I have no doubt that the dynamic duo of Musk and Ramaswamy will do a bunch of bad things, but this is wank:
The new body will not be a government agency but an outside organization offering the White House “advice and guidance”. Trump said it would shock government systems, as Doge (the acronym is the name of Musk’s favorite cryptocurrency, which itself references a meme about a dog with an amusing expression), partners with the Office of Management and Budget to “create an entrepreneurial approach to government never seen before”. […]
I’m guessing that they’ll pinpoint a few of Musk’s hobgoblins while making sure his defense contracts stay lucrative.
Anyway, far more concerning is Mike Huckabee as Ambassador to Israel, and some Fox News host as Secretary of Defense.
Also, all those links are from the Guardian, which is going to be my go-to “just the facts” news source. They stopped posting on Twitter, btw.
JoyceH
Is anyone as delighted as I am that they attached Ramaswamy to this effort? Everyone remembers a guy like Ramaswamy from their own high school and college experiences – and everyone hated that guy.
KatKapCC
The mere fact that it’s called Doge makes me wish the British had fucking won.
Steve LaBonne
Depending on how much power Trump gives RFK Jr., a collapse of our public health agencies and subsequent unavailability of vaccines could be the biggest catastrophe of all.
Omnes Omnibus
@KatKapCC: A president cannot unilaterally create a new department. He can create a new office within the WH, so OOGE it is.
Old School
@Steve LaBonne: Is RFK Jr. back in? I thought they were backing away from him.
Sister Golden Bear
So…. hiring two people to do a one-person job. Seems efficient to me. /s
KatKapCC
@Steve LaBonne: Depressing party game: Guess the soon-to-return-to-pre-vaccine-levels disease!
different-church-lady
@Old School: They’re backing into him.
KatKapCC
@Omnes Omnibus: “Ooge” sounds like something I definitely do not want to look up on Urban Dictionary.
Steve LaBonne
@Old School: I can’t find any stories that offer clarity on that. Let’s hope they ditch him.
different-church-lady
@KatKapCC: COVID would be the early favorite.
Lobo
I have questions:
While we navel gaze over whether Harris should have dyed her hair pink to better appeal to the youngs or let her hair go gray to better appeal to the olds, would our energy better be spent on the catastrophe coming up and what we can do as little as it may be?
Why has more ink been spilled by the media over Biden’s age than what Trump is proposing right now? Why was Biden’s age a level one extinction event and Trump’s presidency just another day in the office?
Related to the above. Where is all the urgency Democratic leaders had for pushing Biden out than fighting Trump now? We keep hearing Trump is going to be bad from them, but their actions don’t align with their statements. See Bennett, Garland, If you caring politician, why are giving the keys to a dictator? This cognitive dissonance is why many people didn’t believe Trump was as bad as he is. Actions didn’t match words.
Am I being gaslighted? Is this a bad simulacrum? Now, I know where my disequilibrium comes from.
Steve LaBonne
@different-church-lady: I’m gonna pick measles because there have already been outbreaks and COVID vaccine uptake already sucks.
Baud
@Lobo:
Yes, you’re being gaslighted. Trump will be the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Jinchi
SecDef has to be confirmed, right?
Any chance R Senators would object?
piratedan
our very own Brexit, guess we’re finding out that stupidity is another universal constant.
There are some times where I want to temper that with recognizing ALL of the disinformation that has been generated and the absolute cowardice of the media to speak plainly and honestly about the issues and the positions of the parties….
yet, I can still be shocked that the Arab community in Michigan believed that somehow DJT would be better (not blaming them, how are they any different than women, veterans, and hispanic voters who did the same?) given his history of lying and actual deeds (Muslim bans).
I guess it means that none of us are really any better at this than anyone else and our disappointment is shared.
different-church-lady
@Lobo:
Because people fucking suck.
Jinchi
@Old School: Our best hope with characters like RFK,Musk and Vivek is that they all have the same narcissistic belief that they are the center of the universe.
And there can only be one in the next administration.
Steve LaBonne
@Jinchi: You’ll notice that the actual statutory Cabinet positions are going to MAGA nonentities i.e. yes people.
suzanne
i’m sure they won’t just be wanking. I predict a lot of sternly worded emails and bedazzled press conferences, as well.
KatKapCC
@Baud: So this is it, huh, folks?
different-church-lady
We have seen graft and cronyism before.
df
Best case scenarios:
1. Everything is too fucking clown shoes to be outright evil. I mean, what’s Leon actually gonna do, other than try to juice his government contracts? Cutting spending (for now) still necessitates Congress, and the federal budget is massive and complicated, even if you’re trying to destroy America. But we’re through the looking glass now, so anything is possible.
2. I can’t remember the other one because I had to call my bank about something.
Steve LaBonne
@different-church-lady: Though possibly not on this scale since the Harding Administration.
KatKapCC
@Jinchi: They’ll certainly object to shaking his hand.
UncleEbeneezer
@Sister Golden Bear: Everyone knows that the real way to efficiency is laying off one worker and then demanding the other do the work of two people. Can I have my big-time consulting $ now?
Steve LaBonne
@KatKapCC: I would love to see Democratic Senators wear gloves.
OId Man Shadow
Well… if Musk/Trump does everything they’ve promised to do, it will be the Greatest Depression.
But who knows how it’ll play out? They’re catastrophically stupid, but they’re also lazy narcissists that can often be placated with money, compliments, and a fresh diaper, so your guess is as good as mine. It’s going to suck and it’s going to be bad. And I doubt the stupid fucking voters will blame him for it when it happens.
cain
@piratedan:
This whole autocratic thing is everywhere – and it’s because of algorithms and social media. Everywhere people are reporting that if you create a fresh account you are literally going down a right wing sink hole.
If we end up in a world wide depression and it’s heading that way, the tech companies deserve the huge loss that comes with it.
Layer8Problem
I swear to god, this shit would have turned the late P. J. O’Rourke into a liberal.
hrprogressive
@Lobo:
Because it’s a big club, and we ain’t in it.
Really answers all of these questions, and more.
p.a.
I wonder at the timing of this video. Posted 15 hours ago.
youtu.be/dTRbyGEyJR0?si=5h3W9WfcDpg6hLM3
Jinchi
I know it’s just Biden being a decent guy, but seeing “Welcome Back!” as the headline for him greeting Trump at the White House pusses me off.
Trump famously didn’t extend an invitation to Biden in 2020 and as far as I’m aware hasn’t been anything more than petulant and vile in his victory.
Sister Golden Bear
@Jinchi: Musk believes he’s co-president. At some point Trump will disabuse him of that notion.
cain
Reddit has been posting another Stephen Miller thing (crazy nazi MF) where he plans on having a private army culled from red state national guard to go into blue states to enforce deportations.
This stupid mother fucker is trying to cause a civil war. By blue state, he’s going after California and the west coast. We all know that.
This man is the most dangerous man in the administration and a clear clear and present danger to our Republic.
My hope is that Trump does the tariffs thing and ushers in a great depression causing just about the entire country to go ape shit. Mexico is reported to do a counter tariffs against the U.S. if they enact the tariffs. They are following the exact same thing that caused the great depression. All those people who voted for chaos are going to get it. But if the great depression happens, killing successful economies in the states are going to make the oligarchs very unhappy.
ETA
Apparently, there was something about tariffs and the battle of 1812 where we barely survived the British if it wasn’t for the fact that England was busy fighting the Napoleonic wars.
OId Man Shadow
@Lobo: Yeah, my governor at least got on the phone with other blue state governors and started figuring out what they can do to protect their people and resist the Trump agenda.
But at the national level, it’s just “Oh well, nothing to do but wait for 2026. Give us money, please.”
It’s like the NYT saying that they expect freedom of the press to greatly change under a Trump administration and then they spend most of their column space saying “BIDEN OLD!” and “HARRIS NOT DETAILED ENOUGH!”
different-church-lady
@Sister Golden Bear: “Doge is my co-president” — bumper sticker from Hell.
KatKapCC
@Steve LaBonne: Two of them will grab his arms while another sprays Purell on his hands with a Super Soaker.
cain
@Layer8Problem:
That’s the thing – none of this is really conservatism. Conservatism is preserving the status quo and respecting the institutions. What this is is neo-liberal shit. It’s breaking the system.
different-church-lady
@OId Man Shadow:
No no no, they spend it saying, “People think those things and the reason they think so is, well, we have nothing to do with that…”
hrprogressive
@cain:
They’ve very clearly stated they want to annihilate everyone not like them.
I’ve believed them for a very long time.
Nobody wants to believe them.
But by the time the bullets start flying, it’ll be too late.
Jackie
@KatKapCC:
WA State has a whooping cough outbreak currently…
doh.wa.gov/newsroom/washington-state-sees-steep-increase-whooping-cough-cases
UncleEbeneezer
Stephen Michael Tow:
I would only expand this to everyone who used the phrase “Genocide Joe.” I would love to live in a world where the people who get lured into obvious OPs designed to hurt Dems chances in major elections, showed some introspection and self-awareness, after the fact. But going all the way back to the 2000 election, very few actually do. Those that do admit they fucked up and try to do better going forward, are truly some of the finest people out there and I respect the hell out of it. But most don’t. They will just gleefully jump onboard with the next Dronez, Emailz, Student Loans, Biden-so-old, GenocideWhoever etc…
different-church-lady
@hrprogressive:
Quite a few voters do.
different-church-lady
@UncleEbeneezer:
If they were capable of introspection they wouldn’t be so easily lured in the first place.
JML
weirdly, I’m a slightly less worried about the FoxNews dolt at DoD than some of the other clowns, just because the pentagon is such a massive bureaucracy with a lot of redundant parts in the military and civilian staff structure that there’s…insulation, of sorts. Yes, he’s terrible and won’t make the kind of smart decisions we need to cut down on waste, improve efficiency, and keep our national security apparatus functioning at the highest levels, but hegseth also strikes me as the kind of dude that will get into all the ceremonial trapping at DoD rather than try for sweeping changes.
more worried about guys like Flynn getting back in the door. because that guy is nuts
Lobo
@OId Man Shadow: Whew, I thought I was going to have to commit myself. I am not the only one.
