects in November's general election...

she doesn't give a shit

lol

“I didn’t eat my dog. I didn’t shoot my dog. I loved my dog, and my dog loved me,” Romney said, on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, as reported by HuffPost.

Romney would eat a dog.

Where’s the Commemorative Trump On Trial NFTs for $599 each?

MTG is clearly running for President in 2028.

where's the dog tags?

https://static.stereogum.com/uploads/2012/08/dont-roof-rack-me-bro.jpeg

It's starting...

Arizona lawmakers on Wednesday voted to repeal a Civil War-era law that banned nearly all abortions, after a pair of Republican senators joined with all Democrats.

The Republican-controlled Senate had enough votes to pass legislation repealing the 1864 law by a razor-thin margin, 16-14. All 14 Democrats were joined by two Republicans: state Sens. Shawnna Bolick and T.J. Shope.

All 14 Democrats were joined by two Republicans: state Sens. Shawnna Bolick and T.J. Shope.

Who will immediately receive primary challenges for their trouble.

well, anyone who's too lilly-livered to uphold 1864 statutes probably deserves to be primaried

An interesting list of things maybe possibly of importance to Americans, if only they knew about them:

Nearly every day for the past month, the Biden administration has made an announcement about a finalized regulation. They have completed a minimum staffing ratio for nursing homes, conserved 13 million acres in the Alaskan Arctic, designated “forever chemicals” as hazardous substances, invested in rooftop solar panels in low-income communities, banned most noncompete agreements at U.S. businesses, directed federal agencies to purchase sustainable products, and closed the “gun show loophole,” to name just a few.

Why has April been a month of regulatory action? The administration surely wants to show key constituencies that they have made progress. But policymakers are also racing to get regulations done to protect them from being overturned in the next Congress.

The threat depends on the outcome of the 2024 election. If Donald Trump and the Republicans sweep back into power, they would have the ability to use the Congressional Review Act (CRA), a 1996 law that allows Congress to overturn federal agency rules through a streamlined process. Unlike most legislation, CRA resolutions can pass with a simple majority in the Senate, giving a future Republican majority a path to quickly show progress early in 2025.

But because of the timeline outlined in the CRA, any rule finalized before late May (roughly speaking; this is a moving target) is safe from being reversed by Congress. So agencies have clearly been told to get their most important rules out the door now.

In other words, the CRA is so powerful that it virtually shuts down executive branch rulemaking authority, months before the end of a presidential term.

But, you know, the most important issue in America — the most important thing in the entire world — is what's going on in Gaza, so never mind.

Voters are voters and we don't get to decide who or why they vote or don't vote. Votes are earned whether we like it or not. I've seen quite a bit of voter shaming for people saying they will vote for Biden, and now I'm starting to see it creep in for people who say they won't vote for Biden too. I don't think either are persuasive approaches

But, you know, the most important issue in America — the most important thing in the entire world — is what's going on in Gaza on American college campuses, so never mind.

But, you know, the most important issue in America — the most important thing in the entire world — is what's going on in Gaza, so never mind.

what's going on in Gaza?

KAITLAN COLLINS: So you agree that people who break in and vandalize a building should be prosecuted?

JD VANCE: Yes

COLLINS: Ok, I'm just checking, because you helped raise money for people who did so on January 6 pic.twitter.com/nEztSPrQlC

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 2, 2024

ZING

Unperson, can you provide the link for that story? I’d like to share it around

i'm pro-JD Vance only because that movie about him was one of the funniest fucking things i have ever seen in my life. kudos to him and his life.

https://www.awardsdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Glenn-Close-Hillbilly-Elegy.jpg

Raymond:

https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2024/05/the-regulatory-push

the most important thing in the entire world — is what's going on in Gaza

... yes.

Thanks, Alfred!

