Yesterday was my last dose of Paxlovid so hopefully the terrible garbage mouth that comes with it will be gone. I’m feeling all better too. Still working from home though, because I can…
Lulz
In stunning vote, House Republicans fail to impeach Secretary Mayorkas
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/02/06/house-mayorkas-impeachment/
Wow
Jennifer Crumbley, mother of school shooter, found guilty of manslaughter in test of who’s responsible for a mass shooting
https://cnn.com/2024/02/06/us/jennifer-crumbley-oxford-shooting-trial/index.html
Stonks!
Snap plunges 30% on revenue miss and light guidance, as company says Middle East war creates ‘headwind’
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/02/06/snap-earnings-q4-2023.html
Sprots!
Patrick Mahomes’s greatest strength is what he doesn’t do
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2024/02/06/patrick-mahomes-super-bowl/
Those silly NPS folks
Have a good day!
pfffft
*edit*
pffffft
oh wait….did some one see me put in an edit?
no you fucking didnt…
My understanding of the impeachment virus that they wound up tied so one republican changed his vote to no specifically so they could hold the vote again when Scalise is back. So I expect this to go through by one vote then.
The GQP already announced they’ll revisit it when “they have the votes” — so, yeah.
I wouldn’t assume anything at this point – these guys are capable of screwing up a one shovel potato harvest. They may have a floor fight to kick Johnson out of the speaker’s chair soon, and who knows what that does to them.
They don’t just want to impeach Mayorkas, the big goal of the nuts is to impeach Biden. The more capital they have to expend to get Mayorkas, the harder it will be to round up the votes for Biden, which is already painful for the swing seaters.
It’s already campaign season for these guys too, and if you’re out in California or Colorado and the call comes to drop everything, fly to DC and vote for something that does you no good for reelection, what’s your incentive? Especially if you have no faith in your team’s vote counters before things hit the floor. This keeps happening, even when people like Scalise and Jordan were trying to become Speaker, and they were supposed to be in charge of counting the votes.
They may scrape it together, but this screwup isn’t a good thing for these bozos.
…I find myself going back & forth over this…because you have your glassy-eyed loons like empty greene or bobbles & her bubble-headed nonsense…&…the whole clowncar caucus…& individually most of them come across as some brand of true-believer…like those two mostly seem credibly dumb enough that it’s possible to wind them up, feed them a script & let them go off in classic useful idiot style…but then you’ve got your matt gaetz types…who seem like their brand of true belief is in a system that will cover their ass as long as they shill for the requested product
…& for that layer of player…I can see serial unproductive behavior being a thing your voters would hold against you…unless they’re full boat “the government shouldn’t be able to do anything” nutters, I suppose…but for the party/mega-donor layer…I could maybe buy that even a truckload of DoA moves against biden counts as an asset…it keeps the same sets of conjoined terms in the narrative…associates biden with the same sins their boy is patently guilty of…seems to go on forever…& turns out to be nothing…so…stands to reason the same must be true of anything that sounds like the same deal with the teams on the opposite sides of the bench…the whole thing just becomes indistinguishable white noise to the people you need to keep not understanding it
…to that set the individual fate of specific congress-critters means approximately fuck all…unless you’re joe machin or some shit, I guess?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
https://apple.news/AeZH1Ume4QNWkln87cQ_ZPg
As funny as this is, the money line is here:
…I know his allegedness the defendant-in-chief wasn’t on the thing…but…I just want to say I don’t think we’ve achieved an acceptable level of dunk-age on this
…even their own voters will take “actually I don’t wanna fuck with none of these clowns” if given the chance
…we should be trying to grassroots a campaign to get them to put “none of the above” down as a write-in bid for the actual election…just a blizzard aimed at “independents” & GOP voters in those swing states
…I mean…if we were doing that then sure…the lack of dunking would be tactically sound…but…unless that’s the case we’re being distinctly irresponsible not taking the piss a great deal more than we’ve managed today…I have faith in us, though…we could rally…day’s not over?
I think the big danger to the GOP is not that their voters will choose Biden in November.
It’s more that given the choice between spending an hour on election day driving and standing in line, or going to Sam’s Club to stock up on their big sale on air filters, they’ll choose Sam’s Club. If their sister says she’s not babysitting and they have to drag the kids to the polls, do they show up? If they pulled a double shift and they have to get up early to vote, do they do it?
