Meanwhile, Sinema eats battery acid. pic.twitter.com/K8nkbacQt0
— Renee (@PettyLupone) March 23, 2023
god willing sinema will flame out of politics completely because she decided she wanted to openly and authentically be the senator from Blackstone https://t.co/AJBMHvi16C
— b-boy bouiebaisse (@jbouie) March 23, 2023
What’s the term for the opposite of ‘beat sweetener’? Big weekend read from Politico, hot to revive their beloved Dems in disarray!!! trope, even if Sinema isn’t actually a registered Democrat any more:
… As she races to stockpile campaign money and post an impressive, statement-making first-quarter fundraising number, Sinema has used a series of Republican-dominated receptions and retreats this year to belittle her Democratic colleagues, shower her GOP allies with praise and, in one case, quite literally give the middle finger to President Joe Biden’s White House.
And that’s before an audience.
Speaking in private, whether one-on-one or with small groups of Republican senators, she’s even more cutting, particularly about Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, whom she derides in harshly critical terms, according to senior Republican officials directly familiar with her comments.
Sinema’s sniping spree has delighted the Republican lawmakers, lobbyists and donors who’ve taken in the show, giving some of them hope that she can be convinced to caucus with the GOP, either in this Congress or in the case she’s reelected as an independent.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who Sinema has assiduously courted, remains skeptical, however. Believing she remains a Democrat at heart, McConnell has focused on trying to recruit a non-controversial Arizona Republican into the race, somebody who could attract the moderate GOP voters and independents Sinema would need to win the purple state as an independent.
It’s entirely possible, however, that such a Republican doesn’t run or can’t clear a primary in Arizona’s MAGA-fied state party…
Which all raises the question for McConnell: Should his efforts to woo a mainstream Republican fail, would he be better off attempting to cut a deal with Sinema or hope a candidate like Lake can prevail in a three-way race against a current and former Democrat? One potential arrangement: Sinema could remain an independent but caucus with the Republicans in exchange for a ceasefire in spending from the National Republican Senatorial Committee and McConnell’s Super PAC.
Otherwise, McConnell could find himself ushering the election-denying Lake into the Senate, a step he may be less inclined to take as he considers his legacy and, more proximately, the group of mostly newcomers who’ve already tried to overthrow him once from his post. Remarkable as it may sound, on the vote that counts the most for the longest-serving Senate leader, the one to extend his record further, the independent may be more likely to support McConnell than the Republican…
At another Republican-filled fundraiser in Washington this year, Sinema chided Schumer.
Taking questions around the room, as she prefers to do rather than give remarks, the Arizonan encountered a lobbyist who said he was hoping to work with the Senate Democratic leader on finding a compromise over energy permitting. Sinema looked at the lobbyist and shot back: Oh, good luck, according to an attendee.
It’s not just liberals who she’ll take aim at, though. At fundraisers, Sinema has mocked the name Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) bestowed on the climate bill, the Inflation Reduction Act, likening it to the moniker of the initially unpopular health law now known as “Obamacare”: the Affordable Care Act.
And when a Republican donor told the Arizona senator that it was not Manchin but Sinema who “carried the water for us in this last Congress,” she responded: “You’re hired.”
When the donor said, “Without you our taxes would’ve gone through the roof,” she concurred: “They would have.”…
Cue the old George Bernard Shaw joke: You’ve established what you are, now we’re just haggling over the price.
It has been established: Kyrsten Sinema wants money. Mitch McConnell, ‘preeminent fundraiser’, has money. While he’s ‘Leader’, Sinema has entree to all the top-dollar Repub donors. But once he’s out of the Senate, well…
Lol sinema is like "how DARE you lump me in with manchin- can't you see I'm WORSE?" https://t.co/vyC2Slnxrn
— Hemry, Local Bartender (@BartenderHemry) March 23, 2023
Arizona voter:
I hope Sinema isn’t on a Gabbard arc but uhhh it’s not looking good. https://t.co/OdXCB4qF6n
— Jean-Michel Connard (@torriangray) March 23, 2023
You want to know why Kyrsten Sinema travels in GOP circles? It’s because in under 5 years, she has increased her net-worth to over $11M from a net-worth of over $32K. She was paid a hell of a lot of money to sell out.
— Ricky Davila (@TheRickyDavila) March 24, 2023
I get why the Party has to do this walk on eggshells, institutionally, but everyone at the DNC is going to be fighting each other to be on the ground for Gallego come 2024
The AZ GOP nominated Masters. AZ Dems want to eat her heart Aztec-style. She has no constituency. https://t.co/AgB3Mx1Mj7
— Jack Walsh (@JackWaltimore) March 23, 2023
War for Ukraine Day 394: Bakhmut Still Holds!
West of the Rockies
Narcissism or Borderline Personality Disorder? What a vacuous, dishonest person
Has she authored any meaningful legislation, or is she utterly an attention hound?
bbleh
Wait … you’re not saying that a big part of Republican politics is … just a grift, are you?
Oh noes! My values …!
Betsy
Wait. This is an ex-Mormon and she’s going to lecture the rest of us about Jell-O? Seriously?
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
OT – Holy Shit, I finally discovered the Perry Mason HBO reboot. If you love noir, it’s amazing. Great plot line and attention to detail.
Betsy
Call me stupid, but I don’t see how congresscritters actually line their pockets to the tune of $11 million. It’s illegal to take straight cash, right? Everything has to be itemized on the reports as to what it was spent on: postage, printing, meals, airtime ads, whatever. You can’t actually just pocket the cash. You have to declare gifts like nice jewelry or racehorses or whatever — right??? Bribes are illegal.
