US Politics, January 2020. Because we hate ourselves.

Richmond, VA. Charlottesville, SC. For some reason these neo-Nazis seem to feel a strong affinity with the deep Confederacy. I wonder what's up with that?

Charlottesville, VA

lol

theyre just upset about them statues bein removed

richmond was or is ranked three for cities in the US with the most tattoo shops. It's a weird place. They do have Po-white Parkway though.

It's a tired trope by this point but dude really is a Saturday-morning cartoon villain:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/17/trump-administration-school-lunch-michelle-obama-rules-roll-back

Is Chris Murphy's twitter feed account of the trial legal if he's directly involved?
I've heard jurors and trial participants in other situations being held to silence during the trial process.
So wondered when I saw he was going to give a daily update.

Apparently that is OK. They are not jurors in the traditional sense. They have to be quiet during the proceedings and can't question witnesses, those are a couple of similarities, but there are a lot of differences. For example, they can speak outside of the trial about the trial, don't need to be sequestered, and over the course of the trial they can even overrule the judge (Roberts), among other unique powers.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/17/us/politics/trump-vaping-azar.html

“I never should have done this vaping thing,” Mr. Trump said, adding an expletive, according to two of the people familiar with what happened.

BIG NEWS: New study by Chris Cai et al. just up at @PLOSMedicine.
-First ever systematic review of economic analyses of single-payer.
-Researchers analyzed 22 cost estimates over 3 decades
-20 of the 22 predicted net savings
-Median net savings of 3.5% https://t.co/8v7mBig4aT pic.twitter.com/3HPqZ3Necl

— Adam W Gaffney (@awgaffney) January 15, 2020

What about the paper towels? https://t.co/OxlWtfwSpN

— Jeffrey St. Clair (@JSCCounterPunch) January 18, 2020

omg Big Vape got to him

I know it's a different insane thing every day but that Sea Wall tweet is just chaotic on a whole new level

same level, imo

I mean, what does he care if New York gets flooded? He's moving to Mar-a-Lago, and everybody knows Florida is totally immune to rising oceans.

acknowledges that seawall will be "needed," owns the libs anyway

Sea walls are ugly. Border walls are beautiful.

#allwallsmatter

Sea walls won't work. Border walls will work.

so appropriate

It was exactly three years ago today, January 20, 2017, that I was sworn into office. So appropriate that today is also MLK jr DAY. African-American Unemployment is the LOWEST in the history of our Country, by far. Also, best Poverty, Youth, and Employment numbers, ever. Great!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 20, 2020

so relieved to hear the Youth numbers are the best

So thoughtful and generous of him to take some time to talk about himself on this day.

I was thinking the other day, as I often do, about how confounding it is that Trump is so obviously a bullshit artist, so clearly a buffoon who somehow stumbled pinwheeling backwards into the presidency, so plainly a grifter who is out to enrich himself at every opportunity, a wannabe fascist with dreams of being Supreme Leader for Life, a corrupt villain who clings to power by dividing, by attacking, by bullying, by lying, and by literally any means necessary, and yet somehow there are so many people who buy into his bullshit! How can people believe in someone who is so painfully obviously a fraud? He doesn’t even try to hide it or pretend otherwise! And then I thought about professional wrestling, because that’s another thing that always confounded me. How do people possibly believe it is real? And of course Trump has the pro wrestling connections, he’s been in the ring, he knows it gets people fired up no matter how transparently fake it is. The over-the-top showmanship, the tough-guy posturing, the trash talk. People eat it up and don’t care that it’s not real because it’s a macho fantasy with good guys and bad guys, alliances and backstabbings, surprise attacks and killer put-downs. It’s as though he somehow managed to pose himself as the good guy in his own Wrestlemania tournament, with the ability to turn his adversaries into cartoonish evil strawmen to be taunted, to be hated, to be set up and knocked down like bowling pins while the crowd roars. And so he managed to get enough true believers fired up enough to build political momentum, leading others in the GOP to realize one by one that at some point they would have to jump on the train or get run over by it. And now they’re all on that idiot’s train and I hope it goes off a fucking cliff.

he’s a heel. A lot of people have decided they want to cheer for the heel because he feels like their heel.

Yeah Trump is a heel. From the boasting to the obvious cheating to the constant whining about being wronged/disrespected. Heels are far more fun to root for than good guys.

leading others in the GOP to realize one by one that at some point they would have to jump on the train or get run over by it. And now they’re all on that idiot’s train and I hope it goes off a fucking cliff.