One of the interesting things to me is that multiple state Republican parties are struggling financially, partially due to donor fatigue, and partially due to Trump hoovering up so much money. They’re the ones who traditionally handle get out the vote operations, and it’s not clear that Trump HQ is functional enough to pick up the slack.
They need people who can rent vans to drive senior citizens to the polls, people who monitor turnout at the precinct level, and all of the other things that get the last 3% to turn out. They may still pull it together, but they’re making it a lot harder for themselves.
…you’re right…& that is the responsible thing to focus on
…but I kinda wanna clown on the whole thing being their voters finally finding their voice & clearly expressing the will of the people to be “none of you fuckers”…we can get into whether that means “give us new clowns” or “destroy the state” later…because that’s probably a wedge-issue to those people that we need to pay some attention to driving if only to try to contain the latter crowd…or better still detain
…but at heart I think there might prove to be a statistically significant incidence of people who are just wholesale dissatisfied by the inertia on things that need to be moving faster who are basically voters of desperation gullible enough to fall for the “our guy is the only champion the people have to take on the system as an avatar of our uninformed rage”…& I feel like maybe getting dunked on hard enough might burst some of those bubbles & provide a lucid moment or two
…so…it’s not a wholly irresponsible reflex…I hope?
That school shooter trial is really interesting. From the testimony, it sounds like she and her husband did a pretty poor job of giving their son the help he seemed to need and also got him a gun. So, I get it.
But at the same time, there’s already a really screwed-up climate around parenting in this country, and the idea that parents can be legally responsible for a teen’s behavior when they’re not there is … not totally reassuring. Moreover, it’s preposterous that the parents can get charged but not the people who sold the gun or the people who made the gun. Prosecuting parents might feel like justice, but it won’t actually change anything.
The gun-humpers are going to rally around this like crazy and try to get it overturned. They won’t stand for anybody being held responsible for gun violence, ever.
But you make good points. I do think, however, that failing to control a troubled teen’s behavior is somewhat different that providing said troubled teen with a murder weapon. The parents gave it to him for Christmas (which is sickening on a lot of levels). I feel like a line should be drawn there.
I’m not so sure about that. Having the parent take the blame is a lot better for the cause than anything broader, and even the gun nuttiest gun nuts don’t like having to pretend to be sad about school shootings. This way they can just write it off as bad kid, bad parents, guns still perfect and beautiful.
Oh, to be sure, the battle cry of the Responsible Gun Owner will be louder than ever.
I am trying to think about it if a teen caused death but it wasn’t via gun violence.
Like if a parent gave a teen car keys despite the teen having a suspended license or no license at all and the teen hit and killed someone, then I would go sure, the parents have some responsibility.
If the same scenario happened, but the teen had a valid license, I can’t see the courts holding parents responsible.
I think the only reason in this case the mother was found guilty is the teen had such a obvious issues and the parents ignored it, including when the school has the meeting about the drawings of the gun and not saying oh yeah hey our son actually has a gun at home and it’s not in a safe.
…I reckon it would make sense to me if a lot of it came down to that last part…like…to take your driving analogy a bit further…if they got the kid a car for their birthday…& the accident happened without the kid being under the influence or breaking traffic laws…hard to see how that’s on them
…if the kid has a bedroom covered in fast & furious style gear & constantly talks about being a streetracer…& has been caught racing illegally a few times…& they bought him a car with a roll cage & a nitrous kit…& he killed someone while braking all kinds of laws in it after they’d been told to take the keys off him on public safety grounds
…I think I’d be comfortable saying they had clear culpability?
…I think where the analogy fails for me is that there’s valid reasons for a teen to be in a car on a road…but…at least to me since I don’t really think there’s a viable argument for solving school shootings by letting kids open carry…there just isn’t any valid reason why it’d be ok for one to have a gun on campus…so by the time I stretch the metaphor to accommodate that it looks sort of…distended would be a word for it, I guess?
Oh completely agreed about no scenario where a kid needs a gun in schools.
