Myanmar’s military said Monday that it took control of the country and declared a state of emergency for a year, after detaining civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other leaders of her ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) in a predawn operation, staging a coup against the democratically elected government.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/myanmar-aung-sun-suu-kyi-arrest/2021/01/31/story.html
[…]
Several hours after the raids, the military in a television broadcast said that a state of emergency had been declared in Myanmar and that power would be transferred to the commander in chief, Min Aung Hlaing. Myint Swe, a former general and the military-backed vice president, will become the president, the broadcast added.
[…]
The sweep also included other prominent democracy activists who have been fighting against military rule for decades, leaders of other political parties and NLD lawmakers, according to social media posts and news reports.
[…]
The military has alleged voter fraud in the November vote, but Myanmar’s election commission has said there is no evidence to support its claims. The military’s proxy party, the Union Solidarity and Development Party, also alleged voter fraud after winning only 33 seats.
Communications were suspended and flights disrupted as the military took power from an elected government and declared a one-year state of emergency.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/31/world/asia/myanmar-coup-aung-san-suu-kyi.html
…so…seems like that’s pretty much how that works when the military part of the equation is serious about that shit
…unlike a certain went-to-military-school-that-one-time-bottom-tier-ex-president
77 Days: Trump’s Campaign to Subvert the Election [NYT]
[…maybe it won’t tell you anything you don’t know…but I’d argue that one is worth a read if you have the time]
Former president Donald Trump’s new political action committee raised $31.5 million in the weeks after Election Day through a flurry of fundraising appeals purporting to fight election fraud and help Republicans maintain their majority in the Senate, new filings show.
But by Jan. 1 — two weeks after the electoral college certified President Biden’s victory and days before the two Senate elections in Georgia that tipped the chamber’s control to Democrats — he spent no money on either endeavor, according to disclosures made public Sunday evening.
[…]
In all, the official committees supporting Trump and the Republican Party raised more than $290 million since his Nov. 3 electoral defeat — a staggering amount by an outgoing president that highlights Trump’s lasting influence on the party and its fundraising apparatus.
[…]
The vast majority of the roughly $290 million post-election haul came between Election Day and Nov. 23, filings show. At least $82.6 million of that total was raised from Nov. 24 through Dec. 31, the filing period of the new Federal Election Commission disclosures filed Sunday night.
[…]
Save America spent only about $343,000 of the $31.5 million it raised since it was created after the election, to pay fees to the company that processes its donations, filings show. The committee retained the rest of the donations as of Jan. 1.The money collected by the leadership PAC cannot be used directly for Trump’s own campaign purposes, but there are few other restrictions on how the money can be spent. For example, donations could be used to pay for events at Trump’s properties or to finance his travel or personal expenses.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-raised-315-million-in-the-weeks-after-election-day-for-his-new-leadership-pac-filing-shows/2021/01/31/story.html
…tell me again how there’s a principle involved in that shit?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2021/01/31/gop-stimulus-compromise
…oh, yeah…silly me…the principle is “fuck you – I gots mine” AKA “it’s your fault you don’t have the stuff we won’t let you have”…funnily enough that has a familiar ring to it
Alexei Navalny protests: Moscow in lockdown as police detain thousands [Guardian]
The Kremlin responded to a second straight weekend of protests on Sunday with a violent crackdown, arresting thousands in a show of Moscow’s unease at the growing unrest triggered by the treatment of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/russia-navalny-protests-putin/2021/01/31/story.html
[…]
Hours after protests began in Russia’s two largest cities, Moscow and St. Petersburg, the monitoring group OVD-Info reported that more than 5,000 people had been detained throughout the country, more than were arrested last Sunday. Navalny’s wife, Yulia, was arrested again.
[…]
In St. Petersburg, police used stun guns and batons to corral and detain protesters. Journalists, identifiable in neon yellow press vests, were among those knocked down and forcefully carried off. As riot police formed a wall before protesters and banged on their shields, the demonstrators clapped defiantly in response, videos posted to social media showed.
