President Biden: The NEW one and only politics thread

Jordan wants to use the debate to outline his vision. I'll save everyone the time:

1) Benghazi!
2) Dr. Faucci, bad!
3) Stolen election!
4) 1/6 overblown!

 

"What do you have for me, Jack?"



"Well, sir, Trump is at it again. This time sharing classified intel on our nuclear sub fleet with an Aussie billionaire. He is totally out of control. We don't know what to do. Could be a Moscow plot. The Russians call him "oranzhevyy boltun"--orange talker."

 

Liz is radioactive. No way that happens.

 

I didn't say it is all one president's fault, though that is certainly the false narrative that the Republicans are pushing. I do think he has handled it poorly, but I also commend his willingness to change course.

 

She's also not in Congress, so allowing her candidacy more than opens the door for Speaker Trump.

 

Hell, I'm not sure many people are going to budge no matter what is done or said at this point. I think it's going to be more about turnout.

 

That one's on the Congress as a whole, both parties. Immigration Reform has been a festering sore for decades.

 

Oh boy.

 

At some point between the Contract On America and Trump, the Republican Party mutated from supporting limited government to opposing any government. The problem is that it is basically orthodoxy on the right now that government is an entity actively conspiring against the American public, in many cases on a spiritual level. There are a lot of reasons. First of all, government is most of what keeps Trump from doing crimes with impunity. Government was also what coerced a lot of people into staying home and/or getting vaccinated during COVID and thus committing the unpardonable sin of telling an affluent white person what to do.

I think one of the knock-on effects of what we've done to the social safety net, and if that was on purpose, well, good job Reagan I guess, is that the wider the gaps are in it, the less likely it is the average voter sees the benefits.

For example, we are having mayoral elections in our fair city this year, and if the primary was any indication, the incumbent is going to get thrown out on her butt. She was 32 points behind the challenger. This being a medium-sized city in Minnesota, we're basically choosing between different flavors of liberal here. The incumbent, who is concluding her second term, has governed very much as a "woke" liberal (term used for illustrative purposes only). I'd say she's done a fairly decent job leading the city through COVID, but she has been exposed to a lot of criticism, both of the bad-faith sexist and racist (she's white but there are multiple women of color and a gay man on the city council) variety and the good-faith (high taxation, a lot of groveling toward extortionist business interests and tourism dollars, the city's status as a getaway from MSP has blown up the housing market in an area that is already incredibly difficult to build) variety. The challenger, a former city councilor who loves the camera, dropped party affiliation at the beginning of the campaign and has basically served as an empty bowl for the many aggrieved mostly middle-class white folks that call the city home.

The thing is, with some limited exceptions, this isn't a MAGA thing. Because of our topography (built into the side of a hill) and geology (clay trapping water near the surface exacerbating the freeze-thaw cycle that creates potholes), local streets degrade rapidly. Further, a huge snow event in November 2019 and the snowiest winter in the city's history (2022-23) have laid bare some serious flaws in the city's snow removal plans (not enough plow drivers, who are tasked with keeping main arteries moving first and residential streets second). Between those two events, the city bought and placed hundreds of "Snow Emergency" signs to denote routes on which it is illegal to street park during a declared snow emergency, then never declared a single one last year, possibly because almost all of their "parking lots of refuge" are far from residential areas.

I think a big problem nowadays is that unless you are from the 10% or so of the business class for whom government bends over backwards in the name of job creation, or the 10% or so from the very bottom, upon whom the city is increasingly responsible for programs designed to keep a roof over your head so you aren't freezing to death, or worse, panhandling to tourists (and thus embarrassing the business class), the only thing government does for you is raise your taxes and deliver increasingly less reliable municipal services.

Whenever I think of immigration, I find myself going back to Ellis Island and all of the great Americans and their ancestors who came over back in the day and why that was OK and why immigration is so bad now.

 

Coming back to Trump, Pratt the Australian billionaire, and our submarine secrets, ABC reports that Jack Smith has interviewed Pratt twice since this was reported. ABC also reports that Smith has testimony that Pratt was overheard telling a couple of people at Mar a Lago about it immediately after. This means that one of the MaL employees was concerned enough to notice at the time and willing to speak about it afterward. Pratt told 45 people about it, and who knows how many others they told. Ten of them were journalists.

It is worth noting that this was after Trump was no longer president, so he has no cover under presidential immunity. I'm sure it will be used as background to establish a pattern in the documents case, if it does not earn a superseding indictment on its own.

 

Too many of them are the wrong color, mostly, although not speaking English will do it as well. Never mind that Great Grandpa only spoke Italian or German or whatever back in the day.