― epistantophus, Tuesday, January 21, 2020 12:11 AM (ten hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

And as I say often, they're also all dedicated to playing a game where if anyone else tries to point out something that is supposed to make them reconsider or even just reflect on their position in regards to any GOP talking point, they will instead dig in their heels out of spite. Nobody is to get the satisfaction of seeing any of them concede to any point regardless of counterarguments or new information. Dig in those heels every time, that's the game. And it's a game because context does not matter at all. The only rule is the more pushback you get the more you dig them in.

happy anniv

On January 21, 2010, the Supreme Court of the United States handed down one of its worst and most activist decisions ever. https://t.co/PggwjFzN9l

— Nathaniel St. Clair (@NatStClair) January 21, 2020

And as I say often, they're also all dedicated to playing a game where if anyone else tries to point out something that is supposed to make them reconsider or even just reflect on their position in regards to any GOP talking point, they will instead dig in their heels out of spite.

This is not a game, it's human nature

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont-change-our-minds

I framed it that way semi-sarcastically because i've never seen such a stubborn dedication to that "rule" (as I described it) before the Trump era, to this much of a cartoony extreme degree.

such a stubborn dedication to that "rule" (as I described it) before the Trump era

When your job depends on figuring out what an amorphous blob of hundreds of thousands, or millions, of voters might "think" in the aggregate, you adopt a very heuristic attitude. Trump did things no professional politician would have dared to try before 2016, but he succeeded, so it became monkey-see, monkey-do time in DC.

Del. Lee Carter, the Virginia General Assembly's sole Democratic socialist, just passed his first bill. It prevents employers from classifying workers as tipped employees if they're prohibited from soliciting tips. https://t.co/ucRe1p5Mpi

— Ned Oliver (@nedoliver) January 22, 2020

He appears to be celebrating by shitposting from the House floor https://t.co/Z5jyeC3dvT

— Ned Oliver (@nedoliver) January 22, 2020

that's a good tweet

I agree w TRAINS

Ruining the non-sequitLOLs a bit, but if you click on Lee's tweet, it's in regards to a separate train bill that passed afterwards

Still a good tweet tho

Are we sure it's not a zombie who can't correctly spell BRAINS?

Don't trains have . . . BOXCARS?!!!

rarely ime

Trump promised his mileage standards would make cars cheaper and safer. New documents raise doubts about that.
Top Senate Democrat argues that revised rule “will lead to vehicles that are neither safer, nor more affordable or fuel-efficient.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2020/01/23/trump-vowed-his-mileage-standards-would-make-cars-cheaper-safer-new-documents-raise-doubts-about-that/

The Trump administration on Thursday signed its long-promised regulation to remove millions of miles of streams and roughly half the country’s wetlands from federal protection, the largest rollback of the Clean Water Act since the modern law was passed in 1972.

The move delivers a major win for the agriculture, homebuilding, mining, and oil and gas industries, which have for decades sought to shrink the scope of the water law that requires them to obtain permits to discharge pollution into waterways or fill in wetlands, and imposes fines for oil spills into protected waterways.

But Politico contends:Legal experts say the Trump rule is likely to be placed on hold by federal courts in at least some states, if not nationwide, as the litigation works its way through the courts. In the meantime. developers and other industries will have to decide how much of a risk they're willing to take.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/01/23/trump-epa-curbs-water-protections-102779

doubts are raised and democrats argue but god forbid the washington post weigh in either way

Doesn’t get more humiliating than this. Trump is in a meeting with the president of Iraqi Kurdistan Nechirvan Barzani, but he mistakes him for the leader of the Syrian Kurds & goes on & on talking “safezones” in Syria & Turkey. Truly astounding ignorance.pic.twitter.com/YQbu4SA3it

— Sina Toossi (@SinaToossi) January 22, 2020

president toddler fuckaduck is a a big boy who knows a lot

can't humiliate the unhumiliatable

As such, it's genuinely a wonder that he wears a diaper in lieu of just copping a squat wherever he happens to be when the spirit moves him. He's pure shameless id made manifest, what's really stopping him.

think it might've made the news if Barzani had treated it like a gameshow and at the end said "I am ACTUALLY..."

you fools, haven't you learned how to be right all the time? he didn't mix the two leaders up. no he didn't. that didn't happen.

yup, just gotta play your kurds right

and what many people are saying is how bad it is when YOU mixed up the two leaders. you did that. very dumb of you.