What am I missing? How do you acquire net worth by selling out in Congress or by just being there??
Where did this lipsticked pig get $11m??
dmsilev
Via TPM, seems that some of the shine has rubbed off from Ron DeSantis’s boots:
John Revolta
Fuck. She’s gonna start voting with the Repugs ain’t she.
scav
Ambulatory Froot-Loops, go figure.
piratedan
that one tweeter has it right, she has no constituency, she’s firmly aligned herself with the dark side and even the Mormon soccer mom’s can see and understand that.
While we may classify her as being stupid (and that could well be true), I see her as more of a narcissist looking to drink deep from the well of graft that is the GOP before she rides off to that private island sunset, free from taxes, principles, ethics or morals. She may simply be grifting these assholes because they’ll believe anything, whereas Dems would demand things like showing up and actually giving a shit and that may be beyond her pale now, as it involves work instead of picking clothes and voting in favor of policies that put money in her hands.
goes to show that women can be just as flawed as men (see Rep Greene, Sen Collins, Blackburn et al)
Sanjeevs
@dmsilev: Uihlein (the donor guy) was a big funder of Jan 6.
What an asshole. Born with a silver spoon in his mouth, Stanford education etc . Should be in jail.
Dangerman
DINO?
HumboldtBlue
@dmsilev:
I was prepared to link to an NBC article on Ron’s dilemma. As has been said here many times, the man exists in a Florida GOP bubble, has the charisma of a log and the presence of a meatball and once he leaves that bubble, we see the buffoonish man. Long may it last.
West of the Rockies
@HumboldtBlue:
And I can’t imagine any Republican stepping up to “take on the king”. Haley is going nowhere, Tim Scott seems drab and meek, and the expired retreads (Cruz, Christie, Paul, et al) inspire no one.
Alison Rose
God, she sucks.
columbusqueen
Here’s hoping Gallego stomps her in the primary. The little whore deserves it big time.
sab
@West of the Rockies: We on our side do not take note of the guys they like because what appeals to them makes our skin crawl. Case in point is Trump.
Guy who worries me is Pompeo. Has that skin crawling vibe. Very much looking after himself and seems to know how to do it. My RWNJ brother has admired him for years: ” First in his class at West Point!”
Jim Appleton
@Alison Rose:
And we know why she gets the credulous coverage.
Ugh.
sab
@HumboldtBlue: Chris Christie without the charisma.
Saw John Kasich on MSNBC this week as one of their paid political analysts. What a choice for analysis. Democrats in Ohio to a person despise him. Current Republicans hate him also (he was anti-Trump.) One of his biggest supporters ( Matt Borges) just got convicted of corruption in the absolutely by far biggest corruptiion scandal in Ohio’s long history of corrupt government.
eclare
@Jim Appleton:
Agree. She is awful.
HumboldtBlue
@sab:
He’s another one who has the mean streak and the brains to keep the magas frothing, but he’s fucking creepy, and I can’t see him rallying the base unless something drastic happens. I may be wildly wrong, but until the GOP get rid of Trump, lord knows how, his shit smears everything.
What I would really like to see, is a sea battle — Trump’s flotilla versus Ron’s flotilla — maybe with some archers and Greek fire. Pay per view that shit.
Jay
@Betsy:
sab
@HumboldtBlue: We hate the creep factor but Republicans love it. “He is tough and can own the Dems.”
tobie
@Betsy: I imagine there’s a kind of insider trading that happens on the Hill all the time. You know pending legislation will increase property values in certain areas so you buy low and sell high. Ditto for a host of other investments.
Sinema is so high on her own supply. It’s just grotesque.
Jay
@tobie:
there are a host of “legal” ways. By an asset, sell it to a lobbiest for 100 times the value.
sab
@sab: First in his class at West Point irks me because he had sort of a gut major. Accounting systems, when more serious people were doing physics and engineering.
Accounting systems is very important, but it doesn’t require genius or even much intelligence. Just organization and an attention to detail.
Even I can do it.
West of the Rockies
@sab:
I don’t see Piggy Pomoeo gaining Trumpian traction. Yes, I don’t think like a Republican, but he seems mean, greedy, pissy, and drab. An older, less conventionally good-looking DeSantis.
Man, Harvard and West Point aren’t sending their best…
sab
@West of the Rockies: I hope you are right.
West of the Rockies
@HumboldtBlue:
I’d be rooting for the Kraken.
sab
@West of the Rockies: We are each entitled to our own opinion, but I do not want a kraken as President or my Senator.
tobie
@Jay: Wouldn’t that come out in financial disclosures? I really have no clue. Members of Congress and the Senate are rich. They manage this somehow…so there must be all sorts of ways they do this. Payments for speeches hardly suffice for a multimillion dollar fortune.
Biden apparently didn’t have large personal assets when he became VP.
HumboldtBlue
@West of the Rockies:
I still maintain that’s a silly and unserious name for a Hockey club.
Also, whatever happened to Martin?
sab
@tobie: Somehow Senators get vastly richer than Congressman. Of course you cannot get there without being rich unless you have the multiple various personal and political skills of Barack Obama ( and his grounded, sensible wife.)
I wonder what he feels about the rest of us. Genius and we are just functioning. Probably hopeful. Been working his whole life with the rest of us.
Chris T.
@tobie:
That’s pretty much it, except that it goes both ways: if you already have investments in Industry X, you vote for legislation in favor of X and against legislation that’s against X. You also jawbone in the same vein—hence the senators who were big into office REITs being also big into “return to work” during COVID.
