DL Open Thread Wednesday September 15th 2021
How uninterested is the GOP in actually governing? They really could care less about the actual work of government. By all outward appearances, they are only interested in fucking shit up and being dicks. It is really astonishing to think about. I mean I’m thinking about it in terms of this California recall, but so many stories can just be summed up with a headline like:
“Republicans Determined to Fuck Shit Up”
Prove me wrong. I mean, Ron DeSantis is going to run for the GOP’s Presidential nomination by filling the airwaves with ads in Iowa touting the fact that he was the dick who fucked shit up like mad in Florida.
Lots of stuff in the new Woodward book. The part that grabbed me is the fact that Pence was no hero. Dan Quayle saved American Democracy. Dan… Fucking… Quayle.
Although Dan Quayle wasn’t taken seriously when he served as George H.W. Bush’s vice president, he may have saved American democracy from Donald Trump’s election fraud.
According to “Peril,” an upcoming book by Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, Trump spent his final days in office pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to disrupt the official election certification process.
Trump reportedly told Pence, “I don’t want to be your friend anymore if you don’t do this.”
Pence was apparently so torn between his loyalty to the president and his sworn oath to defend the Constitution that he sought advice from Quayle.
Pence reportedly said that’s what he repeatedly told Trump, adding, “but he really thinks he can. And there are other guys in there saying I’ve got this power.”
According to the book, Pence then repeated some of his boss’s false election fraud claims in places like Arizona.
Quayle shut him down.
Where are all the Catholics when you need them?
Coronavirus is taking a deadly toll on pregnant people and fetuses in Mississippi. Officials announced on Wednesday that the rate of stillbirths in the state has doubled since the pandemic began last year.
They really just listen to each other’s nonsense on Fox News all day.
Republicans have been spreading a rumor that President Biden ability to speak is controlled by someone with a wireless push button.
Today, Senator James Risch (R-Idaho) asked Secretary of State Antony Blinken to tell him the name of the person in the White House who “has the authority to press the button and to cut off the president’s speaking ability.”
Ron DeathSentence won’t run. It’ll be trmp alone in the primary….maybe a token “not trump” like Kinzinger or Kasich for him to eat.
These magaty governors are auditioning for veep.
So now that Newsom easily beat the recall, is anyone going to mop up all the pixels that were spilled in hang-wringing articles about how the Democrats fucked it up?
Unless said hand-wringing was crucial for mobilizing the turnout. That’s the thing about preventative measures. If they work, people will think they weren’t necessary.
I worked on Y2K projects. It took a hell of a lot of work to make Y2K a non-event.
Really? The entire nation had to be subjected to those anxiety-fests, rather than just Californians? I don’t think so.
It’s clickbait, nothing more, for people who like to work themselves up. If Californians didn’t turn out to vote, there was nothing you or I could have done about it.
And before you say “calls and letters,” have any of those things ever motivated you to vote? I doubt it, and I doubt it motivates anyone else, either. That activity amounts to anxiety reduction for participants, not meaningful activism.
Of all the billions of gallons of ink spilled over Roe v. Wade, did a single, solitary one of them predict the midnight OK of the Texas law? Not that I ever saw, and I read a million predictions about how that would go down.
The past is unchangeable, the future is unknowable.
Yeah. so therefore we should do nothing to try and affect the outcome. Great advice.
I think the Texas law was unsurprising. We knew the magats would try as soon as RBG died, just not which form it would take. If you dont like “the anxiety fest” use your privilege and ignore it.
And you use yours to freak out over stuff you can’t fix. Don’t act superior.
Also, you missed the point. We knew they’d try — no shit, Sherlock. So why freak out about what form it would take, which they all did, and they all were wrong.
I never know if you purposely miss the point or you’re just fucking stupid.
I think its more that you’re just bad at coming off as anything other than a Bill Maher type a lot of the time and I don’t really respect that sort of detached white-man-ishness. <3.
I feel like calling in sick and watching Norm Macdonald clips all day.
You mean, like this one?:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJN9mBRX3uo
The Scrabble story is one of my faves.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9czoezm2vqw
i love that norm macdonald played to an audience of 1, himself. and if he thought it was funny that was good enough. good thing he was a pretty good judge of funny
Under reported: Recall based on tapping into anti-vax/anti-mask energy fails miserably. Sure it is Blue California, but if there is a silent majority – it is the majority of people who crave decency and sanity over unhinged MAGA fanaticism.
35% of the population in California still voted for it. thats still a hell of a lot of morons
No, so far about 3.3 million people voted to replace him. California’s population is 58 million. Even among registered voters it’s not 35%, because turnout looks like it will be a bit over 50%.
Gaslighting is going down in America and not to bright people are buying into it. The Republicans Party wants to rule by any means. They are a sick bunch of bastards that we have to fight tooth and nail NO EXCEPTIONS. That’s the size of it.
RIP Turd Ferguson.
Here’s how Minnesota’s state Democratic Party reacted to malfeasance by a misbehaving state rep: They booted him from the caucus.
https://www.rawstory.com/minnesota-house-democrats-boot/?cx_testId=4&cx_testVariant=cx_undefined&cx_artPos=4#cxrecs_s