…though I guess in the case of a lot of the people plowing smaller donations into them double-impeached-narcissist-enrichement-funds it’s kinda-sorta true
With the election over and Democrats in control of the White House and both chambers of Congress, officials in both parties are bracing for a bruising new battle with a different balance of power: the redrawing of congressional maps, where Republicans hold the advantage in many state legislatures across the country, including in key battlegrounds.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/31/us/politics/gerrymander-census-democrats-republicans.html
[…]
“I would say that the national vote could be the same as this year two years from now, and redistricting by itself would easily be enough to alter who controls the chamber,” said Samuel S. Wang, the director of the Princeton Gerrymandering Project. He estimated that reapportionment alone could net the Republicans three seats, and gerrymandering in North Carolina, Georgia and Florida another five seats.
[…]
While partisan warfare on Capitol Hill draws most of the national attention, the battles over redistricting are among the fiercest and most consequential in American government. Reapportionment and redistricting occurs every 10 years after the census, with states with the fastest-growing populations gaining seats in Congress at the expense of those with slower-growing or shrinking populations. The balance of power established by gerrymandering can give either party an edge that lasts through several election cycles; court challenges — even if successful — can take years to unwind those advantages.
As Norman Ornstein tweeted in 2018:
“I want to repeat a statistic I use in every talk: By 2040 or so, 70 percent of Americans will live in 15 states. Meaning 30 percent will choose 70 senators. And the 30 percent will be older, whiter, more rural, more male than the 70 percent. Unsettling to say the least.”
The Washington Post checked this claim and found that “In broad strokes, Ornstein is correct.”[…]
This is why I think Mitch McConnell was playing sly when he demanded that Democrats maintain the Senate filibuster as part of a power-sharing agreement.
He tweeted on Tuesday:
“Today, I made clear that if Democrats ever attack the key Senate rules, it would drain the consent and comity out of the institution. A scorched-earth Senate would hardly be able to function. It wouldn’t be a progressive’s dream. It would be a nightmare. I guarantee it.”
He then dropped that objection without getting any concession in return. I believe he is playing a Brer Rabbit-style trick with the ultimate goal of creating a nightmare scenario for progressives. While abandoning the filibuster would indeed be advantageous to liberals in the short term, in the long term — when it may become harder and harder for Democrats to maintain control of the chamber — it could be a disaster, allowing the minority in America to say what becomes law and which judges get confirmed.
Population shifts mean more political might for relatively fewer people. [NYT]
…not least thanks to the spine-free contingent of no-principle-having shuffling masses of self-interest those same people voted into goverment
How far is too far? This is the question Republican leaders are being forced to grapple with as the public outcry grows over one of their newest House members, Marjorie Taylor Greene.
If Marjorie Taylor Greene Isn’t Beyond the Pale, Who Is? [NYT]
‘It’s endemic’: state-level Republican groups lead party’s drift to extremism [Guardian]
Seldom in life does anyone get a second chance to rectify a grievous failure, but passage by the House on Wednesday of an article of impeachment against Trump affords every Republican senator that chance (except for Mitt Romney of Utah, who did vote to convict Trump on one count the first time). They must all decide now whether to protect our democracy from Trump and future would-be autocrats or to be enablers and apologists for what can now fairly be called the worst presidential misconduct in our history.
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/republican-senators-shouldn-t-flub-chance-show-trump-his-actions-have-consequences
…& speaking of needful things that people aren’t getting
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/covid-vaccines-rollout-disarray-in-u-s-and-abroad
Essential workers get lost in the vaccine scrum as states prioritize the elderly [WaPo]
As Virus Variants Spread, ‘No One Is Safe Until Everyone Is Safe’ [NYT]
…or…if you prefer
Once one of the most respected agencies in Washington, the SEC and its younger cousin, the CFTC, have abdicated their role as economic policymakers by buying into the free-market fantasy that markets are rational and self-correcting. But as we were reminded again this week by hordes of iPhone-wielding investors, financial markets are prone to herd behavior, manipulation, inside information and undue risk-taking, requiring constant surveillance and aggressive regulation that adapts quickly to changing market conditions and technologies.
