Yes….there is a difference between the two. And it’s not just in education. pic.twitter.com/4VOCOi7omu
— Richard N. Ojeda, II (@Ojeda4America) April 13, 2021
can confirm it is not feeling boring in here https://t.co/AWs748xjy7
— Jen Psaki (@PressSec) April 13, 2021
President Biden spoke to President Putin this morning. WH readout: pic.twitter.com/4OUc5OdNso
— Allie Malloy (@AlliemalCNN) April 13, 2021
.@POTUS hands the daughter of US Capitol Police officer Billy Evans a toy she dropped on the ground a few moments before speaking in the Capitol Rotunda at a memorial service for the officer. pic.twitter.com/8WwHbk1Gi8
— Elizabeth Landers (@ElizLanders) April 13, 2021
OzarkHillbilly
Feels strange not fearing what transpired between Biden and Putin. Feels even stranger actually knowing what transpired between the 2.
SalterWobchak
Not at all surprising that the right wing noise machine is shifting attention to Harris, and asking why she hasn’t… held a press conference. Because, you know, that’s what we expect from our Vice Presidents…
debbie
Hearing “readout of a phone call” this morning was a gladdening moment.
mrmoshpotato
@OzarkHillbilly:
No morning dread of “What atrocities will the orange bastard commit today?”
Ken
@OzarkHillbilly: Maybe the WH will someday release “Readouts of calls by TFG to Putin — Taken from the automatic recorder neither TFG nor anyone in his administration knew about.” A 13-volume boxed set.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone???
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
It is the best of times.
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
Falling Diphthong
I like how the Never Trump Former Republicans are like “Yes it is boring ha ha ha I can take a nap and not worry what fresh garbage insanity might have launched during it. Even his tweets are boring and that’s what I voted for.“
OzarkHillbilly
Trevor Noah:
“I’m not saying that tragic mistakes will never happen, but what I am saying is that maybe if the police weren’t so quick to draw any weapon then maybe people wouldn’t die because of a mix-up from Officer Urkel over here. And by the way, don’t you find it amazing that cops think everything is a gun except their own gun? You have a cell phone in your hand. “Oh that’s a gun.” You’re holding a wallet. “Oh that’s a gun.” Their own gun? “No, not a gun, not a gun.”
…………………….
“Please don’t forget: this is how cops treated one of the troops, while he was wearing his uniform. Not a hoodie, not baggy pants, so what’s the excuse this time, huh? If a black man in military uniform can’t get humane treatment from the police, then what chance does every other black person in America have?”
Baud
What say you, WI Jackals?
Patricia Kayden
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
For me, the worst part of that last encounter was the cop bellowing he better be afraid to get out of the car.
Benw
I feel like it’s weird to need to clarify that Dr Jill and Melanie are pretty different
Baud
OzarkHillbilly
@Ken: trump would sue for copyright infringement but drop the suit after they negotiate his
5%10%15%25% commission.WereBear
Relief is very persuasive.
I don’t think anyone has really nailed the mental disorder that is Republicans-since-Reagan, but I have come to believe it really is a case of self-treating all the damage that comes from being an Authoritarian follower.
After that, some form of cult is inevitable.
Baud
@Benw:
There’s an entrenched culture in the US to regard Republicans and Democrats as the same. We constantly have to fight that.
prostratedragon
No comment:
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Something I’ve been wondering about: why is the extension of the New START Treaty only going to be 5 years instead of the original 10?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@prostratedragon:
LMAO!
mali muso
@WereBear: I was just musing on that this morning as I was thinking about the things I need to get done at work today. Feeling a little stress, but then comparing it to the outright sense of terror and existential dread that I was living under last year at this time. The difference is striking.
OzarkHillbilly
@prostratedragon: Said the guy who’s boss calls every DEM in Congress a “radical leftist” and insists they “want to take your guns” and “kill babies” and run “pedophile rings out of pizza parlor basements” and… ad nauseum.
prostratedragon
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Sublime.
Baud
@prostratedragon:
The only part that matters.
OzarkHillbilly
“It’s dangerous when a policeman can’t tell if you’re holding a gun. It’s insane when they can’t tell if they’re holding a gun,”
– Stephen Colbert
Enhanced Voting Techniques
That was my thought about the pressing whining about it being boring; isn’t the Ukraine and Taiwan enough drama? I think they all got lazy with Trump that all they had to do was talk about tweets.
prostratedragon
@Baud: And no doubt the part that has them amazed. Reminds me of an item I saw on an expert dog trainer, a very polite but firm English lady. The dog would be all over the place, and she just repeated “Sit” a couple of times in her no-nonsense way and lo and behold the dog did sit, stunned, as if not knowing what was happening to it all of a sudden.
hueyplong
@prostratedragon: If they don’t want to be called the Jim Crow party, they might consider dropping the current attempt to implement Jim Crow voting laws in every state.
