#Biden’s team of losers

[commonsensecommentary]

The Formula for Biden’s presidency: Extremism + Incompetence = Disaster. The truly frightening aspect of this is that Joe Biden and his Team of Losers think they are doing a great job. The incredible arrogance of stupidity is on full display every day.

[odinsblog]

Imagine being the loser ass tool, Yisha Raziel, who made a deepfake of Bella Hadid saying she supports Israel. 🤮

If you’re reading this, I am telling you right now, you better second and third guess what you see and hear on social media and the news. Stick to reliable news sources. Vet them. Require multiple, trusted sources. Validate links to sources. In the last several months, I’ve seen the deepfake of President Nixon talking about the failed NASA mission that never happened. I’ve seen a deepfake of Joe Biden hilariously using profanity to trash talk Trump - Biden’s deepfake, however, was made to be intentionally obvious that it wasn’t his words, or something he would actually say.

But imagine a viral deepfake video of Biden announcing a nuclear strike on Russia within the next 20 minutes? Or a deepfake of Biden reintroducing the draft to support Israel? Or a deepfake of Biden withdrawing from the 2024 election and endorsing Trump…

These kinds of things are going to begin happening a lot more, especially with the proliferation of troll farms, and especially since YouTube, Twitter (I refuse to call it X), and Facebook have all eviscerated their verification and factcheck teams that used to at least attempt to limit disinformation and misinformation.

Pay attention, peeps.

Don’t get bamboozled.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

In March, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s colleagues laughed as the California Republican mocked President Joe Biden’s age, saying he would bring Biden “soft food” so they could negotiate over the debt ceiling.

But McCarthy apparently did not bring Biden anything to eat during their talks, and the President chewed up the GOP’s debt limit proposal instead. Republicans aren’t laughing anymore.

“Republicans got outsmarted by a President who can’t find his pants,” Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) tweeted on Tuesday, making clear she opposed the compromise legislation that came out of Biden and McCarthy’s negotiations.

Biden, 80, is the oldest person to serve as President of the U.S., and his age and alleged senility have been a constant focus of Republicans and right-wing commentators, despite assurances from his doctors that there’s nothing wrong with his mind. Polls have also shown that voters have concerns about Biden’s age.

During the debt limit standoff, McCarthy repeatedly said that by refusing to negotiate with Republicans, Biden was “bumbling” the U.S. toward a potentially catastrophic default. Even some Democrats criticized the President for not publicly engaging as much as McCarthy has in recent weeks. But as of Wednesday, default seemed unlikely, and the outlines of the deal appeared favorable to Democrats.

Asked if Biden had gotten the better of McCarthy, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), replied, “Yeah, I think that’s a fair assumption.”

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), meanwhile, said he believed McCarthy had simply been “misled.” He didn’t say by whom.

Even McCarthy conceded that he had been impressed with Biden’s negotiating team during the talks, calling them “very professional, very smart” and “very tough at the same time.”

But the Speaker has denied that he was outsmarted, touting the bill’s reductions to government spending and stricter “work requirements” for federal food benefits that Democrats opposed. The legislation would reduce the deficit by $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years, in large part due to cuts to non-defense programs, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

“How were we outsmarted? The largest cut in the history of Congress. The biggest ability to pull money back,” McCarthy told ABC News on Tuesday. “We’ve got work requirements for welfare where the Democrats said was a red line.”

Still, Biden got plenty of wins in the bill, which cuts federal spending far less than Republicans initially hoped. And in a twist, the CBO said the work requirements won’t reduce spending or enrollment in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

The program supports 20 million households and already limits benefits for unemployed adults without children or disabilities who are between the ages of 18 and 49, unless they work or perform some other qualifying activity for 20 hours a week. Republicans proposed expanding the work requirement to people in their early 50s, as well as restricting states’ discretion to exempt some recipients. The CBO estimated the Republican proposal would have saved $11 billion and reduced SNAP enrollment by 275,000.

Biden signaled early on that he was open to stricter work requirements for SNAP, just not “anything of any consequence” — a statement that drew mocking laughter from McCarthy and his colleagues as someone, apparently a lawmaker behind the Speaker, shouted, “Loser!”

Sure enough, Biden agreed to expand SNAP’s work rules to people as old as 54 — but the White House also won changes that render the net impact of the bill inconsequential, at least from a budget perspective. The CBO said that, thanks to brand-new work requirement exemptions for veterans and homeless people, the bill would actually increase SNAP enrollment by a small amount and boost federal spending by $2 billion.

The analysis was not a surprise to the White House; a senior administration official said Sunday that “we expect that the number of people subject to SNAP work requirements will stay roughly the same under this agreement.”

The deal also preserves key Democratic priorities like student loan debt relief, climate change funding, and the bulk of investments aimed at making sure the wealthy pay their taxes.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) likened the bill to a “shit sandwich” that Republicans would have to eat — a sentiment shared by other Republicans planning to support the bill in a vote on Wednesday.

That doesn’t mean Democrats don’t have concerns about the legislation. Progressives, in particular, are furious that Biden was forced to negotiate over the debt limit at all, warning that he set a precedent Republicans will exploit time and time again if the debt limit isn’t abolished.

“It rewards the hostage-taking that the Republicans have gotten so damn good at,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said Tuesday.

