US Politics, December 2022: "They're now the working class party, man."

you missed the "Here's why that's devastating news for Joe Biden" bit

Good article, I learned a couple things. However, this:

Democrats even spent tens of millions of dollars helping election deniers win Republican primary contests, something that would obviously be unconscionable if they literally believed that American democracy was on the cusp of being dismantled. The cynical bid paid off: Literally all the extreme GOP candidates that Democrats boosted failed in the general election. Again, this should not have been a shock.

is, shall we say, bullshit. All the Dems did was say, "Look at how horrible these people are" and GOP voters said "gimme!"

Yeah, I pointed that out on Twitter and just said people should ignore that bit — inserting it is the price of admission to Sunday talk show green rooms.

I mean, those ads were pretty transparently designed to boost those candidates among extreme right voters, no?

The tone was like "Oh man, definitely don't vote for this guy who is a true conservative and a staunch defender of the border" etc.

it was a dumb gamble that did appear to mostly pay off, i thought

my god these people still consent to Chotiner interviewing them.

"Do you think that there could be people who, for whatever reason, have sympathies with Israel but don’t like Jews much?

I think it’s highly unlikely. If you like Israel, which is the Jewish state filled with Jews, how can you hate Jews? Can you like Italy and hate Italians? Can you like Spain and hate Spanish people? It’s beyond my comprehension that that’s a possibility."

jesus fucking christ people are dense

All-time:

Honestly, I mean, you really don’t have to do this. You’re just going to cause trouble and embarrassment for yourself.

Chotiner's like Cary Grant at his understated best: he sets'em up courteously, lets his co-stars fall over themselves.

Was this Vanity Fair article already shared? I didn't see it in the November thread...

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/11/america-new-civil-war

A typically terrifying paragraph:

When Rob thought about abortion, he started with guns. The question for him was not whether abortion is right or wrong. The question was: When will China invade? The question was: Can we afford to spare potential infantry? “If you make the top 10 of things that keep your country running, abortion is not in the top 500. But 10 years down the road, if I have a war and I’m a leader, and you and the Black population have aborted 40% of their babies for the past 30 years, I’m running out of foot soldiers. Abortions are bodies that never make it to my front line.” (It’s true that a higher percentage of Black pregnancies end in abortion than white ones. Rob’s even right about the number 40. But not the percent: It’s 40 out of 1,000, according to the American Journal of Public Health. That is 4%.)

These lunatics have seen "Red Dawn" so many times they have internalized its manic what-if insanity.

The question for him was not whether abortion is right or wrong. The question was: When will China invade? The question was: Can we afford to spare potential infantry?

otm

https://media.vanityfair.com/photos/63852db5ed2be6c0ac98ceb9/master/w_1600,c_limit/Wisconsin-Death-Trip-20.jpg

Pretty much my understanding of Wisconsin in a single image...

(Out of context, I mean ... in context, she's protesting in support of abortion rights.)

“You start prepping several generations ahead to have bodies when you lose so many bodies that you need a level of fresh bodies you never dreamed you’d have to dig into.”

Why does he make it sound like planning for a party?

Well, guys like that are probably tumescent daily at the thought of any excuse to shoot "them", so it very likely feels like party planning.

it's great in the badger state

I have a long-running unprovable theory that people in rural Red State areas get so worked up about imagined impending threats and invasions (the "caravan," Sharia law, Antifa, China) because they are so fucking bored because there is nothing to do. You can only pretend to get excited about shooting deer for so long. (I grew up in rural areas, I'm allowed to say this. I moved to cities for a reason.)

So Jan. 6th was actually just a vacation package?

"It didn't happen! I was there, but it was a hoax! This is the gun I carried when I was in D.C.! But it was a false flag!"

Jan. 6 was 100 percent the most exciting thing that had ever happened to those people, right up until it turned out they might go to jail.

Can we please revisit Andy the Grasshopper’s comment about a Honduran “invasion” from the last thread? If it was meant sarcastically, then okay, but if not… uh, that’s some pretty fucked up rhetoric

Sometimes there's good news:

Chris Cillizza is one of the CNN staffers who have been let go in the latest round of layoffs by Chris Licht, according to @bristei:https://t.co/ZWDKSjkEYs pic.twitter.com/c4KhRYsi3O

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) December 1, 2022

As progressives push for paid sick leave as part of rail deal, Joe Manchin signals he opposes going that route. Says he doesn't like having Congress intervening in this way.

