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

https://i.imgur.com/lbnzZ0J.png

😂

thats honestly slightly more of a recognizable joke than i recall them being

it's so funny because it's true!!!!

Petri can be funny; Borowitz is never funny.

the babylon bee-orowitz

Yes, Petri can be extremely funny. Borowitz has never been funny once.

cant believe you guys are out there reading washington post columnists, real sicko shit

it's how i keep my finger on the pulse of america

I versed Alexandra Petri in quiz bowl in high school

She was an aggressive player which meant that she got wrong answers for -5 points known as a “neg” a lot while still doing generally well, I think I awarded her at least one “neg prize” at a tournament

cant believe you guys are out there reading washington post columnists, real sicko shit

― lag∞n

some of us are sodomites too *shudder*

There is a masochism booth at Folsom Street Fair that just projects WashPo columns at a slow pace, fwiw.

"I Wrote A WashPo Column Just To Watch Democracy Die"

fwiw the only columnist I seek out is Jamelle Bouie

can't believe silby was out there negging columnists as a teen. some alpha shit

No way man I thought she was cute I was simping hardcore

game respect game

fwiw the only columnist I seek out is Jamelle Bouie

i used to find his linguistics podcast to be a pretty entertaining diversion and he just came off as a slightly out of his own time academic dork but yeah he has gone insane.

McWhorter has always had bad politics. I think he used to keep it more separate from his academic linguistics writing, but having a perch as a NYT columnist means that his entire worldview is laid bare in one place.

But yeah, he was blaming black people for being poor over 20 years ago.

https://books.google.com/books/content?id=UvMGxQrbQREC&pg=PP1&img=1&zoom=3&hl=en&sig=ACfU3U1m_iDKns0WJRXhQ-uId8uMiTj6WA&w=1280

In terms of WaPo columnists, I like Perry Bacon Jr.

xp There is mad bank to be made in telling white people what they want to hear.

i.e. the existence of Pete Buttigieg

i'm not sure anyone has a good idea of what a trump schism in the GOP would or will look like in practice, but i think it would probably involve stuff like this.

Charlie Kirk, the 29-year-old activist who leads Turning Point USA and a network of conservative affiliates, wrote with a warning.

In a Monday email to the 168 members of the Republican National Committee, he told them that donors and activists would desert the party unless it changed. The result, he said, would be colossal failure in the 2024 presidential election.

“How do we plan to win in 2024 if you so boldly reject listening to the grassroots, our donors, and the biggest organizations and voices in the conservative movement?” he asked in the message, which was obtained by The Washington Post. “If ignored, we will have the most stunted and muted Republican Party in the history of the conservative movement, the likes of which we haven’t seen in generations.”

...
Kirk alerted the RNC members to a new initiative of his group’s political arm, Turning Point Action, that would seek to pick off RNC members deemed “disconnected with grassroot conservatives.”

He said the effort, called the Mount Vernon Project, will “recruit leaders to serve on the RNC and at the state level who wish to better represent the grassroots voice.”

The initiative, which was previously reported by Politico, is “funded graciously by donors who are vocally disenchanted” with the RNC’s members, Kirk wrote.

The project brings to the national stage a model of bare-knuckled politicking used by Turning Point in its home state of Arizona, where it has worked to purge GOP officials who stood in the way of Trump’s efforts to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election. Now, the focus is on the race for GOP chair, with Kirk saying at his group’s weekend summit in Phoenix: “Turning Point Action might remove members of the RNC if they vote incorrectly.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/23/charlie-kirk-rnc-ronna-mcdaniel-harmeet-dhillon/
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/12/20/tpusa-ronna-mcdaniel-rnc-chair-00074826

Turning Point Action further commented that the RNC has ruined the word "conservative" and that Kirk is forming a new splinter party called the Not C party.

LOL

Charlie Kirk's nickname in Trump World is "Fräulein Anna."

i left it out of that excerpt above because i didn't want to copy/paste a mountain of text, but a key part of it (was about Turning Point/Kirk's efforts to replace RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel with the supposedly more trump/fascist loyal Harmeet Dhillon. the politico link focuses on that.

but what's crazy is that Ronna McDaniel was _already_ a loyal trump fascist? the jan 6 report that was released last night talks about that. here she is just a couple weeks before jan 6:

But the report provides new details which tie the scheme to national party leadership.

Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, for example, personally gave Trump an update on the fake elector effort on the evening of Dec. 14, the day that the slates all voted.