I remember when JDV was always on NPR, Fresh Air, etc., the liberal media nearly swooned over him and his sad, soulful coal miner neighbors... he really fleeced everybody

Always Be Grifting.

the most important thing in the entire world — is what's going on in Gaza

... yes.

― papal hotwife (milo z)

otm

x3

I posted my JDV story a while back, perhaps it's time to rescreen...?

In local (to me) news, Biden has nominated an attorney for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes to replace Judge Dana Christensen in the U.S. District Court of Montana.

Danna Jackson, a former U.S. attorney who served as chief legal counsel to the Montana Department of Natural Resources from 2016 to 2021, would be the first Native American federal judge in Montana if her nomination is confirmed. She worked as an attorney within the U.S. Department of the Interior from 2021 to 2023.

...

Jackson, who grew up on the Flathead Indian Reservation, has spent the bulk of her career focused on tribal law and natural resource issues.

Fun Fact: JD Vance (then known as "James") lived* across the street from my buddy in Bernal Heights, SF about 8-10 years ago, back when he was just a garden variety techbro.

*501 Franconia St for those Zillow curious.

Kinda crazy what a decade can do (though he was working for Thiel at the time so he probably drank the koolaid and some).

― citation needed (Steve Shasta), Tuesday, June 13, 2023 12:21 PM (ten months ago)

Yeah that's what was surprising to my (longtime neighborhood resident) friend who said JD and his POC wife (note: they both used different names back then, is that a MAGA thing?) were active in their neighborhood projects (cleanups of neighborhood open space/public stairwells, garden) and seemed pretty non-sociopathic. Then they moved away and JD grew a beard and adopted this whole hillbilly rustbelt salt-of-the-earth persona.

― citation needed (Steve Shasta), Tuesday, June 13, 2023 12:34 PM (ten months ago)

what were the names they used?

Lee Oswald.

Two months away from posting about how commies want to make you live on crickets and cockroaches

Pains me deeply to agree with Crash-and-Burn Ron, but I co-sign this.

As a member of @SenateAgDems and as some dude who would never serve that slop to my kids, I stand with our American ranchers and farmers. 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/zZLYf8t5lI

— Senator John Fetterman (@SenFettermanPA) May 2, 2024

Lab-grown meat hasn't suffered the pain and fear that makes a steak so juicy

Let's make some things up for DeSantis to ban... uh, 'Co-Ed Checkout Lines' , 'All Ages Parks', 'Transparent Window Panes'

some "lab grown" meat Donnie and Johnnie can feel free to snack on:

Hungry? Perhaps you'd like a POOP BURGER

what were the names they used?

― I? not I! He! He! HIM! (akm), Thursday, May 2, 2024 12:47 PM (nine minutes ago)

JD went by James and his wife (Usha) went by Dawn.

PLEASE JUST BUY MY FUCKING BOOK

“You know how the fake news works,” Noem told Fox News. “They leave out some or most of the facts of a story, they put the worst spin on it. And that’s what’s happened in this case.

“I hope people really do buy this book and they find out the truth of the story because the truth of the story is that this was a working dog and it was not a puppy. It was a dog that was extremely dangerous.”

How is it 'fake news' if it's your own book? She admit it!

Noem's going to have to look to any distraction she can gin up given this:

https://apnews.com/article/south-dakota-abortion-rights-ballot-initiative-1add60de74f1985a19d01084d796297d

“You know how the fake news works,” Noem told the Fake News Network.

I heard the Biden statement on the radio, it was extremely short and said about what I'd expect it to say. Some definite needle threading there. someone asked him at the end if he thought the nation guard should be called in and he said "NO". It was like he wanted to get the fuck out of the room.

(biden statement on the protests, sorry, I can't keep track of threads anymore)

Andy's thread title is gr8 but here comes a late entry fromm WaPo:

Trump frequently meandered and interrupted his text with playful asides — when reciting grocery prices, he added, “I love chicken.”

Thanks for ruining chicken for me

KFC isn't chicken.

