US politics: When DeSantis go marching in

[Wade1865]

But you prob knew that!

[Jace, Extat]

6 minutes ago, Wade1865 said:

Fire and Jace -- yes; but mechanized. Once the USG dominates near earth orbit and beyond (and it will), our competitors will have to dig deep.

DARPA took the lead on this, but not sure its status. Worst case, partially developed and shelved, until needed.

I always identified strongly with Sonar Taxlaw. Not unlike the machine communicator at the end of The Matrix 3, there are levels of survival I am prepared to accept. Sign me up for moleworld fascism I guess. 

Let's be honest, I could use the structure.

 

[Lord of Oop North]

20 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I was going to give this a shot tonight, but after watching the trailer I have to wonder if this is one of the worst movies ever made. 

It is absolutely awful. Perfect for Trump analogy.

[DMC]

So the text of the omnibus deal was finally released around 2am eastern.  It was supposed to be released Monday afternoon, but there was a final snag between Maryland and Virginia Democrats on the location of the new FBI headquarters.  Seriously.  Details:

Quote

The omnibus includes about $45 billion for Ukraine, exceeding President Joe Biden’s request for $37 billion, in addition to nearly $40 billion in disaster aid for storm and wildfire recovery. The bill is also loaded with unrelated policy provisions, including a bipartisan deal to revamp the outdated Electoral Count Act, legislation that would ban TikTok on government phones, an extension of pandemic telehealth flexibility, retirement savings incentives and much more.

Not included in the bill is billions of dollars in pandemic aid requested by Biden, an extension of the enhanced Child Tax Credit pushed for by Democrats, cannabis banking legislation and a popular tax provision that would have allowed businesses to immediately write off their research expenses, rather than over a period of five years.

[Zorral]

Why Petulant Oligarchs Rule Our World by Paul Krugman

"... social critics like John Kenneth Galbraith and speculative writers like William Gibson generally imagined corporatist dystopias that suppressed individuality — not societies dominated by thin-skinned egomaniac plutocrats acting out their insecurities in public view."

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/19/opinion/columnists/elon-musk-twitter-oligarchs.html

Quote

 

... we’re clearly living in the age of the petulant oligarch.

As The Times’s Kevin Roose recently pointed out, Musk still has many admirers in the technology world. They see him not as a whiny brat but as someone who understands how the world should be run — an ideology the writer John Ganz calls bossism, a belief that the big people shouldn’t have to answer to, or even face criticism from, the little people. And adherents of that ideology clearly have a lot of power, even if that power doesn’t yet extend to protecting the likes of Musk from getting booed in public.

But how is this possible?

It’s not really a surprise that technological progress and rising gross domestic product haven’t created a happy, equitable society; downbeat visions of the future have been staples of both serious analysis and popular culture for as long as I can remember. But both social critics like John Kenneth Galbraith and speculative writers like William Gibson generally imagined corporatist dystopias that suppressed individuality — not societies dominated by thin-skinned egomaniac plutocrats acting out their insecurities in public view.

So what happened? ....

 

 

[Zorral]

No surprise that investigations show Santos's campaign was funded with Russian money.  I guess.  However I only have Partner's word for this, which Partner saw as twits by a journalist whose name I don't recall.

[Mindwalker]

I'd blame the NY Dems for the lack of oppo research, but they were busy fighting progressives. Sometimes you have to make the hard choices.

Still, the number of lies he told is hilarious.

ETA: A little mashup of the Misinformer of the Year:

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

17 hours ago, Lord of Oop North said:

It is absolutely awful. Perfect for Trump analogy.

No, this is:

 

[Zorral]

2 hours ago, Mindwalker said:

I'd blame the NY Dems for the lack of oppo research, but they were busy fighting progressives. Sometimes you have to make the hard choices.

Some are saying that Dem party, via Certain Members, deliberately threw the elections to the reichlicans.  One cannot help but consider the when the only candidate the Dem would run for mayor of NYC was the corrupt finance-real estate bro, Eric Adams -- while his only opposition was -- Curtis Sliwa! As you see, I still can't get over this!