Jackie
@Jinchi:
That might depend on who they elect as Majority Leader… secret ballot vote happening today. If Rick Scott wins, he’ll push to confirm anyone and anything TCFG wants.
sixthdoctor
Aaron Rupar just posted a Fox News chyron saying the GOP Majority Leader vote is down to Thune and Cornyn.
bsky.app/profile/atrupar.bsky.social/post/3latssdkbmk2e
Geminid
@Sister Golden Bear: This morning’s Politico Playbook had some reporting about friction between Trump aides and Musk. “Musk is getting too big for his britches,” one said.
Westchester County, New York Democrat Tom Watson had some fun with the relationship:
Trollhattan
Damn good thing an ambassador has no actual power, because Huck is expressly of the belief Israel holds dominion over the entire territory and would applaud a complete takeover of the West Bank and the sand pit that is now Gaza. He’s literally said this with his outside voice. Because he’s a religious scholar and such.
God, what a family.
gene108
I am rooting for injuries, even if I am one of the injured (probably will happen for me with ACA repeal).
I hope Trump’s clown cabinet is as stupid as they and disruptive as they seem. One of the worst things a leader can be is incredibly ignorant about what they are leading and arrogantly overconfident in their abilities, which seems a common trait with proposed Trump cabinet appointees.
Baud
@sixthdoctor:
Both probably better than Scott. So good.
KatKapCC
@sixthdoctor: I guess Thune would only be like 99.8% awful.
cain
@hrprogressive:
I think that’s going to be harder than he thinks. The entire country is supposed to swear an oath to the constitution not to Trump or the president.
I don’t think the national guard has the stomach to kill its own people. There are still plenty of people of honor.
But sure, if it comes to that – guns are freely available. Not that it will matter with drones but an all out civil war is bad for business. A lot of these idiots just want cheap goods not a civil war. That’s not what they voted for.
Jinchi
It would be darkly hilarious if Elon ended up prosecuted by the Trump DOJ after all if his nonsense about Kamala.
Steve LaBonne
@sixthdoctor: One small ray of hope is that Trump is after all a lame duck. His power over GOP Congresscritters will steadily diminish over the next four years.
Baud
Bluesky
gene108
@Trollhattan:
It is well known in conservative Christian circles in the USA that until Israel controls Jerusalem and rebuilds the Temple of Solomon, the Armageddon prophesied in the Book of Revelations will never be. Christ will not descend to Earth and punish the wicked and save the devout.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Jackie: I read that Trump has asked the Senate to recess immediately after he’s sworn in so he can make interim appointments and thus get rolling quickly. The Senate would probably confirm his nominees, but it will take time.
We’ll see whether the Senate abdicates their power.
Doug
@JML: And the Pentagon, as an institution, tries to roll every new (or in this case newly returned) president. I’m wondering if the guy from Fox will even realize that he’s been rolled.
eclare
@Layer8Problem:
Hahaha…I bet you’re right! A tipsy liberal, but a liberal. I miss his humor. IIRC, he voted for Hillary.
Jackie
@Steve LaBonne:
I like the thought of pulling a purse/pocket size bottle of hand sanitizer and apply immediately before and after handshake.
cain
@Trollhattan:
Essentially Huckabee will push Israel into an all out war and do a complete takeover.
I don’t think Israel is going to bite because they and the Arabs want to have normalized trade. But if they were stupid enough to do it there will be all out middle eastern war.
Putin and Xi are going to laugh their asses off, but I think they really should be worried.
trnc
@df: DT is legally required to spend money allocated by Congress, but that’s an official action covered by criminal immunity. Anyone in blue areas will be affected by that first.
suzanne
@Layer8Problem: P.J. O’Rourke voted for Hillary. He knew the score.
eclare
@Sister Golden Bear:
That is a battle I am looking forward to. So far ETTD has never been proven wrong, the only difference is the timetable.
Baud
@Steve LaBonne:
The media would call them elitist.
TBone
Bringing up from downstairs
Joint Chiefs of Staff military head Charlie Brown (that’s his real name, Charles Q. Brown, Jr.) first up to the chopping block.
I guess the Michael Q Flynn family is advising…
FTFNYT but except for this article
nytimes.com/2024/06/23/us/politics/donald-trump-michael-flynn-qanon.html
Jinchi
Didn’t he get pushback from the rank and file at the end of his first term.
I seem to remember rumor of his administration cobbling together forces more loyal to him via ICE and other agencies around the time of his stupid upsidedown Bible photo op.
Trollhattan
@gene108: Can they get the rapture done already, so we can soldier along without them?
Winning!
PIGL
@Steve LaBonne: Ya votes for Beelzebub, ya gonna haz flies.
cain
@sixthdoctor: I assume Thune is better than Cornyn?
Anonymous At Work
Having the cohost of a weekend show on FOX News as Secretary of Defense is laughable and he will be laughed at overseas. However, the military will keep its head down and proceed around him. No doubt there will be lots of “I can haz memo” scenes that do jack-all.
Huckabee as Ambassador to Israel is a huge problem. He’s of the Southern Baptist of the evangelical twist that views Revelations as imminent and requires (sotta voce) the destruction of the First Kingdom (Israel) by its enemies before the Second Kingdom (America) will emerge and all that jazz. There is no doubt that he and The Convicted Felon will let Bibi and the fascist/zealot parties of far right do whatever they want in Israel, including converting Occupied Territories to Israel territory proper but deny citizenship to the Palestinians, possibly even deny them residency at all.
sixthdoctor
*JOHN THUNE ELECTED TO BE SENATE REPUBLICAN LEADER: FOX NEWS
bsky.app/profile/peark.es/post/3lattbkf5zz2r
JoyceH
@Dorothy A. Winsor: He doesn’t just want his nominees to be confirmed fast, he wants them to get in with zero scrutiny. This being Trump, the lightest vetting would indicate that most if not all of them are too ignorant, corrupt, or incompetent to confirm.
cain
@gene108: So, you think Trump will give money to rebuild the temple of solomon?
What about the role of Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, and Achilles?
TBone
@TBone: P.S. guess what color skin Charlie Brown has.
Baud
@sixthdoctor:
And there was much rejoicing.
lowtechcyclist
@JML:
He seems to be interested in getting rid of disloyal generals. Disloyal to TFG, of course.
Get rid of enough key people, and you can really weaken an organization. My expectation is that Putin will appreciate this guy’s work.
Baud
@TBone:
He’s white in the cartoon.
eclare
@Trollhattan:
I like your plan.
Bupalos
“They’ve very clearly stated they want to annihilate everyone not like them.“
Do tell.
only the internet can make you say things like this people
TBone
@Baud: I wish I could laugh at that today. It hurts tho.
Quaker in a Basement
@Old School: I thought they were going with Hamburglar instead.
SFAW
@Omnes Omnibus:
You’re just too modest to spell out its full name: the Omnes Omnibus Government Efficiency office.
Baud
@SFAW:
Haha. Win.
cain
@Jinchi: All of that will require approval from congress to recruit and pay.
But you’re right that it will likely have come through ICE as an army. But that still leaves the state national guard working against them.
But moment an army is assembled and is moving to another state to fight, I hope voters take notice because that has never happened.
If red state national guard people start killing national guard troops in other states.. You’re not going to be able to come back from that.
If red state voters feel isolated now, it’s going to get a lot worse.
TBone
@eclare: I wanna get a whole crapton of inflatable sex dolls, fill them with helium, and release them over the Inauguration so the dumbfucks think they’ve been left behind.
Belafon
@TBone: “Woke” military: We need soldiers and trans people are volunteering.
cain
@SFAW:
I wonder if Elon will walk in with a kitchen sink as well?
Jinchi
@Anonymous At Work: It does seem like they’re encouraging Netanyahu to simply purge all Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza, which would create a massive refugee crisis and likely trigger a major regional war.
I know chaos is the goal for dictators and nationlists but the fantasy is always that they, in particular, will proper while the world is on fire.
Baud
Bluesky says Trump affirmatively wanted Scott. So the first official act of Senate Republicans was to reject that.
FelonyGovt
I wonder how many of the (returning) Repub Senators and Reps secretly hoped for a Trump loss so they could get rid of him and start rebuilding their party. Maybe they won’t be quite as compliant as we fear.
And maybe elephants will fly. 😛
AWOL
@Lobo: Your instincts are correct and you will survive, unlike many others.
Many have not read Timothy Snyder and are obeying in advance.
It does not bode well.
Ned F.
Looks like John Thune will be the Senate Leader.
OId Man Shadow
@cain: I think that’s what most of Israel wants right now anyway. Huckabee wouldn’t have to push them at all. Just give them the thumb’s up that America won’t punish them for doing it and will give them cover in the UN.
Citizen Alan
@Steve LaBonne: Which Horseman of the Apocalypse would have been in charge of taking the fluoride out of water and banning vaccines? Asking for a friend.
KatKapCC
@Bupalos: You think they wanna sit around singing kumbaya with us?
TBone
@Belafon: check out our new script writers:
(From my WaPoo link)
Donold has not read that book past the title.
Steve LaBonne
@Ned F.: The MAGAverse is gonna have a normal one about Thune.
Steve LaBonne
@Citizen Alan: Gotta be Pestilence.
JKC
@eclare: O’Rourke did indeed vote for HRC. He described her as “wrong, but within acceptable parameters.”
Quaker in a Basement
@Jinchi: One or two, maybe. But it will take 4 to block a nomination.
Jinchi
@FelonyGovt: I don’t believe any word of pushback from Republicans trying to manage Trump. It’s just self-interested BS.
They have had many opportunities to be rid of him. They have protected and supported him at every turn.
Trollhattan
Gov. Ronnie Reagan was famous for shutting down state hospitals and turning loose lots of folks loose, whether prepared or not. Donny might reverse that.
Naturally, even if he follows up there won’t be any money behind it so another hollow threat.
“What if we build mental hospitals in shithole countries?”
“Great idea, sir!”
Jackie
@sixthdoctor: Thume wins! TCFG won’t be happy!🤭
TBone
@AWOL: Senator Liz Warren led the troops with a rallying cry immediately.
Womens’ work:
time.com/collection/time100-voices/7173801/elizabeth-warren-democrats-plan-after-2024-election/
JML
@lowtechcyclist: sure, but that’s also the sort of thing that you can make a lot of noise about, but never really do anything.
“Oh yes, sir. We’re absolutely stomping out that woke nonsense. Everyone is very loyal, you bet. Have you had a chance to review the 400 page memo the DCSOPS sent up for you today before we talk to the Chiefs? It’s very important that we keep you informed.”
Old School
@TBone:
“Why’s everybody always picking on me?”
SFAW
@cain:
If it’s large enough to stick his head into the In-Sink-Erator, I’m OK with that.
