The Republican Agenda 2016 forward

[SouprMatt]

Yes, Dems need to do their F-ing job and stop worrying about so-called norms. Mango is not a normal pol. He's a wannabe dictator and imbecile. They should do what the GOP did to Obamacare: muddy any prospective GQP legislation and then call it out when it inevitably fails.

I made a new thread for that, but the resistance is so weak and pathetic it probably doesn’t even deserve a thread. Here’s AOC. Maybe she should run for prez next time around.

 

[lizkat]

US House raises bar for flagrant ring-kissing. A zero-chance proposal to amend the Constitution to let Trump run for a third term.

Republican floats Constitutional amendment to allow Trump a third term

Rep. Ogles, of Tennessee, wants to amend the 22nd Amendment of the US Constitution, which currently limits presidents to two terms.

www.newsweek.com

The 5th Amendment, which lays out the process, states that two-thirds of both houses of Congress must support the proposal of an amendment or two-thirds of state legislatures must call a convention to propose an amendment. Should the resolution clear either of those initial hurdles, it would require ratification by the legislatures of three-fourths of states or "by conventions in three-fourths thereof."

 

[Pumbaa]

US House raises bar for flagrant ring-kissing. A zero-chance proposal to amend the Constitution to let Trump run for a third term.

Republican floats Constitutional amendment to allow Trump a third term

Rep. Ogles, of Tennessee, wants to amend the 22nd Amendment of the US Constitution, which currently limits presidents to two terms.

www.newsweek.com

Carefully crafted to exclude Obama. 😂

 

[lizkat]

Carefully crafted to exclude Obama. 😂

Yeah and a few other living ones - via excluding those having been elected for "two CONSECUTIVE terms".

 

[P___X]

Mark My Words: there are enough insurrectionist pardoned for us to see a flurry trying to get into politics in 2026.

 

[Thomas Veil]

And enough idiot MAGA voters to elect them.

 

[P___X]

And enough idiot MAGA voters to elect them.

yup. It feels like we're getting the exact shit through and through that people voted against in 2020 and the only difference appears to be that COVID isn't actively trying to decimate the population. Though they made sure that something else could wreak even more havoc.

 

[Thomas Veil]

I love reading Robert Reich. He’s one of the few who can clearly and concisely capture what is happening to our country, and here he is at the top of his game:

The New York Times describes Trump as leading “a global wave of hard-line conservative populism.”

Rubbish.

What’s (sic) Trump is undertaking has nothing whatever to do with conservatism, which is about conserving institutions and shrinking the size of government. And it has nothing to do with populism, which is about confronting elites.

Trump is leading a move to replace democracy with oligarchy.

He’s implementing a plan to make the wealthiest people in America far wealthier and more powerful, including Trump himself, and to turn American democracy into a giant corporation run by a handful of absurdly rich men.

He thinks he can accomplish this by getting the rest of us so angry at one another — over immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, abortion, diversity, and the like — that we don’t look upward and see where most of the wealth and power have gone.

Trump’s divisive policies will cause great harm, to be sure, and we must do everything we can to protect those who are vulnerable to them. But his cruel divisiveness is deflecting attention from the main event.

The media reported on all the hot-buttons Trump pushed: The government now recognizes only two “immutable” genders, male and female. Migrants (now referred to as “aliens”) are being turned away at the border. Immigration agents are freed to target hospitals, schools, and churches in search of people to deport. Diversity efforts in the federal government have been dismantled and employees turned into snitches. Federal money will be barred from paying for many abortions.

All awful to be sure, but the bigger story is Trump’s consolidation of power — substituting loyalists for experts across the government, using retribution to intimidate others, purging the government’s independent inspectors general, giving the Defense Department more authority over civilian life (and putting a raving loyalist in charge), giving Elon Musk authority to cut spending and roll back regulations, and readying a massive tax cut for the wealthy and big corporations.

Americans aren’t seeing this big story yet because Trump’s divisiveness is masking it.

Precisely!

And then Reich goes on to say that while the media are following Trump’s lead, reporting on every regressive policy he’s implementing…

Trump is the frontman. The three richest men in the world (Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg) stood prominently before him when he was sworn in last week. Trump has appointed other billionaires to key positions.

Behind them is a coterie of billionaires pushing for more oligarchic control of America (among them, Peter Thiel, Blake Masters, tech entrepreneur David Sacks, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, Palantir adviser Jacob Helberg, and Sequoia Capital’s Doug Leone).

Their two key inside players are Musk and JD Vance.

The oligarchs are counting on Vance to become president when Trump is incapacitated or dies in office, or clings to power beyond 2028 and turns power over to Vance. Vance will manage the final transition to an oligarchic form of government.

And while I’ll stop quoting at length here, I’ll summarize the rest of Reich’s essay: these ultra-rich elites are trying to convert us into their “ideal” government, in which they are the major stockholders and they elect a “CEO-president” to run the government, and that CEO serves at their pleasure.

Who’d have thought a 19th century Supreme Court railroad case could have been the start of all this?

Trump's first week: The Real Story

Let it be known

robertreich.substack.com

 

[SouprMatt]

Some MAGA faithful are angry at Colombia. So they are trying to boycott Colombian coffee. Their solution? Italian coffee! 🤣🤣

 

[Hrafn]

Some MAGA faithful are angry at Colombia. So they are trying to boycott Colombian coffee. Their solution? Italian coffee! 🤣🤣

Well, if you don’t care about facts or details…gotta go eat me some FREEDOM fries…

 

[Thomas Veil]

Competence, thy name is Trump.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt acknowledged that Medicaid portals were down today in a post on X, calling the issue an “outage” and writing:

“The White House is aware of the Medicaid website portal outage. We have confirmed no payments have been affected — they are still being processed and sent. We expect the portal will be back online shortly.”