Still, Democrats maintain the GOP has underestimated Biden at every turn, pointing to his many legislative accomplishments in the last Congress, including bipartisan investments in infrastructure and semiconductor research, and his signing of a historic climate change bill.

“If you haven’t figured out by now that our president is in the top 1% of negotiators, you haven’t been paying attention the last two and a half years,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told HuffPost.

[kineticpenguin]

My mom watches a lot of MSNBC, and I can't help but notice it's heavy on Trump coverage. Well, the word "coverage" is doing some heavy lifting there: there isn't a whole lot of Trump news, so a lot of it is just having talking heads on to discuss and speculate on all things Trump, up to and including how bad it'd be if he got re-elected.

I get why liberals, especially boomer libs, tend to be all "vote blue no matter who." They're terrified of Trump and bingeing MSNBC is their version of doomscrolling. People talk about January 6th but Trump has been these people's bogeyman since November 8th 2016, oozing right past norms like an orange T-1000.

"Wait, he can just do that?"

But I honestly think the best case scenario for the Democrats would be Trump getting the nomination. He doesn't have Bannon to do his campaign strategizing for him, and his ability to campaign much at all might be curtailed by however his court battles shake out. Anyone who's ever worked for him with a shred of competence has either gone to jail as a result, had a complete falling out with him, and/or has published tell-all books about their time under him. His cult following is weird and loyal, but it's worth remembering that the dude has never won the popular vote, and he doesn't have the sort of strategists around who know where and how to game the election to finagle him an electoral college win like he did in 2016.

The second-best thing to a Trump nomination that could happen to the Biden campaign would be Biden finally going into the light, letting Harris coast in on the sympathy vote. I'd be more concerned about the B team.

Everyone likes to joke about the current band of losers in the Republican debates, "vying for which one of them won't be President." But just as none of them seem able to wrestle the Republican base out of Trump's grasp, none of them scare the normal people the way Trump does. Biden squandering political capital to be Bibi's Best Buddy would cost him a lot more against these guys. Scared voters "vote blue no matter who." Disgruntled and apathetic voters stay home.

The Lincoln Project/NeverTrumper types would happily go for a "normal" Republican like Christie. Their issues with Trump (and Trump wannabes like Desantis and Ramaswamy) are all about style, not substance. They'll happily back any Heritage Foundation stooge that knows how to act. This also means people with administration experience, subject matter expertise, y'know, competence, will go back to working to put these guys in office.

Also, frankly, Trump is a 77 year old man with a hot dog addiction. There's a nonzero chance he could just kick the bucket, forcing his legion of dipshits to settle down and fall in line behind just about any of these guys.

[anthonybialy]

Iran As Bad At Attacking Israel As Anything Else

Iran just sent its economy to be destroyed.  They didn’t set anything aside to have their twisted version of fun next weekend.  The living medieval museum spent 87 percent of its GDP on drones that turned into an Israeli fireworks show.  The one Middle Eastern country you’d choose to live in is resented by everyone around it for ruining the grade curve.

The Persian Empire’s remnants still have their weeds.  But they won’t sell for much.  Geopolitical experts debate whether brilliant mullahs knew their allegedly noble flying armada would be destroyed or thought they’d destroy what they aimed to hit, which you may recognize as the Middle East’s only functioning spot.  Israel sighs as it defends the neighborhood’s societal outpost yet again.

Iran is a Batman villain without the character.  Caricatured reprobates can’t even seem compelling as they spread chaos.  A rabid all-time dastard certainly isn’t going to generate something useful.  But they sure will try to wreck the output of those not residing in the Third or Fourth World.  True professional deadbeats are so jealous of the productive that they will set out to destroy them so everyone’s equally miserable.  At least we know why liberals sympathize with them.  

Even remedial countries know Israel makes sure attacks more than even out.  

So, who would be dim enough to strike first?  Iran raises its hand.  A place which hasn’t discovered civilization lacks the impulse control to foresee consequences.  It’s easy to see why they’re on eternal probation unless you’re them.  The Carl Showalters of the world don’t think ahead about their assaults.  If they did, they’d be able to create a nation that offered more than sand and terror as exports.

Ungrateful Westerners who romanticize brutes enable gall.  A nation that’s primitive for the ninth century didn’t learn their lesson.  Or, they did in the same sense that unpunished bullies continue to operate wedgie rackets.  Moronic hooligans still possess the instinct to learn they can get away with lashing out if teachers are negligent.

The UN is rushing to vote to blame Israel for getting in the way of Iran’s drones.  Our globe features a forum for recognizing commonalities.  Unfortunately, that often means anti-Semitism given the frequent appalling tendencies of many members of our species.  Gathering everyone together to talk out problems is counterproductive when there are so many awful idiots.

An assembly of Borats knows who’s the cause of every planetary ill.  They just know that there would be no more warfare, poverty, or mosquito bites if a sliver of a country with a legislature and pride parades no longer had the nerve to guard from bloodthirsty pillagers.

Losers blaming Jews for their failures is not just for disheartening Twitter replies.  The oldest prejudice is popular amongst shrieking hateful lunatics who run entire countries.  To be fair, they’re not good countries.  Iran is Earth’s Limp Bizkit.