GameStop mania exposes SEC’s failure as regulator [WaPo]
…oh, & while we’re at it…there’s this too
The former head of Voice of America’s parent agency hired two law firms to open-ended, no-bid contracts, including one specifying that top lawyers would earn $1,470 per hour, according to documents and people familiar with the matter. The two agreements have cost taxpayers close to $4 million over a five-month period, far more than was previously known, and possibly in violation of federal rules.
The first details of the arrangement were made public last week in a whistleblower complaint against Michael Pack, who was appointed chief executive of the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) eight months ago, and whom President Biden forced to resign hours after he took office last week.
[…]
From his Senate confirmation in June until his resignation last week, Pack oversaw USAGM’s portfolio of international news agencies, including VOA, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Radio Free Asia. The networks specialize in broadcasting news in countries where an independent press is suppressed.
[…]
He sidelined experienced managers, investigated a VOA reporter, and sought to steer the editorial direction of the news agencies — all in the name of rooting out what he called “bias” against Trump. Agency bureaucrats and journalists responded with a volley of lawsuits, whistleblower complaints and a petition demanding the removal of Pack’s appointees.The contracts were part of his effort to reshape USAGM and purge employees he saw as problematic from the news and broadcasting groups under its authority. Pack hired two Washington firms, McGuireWoods and Caplin & Drysdale — apparently in contradiction to federal contracting regulations and guidelines, according to internal documents.
McGuireWoods has received the bulk of the payments — in excess of $3 million — for a lengthy and complex review of USAGM’s email archives. Pack initiated the review to create files documenting “employee misconduct,” as internal records refer to it, against five executive members of USAGM. He suspended and replaced all five in August.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/media/former-head-of-voice-of-americas-parent-hired-two-law-firms-to-no-bid-contracts-price-tag-4-million/2021/01/25/story.html
…party of fiscal responsibilty, you say?
So you’re being held accountable? That’s not ‘cancel culture.’ [WaPo]
…still…it can’t all be bad news…right?
https://www.today.com/pets/video-giant-pandas-playing-snow-will-melt-your-heart
…oh, & we’re up by a brace of polar bears too, by the way
…still & all…I’m feeling less like a bear & more like one of them rats
Norman Ornstein has been widely quoted for 40 years, and he’s only 72. He is a good Democrat but I think his prediction for the fate of the Senate is a little too pessimistic.
As the US population moves around and because of birthrates and immigration the southern and western states will gain more and more representatives. If he is correct and only 15 states will hold 70% of the country’s population, every state still gets two Senators. Let Florida fill up with expatriate NY and NJ residents. Everyone still gets two Senators. I’ve heard that in the West there is something called “Californicaton.” Let them move to places like Arizona, Texas, Nevada. Everyone still gets two Senators. Californication probably played a large part in the bue-ing of Nevada and Arizona, along with efforts to crack down on voter suppression. Lots of folks from the north/northeast seem to be moving to North Carolina. Donald Trump won there in 2020 by about 1%. In 2016 he won by almost 4%.
I don’t think any state is a lost cause for the Democrats. Wyoming, for example, has fewer than 600,000 residents. It has much to recommend it. There is a thriving hi-tech belt near Salt Lake City; there could just as easily be one in Wyoming. What if 100,000 tech jobs sprung up around Cheyenne or Jackson? They’d be voting-age adults, maybe bring a spouse with them…do you think they would vote for the nuttier voices on the far right?
No, I’m a cockeyed optimist. And yes this is the second “South Pacific” video I’ve posted in the lasted 12 hours.
…I don’t know as I buy into that prediction entirely, either…& to some extent I’m not sure I buy the thesis of the article I pulled it from that this is the one slim window when the potential exists to see movement on some issues of specific interest to the slice of the BAME community that lands squarely on the B
…but in terms of how he frames what mcconnell’s up to & why…it seems like a solid explanation…& that prediction or something like it along with the GOP logic that would be the obvious corollary seemed like they went together
…admittedly monday seems to be stepping pretty hard on my optimism today…so I guess take it with a liberal helping of salt?
