Don't worry. It'll be impossible to cob-ble together enough votes for it anyway.
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US PoliERA 2018 |OT6| An Unmitigated Disaster
- Thread starter Midnight Jon
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Don't worry. It'll be impossible to cob-ble together enough votes for it anyway.
Quit stalk-ing the thread and you won't have to corn-cern yourself with it.
Yeah, he doesn't understand the "Elite" thing is an insult, because he's jealous of how he was never accepted by the New York elite. He's been trying to be one of them since the 80s, but they always saw him for what he is, a boorish, stupid clown, and always kept him on the outside. He doesn't understand having money doesn't make you classy.
I know this is a Soviet Leader making an ass of himself but what are the details?
Replying because I saw the pop-up alert and can't leave well enough alone. I'm actually burying my social media bookmarks shortly. =p
Thanks, though I'm not there, or even the camping type or anything. I plan to spend all weekend in the air conditioning playing board games, actually. The picture was a reference to something I wrote three OTs ago when I was feeling hopeless, and a lot of people seemed to appreciate. Maybe people can benefit from reading it now too, since today is a hell of a lot darker.
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Thanks, though I'm not there, or even the camping type or anything. I plan to spend all weekend in the air conditioning playing board games, actually. The picture was a reference to something I wrote three OTs ago when I was feeling hopeless, and a lot of people seemed to appreciate. Maybe people can benefit from reading it now too, since today is a hell of a lot darker.
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You know, I had the thought tonight after Laurence O'Donnell kicked off his show with a quote from near the end of Comey's book where he refers to the Trump presidency as "a forest fire."
He could have picked any disaster to describe this administration, but he picked a forest fire and I'm not entirely sure it was accidental. With a hurricane, earthquake, tornado, killer bee swarm, whatever; those happen suddenly, we're all in shock as they happen and then we clean up the mess and try to prepare for next time.
Catastrophic forest fires happen because we mostly use total fire suppression programs that treat all fire as bad, because they will inevitably destroy something, be it a house or timber or whatever. The problem with that is, without the natural fires that come through every decade or so, forests get so heavy with dead plants and underbrush that they become a tinderbox (and all of that fuel allows them to spread much more quickly and unpredictably). But forest fires can be beneficial too, in that they clear the forest floor of overgrowth, allowing for more room and sunlight at the forest floor, resulting in greater plant diversity and growth (for example, sequoia trees basically need fire to populate). The indigenous peoples of California thrived without anything we would recognize as agriculture by having a regional fire ecology, using controlled fires to optimize growth.
The point is, after a forest fire, life returns stronger and more diverse than before, and having the occasional controlled fire keeps the big ones from starting.
The Trump Administration is a catastrophic forest fire. It's big and loud, destroying lives and spreading everywhere no matter how hard we fight it; we're literally going through a sort of hell. It's fueled by all the nasty undergrowth that we've been allowing to fester in this country, carefully fed into the hateful little fires that Republicans have been stoking since they adopted the southern strategy. Trump is the spark that got away from them and is now burning wild through the land. But it's consuming all of that fuel, because people are now intimately familiar with and learning to despise it in a way that hasn't happened in a long time. So while they're burning the government to cinders with these weekly constitutional crises, when this is over they'll have very likely killed their brand of conservatism for a generation, if not forever.
What comes after is stronger and more diverse than before, and if we're smart we'll burn that ideology away every time it starts to grow again, to keep the big ones from starting.
That kind of gives me the hope that we desperately need.
He could have picked any disaster to describe this administration, but he picked a forest fire and I'm not entirely sure it was accidental. With a hurricane, earthquake, tornado, killer bee swarm, whatever; those happen suddenly, we're all in shock as they happen and then we clean up the mess and try to prepare for next time.
