Aww, man. I just saw the little green logo. I thought this was real. I have been really fucked up over this for the past 3 hours. I guess the fact that it seemed plausible enough for me to actually believe it when I saw the thumbnail speaks volumes. 

Some guy at my work came up to me while I was eating my shitty lunch to talk about how he had just won a seat on our union, and wanted to thank me for voting for him (I didn't). Then tries to fold this joy of his into what an extra great week it was for him.

He looks around to see if anyone is looking.

"On Tuesday, Trump wins in a landslide. On Wednesday, I win in a landslide. I almost want to think there are some similarities going on here, don't you think?"

I just coldly look at him and tell him, ya, two total fucking disasters won a popular vote, so there is that, and he laughs.

"But Dave, did you see the stock market. As soon as he gets elected....through the roof"

I explain to him all the nuances of who gives a fuck about the stock market.

"Well, I just can't wait to watch all the prices go down. I feel bad for Trudeau, Trump is going to make mincemeat out of him. Watch those prices drop!"

I was going to ask what exactly he thinks Trump is going to do to make this happen, and what the fuck it has to to with the stock market, but why bother. Because the whole point for these people, even in Canada, is that Trump's victory is somehow a victory for them. And that they somehow believe that cunts bluster equates to some kind of masculine virility, and this masculine virility will just be able to scream down the prices so even toilet cleaners like him can affordably eat again.

But who cares. I just let him talk and talk and talk from that point on, stared out the window, realized my food was cold. That jarred curries are for stupid cunts just like me. Didn't even bother telling him how much he looks like a pedophile. I'm sure he's heard that before, anyways.




 

Jinnistan wrote:

How hard is it to win a seat in your union?

Basically you have to think to even run. And then maybe bother a handful of people in the cafeteria to vote for you.

Jinnistan wrote:

Another annoying thing from these post-election takes is that I keep seeing the word "landslide" being thrown around.  And not just from gloating Republicans trying to inflate their victory, but even "told-you-so" leftists who want to rub it in for their own sense of self-righteousness.

This election was not a landslide by any objective metric.  It's worth looking at the historical context, so let's consider the vote gaps of some modern presidential elections, using pure tallies aside from turnout and other percentages.  The final tally for this year's election is not quite finsihed, sitting around 95%, but we can approximate:

2024:  Trump beat Harris by about 4 million votes.  (Interestingly, Trump's numbers are only slightly more that 2020, while Harris earned about 10 million votes less than Biden, so the poor turnout is crucial.)

2020: Biden beat Trump by 7 million votes.

2012: Obama beat Romney by nearly 6 million.

2008: Obama beat McCain by 9 1/2 million.

2004: Bush beat Kerry by 3 million.

(Obviously the Republican winners of 2000 and 2016 lost the popular vote, by half a million and 3 million votes respectively.)

1996: Clinton beat Dole by 8 million.

1992: Clinton beat Bush I by nearly 6 million.

1988: Bush I beat Dukakis by 7 million.

1984: Reagan beat Mondale by nearly 17 million.  (Landslide!)

1980: Reagan beat Carter by 8 million.

1976: Carter beat Ford by less than 2 million.

1972: Nixon beat McGovern by 18 million.  (Landslide!)

1968: Nixon beat Humphrey by half a million.

1964: Johnson beat Goldwater by 16 million (Landslide!)

I'll stop there, covering the past 60 years.  It's worth noting what an actual landslide looks like.  By comparison, Harris' loss is not among the most catastrophic in recent history.  We can say definitively that Trump's victory was decisive, although whether that constitutes as mandate is less clear.  More clear is that Trump will exaggerate the significance of even the smallest victory into Jericho-sized proportions.  The rest of us would do well to avoid such hyperbole.
 

I confess, I have used the word "landslide" myself more than a few times this week. I guess after decades of "razor thin majorities," any configuration that doesn't necessitate a tie-breaking vote for every minute order of business just feels like a landslide by comparison. And we're already anticipating the crushing weight of the impending policy avalanche this tipped balance will trigger. It's not an electoral landslide in the accepted sense of the metaphor, but the list of ramifications suggests large–scale disaster of some kind. I guess in a winner–take all, ideologically–divided 2–party system, any decisive electoral victory might as well be a landslide in terms of policy, even if calling it a landslide is an abuse of the metaphor.  

