The Biden Administration (No Lago)

[tussock]

Jesus the SC has just gone full on bullshit, eh.

Separation of Church and State, gone. State teachers may force students to pray with them, but in reality, of course, only the Christian ones.
Treaties with the various American tribes, just torn up and chucked in the rubbish, tribal law no longer exists and all must follow state laws.
Miranda rights are gone, that whole thing where police had to tell the truth about a thing just exactly once was too much and is over.
And then, banning pre-viability abortions is fine, so, every sperm is sacred once more. People with ectopic pregnancies are being told already they will have to suffer in agony and then start bleeding to death before they can be saved, which is like a 40 minute window. People with cancer being denied treatment because pregnancy, so they'll just die, and so will the foetus. Arthritis medicine is apparently an abortificant, so enjoy unmedicated rhumetoid, everyone with a uterus. Laws on the way to punish anyone crossing state lines for any of that. Online order forms are evidence of murder, enjoy your 19 years in prison.


Anyway, seems like the reason Biden didn't have a plan to do anything at all about Roe v Wade falling over is that he's just very Catholic and thinks abortion is murder. So is Pelosi. Continuing to support anti-abortion democratic candidates for various offices to this very day.

Probably be more tomorrow. What an absolute disaster. Gotta respect that fillibuster rule where people don't actually fillibuster any more though, otherwise you might get anything at all done and stay in power as a result. Nice to see a few states, and the odd federal politician actually fighting though.

[Kaelik]

Actually, Biden doesn't just support anti abortion democrats, he's also appointed anti abortion republicans to judgeships.

Because lmao.

[Stahlseele]

i don't get your politicks . .
over here we have tha nazi party, which is the designated bad guy.
and the green party who nobody cares about.
and the left party, which is basically trying to be the opposite of the nazis. also a designated bad guy.
and then whe have 2 different kinds of christian democratic parties for some reason.
and another free democratic party. who also nobody really cares about.
and a socialist democratic party.

and over there you have . .
the democrats. who are the designated bad guys.
and the liberals. who are also the bad guys now?

*confused*

[Kaelik]

I think you might be mashing together US and Canadian/Australian politics.*

But it is the case that many people correctly pointed out that the 80 year old leaders who have been in charge of the democratic party for 20 years would probably act the same way they did in their 50 years in office, by opposing abortion and trying to make friends with republicans, and flatly refusing to rise to the challenge of the moment.

And then a bunch of people said "nah, all democrats are exactly the same, ignore all the actions they've ever taken and vote for the ones who have always had power because the only thing that matters is just having a D in front of their name." and in a complete surprise they managed to be wrong about that! And now the democrats are either doing the same evil shit as the GOP (anything that involves outside the US borders) or just letting the GOP make all the decisions (anything that happens inside the US borders).


* Canada and Australia have a "Liberal" party, and in Canada they are the Democrats, except without any of the leftist with no power, because those are the NDP, so the canadian liberal party the Joe Bidens don't have to pretend to be left and then govern from the right. But they still do the Dem thing of saying "we agree 100% on all the same things as every leftist, but we have different ways to get there. What no we are a party of capitalism. Shut up and work for my profit."

In Australia the US Democratic party of centrists who hate the left more then fascism and believe that the correct response to the entire world burning is means tested tax breaks for people who individually choose to buy only renewable energy are called Labour, and the Liberal party is just the Tories/GOP/Conservative party that wants the normal fascism.

[MGuy]

The electable parties in this country are Dems and Republicans. Both parties are bad, though for reasons, many many many people are under the impression that one being less bad than the other makes that one not so bad. Which party is that? Depends on who you ask. There are also liberals in both parties.

[PseudoStupidity]

I like to describe the US parties as the following.

Two main parties that can actually win elections:

Democrats - Neoliberal imperialist party. Knows how to run a capitalist economy reasonably well, are socially liberal, but still anti-labor and anti-welfare. Hugely into privatization, and very hawkish foreign policy when it comes to protecting capitalist interests but otherwise unconcerned about foreign policy.

Republicans - The theocratic fascist party. Doesn't know how to run an economy at all and is somehow even more into privatization than the Democrats, hates everyone who isn't a Christian (and if you're not a straight white Christian you're on thin ice), and is imperialist to the point of openly talking about how the US should rule the entire world.

The other parties:

Green- Party you can get yelled at by the Democrats for joining.
Libertarian - Party you can get yelled at by the Republicans and Democrats for joining.
All other minor parties - You've never heard of them and never will.

[Kaelik]

Joe Biden celebrating the Supreme Court preventing the EPA from regulating carbon emissions by announcing his plans to expand oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska.

