American Politics IV: 1400 Reasons Why(A Stimulus Serial)

[Dresderstan]

Careful with that one, lest the Musk stans hear you...

I will never understand how Musk got so many fans.

Reddit... that's all I got.

[Shu Chengdu]

So apparently, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) failed to report nearly $3 million in campaign raising and spending over the last two years, and now the FEC wants to know why

[A-Series-Of-Tubes]

So apparently, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) failed to report nearly $3 million in campaign raising and spending over the last two years, and now the FEC wants to know why

"Don't ask me, I'm not a lawyer ... oh wait, I am a lawyer! You'll have to ask my accountant in the Caymans, I'll give you her email address ..."

[Bear Stearns]

Uh, if they're unemployed they have no income

Previously medium/high-income, currently on little or no income (bear in mind assets they could sell) but trying to keep their residence in the hope of getting their old job back.

It makes sense for Democrats to help those people, firstly because not all Democrats are poor, but more because at this time they are income-poor.

Whether the $100 raise survives the Senate I'm not sure. It might be one of those things Manchin cares about, West Virginia having high unemployment at the best of times.

If the ongoing political realignment continues, this may not be the case

Neocons and Never Trump Republicans will join the Democrats. Romney has more in common with Biden than he does with the populists. Democrats are already on the path to becoming the party of big business and the rich, and this will only solidify it. And if Biden's policies so far are anything to go by (especially his foreign policy), this will be welcomed by the Democratic establishment. These people hate Bernie Sanders supporters, who incidentally, have more aligned interests with Trump supporters than with neoliberals. If a populist Republican Party is smart, they can build a blue-collar, working class coalition uniting left and right wing populists.

The problem is in both sides you have fake populists that cater to more to the establishment of their respective parties (the AOC crowd for Democrats and the TPUSA crowd for Republicans). I'll suspect when push comes to shove, they'll side with the establishment.

[Bear Stearns]

NASA, you gotta cancel that contract with SpaceX
They finally successfully landed a prototype...and then it blew up

If our foreign policy leaders weren't batshit insane, this would be a fantastic area where we could collaborate with Russia.

[Bear Stearns]

They don't, they say they'll help but really it's solely for their own ego and power, doesn't help the "aid" they say is no where near enough to make a change.

Trying to help everyone means helping the 1% as well.

There's some point between 75% and 99% where a left-of-center government has to draw the line, and say "you people don't need government help, you've already helped yourself plenty".

That said, I wouldn't go much below 75%. It's political suicide to disdain the middle class.

Well someone should have thought of that about 70 years ago.

[Senkaku]

Previously medium/high-income, currently on little or no income (bear in mind assets they could sell) but trying to keep their residence in the hope of getting their old job back.

It makes sense for Democrats to help those people, firstly because not all Democrats are poor, but more because at this time they are income-poor.

Whether the $100 raise survives the Senate I'm not sure. It might be one of those things Manchin cares about, West Virginia having high unemployment at the best of times.

If the ongoing political realignment continues, this may not be the case

Neocons and Never Trump Republicans will join the Democrats. Romney has more in common with Biden than he does with the populists. Democrats are already on the path to becoming the party of big business and the rich, and this will only solidify it.

I mean, sort of? You leave out the fact that the ongoing political realignment is also pushing the Dems leftward, substantially so among some factions, so I think this popular take that the Dems are becoming the party of the elite is maybe more flawed than its proponents are letting on.

And if Biden's policies so far are anything to go by (especially his foreign policy), this will be welcomed by the Democratic establishment.

American foreign policy has always been appalling decoupled from domestic policy. Unfortunately, even though we talk a lot about it, most Americans simply do not care if some foreigner gets bombed as long as the President says it was for a good-ish reason. Not sure the continuation of this long-established trend is proof of much, besides that it's still easy and desirable to conceal atrocities on the periphery from the metropolitan population.

These people hate Bernie Sanders supporters, who incidentally, have more aligned interests with Trump supporters than with neoliberals.