Citizen Alan
@tobie: The salary for a u s senator is $174k a year. If you make that much for more than a term or 2, and you are not a millionaire, then you are a spendthrift or possibly a cocaine addict.
tobie
@Chris T.: You are so right. I should have thought of that two-way street. You vote on legislation to benefit the investments you have.
Chris T.
@Citizen Alan: It’s not the salary that does that (senators have a lot of expenses, though they also get non-salary income that covers a lot of these expenses). It’s the perks that do it: Wall Street lets you in on IPOs, for instance. This is very old (2002) but while the names have changed, the practices are the same.
tobie
@Citizen Alan: Do you know how much rent is in DC? I’m sorry but $174K a year in DC will not make you a millionaire.
Jay
@tobie:
TFG got away for years by underappreciating property for taxes and over appreciating it for loans. Still has. So you sell a $100k house for $500k, that’s not illegal. Buy a stock for $20 and sell it for $200. People buy stuff above the market price all the time. Sexy underwear worth $15, worn only once, sold on EBay for $750.
sab
@Citizen Alan: In their social circles this is chump change. Look at innocuous Rob Portman’s finances. JD Vance. Also Manchin. They didn’t get rich in the Senate. They got to the Senate by being rich.
tobie
@Jay: I’m sure you’re right. It’s late and I can’t think of creative or not-so-creative ways to make a fortune. I guess that’s why I’m not a millionaire.
Good night, good people!
West of the Rockies
@HumboldtBlue:
Agreed. Kraken is a goofy team name. So is The (Stanford) Cardinal, the Los Angeles Lakers (Lakes? In LA?), and so many others.
I miss Martin. I think he got miffed from a thread a week or so ago. I missed the dust-up.
Chetan Murthy
@Chris T.: To make things easy, let’s assume $200k/yr income, a 50% tax rate, and that they save half their after-tax income. That last assumption is pretty stringent: most Americans can’t manage that. 12yr at 8%/yr return (pretty optimistic) gives us just under $1m, and that’s not accounting for taxes. 18yr give just under $2m.
Halve the amount saved per year, and you halve the end amount. Since $25k/yr is probably more likely (even that is a lot for someone who has to live … “like one of the 103 most powerful people in the country”), I think that Chris T is right, that the way they make their massive wealth increases is the old-fashioned way: *corruption*.
NotMax
@sab
Honest to goodness newspaper piece from a while back cautioning residents of Ohio.
;)
Aussie Sheila
@John Revolta: Yep. She’s a disaster. Not just because she refused to vote for Dem priorities in the Senate. It’s because from half way around the world, it was obvious she revelled in disrespecting her voters. One of the worst electeds I have ever seen in my political lifetime.
A word of warning. Never, ever, endorse someone who has been a member of the US Greens. Worse than a useless political formation, they are, in my opinion, a fully paid up Russian rat fucking operation. She is far worse than Manchin in my opinion. He is just the usual corrupt pol. She is something special.
Grow partisan Dems. Don’t go looking for imports.
sab
@NotMax: My hair is safe. It is lucky if I wash it (with safe satby soap) twice a week. Wash more on sticky hot days.
ETA Who were those people? Odd.
HumboldtBlue
@West of the Rockies:
Stanford Cardinal I am OK with, and the Lakers (fuck the Lakers) at least carry that name back to their origins.
Hell. Utah have the Jazz.
sab
@Aussie Sheila: She came from the Greens. People thought she was one of us.
We now know North American Greens are Putin’s puppets. We did not used to know this.
Scottish Greens I know are all about the environment and global warming. I assume Australian Greens are also. Or they don’t bother with Greens.
HumboldtBlue
I’m always looking for collard greens.
Come to think of it, I haven’t cooked greens in a while. Like, a long while.
J R in WV
@sab: Pompeo first in class at West Point says more about the “academy” than it does about the person Pompeo!
Frankensteinbeck
@John Revolta:
It’s hard to be sure, but I get the impression she enjoys pissing inside the tent more than being a nobody in the Republican caucus. Being unreliable is more profitable and more ego-fulfilling than being predictable in either direction.
Aussie Sheila
@sab: Australian Greens are a very successful minor party here in Oz. They have genuine trade union links, a record of genuine activism and they support Australia’s efforts re Ukraine vehicles and training. They are very different to US Greens, mainly because with our preferential voting system, they are electorally successful in both lower and upper Houses of Parliament at both State and Federal levels. They are a part of our governing politics. They can’t afford, nor do they attempt, to blow up a system which gives them real political power in both States and Federal Parliament.
They are also a useful electoral tool for keeping the ALP ‘honest’ on a number of policy issues. Very different to the US situation where your ‘first past the post’ voting system creates vicious spoilers like the US Greens. They should be shunned by everyone.
Electoral systems create parties. Not the other way round
piratedan
because I’m one of her constituents, I infrequently get her e-mail reach outs and this one came embedded with a you tube video link regarding her “coffee with constituents”.
I would encourage you to look at the number of subscribers and the comments on her video, feel free to say what you wish….. after all, it’s You Tube :-)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UydSueC1eW4
AL, feel free to grab this for the morning crew if desired….
Jay
@tobie:
the trick is, you need to have someone willing to pay $200 for 100 shares of a stock worth $20, or $500k for house appraised at $100k,
that’s where lobbiests, corporations and Multimillionaires come in.
SoupCatcher
@West of the Rockies: Cardinal is a huge improvement over the previous racist team name.
I feel the Venn diagram of Stanford alumni who insist on wearing clothing with the old mascot and those who voted for Trump is a circle.
