In 2000 the GOP SCOTUS members literally decided to stop counting ballots and make GWB President, so there was a good argument there, but even so, Gore and a vast majority of elected Dems said it was over and Bush won shortly after the SCOTUS decision.

Looks like Psaki is going to be headed to MSNBC for a new gig at some point in the next month or two.

And I haven't successfully hit on a coworker since Biden became president!

Going to miss her destroying Doocey

One thing that bothers me about Democrats is they never choose the narrative at elections. They are terrified to ever take a stand on something. We know the midterms will be about CRT or LGBT or El Salvadorian gangs. Whatever culture war issue the Republicans choose, it will be what Democrats have to talk about throughout the campaign.

Which got me thinking about the marijuana bill that passed the House today. What if the Democrats took a hard stand? What if they made the midterms about this? There are a ton of angles for it too. It generates tons of revenue, it reduces the power of gangs, it's a reform of the criminal justice system. Play the freedom card for all I care.

Support for legalization is incredibly popular (68%). It's at 71% among independents. Heck, even Republicans are 50/50 on the topic. You'd crush with young people at the polls and people who don't normally come out to vote. You would be moving the narrative away from all the failures of the previous 2 years. It would put the Republicans in a position where they have to defend an unpopular position.

The only time in recent memory I can remember Democrats picking an issue and running on it was the Georgia Senate. Both candidates really slammed home "if we win, we're getting a big stimulus check". It worked. People supported the guys who took a stance on a very popular position.

I know the bill will bomb out in the Senate. It'll be swept away and forgotten in a couple weeks. They'll sit back and get slaughtered in November and maybe that's what they want in the end. But if they ever had an ounce of courage, this would be a fascinating issue to run on and something the Democrats could actually make gains with. Not saying they'd win, but I think it might save a few seats and help in downballot races where you need some motivation to come out and vote.

Yeah, there have been a number of studies of the ballots that showed if they kept counting, Gore would have won under every conceivable scenario. The justices of the supreme court who love states rights decided that states rights didn't quite apply in this case for some reason.

They lost in 2004 and 2016. Maybe you could argue that 8 hour voting lines and such hurt them enough to swing an election. But they ran some shitty candidates who proceeded to run shitty campaigns. And 2016 falls more on the fact we have a moronic system where the 2nd place person wins because we really loved slavery back in the day.

Nope, nothing to *remotely* the same degree. Yes, there were people who said that. There will always be people who say things like that, but not 'many Democrats' in the sense of anything close to a majority of them. There weren't widespread completely groundless lawsuits to throw out certified electors in multiple states.

Bush-Gore is a completely different scenario in terms of how close the election was, but even there you had one push in one state. You did not have groundless lawsuits in many different states trying to throw out evident results. Nothing in 2004 or 2016 is even remotely comparable to 2020. After Bush-Gore you didn't have anything like January 6 of '20.

There was far more of 'ugh, I can't believe so many people voted Dubya' - in other words, I accept that they did, but they're idiots etc. Now we have 'no way 80 million voted for Biden' 'the election was stolen' etc. It's a completely different animal.

Americans have never thought that logically collectively. See Obama and the 'fierce urgency of now', with a mandate to fix the economy (never mind that no President has the power to do that, never mind logical assessments of why/how it broke).

Presidents get blamed and credited for situations they don't control all the time. It's dumb, but it's also fairly equal-opportunity. Modern democracy has no answer to this problem.

The GOP made it clear today that if they are in the Senate majority they won't ever even hold hearings for a Dem SCOTUS nominee.

I guess it won't be long before you see direct placement where the advise and consent portion is simply ejected. That would be the next logical step in that situation, would it not?

Dems have never placed a nominee on SCOTUS while the GOP has held the Senate. The only difference now is that the GOP admits it. (GOP presidents have gotten 12 Justices confirmed by a Dem Senate since 1900).

No Senator is going to give up the opportunity to grandstand in front of the cameras.

It's all for show now, anyway. When was the last set of hearings to have an impact on the final vote? Bork's? Miers never made it to hearings before having her nomination withdrawn.

