US Politics January 2018: "You All Just Got A Lot Richer"

Chelsea was ostensibly there to "crash it" but bb you gotta do more than show up and get seen at a white supremacist's party if yr gonna call it crashing

God her ad is so bad, all signifiers aimed at people who think voting doesn't do anything

I want better things for her than this

probably a better option than "draft dodger" or "chicken hawk": "shithead"

Meantime

oh my god https://t.co/uudoz4Z6Ps pic.twitter.com/2YgXIVqdaO

— Simon Maloy (@SimonMaloy) January 21, 2018

When I find myself in full agreement with Morbius, consecutively over a series of days, that’s a fucking sign.

― El Tomboto, Saturday, January 20, 2018 5:41 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sigh, tying the knot. finally. looking for rsvp.

pic.twitter.com/Vl3Q2ucHQz

— Alex Nichols (@Lowenaffchen) January 21, 2018

That's an adorable dog. I refuse to see what's in the rest of the picture, tho.

let’s hope the dog enjoyed a long, full life and was not eventually murdered by noted dog-murderer david huckabee

I want better things for her than this

I think what you actually want is a better version of her than the one that actually exists.

uh oh someone's suggesting the "nuclear option" in the Senate again

Did Rand Paul hack Josh in Chicago's account?

Ha! I love the government and want it to be even bigger. (Except the military, which is big enough - Rand Paul likes big military, doesn't he?). My point (as such) was that the GOP is constantly harping about the size of government, and the current administration is actively trying to shrink things or shut them down, while leaving several posts unfilled (we still don't even have an ambassador to South Korea!) or pressuring other workers to quit or retire or take buy-outs and leave. Which I find so disingenuous, the party of small government or, lately, no government, suddenly concern trolling for ending the shutdown. This is their dream come true! Or should be. As for the shutdown itself, yeah, it hurts people financially, at least in the short term, but so does the massive cutting and dissolution of government programs under Trump, right? Because of Trump GOP strategy, a working government means a government working to limit or shrink government, which is kind of a Catch-22. The irony is that congress is *not* shut down, but they've been the least productive or effective branch of government the past year.

(I fully acknowledge any illogic and stupidity to my reasoning, it's just that my gut instinct is if ever there was a government I'd want shut down, it's this one!)

You could have just said that!

if ever there was a government I'd want shut down, it's this one!

Josh in Chicago otm

See?

I think what you actually want is a better version of her than the one that actually exists.

― grawlix (unperson), Sunday, January 21, 2018 11:03 AM (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

No, but thanks

xp As a rhetorical device "look, shutdown is a sneak peek at the logical extension of your libertarianism" or "this is what you get when you drown government in the bathtub" is just the sort of rhetorical device the Dems remain too clumsy/lumbering to make

It doesn't seem that hard an argument to make! "You republicans have been calling for cutting and slashing for years, and now here you go, government is on hold. Happy? We want CHIP. We want DACA. We want lots of things. You want nothing, because if you wanted something you'd be voting on it, like you voted on lowering taxes or ending the ACA some 50 times. So to sum up: fuck you."

No I don't think it's hard at all. I wish they'd do it.

what it boils down to is that we have to make their arguments for them and sell them for them. if the democrats wind up getting shit on for the shutdown, it's our failure more importantly than it is theirs.

lol fuck that

That’s not what these shutdowns are. All of DHS’s essential functions are staffed. All the military functions are staffed. All the contractors are still getting paid. The mail is being delivered. Social Security checks included.

Nothing is “shut down” in any meaningful sense.

uh oh didn't we do this already?

xposts whether the blame lies with the electorate or the party, this is why leadership has gotta be flipped. The legislative muscles necessary to become a Nancy Pelosi or Steny Hoyer are built up incrementally over decades of navigating an arcane system, and they're important and necessary esp. for maintaining power. But in the process it seems that the muscles that help you punch above your weight, in fighting to take it back, tend to atrophy.

What these shutdowns amount to is that all of the activities the federal government does to further its ability to provide services, or improve our way of life, or advance the state of practice in various fields of study that venture capitalists tend to ignore, those things stop cold.

All of the civil servants who manage and/or do that work are going to get paid leave for however long this takes, so taxpayers are just getting ripped off for nothing.