Catastrophic forest fires happen because we mostly use total fire suppression programs that treat all fire as bad, because they will inevitably destroy something, be it a house or timber or whatever. The problem with that is, without the natural fires that come through every decade or so, forests get so heavy with dead plants and underbrush that they become a tinderbox (and all of that fuel allows them to spread much more quickly and unpredictably). But forest fires can be beneficial too, in that they clear the forest floor of overgrowth, allowing for more room and sunlight at the forest floor, resulting in greater plant diversity and growth (for example, sequoia trees basically need fire to populate). The indigenous peoples of California thrived without anything we would recognize as agriculture by having a regional fire ecology, using controlled fires to optimize growth.
The point is, after a forest fire, life returns stronger and more diverse than before, and having the occasional controlled fire keeps the big ones from starting.
The Trump Administration is a catastrophic forest fire. It's big and loud, destroying lives and spreading everywhere no matter how hard we fight it; we're literally going through a sort of hell. It's fueled by all the nasty undergrowth that we've been allowing to fester in this country, carefully fed into the hateful little fires that Republicans have been stoking since they adopted the southern strategy. Trump is the spark that got away from them and is now burning wild through the land. But it's consuming all of that fuel, because people are now intimately familiar with and learning to despise it in a way that hasn't happened in a long time. So while they're burning the government to cinders with these weekly constitutional crises, when this is over they'll have very likely killed their brand of conservatism for a generation, if not forever.
What comes after is stronger and more diverse than before, and if we're smart we'll burn that ideology away every time it starts to grow again, to keep the big ones from starting.
That kind of gives me the hope that we desperately need.
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I think the absolute most Democrats can achieve is getting the process pushed past election day (which I'm not in favor of anyway; I don't want anything that might goose Republican turnout). I also agree with Pigeon's take that Manchin and some others might give the Republicans bipartisan cover to just get the confirmation over with.
Not a single Republican will flip. A president's SC pick hasn't been voted down on the floor since Robert Bork. If Trump nominated someone heinously unqualified, they might pressure him to pick someone else, but they're not flipping on the floor. Someone's getting confirmed.
If Dems can get to 51 in November, they still have a great shot at eventually securing a 5-4 liberal court via the Thomas seat.
My thought is that if they get to 51 this year, they're unlikely to lose their majority in either 2020 (should be a Dem WH victory that leads to a bunch of the 2014 losses flipping back), or the 2022 midterm (the GOP did about as well in the 2016 races as it could possibly do).
The biggest risk will be 2024 when this year's seats are up again, likely with a Dem incumbent running for re-election. But that's a solid 6 year window.
My thought is that if they get to 51 this year, they're unlikely to lose their majority in either 2020 (should be a Dem WH victory that leads to a bunch of the 2014 losses flipping back), or the 2022 midterm (the GOP did about as well in the 2016 races as it could possibly do).
The biggest risk will be 2024 when this year's seats are up again, likely with a Dem incumbent running for re-election. But that's a solid 6 year window.
Khrushchev was really obsessed with introducing corn to the USSR. He's laughing merrily while observing a fine specimen on a trip to the US.
This is the correct take. We have to just accept it, internalize it, and use it to engergize voters.
I hate it, but it's our reality.
Stop hacking me.
People aren't going to like this, but yea, this is where we are right now.
Because I hate myself, I went and looked at the heavily brigaded r/politics thread on Kennedy retiring and holy shit Trump supporters really do live for nothing but 'liberal tears', don't they? It almost makes me want everything to crash and burn so that these smug fuckers will finally hurt a little.
I always go into those and sort by Controversial, because apparently I want to lower my life expectancy.
I want nothing more, but we can't hurt them.
Poor whites identify with rich whites, and rich whites could literally not give a shit about anything but racism and money.
The only way we hurt them is from the top down. Remove their power from the Congress, and you'll suddenly see them very interested in 'social justice'.
If Dems pack the courts a 6-5 liberal majority would turn into a 8-3 pretty quickly if Thomas and Alito retire/die.
I mean, we could pretty easily hurt them badly by ending certain subsidies and writing laws specifically to help larger population centers
If we really wanted to.