Aussie Sheila
@piratedan: JFC. She makes me so furious. And I’m not remotely connected to either her or her electorate. Do. Not. Preselect. USGreens. For.Anything.
Chetan Murthy
@Aussie Sheila: Y’know, I donated to her Senatorial campaign in 2018 (she was the nominee, what else could I do?) and …. I don’t agree with this: “AZ Dems want to eat her heart Aztec-style.” Me, I wanna feed her heart to the gators, for an appetizer.
Omnes Omnibus
@Aussie Sheila:
She was a better option than the Republican.
Aussie Sheila
@Chetan Murthy: I get you. I really do. I am not even a U.S. citizen, and she makes me so mad I could spew. Really the worst elected pol I have ever seen. The contempt for the people who worked so hard for her election made me sick. I know what it is to work hard for the Party you support. To elect someone who turns around and spits in your face is something I can honestly say, I have never seen the like of in my life.
The need for more partisan and hardy Dems has never been higher. They can be grown, even in lean times. Partisans rather than policy gadflies are better every time imo. But I come from a place of strong party discipline. And I am here for it, every time. I watch the US and it breaks my heart.
It doesn’t mean winning elections is any easier when times are tough. But it does mean that when you do win, you can expect real results, not mealy mouthed pablum, let alone disrespect from people you have worked to elect. She is the worst imo.
Chetan Murthy
@Omnes Omnibus: McSally … *ugh*. Yeah, she was better than the alternative. Duverger’s Law is a harsh mistress.
Chetan Murthy
@Aussie Sheila: It might ease the gall, to remember that in our lifetimes the Democratic Party was still led by lots of people who were just fine with segregation. They were old, sure, and they’ve pretty much all retired. But there was a time when “bipartisan” really meant something. And what it meant was that both parties were fine with the way things were — segregation, misogyny, etc. The Democratic Party slowly changed from that, but there are still a ton of gerontocrats who remember those times, and cling to the “bipartisanship” even as they’ve banished the bigotry.
The solution is to cycle thru a new generation of Dem leaders who neither fear nor respect their “colleagues” on the other side of the aisle. I think AOC said it once: “we’ve always known that those guys are out for our blood, and we’re not going to let that stop us.” We need more of that.
piratedan
@Omnes Omnibus: the not so lamented Martha McSally, erstwhile coup cheerleader and former AF pilot.
Aussie Sheila
@Chetan Murthy: Yes indeed. Party composition can vary across a big country, but the coalition a Party builds to win can be built across that same country.
I am surprised there are still segregationists in the Dem Party. I would have thought the Reagan years sorted that out. I think the problem is the first past the post voting system, and a lack of Party discipline as a result of the Cold War years of there being a very big ‘centre’ which swayed a bit this way and that, but never vered too far past the op Ed’s of the nyt or the wapo.
Times have changed. The new war should be a class war, of the many against the few. Lucky for us, in Australian, despite the many vicissitudes, there is still a better than vestigial memory of class war. We not only didn’t outlaw the communist party here, despite conservative attempts by two referendums in the early 1950s, we had communist party leaders of powerful and effective trade unions right up until the communist party dissolved itself.
This history has been of inestimable benefit to the Australian working class compared to the US. It has made the Australian trade union movement far more effective at the workplace and electorally than in the US, and made a U.S. political economy impossible here. Thank heavens.
Chetan Murthy
@Aussie Sheila:
Yes, that’s what I mean (in a way). There still were, right up to the Reagan years; that’s when the last of them started leaving for the GOP. But the Dems from that time *remember* “bipartisanship”, and have real trouble discarding the habits of that time. So even though somebody like Feinstein is, I’m sure, not a racist, she can’t help making nicey-nicey with that fucker Lindsey Graham: it’s pretty much in her DNA at this point. Or Leahy (the Vermont Senator who seems to have a jones for getting screwed by GrOPer Senators every chance he can get). They’re too damn fixed in that before time.
Mai Naem mobile
@Jay: i can’t remember who it was but I believe one of the California congressman who ended up doing time was caught for selling a house to a lobbyist/donor for quite a bit more than it was worth. And, ofcourse, TFG sold at least one property in Palm Beach for more than it was worth to a Russian.
sukabi
@Betsy: insider trading….congresscritters get all the best info on what’s happening in the business world before it’s public …. especially if you’re being courted by lobbyists and hanging out at big money events…
Aussie Sheila
@Chetan Murthy: I can see that, even from here. But I keep to my point. Grow better and more partisan Dems, and grow better more effective ‘machines’ linked organically to the organised working class. It will be a slow process in the US but there is no substitute imo, for organic links with the organised working class, together with the discipline that trade union politics teaches.
It pays off, even if the process takes time.
Chris T.
@Chetan Murthy: I suppose it was like the choice between having your leg chopped off, or dying from gangrene. The amputation option is better, but it’s still not good.
Chetan Murthy
@Chris T.: [I write this only *somewhat* in jest, but ….]
Just you wait’n’see, in 2024 if the Senate balance looks shaky, we’ll all be donating to that fucker Manchin.
ColoradoGuy
The late Forties stripped all the Communists out of the US left and the Democratic Party. Henry Wallace, the former VP, split the Democratic ticket in 1948, and Strom Thurmond split it the other way. It was a miracle that Truman got re-elected with the party splintering into three parts. By the time of the HUAC hearings in the early Fifties, the former Communists had all gone into hiding.