"I'm very, I'm really reluctant ... for us to jump in and set a precedent," he told me

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) December 1, 2022

Jump in and fall on the tracks, ya turd.

Yeah, that was sarcasm, sorry about that

If you recall, that was Kamala Harris' first assignment upon taking office - to stem the flow of migration from Central America; a herculean, if not impossible ask of a VP
I don't know if she's involved in that effort

I think it’s highly unlikely. If you like Israel, which is the Jewish state filled with Jews, how can you hate Jews? Can you like Italy and hate Italians? Can you like Spain and hate Spanish people? It’s beyond my comprehension that that’s a possibility."

I find it interesting that three seemingly random ethnicities wind up involving both how more non-Anglos were made “white” in the 20th Century and also the population used to create the concept of “white” in the first place back in the 16th-17th Centuries with the Reconquista

they finally deleted the tweet

RIP to nearly two months of transparency from the GOP pic.twitter.com/a4tggUOLUL

— Eli Valley (@elivalley) December 1, 2022

Statement from the Republican Jewish Coalition:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fi6hrWMXEAE3k8j.jpg

2) Biden: It doesn't mean because we are going to pass this, God willing, on by Friday, by the time I read by the weekend that we're going to back off of paid leave, I made it really clear I'm going to continue to fight paid leave for not only rail workers, but for all workers,

— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) December 1, 2022

Sorry Andy, didn't mean to get punchy, just couldn't read the tone.

no worries, sorry if that wasn't clear

Good

News: It's Michigan.

Mich is poised to replace Iowa as an early nominating state for Democrats in 2024, per senior officials.

Will be formally taken up by DNC this weekend, but the White House has decided.

I first reported Mich was being eyed here:https://t.co/fDPVbwoixc

— Jonathan Martin (@jmart) December 1, 2022

The Republican Jewish Coalition seems to think they have some standing within the Republican party and that their concerns will be heard and honored through actions. Some people are awfully late in getting the news from Charlottesville.

democracy is when a bill that 80% of the country would want fails because only 52% of our representatives vote for it https://t.co/7M2WrlRDW3

— Communist Dog Tail (@pointblaek) December 1, 2022

I can't believe Lucy picked up the football AGAIN

The Squad and @justicedems-backed members stood with rail workers, flexed their bloc, and began turning Biden and Democratic Party leadership around on this one. pic.twitter.com/LArXaIkhTO

— Waleed Shahid (@_waleedshahid) November 30, 2022

If michigan gets the first primary I'm just going to hang out in diners for a month beforehand so I can say crazy nonsensical shit to reporters

lol

you could be the new Ken Bone

“What I really want is a Biden-DeSantis unity ticket. I want to defund the police but I’m also skittish about classroom litter boxes.”

“We need high gas prices AND fascism.”

If this happens it will radically reshape American presidential politics.

Biden pushes South Carolina as first primary state, elevates Georgia and Michigan

Imagine having to win over black voters first before a bunch of one-foot-in-the-grave farmers in one of the country's reddest and whitest states.

Feels like a “no more Bernies” move

Feels like a “no more Bernies” move

Don't threaten me with a good time.

Or at least making sure the next Bernie can win in larger, more diverse states. Bernie might have been force into a different (better!) campaign if he'd had to run in South Carolina first.

"How firing Christopher Cillizza may actually help Chris Cillizza," muttered a stunned Chris Cillizza to himself over and over again as he approached his parking space one last time.

— Danny Zuker (@DannyZuker) December 1, 2022

A 15-year-old canvassing for Raphael Warnock was shot

Savannah Police detectives have arrested a 42-year-old Savannah man who shot a teen outside his home on Hartridge Street on Dec. 1.

Around 5:35 p.m. officers responded to the 500 block of Hartridge Street in reference to a shooting and discovered a 15-year-old male victim suffering from a gunshot wound to the leg. He was transported to Memorial Medical Center for treatment of non-life threating injuries.

