US politics: When DeSantis go marching in

[Wilbur]

9 hours ago, Week said:

I like to pile on Florida as much as anyone else but we need to remember that there are good people (and DMC) there too:

/Salute

That is still only about 20% more cringey than the parade of out-of-state developers and their shills and shysters who parade up to the rostrum in the Kiva of the Scottsdale City Hall to pimp their proposals to build apartment blocks with multiple Olympic-sized swimming pools in The West's Most Western Town during a decades-long drought.

[A Horse Named Stranger]

12 hours ago, Week said:

I like to pile on Florida as much as anyone

Really now?

[Larry of the Lawn]

Let's argue about something dumb for the holidays-- Fight me!!!!!!

[A Horse Named Stranger]

You mean like Florida? (155)

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Let’s argue about how stupid the “pro-wrestlization” of US Politics really is. 

[Zorral]

It's sorta fun seeing every journo, pundit, 'news' org. combing as fast as they can through the 895 Committee Report, lookin for the nugget(s) out of which they can write something that others are not writing about! 

Of course, I too am rather browsing through the Report, so I shouldn't laff. 

[DMC]

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Let’s argue about how stupid the “pro-wrestlization” of US Politics really is. 

Lincoln was a wrestler.  You obviously hate America.

[Zorral]

Adam Schiff: My Fellow Members of the Jan. 6 Committee and I Don’t Want You to Forget About ‘the Republican Congressmen’

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/22/opinion/adam-schiff-jan-6-committee-report-referrals.html
 

Quote

 

... one line of effort to overturn the election is given scant attention, and that involved the willingness of so many members of Congress to vote to overturn it. Even after Capitol Police and Metropolitan Police put down the insurrection at great cost to themselves, the majority of Republicans in the House picked up right where they left off, still voting to overturn the results in important states.

At one of our Jan. 6 committee hearings, the committee vice chair Liz Cheney, a Republican, called out her colleagues in Congress for their duplicity in the most searing terms: “There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.”

With our work on the committee largely concluded, it will now fall to the Justice Department to ensure a form of accountability that Congress is not empowered to provide, and to vindicate the rule of law in a manner beyond our reach: through prosecution. Multiple laws were violated in the course of a broad attempt to overturn the election, and not just by the foot soldiers who broke into the Capitol building that day and brutally assaulted police officers, but also by those who incited them, encouraged them and, when it was all over, gave them aid and comfort. Bringing a former president to justice who even now calls for the “termination” of our Constitution is a perilous endeavor. Not doing so is far more dangerous.

There is a growing disdain for the law and for our country’s institutions, and a frightening acceptance of the use of violence to resolve political disputes. Mr. Trump’s big lie has been one of the most powerful instigators of political violence, since it persuaded millions of people that the election they lost must have been rigged or fraudulent. If people can be convinced of that, what is left but violence to decide who should govern? The attack on the Capitol was an all too foreseeable consequence of Mr. Trump’s relentless effort to alienate the people from their government and from the most important foundation of governance: their right to vote. ....

 

 

[Centrist Simon Steele]

So, when the House voted against the railworker strike last month, AOC and the Squad got shit on for voting against the workers' ability to strike. Ryan Grim (a great reporter for the Intercept) was the only reporter who explained what happened--that the rail worker union wanted the Squad to vote as they did in the House because the union wanted to fight in the battle in the Senate. Literally every other outlet seems to have missed this: 

Does anyone else know anything on this? Were the media outlets so excited to shit on AOC (this would be "liberal" and "centrist" outlets as much as Fox) that they misunderstood what was happening?

Edited December 23, 2022 by Centrist Simon Steele

[DMC]

10 minutes ago, Centrist Simon Steele said:

Does anyone else know anything on this? Were the media outlets so excited to shit on AOC (this would be "liberal" and "centrist" outlets as much as Fox) that they misunderstood what was happening?

I mean, yes, House progressives demanding - and getting - a vote on the sick days was certainly part of the coverage.  See here:

Quote

The resolution, however, was not immediately embraced by all Democrats. Some liberal lawmakers were initially cool to approving the agreement because of the lack of sick leave benefits. Union leaders had asked for 15 days of paid sick leave, but the tentative agreement only allocated one additional personal day, which sparked displeasure from union workers and some Democrats.

Pelosi’s decision to hold a vote on a separate bill that would give workers seven days of paid sick leave per year, however, assuaged concerns.

Should be noted one member of the squad - Tlaib - was one of the eight Dems that voted against the original measure.  Also, Sanders too demanded a vote in the Senate on the seven sick days.  Which he got and it failed due to Republican opposition:

 

[Larry of the Lawn]

The 7 days leave was doomed to fail by separating it.  If Dems wanted a fight in the Senate they shouldn't have separated it. 

Edited December 23, 2022 by Larry of the Lake

[Martell Spy]

1 minute ago, Larry of the Lake said:

The 7 days leave was doomed to fail by separating it.  If Dems wanted a fight in the Senate they shouldn't have separated it. 

I think Sanders knew it would fail either way. And he wanted to draw attention to the issues. I read something about him talking about it.

[DMC]

6 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

I think Sanders knew it would fail either way. And he wanted to draw attention to the issues. I read something about him talking about it.

Yes.  This is why he demanded a vote on it rather than demanding it be in the bill.

[Zorral]

Yugely Sad, Sad, Sad!