People have been saying this for ages, uncritically buying into the narrative put out by the same establishment Dems who hate them so much that Bernie supporters are all a bunch of angry white dudes who are functionally not much different than Trump or his stereotypical supporters. It's not true. Bernie has a pretty diverse coalition, and his supporters know they stand a lot to lose under a right-wing dictatorship of capital that openly parades its genocidal and ecocidal ambitions.

A nematode also has "more aligned interests with Trump supporters than with neoliberals," depending on what form of that amorphous epithet we're using in this specific case, insofar as it also is interested in the survival of the biosphere whereas global capitalism does not appear to be. This is not really a useful dimension of analysis.

If a populist Republican Party is smart,

come_on_now.png

You've been alive for the past decade, haven't you?

they can build a blue-collar, working class coalition uniting left and right wing populists.

And then they can all go to the fucking Moon together to eat cheese (after they develop fusion and practical direct-air capture), right?

This has been a speculative narrative in media for a while and a lot of Take Guys online seem to think it's a subtle or clever analysis. It isn't, it's fabulism on par with the Resistance wine moms who thought the EC was going to nullify Trump's win in 2016 or something. You are describing things that sound like they could be plausible, if only certain essential facts we're all aware of were completely different and events had transpired completely differently and voting coalitions were completely different from what they actually are.

The Republican Party is not interested in ending its political partnerships with capital or with white racial grievance. It is in the grip of a man who's achieved all of his political success by embracing those two things and who's gotten everyone else still in the party to embrace them too. It is not going to just suddenly go, "actually, fuck that, let's have a multiracial workers' democracy!", and if it did, do you really think voters would be that receptive after everything that's happened? I expect the only thing that'd happen in such an event would be that their current base leaves them for pulling such a massive bait-and-switch, and no one new is really willing to join, because the rest of us have seen what a fucking nightmare of an organization it is and would have no reason to take their change of heart at face value.

The problem is in both sides you have fake populists that cater to more to the establishment of their respective parties (the AOC crowd for Democrats and the TPUSA crowd for Republicans). I'll suspect when push comes to shove, they'll side with the establishment.

If you really think large numbers of highly polarized people on each respective side are going to cross party lines to form a third-positionist vanguard against "the establishment," I really don't know where to even begin. It'd certainly make a very compelling novel in the hands of a good fiction writer, but I don't see it having much more applicability to the real world than that.

[The Black Forrest]

Regardless, Trump will go with someone that's most likely going to be the loyalist- and someone that will lick his boot and only say yes. Given a majority of these type of choices are nut cases, I suspect it will only help with Trump Supporters and not key voters.

Then again, if the GOP does succeed in getting many of their voting restrictions passed, Trump could barely sneak a second term.

Making it harder to vote tends to make people only more determined to do so. There is is only so much you can do.

Republicans have been using voter suppression for a long time. It works. It’s one of the reasons they are scared of HR1. A decades old playbook will be lost to them.

[Picairn]

Well someone should have thought of that about 70 years ago.

In 1951 Americans were enjoying unprecedented prosperity with a President working hard to forward civil rights and general welfare for the common man.

[Punished UMN]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8ZsKQL ... =TRUMP2024

[Proctopeo]

The GOP plans to make senate clerks read the whole covid relief bill aloud-a process expected to take at least 10 hours-before voting even begins, before forcing a massive number of amendments, potentially dragging the debate on 'till saturday

Ten hours read aloud? That's one hell of a bill.

[Omniabstracta]

The GOP plans to make senate clerks read the whole covid relief bill aloud-a process expected to take at least 10 hours-before voting even begins, before forcing a massive number of amendments, potentially dragging the debate on 'till saturday

Ten hours read aloud? That's one hell of a bill.

Honestly, ten hours is shorter than I would’ve expected for a bill like this.

[San Lumen]

Making it harder to vote tends to make people only more determined to do so. There is is only so much you can do.

Republicans have been using voter suppression for a long time. It works. It’s one of the reasons they are scared of HR1. A decades old playbook will be lost to them.

Hopefully Democrats can pass it.