The barbarian state’s enablers enjoy a weekend packed with even more fun than class warfare.  Iran’s BFF Barack Obama struggles to not refer to Iran’s meagerly diabolical barrage as second Christmas.  Ben Rhodes thinks missile footage is NSFW.  And Tommy Vietor has never been happier to have gotten the most undeserving promotion from van driver.

Humans who aren’t arrogant in decline are left pondering how life got this dangerous while ducking for cover.  The question of whether the Party of Biden enabled Iran deliberately out of contempt for all things decent or were legitimately daft remains unanswered.  As is often the case with Democratic devastation, the rotten result of believing they could befriend an asylum with an Olympic team is the same either way.

Flaccid appeasement doesn’t stop unprovoked attacks as well as expected.  Fake tough guys are truly easy to spot.  Look at this dump since this White House strolled into power for countless examples of disregarded orders.  Iran stopped listening to Joe Biden commanding “Don’t” halfway through the word.  Edgar Wright knew it was a joke.

The incumbent laments not increasing Iran’s allowance.  Stingy American taxpayers could’ve turned Iran into New Eden if they allowed Obama to send a second pallet of cash, but they were such babies about dropping off one.  The Islamic Republic’s centrifuges would be used as ice cream churns today if we had just heeded the gentle wisdom of Marie Harf.

Bribery always works, according to those who dole it without funding it.  The same people who think printing money is about to make everyone rich believe hush money will turn goons into pals.  The good news about inflation is that it devalued Iran’s kitty.

It’s easy to guess who started this again.  Craven fiends who attacked a music festival have an ideological ally in a nation sending missiles at the not very precise target of a whole country.  The intended ground zero will righteously preserve itself for the crime of existing even as they’re condemned for it.

The good guys have never been easier to identify, which confuses those who claim they’re anti-fascist because they torched cities with their faces concealed.  Comparing themselves to D-Day liberators is a typically pompous notion by those condemning Israel for responding.  Getting attacked by the wicked for the being decent is as predictable as anti-Semitism.  There’s no greater test of faith than doing what’s right in a very wrong world.

[humanjeff]

oh you have got to be kidding me

At 2:36 on Monday morning, James Musk sent an urgent message to Twitter engineers. “We are debugging an issue with engagement across the platform,” wrote Musk, a cousin of the Twitter CEO, tagging “@here” in Slack to ensure that anyone online would see it. “Any people who can make dashboards and write software please can you help solve this problem. This is high urgency. If you are willing to help out please thumbs up this post.” When bleary-eyed engineers began to log on to their laptops, the nature of the emergency became clear: Elon Musk’s tweet about the Super Bowl got less engagement than President Joe Biden’s. Biden’s tweet, in which he said he would be supporting his wife in rooting for the Philadelphia Eagles, generated nearly 29 million impressions. Musk, who also tweeted his support for the Eagles, generated a little more than 9.1 million impressions before deleting the tweet in apparent frustration. In the wake of those losses — the Eagles to the Kansas City Chiefs, and Musk to the president of the United States — Twitter’s CEO flew his private jet back to the Bay Area on Sunday night to demand answers from his team. Within a day, the consequences of that meeting would reverberate around the world, as Twitter users opened the app to find that Musk’s posts overwhelmed their ranked timeline. This was no accident, Platformer can confirm: after Musk threatened to fire his remaining engineers, they built a system designed to ensure that Musk — and Musk alone — benefits from previously unheard-of promotion of his tweets to the entire user base.

fucking INCREDIBLE

By Monday afternoon, “the problem” had been “fixed.” Twitter deployed code to automatically “greenlight” all of Musk’s tweets, meaning his tweets will bypass Twitter’s filters designed to show people the best content possible. The algorithm now artificially boosted Musk’s tweets by a factor of 1,000 – a constant score that ensured his tweets rank higher than anyone else’s in the feed.

this guy is the saddest loser in all of human history

[eltristan]

The oddest thing about the Republican Party and their response across all channels to the SOTU (last night) is how Republicans suddenly care so much about Haiti... About how sleepy Joe needs to "look to Haiti" (most common n-gram)... (Context: Haiti 🇭🇹 is currently an incredibly violent place with armed gangs engaging in a civil war to overthrow the PM -- who isn't in Haiti at the moment -- currently much of the fighting is their attempt to take Port-au-Prince's Toussaint Louverture International Airport.)

iirc the last time the most Russia-aligned political party used "Look to ———" as a talking point, it was "Look to Libya" 🇱🇾 in the 3 months prior to the Benghazi attacks, after Republicans uniformly decried Obama's use of military force in Libya as "an affront to our constitution" (another n-gram).

Earlier this week Biden slipped additional USMC MSCEG into Haiti, including FAST (Fleet Anti-terrorism Security Teams), without telling anyone or making a fuss about it -- or at least Republicans haven't gotten the memo. Expect a Haitian Benghazi-attempt in 3 months, approximately July 4th - August 8th.

While it seems to have been an attempt, Benghazi itself didn't derail Obama's reelection in 2012 (but it kept Republicans distracted and busy for a while). People forget that the future #45 was a presidential candidate for the 2012 elections, using the slogan MAG "Make America Great" (reused in 2016 as MAGA), but that he dropped out (Loser) ...to Mitt Romney! If you look at what Republicans were most mad about, about Benghazi, it's about the purported cover-up and how the attack didn't affect the US election that year!