“It’s working” because it’s an accurate description of what’s going on.
Betty Cracker
Was just reading the Politico gossip about Republican frustration (linked at #19) with a sense of deep satisfaction over a villainous party’s long-awaited comeuppance:
Excellent! Now, the “entrenched narratives” they’re complaining about are totally true, but it sure is lovely to see the actual villains hoist on their own “narrative” petard for a change.
rikyrah
Muthaphucka ? was picking on a child!??
Kay
@prostratedragon:
There really could have been a Republican infrastructure package during the Trump Administration. They were just too lazy and venal to put it together. They had two Obama terms to plan it. Eight years seems like enough time, considering Biden put his together in a month.
rikyrah
@Betty Cracker:
You mean perception is truth?
There is nothing done by the GQP since 2009, that would make any Democrat believe that they are coming in good faith.
Nothing.
I love that these Democrats aren’t pretending that they are
SiubhanDuinne
Seen on Facebook:
Soprano2
Man, that Politico article is something else. It sounds to me as if they’re really, really mad because they’re being tarred as what they have been since Obama was elected – obstructionists who are more interested in “jamming up” the president than cooperating with him. It doesn’t seem to occur to them that if the “Group of 10” had been willing to give some during the COVID relief bill negotiations, and been willing to pledge to vote for the bill if they got a significant amount of what they wanted, then they could have made a deal. They’re used to presenting what they see as a “reasonable” alternative, and then when it’s not accepted being able to jam up the president’s agenda until he gives in to them. They don’t seem to realize how unpopular the things they want to do are with the average American, which gives Biden enormous leverage to just ignore them!! They don’t know how to deal with someone who can ignore them. They’re stamping their feet like small children to Politico saying “We will not be ignored!!!” Babies, all of them.
hueyplong
@Kay: Soon it will get to the point at which none of them actually knows how to draft legislation.
When all you are is a Fox media-packaged internet troll, you have no idea how to govern.
Soprano2
Yep, this exactly! They need a 12-step program to break their addiction to the chaos surrounding TFG.
rikyrah
@Kay:
They didn’t want it because they don’t believe in anything positive that the Government could do for the people. Also, they wanted to do a bunch of privatization bullshyt schemes masquerading under an infrastructure label.
Kay
@prostratedragon:
A Trump infrastructure would have been bipartisan. If they had actually tucked some roads and bridges in with the grift and tax cuts to donors, they would have peeled off a few Democrats easily.
Someone should ask Chris Christie why they didn’t get it done.
Betty Cracker
Charlie Pierce wrote a lovely post yesterday that was also illustrated by the photo of Biden handing a toy back to the child of the deceased policeman at the Capitol memorial service (shown in last tweet above). An excerpt:
Spot on, if a bit unfair to vultures, which are essential creatures. The contrast that immediately leapt to my mind was when TFG and his horrid wife staged a photo-op with the baby who was orphaned in the TFG-inspired mass shooting in El Paso.
I’ll never get that image out of my mind. With their fake, toothy grins, the Turnips couldn’t have looked more opportunistic, cruel and grotesque in that photo if they had actually planned to boil that baby for dinner.
zhena gogolia
I love these threads. That Jen Psaki/ Sam Stein tweet is so lovely.
zhena gogolia
@Betty Cracker:
Yes!
hueyplong
I gave up political tv for Lent. For the first time in who knows how long, I saw bits of Brian Williams’ show last night between innings of a ball game. In the last 3 minutes or so, he took hammer and tongs to Trump. No Both Sides nonsense there. Has he joined the team? On Jan 6, it seemed like he was angered by the stuff he was seeing and talking about so I wonder if he has “improved” from the POVs of people here.
Kay
@rikyrah:
They can’t complain about health care or infrastructure as far as I’m concerned. No one was stopping Republicans from doing their own. Republicans in Congress become known for one of two things- either blocking everything Democrats propose or one or two of them breaking off and saving an existing Democratic law or policy. They could consider doing their own work. See how that goes.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@debbie: I never could understand why TFG’s team didn’t do readouts. Were they so incompetent they didn’t know that was routine? Did TFG know but decide it was no one else’s business?