[Kaelik]

Pragmatic centrist Joe biden had originally planned to announce his appointment of a federalist society ghoul to the bench on the day the court overturned roe v wade but he had to back off. This information was leaked to the media from inside the biden admin along with some fun shit like "someone in the biden admin was promised Dobbs wouldn't come down that day and believed it like a moron"


All of this is old news except that obviously biden nominating a federalist ghoul was part of a deal and today an intrepid reporter just called the biden admin (which to be fair had previously been denying they were going to appoint this ghoul until they finally gave up denying it*) and asked what the gop promised biden in return for appointing this guy......


Guess what it is! It's nothing. "We still haven't worked that out yet."

The promise was biden was going to nominate a federalist ghoul to a lifetime appointment, and then after he was confirmed McConnell was going to decide what biden got out of the deal.


*they decided to stop denying they were going to appoint him because the biden admin has decided its been long enough since roe was overturned thay the biden admin will now be going forward with giving him a lifetime appointment.

[PseudoStupidity]

Do you have a source (or sources) for that last post? Too much news has happened lately, I am struggling to catch up. My WaPo and NYT news bubble often leaves out details on why Biden goes the headass shit he is constantly doing.

[Kaelik]

Do you have a source (or sources) for that last post? Too much news has happened lately, I am struggling to catch up. My WaPo and NYT news bubble often leaves out details on why Biden goes the headass shit he is constantly doing.

Senator Dick Durbin in this article, though I originally saw the tweet this article was based on: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/pol ... 033798002/

"Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which takes up federal judicial nominations, said he spoke last week to the White House about the potential Meredith nomination.

“What's in it for us? They didn't give a specific answer," Durbin told reporters, according to Politico. He said Democrats would not support Meredith's confirmation "on his merits alone." "

I guess you could instead interpret it as "there is a solid deal, and it's so worthless that Biden instructed everyone to lie to the Dem Senator's who's votes he needs."

[PseudoStupidity]

Fucking incredible, thanks for sharing that. I love seeing effective bipartisanship where the Democrats give the Republicans things and get nothing in return.

[Kaelik]

The guy that biden and Pelosi pulled out all the stops to keep in office just introduced a bill to end the minimum wage and overtime pay.

[Kaelik]

Turns out that Joe Biden's FBI Director just took all the tips on the Kavanaugh shit and just emailed the whitehouse and said "which ones of these do you want us to investigate" and then only investigated the ones that the whitehouse told him to. Great choice Joe Biden!

In related news (Biden being a piece of shit who appoints evil conservatives to every post) the NLRB is ordering coal workers to pay coal barons 13 million dollars for the crime of striking.

[PseudoStupidity]

Wait, you can still sue people for striking in the US? I thought that was only for federal workers, and even then I thought that was only for critical jobs like air traffic control. How the fuck are they suing coal workers for striking!?

Edit: I have Googled it and it looks like they are requiring the strikers to pay for losses from the strike. That sounds uncomfortably like they're making it illegal to not work for coal barons.

[MGuy]

If they can get fined for choosing to strike does that not basically mean it's essentially illegal?

[Kaelik]

The Democratic Senate is making extremely clear that they believe the act of offering amendments to make a bill better is a crime and that every single one of them believes that Bernie Sanders should not be allowed input in any bill ever for the rest of his life, and the same for any other leftist.

If the senate is 50-50 after the midterms Sanders should stop caucusing with the democrats, since clearly the only way to be allowed to have any input at all is to sabotage the democrats into submission.

[Kaelik]

After Democrats announced that even the concept of Sanders being allowed to propose amendments is evil, and they voted in unison against the child tax credit they braggeed about last year, medicare providing dental coverage, and several other amendments that would have improved the bill in order to hide the ones who oppose those changes from having to go on the record about them.......


7 democrats just voted for a GOP amendment in the vote a rama. HMMMMM almost like it's not actually the case that they believe offering amendments and seeing if they get 51 votes is bad, and they were just pretending in order to hide that half the democratic congress would vote against anything that helped people, and they don't want us to know who those people are and primary them.

[PseudoStupidity]

I found a Biden quote in a recent WaPo article to be very funny.

Article: https://web.archive.org/web/20220810231 ... cy-threat/

Quote: “You can’t be pro-insurrection and pro-democracy,” Biden told the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives. “You can’t be pro-insurrection and pro-American.”

I think it's neat that Biden apparently does not know that the United States (which is at least technically a democracy, although it's easily one of the least democratic democracies among developed nations) was created by an insurrection, or that insurrections can be pro-democracy and pro-American. I guess he could mean that anyone who is pro-Jan 6 can't be pro-democracy or pro-American, but that would still be wrong.