Maybe Peter Stormare can help with that. I mean, if you squint your eyes just right, Skum sorta resembles Steve Buscemi.
Quaker in a Basement
@Citizen Alan: Famine, maybe. And if not him, then Kevin.
Trollhattan
@Citizen Alan:
Going with Curly. Neither Larry nor Moe seems right.
Geminid
@Jinchi: I wonder how much weight the Saudis and Emiratis will swing with this administration. Both nations adamantly oppose annexation, so they might help put the brakes on formal annexation.
Netanyahu’s rotten government has pursued measures that amount to a creeping de facto annexation though, and these will likely accelerate under Trump’s administration
hrprogressive
@cain:
I think you are severely underestimating the level of rot within our institutions.
And, yes, a lot of voters explicitly did vote for this because they want to purge the country of undesirables.
WereBear
@different-church-lady: Yes, and the head Nazis were incompetent failures.
But they hired ambitious young people and showed them the ladder and they were the ones who actually did things.
lowtechcyclist
@JKC:
Kinda like how I feel about Liz Cheney.
Jackie
@Dorothy A. Winsor: If the rethuglican wants a king, they will. Hopefully Thune won’t go along with that.🤞🏻
Belafon
@TBone: I could almost buy the summary, except meritocracy is exactly not what they want. What happens when the trans woman is better at managing the missile system on the ship than the white man?
Kayla Rudbek
@Citizen Alan: pestilence.
suzanne
@Trollhattan: It’s so funny that TFG thinks we have enough behavioral healthcare capacity for all of the unhoused people with severe mental illness.
And by “funny”, I mean “idiotic”.
SFAW
@Citizen Alan:
Harry Stuhldreher. If not him, then Elmer Layden.
TBone
@Old School: I just bought two new Peanuts sweatshirts today. 🎶 Bring in the dawgs, put out the cat, yakkitty yak! I’ll always talk back, parents never managed to whup that outta me!
🎶😎
m.youtube.com/watch?v=epCN0f7FTIY
FelonyGovt
@TBone: I wonder if the war on “woke” in the military also means weakening any efforts to root out sexual harassment, thereby making military service even less attractive to women.
Citizen Alan
@Steve LaBonne: What percentage of (a) MAGA voters, (b) the House/Senate GOP, (c) the media, and (d) SCOTUS will nod and go along with it if Shitgibbon says with a straight face that because he was “robbed” in 2020, he should be allowed to have a third term regardless of what the 22nd Amendment says?
I mean, personally, I don’t think the SOB will still be alive in 2028, but he’s a fucking cult leader, so who’s going to tell him “no.” Besides, if he really is the Antichrist (which is an idea I am almost ready to consider seriously), he’ll only get 3 1/2 years before Rambo Jesus comes back to kill us all.
SFAW
@suzanne:
He’s probably already letting developers know that he’s open to unregulated mental institutions being built in Blue-voting districts.
For a price.
TBone
@FelonyGovt: of course. Built right in!
karen marie
@JoyceH: I want to know who’s paying members of this “outside agency” and the basis for their qualification. What information will they be given? What controls will be in place to ensure transparency?
I wanted to live in an interesting time, not the most stupid time.
artem1s
@Lobo:
Because the attention whores who get clicks for hot takes won’t let anyone CHANGE THE FUCKING SUBJECT. As soon as clicks stop clicking on the postpartum depression, then, maybe they will start paying attention to the giant orange turd about to clog up plumbing in the USA.
hrprogressive
@Bupalos:
You can read innumerable levels of right wing fash-posting of trigger-happy MAGA folks who can’t wait till they can “shoot all the dems” and or “the only good liberal is a dead one”.
If you refuse to believe them, that is at your peril.
Trollhattan
This was preordained but nevertheless, funny as hell.
Big Daddy needs more bear and whale in his diet.
tam1MI
@Lobo: Where is all the urgency Democratic leaders had for pushing Biden out than fighting Trump now?
Good question. It’s too much to hope the Coup d’Etat Caucus will ever acknowledge their catastrophic mistake, but you would think they should be able to turn their energy and discipline to a higher cause.
Trollhattan
@artem1s: If he makes it four years without JD smothering him with a My Pillow, Donny will be 82 and perhaps the corpse remains ambulatory, but his bwaaaain will have completely reverted to cottage cheese.
Anonymous At Work
@Jinchi: Oh, a global crisis in the Middle East. That won’t cause inflation or oil issues or disrupt trade along the Suez Canal. </s>
TBone
@Belafon: fragging.
SFAW
@Citizen Alan:
You’re not usually this delusional. He may outlive the country.
But as for your point re: third term: pretty sure CJ Alito and Lapdog Roberts are A-OK with the idea. And they have three or four years to come up with “reasoning” and “precedent” to inform their votes.
Of course, Alito’s “reasoning” will be something like “Grobble gribble greeble potrzebie veeblefetzer. Don’t like it libtards? Too fucking bad.”
Chris
The fact that Mike Huckabee was openly genocidal when it came to Palestine is one of the biggest reasons I had him pegged as the worst of the worst in the 2008 Republican primary field. A field that wasn’t exactly lacking in strong candidates for such a designation.
Trollhattan
@suzanne: Costs over $100k/year to house a prisoner in California and guessing a proper mental institution will be 2 or 3X that sum.
Nah gah happen. Now cages in Calexico, that can be done on the cheap.
Anonymous At Work
@Geminid: OPEC will be the means. Venezuela has a beef, Mexico will soon have a beef, and if UAE and Saudis have a beef, driving up oil prices and cutting deals with China and India will be how they move forward.
lowtechcyclist
@FelonyGovt:
If they believed Trump losing would enable them to go back to the way things were ten years ago, boy howdy, did they ever fail to read the room.
The big difference between then and now is that in 2014, Republicans had to at least pretend to not be racist or misogynist. Now, they’ve had nearly a decade to let their racist, misogynist freak flags fly. And not only are they not going back, but they weren’t going to if Trump had lost.
There’s no way anyone’s going to be able to dress them up anymore as the party of low taxes and deregulation. Just not happening.
@Jinchi:
Yeah, they may have secretly hoped for a Trump loss, but how many of them joined Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger in actually standing up to him? Spineless, worthless turds. “Who goes Nazi?” They already have.
TBone
Ok, just alerting everyone on how to sabotage any pop-up “camp” construction sites. First, move every surveyor’s marker. Repeat each night.
Ask me how I know this works.
lowtechcyclist
@SFAW:
I take it you used to read MAD Magazine. :-)
OId Man Shadow
@Trollhattan: Somehow I can’t see Republicans building adequate care facilities for millions of people suffering debilitating mental illness.
I can very much see them building horrific prison-like facilities full of physical, mental, and sexual abuse and torture by predator guards preying on the vulnerable and administrators who want to spend as little as possible on patients and pocket the rest.
SFAW
@lowtechcyclist:
Of course.
ETA: Not speaking much Polish, I did not learn it’s an actual Polish word until about 20 years ago.
Old School
This made me laugh:
lowtechcyclist
@FelonyGovt:
I don’t wonder. I’m absolutely certain of it. Dammit.
Baud
Bluesky
TBone
@OId Man Shadow: see #141
Trollhattan
@Old School: Elmo sure streamlined Twitter’s stock price.
TBone
@Trollhattan: 😆
lowtechcyclist
@Citizen Alan:
Hold on now, when did/does the seven-year Tribulation start? And the Rapture: pre-, post-, or mid-Tribulation? ;-)
Been more than half a century since that brief period where I took any of this seriously. And it’s still cluttering up my brain.
different-church-lady
@Steve LaBonne:
The Roberts Court in three years: “Actually…”
Citizen Alan
@hrprogressive: They are fundamentally lazy and stupid, but at a minimum, there is a notable percentage of MAGAs (IMO) who would be perfectly fine with death camps for whatever identity group they hate the most so long as someone else did the actual work of building and operating them. They wouldn’t be called death camps, of course. Detention centers with a regrettably high death toll or something like that. Declare trans feelings (or even homosexuality) to be a sign of mental illness and stick them in the same underfunded and unregulated mental hospitals where they’re going to send all the homeless people. The question is whether there are enough people who will have the capability and mentality to build and operate them.
different-church-lady
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
The only thing to rival the size of Trump’s ego is a the ego of US Senator.
lowtechcyclist
@SFAW:
You were about 20 years ahead of me, then, since I just learned it from you right now. :D
Shakti
Regardless of how you feel about her positions, RESPECT to Slotkin for this:
(Video referred to is here: Elissa Slotkin tracker video from Lansing, Michigan, July 2018 )
Soon after is
Source: definitely not a spook, comically open on the interwebs
SFAW
@Baud:
Well, Fuckhead can just order Miller’s Neue SS to take Thune out and shoot him, claiming it’s an “official act.”
You can bet the rest of the caucus would fall into line pretty damn quick.
You probably think I’m being hyperbolic. Perhaps, but I don’t believe for a minute that he hasn’t considered it. [Maybe not for Thune, but for others.]
Citizen Alan
This debate is utterly pointless. While I was opposed to replacing Biden at the time, I am now of the very firm belief that Biden on the ticket would have lost as badly as Kamala did (and might have done worse if he’d had any “bad moments” like he did during the Debate.
TBone
@Citizen Alan: that’s what slave wage prison labor is for.
karen marie
Speaking of wank …
mistermix and others have been pushing Bluesky hard. I can understand from a front-pager’s POV that having a twitter-like social media platform from which to plug in content is a benefit, but I’m predicting it will all turn to shit down the road.
This guy has a pretty decent explainer of the issues with Bluesky. Follow the money.
cmorenc
@Steve LaBonne:
Difference is that Harding was himself not an evil narcissistic ass-clown – Harding’s background was as a successful newspaper publisher from small-town rural-Ohio (Marion, Ohio) who made several seemingly solid cabinet appointments from the business community and actually had a few noteworthy achievements. Nonetheless, the scandals happened because Harding was out of his depth and made some other superficially seemingly solid picks who were the rogues who turned out corrupt, Interior Secretary Fall and AG Daugherty. Harding himself was not corrupt. He was very popular – the scandals weren’t revealed until after his death of a heart attack (which brought us Calvin “the business of America is business” Coolidge.
Sister Golden Bear
@Geminid: Not gonna happen, but I’d love to see Trump get pissed enough at Musk that he revokes Musk’s citizenship and deports him.* But a girl can dream.