And Miers was a really weird one. She was nominated by a GOP President and then forced to withdraw due to GOP Congressional pressure. So it wasn't an inter-party dispute.

You could make the argument that the president, who we know is responsible for putting people on the SC, could simply bypass the Senate, sending them to the Senate for hearings could be argued as 'optional' and then you simply have direct appointments. is that better? No, it's not, because now the SC becomes completely and totally political, and that pretty much is the final nail in democracy in the US. But it is the next logical step on the way there, imo.

Don't know what the legalese is but don't think Senate approval is optional?

As someone else posted, up until Brandeis, there were no hearings. I'm not sure exactly what went on, but given the short timings from nomination to approval back in those days, it sounds more like a quick consultation than anything, maybe to push back on obviously unqualified candidates (like, ironically, what happened with Miers)?

Student Loans: White House extends payment pause through August

I'll bet anyone $100 that this payment pause will be extended again until at least after the election.

Obama referring to Biden as Vice President was some next level trolling. Well done.

Who could have seen this coming?

NEW: Congressional Democrats had a 12-point generic ballot lead over the GOP in December among recipients of the expanded child tax credit.

That benefit has dried up, and now congressional Republicans have the advantage with this group of voters. https://t.co/IDFTls4Cc7 pic.twitter.com/tQxKkWIGSn

— Eli Yokley (@eyokley) April 6, 2022

Of all the debates, including within parties, about student loan cancellation, I don't remember anyone coming up with Biden's solution - just put them in forbearance indefinitely and keep extending the deadline. I wouldn't be surprised to see him do this through the next presidential election. It's a very Biden-esque solution that has avoided, so far, a big court battle that they might lose.

I paid on mine a little in the last two years, but, I think I'll just let them sit there until I have to pay now. Inflation reduces the effective balance every day, it makes more sense to put money into retirement accounts and home improvements, and it keeps that hedge in case of actual cancellation wiping them out someday. And at this rate I'll probably die with a student loan balance without ever having to pay them off completely, so, that's nice too.

One of the best solutions would be to allow student loans to be discharged in bankruptcy like every other debt. I know Biden spearheaded that rule because he loves predatory banks, but he could do a 180 and propose eliminating it.

Our country really is fucked. We literally have hours of Trump saying the dumbest most nonsensical shit on tape yet the right will cling to a 13 second vide to show faux outrage over Bidens "cognitive decline"

Brutal.pic.twitter.com/fhXGcgcutu

— Michael Knowles (@michaeljknowles) April 5, 2022

Is that really brutal? That is me at like any social function.

Yeah, that looked more like, "I'm going to go talk with Obama...oh, he's busy, I'll come back later."

I guess the "cognitive strong" approach would've been for him to bogart his way into the group and start talking?

It really is completely stupid, some on that side eat up every dimwitted, non-sensical thing Trump says, yet they find a short clip that they can use to reflect Biden as being in a confused state and blow it up as
"proof" he has lost his ability to think. Pretty sure everyone of us who has been at a large social function has had a moment like this.

I find that the awkwardness of those moments is mitigated if you're carrying around a snack or drink.

JD Vance accused of racism over new campaign ad in which he asks ‘Do you hate Mexicans?’ | The Independent

If you haven't seen JD Vance's new ad its...something...

The ad is embedded in the article and if you didn't know better you'd think it's satire.

Isn't it better to just say it instead of using a bunch of dogwhistles?

If you see the next ten seconds of video it's clear he's perfectly normal.

This is really weird.

https://apnews.com/article/us-secret...b7c52794d202b2

The big questions are who were they working for and why?

How in the living fuck are you a Secret Service agent and have some random person offer to pay for your apartment and that does not raise any red flags?

They posed as Homeland Security but yeah, you would think Secret Service personnel would know better for sure. And article said it was some USPS investigation unit that broke it, weird.

Ha!

Imagine sitting in federal prison and someone asks who busted you.

Was it the FBI? Secret Service? CIA? ATF? IRS?

And then you cry as you respond

Nope, it was the Post Office.