This was personal for my family because my father was a classic FDR/Truman Democrat, but *his* father was a card-carrying Communist, and Stalin fanboy. It caused an irreconcilable split in our family … I only saw my grandpa once, when I was very young. The “joke” in the family was whenever somebody foolishly attended a CPUSA meeting, half the people there were FBI snoops, with no way of telling who was who. Only J. Edgar Hoover knew for sure.
The destruction of the CPUSA greatly weakened the U.S. labor unions, because it was well-known the CP members were the most dedicated to the cause, whether they were hard-core Stalinists, anti-capitalists, or simply committed to labor rights.
By contrast, the Republicans never purged the Nazi fellow-travelers out of their party, so they kept re-emerging and changing form.
Shalimar
@sab: Pompeo scares me. I definitely wouldn’t say it is likely, but there is a non-zero chance he thinks God put him on Earth to trigger the 2nd Coming with a nuclear war that wipes out all the unworthy people.
Baud
@Betsy:
I have the same question. I also have a tough time believing she had that little 5 years ago.
Chetan Murthy
@Baud: From accounts of her history, she spent significant amounts of time in her life being really poor. I mean really poor. So it’s believable that she got to 2018 with very little savings: it’s possible she had a lot of debt coming into her time in the House. IIRC in 2020 her net worth was >$1m, but not $11m. I wonder if that second figure is accurate, and if it is, *wow* — she’s really cashed-in.
Aussie Sheila
@ColoradoGuy: Yes. My reading of US Labor history makes this clear. This was a terrible thing and very much like the contemporary authoritarianism in the US. Unfortunately US liberalism needs to learn that if you jettison the ‘left’ to please the centre, you are also creating your own downfall. US liberalism is more robust and loud than its UK counterpart imo, but is useless compared to its working class chartist inflected Australian equivalent.
I suppose it helps not being an empire and not being invested in a caste system of labour extraction. The US class system has been infested with racism and caste to a level unknown in most other contemporary democracies. Not that Australia hasn’t and isn’t racist in its way. But nothing compares to the systematic way US capital has managed to split, shiv and agitate racially the US working class.
It is up to the US working class and its allies to build a multi racial, multi ethnic working class able to hold US capital to account, if only at the margins. Even that would be an improvement. In Australia the minimum wage is $AU21.38 per hr. In the US you couldn’t even pass a $15.00 phr min wage. And you have the global reserve currency .
There is something really wrong with the way working class organisations do politics in the US, and something very wrong with the Democratic Party in a number of States. Unless it improves, I don’t see democratic norms being rebuilt, never mind being built back better. If you get my drift.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Aussie Sheila:
Yours is a very unique vantage point.
I’m 61 this coming month, and view myself as American center left by way of inclination and inadvertent upbringing (mom is a redneck fascist, but my education wound up too idiosyncratic and urban blue collar Catholic to actually leave me in that camp). Flirted with a lot of Republican votes and some activism for about 25 years before I came to a point where I decided that being conservatively progressive and doing a Chicago school-style cost analysis on the benefits of proposed progressive policies was actually a solid approach.
For me, the cautious optimism of Obama was the ideal – it required consensus and buy-in from stakeholders. What I hadn’t counted on was the extent to which the backlash of 2010 and the simultaneous flex of the “fuck everything” left in reaction to his election broke our polity.
Betty Cracker
Forget “12 Angry Men,” “Inherit the Wind,” “A Few Good Men,” “Perry Mason,” etc. This is the greatest courtroom scene ever, and it’s REAL:
Aussie Sheila
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
I get some of what you say, but from my perspective, a disorganised working class, racially divided and ethnically split because of the lack of conscious organisation, is the single biggest danger to democratic politics. I was not at all surprised by trumps election in 2016, although dismayed of course. In the UK Brexit was partly a result of a similar breakdown of working class organisation, mobilisation, and above all, material deprivation as a result of the Blairite delight in a desiccated liberalism that lacked any respect or material benefits for the UK working class. A decade and a half later, almost, of austerity and reactionary ‘kick down, not up’ politics, has left the UK economically reeling and politically stuffed.
In my state in Australia we have just kicked another conservative government to the kerb. Now the ALP has to deliver. Materially. We have one conservative lead State left out of six. Plus we have an ALP federal government. They need to work hard and fast to make substantial and structural change that can outlast future conservative governments.
Luckily parliamentary government means they who have 50% plus one rules. I approve of this system. I loath the ‘reach across the aisle’ BS politics, which in reality means, the powerful and well connected rule, and the poor and politically disconnected get to eat shit.
It is that layer, together with cunning and unscrupulous billionaires that will destroy democracy if we are not conscious, careful and militant.
Baud
Via reddit
https://i.redd.it/i7eesmqvztpa1.jpg
brantl
@sab: And Weight Watchers! And grifting.
Chetan Murthy
@Baud: [megyn kelly voice] “It’s different when a straight man does it; it just is“.
p.a.
@Betty Cracker:
Wait. What?
Goddamnit Cracker, I’ve avoided TMZ for years, don’t incentivize my recidivism! (Is it actually still on-air?)
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Aussie Sheila:
Is QLD still super retrograde?
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Prettier than Nancy, tbh.
@Aussie Sheila:
Agree 100% with this — the odious senator from AZ exemplifies how this works for climbers who aspire to rule.
Maybe the next generation of Americans can change things because they never bought into the myths. My kid grew up in a country where Repubs were always fascist goons and institutions were always teetering on the brink of failure. Different perspective!
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
I hope so. I see good signs there but also some worrying signs.
Anyway
@Betty Cracker:
People bring up her votes for D judges –ok granted, but what kind of left/ center-left/ former Green can be so much in the tank for private equity and vulture capital? I just don’t get how smitten she seems with hedge funds and the like. They are sooo bad for the country’s workers and brutally exacerbate wealth inequality. I cannot forgive her fawning over Davos plutocrats.