But the timing and effort that were put in to embarrass the then-Secretary-of-State over Benghazi, at the time maybe paid off and ultimately it was used to great effect in the 2016 election against Hilary Clinton. Current Sec-State is Antony Blinken (who would make an outstanding president), fwiw. (Expect to see Haiti resurface in 2028)

[jerseydeanne]

"The United States Government has admitted to taking Trump’s attorney-client privileged documents in its sloppy raid." Holy shit! Just let the Muller team do their job. Just let the FBI do their job. That's why the old good Rep. party are a one big LOSER! Lets play nice. Lets not angry Dems. The Trump base won't come out in November if the Reps continue play nice. They must fight back. That's how you win!

The people are willing to fight! RINOS be damned!

Trump base is fired up and ready to go!

Democrats and RINOS are commie bastards! Is this how you want to live?

Do you want wokeness (marxism) to win? Hell, no!

We need every freedom-loving person on the planet to rise up and tell them to go straight to hell!

When Trump /Zelensky's perfect talk happened, they tried to impeach the president for being political, yet they did the same thing to Trump.

Biden has got to go!

Thank you, Anon 😜💋🤟🏻

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Rob Rogers @newcounterpoint :: @Rob_Rogers

* * * *

McCarthy's sham impeachment inquiry.

September 13, 2023

ROBERT B. HUBBELL

Speaker Kevin McCarthy has surrendered to pressure from the extremist elements in his extremist party by opening an impeachment inquiry. The inquiry will turn out worse for Kevin McCarthy than for Joe Biden—much! But in the meantime, Republicans will divert the attention of Congress from the urgent work of passing a budget for the 2023-24 fiscal year. The losers will be the American people, who should punish the GOP for converting a constitutional safeguard into a partisan party trick designed to pacify the tantrums of the so-called “Freedom” Caucus.

          The inquiry is part of Trump's effort to destroy every institution that has attempted to hold him accountable for his crimes. “Impeach me? I’ll impeach you! Indict me? I’ll indict you!” The inquiry is a charade that will further erode the legitimacy of the Republican Party and—sadly—Congress.

          There is no basis for the impeachment inquiry, a fact made plain by McCarthy’s announcement on Twitter. McCarthy could not bring himself to say that there was a factual basis for the inquiry, only that there were “allegations” of misconduct. McCarthy posted:

I am directing our House committees to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. Over the past several months, House Republicans have uncovered serious and credible allegations into President Biden’s conduct—a culture of corruption.

          McCarthy did not specify the “serious and credible” allegations because they are whisps of swamp gas swirling over the MAGA cesspool of disinformation. Senate Republicans were openly scornful of the inquiry by their House colleagues. See The Hill,  Senate GOP unhappy with McCarthy on impeachment inquiry: ‘It’s a fool’s errand’. Per The Hill,

“It’s a waste of time. It’s a fool’s errand,” one Senate Republican said on the condition of anonymity to speak freely and critically about the politically charged decision. Asked if there’s enough evidence to impeach Biden, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), a member of the Senate GOP leadership team, replied: “I do not.”  

          Democrats were a bit more expressive about the inquiry. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said that it is an “illegitimate impeachment inquiry that is a kangaroo court, fishing expedition, and conspiracy theater, rolled into one.” Indeed, Democrats believe the inquiry will damage GOP prospects for retaining control of the House in 2024. Per Politico,

Abby Curran, the executive director of House Democrats’ super PAC, said the inquiry would "doom" vulnerable Republicans, especially the 18 members in districts won by President Joe Biden.

          As Trump has done repeatedly over the last seven years, he is leading the Republican Party into a lose-lose position in the pursuit of revenge. Indeed, Trump is privately pulling the strings of the GOP’s impeachment show. See Politico, Trump privately discussed Biden impeachment with House GOPers. Trump's ego may be satisfied by a Biden impeachment, but the effort will ensure that Republicans lose control of the House. When will Republicans learn that Trump is the slow poison that is killing their party?

          It is, of course, frustrating to the point of madness to watch Republicans engage in political terrorism. But there is a cost to their self-destructive behavior. The ruling in Dobbs is an example. Within months of the ruling, the warning signs were flashing bright red, signaling that Republicans had incurred the wrath of most Americans by overruling Dobbs.

          But Republicans could not restrain themselves after Dobbs. Rather than regulate abortion, they criminalized it. They threatened to jail doctors and Uber drivers who assisted women seeking medical care. They offered bounties for reporting medical workers who provide healthcare to women who miscarry. And now they are threatening to make it illegal for women to travel out of their home state to receive reproductive healthcare. See Vox, The unconstitutional plan to trap women who need an abortion in Texas.

          Although abortion is effectively illegal in two dozen states, the tide has turned. Republicans are on the defensive and are scrambling to find a way to avoid the proliferation of absolute bans that ensure their ultimate demise. Indeed, they now see a national 15-week ban as a face-saving “middle ground” that will stop their election losses. All of this is explained convincingly by Josh Marshall in Talking Points Memo, The End of the Pro-Life Movement. Per Marshall,

While abortion rights remain more restricted and endangered than at any time in the last half century, the “pro-life” movement itself is essentially over. It’s future is as a rearguard action, using inertia, incumbency and legislative chicanery to hold on to existing gains.