But there's more than just the presidential race affecting a perception of a landslide. There's also the fact that one party has now claimed decisive control of all three branches of government, and specifically on the heels of having revoked women's rights over their own bodies, with contraception now in the crosshairs, having just placed the convicted pussy–grabbing felon president above the law, having fanned the flames of political violence with dangerous conspiracy theories about rigged elections and demon vaccines. There's the fact that said party has been hijacked by an extremist fringe movement in a frightfully short period of time, and has won total control of the United States government on a platform of divisiveness and explicit attacks on the pillars of our constitutional freedoms. A movement with the stated goal of infiltrating the police and armed forces with insurrectionists while acquiring military expertise through those same channels. That even a simple majority of the American public, knowing a Republican majority would usher in an acceleration of such extremism, voted for one anyway, still lands like a ton of bricks, and not just on the chronically–uninformed.
Also contributing to this feeling of a landslide is the current picture shaped by the decades–long glacial takeover (enjoy the pun) of various seats in all three branches of government at state and local levels. I confess I may have been excessive in clinging to my faith in our system of checks & balances to insulate us from extremism's ascent, even as I heard the creaks emitting from that system's rickety frame. We look around and see right–wing reactionaries seated in every position of power great and small, even having pushed out the moderates of their own party, even respected incumbents, pushed out by inexperienced PAC–backed ideologues promising to roll back human rights, by violent means if necessary, whereas the Republicans of even 20 years ago would arguably not have tolerated the kind of scorched–earth, rabble–rousing, desk–shitting, lethal political chaos their party currently embraces.

For those who were exclusively focused on coverage of the presidential election, for those who trusted that headline–grabbing lunatics like Taylor–Greene and MyPillow guy would never be taken seriously, for those still trusting the TV to keep them informed, in addition to voters who tend to stay chronically tuned–out, the current outcome must come as more of a surprise than it probably should. The conservative effort to consolidate power in the US is nothing new, but the current extremist takeover of the Republican party has been comparatively swift and largely unexpected. Apt comparisons to historical surges in authoritarianism lend a sense of something sudden and cataclysmic, even if the current status is merely the iceberg atop the glacier that has been slowly encasing us for decades.

OK, I'll refrain from calling a landslide. There are plenty of other words to choose from. "Catastrophe," "farce," "punch–line..."

Whatever we call it, though, it won't change the fact that I'll probably have to cancel this year's government shutdown social. Luckily the barnload of party favors I bought came with a 30–day "no questions asked" return policy. 



















 

As Jon Stewart said, most of the takeaways from our political pundits about this year's election will be wrong, and these pundits have been quite busy this week trying to prove Stewart right.

Again, we have these headlines about "The Elites had it coming", or something to that effect, and each side have their own pet definition for what "the elites" consist of.  For leftists, the elites are centrist liberals.  For Republicans, the elites are also centrist liberals, only that they're also engaged in a conspiratorial social engineering project to emasculate and sexually mutilate our children and to import browner people with "compliant" genes into our national bloodstream.  Both of these camps, for the record, are terminally full of shit.

The Elites have actually been having a very good week, and a little "cui bono?" logic is the least amount of work one should have to apply to easily see exactly why, and for whom, Trump won the election.

But the prevailing dogma is that the "working class" won Trump the election.  And why is that?  Inflation and the economy?  Sure, these were factors.  Interestingly enough, these were not factors in the vast majority of Trump's political messaging however.  The most prevalent issues pushed on voters by the Trump campaign and his aligned PACs, the issues on which the vast amount of cash resources were spent on advertising, fall into two basic categories - immigration and transsexuals.  Notice how Trump never blamed the "elites" for inflation - in fact he attacked Harris for attempting to combat price-gouging by calling her efforts "communism".  Trump has no plan to combat price-gouging or fixing.  He has an empty promise to lower inflation and interest rates, which is convenient since both of these things are falling back to their pre-pandemic levels just as he'll be taking office.  And there are a few dozen reasons to believe that Trump's actual economic policies will make life much worse for the working class.  And that doesn't even take into account his plan to handicap the regulatory agencies and promote deregulation across industrial sectors.  Simply put, not only is Trump showing no interest at all in holding the corporations who have been price-fixing - from groceries to the rental market - to account for their corruption, he's primed to reward them with extra corporate tax cuts. 