I think the biggest flaw in this Manichean two-party prognosis industry is two-fold: citizenship in a state automatically assumes that you will (broadly) vote a certain way, and that staes always vote a certain way. This is absolutle nonsense. Vermont used to be one of the most reliably Republican states in the Union. Today they have one Senator who is a Democrat (Patrick Leahy, who is going to preside over the second Trump impeachment trial) and Independent Bernie Sanders, independent because he believes the establishment Democratic Party is Rockefeller/Nixon-era centrist-Republican from the 1960s and the 1970s, and he is correct. The governor, though, is a Republican, but so is Charlie Baker up in Massachusetts, and he’s just, in reality, a fumbling a-political figurehead helicoptered in from the private sector who ran against a supremely inept Democratic challenger.
California used to be reliably Republican in the post-war era. I wish I could embed an image. They voted for Harry Truman in 1948, and then again for LBJ in 1964 (that was kind of extraordinary circumstances), and then didn’t vote for a Democratic President again until 1992, when they went for Bill Clinton. They’ve been Democratic ever since, but I think most of the Deadpslintertariat was alive in 1992, so within our lifetimes.
If you’re a little older you were alive in 1976. The only state that Gerald Ford (R) lost in 1976 west of the Mississippi was Texas. Where did Jimmy Carter (D) get all his votes? Lots came from “the solid south”, and as a son of the south those states, mostly solidly Democratic at the time, but in a southern way, went all in. Then the social tide started turning, Lee Atwater developed his southern strategy for Reagan, all kinds of things happened, and that’s where we are now.
Even here in New York, it’s not the hotbed of leftist socialism it’s portrayed to be. We had 20 uninterrupted years of Republican Mayors that only ended in 2014, with the election of de Blasio. His Mayoralty has been so…I won’t get into it…I wouldn’t be surprised that if the Republicans could run a plausible candidate later in the year they might win.
We shall see.
…yup…I get that side of it…but I also get that to some extent there’s a degree of self-fulfilling prophecy involved in so far as people like mitch do base some of what they do on projections that are often fairly rudimentary extrapolations…along the lines of “assuming everything keeps trending the way it is *right now* for the next X years & nothing comes along to derail that the way it reliably seems to have in the past in ways that would make this prediction bullshit – then this is definitely exactly what’s going to happen”…& thus that kind of thinking is as often as not quite an accurate basis from which to predict what concerns people like him…& thereby what bullshit they’re liable to pull to make themselves feel better about things
…I think that might be the only way I find that sort of thing useful, really…aside from that most predictions about the future seem best used as a guide to how things won’t be by the time they’re due to have come into effect…at least if they try to be specific
…I mean, I’ve been promised flying cars (or at least a hoverboard) “in the next decade” since I was less than a decade old…not to mention “real” AI…frankly the future isn’t all it was made out to be…but apparently refunds are hard to come by?
Interesting to hear you describe Baker as apolitical. I think there are probably a lot of issues he doesn’t care about, but he definitely cares about protecting wealth for the wealthy, which is a firmly Republican stance. I hate that we keep electing that fucker. Even “liberal” members of my family like him and describe him as moderate, because his acts of screwing over poor people seem to mostly take place without media coverage.
Also he just tried to veto an expansion of abortion rights, but luckily the Mass house overrode his veto.
Baker is a straight up piece of shit. He’s just better at looking like he isn’t a complete psychopath on camera than other Republicans, which is why his approval ratings are so high. The only think keeping him from turning MA into TX or FL is the state legislature.
Well, as far as Baker protecting the wealth of the wealthy, ask Emmy-award-winning Emperor Cuomo about his thoughts on introducing a graduated income tax that would not top out at whatever level it does and escalates along with the income that climbs ever-higher among those somehow able to prosper amid the Great Covid-19 Plague. This is a bipartisan thing.
The abortion stance is news to to me. Wasn’t he the CEO, and maybe the founder, of some health care company? Surely he, of all people, must recognize…I’m not going to touch the third rail of abortion. Lots of Catholics up in Massachusetts, maybe he’s pandering to them.