Bloomberg - Are you a robot?

Ask for your raise if you haven't already. This is probably the best labor market you've had in your life and might ever have again.

Lindsay Graham taking off his tie so he couldn't go onto the floor to vote gainst Judge Jackson is just too perfect.

Congrats to Biden on a nice SCOTUS win.

I guess but it is a pretty sad day in our nations history. She should have been a unanimous vote instead she was attacked for no other reason then to score political points.

Have to go back to the Reagan days.

What's sad to me is not just the partisanship but trying to score political points about Biden promising to choose a woman over other qualified candidates when Trump and Reagan did the same. It's as if history - even recent - doesn't exist or can be rewritten and instantly believed in real time.

For those of you interested in the history: U.S. Senate: Supreme Court Nominations (1789-Present)

dola, interesting that up until Nixon a lot got confirmed by a voice vote only.

Perhaps Rand Paul and Lindsay Graham were just honoring the old voice vote system by hiding in the cloakroom instead of being on the floor to vote no.

They had ties to Pakistani intelligence and had traveled to Iran. Prosecutors said the secret service agents had been compromised as well. At first I thought it was just some rich guys who wanted to cosplay as secret agents, but this might be a bit more dubious than we thought.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md...ecret-service/

Also in the Ohio Senate primary we have Mike Gibbons running on the "middle class doesn't pay enough taxes" platform.

Unanimous vote is a pretty darned extreme expectation. In a country as polarized as ours where we don't even agree on what the proper function of law is, what the job of a judge or justice should be, that's just not happening even if everyone in Senate was a responsible statesperson.

his last name is appropriate.

These guys are probably going to get a slap on the wrist, likely because the Secret Service tipped them off before the DOJ could investigate them thoroughly. This look like a train wreck, and possibly a straight cover up.
A Tipoff By The Secret Service Blew Up The Federal Probe Of Alleged Imposter Duo | Talking Points Memo

DeSantis wasn't happy with the congressional maps proposed by state legislature so the state legislature gave Destantis the authority to create his own map.

This is what a lot of GOP want. One person to pledge fielty to while they sit in an easy job with little responsibility or authority.

Being homeless doesn't have to be bad. It worked out okay for Hitler.

TN GOP state senator uses Hitler as an example of how people can make something of themselves after being homeless.

This is absurd. pic.twitter.com/bhyTWIz6C1

— The Republican Accountability Project (@AccountableGOP) April 14, 2022

Well shit, copies of Mein Kampf for all and our homeless problem is solved!!

I promise you are not prepared for Tucker's latest montage pic.twitter.com/8tdvYTW2cn

— nikki mccann ramírez (@NikkiMcR) April 16, 2022

Some inspirational Easter message from our current and former president:


No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen on Twitter: "Easter messages from the former vs current President.… "

Atocep,


Speaking as a gay man, I've never seen something so gay as that Tucker Promo

Tucker:Hey guys, I was watching a music video. Let’s use this as inspiration
Interns: which video?
Tucker:
https://youtu.be/UxV7GTbqC10

wow how did i miss that Steve?

So seriously, what’s up with that guy having the bright light shining on his Johnson?

I don't know just glad it wasn't Tucker doing the modeling for that

It's apparently a quack treatment to increase sperm counts.

538 has Biden's current approval at 41.8%. All time low was 40.4% so this seems to be a floor (so far).

Haven't heard much from Biden. Ukraine is going relatively well compared to domestic stuff but agree with article below that he needs to start refocusing on domestic stuff. Maybe boast on the infrastructure bill & Mayor Pete (anything going on there?), or come up with a plan on how to lessen impact of inflation. Be good if he was seen to be more coordinated with the Fed than (seemingly right now) just letting the Fed handle it.

I'm sure there are plans, it just doesn't seem they are very well publicized or coordinated right now.

Biden’s been consumed by Ukraine. His team wants to bring the focus back home. - POLITICO

Not Biden, but not sure really where to put this. But Sinclair must be scared of Wes Moore's potential, because man are they going all out with the 5-minute hit pieces on him in his run for MD governor.