So....did the working class come out for Trump because they're excited about this soon-to-be corporate bailout?  At their expense?  No, obviously not.  They came out because immigrants and transsexuals are gross.  Voters decided their vote based on cultural resentment rather than economic self-interest.  And it's worth looking at the actual numbers, as some media is calling this a working class "exodus".  In fact the split among income levels was still reasonably close across the spectrum:

Income            Trump  Harris
Under $30,000        46     50    
$30,000–49,999      53     45    
$50,000–99,999      51     46    
$100,000–199,999   47     51    
Over $200,000         45     51

(No category for strictly billionaires )

Essentially, there's very little evidence that these 5-8% differences were caused by anything other than the anxiety inspired by tens of millions of dollars worth of anti-immigrant/trans ads which proliferated in these final weeks.

The only takeaway I see as valid is that this was an election ultimately decided by hate and fear.

But the Dems prefer self-loathing.
 

It's actually slightly amusing to see this initial power grab play out, as long as it it doesn't end up, you know, succeeding.

There's no way of knowing yet whether the new Senate Majority Leader, John Thune from South Dakota, will actually allow Trump to proceed with his plan to assemble his cabinet using recess appointments.  These recess appointments are intended for use only in an emergency situation where the Senate is unable to convene to perform their own "advise and consent" obligations to confirm cabinet positions, and it would really take some stretching of the imagination to concoct such a necessary emergency scenario at the moment.  Of course this is all up to Congressional leadership to go along with the ruse, and the House's Mike Johnson is apparently willing, but Thune may be less so.  He's thrown out some vague words in the press about how important it is to get Trump's team up and running as soon as possible, and I imagine that Thune would even endeavor to allow some recess appointments.  Maybe not the more important positions.

Which brings us to Matt Gaetz, up for Attorney General.  We've just learned that Congress was actually scheduled to vote on the public release of the final report on Matt Gaetz's ethics investigation this very Friday, and it seems that his swift resignation yesterday, to be so quickly prepared to take on the AG role (note that none of the other Congresspeople nominated to Trump's cabinet have resigned their official duties yet) may have been an attempt to make Friday's vote moot.

Out of all of the suggested appointees named in the last several days, Matt Gaetz is clearly the one who would be most in need of a recess appontment, because it would not be difficult in the least to find a handful of Republican senators or a couple dozen House members to torpedo his confirmation.  In fact, some of the goss right now is suggesting that maybe Trump is setting him up to fail, a "sacrificial sucker", so that he can eventually push through a slightly less abhorrent, but still reprehensible, alternative down the line.  But that's not quite Trump's style.

What's more illuminating is watching the reaction to Rick Scott's failed bid to become Senate Majority Leader, where he was backed by MAGA-folk like Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson, Charlie Kirk, etc. They seem to be very upset by Thune's ascendency to the role.  Perhaps Rick Scott already had an understanding with Trump about allowing these recess appointments, and that Thune is less likely to follow orders.  We'll see soon.
 

Does the Tyson/Paul fight count for this thread?
It should.
What a pile of shit this is going to be.
 

Apparently it's not Logan Paul.  It's Jake Paul, his brother?  I assume there's a difference?

Matt Gaetz is a psychological operation.  Allow me to explain.  There is not a single Republican congressman who has the least bit of doubt that Gaetz is a sex criminal.  They all know what's in that report whether it's publicly released or not.  In fact, that's exactly why they don't want the public to see it.  No Republican would be opposed to releasing a report that exonerated him.  Any cognizant adult understands why Gaetz abruptly resigned, because he surely wouldn't have if he thought he could possibly be exonerated.  There is no evidence of even a charade of credibility for Gaetz's qualifications for Attorney General.  Everyone understands this.  That's the point.

This process of nominating Gaetz is to force the entire Republican caucus into a public ceremony of submission.  Because surely everyone (again, among cognizant adults at least) understands the implications of allowing this greasy shyster sodomite to ascend to the top position of our justice system, there will be no mistaking the complete moral collapse of the Republican party.  Everyone will see and understand that this gesture is the final sacrifice of integrity for power on the alter of the Almighty Don.  It's a particularly perfidious omerta because it's meant to be public, it's meant to be generally understood.  The ultimate message is clear, to intimidate and remind the country that Power, not morality or integrity, is now the ruling virtue of our culture.  The definition of fascism, by the way.

We did see these kinds of faschy intimidation tactics earlier this week when the MAGA folks tried to squeeze Rick Scott into the Senate Majority Leader, where there were threats to "primary the shit out of" those Senators who did not vote for Scott.  Open threats against the new SML, John Thune, that "we will remove you" if he does not abide by Trump's open (public!) demand to abdicate the Senate's confirmation process.  Or look at 'Bama Bub Tommy Tuberville, making such Eichmann obedience the new norm:

President Trump and JD Vance are going to be running the Senate....