Aussie Sheila
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
No, not any more. It’s still less urbanised than the Southern states, but its gerrymander has been abolished and its politics are now recognisably ‘ normal’ Australian politics, albeit probably a tad more socially conservative.
Abolishing gerrymanders that favour rural and peri Urban areas permits better, more progressive and responsive politics. That means easier organising and better delivery of benefits for the working class, rural as well as urban.
Betty Cracker
@Anyway: Greed probably explains it. The antics described in the OP tell me it’s finally dawned on the smarmy twit that she’s screwed herself politically, so now she’s in smash-and-grab mode. Let’s hope she doesn’t screw the rest of us on the way to well-earned oblivion.
Gvg
@Betsy: you are right. She is crooked. Someone with authority needs to follow the money and she needs to go to jail. All of the crooks need to go to jail.
we really need to get the crooks out of the supreme court. The rulings allowing dark money and hiding donors etc made it harder to catch crooks and I bet those judges who ruled for those ethics stupidities have benefited with graft since. We need to prove that even if we can’t remove them for it and get rid of them some way and clean up our politics.
American politics have gone thru cycles of corruption and clean up before and will again. It’s human. It’s also a responsibility to deal with.
Matt McIrvin
Well, I suppose the traditional next step is for her to start railing against trans people.
Viva BrisVegas
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
Not at all, although the southern states like to think so.
In Queensland at the state level we’ve elected Labor governments for all but 5 of the past 32 years.
However at the Federal level we’ve been a bastion for the conservative Liberal Party.
It’s a dichotomy that puzzles even us bananabenders.
kalakal
@Aussie Sheila:
You can blame old Tony for a lot of things but Brexit ain’t one of them. The Blair administrations had considerable achievements in reducing poverty, boosting education, and funding the NHS. Here’s the Poverty figures
The real killer came after the 2008 credit crunch with Tory austerity economics.
The biggest cause of Brexit was a Tory civil war that’s been running since at least the 70s, Major for instance was plagued by the “Eurosceptics” aka “the bastards”.
The pro Brexit faction of Labour was mostly on the left eg Corbyn rather than to the right eg Brown
LiminalOwl
@West of the Rockies: Definitely not Borderline. Narcissistic is a strong possibility. Maybe Antisocial.
(Lemme know if you want a lecture on personality types and diagnostics.)
Geminid
I don’t believe that Sinema’s net worth is $11 million. I cannot find a solid recent number for her, but I did check out one source for the $11 million figure- “CAKnowledge”- and they used some very creative methods to reach that number.
I don’t attribute that much meaning to Sinema being a Green up until 2004 either. She dabbled in Green Party politics, and in 2002 ran for office (and lost) as an Independent affiliated with the party. But as as a commenter here who watched Sinema during her rise in Arizona observed, Sinema is essentially a social climber, an opportunist who saw that the Democratic Party would better serve her ambitions. So she ran for and won a state Delegate seat in 2004 as a Democrat.
Sinema claimed to be very liberal early in her career as legislator, but when she entered Congress in 2013 after a narrow win in the new 9th CD, she joined the centrist Blue Dog Caucus.
Arizona Democrats tolerated this centrist stance in 2018 because they had not put a Senator in Congress for decades. But Sinema went rogue, while Mark Kelly proved in 2020 that Arizona would elect a more standard Democrat (albeit one with a compelling biography). So Democrats were very willing to ditch Sinema in a primary before she forestalled that by leaving the party.
Sinema is raising money for a Senate run, but I’m not certain she’ll make the race. Polling shows her a distant third in against Ruben Gallego and various Repubicans. I don’t see how Sinema turns that around. Arizona has plenty of Independents, but Sinema does not seem to have built much of a following among them, or anyone else either.
So whether or not she runs next year,I figure Sinema will be looking for a job come January, 2025. She’ll find a good one too, and then it won’t be long before she really is worth $9 million.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Aussie Sheila:
Sadly, I feel as though slavish devotion to the hardworking yeoman farmers of the land (or whatever romanticized term you want to call white rural and exurban working class folks) has been our undoing as a society. They’re special snowflakes whose need for cultural coddling and reinforcement of all of their deeply held ideas and prejudices on race, ethnicity, religion, economics and society come before any and all other considerations, and the gerrymander is a major reflection of that.
My own congressional district reflects that – it runs along the Ohio River and extends from some of Louisville’s wealthiest northeast suburbs all the way to West Virginia. It literally borders three states – as a commuter to Louisville, I have nothing in common with hardscrabble Appalachian hill jacks in far Northeast Kentucky.
As a result, we get a snotnosed jackass like Thomas Massie, who does nothing for this district.
Aussie Sheila
@kalakal: I agree that Tory austerity was the real cause of Brexit. But Blairite insouciance towards the financialisation of the economy, the increasing wealth of London as opposed to the deindustrialised regions and the emphasis on ‘cultural politics’ as a way of steering an otherwise ‘depoliticised’ economy helped Cameron’s BS a good deal.
I also agree re Corbyn. I’ll never understand the UK left nostalgia for a pre EU Britain. I know they thought that Brexit would permit widespread nationalisation, a sort of ‘socialism in little Britain’, but do I have news for them. Calling Sir Keith Starmer and Rachel Reeves to the courtesy phone, it’s France on the line asking what the eff the UK left has been doing for a decade.