According to the preliminary investigation, the teen was campaigning for Raphael Warnock for the upcoming run-off election when the incident occurred. While at the front door of one of the residences on Hartridge Street, the suspect fired a shot through the closed door, striking the teen.

Officers quickly identified and located the suspect, Jimmy Paiz, at the residence. Paiz was booked into the Chatham County jail on charges of aggravated assault and aggravated battery.

The case remains under investigation. At this point, there is no indication the shooting was politically motivated.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=961009514418625

Same dude.

fuuuuck

where do they find these people

Herschel Walker voter to MSNBC: "I'm a Republican ... [Walker's] he's gonna lose, in all probability. Mr. Warnock is a wonderful individual, and I fully expect that he will win." pic.twitter.com/SyPGlhMFoK

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 1, 2022

I dunno, but I wish the Dems could find more people like Obama:

Obama on Herschel Walker: "Since the last time I was here, Mr Walker has been talking about issues that are of great importance to the people Georgia, like whether it's better to be a vampire or a werewolf ... this would be funny if he weren't running for Senate." pic.twitter.com/Wm2KNRvfgt

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 2, 2022

Not surprisingly, Marge Green is defending him.

unrelated, but Congress passing SECURE Act 2.0 on 12/23, which changes the Required Minimum Distribution age to 73, which would require retirement plan recordkeepers to update all automated customer-facing documents, as well as update training materials and retrain existing agents in a month where about everybody takes PTO....expert level trolling, congrats guys.

(yes this affects me but fortunately I'm not on the technology side who is probably flipping out about this).

this feels like another 'rich people' bill because people who aren't well off aren't likely to delay taking their retirement benefits

Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.) on Wednesday announced he has cancer, but he said the condition is curable and he expects to work during treatment.

The congressman, who led the second impeachment of President Donald Trump and is a member of the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, announced the diagnosis in a news release.

“After several days of tests, I have been diagnosed with Diffuse Large B Cell Lymphoma, which is a serious but curable form of cancer,” he said. “Prognosis for most people in my situation is excellent after four months of treatment.”

Raskin is one of the few Congress humans who is worth a damn. I stumbled upon and joined a protests he led outside the Saudi Embassy in DC about the murder of Jamal Kashoggi.

Kevin McCarthy has the support of gay Republicans, Catholic Republicans, Jewish Republicans, poor Republicans, ultra-rich Republicans... and that's just George Santos.

— Mark Russell (@Manruss) December 28, 2022

Santos:

Ahhhh Omg pic.twitter.com/r1g0Nr1XKc

— Tyler Dinucci!! (@TylerDinucci) December 29, 2022

this guy is the grift that keeps giving

The odds of him completing a term seem slim.

🐦[Kevin McCarthy has the support of gay Republicans, Catholic Republicans, Jewish Republicans, poor Republicans, ultra-rich Republicans... and that’s just George Santos.
— Mark Russell (@Manruss) December 28, 2022🕸]🐦

He does seem hilariously like some Russian oligarch's idea of an American candidate. In the indie comedy version of this, he was concocted by an inept cell of slacker agents who spend most of their time getting high.

https://i.imgur.com/96HQb6m.png

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbGnU96ByYQ

if he were a russian asset, Tulsi wouldn't have been going after him so hard. Or maybe she's mad he was such a bad liar.

https://i.imgur.com/r8WBNBm.png

he made up everything, won his election 55-45 and wikipedia doesn't have a photo of his opponent, bob dylan

now that's the american dream

phew! positive update on one of the AZ recounts:

Kris Mayes, the Democratic candidate for attorney general in Arizona, prevailed in a recount by a margin of 280 votes over Abraham Hamadeh, a Republican, bringing clarity to one of the last undecided races of the midterms.

Dems in array!

Democrats fell just short of an ambitious goal of confirming 100 new federal judges as time ran out on the 117th Congress, but they are optimistic they can continue to reshape the courts over the final two years of President Biden’s term.

