DL Open Thread Wednesday June 21 2023
I may add to this later but for now I just want to say…
1) Fuck Hunter Biden. That said – for Republicans everything is always about presidential electoral politics and nothing is ever about policy.
Since they are widely hated for their policies (and because they are awful), they have to make their opponent MORE awful in the eyes of low info voters.
That was easy with Hillary Clinton. It was harder to do with Biden, but the project NEVER stops. It is relentless and bottomless.
2) “Sweetheart deal”. That’s what the DOJ kept trying to give to Trump. When Merrick Garland’s made the decision to not investigate Trump for trying to overthrow the government because Republicans might get mad – that was a pretty fucking sweet deal.
A Washington Post investigation found that more than a year would pass before prosecutors and FBI agents jointly embarked on a formal probe of actions directed from the White House to try to steal the election. Even then, the FBI stopped short of identifying the former president as a focus of that investigation.
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Will I serve as a juror in my husband’s impeachment trial? Maybe I will.
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas state Sen. Angela Paxton said Monday she will “carry out my duties” ahead of the historic impeachment trial of her husband, Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, but did not outright say whether or not she will recuse herself on a vote to remove him from office.
Breaking weeks of public silence since her husband was impeached in May, Angela Paxton did not address the accusations in a statement released by her office.
Whether Paxton will cast a vote with her husband’s job on the line has raised ethical questions ahead of the looming trial in the Senate, which is set to begin no later than August. State law compels all senators to attend, but is silent on whether she must participate.
“As a member of the Senate, I hold these obligations sacred and I will carry out my duties, not because it is easy, but because the Constitution demands it and because my constituents deserve it,” Paxton said.
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The Russian Army Gave Itself Cholera
The Russian army has been hit by a cholera outbreak, days after the destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam in southern Ukraine caused catastrophic flooding, a military partisan movement has said.
Atesh, a military movement of Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars, which has 41,000 subscribers on Telegram, cited “informants” from military hospitals of the Kherson region and Crimea as saying that many Russian soldiers are being admitted daily with suspected cases of cholera, a potentially deadly bacterial disease. Several Russian troops have died, the group said.
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In the ultimate quintessence of centrist dipshitery, 30 percent of Democrats (the hardcore dipshits) would support a pardon of Trump in the interest of “national unity,”
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4055163-most-americans-support-trump-pardons-if-hes-convicted/
Fucking idiots.
https://docquery.fec.gov/cgi-bin/forms/S4DE00060/1708603
Well that’s something.
Can someone please give me examples of what she has accomplished that goes beyond a baseline of adequacy?
Adequate is probably the best we can hope for. If she were overtly pleasing to progressives, the cops and corporations would run her off the ballot.
Here the thing about Hunter Biden – for Republicans everything is about presidential electoral politics and nothing is about policy.
Since they are widely hatred for their policies (and because they are awful), they have to make their opponent MORE awful in the eyes of low info voters.
That was easy with Hillary Clinton. It was harder to do with Biden, but the project NEVER stops. It is relentless and bottomless.
Like button needed.
Yusef Salaam, who was wrongfully charged and served seven years in prison as one of the Central Park Five, is running for New York City Council.
The point of a campaign like his isn’t to get elected as much as to spread his message.
Remember, this is a guy who Donald Trump wanted executed even after DNA proved him and the other four innocent.
LBR’s official announcement and first campaign ad: https://youtu.be/irgGiG9JXhM
So basically we should elect her because her husband died.
Which husband? I remember she had been married to former ‘Nova hoopster Alex Bradley.
OK, they divorced in 2003.
Al said it best: ‘A placeholder who never gets replaced.’
Seriously, though. This is all about her personal journey with very little about a policy agenda beyond protecting abortion rights. And when a person doesn’t state her agenda, it indicates either that she doesn’t have one, making her malleable, or she has one that she doesn’t want to broadcast. I get negative vibes either way.
It’s more than I ever did. I don’t even have a husband.
Per the AP,
“The only measure sponsored by Blunt Rochester (as a member of congress) to become law is a resolution naming a Wilmington post office in honor of Mary Ann Shadd Cary, a 19th-century anti-slavery activist and publisher.”
The old “keep your head down and you’ll be moved up” school of politics.
What gets me about every LBR story is the infinite political void, the Vantablack non-entity, the not worthy of a wisp of a mention that is the DEGOP right now.
That should be a story. Odd that it isn’t.
Also left unexplored: Sky blue, water wet.
Not odd when you remember how successful Republicans have been at getting Democrats to implement the Republican agenda. Democrats have repealed the estate tax, squashed every attempt at an upper income tax increase, and resegregated schools, for starters.
She’s not a legislator, she’s her own brand.
Where’s Alby? just saw the big explosion in Paris’ 5th arrondissement
I’m still in the US. The explosion was close to the Pantheon, across the river from my place.
LBR just interviewed by Lawrence O’Donnell on msnbc. You can catch it again at 1:00 a.m. (Thursday) or on the msnbc website tomorrow.
She wants to keep doing what she’s been doing, only more so.
https://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/rep-lisa-blunt-rochester-announces-run-for-u-s-senate-in-delaware-183973445522
Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-DE) joins MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell to explain how her time as an intern for Sen. Carper launched her political career and how working in the House has allowed her to have her “finger on the pulse” of issues like reproductive freedom and Supreme Court reforms that will help her constituents if elected to Senate.
I am starting to warm up to LBR’s anodyne approach. She is a reliable Democratic vote. I never see her on cable TV spouting Republican talking points, and never hear about her mucking up committee votes. Progressive leaders need followers too. If that’s how she wants to play it, that’s fine with me.
I think this is a fair point. We really only hear from the same 20 Democratic senators over and over in the media, and one of them is not Carper for sure.
Do you ever see these senators on TV?
Tina Smith
Jacky Rosen
Ben Ray Luján
Martin Heinrich
Catherine Cortez Masto
Alex Padilla
Jack Reed
Gary Peters
Dianne Feinstein (lol)