I actually agree w unperson in that, as horrible as the situation in Gaza is, there are other things of equal importance.

He does love chicken, though (in the paedo sense).

I was was just looking at videos of European tourist destinations packed with Americans and they didn't exactly look like ulta-wealthy people to me

a bunch of trump voters mad that it's not as easy to by a new care every 3-4 years

buy*

i sell cares

lol ugh

I wonder how many people think stocks are down because they got into crypto at the wrong time and fucked up

BUY THE DIP

Definitely the economy doesn't seem great to many people based on their personal experiences. But the larger thing going on with that poll imo is just the ongoing hyper-partisanalization of reality. If 50 percent of people believe unemployment is at a 50-year high, that's mostly because 40 percent of them are just mindlessly filling in whatever answer is worst for Biden. That kind of thing makes these polls sort of useless.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Thursday, May 23, 2024 11:22 AM (twenty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah I think this is the long and short of it. I mean yes they are "uneducated" on what's really going on but that's because they spend hours a day watching a network that's been telling them that the Mar-a-Lago raid was actually an assassination attempt.

But the larger thing going on with that poll imo is just the ongoing hyper-partisanalization of reality.

this is part of it, but the media's failures of omission and commission when reporting objective realities enable accelerate that process. for better or worse swing voters are disengaged people who mostly trust the media when they encounter it, and care about things like "the economy" (jn the sense these facts describe it). the media enabling a belief that for example, price cuts are evidence of inflation, is how those swing voters stop being swing voters.

'Dow Jones tops 40,000 for the first time - here's why it's bad for Biden'

look forward to electing a President who will nominate one or two more judges who will hasten the erosion of worker's rights and expand protections for corporations.

hell, who needs the ADA, and discrimination protections

the market will correct

I was was just looking at videos of European tourist destinations packed with Americans and they didn't exactly look like ultra-wealthy people to me

"Americans dress like shit everywhere they go" is a whole other phenomenon, unrelated to the economy.

Dressing like shit is how we show our contempt for the rest of the world

I don't really read CNN or the NYT much but they've been really bad lately, CNN last week had a front page article detailing how the case against Trump had completely unraveled due to Cohen misremembering something (the prosecution provided video evidence the next court day), then yesterday NYT reports on student loan forgiveness but points out every paragraph that Biden promised more than he delivered, omitting the fact that Congressional Republicans and Trump's Supreme Court have obstructed everything he's tried to do, forcing him to find all sorts of weird loopholes. WaPo reports on how young people don't like Biden's approach to Gaza but will then public an op-ed arguing all Jews should vote Trump because Biden allowed all these student protests to happen. they really really want the horse race.

I had a threesome with Jake Gyllenhaal and Barbara Bush.

― the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, May 23, 2024 10:38 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Is… is that TRUE?

Dressing like shit is how we show our contempt for the rest of the world

It's showing off our egalitarian chic.

xxp

they don't just want a horse race, they are actively pining for more of those sweet tax cuts

but the media's failures of omission and commission when reporting objective realities enable accelerate that process

There's plenty of dubious framing from the MSM, but also I think when people talk about too much about the MSM they vastly overstate its actual reach and influence. Starting with that 40-ish percent of Americans who not only don't care (or even hear) what the MSM says about anything, they will disbelieve it on principle. And other less partisan low-information voters aren't much more influenceable by the NYT or CNN or whatever. I'm not saying the media doesn't matter, but we've reached a point where it's hard to say that it matters much on this kind of stuff. The MSM is already full of stuff that's objectively bad for Trump, but it's not making any perceivable dent in his standing.

Political reporters, the ones I've known, aren't evil -- they're grindingly, exhaustively obsessed with j-school standards of objectivity.

tipsy otm. Old Republicans watch FOX and anonymous YouTubers (all day). My parents will toss in Lester Holt at 6:30.

people being wrong about societal and economic trends is more of an expectation than a surprise at this point (and possibly... forever), it's been the case with crime, child safety, what's actually going to kill you as an average American, etc. for all of our lives

The MSM is already full of stuff that's objectively bad for Trump, but it's not making any perceivable dent in his standing.

