US politics: Manchin to the beat of a different drum

[DireWolfSpirit]

Whoa I'm going to need to carefully re-read the last 2 pages because my eyes are having a hard time believing it.

Did MTG really call someone else a "feckless c#nt"?

And did a Fox news (freak)  really insinuate that vaccine shots had something to do with a mass shooter?

Has our entire nation just became the National Enquirer? 

We are doomed.

[butterbumps!]

29 minutes ago, Altherion said:

If you have a couple of hours to spare and want to differentiate the candidates, try watching their May debate. I saw some of it live and they're actually quite different. Adams is fairly strongly pro-police (not surprising given his background). I remember he mentioned bringing back the plainclothes police unit, but doing it right this time which made the more left-wing candidates quite angry.

Garcia is interesting in that she deals with pressing issues (lead paint, COVID food relief) and does it relatively well which makes her a natural choice for the current era. She is also the most environmentalist of the candidates.

The others are all different in a variety of ways (in addition to the police, the debate discussed education, COVID recovery and a few other issues). I think you get to rank your top 5 choices, but I would just go with Garcia first and maybe Yang second.

That's a good call- I might watch the debate.   I also came across this from the Gotham Gazette that goes into surprising amount of detail on the candidates.  I'd normally just go with my union on these matters, especially because the mayor is actually kind of my boss (I work at a city agency).  I'm happy to vote for someone who might not be as good for me personally but good for the city, but I am really curious why Garcia wasn't the candidate endorsed by the workers being as how she was commissioner of Sanitation.  Though I guess she was relatively obscure until she recently began to catch fire, so maybe it's that?  I'm not crazy about Adams' heavy focus on policing-- unless it really is in a capacity to reform it, which in fairness is what he proposes, but we'll see.  I also don't love how pro-big business and real estate-friendly he is.

19 minutes ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

I want to think strategically how I rank my top (I have 4 right now, but might put in a fifth) candidates within the ranked choice rubric. I probably shouldn’t try to game the system, easier just to actually rank them, but ranked choice is like a new toy and I can’t resist.

Yea, this is making it a little harder for me in some ways.  Like I wouldn't even include Yang and Stringer in my vote at all because we only go up to 5 and there's approximately 92 candidates running, but strategizing to keep it away from them generally by ranking milquetoast ones higher maybe?

[Zorral]

13 minutes ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

Has our entire nation just became the National Enquirer? 

No, "... just becoming ..." involved.  This is how we've been for years and years, since Reagan.  Just more so all the time.

[argonak]

33 minutes ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

Whoa I'm going to need to carefully re-read the last 2 pages because my eyes are having a hard time believing it.

Did MTG really call someone else a "feckless c#nt"?

And did a Fox news (freak)  really insinuate that vaccine shots had something to do with a mass shooter?

Has our entire nation just became the National Enquirer? 

We are doomed.

I don't think the entire nation has, but the "national enquirer" style of nonsense news took over a huge chunk of the right's news media.

Unfortunately our cruddy form of democracy means 25% of the country can hold the other 75% hostage.

[Kalbear]

5 hours ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

2.  This isn’t directed at ANYONE in this thread at all, but more on my observations in conversations with people iRL.  I don’t personally like when one person tells another person that their stated beliefs and emotions aren’t real.  Completely off topic, but anecdotally I see this accusation thrown at women a lot.  It sets my teeth on edge.

The most common thing I get when I talk about it is some variant of 'hope she sees this comment', implying that the only reason I might care is to impress women. 

 

[Relic]

1 hour ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

 

We are doomed.

That's been obvious for a long time, mate. 

[Tywin et al.]

5 hours ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

Don’t knock performance.  Performance is IMPORTANT, and sustained performance is CRITICAL.  On some level, every social interaction we have is performance.  You present yourself as the person you want to be perceived as rather than the person that maybe you are, but those two concepts aren’t binary, and they merge over time.  I know exactly what annoys people, and I hear it all the time and it annoys me too (buzz words, perceived hypocrisy, posting rather than doing).  But habits of mind are formed by repetition.  Or put differently, if you tell a lie often enough at some point you believe it. So my view is let’s not knock performance, even if you, the audience, don’t love the second act of the play.  Let’s encourage MORE performance and better performance rather than throwing tomatoes.  

ETA two things:

1.  It is now fashionable in certain circles to have exactly this cynicism.  It’s performance as well.  

2.  This isn’t directed at ANYONE in this thread at all, but more on my observations in conversations with people iRL.  I don’t personally like when one person tells another person that their stated beliefs and emotions aren’t real.  Completely off topic, but anecdotally I see this accusation thrown at women a lot.  It sets my teeth on edge.

 

Not to side step valid points you raised, I agree, but I want to connect the bloded. My complaint is that a lot feelings are being overexaggerated, much like how in a lot of reality TV shows the characters may have disagreements, but they're playing them up for the cameras because that's what sells right now. I only see that getting worse with time and it doesn't really help in solving a lot of issues of the day.