…I guess I should qualify that statement to something along the lines of “bringing one from home”…technically at some of the schools I went to there were guns…even shooting competitions between schools sometimes
…& when the students were old enough to do the whole playing soldiers cadet corps thing…sometimes those were even versions of the gun troops actually got issued…not the automatic version…but there were teenagers who went through learning how to field strip an SA80 even years after dunblane
…so truthfully I can understand scenarios where a student might have access to a firearm on campus…but the sort that is 100% strictly overseen at all times
…the way I remember it you got a little wooden block with some holes drilled in it into which a specific number of rounds were given to you at the point you were in front of a target & almost always they had to be loaded one at a time even when the thing could theoretically have a magazine…& I don’t think even the most mal-adjusted of the kids at those schools ever seriously entertained the idea of trying to get hold of a gun to take their frustrations out with
Yeah no clue on what sorts of actual legit events a school might have.
I went to an all-girls high school. We weren’t allowed to play with weapons but we did have lots of conversations about how if the Chicks’ “Goodbye Earl” was a real scenario we’d totally help friends hide bodies.
You’re right that the facts from the case point to some real negligence on the part of the parents, so I don’t want to exclude them from blame. I am REAL curious to see if the father gets convicted too; his trial is up next!
The big thing about guns vs. basically anything else but in this example, cars, is that insurance creates other avenues of justice and culpability. Because cars are insured and regulated and there are pretty cut-and-dried laws about who can and can’t drive, when and where they can drive, street-legality of cars, etc., it provides a legal handle for a plaintiff to grab onto. Gun laws are so haphazard and piecemeal that those things don’t exist (specifically because gun makers and gun nuts do not want them to exist). I’d love cases like this to lead to the idea of gun insurance, which is a fundamental threat to the gun psychos, but it’s also why I think they’d love to cop out to “Well, THOSE parents were irresponsible, but 99.9999999% of all gun users are totally responsible…”
…assuming you took it as assumed that said insurance would be a mandatory requirement with no exceptions but presumably some variations in terms of premium:liability…so…one or two kept at a range…not a lot…several hundred crammed into every available nook & cranny of your home & vehicle(s)…ummm…fucking shitloads…like…you got a koenigsegg the day after you got your license kind of premiums…& you don’t get to take it for a spin until you can show you’re paid up to date
…pretty much everything about that hypothetical stands to reason for me?
Absolutely, you keep a gun on the range? You can have the basic plan. You keep one at home? Welp you’re gonna need the gun insurance and your homeowner’s insurance is also going up. Drive with it? That’s gonna be tacked on to your auto insurance. I guarantee there are any number of actuaries who have done some noodling on those figures and could have them ready to go within hours of legislation passing.
Also, it is just kind of a wait-say-that-again thing on American law that you can freely buy a gun for a minor in many states but buy them cigarettes or beer and you can go to jail. Hell, half the GOP states are making it considerably more illegal to get your son or daughter hormonal medical treatments than it would be to buy a gun. Talk about misunderstanding danger!
Trump has no immunity from Jan. 6 prosecution, appeals court rules
So. How will the Supremes deal with this now? Because make no mistake, if they uphold Trump’s bullshit, they rule themselves out of a job. Also everyone else in government. Will they adopt a dictatorship? I mean, normally, I’d say this is ridiculous, but with the lunatics we have now?
Poor Biden having to call off the drone strike on Trump after this ruling.
Nuke them from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure!
The agreement of Henderson is a big deal, because she’s widely seen as a very conservative judge. And the form of the ruling is said by legal types to be designed to give the Supremes an easy way to tell Trump they won’t get involved, the same way they declined to hear his appeal of Judge Chutkan’s ruling on handing over records for the classified documents case, and they didn’t back his appeals prior to January 6.
Which doesn’t mean the hacks will keep their noses clean in this case. They’re dolts who think they’re on a path from god. But they may think Trump isn’t a part of that path.
I’m “surprised” that none of those fiscally conservative Nevada conservatives are railing against wasting taxpayer money on a meaningless primary. Quelle surprise!
He is so fucked…
https://archive.li/g1107
THEY ARE STEALING OUR JOBS!!!
https://civileats.com/2024/02/07/a-new-florida-immigration-law-is-turning-farm-towns-into-ghost-towns/
This one goes to 11!
https://www.salon.com/2024/02/06/category-6-mega-hurricanes-becoming-so-strong-they-need-new-category-scientists-say/?in_brief=true
Eh, the Florida Legislature will never tackle illegal immigration. The farmers, construction, and the hotel industries are utterly dependent on cheap labor.