― a man often referred to in the news media as the Duke of Saxony (tipsy mothra), Thursday, May 23, 2024 12:54 PM (twenty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

true but they mitigate this by giving Trump every possible benefit of the doubt. as president he got near-universal praise when he made it through a SOTU speech and started bombing Yemen. nearly everything Biden does is reported through Republican framing. in 2016 more attention was given by far to Hillary's email server than anything Trump did. it was the one thing everybody knew about her. I don't think this makes a huge difference but its definitely enough to swing an election

Two abortion-inducing drugs could soon be reclassified as controlled and dangerous substances in Louisiana under a first-of-its-kind bill that received final legislative passage Thursday and is expected to be signed into law by the governor.

Supporters of the reclassification of mifepristone and misoprostol, commonly known as “abortion pills,” say it would protect expectant mothers from coerced abortions. Numerous doctors, meanwhile, have said it will make it harder for them to prescribe the medicines that they use for other important reproductive health care needs, and could delay treatment.

Louisiana currently has a near-total abortion ban in place, applying both to surgical and medical abortions. The GOP-dominated Legislature’s push to reclassify mifepristone and misoprostol could possibly open the door for other Republican states with abortion bans that are seeking tighter restrictions on the drugs.

Current Louisiana law already requires a prescription for both drugs and makes it a crime to use them to induce an abortion in most cases. The bill would make it harder to obtain the pills by placing it on the list of Schedule IV drugs under the state’s Uniform Controlled Dangerous Substances Law.

https://apnews.com/article/abortion-pills-louisiana-legislature-controlled-substance-06ea3e8df86b72b473efe8fc71054ddf

I don’t think the MSM is responsible for 60% of adults being wrong about objective facts like “we’re in a recession” or “the stock market is down”. Most of that is due to negative partisanship. But republicans who watch Fox News do not comprise 60% of the population. there really are swing voters who really do watch CNN and read the NYT etc. and absorb the tone.

(and fail to learn facts that are important to how they vote, because those facts are not stated)

Texas is the reason

Texas doctor who said nine-year-olds can safely give birth appointed to maternal mortality committee

Dr. Ingrid Skop called the supreme court’s overturning of Roe v Wade ‘a victory’ and has argued in favor of abortion bans

Skop – who has called the supreme court’s overturning of Roe v Wade “a victory in the battle but not the end of the war” – has argued in favor of forcing rape and incest victims as young as nine or 10 to carry pregnancies to term. “If she is developed enough to be menstruating and become pregnant and reach sexual maturity, she can safely give birth to a baby,” Skop told the House oversight committee in 2021. Pregnancy at such a young age is shown to carry significant health risks, including pre-eclampsia and infections.

State committee or National?

"... Texas health committee tasked with reviewing maternal deaths...."

It doesn't sounds like she'll have any power, but still

In Texas we have to accept that anyone appointed to a state committee under this regime will be straight garbage.

I wonder how many people think stocks are down because they got into crypto at the wrong time and fucked up

Tragically, I think the crypto dweebs are doing pretty well if they rode it out. FTX is going to be able to make a lot of people whole because so many of their bullshit coin holdings have skyrocketed.

Ponzi: The Sequel

It appears that I sold my leftover darknet bitcoinage (0.002) for $60 when it was at $29k, I could have had $135!!!

DeNiro doing the voice over, pretty good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiwJ3kTMX60

Just a gentle reminder for those whose minds have drifted away.

Gimme the fake news and free my soul

oh no

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/25/trump-loudly-heckled-libertarian-national-convention

Former president Donald Trump encountered an unusually tough crowd at the Libertarian National Convention on Saturday night as the audience loudly booed him and used noisemakers to drown out his speech.