4 hours ago, argonak said:

Either you're elected because the crowd likes what you like, or you're elected because you like what the crowd likes.  If you try to do the "right thing" but the crowd doesn't like it, its very rare they'll continue to support you.

That's the cost of trying to be a leader, you have to be able to tell people the things they don't want to hear. 

[Fez]

It's a fun quote, but not entirely sure how I feel about this. Is Biden being blasé about the threat or properly distinguishing between action and performative politics? I don't know.

[DMC]

17 minutes ago, Fez said:

It's a fun quote, but not entirely sure how I feel about this. Is Biden being blasé about the threat or properly distinguishing between action and performative politics? I don't know.

Pretty sure he just wanted to eat some ice cream.  Which is his god-given American right.

[Mindwalker]

I'm so tired of all this justice baiting going on right now wrt the former guy... as if!

[Fez]

1 hour ago, DMC said:

Pretty sure he just wanted to eat some ice cream.  Which is his god-given American right.

Fair enough. But I want to eat some ice cream too, and not have a little voice in the back of my head saying this one of the last years you'll get to eat democratic ice cream. Soon it'll be authoritarian ice cream, and they skimp on the milk-fat.

[DMC]

3 minutes ago, Fez said:

But I want to eat some ice cream too, and not have a little voice in the back of my head saying this one of the last years you'll get to eat democratic ice cream. Soon it'll be authoritarian ice cream, and they skimp on the milk-fat.

Well, I try to think of nicer things while eating ice cream.  And I try to stay alert to make sure my ice cream doesn't become authoritarian.  It's tough.

[Larry of the Lawn]

4 hours ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

 

Did MTG really call someone else a "feckless c#nt"?

.

No, she retweeted someone else saying it.

[Tywin et al.]

3 hours ago, Relic said:

That's been obvious for a long time, mate. 

Never fear, Paul Ryan is giving a speech tonight that will save the Republican party and the country.

[HoodedCrow]

My ex room mate, could pass for American black, as that was his heritage. He was so distant from the black experience in th U.S., that he felt very strange when attending a function there. He didn’t know the “language”. That’s how fast it can happen. He used to watch Spike Lee to catch up.

 

[A True Kaniggit]

13 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Never fear, Paul Ryan is giving a speech tonight that will save the Republican party and the country.

Haven’t you heard? The Republican Party is the country! Democrats don’t count.

Thats how Republicans can believe lazy Democrats never work, but at the same time the country had a super low unemployment rate. Fuck reality!

[ants]

15 hours ago, argonak said:

By its nature democratic (small d) politics is always performative.  Politicians ultimately do what they do because it gets them re-elected or is what got them elected.  Occasionally you have people who will step away from that line (Liz Cheeney being an example), but the system corrects for that quickly (Liz Cheeney being an example again).

Either you're elected because the crowd likes what you like, or you're elected because you like what the crowd likes.  If you try to do the "right thing" but the crowd doesn't like it, its very rare they'll continue to support you.

Um, if that was all true then this couldn't be happening:

 

 

[Fragile Bird]

There’s been a new hack attack launched against the US government and other nations, apparently from the same Russian group that brought you the Solar Winds attack last year. The amount and extent of damage done by that attack against at least nine US government departments still has not been revealed, or, perhaps, uncovered.

The focus of the attacks this time has been on US aid and humanitarian organizations. Access to the Constant Contact system (aside: I hate their commercials so much) used by USAID was obtained and an e-mail sent out under a real name. The hook was a link purporting to show new evidence of Trump fraud, so tempting to click on! 
 

Apparently Microsoft security systems have been stopping many of the emails.

[Altherion]

21 hours ago, butterbumps! said:

I'm happy to vote for someone who might not be as good for me personally but good for the city, but I am really curious why Garcia wasn't the candidate endorsed by the workers being as how she was commissioner of Sanitation.  Though I guess she was relatively obscure until she recently began to catch fire, so maybe it's that?

Yes, I think that's it. Up until a few of weeks ago, Garcia was polling somewhere in the single digits and the race looked to be between Yang and Adams with maybe some small chance for Stringer until the accusation. Most of the establishment preferred Adams to Yang so Adams got a whole lot of endorsements.

[Fez]

And Senate Republicans filibuster the 1/6 commission on a 54-35 vote. Even if the filibuster was broken though, the commission was doomed since McConnell/McCarthy could've just declined to name any Republican commission members.

There were actually 6 Republicans who voted in favor, 2 Democrats missed the vote along with a bunch of Republicans. But filibuster are affirmative to end, you need 3/5ths of all members to vote aye; a 59-1 vote still fails; so it didn't matter.

The 6 decent Republicans were: Cassidy, Collins, Romney, Sasse, Murkowski, and Portman. To my mind they are now the only ones who, assuming they're still in office in January 2025 (and we know Portman won't be), can be trusted to vote to certify a Democratic electoral win. I'm not saying none of the others can be trusted, most of them did vote do so last January, but I don't trust them anymore on it.