Dorothy A. Winsor
@OzarkHillbilly: I’m reading Isabel Wilkerson’s CASTE and the treatment of that army officer is right in line with her work. I think things change only by millimeters at a time.
Ken
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I always thought the reason was obvious.
rikyrah
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Heaven forbid they actually have to to research about topics ??
You know… journalism
rikyrah
@OzarkHillbilly:
IKR?
Steeplejack
@prostratedragon:
Their words, not ours! ?
scribbler
@rikyrah: Truly awful and disgusting behavior. Please let that racist soldier be in a world of hurt by now. He deserves every bit of pain coming his way.
Starfish
@Betty Cracker: I was thinking of the stage photo of the kid with the lawnmower.
TFG never showed a moment of that type of public kindness while in office, even with his own child.
Soprano2
This one. He didn’t want anyone to know what he said to foreign leaders, especially Putin. He thought it was no one’s business what he did or said.
Steeplejack
@prostratedragon, @Steeplejack:
And they sort of doubled down on the self-own in that article.
Again, their words, not ours.
SFAW
@prostratedragon:
If any of those mofos had shown even the smallest inkling of a hint of maybe considering honestly working with Dems to pass anything other than a tax cut, I might have the smidgen of a bit of an iota of sympathy for their horrible plight. Especially if President Biden (FSM, I love being able to type that!) had treated them one-hundredth as vilely and disrespectfully as That F-ing Guy treated all Dems.
But they didn’t, and he doesn’t, so fuck them.
And that goes triple for Capito, Portman, Moran, Rounds, Tillis, and Young, who apparently were OK with That F-ing Guy inciting insurrection and attempted murder.
sdhays
@hueyplong: I think that’s already true. Most Republican legislation is completely written by lobbyists.
hueyplong
@sdhays: Yes, they let their donors write the few laws they pass. Representation of a sort, but hardly working for a majority. Of course, if there is a single GOP theme, now more in the open than before, it is that majority rule is very bad.
No doubt coincidental what whites are heading toward plurality status.
SFAW
@Steeplejack:
You seem to think that their counter-“offer” of a $600 Million* bill was insincere. [Not that any of them would have voted for it anyway: “Oooh, it doesn’t give enough tax cuts to our benefactors, so I can’t vote for it.”]
* Yes, I know it was $600B. The point is: if you’re going to make an insulting counter-“offer,” what’s three orders of magnitudes between
adversariesfriends?zhena gogolia
@hueyplong:
He’s been good in recent months. Also quite funny sometimes.
SFAW
@hueyplong:
Republic, not a democracy, libtard.
Another Scott
@Kay: IIRC, Moscow Mitch said before TFG was sworn in that there wasn’t going to be any giant infrastructure bill. And nobody was willing to challenge him on it. Since TFG was mostly about claims of greatness with no work, he didn’t care either.
Cheers,
Scott.
SFAW
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Almost; he didn’t want his treason to become publicly known.
Kay
@Steeplejack:
Seeing themselves as victims has really become central to conservatism. They take responsibility for nothing. It’s filtered down to the base, too. They whined and complained all thru the Trump presidency that they weren’t getting “credit” for things. Even when they win they lose.
They are 100% responsible for Trumpism. It’s theirs. They are going to have to kiss his ass every single day until he keels over. That’s the deal they made and it’s now time to pay up.
Hoodie
@prostratedragon: These dipshits labor under the delusion that they should rule the world, when the reality is that they cowered in fear when the Trumpists were in power. Now, they are getting bulldozed over by Schumer, who has ample experience to know they’re essentially worthless as allies because they’re abject cowards.
hueyplong
@SFAW: Haha, that’s exactly what they say. As carved in stone as the 2A as the most important part of the Constitution and one of the lost commandments when Moses went all E-6 with the tablets.
SFAW
@SFAW:
Of Speaker Pelosi and various other Dems, and maybe Pence. I wasn’t forgetting Officer Sicknick; I was just focusing on the targeted hate coming from TFG and his minions.
SFAW
@hueyplong:
Yeah, they use that a lot, especially when a citizens’ referendum changes state law to be more compassionate, and the leges hamstring the law (FL ex-felon voting) or refuse to fund it (MO Medicaid expansion).
Of course, when the Dems ignore Rethug wishes, they need fainting couches.
ETA: E-6? The shortstop makes a throwing error? Not getting your banter, Squiffy.
hueyplong
@SFAW: Looks like you are getting it. Error on short. I lapse into sportsball a lot.