*Although I could see Trump threatening to do so—or threatening some of Musk’s business interests—unless Musk pays him a large enough bribe.
Chris
@sixthdoctor:
I remember when Thune first came to Congress and some paper did a fluff piece about how he was “a different kind of Republican,” one who “didn’t fit easy categories,” and “was less interested in ideology and more interested in bringing his down-home pragmatism to Washington” (those are rough quotes from memory, I don’t know the actual story).
I was like “okay, so he’s a far-right extremist.” Other than being tautological (he’s a Republican), this is how these people are always fluffed when they’re introduced to the national scene, so that we can all turn over a new page and treat them like a blank slate onto which it’s very very wrong to project our long experience with the Republican Party.
suzanne
@Trollhattan: Point-and-laugh is probably the best strategy for the next four years.
lowtechcyclist
@TBone:
Hayduke (well, Hayduchess ;-) lives!
SFAW
@lowtechcyclist:
I live to serve.
Citizen Alan
I said he probably wouldn’t live to 2028. That has nothing to do with the effective life span of the USA, which might well be measured in months at this point. The bulk of his supporters would vote for him if his dead body were propped up on a horse like El Cid. And he (or his taxidermied corpse) will have had four years of Nazis running the government and dismantling all democratic norms.
Citizen Alan
@Chris: Damn. Last night, I finally deleted my Facebook account permanently. I wished I’d waited a few days so that I could get the opinions of the cosplay Marxists on my feed who’ve been sneering about Genocide Joe for months.
TBone
@karen marie: thanks. I thought to myself, very quietly, “do I really wanna surface on any social media again, ever? Nope!”
I recently posted something else that guy dug up.
about.davetroy.com/
cain
@Baud: Probably their oligarch masters have directed them otherwise. You do want some checks and balances even against Trump.
different-church-lady
Goddamn that commenter is a stupid fuck.
Steve LaBonne
@Citizen Alan: I’m just ignoring anyone who is still beating that badly decomposed horse.
Baud
@different-church-lady:
Nominated!
cain
@TBone:
He’s not even read the title, he read the teleprompter that stated the title.
Gvg
@SFAW: Just keep reminding everyone he tries to hire or contract for anything of his reputation for not paying. Even when it’s not his money, he acts like it is. He is more likely to sue them for years. Scare everyone away that we can.
different-church-lady
@karen marie: I mean, the idea that the clone of Twitter will turn out to be less problematic than pre-Musk Twitter is a kind of naivety you can build a McMansion on.
cmorenc
@different-church-lady:
Another way I’ve seen this principle stated is that every Senator sees a would-be President when they look in a mirror.
TBone
@cain: 🎯
SFAW
@Citizen Alan:
Hunh, I also used the Ruy Diaz de Vivar example a couple of days ago. I’d say “great minds” and all that, but that wouldn’t explain me.
Be that as it may: his genetics seem to indicate that he’s going to live until at least the “end” (so to speak) of his term. Fred lived to be 93, and TCFFG’s mom lived to 88. From what I understand, it’s one of the better predictors.
cain
@hrprogressive:
Some who are children of undesirables.
It’s interesting how many have forgotten the first term of his presidency.
TBone
@SFAW: yeah but did they eat FcDonolds and KFC alla time?
different-church-lady
@cain:
That’s a curious way of spelling ‘terrifying’.
Soprano2
@Sister Golden Bear: What’s going to happen when those two huge egos disagree? You’ll be able to see the explosion from space.
SFAW
@Gvg:
Great in theory, but there will always be numbskulls who will pay-to-play, thinking “this time will be different.”
cain
@Trollhattan:
I think we are falling back into old habits reading shit like this. We need to turn that spigot off these news media people this is what they always wanted back. They want to spread this kind of gossip.
We’re all scared so we are now being exploited by reading these hot takes.
UncleEbeneezer
@Citizen Alan: The fact that these idiots were saying Trump “couldn’t be worse” than Kamala/Biden wrt Gaza, shows just how unserious and bad-faith these assholes were all along.
lowtechcyclist
@Steve LaBonne:
I hear you. What’s the point of re-fighting that particular battle now? It’s not even in the “mistakes we need to learn from so we don’t make them again” category. And even those can wait until we figure out how to fight the battle that’s right in front of us.
Sister Golden Bear
@Belafon: Historically trans people have served in the military at higher rates than the cis-het population.
For trans woman in denial about their true identity, it was an attempt to “man up” themselves. For trans men (and butch lesbians), the military has been a place where “masculine” women were accepted.
(Note; I’m not saying trans men = masculine women, only that if they were closeted, they could pass for the latter. Also too, a number of trans men, it takes a while for them to realize their true identity and identity if “masculine women” (especially if they’re attracted to women) is often an intermediary step).
cain
@Anonymous At Work:
Every time I see this, I keep thinking we should just keep congress and let the GOP have the presidency for awhile. I mean, who the fuck wants to clean up after all that mess?
tam1MI
They’re not our problem any more.
SFAW
@TBone:
He’s subsisted on that shit for years, his (actual) BMI is in the Obese range, and he’s still able to present himself (to the extremely-casual observers) as being “with it.” So, I get your point, but think you’re worng.
On the other hand, I’d be happy to be worng myself — as long as J Divans gets hit by that meteor.
cain
@Chris:
Well, I’m sure the pro Palestinian protesters will do everything in their power to stop the genocide by showing up and protesting everywhere and disrupting things and being a nuisance. Just like they did during the Biden administration and Harris’s campaign.
In fact, there is no greater than need than now to protest, right? ::saying with a straight face::
Citizen Alan
@lowtechcyclist: It’s been decades since I read The Late Great Planet Earth as a kid. And the Left Behind series was unreadable word-vomit. (Fred Clark had inestimable fortitude to read and review that series as long as he did before he finally gave up around the 3rd or 4th book.) But my recollection is that the Antichrist is supposed to have a 7 year reign that goes reasonably well (for everyone who took the Mark of the Beast, anyway) for the first half until he miraculously survives a head wound. Then, angels start opening Seals and God starts raining divine disasters down on everyone right up until The End.
The concept of “the Rapture” is, IIRC, less than 250 years old and was fabricated out of stitched together verses from entirely different books of the Bible to answer the question of how a loving God would leave all the children and all the Real True Christians ™ to suffer through the Tribulations along with all the sinners. Answer: He teleports them all to safety on Day 1.
I don’t have enough hours in the day, but I seriously would love to write a political-religious satire about Trump et al, the premise of which is that God has a cruel sense of humor, so he picked as his Antichrist the most vile and repellent man he could find and made him uniquely suited to speak to the bigotries and hatreds of Evangelical Americans, who were simultaneously the most outspoken, in-your-face, and prideful Christians in the world and also the most apostate and hypocritical when it came to actually living in a Christ-like manner. All just so that on Judgment Day, Jesus could say “SURPRISE! All the non-Christians who showed mercy and kindness and compassion go to Heaven. All the MAGA Christians go to hell!”
different-church-lady
@cain: Even if they do, we probably won’t hear a peep about it in the news.
Geminid
@Anonymous At Work: Right now OPEC is having a tough time sustaining current oil prices, and there is so much production by non-OPEC nations including the US that OPEC cannot control prices on its own.
But Saudi Arabia and the UAE have influence now that is independent of their ability to swing oil prices, especially with the rest of the Arab and Muslim nations.
I just don’t know how much influence they will have with this administration. And both nations have important interests that are affected by their relationship with the US, and they will always put their own interests ahead of that of the Palestinians.
SFAW
@cain:
No, they just wanted to “teach Biden/Harris a lesson.” Now that they’ve done that, they’ll return to their daily routines.
cmorenc
@TBone:
Please supply some general context to the sorts of situations you are addressing here. Of course, not so specific that you risk problematically outing yourself, but what sort of development scenario are you speaking of?
different-church-lady
@cain: Absolutely: the fact that this shit is treated as entertainment is a huge part of the problem.
Soprano2
@Anonymous At Work: I hope all the Arabs in Michigan are paying attention to this. I read that one of their organizations already wrote a letter to TCFG asking why he didn’t fulfill his promise to them to call for a ceasefire on the first day after he was elected. Leopards, faces, FAFO…….
different-church-lady
@Soprano2: Trump specifically gave Netanyahu the green-light a couple of weeks before the election.
There’s not a goddamned thing you can do in the face of that kind of stupidity.
JoyceH
Has Trump spoken in public since the day after the election? Just wondering how obvious the deterioration is by now.
Soprano2
@Belafon: To them that is unpossible, the white man is always the best at anything they want him to be best at.
Soprano2
@suzanne: In my experience a lot of people will cheer any “solution” to homelessness that promises to make those people disappear from their view. People don’t care if the problem is solved, they just want it relocated so they don’t have to see it anymore.
Salty Sam
1970. “Four Dead In Ohio”
Mai Naem mobile ¹
@UncleEbeneezer: i listened to Pod Saves America and,honestly, it came across as too bro-ish. And I don’t remember her name(Lisa ???) but the female who was on occasionally always seemed to have a secondary role. I am tired of the star politicians’entourage(Carville/PSA/Axelrod/Begala/Noonan/Caddell) thinking they’re some brilliant strategists when it the candidate charisma/Q factor and a little bit of luck(right place/right time) that won an election not the skill of the entourage.
scav
Forget Santa, I think the younger generations are going to stop believing in grownups.
About time too.
Subsole
@KatKapCC:
Covid, flu, mumps.
Whooping cough. Syphilis.
Soprano2
@Baud: I think TCFG’s approach to this was typically stupid. Instead of challenging all those egos in the Senate, he should have waited to see who they elected Majority Leader, and then had one of his staffers talk to one of the Majority Leader’s staffers about making a deal that if some of TCFG’s nominees can’t get confirmed they’ll recess and allow him to recess appoint them. Anyone who really knows how to make deals would have known the worst way to get what he wanted from the Senate was to do what TCFG did.
different-church-lady
@Mai Naem mobile ¹: See #198
KatKapCC
@Soprano2: Yep. Case in point: The city of San Jose giving unhoused people one-way bus tickets over the hill to Santa Cruz. No money, no nothing, just the ticket.
Important note: San Jose is roughly 180 square miles with a population slightly over 1 million. Santa Cruz has a population a little over 60,000 and in area is probably less then 25 square miles.