Sounds like Biden's approval tanking is mostly with young voters, a contingent that was vital to him winning. He backed out of most promises with them so I can see why they stopped caring. Will be interesting to see if he can win without them in the next election.

Hint: he can't

SI

I am completely convinced they don't want to win. Sure some politicians do, but I think the party likes being in the minority. They can complain a lot, raise money, and have zero responsibility. And staffers can grab high-paying private sector jobs (like all the Obama alums who not shill for Amazon or whatever).

Last week Abbott handed them the biggest gift they could ask for and they just ignored it. They don't want to win.

They lack the will because they think that every step is a losing step, that they aren't willing to even consider trying. Like the fear that potentially trying trump just leads to him winning or setting the precedent that it's ok to just go after any political enemies simply because. The point being that if they don't and they lose it's all going to happen anyway. We're totally, and unequivocally fucked.

It's always in the back of my mind. Like I'm not certain it's true, but I can't help but wonder. There's an individual excuse why this or that won't get done, but when all of them happen, at some point, you start thinking Casino: "Listen, if you didn't know you were being scammed you're too fuckin' dumb to keep this job, if you did know, you were in on it." And that whole theory about how the rich who really finance our election and choose most of our politicians back the GOP in the primary who are most favorable to them and Dems who can win but are weak.

The only reason why they can get votes is because the alternative is far worse. Like I feel like anyone voting Dem is like "here's 10% of the table scraps you voted for" while the GOP delivers like 50% or more. So voting GOP, you definitely get "better value" and feel like you're on a "winning" side. Of course the winning side means you have to be ok with white nationalism, institutionalized racism and sexism, warhawking, gutting of the federal government, replacing it with socializing the losses and privatizing the gains, and a whole host of other garbage. But, hey, your "sports team" won. So you have that going for you.

SI

They can trot out the Manchin/Sinema excuse and get away with some stuff. But there are things they can do that require zero political capital.

For instance, the Texas Governor has been holding up trucks coming in from Mexico. It's blatantly illegal and unconstitutional. Written plain as day in the constitution. You have analysts saying it has cost billions in our GDP.

Now if you're a Democrat that wants to win, this would be all I talked about. I'd have Biden speaking about it, all the surrogates going on news shows with the same message. The Texas Governor is purposely halting commerce in this country to sabotage the economy. Heck, blame rising prices on it. It's a simple message that everyone can understand.

But no. They'll sit back and play defense on inflation, culture wars, or whatever the GOP wants to be in the news.

Some other issues. Start with Russia. Polls show the OVERWHELMING majority of people hate Russia and what they are doing in Ukraine. May be a good time to remind the public which party withheld aid from the country in an extortion attempt.

Heck, tie it into the election stuff. Democracy is still technically pretty popular in the country. You have a lot of people in one party who refused to certify the election. People who actively participated in a coup attempt. I would never shut up about that. But hey, I'm sure posting a picture of John Lewis once a year on your Twitter account will do the same thing.

Nobody knows what Dems stand for. Sometimes, Not Trump, is enough, but it won't be this Fall.

On the Russia topic, one of the PA Senator candidates is running ads saying, Russia invaded Crimea and Ukraine under Democrats and not under Trump and when America is strong. Simple message when you are trying to win.

Well yeah, because they were counting on Trump to win and withdraw from NATO, so there is that.

Guess the Dems could come back with China created a virus to destroy America under Trump, not Democrats for their mid term message.

Does the GOP House leader still think Trump is on Russia's payroll?

Nah, it’s always “rural high speed internet” here

Good heavyweight fight. Unsure who will ultimately come out ahead but think DeSantis is ahead in the 4th round.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/21/polit...tus/index.html

Not really. This is mostly an empty gesture legislation. The way the original tax status bill was written, it would take the legislature vote AND the agreement of the land-owners (basically a board of Disney employees) to agree to overturn it. There are going to be a million ways that Disney can challenge this in court, but that original agreement gives this zero chance of actually taking affect.

Performative legislation that fires up the base and does nothing? No way!