SFAW
@hueyplong:
Ah. As in “I bring you these 15 – *crash* – uh, 10 Commandments”?
ETA: I also sometimes use sportsball banter. Was just a little confused re: how to make an “E-6” fit.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Betty Cracker: Here is a bit of speculation after that article Betty is quoting – the press knows most of it’s audience is radical, ready to stick to the man, boomers who make over 100K a year and the “OMG, Biden is so BORING!!!” stories are really more stealth gloating like that Political story is gloating about how hard it is to make Biden the villain of traditional conservative narratives.
different-church-lady
Boring is good. Boring works.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Yep, Republicans are always the victims, even when they are getting unearned positive press, like my shitty governor. Every time he’s in front of a camera, he whines about the media.
We Democrats, including me, whine about the media a lot too, and with scads more justification! But at a certain point, maybe that becomes self defeating?
hueyplong
@SFAW: Yes and that scene is actually what I had in mind as I typed “E-6”
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@rikyrah: Indeed, work, don’t people know these journalist are white?
But to be fair, how does one explain the Ukraine situation to an audience of Cletus and Kareens who thinks California and Puerto Rico are foreign countries and Eurasia is some rock band.
Woodrow/asim
@Kay:
It’s always been central to what we now call Conservatism, too. Read John C. Calhoun, and how he and his contemporaries always railed about “The South” as a victim of something — usually Northern interests (see: tariffs), but sometimes just good ol’ Black folx, enslaved or free.
Not a single one of these latter-day George Wallaces would ever want these marks to ever feel safe. From Black folx to Trans folx, they will always find new people to grind underfoot, for no other purpose than to squeeze another round of money and votes from the privileged people they’ve conditioned to live in fear.
And the collateral damage? The actual people living in real fear, with real harm?
Never their fault.
SiubhanDuinne
Apparently Bernie Madoff has died. Okay then.
Baud
@SiubhanDuinne:
It must have been hard for him to see his work overshadowed by so many other grifters.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
I think we need to do it primarily because too many of our people need to be reminded that the media’s framing of Democrats isn’t necessarily to be taken at face value.
rikyrah
Oh really???
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@SiubhanDuinne: I thought he had died a while back
rikyrah
@Betty Cracker:
It also helps that the Democrats are taking the GQP at their word…..they are taking into account all that they’ve done since 2009, and are acting accordingly.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@SFAW:
I’ve always thought this was the stupidest “counter-argument” of theirs. I’m like fine, we’re a representative democracy if you want to be technical. I’m pretty sure St Ronaldus Magnus talked about American democracy etc
SiubhanDuinne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I kind of thought the same. Had to check Wikipedia to make sure it wasn’t one of those online obits that pop up years after the event. Both of Madoff’s sons predeceased him, though.
OzarkHillbilly
Maybe America Is Racist
– Michael Harriot
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
Poor thang.
NorthLeft12
If by boring the media means lack of criminal incompetence, and at least daily examples of corruption, ignorance, and outright stupidity then yes, this President is boring.
Looks like the media will need to open their eyes and take a good look at everything that is going on and report that.
Ruckus
@Soprano2:
He didn’t think it was no body else’s business, he knew. Every single thing in his life is always about him and it’s never a pretty picture because he’s a horrible person.
He is the epitome of a modern day republican.
It is why he was so popular to them, it’s why he doesn’t get the level of admiration he deserves but the level they think he does. He is the republican party. Selfish in the extreme, useless in the extreme, dangerous to life in the extreme, racist in the extreme. This is the republican party and has been for all of my seven decades. They had a facade of respectability for a while, because most of them didn’t say the bad parts out loud. But they have been thinking the bad parts, believing the bad parts. Because this is them. Some of them don’t think it is them, but they don’t leave the party. There is a reason for that. And it isn’t pretty.
SFAW
@hueyplong:
I don’t know if I should be gratified or scared.
OzarkHillbilly
@SFAW: C) Both.
SFAW
@SiubhanDuinne:
And somewhere, the Wilpons* are saying “Damn! Now we’ll never get our money back!
** For the non-Mets-fans: Fred and Jeffy Wilpon were, until recently, the owners of the NY Mets. They were horrible owners, made worse when they lost a shitload of money because they were Madoff “clients.” That money loss led to various bad decisions. I don’t think they were as hated as, let’s say, Dan Snyder — but it was close.
SFAW
@OzarkHillbilly:
Sorta like when you and I are “on the same page,” right?