Tony G
@df: Well, as per the July 1st Supreme Court ruling on “Trump vs United States”, the president is now an absolute monarch who can violate any law with impunity. So, none of the old rules (the ones that have been mostly followed for the past 230 years) apply now. If you object then President Trump can, with impunity, order a military unit to kill you.
JoyceH
@Salty Sam: That was more panic than ruthlessness and that four didn’t start a trend of shooting protesters.
Mai Naem mobile ¹
@Baud: i did not have rooting for John Thune to win any electoral position on my 2024 bingo card.
Soprano2
@SFAW: Depends on you you take care of yourself. My grandmother, her sister and one of her brothers lived into their mid to late 80’s. Her other brother who smoked all his life died in his early ’70’s.
Raven
@Soprano2: I’m in the “infusion center” for my second dose. This one is only three hours, the last one was six!
Soprano2
@JoyceH: I’ve been wondering if he’s even been seen in public until today. I wondered if they had him sequestered somewhere recovering from the campaign.
different-church-lady
@Tony G: “Trump vs United States” should be the name of this whole goddamned movie.
Sister Golden Bear
@Soprano2:
Trump doesn’t want deals, he wants dominance.
different-church-lady
@Soprano2: Kinda hoping he doesn’t show up for the inauguration.
Soprano2
@KatKapCC: I heard a Planet Money podcast about this. Cities all over the U.S. do that kind of thing. They try to find a relative of the homeless person and then buy them a bus ticket to that city – problem solved! Hawaii pays to fly people to the mainland. That’s usually a one-way ticket.
Trollhattan
@KatKapCC:
Reno used to send theirs to Sac on Greyhound.
KatKapCC
@Soprano2: In this case, they didn’t give a damn if the person had family. SJ was just like “go live in the hippie college town”.
sixthdoctor
@Chris: The only positive thing I take from all of this is that Rick Scott has been made unhappy in some way, and I think we should all allow ourselves some pleasure in that.
Soprano2
@Sister Golden Bear: I know, that’s why he did what he did. Look how it backfired. He’s dumb about stuff like that.
TBone
@cmorenc: the scenario where they try to build anything detrimental to our vulnerable people. They have to start with staking everything out first, making straight lines, etc . Gaslighting them on their markers, and if they don’t realize it (say you move some very slightly) they get the Leaning Tower of Pizza. Or it just topples. Worst case (for our efforts), they have to spend a lot of time making their survey marks, stakes, lines, plumb lines, etc. over again every morning.
emlii.com/what-is-site-survey/
Jeffro
@Layer8Problem: PJ did live long enough to say (back in 2016) that he was voting for Hillz. Something about her being “wrong, but within normal parameters”
rikyrah
@piratedan:
Jared done told them that GAZA=BEACHFRONT CONDOS…
but, somehow, they just couldn’t find it in their minds to support the Black lady.
oh well.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mai Naem mobile ¹:
Was Thune the one that had Bobo drooling over his “rugged, wind-chapped face” many years ago?
ETA: I’ll answer my own question. I looked it up, and it was indeed a David Brooks FTFNYT column with the original and enticing headline “Meet John Thune.” From 2009.
suzanne
@Soprano2: I have a pretty low tolerance for public disorder, and people on the street in obvious mental health crisis or under the influence of whatever do make me uncomfortable. I understand why people hate it.
But, like…. I’m a realist. I cannot wish people away. I do think good solutions are possible, but they will require money, time, professionalism, compassion, accountability, etc.
Bill Arnold
Drones are also freely available. (Not big military ones, to be clear.)
Trollhattan
@sixthdoctor:
Skeletor SAD.
Did he just become FL’s senior senator? God help us WRT DeSantis’ Li’l Marco replacement. Can they send a sentient python?
Chris
@Lobo:
No, I’m pretty much there too, and have been at various points in the last four years. For most of the decade so far there’s been a total absence of any sense of urgency in Washington about the ongoing fascist takeover attempts, and while the lion’s share of the blame may go on the Republicans and the media, it was far too true of the Democrats too.
Ksmiami
@Lobo: the only message should be. When Republicans are in power, tons of people die unnecessarily.
thats it
Chris
@cain:
It’s really gotten much, much worse just in the last few years, too. Facebook has been getting worse for a long long time, but even as late as 2020 it was nowhere near this bad. Now it’s almost all bots and largely a right-wing puke funnel. And it’s aggressive about its propaganda too; one of the most common experiences has become “delete a fascist meme, block the person who posted it form appearing in your feed, return to your feed, immediately see the same meme again posted under a different name.”
Jeffro
@Citizen Alan: he has already said, multiple times, that he should get a “do over” for his first term, since he had to ‘put up with the Russia, Russia, Russia’ investigations.
So there’s that do-over, plus being robbed in 2020…technically he is owed the presidency until something like 2044??
Maybe he can leave his remaining terms to Don Jr and Eric in his will??
Who knows? It’s certainly a brave new world out there…
tam1MI
That’s what it was always about. No “also” about it.
OId Man Shadow
@Citizen Alan: God as a trickster deity would make a lot more sense than most religions.
Harrison Wesley
@Trollhattan: I’m thinking Balloonhead Gaetz
Jeffro
@SiubhanDuinne: yes
“Tall (6 feet 4 inches) tanned (in a prairie, sun-chapped sort of way) and handsome…”
actual Brooksie quote
tam1MI
@artem1s: Because the attention whores who get clicks for hot takes won’t let anyone CHANGE THE FUCKING SUBJECT.
Let us not forget the elected Dems – may they rot in Hell – who spent an ENTIRE FUCKING MONTH making sure the subject was not changed.
Mai Naem mobile ¹
@different-church-lady: I’ve decreased my intake of cable TV news channels bigly. I not going to contribute my eyeballs to this
Captain C
@JoyceH: I’m wondering if he’ll start giving a completely incoherent Inaugural Address and just fall over halfway through. If that happens, what are the odds that the FTFNYT’s headline is along the lines of “New Dear Leader cuts short eloquent speech to get right to work”?
Baud
@SiubhanDuinne:
Jane, his wife…
Leto
I think I saw it mentioned in the thread below, but the first thing he does is create a “Department of Efficiency,” and then proceeds to appoint two people to a one person job. Just… the biggest brain. Stable genius. The best people. /mindblown.gif
Edit: @Baud: /golfclap
Soprano2
@suzanne: It make me uncomfortable too, but I understand that there aren’t any good solutions right now that people are willing to pay for. They just want to quit seeing those people, and if it meant putting them in jail I think a lot of people would support that because they already think homeless people are criminals of some kind.
Baud
@suzanne:
Same.
Subsole
Just dropping in.
Hope all of y’all are ok and taking care of yourselves.
Still processing the fact we’re back here again but worse. Alternating between despair and anger. Got over disbelief and bargaining the last go round, so let’s hear it for increased efficiency, I guess.
It did occur to me today that all the folks trying to explain “why the Dems lost” are, in fact, perfectly demonstrating one very large part of why. Discipline.
I got my teeth kicked in by Trump. I turn on the t.v. Bernie sits there shitting all over us because the stupid finger wagging prick still, after all evidence contra, believes you can buy people out of their bigotries. Nancy sits there shitting on Biden, and all the consultants are shitting on everyone.
Not a leader in sight. Where is Jeffries? Where is Schumer? Obama? Anyone?
So, as a loyal Democrat who doesn’t know much but the six in front of my face, I see my party eat shit from the badguys. Then they eat shit from their own leadership.
Who on earth would sign up for that kind of outfit? The party needs discipline. Badly.
TBone
@p.a.:
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Rose
KatKapCC
@Captain C: I have a feeling that GWB’s response of “That was some weird shit” to the first one is gonna be a massive understatement this time around.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@sixthdoctor: You’re cheering me right up
lowtechcyclist
@Citizen Alan:
My deep dive into that book, and all the End Times stuff, was back in 1971-72. I’m sure I haven’t opened that book since.
My wife’s grandmother was a Southern Baptist, and she had some of those books on her shelf. As we were cleaning out her house to sell it after she passed, I took the first book and tried to read it. I lost interest less than 30 pages in, is my recollection. So I too am impressed that Fred was able to get at least well into book 2, and possibly book 3.
Anyway, the group I was involved with at the time was deep into that crap, which was why I was too. My recollection is that there were arguments for the Rapture being at the beginning, the end, or smack in the middle of the Tribulation, and our group leaned towards the mid-Trib Rapture interpretation. I know the LB books have the Rapture at the beginning, but that was far from universally accepted back then. Maybe it is now, though, since a lot of folks, I’m sure, believe that the LB books are totally Scriptural.
Daoud bin Daoud
@Steve LaBonne: the biggest catastrophe would be the collapse of the world’s ecosystems under the influence of global warming. Nothing else threatens us so much in the long (20-30 years) term.
Trollhattan
@Harrison Wesley:
Good god that’s both horrifying and probable.
Do senators get more interns than House reps? Matt will be thrilled, and not in a good way.
UncleEbeneezer
@Chris: I have pretty strong controls on for FB and am quick to block people and my experience has not been much worse since 2020. But that’s because I’ve virtually built a silo of only reasonable and liberal people. Twitter, otoh, has gotten much worse, no matter how tight I try to keep things.
Trollhattan
@Daoud bin Daoud:
Yup, and one or more tipping points could well trigger things much sooner.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Anonymous At Work: Of course. If you are going to work in the Antichrist’s administration, priority one has to be bringing about the end of days.
Belafon
@Subsole: Which gets back to the idea that Democrats have always been more of a confederation than a party: A bunch of different interests whose common one was being anti-Republican.
We’re going to have to wait to get through the “I’m right, they’re wrong” for a bit. I do think we can all agree now that Pelosi’s counting ability has been permanently damaged.
I will say that I am envious of all of you with Democratic reps, especially new ones. Keep supporting them, and especially encourage the younger ones to fight for changes in leadership.
Leto
@Jeffro: can’t wait for SCROTUS to rule the 22nd Amendment is just a suggestion, not a guide. And that there’s no 13th Century British precedent for it, so it’s not legal. Same twisted, torturous logic they’ve used for everything else.
Seanly
RE: National Guard from one state going into another state, INAL but National Guard from a different state require an invitation from the Governor of the other state. As I understand it, Trump would have to federalize National Guard and then it would require an act of Congress to allow federalized National Guard (or regular military) to be used for law enforcement.
lowtechcyclist
@different-church-lady:
“This is no movie, this is real!”
“Which reel?”