Though, he hasn't really learned from the master unless there's some grift in there for him where he personally profits from it.

SI

So on Twitter, where I spend altogether too much time, I keep hearing people are furious over “empty shelves” because as I understand it that’s the President’s job. Are any of you seeing actual empty shelves? Maybe I’m just missing out because I’m a coastal elite or something.

I mean, I’ve had some delivery delays for certain things, but these images of soviet eta bread lines don’t connect at all to what I’ve experienced.

A few times, something I wanted wasn't at a store. So I either waited a week or drove to the other store five minutes away and it was there.

So it has not been quite the 100% of products available at all places at all times like it was pre-pandemic.

But it has been, like, 99% like it was.

Definitely seen some things out of stock for our grocery orders sometimes it was breakfast bars, sometimes spaghetti sauce or orange juice. Usually back in stock in a week or 2.

I've mostly been doing curbside and, sure, there are still the couple of things each week out of maybe 40. But I just chalked that up to how it's always been - like there's always been stuff that's not on the shelf - this isn't a pandemic thing, this goes back before that. It's just that if brand X isn't in stock, I could just buy brand Y on the shelf right next to it. You can't do that on the app because you don't have real control over the substitutions.

I went in last week for a few things and it didn't look much different than pre-pandemic, honestly. It was a little messier, perhaps because there aren't as many people working and doing facing. Perhaps because we're just being more slothenly as a society. But it didn't look markedly different to me.

Then again, I'm a bit more flexible on my grocery shopping that most. Maybe this is a bit more a deal if you MUST HAVE brand X and brand Y simply won't do. Or maybe it's something that's more common in smaller towns?

I swear, more and more, this feels more and more like forced scarcity from suppliers. Why should I produce 10M widgets and make $1 each when I can make 3M widgets and make $3 for a lot lower cost? Yes, there are a few supply chain things getting in the way (microchips, etc). But like microchips aren't the reason why, say, toilet paper is in short supply.

SI

This is a deal because "A Democrat is President, so I will scream on Facebook about bread lines b/c 1 of the 7 brands of shaving cream here isn't on the shelf right now."

I think it is a good bit of "we can cut costs by producing less and raise profits by charging more" and somebody else gets the blame (ie Democrats for some reason).

Not sure if this is the right place, but I thought this was an interesting law

Tennessee passes bill requiring drunk drivers to pay child support if they kill parent

McCarthy

Lying

Doesn't matter

It does matter. Just not in the way it should.

The fact that he actually opposes Dear Leader but nonetheless bends the knee to him is a positive for MAGA.

Obedience is key. He has shown that.

dola:

NEWS: Trump & McCarthy spoke last night after audio proved the GOP leader was going to tell the former pres. to resign days following Jan. 6. Trump was reportedly not upset and reveled over his continued grip over the GOP, two sources tell me & @JaxAlemany https://t.co/7ZJhjNWTuS

— Marianna Sotomayor (@MariannaReports) April 22, 2022

Getting someone to agree with you b/c they agree with you is boring.

Getting someone to agree with you b/c they are afraid of you is where it's at.

I understand the idea behind it but

A) We have issues ensuring that divorced parents pay their child support on time if at all. How will enforcement of this be any better and

B) if the goal includes "maintaining the child’s standard of living", how would that apply to a situation where someone making minimum wage kills someone making millions like a star athlete?

Definitely some holes on shelves and continuing to see certain items barely if ever in stock (zero sugar pop and Gatorade are still mostly absent or "you had to be there when they put a small bit of stock on the shelves to get them" levels of available) but 95% of what we need, we can get.

This

It seems to be easing up but it felt like it came in different waves. One week it might be difficult to find one thing you were looking for and the next it might be something else.

The specific cat food my spoiled-ass cats like has been hard to find at the store next to us but PETCO, Amazon, ect have it in stock.

Overall I'd say it's been an incredibly minor inconvenience although my wife is more than tired of hearing me say "bare shelf Biden".

This was published 2 hours ago on Fox News' website.

