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

[Malvolio]

Boring is Good: The Moral Case for Joe Biden

So he's boring. So what? It's an election, not a rock concert. You vote; you go home. You don't need to get excited about it. You just need to do it.

[worstblogever]

So, it sounds like Fled Cruz might be in a spot of bother after news got out regarding tapes where he talked about gumming up the works for the vote certification back in 2020.

His counterargument on social media has been, "These tapes weren't some SECRET. I was always openly lying about supposed fraud to be a seditious twit!"

Which, isn't the dig back at the reporters he wants it to be.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

So he's boring. So what? It's an election, not a rock concert. You vote; you go home. You don't need to get excited about it. You just need to do it.

THIS! I happen to like boring. Words can't describe how strung out I felt between 2017 and 2020, waking up every morning and the first thought that creeped into my mind was: "What did that crazy bastard Trump say, do or tweet to inflame things while I slept?" I've had no such concerns since 'Sleepy Joe' was elected.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Proud Boys leaders: Trump caused Jan. 6 attack

Former Proud Boys national chair Enrique Tarrio — the man prosecutors have portrayed as the ringleader of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — told jurors Tuesday that he’s merely a scapegoat for the real culprit: Donald Trump.

“It was Donald Trump’s words. It was his motivation. It was his anger that caused what occurred on January 6th in your amazing and beautiful city,” said Nayib Hassan, Tarrio’s lawyer, during closing arguments in a seditious conspiracy trial stemming from the Jan. 6 attack.

Hassan leaned heavily into the role Trump played in ginning up the crowd at his rally the morning of Jan. 6, just minutes before rioters began breaching police barricades at the Capitol. Trump urged his supporters to “fight like hell” just 36 minutes before the first wave of the mob charged at police, Hassan noted.

“It was not Enrique Tarrio. They want to use Enrique Tarrio as a scapegoat for Donald Trump and those in power,” Hassan said.

[worstblogever]

THIS! I happen to like boring. Words can't describe how strung out I felt between 2017 and 2020, waking up every morning and the first thought that creeped into my mind was: "What did that crazy bastard Trump say, do or tweet to inflame things while I slept?" I've had no such concerns since 'Sleepy Joe' was elected.

We don't have to sleep restlessly at night wondering if the moron with the nuclear codes will decide to ignore everybody and try to stop a hurricane by launching one.

Just for one example. There's also botching pandemic response, locking children in cages, leaking our national security secrets to foreign enemies, kidnapping Americans off the streets for daring to speak out against him without even charging them with a crime... and that's just the security we're talking about, that's not even the vast record-setting corruption of his Cabinet and as we're now learning, of his judicial appointments. Add Trump's been campaigning on creating tent city prisons for the homeless if re-elected.

So pardon us if "Old Boring Joe" has my support over... that. And the fact that no Republican has the spine to dare to deviate from that madness.

[worstblogever]

It's also worth noting how Trump's tendency to dish out nicknames to break people apart like a mean girl in high school... hasn't worked on "Sleepy Joe". Worse, the Trump supporters who went "Let's Go Brandon" have had it flip on them to not only do people on the left share taunting "Dark Brandon" memes when Biden gets a political win...

Biden's campaign are literally selling Dark Brandon merch on his re-election website.



If you can flip an insult into a fundraiser... suffice to say, you're gonna be tough to beat. Especially if this and lying are all Trump has.

[Mister Mets]

Chris Hayes points out a weird policy fight in New York where the state assembly is hesitant to crackdown on illegal cannabis shops by levying fines and seizing product.

The black market weed shop issue in NYC is a pretty interesting policy test. The reason they sprouted up is that NY state wanted to grant its licenses to people and communities that had been disproportionately harmed by the War on Drugs. Which is great!

The black market weed shop issue in NYC is a pretty interesting policy test. The reason they sprouted up is that NY state wanted to grant its licenses to people and communities that had been disproportionately harmed by the War on Drugs. Which is great!

So what to do? Well the problem is the only way to really make the law work as intended is to enforce it and that means shutting these unlicensed storefronts down. There are good reasons to worry about how that enforcement itself might go sideways.

But if you *don't* want to use enforcement powers to shut those places down it feels a bit like you're moving form skepticism about policing to skepticism about regulatory enforcement, which seems more than little dicey for any project of progressive governance.

Matt Yglesias sees this as an example of how we're no longer in an economic emergency and need to consider boring tradeoffs, in response to what Ezra Klain called "everything bagel" liberalism of unfocused policies.

https://www.slowboring.com/p/every-p...e-all-the-time

The other side of it would be that deliberate focus requires compromises which may demotivate the base, and hinder momentum.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Trump questions why he should participate in GOP primary debates

Former President Trump on Tuesday raised the prospect of skipping the two Republican White House primary debates that have been announced thus far, suggesting he should not have to subject himself to such scrutiny given his commanding lead in the polls.