President Trump was elected by an enormous vote, and he deserves a team around him that he wants. It’s not us to determine that....

I’ve already seen where a couple [of Republican Senators] says, "I’m not voting for him".  Wait a minute. You are not the United States of America. You have one vote in the U.S. Senate. You did not get elected the president. Vote with President Trump. This is the last chance we’re gonna have of saving this country. And if you wanna get in the way, fine. But we’re gonna try to get you out of the Senate, too if you try to do that.

So here's a question...what's the urgency again?  This "last chance", what is that about?  That whole "dictator for a day" thing is starting to make sense if we consider that there may be a push by the Republican Congress to go ahead and burn down their own Reichstag voluntarily as soon as Trump gets into office, maybe even as fast as Matt Gaetz will surely burn down the Justice Department.  This urgency - absent any recognizable national crisis at the moment - to bypass the Constitutional norms of checks and balances sounds like the intention is to make this transition to an authoritarian unitary executive as quickly and (proverbially) painlessly as possible.  It certainly can't be based on these "enormous numbers", since Trump won by far less than either Biden, Obama or Clinton, and yet no one ever thought of suspending the confirmation process for their nominees.  So, gee, what's chaged, I wonder?

John Thune, to his credit, has walked back some of his acquiescing tone about these recess appointments, saying that the Senate will abide by their responsibilities.  Now that he's safely in the Leadership role, he can afford to distance himself from Trump.  Normally this would be all we need, because he's the one to ultimately decide to adjorn the Senate to allow recess appointments or not.  But, as all things Trump, there's always a weasel with a scheme on the sidelines.  That weasel is Mike Johnson, the House Speaker, who has far less shame in being totally subservient to his master.  Normally, the House plays no role in the confirmation process, but weasels find a way.  From Rolling Stone:

Conservative lawyer Ed Whelan has said he’s hearing that Trump could use a provision of the Constitution that allows the president to unilaterally adjourn Congress, and then appoint who he wants. Article II, Section 3 holds that “in Case of Disagreement between [the Senate and the House] … he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper.” No president has ever done this.

So if Mike Johnson were to pass a House resolution calling to adjorn Congress, either the Senate agrees, allowing Trump to recess appoint his cabinet, or the Senate disagrees, allowing for Trump to invoke this obscure and never used section of Article II to force adjornment and make his recess appointments anyway.  Mike Johnson, a man with zero Constitutional authority over presidential appointments, would be single-handedly blocking the Senate's Constitutional 'advise and consent' obligations.  And this is the same man who worked very hard to overturn the 2020 election, so it's not like he'll lose any sleep over it.

There are a couple of potential offsets.  The most promising is that, due to Gaetz's deep unpopularity among his collegues and due to the understanding that Gaetz is pretty much the primary beneficiary of this move, there would be enough Republican House defectors who will vote against Johnson's adjornment resolution, which would make the matter moot.  This would have to be weighed against the pressure that MAGA folks (illustrated in the comments above) will surely exert on these Republican House members and whether or not these threats of betraying Trump would outweigh their distaste for Gaetz.  Because the House remains slimly divided between parties, it would only require a handful of Republicans to tank the simple majority vote.  (Under the asumption that no Dems are dumb enough to cross the aisle.)  Less promising is that such an unprecedented move would provoke multiple legal challenges which, in addition to taking a lot of time (during which all of the damage would be done anyway), would all end up at the same Trump-appointed Supreme Court anyway.

On a more positive note, despite what happens with the vote from the Ethics Committee, I'm about 90% sure that report will get leaked sooner than later.  But again, that's not the point.
 

Yes, The Onion's purchase of InfoWars, with no small amount of help from the Sandy Hook families, is an inspiring example of getting imaginative with people–power beyond the ballot box without resorting to... ahem, "civil unrest."  

Over the course of my "regrouping" over the past week I've been reflecting on what avenues are still open to us, now that all three branches have turned to The Dark Side. Dick Gregory's old bit about how to effectively use the power of boycott keeps coming to mind. Incidentally it's from his album The Light Side: The Dark Side, about 30 mins in on the first side. 

Much of this week's news coverage has been dedicated to the outrageous cabinet picks, which to me signal something worse than a reactionary rightwing resurgence. They signal clear intent to make the U.S. as vulnerable as possible to corruption and foreign influence.