The Senate’s top two Democrats say their ability to outpace the concerted Republican judicial push of President Donald J. Trump’s first two years, with a total of 97 judges seated, was especially noteworthy considering they did it with a 50-50 Senate, an evenly divided Judiciary Committee and little cooperation from most Republicans.

And the personal and professional backgrounds of the judges they confirmed were markedly different from the past. The Senate named scores of women and people of color to the courts, many with specialties in defense and civil rights work as opposed to the corporate law partners and prosecutors who were the norm in previous administrations of both parties.

“It’s remarkable to think that an 11-11 committee, with the Republicans we have on that committee, was able to achieve this,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat who, as chairman of the Judiciary Committee, led the judicial push.

Nice.

There's the tax returns.

good morning!

what's going on, folks?

!!!

haha it's the big day qualmsly!

Qualmsey! We made it!

This seems like a good time for a YSI? joke.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2022/12/30/documents-trump-tax-returns/10965563002/

2 The structure of the organization must be understood to understand the flow in which the tax items were reportable. Mr. Trump is the beneficiary of a revocable trust, noted as request number 2 above. The trust is characterized for Federal income tax purposes as a grantor trust, a disregarded entity for tax purposes. As a disregarded entity, the items of income, deduction, gain, loss, and credit accruing to the trust appear directly on the Federal income tax returns of Mr. Trump. The trust in turn has an ownership in various pass-through entities (partnerships and S corporations) and the items of income, deduction, gain, loss, and credit from these entities flow to the individual Federal income tax returns of Mr. Trump (because the trust is a grantor trust). These pass-through entities own interests in other pass-through entities, the income, deductions, gains, losses, and credits from which flow upwards to the owning entities. In short, the items from the lowest tier entities flow up to the next higher level of pass-through entities and keep flowing upwards, eventually appearing on Mr. Trump’s Form 1040s.

donald trump - the big guy who understands the plight of the little guy!

So basically his taxes are an MC Escher illustration?

🫡 qualmsley

honestly though -- when they came at him in the debates over not paying taxes and he came back with "that makes me smart," it was one of his canniest moves. if this got him jail time (lol) that'd be great but the number of people who'd vote for Donald Trump who will, after learning that he goes to great lengths to defraud the IRS, then withdraw their support...it's gotta be zero. his people like that he's screwing over the IRS, because when they see their paychecks and look at the withholdings, it stings. that they can't benefit from his ability to game the system using legacy wealth & hired hands doesn't affect them -- as long as somebody's sticking it to the assholes who make my paycheck smaller, that's good enough for me, and that, I think, is the perception not just among the fringe J6 types but among the "did my neighbor actually vote for this asshole?" types.

yeah, I said this upthread. People constantly cheat the IRS; Trump's a hero for getting away with it.

You can pretend it's 5-D chess
And you can cheat the IRS
And the Pepe the Frog boys are on the loose again

JCLC otm

His fans' perception has nothing to do with possible legal consequences, though, which is why the returns matter.

i'd agree, but the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has already had the returns, for more than a year now.

His returns show numerous business enterprises that he said had no earnings at all, only expenses — a pattern that the House committee says should have raised red flags for auditors. On one 2015 speaking engagement, for instance, Trump says he was paid $50,000 but spent $46,162 on travel expenses for the gig. (The tax return doesn’t say where Trump traveled to give that speech, which was one of his lowest-paid engagements; he reported making as much as $450,000 as a speaker on other occasions.)

If the IRS completes its audit work and validates some of the concerns raised by the report, the likelihood that Trump could subsequently face serious legal trouble — something beyond adjustments or fines — appears to be low. The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, which has been conducting a criminal investigation of Trump since the summer of 2018, has had access to Trump’s tax returns for more than a year and has not charged him.

That's largely because the previous DA, Cy Vance, infamously punted the case and his successor Bragg expressed concerns about the merit of the case in his second public turd stepping in office.

Office has bungled it from the jump

Today's favorite headline:

Kari Lake Says She Would Have Been Graceful if She'd Lost Arizona Election

LOL

ok let me tell you something that's been bothering me about these people for a while. not necessarily Trump but the people like MTG and Boebert whose rhetoric is basically straight up fascism and genocide, but then they drop a phrase like "Grouchy Fauci" in there. it feels so weird but not really because you know these aren't serious people to begin with, had they not been elected they'd be selling diet pills and auditioning for Survivor. its why all these scholars' warnings of "we are diving head first into fascism" aren't really resonating with me. I mean maybe they're right but it's not the kind of fascism we've seen in the past. it's way too stupid for that.