Aussie Sheila
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
The drawing of electoral boundaries by politicised bodies instead of apolitical commissions contributes to that. Gerrymandering in the US is simply wicked, together with the lack of growth in the number of HoR seats to reflect an expanded urban electorate.
Baud
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg:
There’s no good reason that the GOP can’t hate blacks, libs, and LGBT, and still support working class economics. Their voters don’t demand it.
Frankensteinbeck
@Aussie Sheila:
Certainly true. Unfortunately, it’s exactly the place we’re in. Because of partly deliberate quirks in our system, the most racist demographics have at least twice the voting power of any other, so fixing the problem is a heavy lift.
Sort of. There are people who were segregationists and learned to be better. There are many elected Democrats who grew up in a world where they may not have agreed with segregation, maybe disagreed vehemently, but it was utterly impossible to reject working with segregationists on day-to-day issues. There were too many, and they controlled too much. You’d be ostracizing yourself from society.
This is what you’re getting wrong. It happened from the ground up. Plutocrats ride a tiger going in their direction, but the US electorate split itself. US racists offered themselves up on a plate the second plutocrats said “you know, we both hate those n-loving liberals.”
You love unions and stress their importance in creating political power for the lower and middle classes. You are absolutely right. But Democrats didn’t turn their backs on unions. The instant unions were forced to accept blacks, decades ago, unions turned against Democrats and against their own relevance. We have had to go more than a generation to reach a working class that doesn’t remember desegregation, doesn’t have that chip on their shoulder, and is starting to fight back.
Also, keep in mind that 15 years ago bipartisanship actually was possible. Republicans were already bad faith assholes, but the total war, the insanity that now seems like just the way things are was a result of Obama’s election. Someone here said at the time that White America was about to lose its shit, and they were right. That is how deeply embedded racism is in America.
Geminid
@Frankensteinbeck: Your characterization of unions turning away from the Democratic Party might have been true decades ago, but I do not think it applies today.
Frankensteinbeck
@Matt McIrvin:
Already happening. She delivered quite the anti-woke screed a few days before declaring as an independent.
@Baud:
We rarely disagree, but here I do. If Republican voters think they have to share an economic benefit with minorities, they will and repeatedly have demanded the destruction of that benefit. The public pools problem.
Trump was so virulently racist he convinced his voters that they could get the goodies while punishing minorities. Even then, they mostly shrugged at the economic leftism. Remember, Obamacare repeal first, then a replacement. Priorities.
EDIT – @Geminid:
They screwed themselves over but good. You’re right, they’ve gotten over it, but an enormous amount of ground needs to be made up.
Aussie Sheila
@Frankensteinbeck: Your diagnosis of US unions doesn’t jibe at all with my experience working with US unions 20 years ago. Of course there are racists in every institution and in all classes. But lack of conscious organising against plutocratic and reactionary right wing politics leads to more plutocratic control of politics generally. The US working class is racially and ethnically diverse, just like the Australian working class.
It can’t organise ‘spontaneously’. It takes deliberate, politically conscious organising, bottom up, and top down. If not, be content with an unstable coalition of college educated voters, with whoever thinks the republicans have potty mouths and bad table manners.
I wouldn’t bet a stable democracy on that combo.
Baud
@Frankensteinbeck:
I’m not sure where we disagree. I’m saying GOP working class voters aren’t demanding working class economic policies.
Frankensteinbeck
@Baud:
Oh! I misunderstood you. I thought you meant the opposite.
Betty
@sab: But, don’t you know, Joe invited him to speak at the Democratic National Convention so obviously he’s a great guy. There are moments when Joe does make me cringe. I change the channel as soon as Kasich comes on.
Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg
@Frankensteinbeck:
This.
”Ah done moved out here to the edge of town to keep me and mine away from them goldurned n****rs, and them communist libruls done brought ‘em out here” is a widely held sentiment of hard working white men.
Aussie Sheila
@Baud: It’s hard for people to demand something they don’t even know exists. I get the disdain for racists, I share it. I also don’t think racism is either genetic, a disease or a function of one’s education.
It’s structural, learned behaviour, and an easy way to kick down when kicking up is too hard and you don’t even know you can do it. Kicking up is hard, it has to be taught. Fortunately, it can be taught. Ask liberation movements, international as well as domestic that have had to hoe that road.
Baud
@Aussie Sheila:
They know it exists. They have been taught to hate it.
kalakal
By the time Blair came to power in 1997 the boosting of London and financial deregulation was irreversible if you wanted to get elected, Big Bang was in 1986, and it had been running on steroids for a decade. Brown actually did a pretty good job of steering money into other areas both economically and geographically, I remember seeing the difference in South & West Yorkshire, miles of disused steel mills and heavy industry being replaced by light industrial/commercial business. British industry was eviscerated by Thatcher in favour of services and I can’t see it ever coming back, Brown by reducing poverty figures at least boosted services nationally rather than just the South West.
You’re dead right about the cultural politics, as time went on there was definitely a triumph of style over substance about Blair.
The UK has had London problem for 100s of years, Blair didn’t solve it but then I don’t think he tried too hard ( probably wisely)
He made a Devil’s agreement with the establishment in order to get political power, something no Labour politician has managed since the 70s. He did at least drive a very hard bargain and used that to reverse at least some of Thatcher’s poison.
For me the tragedy was Brown losing to Cameron, at that point the old politics was back in style and the haves got to shaft the have nots once again. The media treatment of Brown was an instant reversion to the pre Blair model.