Problem is, nobody tells the illegals, because the legislators don’t dare to announce the fact that they’re owned by lobbyists. Rumors sweep through the illegal community and they pack up and head for Alabama to harvest crops there.
I want a hurricane named Tufnel, and I want it now.
…there was a hurricane nigel last year…which is nearly there…I forget whether they re-set each year or rotate all the way through the alphabet but it’s possible that getting to a 20th named storm in a season might be a lot less unlikely than it used to be?
…the weisselberg stuff is certainly intriguing…the guy perjured himself for his boss’ “strategy” & if he had second thoughts about being thrown under the bus & opted for the tuck & roll movie escape where it passes right over him…you’d assume there’d be tantrums…but it’s almost as though it seems like some people are prepared to take seriously the idea that it shouldn’t be considered pertinent to another case he was also deposed for on the grounds that “we already got away with that part, no taksies-backsies”…there they are all over the shop trying to delay everything in sight…& this judge delays a ruling & they’re suddenly all “no fair, this was meant to be done before that could be a factor”
…it makes me crazy how internally inconsistent…or incoherent, really…their whole stance is…when the only common threads you can sketch out that provide any logic to the thing are the sort that scream acts motivated by a consciousness of guilt that feels like it ought to be culpable in its own right?
I think it’s been true for decades for Trump that the strategy is always delay delay delay. But I think this type of thing draws into question whether that was a good strategy right now.
If he was facing a single case, I think it would make a lot more sense. But the problem with multiple cases is that the legal risks multiply, while the benefits as far milking a persecution complex are static. He’s only got one bucket, and having more cows doesn’t help.
He could rile up his base with just one prosecution, and the marginal benefits of having multiple cases don’t matter much when they’ve already bought the narrative. But being hit with multiple punches, even if they’re not knockout blows yet, takes a growing toll.
If he loses in November, I think an obvious storyline would be that he would have been a lot better cutting deals on most charges a long time ago and just having one case this year that he could demogogue over. And quite frankly, if he wins in November, he’d make up whatever damage would have been done from plea bargains anyways.
He may luck out, no question. But I think people should be aware he’s relying on luck as his strategy a lot more than he’s doing any sophisticated planning.
…it’s never really made sense to me…like you say…he could have got the same mileage out of less charges…to the point that if he hadn’t been indicted he’d have run like the failed impeachments were the same thing as being on trial…the mechanic where it benefits him is one of his go to tactics
…but…like…the classified document stuff…he could have made that go away before it ever got to a point where come-on-eileen was useful…& I can’t for the life of me figure out why he’d push it to go the way it has instead short of just the baseline compliance required to make it go away somehow filling in datapoints that fuck him…worse than that whole circus has…& it’s just a struggle to see how that could be true without it being some seedy back-handers from hostile foreign powers shit that has probably terrifying implications & could be clearly inferred based on which documents he doesn’t have any more that he shouldn’t have had to begin with?
…&…I get trying to avoid there being any verdict in the jan 6th stuff before the voting happens…but…superseding indictments are a thing…& traditionally october is surprise season…so I guess I just keep stockpiling the popcorn & hoarding the whisky…& hope there’s a grand finale that avoids the unpleasant sort of fireworks so we have a shot at a merry christmas?
Another sleazy billionaire committing tax fraud? Nooooo…
https://www.propublica.org/article/senate-probe-casts-doubt-harlan-crow-yacht-tax-deductions
And you wonder why Republicans want to defund the IRS.
…I don’t know why…but my brain went from “defund the IRS” to “defund the police” & all the ways that bit of branding got fucked up…to the military industrial cashflow component clinging on stubbornly…& got to “imagine if they took all the money spent on militarizing the police & diverted it to the IRS but that bit got grandfathered in & next time someone like fuckface von clownstick refused to surrender his books they turned up in flack jackets with a tank converted into a battering ram & bulldozed the lobby before storming the joint with a lot of embarrassed-looking accountants tooled up to the nines in tactical gear”
…I…probably just need a rest…yes…that’ll be it…I’m not cracking up…it’ll be fine…although…the accountant in the untouchables got a shotgun…so
…& now it’s not funny to me any more?