I think he’s catering to the ever more radicalizing wing of the Republican party, but yeah, it was a bit of a surprise. He tried to walk a fine line throughout the trump years of not endorsing him but only offering mild criticisms. And sure, fiercely defending the hoarding of wealth happens in both parties, but it’s a defining viewpoint for Republicans.
That prediction strikes me as a bit one-sided, as well. US demographics are changing rapidly, and I don’t think you can state reliably that retirement states like Florida and Arizona are going to stay white. I feel like Trump’s co-conspirators were using the coronavirus as a way to conduct ethnic cleansing, but they got interrupted on that front and I think long-term effects now will largely impact the elderly population.
Overall, people are growing more and more liberal, not less and less. It’s going to be much harder for Republicans to sell white supremacy when the older white population has children, nieces, nephews, grandchildren, etc., who are ethnic or in relationships with ethnic populations. Also, at least here in Florida, a substantial percentage of healthcare workers are non-white. I don’t know if it’s a majority, but it’s a lot. And every old person needs probably 6-10 healthcare workers at any given time, from hospitals to doctor’s offices to nursing homes.
Nobody’s ever called me an optimist, and I’m not prepared to argue numbers at the moment, but this doom-n-gloom scenario just doesn’t feel realistic to me. I need to put in some time doing some research.
I will say that, like Jake has been promised his flying cars for decades, we have likewise been told that “demographics is destiny” for at least two or three decades now, and it’s clearly not working out that way. Much of politics and bigotry is learned behavior. The older racist morons who vote against their interests are simply raising younger racist morons who continue to vote against their interests. Plus, with the census shenanigans which will translate to more gerrymandering for Republican advantage, we’re going to be dealing with this shit well into the future–especially with a permanent right wing majority on the SCOTUS. The only real hope we have at this point is that the Democratic Senate finds a way to ram through voting and civil rights legislation that is somehow tied to the budget so they can tell the Republicans to screw their fake filibusters over the next two years. Until we can undo that redistricting damage, we have little hope of any real and lasting progress. Even then, we’d have to hope that any changes that get made hold over the course of the next 30-40 years to rebalance the SCOTUS. It’s all long game and Democrats have allowed Republicans to take that advantage for so long that even if the voting rules change over the course of the next two years it will still take decades of sustained effort to have an effect.
I totally agree. My friends and family members assure me that with every passing year children are exposed to more and learn more and become more aware as previously shunned groups become more visible. Look at Barack Obama! Racism is totally over!
And then look at campaign footage of the Clinton and Trump campaigns in 2016. Apparently Hillary Clinton preferred to speak to smaller groups, and her most receptive audiences were usually whiter, more female, and older than the electorate as a whole. Trump’s huge rallies, thousands at a time, were even whiter, but with an even mix of men and women and spanning all age groups. The lunatics who stormed the Capitol were not, by and large, on the older edge of the American populace. The next generation is not going to save us.
…there’s a quote that I believe is generally (mis-)attributed to churchill about how only someone with no heart would be a conservative as a youth but only someone with no brains would be a liberal in their older age…it’s largely nonsense…but I have noticed that among the people I know the kind of idealism they had when young is hard to maintain when you’re old enough to have to foot the bill…& a certain degree of cynicism attaches to having seen things not get better in too many ways for too many people for too long
…I still know a few folks who are wont to say they don’t worry overmuch because in due time things will come right…often people who seem to think their kids’ generation will be the one to see it done…& I’m fond of those folks…so I don’t like to remind them that I remember when their parents used to say much the same thing
…or that mostly those parents are old enough now that they seem comforted by the fact that things won’t get bad enough fast enough to really mess with the things they care about until after they’ve shuffled off this mortal coil
…like I said…monday seems to have done a number on me this week because I catch myself wondering how many more times that particular cycle can repeat before, as the poet said “the centre can not hold”?
Yeah, that sentiment always pissed me off, because there is nothing illogical about a liberal stance (though there is absolutely something heartless about a conservative stance). It only works if you believe taking care of other people is illogical, and that’s some bullshit. Especially because social services also provide a safety net for you if things were to go sideways, so it’s not like paying into social services is purely a selfless act.
