All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[Jack Dracula]

Let's correct your math, since it seems to be flawed...
You're undercounting 2. It's, at this time in the House, Taylor-Greene. Boebert. Biggs. Gosar. Brooks. Cawthorn. Gohmert. Harris. All of them are under a looking glass, and oh yeah, there were 140 people who voted against - certifying the election results. But for the hard-core conspiracy theory seditionists? You're talking probably 8.

Let's check your denominator. Overcounted. 435 is total House members. Convenient you're padding the numbers by including the Democratic half when it's convenient. 8 of 211. It's more like 4%, and by the certification votes of people who showed they'll vote for seditionists, it's a staggering 2/3 of your tainted party.


And... frankly f***ing one seditionist in your party seems embarrassing. Let alone the percentage.

Does anyone remember when Steve King was one of the worst Republicans in congress?
Now they're all Steve King.

[BeastieRunner]

[Malvolio]

Arizona GOP lawmaker introduces bill to give Legislature power to toss out election results

I better tell my sister and her husband that their votes don't count any more if the Republican legislature doesn't like how the election turned out. But this is the party that wants unity, right?

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Parkland, Sandy Hook Parents: Marjorie Taylor Greene Has ‘No Place’ In Congress

The Georgia Republican has suggested the school shootings that killed their children weren’t real. Hell, that bitch has no place in politics...PERIOD! By the way....

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Marjorie Taylor Greene Theorized Space Laser Beam Sparked California Wildfire

“[T]here are too many coincidences to ignore,” the Republican congresswoman claimed in 2019. And Congressional Republicans are happy to have this loon in their ranks. Well played, GOP, well played!

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GOP Strategist Predicts What Will Become Of The GOP If Donald Trump Isn’t Convicted

“This is their best chance to put a stake through Donald Trump’s political future,” said Sarah Longwell, founder of Republican Voters Against Trump. Yeah, it becomes the Trumpublican Party.

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Ocasio-Cortez To Ted Cruz: ‘You Almost Had Me Murdered ... You Can Resign’

After Cruz said he “fully” agreed with the congresswoman’s thoughts on Robinhood and GameStop, she slammed him for his role in the Capitol insurrection. Not just AOC, but the goddamn Vice President as well. By the way....

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How The NRA Helped Foment An Armed Insurrection At The Capitol

Insurrectionists had enough ammo to shoot everyone in Congress “five times” — and they were radicalized by decades of NRA fearmongering, a new report finds. All the more reason to kill the NRA stone cold DEAD!

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Some QAnon Supporters Checked By Reality Seek A Way Out

“Hi my name is Joe,” one man wrote on a Q recovery channel in *******m. “And I’m a recovering QAnoner.” Good to know some have seen the light.

[Tami]

This can't have been just a mistake, LOL

The greatest news clip ever from @11thHour
with Brian Williams! This sums up the meeting between @GOPLeader
Kevin McCarthy and the Palm Beach bully. You won't want to miss this

Twitter Link with Video

This video clip is better

[Tami]

I was watching Stephanie Ruhle on MSNBC discussing the GameStop situation. She had two guests, one was a CEO of one of the App companies, the other was the founder of the Reddit board where this all began.

One thing that struck me was that, while the Trading App Rep and Ruhle were going over how this system works and what caused the temporary shut down of trading, basically that you can't trade if you don't have the money to back it up and that there are clearinghouses and other issues to deal with, and they admitted to weaknesses in the system...the guy behind the Redit board was like, 'Who Cares?' No one cares about how the system works, they just want to trade and make money, like playing a game or going to a casino.

If App Companies are driven out of business, then what are these traders going to use? I just didn't like his attitude.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Really great video on Ulysses S. Grant and his presidency, warts and all.



Grant was both a great president and a failure and it's kind of interesting to see how that played out.

[Kirby101]

Really great video on Ulysses S. Grant and his presidency, warts and all.

Grant was both a great president and a failure and it's kind of interesting to see how that played out.

Did you see the History Channel Grant mini-series? Very well done.

[Agent Z]

Following the Capitol Insurrection, White Nationalist Novels Surge In Popularity.

https://jezebel.com/following-the-ca...t-n-1846156574

[TheDarman]

Someone needs to tell these idiots that Trump only has as much power and credibility as they're willing to give him.

Since 2008, Republicans have only performed well in presidential election cycles when Trump was on the ballot. They are probably hoping to build the same coalition as there was in 2020 (with a surge in Trump voters who complimented voters who just wanted to see a President Biden--whom many of them voted for--checked) in 2022 with less turnout among Democrats. The issue is that political polarization is still a huge factor. In particular, Senate elections have become enormously polarized based on which state went for the presidential winner. The only two Senators who are currently in the Senate despite their party's presidential candidate losing their state are Manchin (2012) and Collins (2020).

It's also worth noting that Democrats have had tougher mid-term stings than Republicans in the past--largely because of the Democrats' reliance on low-propensity voters during the Obama years. Those voters needed a candidate like Obama, and a presidential election environment, to show up. Democrats, though, have a shifting coalition that has lost many low-propensity voters. These voters are hard to account for, especially in polling that tries to emulate mid-term circumstances.

