President Biden: The NEW one and only politics thread

A trio of unaccountable religious fanatics, appointed by a traitorous criminal, impose their will with a ruling that 70 percent of the country doesn’t want by using completely flimsy and hypocritical reasoning. And two of the the seats were flat-out stolen.

Government of the people, by the people and for the people my fucking ass.

And the disgusting fucking party will sweep back into power in a few months despite this AND attempting to overthrow the goddamn government. Because of gas prices. There will never be any fucking consequences.

The great American experiment has failed. I’ll watch the rest of it burn from my deep blue state.

 

Fine. I'm sure people are sick of seeing Trump flags.

 

This is a good, true point. The costs of housing/living, and climate/lifestyle ease, are the biggest reasons people move, generally speaking, if it does not happen for a particular job/work transfer. Political ideology is not often the primary reason people make substantial moves. And us unilaterally making it out to be about politics is just another example of the politicizing of, well, everything, lately.

This is what needs to stop, for the benefit of this country.

 

This is why the Democratic party really must make it its business to come up with a legitimate, fresh candidate whom people will support.

 

I realize that too much Aaron Sorkin dialogue is generally not a good thing, but I keep finding myself referring to Will McAvoy:

"If liberals are so fucking smart, how come they lose so goddamn always?"

I've spent a lot of the day trying to answer that question. Setting aside structural and historical stuff like the Senate and the Electoral College, I've come to two main conclusions:

1. Democrats view their enemies as people to be persuaded. Republicans view their enemies as evil to be defeated.

The number one reason the GOP tolerates Donald Trump's antics is he is uniquely willing and interested in punishing his enemies. And dating back to Obergefell, if not the Clinton Administration, if not Roe itself, Republicans are desperate to be avenged. Avenged from the city people who make them feel stupid, the uppity Blacks and gays who call the only culture they've ever known racism and homophobia, and the loose women who either won't fuck them or whose lifestyles mock the restraint they had to show when they were their age. The right has been fighting a defensive war on this front for nearly 75 years now, until today. I hope that today will convince non-activists that they have to fight that way, but I'm guessing it's going to take some, maybe a lot of very preventable deaths, to turn that tide. Because the left has lots of activists and "allies," but they often do more harm than good. There are far too many Democrats who want to box and win on points, because there are a lot of Republicans who want knockouts and are willing to throw punches after the bell. I'm really tired of white liberals like Jacob Frey who always remember to tweet on Juneteenth, but somehow expect that this time the power of their argument will convince the police union to not tell him to go fuck himself.

2. Republicans overwhelmingly appeal to fear and emotion. Democrats overwhelmingly appeal to reason and logic, which the average voter is too stupid to understand.

If there's anything my time in journalism has taught me, particularly in the more recent Internet age, it's that you can never overestimate the stupidity of the reader. We bend over backwards for them. Going through 10 steps to make sure Google or Facebook leads them to our work, and they still can't find it, and if they do, they go apeshit if we tell them anything that contradicts what their pastor or neighbor or fat orange messiah tells them, even if it's that the sky is blue. Our newsroom has joined "The Trust Project" in some sort of misguided belief that if we explain our process to them really slowly that the people who hate us won't hate us, and I'm kind of done with it all. Sometimes I fantasize at the Y about cold-cocking the guy who changes the TV to Fox News. Sometimes I wonder if I could tell my Republican congressman to fuck off without getting fired. I should probably talk about that with a therapist, but Bandolini said 'The amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.' Even if the left can convince their non-activist class to get off their ass and start taking the fight to the Boomers, this is going to be the uphill battle. People are getting dumber and more self-interested every day, and in almost every policy position, the right-wing viewpoint is easier to explain and understand. We give airtime and column inches to people acting in bad faith because we're desperate to avoid being perceived as making a value judgment. Part of me wants to say, "this is how we saw it. If you don't like it, go start your own website or fuck off." But we have bills to pay so we continue to apologize for ourselves, desperate that we'll finally convert those NYT sources in that Youngstown, Ohio diner.

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I'm a straight white male, and the only thing I'm in a relationship with is journalism. My life will go on, but I feel terrible for the people (most of them women) who I know and the people I don't who have been irreparably harmed today. I don't know if there's anything I could have done to change this, but they deserve so much better.

 

Do it without the coke, it’s the caffeine

 

Well said!

 

Alexandra Petri comes out of the maternity leave dugout for a pinch hit homer.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...e-court-protect-life-conception-birth-satire/

 

But could you not order a double Jack In The Box burger and a Coke?

Depends on the Mormon Ordnung.

 

Alexandra Petri probably wrote that in six minutes, too.

She’s smart and damn, I have a writer crush on her.

 

I had a layover in SLC about 30 years ago on a Sunday night and was surprised the bar was open. Even saved my drink reciepts.