US Politics: Killin' Ya Hard With Hate

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Will Trump appearing at an event at a non-union parts plant sponsored by “Right to Work.org” really boost his Numbers with Union members?

Idk, has he threatened to kill union leaders yet?

[Durckad]

12 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

What a hilarious shitshow. I wish I had turned in sooner. 

Aw fuck, I skipped the debate as I assumed it would be a largely dull "I expected that" sort of affair ie bringing no new information or perspective on these clowns to the table. Guess I may have to watch a stream of it somewhere if it was actually worth the time to do so. Great...

[A Horse Named Stranger]

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Will Trump appearing at an event at a non-union parts plant sponsored by “Right to Work.org” really boost his Numbers with Union members?

Joking aside, there's sorta an angle involved, that could bring those workers into play. Climate change. Or rather switch from fossils to be precise.

Democrats and Biden are at least making sounds about switching from fossils to electric energy. That involves cars with combustion engines. If you produce electric cars instead of the combustion engines, you will need less human workers. Just the way it is. An electric engine is simpler technically and requires less manpower to build. So that puts job security of those folks working in the car industry very much on the table, and we're talking about 20%++ of those jobs here if I am not mistaken. So no small numbers.

 

[Martell Spy]

California’s fast-food workers win fight for $20 hourly pay and industry council
A new legislation will create a panel that will set wages and other standards for the industry

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/sep/28/california-fast-food-workers-minimum-wages-victory

Quote

 

In the face of recent intense pressures on fast-food workers, employees in the sector in California are about to get a boost with the creation of a body that will set wages and other standards for the industry.

The move is a hard-fought win for the labor movement in the state and is expected to be signed into law – called the Fast Food Accountability and Standards Recovery Act – by Gavin Newsom, the California governor, later on Thursday.

 

 

[Zorral]

Jasmine Crockett Woooooooooooooooooooo!  Texas women are fierce!  "These are our national secrets and the look like they're in the shitter!"

This young woman is going far!  AOC was no slouch either. She got Turley to admit he has found witness evidence for impeachment.

 

Edited September 28, 2023 by Zorral

[JGP]

‘Of course y’all object but we gonna talk about it… ‘

lol

[Zorral]

Someone Elsewhere observed:

So to be clear, this week:

The leading Republican candidate’s business was found to be based on fraud.
Republicans can’t pass any budget bills from their caucus.
The kiddie table Republican presidential candidate debate was a joke.
Republicans started an impeachment inquiry where their first witness said it was baseless.
Republicans entered fraudulent evidence in their impeachment inquiry.
The Speaker of the House told another member of his caucus to “Get Fucked”.

Somehow this sideshow of buffoonery is one of two major political parties in the US.

Someone Else responded:

And they won't lose a single vote over any of this. Not one.
 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

45 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Jasmine Crockett Woooooooooooooooooooo!  Texas women are fierce!  "These are our national secrets and the look like they're in the shitter!"

This young woman is going far!  AOC was no slouch either. She got Turley to admit he has found witness evidence for impeachment.

 

Couple of sorceresses slinging level 100 fireballs. I caught some other clips too and my god, Republicans really stepped in it. This was a disaster.

The countdown clocks were a nice touch. 

[Zorral]

Republicans panic as Democrats call for Giuliani to be subpoenaed: 'Where is Rudy?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/republicans-panic-as-democrats-call-for-giuliani-to-be-subpoenaedwhere-is-rudy/ar-AA1hpowh?

Quote

 

Republicans panicked Thursday as a line of questioning at the impeachment inquiry  Thursday as a line of questioning at the impeachment inquiry into  President Joe Biden turned to Rudy Giuliani's involvement in searching for information in Ukraine – and Rep. Kweisi Mfume (D-MD) motioned to subpoena the former president's ex-lawyer.

Republicans immediately called for his motion to be tabled, but too many chairs in the room were empty for them to secure that vote. Chairman Rep. James Comer (R-KY) called for a "voice vote," but Democrats asked for the names to be recorded. Comer tried to railroad the requests, but it wasn't working

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) stood up and paced about the back row, nervously licking his lips and giving orders to people who hurried from the room.

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-NC) came in and asked what they were voting on. Comer told her it was about subpoenaing Giuliani.

"Well, he doesn’t have a lot to do with this," Mace said before voting to table the subpoena.

After Republicans were able to bring back their members, they passed the motion to table Giuliani's subpoena.

Mfume wasn't happy.

"I do reclaim my time and I asked my question where in the world is Rudy Giuliani?" he shouted. "And that is how we got here, ladies and gentlemen. This committee is afraid to bring him before us and put him on the record. Shame. The question was raised, what does this have to do with it? It has everything to do with it. And [witness University of North Carolina law] Professor [Michael Gerhardt], in your testimony you said, in every impeachment inquiry beforehand, the House has identified some credible evidence of wrongdoing committed by the targeted president, is that correct?"

"Yes, sir," said Gerhardt.

"Would you say House Republicans have made an unprecedented overreach of congressional power?" Mfume asked.

"It strikes me that it is," the GOP witness said.

See the video of the moment below or in the link here.

 

 

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

https://x.com/CalltoActivism/status/1707169626671514009?s=2

 

[horangi]

7 hours ago, Zorral said:

Jasmine Crockett Woooooooooooooooooooo!  Texas women are fierce!  "These are our national secrets and the look like they're in the shitter!"

This young woman is going far!  AOC was no slouch either. She got Turley to admit he has found witness evidence for impeachment.