Day-old news masquerading as current news focused on denying the reporting when we all have heard the tapes that make this story moot.

McCarthy rebuts reporting on leaked recordings recommending Trump resign as Cheney, Scalise deny involvementhttps://t.co/O4yGJgrNpj

— Fox News (@FoxNews) April 22, 2022

Yes, some dog food and dog treats have been tough to find at times, as well.

I genuinely don't understand how the government gets blamed for any shortages. Even during the pandemic, it was the short-sighted decisions of companies that led to shortages.

You want a free market where businesses only care about their bottom line? You got it.

I've noticed that our regional chain has less variety and lower stock than our national chain. The creamer we like cut down on the flavors available and PopTarts only have a few flavors on the shelf when there used to be more. I guessed it was more related to buying power to obtain varieties or companies cutting back because they can than supply chain issues.

Overall, there hasn't been a big shortage on items since the first few months of the lockdown. If something isn't at the store this week, it's usually there the next time we go. Things are more or less back to the way they were.

Most supply chain shortage stories end up being a company making a conscious decision. Businesses that staff at the absolute bare bones so they can squeeze every shred of profit out of it that get burnt when something goes wrong.

For instance, Kelloggs gets mentioned a lot. This is a company that is coming off one of its most profitable years. They have bought back billions in shares the past decade. They've also been constantly laying off workers and had a factory shutdown over a labor dispute.

Now it's their business and their choice. Obviously, those decisions are working out well for them. But when some flavors of Pop-Tarts are out of stock, it's on them.

The only "shortage" I've seen is less than fully stocked Progresso/Chunky soup. Nothing else that I typically buy including fruits, vegetables, tp/paper towels, eggs, beef/chicken/salmon etc. So all good here in northern Atlanta suburbia.

Maybe its the grocery store. I shop at Kroger, Publix, Walmart, Target. I can believe the smaller chains or corner mom-and-pop stores may have less inventory.

They should be complaining about higher prices vs empty shelves.

In the event "they" gave a fuck about reality, sure. That's not the game we're playing, though.

It's an interesting angle and I guess it's sticky... prices go up and down, the stock market goes up and down, those things are somewhat difficult to pin to "because someone did a good/bad job."

But empty shelves just feels like a failure, and I can see why it's effective political imagery to imply that this failure is because he failed. it just rolls off the tongue differently than, say, the times "they" claimed that another Dow Jones record was because the President at that time did something or another.

Less than there were before, but there are shortages around here at big chains like Walmart and Meijer. I probably notice it more as a professional shopper, but beef and chicken are less available than pre-pandemic, some other staples. Not always out, but pretty regularly.

I think part of it relates to what RainMaker said. I think some businesses have just discovered that customers won't make them pay a price for shortages that is high enough for them to make corrections. I don't think we ever go back to 'the way it was' in this among so many other aspects. Customer anger rarely goes to the supplier, even when it's their fault (and that's not always the case). People aren't sophisiticated enough in general to pin the blame where it properly goes or to even care to do so, which sort of feeds into QuickSand's point. It feels like a failure even when the people 'held responsible' have no reasonable control over it.

Such is the nature of modern free societies.


Not entirely. It's a lot more complicated than that. There were literally businesses who were closed by government order. I think a lot of that was wise decision-making, but that's certainly not the businesses' fault, and it's inevitable that reorganization and chaos in the labor market would happen to a degree afterwards even if all businesses made good choices (which many didn't of course). Things like aluminum shortages because the normal cycle of the economy was disrupted were just things that happen in a major disruption. It's not government's fault, and it's not the fault of businesses. It's just what happens - the only thing to really blame is the virus itself, but of course that's not a divisive enough target to satisfy most people.

The wet cat food I usually get is the only real shortage I've noticed, it's on shelves maybe half the time.

For all the complaining about gas prices, is there any reason at all for companies to lower them? Even if oil gets cheaper, there is plenty of demand to just keep prices hovering around the 4 dollar mark.

Our gas prices have already dropped .15 to .20 cents.

Yeah cat food has been the only consistent shortage area for me. Other shortages come and go.