The first current or former president to speak at the third-party’s convention, Trump made several major promises to libertarians in the crowded, rowdy room, including assuring the audience that he would appoint a libertarian to his Cabinet if elected in November. But the presumptive Republican nominee also taunted the third party that has typically garnered around 1 to 3 percent of the vote in presidential races, saying they should nominate him if they want to win.

“Maybe you don’t want to win,” Trump said to a loud chorus of boos from the crowd. “Keep getting your 3 percent every four years.”

...Nonetheless, Trump lobbied for an invitation to speak to the libertarians, aiming to appeal to their voters amid concerns from the two major parties that third-party candidates could attract voters who could swing a close presidential contest with President Biden.

Despite the hostile crowd, Trump received his warmest response when he said if reelected, he would pardon Ross Ulbricht, the mastermind behind the online drug market Silk Road, who was sentenced to life in prison in 2015. A Trump adviser was paid to seek clemency for Ulbricht in the final days of Trump’s administration, but no pardon was forthcoming.

Libertarians, who believe that drugs should not be criminalized, have vocally criticized Trump for not pardoning Ulbricht. Many attending Trump’s speech carried “FREE ROSS” signs.

https://crooked.com/podcast/the-trump-voters-who-are-sick-of-trump-ep-2/

Here's an excerpt from a horror novel:

The story of how an elite strike force of Christian lawyers, activists and politicians methodically and secretly led the country down a path that defied the will of a majority of Americans, who wanted abortion to remain legal, has been hidden until now. The ultimate aim of this behind-the-scenes conservative coalition, which powered one of the most significant political resurgences the United States has ever seen, went far beyond questions of when — and if — a pregnancy can be legally ended. For them, the fall of Roe was not an end but a beginning in their effort to make all abortion illegal and, in effect, roll back the sexual revolution. It was not only a political battle but a spiritual mission, rooted in their Christian faith and their belief that they were fighting for the highest moral stakes of the modern age. Their opponents didn’t see what was coming until it was far too late. After so many decades of taking Roe for granted, supporters of abortion rights had grown dangerously complacent and disorganized in ways that made them slow to appreciate the severity of the threat.

This investigation is built on more than 350 interviews with people who had knowledge of these events, including elected officials, lawyers, activists, doctors and ordinary people whose lives were changed by the fall of Roe. The reporting spanned 16 states and Washington, from statehouses to the White House, and a review of previously unreported documents.

generous of nyt to give christianity to christofascists

Didn’t propublica just do this?

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/05/supreme-court-going-off-the-rails-amicus-end-of-term-june.html

(apologies if that was posted in the SC thread, which I do not follow for mental health reasons)

As Cam’ron once opined, “It’s gonna be a hot summer.”

As Cam’ron once opined, “it’s gonna be a hot summer” https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/28/us/politics/robert-de-niro-trump-biden-campaign.html

my bet is that few will remember flags-gate by the time the roberts scrotus is over— and it sure looks like a lonnng time.

_I also think it’s not the Roberts Court anymore, and it hasn’t been since the day Justice Ginsburg died. And the reality is that, probably by this time in July, you’re going to see lots of pieces about how this is Amy Coney Barrett’s court—how Barrett’s going to be the real decisive vote in the cases that matter, because she picks up either Roberts or Kavanaugh.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: If Roberts really believed that the institution were on the brink and that some grand gesture was needed, there’s exactly one thing he can do that none of the other justices can stop him from doing, and that’s resign. Resign in a Democratic presidency with a Democratic-controlled Senate and give the seat to a Democrat. And he’s never going to do that._

oh snap. fuck, you're right, it's RBG all over again.

this is why I unbookmarked the SC thread lol

then again, there is no way Biden would get to nom a justice in June 24

Roberts specialized in denying voting rights denial in the Reagan White House. He ain't going nowhere.

Whereas I don't specialize in double negatives