I’m no big fan of Blair, I damn near left the Labour party because of his control freakery but I’d rather him ( or Corbyn) than any Tory
LiminalOwl
@LiminalOwl: And after further discussion with the Thin Black Duke, I’m going to revise this to say that Antisocial Personality Disorder is actually a strong contender. (With the caveats that 1. I am not aware of any cases of Sinema actually breaking the law [but please educate me if you know of something], and 2. standard disclaimer, I can’t diagnose someone I haven’t met.)
Aussie Sheila
@Baud: I don’t know who the ‘they’ is you are referring to. If it is the US working class, which is as racially and ethnically diverse as Australia, then I am not sure that US democracy can survive at all.
The disdain for people who aren’t either politically engaged or active is palpable, and if you don’t mind my saying so, dangerous and short sighted.
Ohio Mom
@West of the Rockies: I missed that thread too. Also sad, I learned a lot from Martin. Though I have to admit, i don’t understand how people get into such prolonged arguments on threads here.
Shrug your shoulders and leave (or pie them). The person who was disagreeing with you can sputter and that’s about it.
Aussie Sheila
@kalakal: Sure, I agree re Brown. Corbyn’s policies were good, but Christ he wasn’t a good ‘leader’. His Brexit stance was lunacy. But he wasn’t alone o f course. He had a great deal of support for that from some UK unions. They thought it was more left to support Brexit than oppose a right wing Tory grift. Idiots.
Baud
@Aussie Sheila:
They is the GOP working class voter. They are politically engaged in the sense that a lot of them listen to right wing media 24/7.
It is dangerous to regard them as mere victims instead of foot soldiers. They are both, of course, but there’s no way to win them over by coddling them. We should focus on people aren’t so committed to the GOP.
kalakal
@Aussie Sheila:
really good point.
It’s been doing the same as the UK right, blaming their fuckups, stupidity, and incompetence on “Europe”.
UK politics & media has for decades told the British public that the reason “we can’t have nice things” was all the fault of the wicked EU with was somehow both too left wing or too right wing depending on where the speaker stood. You could always tell a far left wanker because of the use of the phrase “EU neo-liberal* regulation” a pretty revealing contradiction in terms.
Well Brexit has certainly exposed that for the crap it always was but it hasn’t stopped the biggest boneheads (mostly Tory) from EU blaming.
* putting neo-liberal in every 2nd sentence, usually in a way that revealed they had no idea what it actually means, was always a giveaway
2liberal
They can live in their offices rent free.
Aussie Sheila
@Baud: Of course, I agree. That leaves a majority of the US electorate to work with, especially the working poor and the consequently politically disengaged. I don’t think HS diploma real estate agents, car salespersons and owners of franchises are working class btw. Education is not a proxy for class position, especially in the last thirty years.
Aussie Sheila
@kalakal: Yes, ‘neo liberal’ every second word is a dead give away. Wankers. What happened to good, old fashioned, wholesome capitalism? 😏
WaterGirl
@Deputinize Eurasia from the Kuriles to St Petersburg: Season one or season two?
Another Scott
@Shalimar: Pompeo was a flop at CPAC. He doesn’t have enough support to win anything significant.
Remember the press was fluffing Christie for years. He didn’t go anywhere either.
Cheers,
Scott.
Another Scott
@Chetan Murthy: The public financial reports are listed in really broad ranges, not actual dollar amounts: “$x-yzM” or so. I wouldn’t take $11M as the actual correct number, myself.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Edmund dantes
@HumboldtBlue: jazz are just like the lakers. Carry the name from their origin. New Orleans.
wenchacha
@Sanjeevs: I think Stanford must have some weird bad mojo emanating from the halls of the institution. Are you familiar with the Rev Gene Scott?
soapdish
I figured DeSantis was toast once the nickname “Ronnie Three Fingers” became a possibility.
J R in WV
@Chetan Murthy:
So much this~!!~ We have spent a lot of time in AZ, it is so beautiful from north to south, and the people are friendly and helpful so far as we have experienced. Ancient history laying around everywhere, scenery that is so beautiful photos can’t do it justice.
So I contributed to witch’s campaign, not a whole lot, and she is so incompetent we have never even gotten fund raising spam… I guess that may be because we used ActBlue and asked ActBlue to withhold our email address, which they do pretty regularly if you ask. Of course, the FEC database has my info in it, but no one on Kristen’s staff knows how to work that, or hasn’t been tasked to visit and accumulate that vital data…
And now she is this, this, … words fail me… and I’m pretty good at invective…
Geminid
@J R in WV: You did get a return on your investment, in that Sinema voted to organize the Senate under Democratic control in 2020. McSally would have made McConnell and not Schumer the Majority Leader. This was critical to Joe Biden’s successes during his first two years.
But you and the rest of us wanted more, and rightfully expected it.
StringOnAStick
@J R in WV: That’s where I fall into the “antisocial personality disorder” camp. As a group most politicians are extremely focused on doing whatever it takes to get re-elected, not rocking their boat, though of course the GOP true believers are now focused on being as crazed as possible because that is what ensures a primary win. In Sinema’s case, she’s just focused on scoring as much $ possible, and that has blinded her to noticing that all these money guys showering her with attention and $ has guaranteed that she’s a one and done Senator. If she’d been less grabby and snotty about it she could have ridden this cash cow for decades; that’s where the personality defect comes in.
Uncle Cosmo
Originally the Minneapolis “Land of 10,000 Lakes” Lakers.
Most every sports team in LaLaLand came from somewhere else, and AFAICT none of them bothered to change the franchise name to anything that bears even an infinitesimal relationship with the new location. (Dodgers? Rams? Kings? Clippers?…well, maybe LA Angels but that’s kind of a cheat since it’s the city name…)