Recall that in 2012, polling averages showed Mitt Romney with a small lead in the national polls (+0.4% over Obama) and then Obama ended up winning by roughly the same national margin that Biden did in 2020. That same shift away from Romney happened for Trump in 2020, with Biden losing about five percent of the vote he was expected to get in national polling. Part of this is a surge in turnout for the incumbent party, but part of it is also low-propensity voters failure to turn up in "likely voter" polls. The Republican Party has leaned on them heavily in the Trump years. The Democratic Party has managed to make up for the loss of these low-propensity voters (at least the electorally efficient ones in states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania) with surges with college-educated voters of all racial identities.

It is an open question as to how well this new Democratic Party does in 2022 when Trump isn't on the ballot. I think another question we reasonably could ask is: just because Trump isn't at the top of the ticket, will that mean he won't have a presence in the race? Two of the people related to him, Lara and Ivanka, seem to be planning two Senate races. Lara Trump would be running for an open Senate seat in North Carolina, one of Democrats' only real pick-up opportunities. And Ivanka would be running to defeat Rubio in Florida. Given the direction that the winds are blowing in Republican politics, I wouldn't be surprised to see either one of them topple Republicans in the primaries. But the name "Trump" has just as much galvanizing force on the right as on the left.

[Ragged Maw]

Following the Capitol Insurrection, White Nationalist Novels Surge In Popularity.

https://jezebel.com/following-the-ca...t-n-1846156574

One would think the crappy cosplay seen in those photos and the borderline slapstick accounts of how easily participants got (themselves) arrested would be enough to turn more people off that kind of thing.

Maybe calling it an "insurrection" was a mistake, as such a term lends a sort of romanticism that might be attracting more of these assholes. All too easy for each of us as human beings to be tempted by larger-than-life interpretations of the world around us, no matter how benign or toxic.

[MajorHoy]

. . . It is an open question as to how well this new Democratic Party does in 2022 when Trump isn't on the ballot . . .

I think how the country as a whole is doing regarding recovery from the pandemic at that point might also be a major factor for the 2022 elections.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

One would think the crappy cosplay seen in those photos and the borderline slapstick accounts of how easily participants got (themselves) arrested. would be enough to turn more people off that kind of thing.

It's a mistake to assume that modern conservatism has any sense of shame or decency. They don't care how ridiculous or stupid they are or how they look. In fact, truth be told, the Nazis were pretty damn ridiculous too and Hitler's Putsch in Munich was a total s--tshow but that didn't discredit him.

People on the right care about the idea...white supremacy, fascism...they don't care about dignity.

Maybe calling it an "insurrection" was a mistake, as such a term lends a sort of romanticism that attracts more of these assholes.

As I said these guys don't have dignity so it doesn't matter. You can call it "the grand s--tshow" and these guzzards would embrace it.

I personally use the word Putsch rather than Insurrection myself.

Insurrection has had positive examples, at least outside USA. During the French Revolution, the King of France who fomented a Civil War that was going badly to sabotage and end the Republic was toppled in an insurrection (and that was the word used at the time). A bunch of volonteers from the Army, a regiment from Marseilles travelled to Paris to the capital, and along the way a song they picked up and caught on as a marching song, was introduced in Paris and came to be known as "La Marseillaise" the future national anthem in honor of this insurrection. These guys marched into the Tuileries Palace where the King and Queen were there. Some of the National Guard at the palace joined the Marseillaise but the Swiss Guard stayed loyal and opened fire on them, starting a bloodbath and shooting battle inside the entire Palace. The King and Queen were forced to take refuge at the National Convention building, who promptly declared a Republic and shifted away from a constitutional monarchy.

In India over the last few days, on the nation's Republic Day (the day when its constitution was ratified), you had farmers storming the Red Fort of Delhi, a historic monument of great significance and occupying it in protest of the right-wing Modi government's oligarchical policies.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/a...forms-n1255673

These two insurrections -- the one in France and India -- are essentially spontaneous mass movements directly reacting against corrupt policies whereas the Putsch was a planned co-ordinated and politically directed and targeted attack on the Nation's institutions to prevent the ratification of an election. Calling it an insurrection is misleading in that sense.

[TheDarman]

I think how the country as a whole is doing regarding recovery from the pandemic at that point might also be a major factor for the 2022 elections.

Oh for sure. And that would be why Biden and his caucus can't really waste time trying to negotiate on (and get five insurrectionists onboard with) a new economic recovery package. Any further time wasted trying to get them on board is time the damage to the economy becomes more and more entrenched and permanently damaging.

[Ragged Maw]

It's a mistake to assume that modern conservatism has any sense of shame or decency. They don't care how ridiculous or stupid they are or how they look. In fact, truth be told, the Nazis were pretty damn ridiculous too and Hitler's Putsch in Munich was a total s--tshow but that didn't discredit him.

People on the right care about the idea...white supremacy, fascism...they don't care about dignity.

But weren't all the ones embracing the dumbassery just the grunts/useful idiots/impulsive types/etc. that, if not stamped out by the current authorities, were coldly "discarded" by the smarter fellas planning behind the scenes once their usefulness expired?

Like, compare immediate gratification with long-term vision.