          So, too, with the endless pursuit of Biden-crime-family fantasies and the use of Congress and the Constitution as cudgels to bash those who offend Trump. The impeachment inquiry of Biden will fail and backfire—and Republicans know it. But they can’t help themselves. Such compulsive behavior is a disease that is consuming the Republican Party—and the vector is Donald Trump.

A quick note on the procedural aspects of the impeachment inquiry.

         Kevin McCarthy could have begun an impeachment inquiry by holding a vote in the House. He did not. Instead, he merely “declared” the opening of an inquiry without a vote—because he knew that he did not have enough votes for that motion to pass. See The Hill, Why McCarthy launched an impeachment inquiry without a vote — and why he can.

          Because McCarthy was forced to proceed without a vote authorizing the inquiry, any subpoenas issued by the House have no compulsory effect. See Politico, How Donald Trump’s DOJ gave Biden a major assist in the coming impeachment probe.

          Per Politico,

In January 2020, the Donald Trump-led Justice Department formally declared that impeachment inquiries by the House are invalid unless the chamber takes formal votes to authorize them. That opinion — issued by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel — came in response to then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision to launch an impeachment inquiry into Trump without initially holding a vote for it. Not only is it still on the books, it is binding on the current administration as it responds to Tuesday’s announcement by Speaker Kevin McCarthy to authorize an impeachment inquiry into Biden, again without a vote.

          So, for those worried about the impeachment inquiry resulting in enforceable subpoenas for documents and testimony, the opinion by the Office of Legal Counsel in the Trump-era DOJ definitively establishes DOJ policy that such subpoenas are not enforceable. The lack of enforcement authority demonstrates that the inquiry is a sham designed to placate the most extreme elements in the Freedom Caucus.

[orthopoogle]

"the average leftist" as you so eloquently put, has "a variety of self-admitted mental health problems". This is exclusive to just Leftists? I know a lot of Trumpers who are overly concerned about CRT which is taught in College, overly concerned about what certain books contain, which is not forced on children, and lastly, overly concerned about Professional Sports teams changing their names, and lastly, overly concerned about Food Companies changing their brand names. Liberals have been targeted for these changes. If one would look at the makeup of the Board of Directors in these Sports Franchises and the Companies who have changed these names I wonder just how many Right Wing Conservatives there are? These Far Right entities have their own mental health problems. Especially true because they are following the likes of a Loser, Narcissistic Ex-President who continues to spew the Big Lie about just so he can beg for more money! Trump goes to Ohio to tell yet another lie blaming the derailment on the Biden Administration when in fact he rolled back safety regulations at the behest of the Railroad. He shows up with bottles of water, cleaning supplies, and hats. Not solutions. Oh, and he says if he was in charge none of this would have happened. Look at the statistics over the last ten years on derailments. That's enough to show you that during his administration nothing he did stopped it! You all make me sick. Trump is in it for himself not you. You and many others have a Right Wing mental disorder.

I don’t like Trump, so I’m not reading all this. Hope you feel better or whatever, though!

[crvvys]

I’m late but I just watched the LSU v Iowa game…Jill Biden did we watch the same game? lol how are you gonna sit up there with good seats and say the losers played a good game? I’d say Caitlin Clark played a good game lmao. bc without her the points slowed by quite a bit and that’s probably why two of their players fouled out bc they had no depth to their bench. LSU’s team contributed as a whole with what 29+ points from the bench? and overall were the way better team like?? American sports and a good chunk of American attitude is about being winners and the best but when white people aren’t, we have to pat them on the back and remind them they’re good too even when they’re losers. aight lmao.

[mariacallous]

As in all the best horror movies, at first glance everything looks normal. It’s a classic scene of the American autumn: campaign rallies outside community centres, battle buses emblazoned with candidates’ smiling faces, kids wearing badges and holding up signs, while TV screens fill with debates, punditry and an endless loop of focus-grouped ads. Even the predicted outcome of Tuesday’s US midterm elections fits a template as familiar as falling leaves. Most experts agree that the Democrats will take a hit, losing control of at least one or perhaps both chambers of Congress, because they are the incumbent party – and incumbent parties almost always suffer in midterm – and because times are unusually tough. Inflation, interest rates, petrol prices, fear of crime: they’re all up. Couple that with a president set to turn 80 this month whose approval ratings have often plumbed the depths, and all the elements are in place for the Democrats to take a midterm beating, losing ground even in states they once counted as solidly their own.

But look closer and you see something else. Because next week’s results will decide more than just whether the red team or the blue team takes control of the House of Representatives and the Senate, on which hangs Joe Biden’s ability to get things done. Next week’s elections will also help determine whether, and for how much longer, the US will remain a genuine democracy.

It sounds hyperbolic and that, too, is an American tradition. Candidates always tell the crowds, “This is the most important election of my lifetime” and plenty will have heard Biden’s warning, delivered on Wednesday, that democracy itself is on the ballot in that same spirit. They will have assumed that when the president said, “In our bones, we know democracy is at risk” it was so much campaign talk. But Biden was scarcely exaggerating.

More than 370 Republican candidates for some of America’s highest offices have joined Donald Trump in his big lie of election denial, either casting doubt on or wholly rejecting the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential result. That means a majority of Republicans running for those key positions refuse democracy’s most basic act: accepting the verdict of the voters.