Her involvement was previewed on Monday, when the committee released the executive summary, which stated that Trump “solicited the RNC’s assistance with the scheme. McDaniel agreed to provide that assistance.”

The full report goes further. McDaniel’s message purportedly said that “President Trump’s electors voted” both in “states that he won” and also in six “contested states.” It’s a funny formulation — both a cop to Trump’s ego and a partial admission that the effort was all a sham.

Trump’s executive assistant replied to McDaniel 101 minutes later, the report says. “It’s in front of him!” she wrote.

Ronna's terrible and I support anything that makes her unhappy

I'd probably stop short of wishing death on her children.

last thing on that, sorry, but jeez:

“I’m here to offer this party an alternative. I’m here to redefine what this party sees as victory. It means winning elections,” Dhillon said as she addressed a thinned-out conference Tuesday, in one of its final sessions. “It doesn’t mean turning out more voters. It doesn’t mean outreach. It doesn’t mean the number of phone calls you try to make but didn’t connect.”

“That’s not a victory. Victory is our people in office making laws that protect our fundamental liberties.”

the spirit of 1776!

hopefully they can replicate all the GOP success in Arizona nationwide

Harmeet Dhillon is yet another scammer. Some of our local hard-right types hired her firm to fight against a court-ordered student mask mandate last year — the locals were VERY impressed with her, because they see her on Fox News — and her firm coauthored one of the dumbest, most embarrassing lawsuits I've ever read. One of my lawyer friends said she couldn't believe any attorney was even willing to put their name on it. Even when they eventually filed to dismiss it (because the mask thing got settled by other parties), the federal judge went out of his way to call it a sham even as he was dismissing it. (Exact language: "a political orchestration underneath the veneer of a federal lawsuit.")

One of my lawyer friends said she couldn't believe any attorney was even willing to put their name on it.

That is a very typical reaction to Trump lawsuits in general. As a member of the profession, am embarrassed by these people and am delighted when they have to face consequences for this kind of shit.

*I am

Inside the Jan. 6 Committee.

The Republicans have two choices in front of them: 1) try to appeal to voters and not run insane candidates who even turn some Republicans off (witness Masters in Arizona), or 2) acquire power through non-democratic, but “constitutional”means, through gerrymandering and the Supreme Court—who I expect to bless the “independent state legislature” theory as what the Founding Fathers really meant. I think they’re gonna go good and hard for the latter.

That NYTM thing seems like 70 pages of breathless “the real story is the story of the story!” i’m too wore out for that tbh, just need to quietly lapse into coma here

kind of impressive how many different contingents of enthusiastic wackjobs the republicans have in their stable right now, from dark enlightenment weirdos like Masters to dumb enlightenment qanon types, with the Trump loyalists in the center trying to grift on top of both while attempting to fuck up voting

this is absolutely not a model for the democrats, but I’m not sure what a good model would look like

who I expect to bless the “independent state legislature” theory as what the Founding Fathers really meant. I think they’re gonna go good and hard for the latter.

I hope you're wrong, but fear you're right. They'll have to ignore all the stuff they pretend to hold important to do so.

to think how quaint the lunacy of the GOP and its base was in the early 2000s. it was still terrible, but it was a familiar terrible. all racist, misogynist, homophobic warmongers who you could call just that. now they're all of those things AND they believe in secret pizza molesting children or w/e

"Dumb enlightenment" is great

The Benighted States of America

https://kesq.com/news/2022/12/24/more-migrants-dropped-outside-vice-presidents-home-in-freezing-weather-on-christmas-eve/

Failure to properly smite Greg Abbott proves that God is not omnipotent.

this week in political moments that resemble bad Nathan Fielder bits

“I never claimed to be Jewish,” Santos said. “I said I was `Jew-ish.'”

George Santos, GOP congressman-elect, admits some lies and tries to spin others. https://t.co/ar4t5eRiHB

— Dan Diamond (@ddiamond) December 27, 2022

xxxp I saw that story about the migrants. As I understand the story, a nonprofit was there to take care of them. The truly great move would have been for V-POTUS to have taken them into her home.

xp funny he doesn't look jew-ish

Reminds me of: https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/ccdb7aad-6808-410b-bb30-56ff75b6b07c

From: James Carville
Subject: The work of electing Democrats isn't cheap

Tawdry, maybe. Disreputable. But never cheap.

https://y.yarn.co/7c10353b-1b1a-49b3-ba76-979c13dcc20b_text.gif