Fascism with a human face

The irony in "that makes me smart" is that the only decisive part Trump played in filing his taxes was to instruct his CFO to use bogus numbers so he could defraud the government. Creating that tangled maze of companies and trusts was entirely done by his underlings.

Months before the New York Times published a December article suggesting Rep.-elect George Santos (R-N.Y.) had fabricated much of his résumé and biography, a tiny publication on Long Island was ringing alarm bells about its local candidate.

The North Shore Leader wrote in September, when few others were covering Santos, about his “inexplicable rise” in reported net worth, from essentially nothing in 2020 to as much as $11 million two years later.

The story noted other oddities about the self-described gay Trump supporter with Jewish heritage, who would go on to flip New York’s 3rd District from blue to red, and is now under investigation by authorities for misrepresenting his background to voters.

“Interestingly, Santos shows no U.S. real property in his financial disclosure, although he has repeatedly claimed to own ‘a mansion in Oyster Bay Cove’ on Tiffany Road and ‘a mansion in the Hamptons’ on Dune Road,” managing editor Maureen Daly wrote in the Leader. “For a man of such alleged wealth, campaign records show that Santos and his husband live in a rented apartment, in an attached rowhouse in Queens.”

The Leader reluctantly endorsed Santos’s Democratic opponent the next month. “This newspaper would like to endorse a Republican,” it wrote, but Santos “is so bizarre, unprincipled and sketchy that we cannot,” adding, “He boasts like an insecure child — but he’s most likely just a fabulist — a fake.”

It was the stuff national headlines are supposed to be built on: A hyperlocal outlet like the Leader does the leg work, regional papers verify and amplify the story, and before long an emerging political scandal is being broadcast coast to coast.

But that system, which has atrophied for decades amid the destruction of news economies, appears to have failed completely this time

https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/12/29/north-shore-leader-santos-scoop/

along the same lines, josh marshall wrote about the North Shore Leader's work not getting picked up last week:

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/hey-the-local-paper-was-all-over-notorious-liar-and-weirdo-george-santos/sharetoken/T56e6Lrn7D8E

worth reading (imo) because it also talks a bit about whose responsibility it is to do oppo research (which i totally just typed "op-ed research", lol) and some of those dynamics, if one is interested in that side of things. in this case, though, it appears that the local newspaper did all the op-ed research for them, and no one bothered to read it or forward it to anyone.

i wonder how much of it had to do with his opponent in the primary? i made a bob dylan joke (hilarious!!) the other day because this is wikipedia's account of the election results:

https://i.imgur.com/gODX6p0.png

robert zimmerman does exist, though. he seems like a game show host

https://i.imgur.com/v20eICo.png

Seems like it was an open secret among republicans

Top House Republicans were well aware of Santos's dishonesty before the election/NYT article, w/ several expressing late concern/incredulity that he might win. Here's what I wrote in @CookPolitical on September 1st: pic.twitter.com/1e5u7RFjOI

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) December 30, 2022

x[ Wrong Dude

it appears that the local newspaper did all the op-ed research for them

*facepalm*

A hyperlocal outlet like the Leader does the leg work, regional papers verify and amplify the story, and before long an emerging political scandal is being broadcast coast to coast. But that system, which has atrophied for decades amid the destruction of news economies, appears to have failed completely this time.

WaPo forthrightly reports that newspapers like the WaPo can no longer be trusted to even notice important stories being investigated and printed by smaller newspapers.

robert zimmerman notices that there is a trace of a wrinkle visible on the tail of his pristine dress shirt, near the bottom hem
robert zimmerman punches the wall in an explosive rage and immediately dips his face into cold water and screams as bubbles form in the sink

dishonesty is the best policy. watch the police and the taxman miss me!

the year has changed again

U.S. Politics January 2023: Kevin McCarthy's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Life