.... He is sensitive about smallness. His entire life, he has rejected smallness. Tall buildings, long ties, big head, big mouth, big swings, big league. “When he was in New York in 2016, the whole world was coming to him. Now we’ve got the Villages, and it shows,” the adviser said, referring to the famous Central Florida retirement community. ....

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/donald-trump-running-for-president-2024.html

Quote

 

.... He had wanted to be in the movie business. It’s important to never forget this about him. He watches Sunset Boulevard, “one of the greatest of all time,” again and again and again. A silent-picture star sidelined by the talkies, driven to madness, in denial over her faded celebrity. When he was a businessman, he showed it to guests aboard his 727. When he was president, he held screenings of it for White House staff at Camp David.

He once showed it to his press secretary Stephanie Grisham, who later described how “the president, who could never sit still for anything without talking on the phone, sending a tweet, or flipping through TV channels, sat enthralled.” And he once showed it to Tim O’Brien, the biographer, who wrote that when Norma Desmond cried, “Those idiot producers. Those imbeciles! Haven’t they got any eyes? Have they forgotten what a star looks like? I’ll show them. I’ll be up there again, so help me!,” Trump leaned over O’Brien’s shoulder and whispered, “Is this an incredible scene or what? Just incredible.”

 

A washed-up star locked away in a mansion from the 1920s, afraid of the world outside, afraid it will remind him that time has passed … Well, he does not like the way it sounds for Trump. He still talks that way, in the third person. “This was the same thing in 2016. They said first, ‘Oh, Trump is just doing it for fun,’ and then they learned that wasn’t true,” he told me. “And then they said, ‘Well, he won’t win.’ And they learned that wasn’t true.” ....

[Larry of the Lawn]

34 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

I think Sanders knew it would fail either way. And he wanted to draw attention to the issues. I read something about him talking about it.

The thing is that if it was in the bill and failed, the union could have struck.  Instead they passed the bill without it, knowing the separate vote would fail.  

[DMC]

7 minutes ago, Zorral said:

A washed-up star locked away in a mansion from the 1920s, afraid of the world outside, afraid it will remind him that time has passed …

I've always found his love for Sunset Boulevard hilarious - just imagining him as Norma Desmond.  I wish he was at Mar-a-Lago when the feebs showed up so he coulda been like "All right, Mr. Demille, I'm ready for my close-up."

 

[Mindwalker]

16 hours ago, Zorral said:

More Dem sandbagging/idiocy in NY.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/12/kathy-hochul-hector-lasalle-new-york-judicial-nomination.html

 

Sounds absolutely not corrupt at all.

[James Arryn]

On 12/22/2022 at 1:16 PM, DMC said:

I can't wait til Ty has a kid so he can sit them down and tell them, "in the interest of trust I need to be honest with you - you were a mistake."

My parents legit told me I was a mistake. One that ~ ruined their lives, and more or less explained the 2.5 years of abuse and argument that made up their marriage before the police/roadblocks/baby smuggling/etc. phase that comprised their custody battle. 
 

silver lining: I was given a very high sense of my own personal value at a very young age. 

Edited December 23, 2022 by James Arryn

[Zorral]

In further regard to that New York Magazine piece on tRomp as Sunset Blvd. linked to above, wrong question by the writer:

Quote

.... Once, the question was, How could this be? He was the boy who cried campaign, a bullshit artist, a camp act. And when he landed in Iowa, when he circled cornfields in his TRUMP chopper, when he told Evangelicals his favorite Bible verse was “2 Corinthians,” the question became, Will this work? We couldn’t look away then. Now we can’t bear — or can’t be bothered — to look. The people who remain at his side, well, let’s just say Trump 2024 is not sending its best. And that’s by the standards of 2020. And 2016. ....

The question should be "Why in hell did I get so grifted by this loser then, and only now notice he wears no clothes?"    He was the same then as he is now. You even say so yourself.  What is wrong with you jerkwaddies?

[Martell Spy]

59 minutes ago, Larry of the Lake said:

The thing is that if it was in the bill and failed, the union could have struck.  Instead they passed the bill without it, knowing the separate vote would fail.  

Well, I found a socialist website of some sort that attacks Sanders on this. And Warren as well. I don't agree with it though. True, Sanders could have delayed the vote, any Senator can. We've all seen Paul do this to be a dick. I don't think that prevents things from passing though. 

It also matters if you trust Sanders and Warren or not. I tend to trust them quite a bit, Warren in particular.

Here's the attack column though, which again I do not agree with...

Bernie Sanders, DSA play crucial role in passing anti-strike law against railroaders

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/12/02/per1-d02.html

Quote

 

Sanders’ defeated proposal in the Senate was framed as an amendment to the anti-strike bill, whereas the House proposal to add sick days was voted on separately. This means that, because both houses passed identical legislation with respect to the question of imposing the contract itself, the bill went immediately to Biden’s desk without delay. Any delay would have been completely unacceptable to the ruling class, which was demanding the contract be imposed immediately, well before the December 9 strike deadline.

The most significant element of the voting in the Senate was the expedited procedure, worked out in negotiations involving both parties and the White House, which required the unanimous consent of all 100 senators. If either Bernie Sanders, the “progressive” Elizabeth Warren or anyone else had objected to this, the vote would have been delayed.

In other words, Sanders’ support was decisive, under conditions in which the outcome of voting was known in advance. Not only that, he was a principal architect of the parliamentary maneuvering through which it was passed.