[Senkaku]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8ZsKQLT-Tw&ab_channel=TRUMP2024

I literally just expelled a single stunned wheeze

[Kowani]

House passes the George Floyd Justice in Policing act, 219-211

shout out to Rep. Lance Gooden (R-TX) who voted "yes" by accident and didn't notice until it was too late

[Washington Resistance Army]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8ZsKQLT-Tw&ab_channel=TRUMP2024

BASED

I SUPPORT THE AMERICA-JAPAN SAMURAI ALLIANCE

[Postauthoritarian America]

NASA, you gotta cancel that contract with SpaceX
They finally successfully landed a prototype...and then it blew up

SpaceX = Spending additional cash on another eXplosion

[Postauthoritarian America]

Cuomo offers yet another apology

just resign already plz

I stopped listening and started laughing after he said he was sorry if he offended anyone. Every married man tries that excuse. Once. My wife laughed herself sick as well. The only thing missing from his nonapology shitshow was a political wife standing behind him with an adoring look and frozen smile on her face. But it pretty much explains why he's divorced.

All that being said I'm still waiting for the explanation of why not counting some deaths of nursing home residents that happened in hospitals as deaths of nursing home residents warrants an FBI investigation, particularly with the COVID-related shit going down in Florida. Luckily for the Andy Cuomo haters they're dealing with yet another in the long list of politicians who never learned which was the proper side of his pants to keep his pecker on.

[Postauthoritarian America]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c8ZsKQLT-Tw&ab_channel=TRUMP2024

Brought to you by the Coup Plotters of America Convention...Samurai Jack there should use his katana to cut Trump another slice of Big Daddy Xi's delicious chocolate cake...

[Kowani]

Biden administration quietly imposes temporary limits on counterterrorism drone strikes and commando raids outside conventional battlefield zones like Afghanistan and Syria, and it has begun a broad review of whether to tighten Trump-era rules for such operations

The military and the C.I.A. must now obtain White House permission to attack terrorism suspects in poorly governed places where there are scant American ground troops, like Somalia and Yemen. Under the Trump administration, they had been allowed to decide for themselves whether circumstances on the ground met certain conditions and an attack was justified.

[Eahland]

What a fundamentally absurd comparison. You're making these points and in each case leaving out the most important details of FDR's record-- you know what the difference between him and Stalin is, in this case? Stalin killed millions of the Soviet civilians he interned; FDR did not (even though it was still wrong and people did die because of the terrible conditions). You really don't think that's a worthwhile distinction to draw, or that it's reasonable for that fact to differentiate our historical interpretations of their records?

And? That does not excuse that FDR committed arguably the biggest human rights violation in US history, in direct violation of the Constitution. His achievements don't negate that he put his own people in concentration camps, auctioned off their property, and deported tens of thousands of them for dubious reasons.

Hahahahaha no.

I'm not downplaying the severity of the Japanese internment, but we've done way, way worse. For starters, look at basically any interaction the U.S. has ever had with the native population. And do I need to remind you that literal millions of people were held as chattel slaves over a period of more than 75 years (and much longer before it was technically "US history"), with lingering effects even up to this day, and most of our pre-Civil War Presidents not only endorsed this practice, but participated in it?

[San Lumen]

Cuomo offers yet another apology

just resign already plz

I stopped listening and started laughing after he said he was sorry if he offended anyone. Every married man tries that excuse. Once. My wife laughed herself sick as well. The only thing missing from his nonapology shitshow was a political wife standing behind him with an adoring look and frozen smile on her face. But it pretty much explains why he's divorced.

All that being said I'm still waiting for the explanation of why not counting some deaths of nursing home residents that happened in hospitals as deaths of nursing home residents warrants an FBI investigation, particularly with the COVID-related shit going down in Florida. Luckily for the Andy Cuomo haters they're dealing with yet another in the long list of politicians who never learned which was the proper side of his pants to keep his pecker on.

Hes not going to go anywhere. The best we can hope for is him not running for a fourth term.

[Kowani]

ERCOT CEO Bill Magness fired after the complete collapse of the energy grid in the February blizzard

[Kowani]

House passes the For The People Act, 220-210

[San Lumen]

House passes the For The People Act, 220-210

excellent hopefully Democrats can find a way to get it to pass the Senate.