It’s comforting to pretend they’re doing it solely to soothe Trump’s ego, to avoid angering him by conceding that the ex-president lost to Biden fair and square. Keeping Trump sweet is a necessary tactic in a Republican party where he remains the dominant figure, reportedly set to launch another presidential bid later this month, whose endorsement or disapproval is enough to make or break a career. But Republicans’ election denialism is not confined to the past; it applies to the future, too. Several of the party’s candidates have refused to say that they will accept the outcome of Tuesday’s vote should they lose. “I’m going to win the election, and I will accept that result,” is how Kari Lake, would-be governor of Arizona, puts it. Some might spin that as mere election eve bullishness, but without losers’ consent democracy cannot function.

More sinister still, several of these democracy deniers are running for the very state-level posts that will oversee and certify future elections, including the presidential contest of 2024. And they are brazen in their admission that they will abuse the powers of those offices to boost their side and shut out their opponents. “Republicans will never lose another election in Wisconsin after I’m elected governor,” is the promise of one Tim Michels, who seeks to lead that state – and it was not a promise that he would be popular. It’s worth recalling that it was in Wisconsin two years ago that a group of Republican office holders moved to ignore the democratic choice of that state’s voters, who had backed Biden, and instead declare Wisconsin for Trump in the electoral college. If they were to try that trick again in 2024, they might have an ally in the governor’s mansion.

If all of this seems too abstract, consider the Republicans’ new attitude to political violence. Once it would have been a matter of bland consensus that no political objective should ever be secured by brute force. But only a handful of Republicans could bring themselves to hold even that fundamental position following the storming of Capitol Hill and the attempted insurrection of 6 January 2021. The rest refused to vote for the impeachment of Trump for his role in fomenting that violence and, if they condemned the rioters themselves, it was usually in terms qualified and mealy-mouthed.

We’ve seen it again in the last week, after the vicious assault in his home of the 82-year-old husband of House speaker Nancy Pelosi. Paul Pelosi had his skull fractured with a hammer, the alleged assailant a man whose head had been filled with far-right shibboleths including the supposedly stolen election of 2020. And yet the likes of Lake saw the attack as a laughing matter, while other Republicans (and their ally Elon Musk) concocted or spread conspiracy theories that cast doubt on the attack. This in an era when recorded threats against members of Congress rose tenfold in the five years after Trump was elected in 2016.

The Republican party’s shift away from democratic norms is no longer confined to one man, even if he embodies it and accelerates it. It is embedded in the ethos of the party now. Reversing that trend is a daunting prospect because of another shift, one that has been apparent for a while but which is taking especially vivid form in these midterm elections. It is the polarisation of information, so that Americans now exist in two distinct spheres of knowledge, each one barely touching the other.

I witnessed it for myself this week, as I covered an especially intense senate race in Georgia. News came that, in a previous age, would have been devastating for a candidate. A second woman stepped forward to say, on camera, that the staunchly anti-abortion Republican Herschel Walker had pressured her to have an abortion and had paid for it. Yet when I put that news to Republicans gathering at a Walker rally in Madison, not one of them was fazed by it. They just assumed it was the false concoction of the “mainstream media”.

This poses its own danger for democracy. Because there can be no collective decision-making – which is what democracy amounts to – without a collective, agreed-upon basis of facts. If we can’t first agree that the house is on fire, we can’t begin to talk about putting out the flames.

Whatever the outcome on Tuesday and in the long days of counting that may follow, this is a moment of peril for the United States. The world’s most powerful democracy is losing the reflexes and habits that make democracy possible. And, as in all the most terrifying horror movies, the threat is coming from inside the house.

[bllsbailey]

Liz Cheney Needs a Political Intervention

There needs to be a political intervention for former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY). The former congresswoman who set her public career ablaze by trying to take on Donald Trump has returned like crabgrass to weigh in on the Supreme Court hearing arguments on presidential immunity from former President Donald Trump’s legal team. This decision is bound to delay Special Counsel Jack Smith’s election interference and mishandling of classified document trials against Trump. It’s a win for Trump, so Liz Cheney is beside herself.  

The Wyoming Republican declared she would do everything to prevent Trump from becoming president again. She’s failing miserably in accomplishing that goal since the GOP base wants Trump, and he has the primary wins to show for it.

“Delaying the January 6 trial suppresses critical evidence that Americans deserve to hear. Donald Trump attempted to overturn an election and seize power,” Cheney wrote on Twitter. “Our justice system must be able to bring him to trial before the next election. SCOTUS should decide this case promptly.” 

That’s not your call, lady. Who the hell do you think you are besides some loser Republican who got booted from a deep red state? You must be exceptionally inept at your job to lose Wyoming’s congressional seat as a Republican. Cheney managed to do that, getting blown out by Rep. Harriet Baldwin. And like all these anti-Trump Republicans, Cheney tried to get Democrats to switch parties to save her when she knew the end was near.  

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Cheney went full Biden with this tweet. The president is reportedly infuriated with Attorney General Merrick Garland for moving too slowly on the Trump investigations, angered that he can’t use the trial or a possible conviction for his political gain. It’s proof that Biden wanted his DOJ to go after his enemies. Yet, Lizzy is huffy over the Supreme Court doing its job because it would mean the J6 trial is delayed. 