“The last reel of this vintage motion picture…”
-Firesign Theatre
different-church-lady
@KatKapCC: Amateurs. Real Nazis fly them to Martha’s Vineyard.
Layer8Problem
@eclare, @suzanne, @Jeffro: [Re: O’Rourke voting for Ms. Clinton]
It seemed like an obvious choice, given Maureen Dowd’s headline writer’s endorsement of “Donald the Dove, Hillary the Hawk”.
different-church-lady
@Ksmiami:
HALF THE COUNTRY: “Who cares as long as it’s those people who are dying.”
Baud
@Mai Naem mobile ¹:
You broke the blog.
different-church-lady
@Leto:
Chris
@Subsole:
I’m reminded of the observation I read from an anti-war blogger twenty years ago: the Democratic Party may be a party of itself, but there is little evidence that it’s a party for itself.
tam1MI
On the “up” side, that whole pile of shit is not our problem any more.
different-church-lady
@Baud: The blog knows what it did.
Leto
@different-church-lady: yeah, pretty much that. Anyways, time for Lit class. /wave
karen marie
@Trollhattan: We can’t even adequately staff nursing homes. How the fuck is this going to work?
John S.
@rikyrah:
As others have stated, they’re on their own now. They fucked around and now it’s time to find out.
I genuinely gave a shit about the Palestinians, and that’s not easy as a Jew. I catch all kinds of shit from my family because of it. And I was pretty outspoken here about Rep. Tlaib and her ratfuckery because I knew it would ultimately be bad for the Palestinians.
Trump handed them a knife, and they slit their own throats. So be it.
Baud
@John S.:
It’s possible to be in a tough situation, as they were, and still handle it badly.
Very impressed with the Jewish vote. Trump really made a play to use the conflict to improve his share.
Belafon
@karen marie: Prisons.
TBone
U.S. House of Reps just called for the rethugs.
Trifecta
suzanne
@Trollhattan:
It’s apparently gonna be Lara Trump, so, yes, a python.
Baud
@Belafon:
People need to start committing more crimes.
Baud
@TBone:
Expected. Do we have final numbers?
John S.
@Baud:
You should be impressed! I just spent 3 days at an orthodox Jewish wedding, and I can assure you those people are rabid for Trump. But they do NOT represent the majority of American Jews.
TBone
@Baud: NBC just called it. Don’t know about #s yet.
John S.
@TBone:
Gee, I guess Nancy was wrong about that too. 🙄
KatKapCC
@Baud: Republicans will never accept that the only portion of the Jewish vote they will get is the Orthodox, and not even all of them. Maybe some Conservative (not the political term, the mid-tier Jewish movement), and maybe a tiny sliver of Reform. But Reform makes up the majority of American Jews and are by and large staunch Democrats.
lowtechcyclist
@SiubhanDuinne:
The MSM’s endless search for a ‘good Republican.’ When they can’t find one, they’ll take a random Republican and tell the rest of us that he fits the bill.
Wonder if they’ll ever figure out what should be totally obvious here in 2024: that there are no decent, trustworthy Republicans. To the extent there were any to begin with, they’ve already been kicked out of the tent.
Baud
@John S.:
Yeah, I never thought Trump would get a majority of Jews. But that Jewish vote was almost at the black vote level. That’s not easy to achieve.
Hoodie
@Leto: In the past I thought he might say something like the 22nd keeps someone from serving more than 2 consecutive terms, but the language is tight enough that it might be hard to do that, even for the Sinister Six. More likely Trump won’t run again, but would like to have some sort of puppet succeed him, like Medvedev followed Putin. Maybe Ivanka or Junior. Anyone who will allow him to continue to grift and get attention. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a building of monuments phase where the government erects (or renames) a bunch of stuff honoring him and his glorious achievements. A GOP Congress might do that to keep him happy and not fucking with their individual grifts and so they can create a hagiography for the party like they did with zombie Reagan. Still pisses me off that they renamed National for that asshole.
KatKapCC
@TBone: Ugh. I knew it might be coming, but I was holding on to a wisp of hope. Guess that’ll teach me.
TBone
@KatKapCC: 😔
karen marie
@TBone: It’s not necessarily social media that I have a problem with, it’s who owns a particular platform. I like Mastodon. Are the Big Accounts (run by people who have been wrong for decades) on there? Mostly, no. Am I missing them? Definitely not.
I have a curated list that gives me all the info I need and takes under an hour to peruse. I don’t care how many followers someone has. I’m more interested in who they’re following/sharing. But I’m not trying to be “an influencer” either, so …
karen marie
@different-church-lady: Thank you. I appreciate I’m not alone.
eclare
@Soprano2:
I saw that. I will never understand why anyone would take a pathological liar at his word. Maybe in 2016, but now? Like you said, they fucked around and are about to find out.
Ksmiami
@hrprogressive: we shoot back then. And finish them off with drones and biological weapons.
Belafon
@suzanne: Caligula gets to appoint his horse.
different-church-lady
@Soprano2: Isn’t it cute they think Trump is going to read their letter?
Tony G
@JoyceH: That is true. I despised Richard Nixon as a teenager (and I still despise his memory) — but Nixon was an order of magnitude better than Trump.
KatKapCC
I’d like to believe that with the Republicans controlling all three branches, they can’t boast about holding all the power and then turn around and blame Democrats when something goes wrong or people are mad about something the GOP did.
I’d like to believe that, but I can’t. Because they’ll still do it and the media will not only let them get away with it, they’ll aid them in the process.
Wapiti
@Citizen Alan: …but I seriously would love to write a political-religious satire about Trump et al, the premise of which is that God has a cruel sense of humor, so he picked as his Antichrist the most vile and repellent man he could find and made him uniquely suited to speak to the bigotries and hatreds of Evangelical Americans…
I was thinking in October of using a God is Testing US plot for NaNoWriMo this year, but I didn’t want to jinx things by starting that on November 1, and after the election, I didn’t care to do much at all.
It still features in my magical thinking moments.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
Shit. Now I’ve got that theme song going through my head.
It’s 2024. Where’s my flying car, dammit?
different-church-lady
@KatKapCC: Being a Republican means you get to defy spacetime itself.
Baud
@different-church-lady:
Maybe they should be in charge then.
Ksmiami
@Chris: they thought good policies and decency would rein, but alas. No. As I said before, the 1/6 event should have been dealt with as harshly and as quickly as possible but Garland… and here we are at the ruin of the nation. Great job guys
Leto
@different-church-lady:
Maybe if they gave him a pop-up picture book, otherwise…
karen marie
@Hoodie: You assume – I think, incorrectly – that Trump will make it through four years. We’re going to have “president Vance” at some point in the not too distant future. My prediction is three to six months after January 2025, or 2026 at the latest.
Chris
@KatKapCC:
Yeah.
In much the same way that we’ve never had a Democratic presidency under as consistently toxic a media environment as Biden had in the 2020s… we’ve never had a Republican presidency under such a toxic environment either. All bets are off in terms of how people will react and what they’ll swallow. The information ecosystem, it turns out, can make them swallow quite a lot.
Harrison Wesley
@Wapiti: I toyed with the idea of “Trump: The Musical” but realized that there’s probably already a dozen in the works by people far more talented than I am.
Belafon
I think one of things that is going to get changed about me is my urge to protect people from themselves. I will be helping people that need it, but I’m pretty much done with “If you do X, don’t you realize Y will happen?” unless I know they’ll listen.
Archon
Can someone explain the Arab American vote in Michigan? I don’t understand the political thought process and can’t come up with an explanation that doesn’t make Arabs who voted for Trump or Stein sound like naive fools.
lowtechcyclist
@Leto: I figured someone would beat me to it!
Betty
@Baud: Senators have a very keen sense of their self-importance. That is my one glimmer of hope that some of the circus act will be thwarted.
Eural Joiner
So with the House being called for the GOP, we’re just running 2016 all over again?
History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce.
History doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme.
etc. etc.
Chris Johnson
Well, that’s ONE way to get around SecDef needing to sign off personally on turning the military upon American citizens.
suzanne
@Archon: The thought process is the same that we saw from a lot of groups.
1) Unhappy –deeply so — with situation (this part is reasonable).
2) Unhappy long enough that one becomes convinced that nothing could be worse and anything else would be better (this part is flawed but deeply human).
3) Allows oneself to be deceived into denying evidence and reality (this part is totally fucken inexcusable).
CHETAN R MURTHY
@Archon: I have a rational explanation, but you aren’t going to like it. There are two possible outcomes: Trump wins or Harris wins. If Trump wins, then having voted for Trump is no worse than if they had not voted for Trump and he won.. It’s a wash. If Harris wins and they voted for Trump and lowered Harris’s margin then perhaps they think that will give them leverage. It’s stupid, but it’s it’s a reasonable thing to think. This is kind of a prisoner’s dilemma argument. And as always with the prisoner’s dilemma, if everybody acts as this rational actor acts, then we get the shittiest world– the world of trump.
SFAW
@sixthdoctor:
That’s probably because one of his Horcruxes has been destroyed.
Hoodie
@karen marie: Maybe, but I could easily see Trump lasting beyond 82. I’ve known fuckers like him who have a shit lifestyle but live to 90 simply out of their assholishness. Even if he’s completely demented, they’ll want to prop him up because of jealousies between the disparate elements of his coalition. It would be hard to pull off the 25th Amendment thing with all the Trump loyalists out there who don’t particularly care for Vance, who is nothing but an errand boy for Peter Thiel. Vance is also a charisma void, can’t see him being able to hold together the various disparate elements of the Trump coalition. GHWB couldn’t hold together the Reagan coalition, and he was a lot more appealing than Vance. Vance basically disappeared in the later portions of the campaign as Musk and RFK became Trump’s sidekicks. He’s also not family, Trump would not let him get in line in front of Junior and Ivanka.
lowtechcyclist
@karen marie:
As I read the 25th Amendment:
1) Let’s suppose Vance gets the support of half the Cabinet in declaring Trump incompetent. He is, briefly, acting President.
2) Someone (Stephen Miller? Corey Lewandowski? doesn’t matter) types up a letter from Trump saying he has no disability. He gets Trump to sign it, and delivers it to the leaders of each house of Congress. Trump is President again, and Vance is back to just being VP.
3) Vance can then repeat step 1, but now he doesn’t just need half the Cabinet on his side, he needs a 2/3 vote in his favor from each house of Congress. (Which would require many Dems to cooperate.) Otherwise, Trump is still President, and Vance is SOL until Trump can’t even sign his own name. And even then, maybe there’s Autosign.