Someone on social media said Biden should get one of those giant checks for $300 billion and use it as a prop as he announces new IRS funding. And like, yeah, he really should!
These boots were made for diving?
The plan all along?
https://hartmannreport.com/p/was-the-gop-plan-all-along-to-break-d9b
…I mean…I just said upthread in a reply to bluedogcollar that there’s a layer of the GOP franchise machine that…I guess…would be like the ownership level of the team in a sports analogy…for whom it is arguably an asset to have players willing to pursue doomed stratagems over taking the points they could put on the board
…& not taking the border deal they got offered this week is a pretty glaring example of turning down exactly that kind of potential score
…you know…I am not good at sprots-anaolgy-ing…but I did not see me talking my way around to casting the dems as ted lasso trying to straight-edge his way through the machiavellian landscape of a GOP management when I got out of bed this morning?
Uh, yeah. We’ve been talking about this since the old Splinter days. The “strategy” is obvious if you just look, so while I like Hartmann, I’m not giving him credit on this one.
The problem is that the architects of the strategy are long dead, and the people that replaced them are greedy, venal morons (as opposed to Machiavellian villains). So the morons keep executing on a strategy they don’t understand. You can see a clear decline of intellect moving from Reagan through the Bush years (both of them) and culminating in Trump, who is barely functional. Ironically, I wonder if this is the direct result of the Republican assault on intellect. Morons gravitate to morons. Even the billionaire class is stupider — look at Elmo.
That actually stands in the way of a strongman. You get buffoons like Gaetz, Marge, and their ilk who believe the strongman should be them. Which leads to infighting and chaos. Without a leader, they can’t move past their own petty concerns.
That’s not good, to be sure. Chaos is never beneficial. But it’s better than having someone that’s actually got some brains running the show. If that happens, we are fucked.
KHAN: I’ve never been afraid.
KIRK: But you left at the very time mankind needed courage.
KHAN: We offered the world order!
…I dunno if it holds water…but I sometimes wonder…like…the people who went from doing the job but pushing things that way for advantage to over generational iterations…this thing we have where posturing is everything & doing the actual job is nowhere…&…at least by the looks of the thing…getting played like a fiddle by the kremlin in the bargain
…the architects of that republican project wouldn’t so much turn in their graves as spin like dynamos
…surely to them it’d just look like they straight up rolled over & volunteered to lose their precious cold war, wouldn’t it?
…& yet…that part is somehow lost on the ones claiming to be keeping their faith…like…it’s just a fucking coincidence that their talking points & russia’s map almost exactly…& tucker’s off to have a chat with vlad
…helluva bait & switch, if you ask me?
Authoritarians always want a strongman and right-wingers are more likely to submit to authority, so some of that was always in the mix. I remember how dreamy the Republicans got about their big, strong president doing big, strong things and it’s like, they’re talking about dementia-era Reagan and W clearing brush for 8 minutes that one time.
But bigger picture: What the GOP wants is so broadly unpopular that the only way they’re going to get it is through undemocratic means. If you put Roe v. Wade up to a national vote, they’re losing it. If you put IRS funding up to a national vote, they’re losing it. So how you do prevent voters getting what they want? Well, there’s really only one answer to that!
…ok…this isn’t exactly a reply to what you said…but as is so often the case in my case I had the radio on in the background so I just caught a soundbite from tucker…&…well…his pitch was basically “see, now most potential trump voters have never heard putin get to make his case for why he invaded ukraine…so it’s only fair they should get to hear it from the horse’s mouth”
…like…he used the word fair
…I…gotta stop falling back on talking about being through the looking glass like the thing hasn’t been in the rearview for fucking years at this point
…also…I may be in the market for reassurance that there’s daylight between homicidal ideation & an objective appreciation of the fact that there might be a net improvement to the state of reality if certain people didn’t form a part of it?
I referred to Rush Limbaugh’s grave as the hottest new gender-neutral bathroom in America after he died so I feel this. These are all very bad people doing really horrible damage to lots of people.
But a big part of this is they have a lockdown on their audience to the point where something being a “fact” isn’t even part of the equation. Since we’re more afraid of China now, it’s fine to back Putin, and hey, he doesn’t have to worry about pesky democracy, isn’t that great?