The Court doesn’t care about your tweet, Liz. They will move at whatever pace they deem appropriate. Also, not that it needs to be said, but January 6 wasn’t an armed rebellion or a coup. Trump didn’t try to seize bath salts. It was years ago, everyone. Go outside and touch the grass. 

[ladyscroogeblr]

Trump,

Trump is nothing compared to our President Joe Biden! Trump wss the worst president, ever! He has no idea what he was doing, most of the time! Trump was clueless how are government ran! Still doesn't! Handled the covid pandemic by pretty much ignoring it except when he told people to inject bleach into their bodies! Never cleaned the swamp! Watched tv, usually 8 hours a day! Wanted to get the US out of NATO! He lost the most jobs as president since Hoover! Trump is stupid. A very bad business man! Tried to run the presidency like a business. Made over a billion as President! He paid more taxes in China then here! Refused to released his taxes. Cheated on his taxes. He looks and acts like he cognitivity is gone down hill! Can't remember what city he is in. A lot of times he babbles about things we have no idea what he's talking about! Gets Nancy Pelosi and Nikki Haley confused! Says Obama is the current president more then once! Said he ran against Hilary and Obama in 2016! Keeps saying Biden is the most corrupt president ever when he actually was! Most world leaders hated Trump and laughed at him and the United States when he was in office! Is a convicted sex offender. Has 91 criminal indictments against him! Is unhealthy! Knows the McDonald's menu then the employees! Eats unhealthy all the time! Says he looks better then Biden! Doesn't exercise because he believes it wears down the body! He worst excuse I've ever heard not to exercise! Most people who worked in the White House could not believe how stupid is was! Trumps says he was everyone's favorite president! Doesn't like soldiers who end up as prisons of war! He calls them losers! Especially John McCain who was a prison of war for 6 and a half years! He's he's head of the MAGA Republicans! Has Mike Johnson eating out if his hand! Tried to sensor Jimmy Kimmel because was telling jokes abouthim! Trump his a bully! An insecure brat! A whiner! Every other word out of his mouth is a lie! Never pays his bills. Brained washed Michael Cohen! Has hired the worse lawyers on the planet! Truth Social is a big joke! He said it would over take Twitter! Buried 1st wife Ivana on his New Jersey golf course to get a tax break! Her grave site is totally neglected! If he could and get a way with it, he'd have sex with daughter Ivanka! Trump is a pervert! A fascist! A bigot! A racist! Arrogant! Pathetic! Disgusting! Unhinged! Still says the the 2020 election was rigged! Trump is head of his own cult! Has cheated on all his wives! Had sex with a poor star he tried to pay off without anyone knowing! Treats Don Jr and Eric badly! Both are pretty stupid! Jr acts like is on drugs! Trump loves Fox News! Loves diet Coke! Sold tons or President documents after he left office. Keep most of TBE documents at Mar a Lago.. Pictures have shown the documents where in the Ballroom and a bathroom for example! He said he took them because he wanted to and said he has presidential immunity! No he does and no president has! The judge head if this case is a hard core Trumpster! This case might not making to count until after 2024 election! Doesn't read. Never has released his school records. Is not religious even though A lot of religious people say he is! The guy us Satan! Played down how serious his covid case was! Wears orange make up which makes him look like a clown! Trashed NFL players for taking A knee during the National anthem! Tried to get involved with this matter with the NFL! Didn't like it either when the NBA and MLB did it! Back in the day he tried to buy the Buffalo Bills. Couldn't do it when he could not get a bank loan! Hated when sports teams won championships and refused to go the White House! Hated his vice president Mike Pence. More later!

[arpov-blog-blog]

..."If you believe the polls, Biden is not just losing but is in arguably the worst position of any incumbent seeking reelection in the modern era. To turn it around, the president and his campaign team must recapture the “resistance” zeitgeist of 2017, link Trump to the violent extremists in his coterie, lay out exactly what dangers he poses to the United States, and advance a coherent vision of what Democrats plan to do with their power if Biden is reelected.

For the two years following Trump’s election in 2016, Democrats were unified in an almost unprecedented fashion. Despite all the social media dunking on “the resistance,” the reality is that, for a time, even rank-and-file Democrats who rarely turn out for anything but elections were enlisted in a whole-party effort to thwart the Trump administration’s designs. The Trump administration did everything it could to boost this mobilization effort, with a seemingly never-ending string of outrages and policy assaults throughout 2017, including the so-called Muslim ban in January, the firing of��FBI Director James Comey, the ham-fisted and doomed effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Trump’s juvenile nuclear brinkmanship with Kim Jong-un, and more.

That fighting spirit and cross-coalition camaraderie will be hard but not impossible to recapture. To do so, potential defectors from Biden, as well as first-time voters for whom this is all ancient history, need not be bludgeoned with the past but rather asked to viscerally inhabit the consequences of a Trump victory. That also means facing a cold reality: Jan. 6 won’t cut it. The insurrection’s political utility for Democrats has been exhausted. While convictions of Trump in the Jack Smith–led trial could conceivably change some minds, no amount of rehashing the day’s events or Trump’s role in them is going to meaningfully move the political needle.

Biden’s speech on the anniversary of Jan. 6 was a good example of rhetoric that the president and his allies need to leave behind. It was mostly a greatest-hits album of things that Biden has hit Trump with a thousand times: about not just the insurrection, but calling fallen veterans “losers and suckers” and promising to suspend the Constitution. He talked about how Trump won’t accept the results of the 2024 election. And all of these things are true, but they are priced in. Is there anyone out there who thinks Trump will give a gracious concession speech on election night and call for unity like a normal person?