“I see that everybody is talking about the Republican Debates, but nobody got my approval, or the approval of the Trump Campaign, before announcing them,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “When you’re leading by seemingly insurmountable numbers, and you have hostile Networks with angry, TRUMP & MAGA hating anchors asking the ‘questions,’ why subject yourself to being libeled and abused?”

Trump also took issue with plans to hold the second planned GOP debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California, noting that Fred Ryan, publisher of The Washington Post, is chairman of the board of trustees at the Reagan library.

Trump is such a goddamn whiner. And his lemmings thinks he's a man's man and a warrior (if you look at his idiotic NFT's).

[Tendrin]

Transphobia rots your brain, part ... I've lost count.

Conservative press is now having a field day with a trans woman who ran in the London Marathon as a woman. The New York Post said she 'beat 14,000 other women', an Olympian said it was wrong and unfair that she ran in it, etc. Clearly, she was dominating all the cis women, right?!

She placed 6160th.

TRanS WoMeN are BIolOGiCAl MAlES WHO will DoMinATe.

[Gray Lensman]

THIS! I happen to like boring. Words can't describe how strung out I felt between 2017 and 2020, waking up every morning and the first thought that creeped into my mind was: "What did that crazy bastard Trump say, do or tweet to inflame things while I slept?" I've had no such concerns since 'Sleepy Joe' was elected.

There is a reason for the curse "May you live in interesting times."

Screw that, I want the world around me to be boring, and the stuff I do to be interesting.

[Dalak]

Such as...?

Something minor thst Qpublicans will try to make some false equivalence brand hay out of.

Pretty much. But I was thinking about any real estate deals or other potentially problematic payments not reported that could let Thomas off, not that anything can really get him over this.

Proud Boys leaders: Trump caused Jan. 6 attack

Trump questions why he should participate in GOP primary debates


Trump is such a goddamn whiner. And his lemmings thinks he's a man's man and a warrior (if you look at his idiotic NFT's).

The Party of Trump! Just remember that unless the GoP rejects the reliance on hate, lies, and fear getting rid of Trump will not erase the affect he's had on it.

Transphobia rots your brain, part ... I've lost count.

Conservative press is now having a field day with a trans woman who ran in the London Marathon as a woman. The New York Post said she 'beat 14,000 other women', an Olympian said it was wrong and unfair that she ran in it, etc. Clearly, she was dominating all the cis women, right?!

She placed 6160th.

TRanS WoMeN are BIolOGiCAl MAlES WHO will DoMinATe.

We have to keep people up in arms over a harmless minority.

There is a reason for the curse "May you live in interesting times."

Screw that, I want the world around me to be boring, and the stuff I do to be interesting.

There is something to be said for boring.

[PaulBullion]

Pretty much. But I was thinking about any real estate deals or other potentially problematic payments not reported that could let Thomas off, not that anything can really get him over this.

In my experience, it's very rarely both sides doing it.

[Dalak]

In my experience, it's very rarely both sides doing it.

I agree. The Thomas stuff has been news for a while now so any chance to bring up a liberal justice doing something similar has to have conservatives digging through records and stories trying to find anything they can make hay out of.

However just because I'm a liberal I don't assume that they are all 100% innocent either, people are people.

[JackDaw]

So he's boring. So what? It's an election, not a rock concert. You vote; you go home. You don't need to get excited about it. You just need to do it.

If he runs again he’ll be 86 by end of term. Realistically he’s already showing some signs that age is making him less effective and efficient. No shame in that…it happens to us all, it’s certainly happened to me.

And as for the Donald? I can’t see why on Earth the Republicans want to run him again. President Biden will very likely beat him, and for sure deserves to on their respective records. But it’s a real danger..I think…that the Republicans will run some one else. Maybe because they have to because his health collapses, or he loses a significant Court case.

Honestly most people in UK are surprised that a re-run of last Presidential election is probable.

[Gray Lensman]

If he runs again he’ll be 86 by end of term. Realistically he’s already showing some signs that age is making him less effective and efficient. No shame in that…it happens to us all, it’s certainly happened to me.

And as for the Donald? I can’t see why on Earth the Republicans want to run him again. President Biden will very likely beat him, and for sure deserves to on their respective records. But it’s a real danger..I think…that the Republicans will run some one else. Maybe because they have to because his health collapses, or he loses a significant Court case.

Honestly most people in UK are surprised that a re-run of last Presidential election is probable.

The Republicans at the top most certainly do NOT want Trump to run again. However, the evangelical wing of the party is standing by him and is unwilling to accept that he is anything other than the Second Coming, despite sharing more traits with the Biblical Antichrist than a return of the first one. So the party is stuck with someone proven to drive negative voter turnout like no one else in history.

The Democrats are in a donut hole for the party. Leadership is basically in 2 groups - quite old or not quite ready. The leaders of the next generation mostly haven't been able to generate a real national following yet.