Jump to content

US Politics: Nine Days in January


Fragile Bird

Recommended Posts

1 hour ago, Winterfell is Burning said:

It is...to a point. With vaccine distribution, there will be economic recovery worldwide, and that will tend to favor people who are already in power. Plus, in the US, it's rare for a party to leave power after only 4 years anyway.

And yet that just happened. Four years ago Republicans captured the Presidency and both chambers of Congress. Now they're out of power. You're right that a mass global distribution of the vaccine will be good for the economy, but the economy is also forever changed and we don't know how that will play out. The pandemic has sped up a lot of cost saving measures the corporate world was already going to face, industries are forever changed, like the restaurant industry which will take a long time to recover, etc. We simply have no idea where we'll be in four years right now, especially given we're a week removed from an event most people in and outside of the US could have never predicted.
 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, Soylent Brown said:

People shouldn't really be running for election at 70 either. Can most US politicians not dress and feed themselves until their mid-fifties or something?

I think their fifties are devoted to amassing the fortune necessary to be able to afford the “free” speech required to run for anything!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 minutes ago, Soylent Brown said:

People shouldn't really be running for election at >70 either. Can most US politicians not dress and feed themselves until their mid-fifties or something?

We Are All Baby Yodas.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 minutes ago, Hereward said:

I think their fifties are devoted to amassing the fortune necessary to be able to afford the “free” speech required to run for anything!

You are not far wrong. It is ruinously expensive to run a campaign, and given the severe economic disparities in the U.S., it's very difficult for someone under 40 (who isn't already bankrolled by their parents) to even think about running for office. Add into that the functionally exclusionary structure of the two-party system (i.e. it's difficult to run on a third-party ticket), you also need to somehow win the sponsorship of one of the two main parties, and both of those have their own biases built in. Finally, gerrymandering has completely fucked our electoral process, so even if you managed to build a campaign, get the necessary sponsorships, and be very popular, many voting districts have been engineered to only generate one result. So that's how you get a lot of aged white people running for office. It's a fucking shitshow. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 hours ago, Castellan said:

so more like an old fashioned undershirt, vest, singlet, whatever you call them, that would have been worn under a shirt?  or some other new invention?

I thought it must be the sleeveless things made like t shirts that show shoulder and arm muscles.

I was closer than my brother in law's family they thought it was headgear!

I should have just googled, of course.

Yeah it's just a classic bonds men's singlet. Obviously they're not all that brand, but picture that and it's exactly what's meant.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Mo Brooks has decided to release a statement that is, well, it's quite a read.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/01/mo-brooks-says-hes-no-criminal-did-not-incite-capitol-riot.html

In between quoting Jesus and MLK, rambling about his 'ancestral history' of participation in politics and exclusively referring to the Democratic party as the 'Socialist Democrats', he angrily insists that he was far too ignorant and dangerously ill-informed to have understood what was going on at the rally he addressed and that to suggest otherwise is malicious slander. Also, because people did not immediately set forth with burning torches after he spoke, but instead hung around to hear Trump, he can't have said anything inflammatory. Checkmate, libs!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, mormont said:

exclusively referring to the Democratic party as the 'Socialist Democrats'

What I found most..I don't even know the right word, was him directly linking Orwell in his epithets against 'Socialist Democrats' - "scurrilous, George Orwellian, 1984, Socialist Democrats Politics of Personal Destruction."  Considering the discussion on here on the misunderstandings of Orwell's politics the other day, veritable doublethink right there.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 minutes ago, mormont said:

Mo Brooks has decided to release a statement that is, well, it's quite a read.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/01/mo-brooks-says-hes-no-criminal-did-not-incite-capitol-riot.html

In between quoting Jesus and MLK, rambling about his 'ancestral history' of participation in politics and exclusively referring to the Democratic party as the 'Socialist Democrats', he angrily insists that he was far too ignorant and dangerously ill-informed to have understood what was going on at the rally he addressed and that to suggest otherwise is malicious slander. Also, because people did not immediately set forth with burning torches after he spoke, but instead hung around to hear Trump, he can't have said anything inflammatory. Checkmate, libs!

I read that as Mel Brooks and was thoroughly confused!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Some kinda crazy (to past me) photos coming around this morning, of the National Guard who are now quartering in the Capitol. Really hammers home how surreal all this is:

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, GrimTuesday said:

Obviously we don't know if she is actually going to run, but Dainne Feinstein has filed her FEC paperwork to run in 2024.

The woman is apparently in, at best, the early stages of cognitive decline, as detailed in this New Yorker article from late last year. This isn't even a "Grimtuesday hates establishment Dems" thing, this is the fact that no one should be running for election at 91. I work in campaign finance, so I know that this was likely done as a way to raise money that is probably just going to be dumped into the DNC, but I don't really get why her donors wouldn't just give to a PAC or the DNC since the contribution limits are higher (5k and 35k respectively vs 2800 to a candidate committee).

100% agree with you. Elder, senior Democrats have done a terrible job to elevate up and comers and relinquish seniority to the next generation. As DMC pointed out, I'm glad she stepped out of her Judiciary role - still that feels like barely the minimum. That inertia is what inevitably leads to more primarying - old folks not getting out of the way. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My morning comments about stuff on CNBC.

Tim Cook said in an interview (on another network) that Parler violated terms of service that all app producers have to follow, but they will be back on the App Store once they correct that situation. And he said it with a straight face.

In the meantime, Amazon, in response to Parler’s lawsuit, has told the court the lawsuit has nothing to do with the suppression of free speech and asks the court not to force them to take them back.

Considering the massive security breach they had, would people actually go back to Parler? Wait until all the identity theft starts to hit the streets.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wtf

Quote

As people rushed out of other buildings on the Capitol grounds, staffers in Pressley’s office barricaded the entrance with furniture and water jugs that had piled up during the pandemic. Groh pulled out gas masks and looked for the special panic buttons in the office.

 

Every panic button in my office had been torn out — the whole unit,” she said, though they could come up with no rationale as to why. She had used them before and hadn’t switched offices since then. As they were escorted to several different secure locations, Groh and Pressley and her husband tried to remain calm and vigilant — not only of rioters but of officers they did not know or trust, she said.

By whom??? There is a lot more to come out here.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/01/13/nation/it-was-like-looking-evil-capitol-attack-through-eyes-massachusetts-delegation/

(Limited clicks because the globe sucks)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

26 minutes ago, Fez said:

Some kinda crazy (to past me) photos coming around this morning, of the National Guard who are now quartering in the Capitol. Really hammers home how surreal all this is:

 

Finally a third amendment violation! (kidding)

 

Sorry if this was already posted but Ayanna Pressley's staff is reporting that the panic buttons had been physically removed from her office prior to last Wednesdays events.  Think it was a Boston Globe article I saw but phone is acting up and can't load it now.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, mormont said:

Mo Brooks has decided to release a statement that is, well, it's quite a read.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/01/mo-brooks-says-hes-no-criminal-did-not-incite-capitol-riot.html

In between quoting Jesus and MLK, rambling about his 'ancestral history' of participation in politics and exclusively referring to the Democratic party as the 'Socialist Democrats', he angrily insists that he was far too ignorant and dangerously ill-informed to have understood what was going on at the rally he addressed and that to suggest otherwise is malicious slander. Also, because people did not immediately set forth with burning torches after he spoke, but instead hung around to hear Trump, he can't have said anything inflammatory. Checkmate, libs!

Expel Mo Brooks from the House.  Investigate him, and if warranted, indict him for incitement.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...