Voters need to hear less about Jan. 6 and more about how Trump plans to deform the government he hopes to once again lead. People need to be scared by new threats Trump guarantees and by ways that American lives will be made materially worse by a second Trump term. I’m thinking about something like a two-minute prime-time ad that narrates the second Trump administration from a year or two in the future. What is it that we think he will do with his first year in office?

If we believe the far right’s Project 2025, there are plenty of horrifying answers to choose from. The first is the broad-daylight scheme to use the Insurrection Act to put down any post-election protest and dissent across the United States and to deploy the U.S. military to the cities Trump routinely disparages as crime-ridden hellholes. Biden mentioned it briefly in his Jan. 6 address, but this authoritarian impulse needs to be front and center. The First Amendment right to peaceably assemble and protest will be erased. The Biden campaign also needs not just to highlight Trump’s worsening rhetoric about how he will “root out” people on the left who “live like vermin within the confines of our country” but to treat it like a promise—and convince Democrats that cherished rights are at stake.

And there’s one cherished, already decimated right that Biden must repeatedly tie inextricably to Trump: the right to abortion and contraception. As Jill Filipovic wrote in Slate this week, the president needs to make Trump’s reelection synonymous with the ongoing threat to destroy what remains of reproductive rights in the United States. Since Trump-appointed Supreme Court justices struck down Roe v. Wade, Republicans have simultaneously pursued a national abortion ban and used the federal government to crack down on the availability of abortion drugs, to harass and intimidate officials in states where abortion is still legal, and to make all forms of contraception more difficult to obtain and pay for. One needn’t reach too deep to imagine what this reproductive dystopia would look like; it’s already there in places like Texas and Florida. Liberal and moderate voters need to be convinced that it will come for them too. And since the Dobbs decision came down in the summer of 2022, Democrats have routed the GOP every time abortion has been directly at stake, in ballot initiatives and constitutional referendums and judicial races.

It’s not just the reproductive tyranny that Biden needs to tie to Trump but also the right’s attacks on vulnerable people and schools: the war against trans lives; the hysterical, book-banning onslaught against public educators; the desire to coldly look on (if not cheer) as migrants drown in rivers. Democrats crushed Republicans in school board elections across the country this past November when these culture war issues were front and center, and during his presidency, pushing back against cruelty to migrants was one of the most successful aspects of anti-Trump politics."

[whatib]

Current History is the Best Reality Show

I was born in the Bronx in the 60's, I've never voted. Never really liked either side but I definitely supported Democrats since Carter was elected, then the Democrats burned my country down from 2016 to 2020. I'll never trust a Democrat for the rest of my Life. Independent Forever! Clearly there was an underlying Hate inside that cult that I never knew existed. Stupid me I guess. But I don't condone violence. These people burned my country down because they lost an election? Are you kidding me? I've watched the System since the 60's. A guy from one team wins then a guy from the other team wins. It's a checks and balances System so that neither the Far Left or the Far Right take over Forever. They hold on for 4 to 8 yrs then it bops back and forth. It's been that way since day One, and it's worked so well that it built the greatest country ever, in the history of the world. Don't give me the racist Hate speech because African Americans gave birth to Americans, and a Black American became the President of the United States of America. (don't forget I supported Democrats at that time) On election day 2008, when I saw that big old black lady waving the American flag in Washington D.C. crying tears of what you can only call Emancipation….I balled my facking eyes out for hours that night. One of the best moments in that I've lived through. It finally happened. But The Constitution has held up for over 250 years, and it will for another 250 years if Democrats get back to behaving like civilized human beings instead of sore losers. We're into the 4th year of the Biden presidency and I still don't see any Republicans burning buildings down. Why? Because Republicans abide by the rules and they know they just have to regroup and try next time, and get out and Vote. They don't want to burn their neighbor's businesses down or harm other people.(and yes they have some crazies, but Democrats have crazies too. Believe me I've watched this country's clown show for over 50 years, both sides are Facked up. you're both literally psychotic with what you believe in) Republicans just want a President they support, so they wait and they Vote. Sometimes they win, sometimes they lose. And now we're in a New World, a World full of Hate from every direction. If you say you don't like dog sh!t you'll get cancelled. It's a very wacky World. I'm just a bystander…watching this nutty World unfold…I'll tell you right now, the Alphabet people have taken over. Like I said I'm just watching this shyt happen and it's very noticeable to me that the Alphabet people now hold Powerful positions in every aspect of the World…from corporations, to small businesses, from entertainment to sports, to movies, tv, and commercials, and education and government…if you haven't noticed it, they are in Power in the United States….and why is that? Because Alphabet people only Hire More Alphabet people. An ingenious strategy and clearly it works. (hahahah I guess that's how the Traditional World also worked but now the Alphabet people picked up the skill and they're using it to their advantage) Whoever is leading them in their mission, is freaking brilliant. They have monopolized all aspects of Life in America. The "Traditional World" isn't just under siege, it's battling for survival, literally breathing it's last breath. I'm literally living through History. What's funny is that I can tune in any day that I want, to see this week's episode.