[tussock]

So by 538.com the House is 70:30 likely to go republican, and the Senate is 70:30 likely to go democrat.

So, that, like, kills all the Trump inquires? Can actually put sane judges in place, not that it matters at this point. About 7-8 R majority in the house, so, maybe get basic legislation passed, of the sort that keeps the economy from collapsing, if not the democracy.

Biden seems better at calling out the bullshit these days, actually using the bully pulpit. But life expectancy is still down, wages are still at the point jobs are moving from India to the US to save money, and racism is still breaking everything and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

Trump seems like he wants to run again, and Republicans are trying to get him back on Twitter, which is interesting, where they're banning science books from schools, but demanding private companies run hate speech for them. Sort of, fascism problem there. And people love it, apparently, or at least hate it less than they hate Democrats in the House. Nothing like hating on tiny powerless minority groups to stir up the middle classes, eh.

[deaddmwalking]

The odds of Republicans taking the house do not in any way correlate with the number of votes they'll receive.

In many states like Texas and Georgia, the house districts are drawn by Republicans. That means that any 'Republican' district is 60% Republican and 40% Democrat, and any 'Democratic' district is 99% Democrat. Let's say your State electorate is 60% Democratic, you have 1,000,000 people and you have 10 districts. With each district having 100,000 people, the first thing you did is put 300,000 Democrats in your first three districts. Of the 700,000 voters who remain, 400,000 are Republicans and 300,000 are Democrats. That lets you create 7 districts with around 57,000 Republican voters and 43,000 Democratic voters.

With 40% of the voters, you control 70% of the districts. This means you have the 2/3s majority typically required to completely control all aspects of government.

What this means is that if Republicans have miscalculated and Democratic voters turn out in higher than expected numbers and Republicans don't, they could lose a lot of districts in a wave election. But even a 'small wave' those districts are 'safely Republican'. It has to be a big wave.

Yes, people who are a clear minority LIKE anti-majoritarian rule because it means they get to have power. The Republican party is not a '50% of the voters party'. It is a 50% of the voters in rural states that have undue representation based on how our Legislative branch is determined, and they're firmly committed to remaining an anti-majoritarian party.

[PseudoStupidity]

I haven't been following midterm speculation too closely lately because it's unlikely to matter. The thing that will determine elections in the future is probably this one SCOTUS case. If the midterms go the way they're expected to (D control of the Senate, R control of the house) we'll probably just remain in gridlock until that court case decides whether or not the US remains a sham democracy or if it takes off the mask and allows Republicans to declare themselves the winners of all elections in states they control forever. Maybe the Dems sweeping the house and senate would change this, but they're not doing anything about it now (which could avert disaster) and so why would they wait until things get even worse to start doing anything about it?

I think DeadDM is right that the Republicans are committed to remaining an anti-majoritarian party, and who cares about elections when they're likely to actually kill democracy in the country via SCOTUS? Seems kind of pointless to even speculate on them from where I'm standing.

[Kaelik]

Indeed, elections in the us are not and have never been decided by the will of the people and increasingly people are seeing less need to even do the work of suppressing votes and lying to other voters when they can bypass that step.

Democrats could easily fix this, but unfortunately for us, democrats fear that fair elections would result in them losing primaries and possibly facing accountability in some cases, so they also substantially oppose fair elections. Exhibit A: The NY congressional map could have been a useful counter gerrymander to prevent republican theft of the house, but cuomo's picked judges made sure to quash that and ensure a stronger hand for Republicans because they were worried too many democrats were becoming leftists.

[PseudoStupidity]

Wait, what happened in NY? Was this in the NY politics thread and I missed it?

[deaddmwalking]

Generally, but not ENTIRELY, Democrats have moved toward making redistricting less partisan (and therefore making elections more competitive). Following the 2000 Census, New York lost a house district. In the redistricting effort, the original map was VERY FAVORABLE to Democrats.

That map was tossed.

While that may be 'more fair' in principle, Florida has an extreme Republican gerrymander, so if one side values fairness and the other doesn't, well, is that really fair?

[Kaelik]

Wait, what happened in NY? Was this in the NY politics thread and I missed it?

The Democrats generated a map for NY that would actually go some way towards helping them hold the house and the republican governor with a D in front of his name's republican supreme court nominees with Ds in front of their name killed it and generated a clusterfuck map that doesn't QUITE maximize the number of republicans you can have in NY, but does what it can.

This actually happened a long time ago (in politics terms, like back in 2021/early 2022 I think), so you probably heard about it, got mad, and forgot about it.