It’s doubly stupid.
It’s really hard to read that “have no brain” bit as anything other than valuing self interest above all else, at any cost (the important part here…)
A couple weeks back, I went to hit up Home Depot for some hardware for a project, and on my way in, I noticed they had these big solar-powered strobe-light trailer things with cameras and big logos about security. And I was thinking about all the homeless encampments all over the bay area, all the cars with windows knocked out, and all the private security personnel standing by the doorway of any place of business bigger than a bodega, and I couldn’t help but think that this absolute refusal to pay people a living wage has to be really damned expensive…
As long as we can keep republicans from gerrymandering the fuck out of house/local districts, I agree.
Dictators and need to inflate their goddamned chest cabbage/flair (medals.)
I’d kind of understand if Min Aung Hlaing were a USSR Great War veteran and Hero of the Soviet Union but the only wars Myanmar have fought is against ethnic minorities who don’t have much in the way of weaponry or an army for that matter.
One must have some serious inadequacies as a human being to give yourself phony ass medals to show how big and tough you are.
Not for nothing, but I still have my Boy Scout vest with all the patches I won. I only wear it for formal occasions though.
Semper paratus.
Really saddened to see the news from Myanmar. That nation has been through so much, and it looks like it will continue to suffer.
I believe the proper term is “fruit salad.”
really compliments the cowboy hat.
Nothing says genuine South-East Asian military experience like a goddamned notebook cover of ribbons and a fucking camo cowboy hat…
I don’t know a ton about Myanmar, but this seems very disappointing. From what I understand, after decades of military rule, they were finally having some democratic rule, but with the military still retaining too much power, and the world wary of how much power the military had retained. This is a huge step backwards for them.
Aung San Suu Kyi had disappointed a lot of her former supporters by the deals she made with the miltary after her election, and they ended up turning on her anyway.
You can bet the US right wing is thinking about her, and if they win power again will push hard to purge military leaders who aren’t subservient. It will go much, much deeper than just appointing a lackey Defense Secretary.
Facebook, of course, leaned over backwards to enable genocidal attacks organized and encouraged via its platforms by the Myanmar military. The absolute rottenness of Facebook’s leadership is so clear — what possible percent of their revenue would have been affected if they had stopped it right off the bat? 1% of their revenue in the Myanmar market?
What kind of PR hit have they taken in the long run, what kind of fuel did they give to their opponents in the US government because they were focused on enabling tiny increments of revenue? And why have they left their political affairs leadership in place when it keeps making such shortsighted decisions?
Zuckerberg is too stupid to realize he is a modern day Henry Ford, who ended up delusional, paranoid, consorting with Nazis and driving his company into a ditch.
on top of being perfectly willing to promote genocide if it will make him a buck or two, the dude is super insecure about his height. I forget the details, and am not going to even try to look them up again, but I think Gizmodo had an article about how he always stages photos so he is positioned to appear taller than he actually is, and there was also some bit about him having a special seat cushion/booster seat for his senate trials to try and look taller.
I hope he gets some spinal disc degenerative disease that leaves him even shorter, and that it constantly eats at him. He’s a venal, evil, small-minded asshole with outsized (bad) influence on the world. Nothing would be too bad for him.
So much for 2020 being over.
At least today is a snow day
It kind of all makes sense when you see the roots of some of these idiots beliefs…
https://thomhartmann.medium.com/theres-a-straight-line-from-a-child-murderer-to-donald-trump-s-treason-600b06100cbc
I watched the 3 part Vice series on QAnon this weekend, I highly recommend it. Spoiler alert, it is a Psy Op that originated as a LARP and Michael Flynn seems to be near the top of the food chain.
The problem with the idea of a filibuster trap is that there is *nothing* that saves it in the future if the GOP wants to wipe it out.
Any Senate majority can eliminate it in an afternoon. There is no way the GOP would tremble before tradition if they wanted to pass a bill.