SFAW
@Archon:
Mrs. SFAW heard NPR interviewing an Arab-American — originally from Lebanon, she thought — living in Dearborn. This person said he/she voted for Trump, because he/she wanted to “teach Biden (and Harris, I guess) a lesson.”
Mission accomplerished, I guess, you asshole.
John S.
@CHETAN R MURTHY:
Seems like a plausible explanation. I just chalk it up to good old fashioned ratfucking and terrible politics.
You reap what you sow.
ETA: Even the Quran says they are fucked.
Surah At-Tur 21: “Every person will reap only what they sowed”
Archon
@CHETAN R MURTHY: You’re right.
I don’t like it. I suspect most Democrats don’t want to hear about the Palestinian cause ever again.
different-church-lady
@Archon: Punitive voting.
lowtechcyclist
@Betty:
And then there’s the number of GOP Senators that have shown any backbone with respect to Trump.
Baud
@CHETAN R MURTHY:
Makes sense. The fact is, our side’s unwillingness to hurt innocent people for purely political reasons hurts us politically.
John S.
@Baud:
Unfortunately, this is one of those many areas where asymmetry in the response between the two parties is so extreme that it’s highly exploitable.
suzanne
@Hoodie: Genetics is the largest component in longevity. Trump’s relatives seem to be pretty long-lived. Didn’t his mother make it into her late 90s? That’s why you see those fluff interviews with some extremely elderly people and they’re like, “My pro tip is to drink Dr. Pepper and whisky every day!”.
I am rooting for the myocardial infarction.
John S.
@Archon:
After all the Genocide Joe bullshit?
Fuck em.
Sure Lurkalot
@Subsole: I’m also disgusted with Biden’s convivial meeting with Trump today, promising a smooth transition and planning to attend the inauguration.
Smooth transition to what, Joe? The end of democracy that you warned the country about if Trump were re-elected?
I’m sorry but not surprised that Bernie is still with his class war schtick. What has he accomplished in that vein besides being famous for his scowl and finger wag? A working class hero is something to be, Bernie and you ain’t it, fella. Liz Warren…yeah.
zhena gogolia
@Subsole: I agree.
Anyway
I wish Biden and Harris and Obama and Hills would all skip the inauguration – fuck it all
ETA I’m in heavy doom mood and don’t think a repeat of 2018 is likely… FUCK IT ALL!
Old School
@tam1MI:
Not quite yet. I saw that some reporter asked Biden if he thought a ceasefire could be negotiated before he leaves office.
suzanne
@Archon:
I find the Palestinian situation just so heartbreaking. Not only because they were essentially sold down the river by much of their community here.
KatKapCC
@SFAW: The people who will end up getting “taught a lesson” are mostly going to be the Palestinians they claim to care so much about.
“Harris had the audacity to say Jews should not be murdered, therefore she hates Palestinians, so we will not vote for her and instead help elect a man who wants to let Bibi drop a nuke on Palestine. WE REMAIN MASTER STRATEGISTS.”
Archon
@Sure Lurkalot: Biden helped Democrats take the high road into political irrelevancy.
zhena gogolia
@John S.: The greatest woman politician of our lifetimes?
KatKapCC
@Sure Lurkalot: Wonkette went in on him over this. Can’t say I blame them.
Layer8Problem
@Archon: That man never ceases to fail, doesn’t he?
//
Hoodie
I’m wondering if the Thune thing is a warning shot on the tariff thing. A lot of red states are big ag states that might be hurt by a trade war with China.
zhena gogolia
@KatKapCC: He won the presidential election. It’s not Biden’s fault. It’s the fault of the millions of Americans who freely and consciously voted for Trump.
I won’t brook any shitting on Biden for this.
John S.
@zhena gogolia:
I won’t deny she accomplished quite a bit over the course of her career, but like so many other politicians who went WAY past their expiration date, she’s going out with a stain on her legacy.
KatKapCC
@zhena gogolia: He’s a felon and a rapist and a traitor who spent the last four years insulting Biden on the daily. There is no law requiring this little chitchat session.
John S.
@Hoodie:
Tariffs aren’t going to happen. Period.
Theres no fucking way in hell Trump’s puppet masters will let him do it. We’re more likely to get Mexico to pay for a border wall.
cain
@JoyceH:
Also keep in mind, if the nazi’s plan is to take red state national guard to attack say california – it’s the red state that has to pay for the troops to do the fighting.
I’m wondering how those governors are going to feel about that. Those red states don’t have the kind of budgets that Washington State and California can bring to bear and almost certainly Oregon and Washington will jump in to protect California if it came down to that.
rikyrah
@Baud:
I guess they feel some sort of way about him stealing their re-election campaign funds a few years ago…
BWA HA HA HA HA HA A
John S.
@KatKapCC:
As I seem to recall, Trump refused any such niceties when Biden was elected.
Biden isn’t a piece of shit like Trump, even if he’s a slave to institutions and norms. When they go low, he still goes high. That’s just who he is.
cain
@Subsole:
This is pretty much the end of their leadership. We’re going to need all new leadership that doesn’t remember anything other than GOP shenanigans. Perhaps that is Jeffries? I don’t know.
But the old guard has failed us.
TBone
@KatKapCC: 💜❤️🙂↕️
JaySinWA
I think the whole point is to avoid making it either a Department or official office. It will be effectively an NGO advisory group if I understand this correctly. So they can dodge the Office and call it a Department of high falutin’ suggestions (DOFHS) without having to doff their hats to Congressional approval or be reined in by the President’s chief of staff.
I doubt Ramaswamy will last in this co-chair position for very long, although he might outlast Musk’s ADHD attention span.
Wyatt Salamanca
from MSNBC – Tulsi Gabbard to be the new DNI
cain
@UncleEbeneezer:
That’s pretty much mastodon for me. I still need to be careful that I’m not in a bubble though.
cain
@Belafon:
Unless, election fraud is involved.
UncleEbeneezer
@KatKapCC: One thing that is absolutely wild to me in the whole I/P discussion is: aren’t a handful of the hostages being held by Hamas, American citizens? Like how was that not even an issue in the election? Why have there been no campus protests for them?
I was born in 1973 and while I was a child for most of the 80’s, stories of American hostages being held by Iran, Lebanon etc., were seemingly everywhere in the news and usually the lead stories and cause for national concern. If you told me that someday, seven American hostages would be held by a world-designated terrorist organization and that it would scarcely even go mentioned on the news or in election coverage, I would’ve never believed you.
Hoodie
@John S.: Oh, I agree. This could just be a way of making sure that Trump understands that. My biggest concern as far as financial fuckery is Trump messing with the Fed and doing shit that would accelerate the depletion of the SS trust fund, which would be the typical passive aggressive way that Republicans would destroy the program. Tariffs are much less likely to happen.
tam1MI
My fear is that the Orange Shitbag croaks before January and his followers go on apeshit killing sprees.
Baud
@Wyatt Salamanca:
Efficient pipeline to Putin.
Quinerly
Tulsi to be nominated for DNI.
cain
@KatKapCC: Perhaps they will simply unnaturalize/de-citizenfy them and send them to Israel?
cain
@karen marie: I actually get a lot of reactions on my accounts but it’s mostly for my cat photos. :)
rikyrah
CALL TO ACTIVISM (@CalltoActivism) posted at 8:00 PM on Tue, Nov 12, 2024:
Soon to be Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth complained on Fox that veterans who use the benefits they’ve earned are dependent on the government and lack “personal integrity”.
This is what every Vet who wore their MAGA hats to the VA hospital voted for.
t.co/H1bfbCLPUi
(x.com/CalltoActivism/status/1856517552727339361?s=03)
KatKapCC
@UncleEbeneezer: Yes, there are American citizens among the hostages, including Hersh Goldberg-Polin, whose parents spoke at the convention, and whose body was recovered days later.
You get three guesses as to why those particular Americans didn’t mean shit to a lot of people here.
Dangerman
Is it bad for me to wonder if the SecDef nominee knows how to get to the Pentagon?
cain
@KatKapCC:
That’s the media’s job. They will blame dems for not defeating the GOP. They will also not advertise anything the Dems are actually doing to help.
cain
@Eural Joiner:
I want an apology from the Democratic leadership. They should be ashamed of themselves.
cain
@lowtechcyclist:
Vance will be out by that point. Trump won’t tolerate that also everyone who signed no as a cabinet will also be gun.
It will be the night of knives.
Trollhattan
@Dangerman: In a 757?
Baud
@cain:
Will you be mad at AOC if she attends Trump’s state of the union address?
minachica
@Trollhattan: I’m guessing that this “idea” rests wholly on the principle of “out of sight, out of mind.”
John S.
@Hoodie:
Besides, I’ll believe it when I see it. Trump isn’t exactly great at keeping his promises.
cain
@Sure Lurkalot:
it’s the same playbook – show the American people that we are graceful losers and this is how Democracy is supposed to work.
We are morons. They are morons.
I’m disgusted with these people. Biden has ruined his reputation with me as far as I’m concerned with this madness.
John S.
@Baud:
I’ll only be mad at AOC if she acts like a horse’s ass in the mold of MTG.
cain
@JaySinWA:
If they are getting govt money then they are going to have to come under congress.
UncleEbeneezer
@KatKapCC: I think I can guess the answer in (((one)))
cain
@tam1MI:
I’m ok with that as we would still be in charge.
Glidwrith
@Lobo: With regard to how Biden and other Democrats are acting with respect to shitforbrains, first, don’t advertise to the enemy what you are doing behind the scenes. Second, inciting a mass panic before anything has actually happened is decidedly not a good outcome. Third, acting that these pudknockers are bound by the rule of law will keep at least some in line, though obviously not all.
None of us know how bad the damage will be. Plan accordingly and do NOT talk about it.
cain
@Baud: Nope. I will be mad if any Dem attends the state of the union.
tam1MI
@Belafon: I think one of things that is going to get changed about me is my urge to protect people from themselves. I will be helping people that need it, but I’m pretty much done with “If you do X, don’t you realize Y will happen?” unless I know they’ll listen.
The Dems have been the party of enablers for far too long. Every time the Repugs try to hurt large numbers of people (which is any day ending in “Y”), elected and street level Dems alike rush in to try and ameliorate and mitigate the harm, to try and rescue as many people as we can, regardless of whether or not they voted for us. Because of this, people have come to assume that it will be always be safe to return to Republicans like a dog to it’s vomit because Democrats will always save them, the same way an alcoholic knows there will be no consequences for returning to the bottle because the enabler will always protect them from the consequences of their own actions. The groups that voted for Trump should not be protected from the consequences of their own actions any more.