In the meantime --

Nassau County Republican leader says allegations about George Santos’ resume are ‘serious’

https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/20/politics/nassau-county-republicans-george-santos/index.html

What is it with reichlicans with a version of 'saint' in their names, being so corrupt and evil -- another example, see the title of this thread!  

[DMC]

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

Some are saying that Dem party, via Certain Members, deliberately threw the elections to the reichlicans.

Er, no.  Plenty can be said about their incompetence, complacency, and campaign malpractice.  But Sean Patrick Maloney and others didn't deliberately lose their House seats.  Neither did Jerry Nadler not Carolyn Maloney deliberately get redistricted into the same district.

[Paladin of Ice]

Also the guy who ran against Santos this time basically said "Yeah, none of this is a surprise to us, we tried to talk about it, but the press only wanted to talk about the so-called crime wave".

 

[DMC]

As expected, Democrats on the House Ways & Means Committee voted to release Trump's tax returns:

Quote

Democratic Rep. Dan Kildee of Michigan, a member of the Committee, said that the panel voted to release a report with supplemental analysis from the Joint Committee on Taxation.

The Ways and Means Committee will also release all information included in Chairman Richard Neal’s request, which will include Trump’s tax returns from 2015 to 2020. Those underlying documents, however, will need to undergo significant redactions and are not expected to come on Tuesday.

“It’ll be a summary of the returns but then also the returns themselves. That’s what we just voted on,” said Democratic Rep. Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania.

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

13 minutes ago, DMC said:

As expected, Democrats on the House Ways & Means Committee voted to release Trump's tax returns:

 

Go Murika! To the Snorky of politics!!!

 

[Zorral]

2 hours ago, DMC said:

Er, no.  Plenty can be said about their incompetence, complacency, and campaign malpractice.  But Sean Patrick Maloney and others didn't deliberately lose their House seats.  Neither did Jerry Nadler not Carolyn Maloney deliberately get redistricted into the same district.

No these people did not. They were candidates. Who were undermined by their own party.

But that nobody could get nominated even for mayor?  And for other offices? And that preposterous redistricting bs that the Dems pulled together? And as little attention as the Party paid to the reichlicans' going after Dem seats?  How little support they gave those candidates?  And so much else.  Of course never leave out the significance of senescence and incompetence of those Dems running the committees and at the top of the election orgs in NYC and other parts of NY.

[Martell Spy]

Zelenskyy expected to visit Washington on Wednesday
The trip would come days after Congress, in the early hours of Tuesday morning, unveiled a year-end spending bill including about $45 billion for Ukraine.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/12/20/zelenskyy-congress-wednesday-00074873

Quote

 

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine intends to make a surprise visit to Washington on Wednesday, the first time the leader has left his war-torn country since Russia invaded 10 months ago.

Zelenskyy was expected to address a joint session of Congress and at the White House as the Biden administration plans to announce the delivery of a Patriot missile battle system to help Ukraine with its air defenses, according to two people familiar with the plans but not authorized to publicly discuss them because of security concerns.

 

 

[DMC]

1 minute ago, Zorral said:

No these people did not. They were candidates. Who were undermined by their own party.

So who, specifically, is "the party" in this case?  State legislators?  The NY Democratic Committee?  Yeah, no, none of them were deliberately trying to give the election(s) to the GOP.  It's a ludicrous notion.

They royally fucked up redistricting, of course, but it obviously wasn't intentional.  And more importantly, that's not really why they lost -- even taking the redistricting fuck up into account, they just simply underperformed:

 

 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

On 12/19/2022 at 2:36 AM, A True Kaniggit said:

A man from Florida walks into a bar.

Ouch. 
 

  Reveal hidden contents

Two men from Florida walk into a bar. 
 

You’d think the second man would’ve seen the bar. 

 

I see, I see. So this is the kinda jokes you want? Fine, I can oblige.