Oh good I’m glad we’re using this time to whine some more about the fecklessness of Democrats

i'll stop when they get some feck

They should demand an immediate vote on feck.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/USkCsrO9sz4/hqdefault.jpg

That's pretty much the perfect wordless punchline. Kudos.

https://instagram.com/p/BeN15oangH-/

much xps, re feck or lack thereof: My rage at this shutdown, as the apotheosis of this administration’s flagrant and treasonous contempt for everything I actually love about my country, is almost greater than even I, internet hardman archetype, can comprehend; so I guess I don’t have any expectations at all that anyone should be able to address this in the terms it merits, certainly not without risking criminal charges.

I mean nobody’s gonna pass my smell test for “messaging” on the events of the last two weeks unless they wind up in shackles on a secret service paddy wagon, so I don’t really differentiate between the varieties of zwieback the Dems are feeding whatever they think their base is. That is completely unimportant to me atm.

The fact that someone on GOP.com put up a page with the actual title of 'The Highly-Anticipated 2017 Fake News Awards' is the perfect crossing of hilarity and despair.

Yikes, that family has some bad genes.

"All the contractors are still getting paid" I thought they weren't?

Depends on how the appropriations are obligated, etc.

Graham: “Every time we have a proposal, it is only yanked back by staff members. As long as Stephen Miller is in charge of negotiating on immigration, we are going nowhere.”

— Igor Bobic (@igorbobic) January 21, 2018

I should ask my pal at one of the National Labs what they’re doing tomorrow

i am less concerned with the specifics of the "messaging" than with its effect. the democrats have stumbled, without really intending to, and aided by republican incompetence, into a decisive state of revolt. if they were revolting against a competent leadership - if, for instance, they were attempting to take a stand against someone like erdogan - they would already have lost. this isn't that kind of revolt.

whatever people say about it, the most important thing is to convince people, enough people, that we are right in doing this, that this is worth doing, that the fantasy of some sort of bloodless coup is impossible. convince people to, whatever is wrong, to continue to focus their blame for it on the republicans, as they have been doing, rather than shifting their blame to the democrats. and this isn't something that can or will be done by democratic leadership, because they are reviled. they're not opinion leaders, they're not going to be opinion leaders.

if the democratic leadership can't get at least enough conditional support from people to win this crisis, i see no hope for resolution to the ongoing failure state.

Mike Pence is a complete shitbird and I hate him with an intensity that involves every molecule in my body

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/370008-pence-blasts-senate-democrats-in-overseas-speech-to-troops

i see no hope for resolution to the ongoing failure state

digging the nation out of the political hole we've slid into will be a long process and most likely just a partial success, since the US has always had horrible aspects to its ongoing politics.

oh and the coups in my fantasies are not remotely bloodless fwiw

I really don't think the public at large cares about a government shutdown. Or, given approval levels, about government much at all these days. And I also agree with predictions that, the way the news cycle moves these days, it may very well be forgotten by November. Or by next month, if and when it happens again. I mean, we've hit the stage where settlements with porn stars are just another day at the office. Just think about that. Just think about any other president posing with a porn star for a picture. And that's like the c-story on your average Friday. That's where we are today. Until things change or don't in November, it's just going to be more of the exhausting shitty same.

Anyway, how can Graham blame Miller by name for scuttling every deal, yet in the same breath remain hopeful there will soon be a deal? He's pinpointed the problem. It's a vicious cycle.

As a corollary, I only care about you in the abstract, as well.

I called the products of my last seven bowel movements and they also hate Mike Pence, because he’s giving them a bad name

does anybody care about anybody else anymore except in the abstract?

I want to start every post about this administration with "As a coronary ..."

I think when Trump is gone and we return to some semblance of "normal," I think people will care about that.

Whut

Stars of NBC's "The West Wing" will hold a one-night-only reading of "All the President's Men" in Los Angeles https://t.co/dVJ50l5TgH pic.twitter.com/14zbf0Uacf

— CNN (@CNN) January 21, 2018

Stars of NBC's "The West Wing" will hold a one-night-only reading of "All the President's Men"

Next, the re-united cast of the 1980s hit film "Clueless" will join together for a one-time reading of "Fire and Fury", thus doubling the potent word magic directed at our president from afar.