Baud
@cain:
You’re going to be mad then.
artem1s
@Chris: Fuckabee is a End Times initiator. He believes he should do everything he can (including causing a extinction level nuclear war) in order to bring on the rapture and end times.
I’ve been thinking a lot about Stephen King’s Dead Zone lately. This version where the POTUS candidate uses a defenseless toddler as a human shield AND an innocent bystander first responder gets killed during an assassination attempt and his supporters respond with ‘HELL YEA, LET’S ELECT THAT GUY’ really, really sucks. And I hate the actor they replaced Martin Shield with.
Chris
@Sure Lurkalot:
I pointed this out a few times on other websites in 2021 and 2022, but you can’t just go to your voters with your hair on fire every two years telling them that the sky is falling, the world is ending, this is the most important election of our lives, and if you don’t give us money to help us win it it’s going to be literally Order 66 times the Red Wedding to the power of Judgment Day… and then as soon as the election’s over, go right back to acting as if everything is normal and the people across the aisle from you are just nice patriotic Americans who happen to have a sincere difference of opinion, you know, just like you and your wife at dinner time when you want an omelet but she wants kielbasa. Nobody fucking buys it. The only thing it teaches people is that dire warnings over the state of democracy is just how politicians raise money and get elected, but that they don’t actually believe any of it themselves.
Which is a shame, because every election in my lifetime, certainly in my adulthood, has in fact been a five-alarm-fire moment.
Mai Naem mobile ¹
@suzanne: I can’t be bothered to look it up but my guess is on average most US presidents die at an earlier age. Carter and Bush Sr are the exceptions to the rule and Carter was a USNA grad so you know he was in really good physical shape to begin with and he got good medical care throughout his life. Tfg’s dad wasn’t potus and I’m pretty sure he didn’t get into all the legal entanglements his son got into. tfg really looked like he was imploding mentally as his legal issues were getting worse. That’s all stress.
suzanne
@Mai Naem mobile ¹: Sure, but I don’t think Trump works hard enough to be stressed out.
Hoodie
@Chris: Yeah, the problem there might have been in telling everyone before the election that Trump signals the imminent death of democracy. It’s not like they bought it before the election, so Biden acting friendly now is probably somewhat irrelevant. I thought the messaging on that during the later stages of the campaign was questionable. It’s more like the risk is a spreading rot. It might have been better to stick with calling them weird, corrupt, crazy and dangerously incompetent, not like they’re the second coming of the Third Reich.
tam1MI
To which the response should have been, “If it was, I wouldn’t tell you”.
Hoodie
@suzanne: People like Trump feed on chaos, so I doubt it reduces their lifespans. The people physically affected by anxiety are type A’s that worry about making mistakes.
Archon
@cain: It’s okay to be in a bubble, you just need to be in a bubble large enough to win elections.
tam1MI
And he can afford to be gracious. He’s the only politician in the history of the US to have beaten Donald Trump.
Harrison Wesley
@cain: The Night of the Tiny Hands
Anyway
@Wyatt Salamanca:
I called it the other day! burnishing her credentials for a POTUS run. <Gack!>
Geminid
@Archon: Plenty of Michigan’s Arab Amaricans were Republican voters to begin with. The people who wrote the letter about a ceasefire might have voted Republican even without the Gaza issue.
There must have been some 2020 Biden voters who voted for Trump this year because of the war, but I suspect there were many more Biden-to-Stein voters because of the issue.
Citizen Alan
@Soprano2: I have no doubt a significant percentage of MAGA would be perfectly fine with the extermination of homeless people. I mean, that’s hardly the only group they want to kill off.
Quiltingfool
We’d really like to see President Biden call Trump a fucking asshole to his face.
Sure, it would make us feel better for Democratic leaders to act exactly like Republicans.
That is a “win the battle” play. That is a “show your cards” play. That is not a “win the war” strategy. Never, ever, show your hand, or let them know what you’re thinking. No matter that it makes you feel momentarily vindicated.
I’m saying this knowing that I will get scorched here. I understand we are devastated and we want our leaders to show us they know our pain and they will strike out for us. But that is, ultimately, not going to amount to a hill of beans here on out.
We may have already lost the war. I don’t know, none of us do. Perhaps the world has changed so much that our normal way of thinking about things doesn’t work anymore. Thing is, whether we’ve lost or we are in a holding pattern, we need to be smart about things.
Never show your cards, never announce your intentions; instead, hit ‘em in the back of the head with a brick when they least expect it. (Metaphorically speaking, of course).
Let the scorching begin!
ETA: what Glidwrith said.
Citizen Alan
@lowtechcyclist:
It is 16 volumes of Christian Revenge Snuff Porn that had evangelicals rubbing their thighs in sexual ecstasy at the thought of Jews, atheists, uppity women, LGBTs and everyone else they hated receiving infinite torture. IIRC, Fred did a chapter by chapter review of the first 2 or 3 books and then skipped ahead to the end to cover that hilarious scene near the end where all the main characters are in Heaven (turns out God is okay with polycules in the afterlife because Rayford Steele is living with both his dead wives) enjoying a meal of “steamed produce” because Adam and Eve only became meat eaters because of Original Sin so the cuisine in Heaven is entirely vegan. (The authors don’t expressly call it vegan, presumably because they think real life vegetarians worship Satan.)
Citizen Alan
@karen marie: It’s not and it’s not intended to. All that matters is that Trump is going to solve the “
JewishHomeless Problem.”Citizen Alan
@Wapiti: I’ve never been able to complete NaMoWriMo or even come close precisely because it’s in November. Federal elections are in every even year, and Mississippi state elections were every odd year. So my Novembers always started off with some form of crushing political disappointment that sapped my will to keep writing.
Citizen Alan
@suzanne: Anyone who did not vote for Kamala Harris is complicit in the coming ethnic cleansing of Gaza. And I will happily tell Rashida Tlaib and her fellow travelers that to their faces.
catclub
@Jinchi:
Magic Eightball says … No.
I think Trump is doing a loyalty test on GOP senators by picking the worst possible person for every cabinet post and forcing them to be complicit by voting those douchebags into their cabinet seats.
Citizen Alan
@Archon: And since it will shortly cease to exist, they will likely get their wish.
catclub
yeah, right. the same way the 20-25% for Haley in the primaries was a warning shot from all the disaffected republicans. My guess is that every single republican who actually changed their vote to Harris was in a Harris commercial.
Citizen Alan
@John S.: If I were AOC, I would send out a press release stating that she would not be attending the Inauguration because, based on past experience, Trump will likely fill the crowd with violent racist thugs who will openly talk about raping her. Which wouldn’t even be a lie.
sab
@Steve LaBonne: And measles is insanely contagious.
Ruckus
@Baud:
Trump will be the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Makes me what to stop buying sliced bread.
No, it makes me want to stop buying bread at all.
sab
@lowtechcyclist: I hope everyone on the GOP side remembers that Trump will be a lame duck president.
I have no problem with Biden following norms in this case. Much as I hate it, Trump apparently got the bigger popular vote. Rule of law and all. Mitch McConnell subvertimg norms was one thing. We are where we are now because of law (bad justices and all) and we need to accept that current law as currently interpreted under our law made this guy our president.
I don’t like it. But there isn’t anything we can do about it so dig in quietly behind the scenes and don’t be an asshole in public is how I intend to move forward. They are so much better at assholeness that I would rather compete on other grounds.
Dan B
@rikyrah: Saw that. The Trump admin is calling veterans lazy and of poor morals. Everything Trump touches will rot. Everyone who supports him will get it good and hard in time.
Ruckus
@different-church-lady:
Some DO suck.
Some suck at a very high rate/volume/vacuum.
Joe Biden is 3 years older than shitforbrains (and 6 yrs older than me).
So I may have some perspective on age, especially on being older. And yes there are others here who are older than me and possibly older than Joe Biden. I know people that are President Biden’s age and are fully functional. I know people younger than me who likely should never be left alone because they really aren’t reasonably functional. I’m not worried about President Biden but I am massively worried about shitforbrains being back in ANY sort of power. And it really isn’t about his age, but about HIM.
karen marie
@Hoodie:
@lowtechcyclist:
You both make good points. I’d still be willing to bet a nickel that it’s “president Vance” before 2026 ticks over. But that’s just me expecting the worst.
How it could get worse than DefSec Hegseth, AG Gaetz and DNI Gabbard though, I’d be hard pressed to say.
karen marie
@cain: Cat pictures? What’s your nym? I’m @ axomamma on mastodon dot online. I love cat pictures!
Chris Johnson
@catclub: No, it’s simpler. Every one is Russia’s guy, or so totally blackmailed that it’s the same.
I don’t know the Fox host. Tulsi. Gaetz. Every last one. I’m surprised he doesn’t drag Jill Stein in and appoint her to something. 100% that’s all it is.
He’s absolutely angling for tariffs and the whole nine yards by recess appointments, because this is his only chance to do what TASS told him he had to do: make good on his obligations to Russia.
Hence, the Senate not giving him his guy, rather the opposite. He is literally up against the Republican party now, because they demand that he give them power for their trouble and loyalty.
They won’t get that, they will get destroyed along with all other (well, all other wealthy) Americans as he wrecks absolutely everything. if they believed he was on their side they’d have given him Rick Scott, not the literal opposite of what he wanted. It’s a power struggle now.
I’m sure Russia has been threatening them all along, but now it’s the end game and their time to personally lose everything and that’s their limit.
Chris Johnson
@Ruckus: Well I tell you what. If RFK manages to make pasteurization illegal so you can only get raw milk, ice cream is dead to me and I’ll drink my coffee black! :D
Uncle Cosmo
@Ksmiami: Cosplay Stalinist talks like man with paper asshole. If someone handed you a gun you’d probably shit yourself in pure terror. And then shoot yourself in the foot when you can’t tell the safety and the trigger apart.
Ruckus
@Chris Johnson:
As stated here before I’m an old. And while I’ve seen a lot of breath taking shit, I’ve also seen good. It’s not just parents that make you good, they just most often show you the way. It’s each individual person that is good or not, OK or pure shit. After all the Kennedy clan has done and been through, I believe it’s pretty amazing that we haven’t seen a defector from the family teachings/upbringing before this.