 

Holy hell, I hope that lady is being marked down in some ledgers for future office.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Senator Feinstein has passed away. 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Ok, this sad and unworthy show has reached it's conclusion.

Didn't Newsom say something about appointing a black woman to the senate, if another vacancy occured, after Harris was not replaced with a woman of colour?

[Varysblackfyre321]

1 minute ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Ok, this sad and unworthy show has reached it's conclusion.

Didn't Newsom say something about appointing a black woman to the senate, if another vacancy occured, after Harris was not replaced with a woman of colour?

I’m just curious on how this will affect the senate judiciary  

[Zorral]

Who elects these clowns, exactly? As it turns out, almost none of us.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/09/29/house-shutdown-primaries-voters/

Quote

 

.... There are a couple of familiar forces that put the “chaos caucus” in charge: the Republicans’ razor-thin majority; the fact that Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is beholden to the tiny minority for the gavel that it took 15 ballots for him to claim — and thus to the extremism that has come to define the Republican Party in the Trump era.

So it is appropriate to ask: To whom are these agents of havoc actually accountable?

A surprisingly small sliver of voters, it turns out.

These days, only 82 of the 435 House districts across the country are competitive enough that both parties start out with a decent shot at winning, according to the Cook Political Report’s David Wasserman.

That is only half the number of swing districts that existed in 1999, and it has effectively eliminated much of the incentive that the two parties once had to find middle ground on contentious issues. Members of Congress know that playing to instincts and impulses of their populist bases are their surest tickets to reelection, and that they will have little protection if they don’t.

You can blame aggressive gerrymandering, which plays a big role. But Wasserman and others say the greater driver of this realignment is a self-sorting of the electorate into like-minded communities, where Democratic voters are concentrated in cities that have turned deeper blue while Republicans are spread out across exurbs and rural areas that have become more reliably red.

Whatever the reason, the reality is that the vast majority of congressional elections are decided in the primaries. And that, as it turns out, puts outsize power in the hands of a tiny minority of highly engaged and intense partisans who bother to show up and vote in those often overlooked contests.

In midterm elections, fewer than 1 in 5 eligible voters cast their ballots in party primaries, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center. The rest of the country sits home, and has to live with the consequences. And that means a tiny — and utterly unrepresentative — slice of Americans is deciding who gets a seat in the U.S. House.

The dysfunction that this creates has been thrown into stark relief in a new study by Unite America, a nonpartisan election reform advocacy organization. It has taken a look at eight Republican House members who have been among the most determined obstructionists: Andy Biggs (Ariz.); Elijah Crane (Ariz.); Lauren Boebert (Colo.); Matt Gaetz (Fla.); Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.); Matthew M. Rosendale (Mont.); Dan Bishop (N.C.) and Bob Good (Va.). (Good is not included in the chart above; he was chosen in 2022 in a party convention, where he received a mere 1,488 votes, compared with his opponent’s 271.)

All breezed through the November election last year, with the exception of Boebert, who won by only 546 votes in a surprisingly strong challenge by Democrat Adam Frisch, who is running against her again in 2024.

What Unite America found is how small a number of people voted in the GOP primaries, where the real choice to send these people to Washington was made. The average, according to its calculations, was only 68,000 voters, or 12 percent of the number who were eligible. We don’t have a House that represents voters because most voters don’t participate.

There are ways to fix this. One is to open up the primaries so that anyone, or at a minimum people who register with no party affiliation, can vote in them. The current system, in which 30 states hold primaries in which only registered party members can vote, effectively disenfranchises 140 million voters in the elections that count, according to Unite America.

Four states have gone further. Alaska, California, Louisiana and Washington have either eliminated primaries in federal elections or replaced them with nonpartisan ones, in which the top finishers make it to the November ballot.

What difference can it make? It is probably not a coincidence that of the handful of Republicans who voted to impeach President Donald Trump after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, the only two who managed to be reelected were Dan Newhouse (Wash.) and David G. Valadao (Calif.) — both from states where their fates were not in the hands of the extremists and election deniers who dominated last year’s Republican primaries.

But tinkering with the system can go only so far, so long as voters themselves are too apathetic to recognize how politics actually works in a polarized country and to take their own responsibilities seriously. It starts with understanding that, increasingly, the elections that matter don’t take place in November.

 

 

[Ormond]

According to the Associated Press, Dianne Feinstein has died.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein dies at age 90 (omaha.com)

So now the ball is in Gavin Newsom's court, so to speak. 

[Bironic]

13 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Who elects these clowns, exactly? As it turns out, almost none of us.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/09/29/house-shutdown-primaries-voters/

 

This is another article that convinces me even more that the US (and to an extent all the countries that use them same election system) need an electoral reform at the very least for the House of Representatives. Be it open/nonpartisan primaries, instant runoff voting, runoff elections, proportional representation. At this point everything is better than what is used now.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

All the electoral reform in the world won't fix the root problem: The American public. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

9 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

All the electoral reform in the world won't fix the root problem: The American public. 

The American people appear to enjoy watching train wrecks.  That is what the Republican Party banks upon.

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

16 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

The American people appear to enjoy watching train wrecks.  That is what the Republican Party banks upon.

 

That may play a role, but it's not the underlying problem. A majority of Americans don't know basic stuff about the government, politics and US history. It's fair to say a super majority are ill-equipped to understand even the marginally complex issues. There's no way to immediately correct this and in many places these problems will only get worse over the coming years.  The latter is made worse due to the Senate and the courts. I want to be optimistic, but as I've said before gaming out the next decade or two mostly leads to bad scenarios.