Amir Khalid
@SiubhanDuinne:
Bernie Madoff is dead? Good.
Steeplejack
@hueyplong:
(Intermittent but somewhat regular viewer of the MSNBC lineup here.) Brian Williams has been lightly mocking and eyerolling the GQP for quite a while—mostly Trump, admittedly, but Trump was almost always the one in the spotlight—but Williams has really been getting after them this year. Definitely turning it up.
mrmoshpotato
@SiubhanDuinne: Do the deaths of massive shitstains come in 3’s too?
Steeplejack
@SFAW:
Moi? Never!
hueyplong
@mrmoshpotato: Difficult to believe you don’t have another two individuals in mind, though at this particular buffet any two might do. And of course, the circumstances matter to some extent.
M31
@hueyplong:
E-6
“BENGO!!!!!!”
SFAW
@hueyplong:
Certainly, but I don’t want you coming up with some scenario like: That F-ing Guy is out “playing” golf at Mar-a-Grifto, is near a water hazard, gets hit in the head by Lindsey Graham’s errant ball*, falls into the water hazard, gets eaten by a gator, and Graham suffers the same fate while trying to save him. Concocting such a scenario would be inappropriate.
*ETA: Or vice versa.
Ruckus
@SFAW:
They are called just rewards for a reason.
germy
Another example of the playfulness of whatever deranged screenwriter is scripting this reality. Too much fun with characters’ names.
Madoff? “He made off with their money…”
I’m surprised the executive producers didn’t write a note to tell them to tone down the silly names.
“Trump” should have been the final straw.
Splitting Image
@mrmoshpotato:
These ones have. Rush Limbaugh is bereft of life. G. Gordon Liddy rests in peace. Bernie Madoff has now rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. That’s five.
Just One More Canuck
@SFAW: that’s completely unrealistic. Graham would never risk anything for anybody. He would just attach himself, remora-like, to someone else
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Splitting Image: Assuming that’s not the “five” from the Book of Armaments, can we hope for Rupert Murdoch and TFG to round that out?
(FSM, please, please, please let me make that pilgrimage to the prison cell where TFG breathed his last…)
Danielx
@mali muso:
Yes! Lack of existential dread…so restful.
Almost as restful as not having to worry about which new personality disorder symptoms developed overnight in TFG’s diseased brain.
SFAW
@Just One More Canuck:
OK, fine, so he’s being a remora when the gator eats Trump, and is collateral damage. Happy now?
I tells ya, sometimes I gotta have the patience of a saint to deal with you lot.
rikyrah
@SFAW:
Tell it.
SFAW
@Bruce K in ATH-GR:
There world would be so much a better place if Rupert had not existed.
Matt
This tweet is profoundly accurate, but not in a way that’s positive for Biden – there _is_ a difference between the two, but it’s just marketing; put on a “LOVE” shirt while still constructing the wall.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Matt:
They’re just repairs, dude
Chief Oshkosh
@OzarkHillbilly: I just keep going back to the video, asking myself; What in the fuck was Officer Dipsy-Doodle doing when she thrust herself into the handcuffing? That’s when things went sour, when she interfered with what up to that point was a fairly regular, if uncalled for, arrest procedure.
James E Powell
@hueyplong:
They haven’t done that for years. ALEC does that for them.
Another Scott
I’m shocked, shocked.
I’ve never been impressed when I’ve caught a few minutes of Barbaro on “TheDaily” while flipping radio stations.
Cheers,
Scott.
Just One More Canuck
@SFAW: I’m literally as happy as a clam
SFAW
@Another Scott:
When I hear him pumping the upcoming show, then introducing it, he always strikes me as modulating his voice to make it sound like … I dunno, Rod Serling? Bobcat Goldthwait (during his standup days? He tries to make it sound like he’s both cool, and things are special/urgent. Then when I hear him talk to his “colleagues,” he talks in a relatively normal voice.
SFAW
@Just One More Canuck:
Do they even have clams in Canuckistan? I thought it was all moose and polar bears and icebergs. Although I guess you may have read about them.
Just One More Canuck
@SFAW: Monty Python’s Lumberjack Song is a documentary about daily Canadian life
misterpuff
@SFAW:
Never happen. TFG would not deign to save or help anyone else, especially Sen. Pittypat. He’d probably take a video though. “It was amazing what I had to play through on the Sixth hole.”
Kristine
@Betty Cracker: Nice to see the hardwired media narratives work in Dems’ favor for a change. May it be ever thus.