McConnell has flipflopped on multiple “traditions” to block and then approve right wing judges, including the filibuster. And if he regains power and wanted to overthrow, say, a voting rights bill, he’d kill the filibuster to do it. Nobody in the GOP would stop him.
The only thing he can do is try and con Democrats into breaking ranks and then yank the football away when he feels like it if he gets back in control.
I still say that the main reason why Mitch hasn’t already killed the filibuster is because he never needed to. Republicans are much more in lock-step than Democrats, and he can always count on shitheads like Manchin or Jones or McCaskill to be more concerned about appealing to Republican voters to get in Mitch’s way. Of course, it never helps the likes of Jones or McCaskill, but it certainly don’t stop them from trying.
To his credit, I think Jones got it. McCaskill had no clue and neither does Sinema. Manchin, I think, is genuinely maneuvering for his own self interests in a way that none of the GOP Senators except for Romney seem capable of doing. It’s selfish and bad for the country, but at least I think he can be bargained with. Susan Collins will sell out the country not only for nothing, she’d accept a nuclear waste dump in downtown Bangor as a part of the deal.
…and still get re-elected by a wide margin.
What a disappointing election that was. And she had even been behind in polls. Goddamn it, Maine, get your shit together.
Maybe he’ll die in the next 4 years. I won’t solve the broader problem of the GOP, just that one specific problem.
This is absolutely no less than I expect from these fucking imbeciles:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/01/us/capitol-rioters-non-voters-invs/index.html
The money line:
“idk what treason is,” she wrote in a conversation shared with the FBI by a tipster, who had confronted the college student in a series of Instagram messages.
So…too stupid to recognize that Trump lost because morons like you couldn’t be bothered to vote for him…and too stupid to understand what treason is. Everything checks out here.
…let’s not forget that don jr avoided catching charges on the grounds that he is plausibly too fucking stupid to have the capacity for mens rea
…& yet they say ignorance is no defense
…damn but it needs to stop being monday before I lose whatever sliver of sanity remains to me
Ignorance is no defense just for those dirty poors.
I can’t help but laugh whenever I’m reminded of that “too stupid to be illegal” bit.
Reminds me of that old Beavis and Butthead episode, where they are trying to get drunk, some how get a hold of some nonalcoholic beer (I can’t remember, I haven’t seen it in 15-20 years…), and are behind the convenience store, pretending/thinking they are drunk, the cop starts to arrest them, notices the NA beer bottle, and is “wait a minute, you guys aren’t drunk, your’e just stupid” And their response is something like: “heh heh no, were totally drunk heh heh”
Remember that psychotic, dipshit pharmacist in WI who sabotaged all those doses of vaccine? Turns out he’s a flat earther and doesn’t think the sky is real. How do these fucking people get through something as rigorous as pharmacy school?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/02/01/wisconsin-pharmacist-vaccine-flatearth/?itid=hp-more-top-stories
Jesus tapdancing Christ. The sky not being real is a new one to me.
“the sky was not really the sky but a “shield put up by the government to prevent individuals from seeing God,” court records show.”
😫😫😫😫😫
Noooo that’s awful.
I knew a girl in undergrad, a fellow biology major, who was a creationist. The earth is only 6k years old, god planted the dinosaurs, all that jazz. And she was pre-med, and has since become a doctor. Thing is, there’s a reason for the saying – doctors aren’t scientists. Some are, but it’s not a requirement. Same goes for pharmacists. Specialized in-depth knowledge of the human body and drugs does not mean you are a scientific thinker in general. Sometimes it just means you’re excellent at retaining information.
Oohh! I knew a person planning to go to veterinary school in college who was a hardcore creationist like that!
Crazy right? And like obviously evolution is a topic in Bio 101… I figure she probably just answered what the textbook told her and apologized to god later for her blasphemy.
fucking flat-earthers…
I remember hearing about this in the early 90s and thought it was some absurdist group, and thought it was hilarious.
Until I went to college, got access to the internet, and found out, not only do they truly believe that, but they were desperately trying to re-write all of physics in an attempt to explain how a flat-earth could not only look like, but also act like… like reality? how do you even explain how batshit this stuff is.
fuckin facebook…