Therein lies the rub.
The man loved a huge, thick, rigid stalk of corn.
Who doesn't?
There have been rumblings about Thomas wanting to retire. Nobody cared until now because it would just mean replacing one solidly conservative stooge with another.
He has to see that his window to have a Republican president nominate my successor might be shrinking quickly. If Democrats win the Senate this year and/or win the presidency in 2020, he may have to wait another 11 years (until 2029) to retire. If there are already rumors about his getting restless at 70, I doubt he'll want to wait that long. My gut tells me he lacks RBG's stubbornness and fortitude.
He has to see that his window to have a Republican president nominate my successor might be shrinking quickly. If Democrats win the Senate this year and/or win the presidency in 2020, he may have to wait another 11 years (until 2029) to retire. If there are already rumors about his getting restless at 70, I doubt he'll want to wait that long. My gut tells me he lacks RBG's stubbornness and fortitude.
I wonder how many cycles of: GOP starts war, wrecks economy and gives massive tax breaks to billionaires, Dems win and slowly fix shit, GOP starts war, wrecks economy and gives massive tax breaks to billionaires rinse repeat; that we'll have before racist morons figure it out.
I've come to realize that I genuinely hate them with every fiber of my being. I genuinely thought people like this who get such a kick out of 'dem tears' would start to drop the act once things got bad enough, but now it's painfully clear they're still having the time of their life. These people genuinely want someone like me to suffer as much as possible so that they can have a laugh and have someone to look down on. I don't give them the benefit of the doubt anymore. I despise them as much as they despise me. They'll sit there giggling about 'owning the dems' even as the country they claim they love goes down in flames. I kinda hate that they've made me as spiteful as they are.
Not until they are less than 20% of the US population and all the rigging they do can't save an election outside of actual tampering, which imo will happen in 2020.
That 20% looks like 45-50 percent on paper with suppression and gerrymandering.
"Hare-brained schemes" i believe the Brezhnevites called it.
Hmm, Corn does taste really good when it's grilled-
umm
oh.
Does the irony of Fox crying about injecting race in to an election really need to be pointed out?
Edit: Not attacking you Freeze, just more of a general thought. Republicans are beyond pathetic at this point.
Huh, I was wondering why Bernie seems to poll so lowly for a guy who was a popular run-up not two years ago and - I'm told - one of the most popular political figures in the country today. But Warren and Bernie cannibalizing each's other base makes sense.
Yes, fox news is the mouthpiece of this fascist adminstration and someone needs to point it out to all the fascists to latch onto.
At least her vote didn't "count." Much like how my husband's Bernie vote in the general (write-in) didn't count because we're in MA. I still give him shit for it, but he maintains he didn't matter because we were in MA (which is true... but I still give him shit for it). He says he would have voted for Hillary if we weren't in one of the bluest states in the nation, FWIW.
She's running
This reminds me of Idiocracy and how they tried to grow plants with Brawndo instead of water.
I agree, but how do you do it? If no one from the GOP flips then it's a done deal.
Harry Enten assuaging my fears about this opening goosing GOP turnout:
One of the replies, far from being a dumpster fire, states it more succinctly:
One of the replies, far from being a dumpster fire, states it more succinctly:
This seat may be lost, but I think the important lesson is the "new rules" bit -- it's not about what was normal before Trump, it's not about paying back republicans or trump by using their rules, it's about dems reevaluating the current state of play and inventing new rules they play by for this and future SCOTUS seats, but also every other fight.
The Kennedy replacement won't motivate GOP voters at all if it's done, as we expect it to be, safely before midterms. All it'll do is motivate Dems who are rightfully mad as all hell.
I would not be surprised if he was just outright lying. At best, he's taking it completely out of context. Not worth trying to find it imo.
Basically, even though GOP voters are already as motivated as they can be, it won't really matter as long as Dem voters are as motivated (even more so) and come out in droves (as they have).
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