Three sharks meet in the ocean. The first one says. I ate a a guy once, who was so drunk, I was swimming in circles for a days. Second one says: I once ate a stoner, who was so high, I was floating by for two days. Third shark: I once ate a Floridian. Guy was such an airhead, I couldn't dive for three days. (165 (blame Ty, who wouldn't recognize #165)).

Why do Floridians always keep a bottle of air with them? You can't keep everything in your head, can you? (164)

Why don't Floridians eat bananas? They don't eat anything smarter than themselves.(163)

What do you call a Floridian with a high school diploma? Genius. What do you call a Floridian with college degree? Fiction. (162)

A guy from Kentucky once had a crush on a girl from Alabama, but she wouldn't date anybody who was not from Alabama, too. So he asked a befriended MD what to do about it. Ah, that's no problem, you can go to a hospital, they remove half your brains and you are good to go. He was unsure what to do, but alas the things you do for love. He wakes up the day after surgery with the Doctors looking kinda worriedl They tell him, there's been a terrible mistake, and they had accidently removed three quarters instead of half his brains. He said: Ah, no prob. Go Gators! (161)

In a race between Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny, a Floridian with a Highschool degree and a Floridian without one, who would win? The Floridian without the degree, because he is the only one who is real. (160).

Why is date night in Florida on a Tuesday? That's when the strip clubs are closed (159).

A Floridian meets a good fairy who grants him three wishes. "Oh, I#d like a pack of cigarettes that never runs empty." She grants his wish. And he says: "Oh great, I'd like two more of those." (158)

One Floridian talks to his buddy: "I Bought myself a puzzle yesterday?" "And, did you finish it?" Sure, took me three hours?" "Wow, how many pieces?" "Twenty." "What?!? Three hours for twenty pieces?!" "Yeah, the box said six to eight years." (157)

A Florida guy stops at a traffic light with a parrot on the passenger seat. The guy in the next car opens his window and asks. "Cool he can he speak?" The parrot answers: "I dunno." (156)

 

 

 

 

[LongRider]

The House Ways and Means Committee put out a report on Trumps taxes,

https://waysandmeans.house.gov/sites/democrats.waysandmeans.house.gov/files/documents/jctreport.pdf

[Martell Spy]

Why Marc Elias Wants to ‘Babysit’ the Republican Party
After Trump attempted to use the courts to change the results of the 2020 election, many Republicans borrowed a page from that playbook. Now Democrats — with the aid of one powerful D.C. law firm — are mounting a counteroffensive.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/12/21/democrats-elias-elections-00073595

Quote

 

And it’s clear, from interviews with nine of the firm’s 15 top partners, that Elias’ attorneys see their mission as making a last stand for democracy — a task that in their view requires giving election denialism (and Republicans) no quarter in court.

“I don’t want to leave the Republican Party unattended,” Elias tells me. “I want to babysit them in every case they file.”

 

 

[Zorral]

14 hours ago, DMC said:

So who, specifically, is "the party" in this case?  State legislators?  The NY Democratic Committee?  Yeah, no, none of them were deliberately trying to give the election(s) to the GOP.  It's a ludicrous notion.

They royally fucked up redistricting, of course, but it obviously wasn't intentional.  And more importantly, that's not really why they lost -- even taking the redistricting fuck up into account, they just simply underperformed:

 

 

We had at least two primaries and elections, including the ranked voting primary -- which nobody understood, and the Dems did a dreadful to no job at all about explaining it. Right there is a whole lot they are responsible for -- and I do mean the Party organization and committee(s). Along with the redistricting -- mess after mess. The Dems did both.  The Dems candidates with very few exceptions, did no personal campaigning at all -- starting with Hochul.  Those that did got no coverage from anyone.  As the Dem opponent to Santos keeps telling us, he and his organization hit Santos as a bllstter-liar over and over, but nobody bothered to cover it, including the NYT, which NOW tells the world, yay NYT!

The Dem Party here is so disorganized they couldn't even get mail-in ballots working in 2020.  Most of them sitting on the New York DNC are really old, and they have given for quite a while the impression they haven't inclination to put in any effort toward making elections work here.

You know, I was there, I was paying attention, and have a really good idea what was and was not going on.