White House orders all federal staff to return to in-office work or resign – as it happened

Memo offers employees who don’t want to serve in ‘reformed federal workforce’ seven months’ salary if they quit by 6 February

www.theguardian.com

 

[P___X]

Competence, thy name is Trump.

White House orders all federal staff to return to in-office work or resign – as it happened

Memo offers employees who don’t want to serve in ‘reformed federal workforce’ seven months’ salary if they quit by 6 February

www.theguardian.com

PubMed was also down around 3PM. it's a trip. I've seen pubmed down about twice over the past 18 years

 

[Jay Mysteri0]

https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/28/politics/video/federal-frant-freeze-trump-school-lunches-digvid

He was working before there were child labor laws?

He's been working since the early 1900's? Why is there such a need to be an asshole?

 

[Jay Mysteri0]

One of the more interesting things on xit tonight ( besides Kanye returning to announce he's following only Taylor Swift, because... ) is a trade made by the Dallas Mavericks to the Lakers. Universally it's considered a very... questionable trade. Which has led to many questioning the decision. Some of that many includes haters of Mark Cuban who was a vocal Harris supporter among other liberal crimes, are having a field day.




The problem?

On November 28, 2023, The Dallas Morning News reported that Cuban was in the process of selling his share in the Dallas Mavericks to Miriam Adelson.

On December 27, 2023, the NBA approved the sale of a controlling interest of 73% in the Dallas Mavericks to the Adelson and Dumont families.

Mark Cuban - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

He sold the team, he has no say. Who did he sell the team to?

Always blame the liberal, for things that

 

[Thomas Veil]

Trump is waging war against his own government​

One federal employee who spoke with NBC News said that the government workforce feels like they're being attacked regularly with "psychological warfare."

“If you want government to function, you wouldn’t be attacking federal employees on a daily basis with psychological warfare,” said a longtime manager in the federal government. “You want them to show up motivated. This is not the way to do it.”

I can't say I like what I'm seeing, but I'm (for lack of a better word) enjoying the schadenfreude. This is what you wanted? Great. Choke on it!

Sure, I know there'll be collateral damage. Tons of it. But maybe this is what it takes to shake the dumbass voting public out of their deranged stupor.

I am cautiously optimistic that this might be the beginning of the end for MAGA. To use Grover Norquist's metaphor, they're filling the bathtub and trying to wrestle the government into it right now.

I just want to see the idiots who voted for this to act all shocked and say to themselves, "I didn't know it was going to affect me this way!"

Of course, the flip side of that is that with a new leader, the Democratic Party has to grow a new and very vocal spine and rub the voters' noses in this. Not to chastise them, just to show them that Republicans have been leading them by the f'ing nose the whole time.

 

[lizkat]

Competence, thy name is Trump.

Yeah add this one. A pilot messaging system glitch may hang up air traffic until fixed...

US pilot messaging system outage may mean flight delays, Transportation Department says

A key U.S. pilot messaging system was experiencing a temporary outage, which could lead to flight delays on Sunday, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said late on Saturday. The Federal Aviation Administration is working to restore the "Notice to Air Mission" or NOTAM system, Duffy said...

www.yahoo.com

 

[SouprMatt]

Trump is waging war against his own government​

One federal employee who spoke with NBC News said that the government workforce feels like they're being attacked regularly with "psychological warfare."


I can't say I like what I'm seeing, but I'm (for lack of a better word) enjoying the schadenfreude. This is what you wanted? Great. Choke on it!

Sure, I know there'll be collateral damage. Tons of it. But maybe this is what it takes to shake the dumbass voting public out of their deranged stupor.

I am cautiously optimistic that this might be the beginning of the end for MAGA. To use Grover Norquist's metaphor, they're filling the bathtub and trying to wrestle the government into it right now.

I just want to see the idiots who voted for this to act all shocked and say to themselves, "I didn't know it was going to affect me this way!"

Of course, the flip side of that is that with a new leader, the Democratic Party has to grow a new and very vocal spine and rub the voters' noses in this. Not to chastise them, just to show them that Republicans have been leading them by the f'ing nose the whole time.

Most federal workers live in and around DC. In DC, Harris got 90% of the vote and Trump got 6%. In Montgomery County, Maryland, it was 75% to 22%. In Alexandria and Arlington, it was 77% to 20%.

These are people who know firsthand how bad a Trump administration is.

The “hurt fans” of Trump assume all these attacks will only hurt the liberals. That’s why Jan 6 was funny to them, or at least nothing to worry about. Well… They are about to find out how fast the downstream effects of the current flood will hit them.

I could be wrong, but I believe the lawsuits will really start to bog down Trump and Elmo’s attempts to punish government workers. But the shutdown or reduction of services will be felt very quickly in “heartland” regions of the country. And the tariffs? They are the fastest possible way to punish MAGA voters in red states. Manufacturing jobs will dry up. Their gas-guzzling trucks that they drive 50 miles just to get groceries will bankrupt them at $5-6 a gallon for gas. And I hope they don’t want guacamole at their Super Bowl parties…!

They think they are sticking it to the liberals, but the fact is that those in urban areas can weather this storm FAR better than those dwelling in rural areas.

Not sure exactly how far the brainwashing goes. I think we will find out. A plane crash in DC in week one can be blamed on DEI and Biden because it’s early and the MAGA crowd doesn’t care about people dying in a far-away city. But when the pain starts to hit home in week 21, or 51 or 101? We shall see how devoted they truly are to their death cult.

 

[lizkat]

Most federal workers live in and around DC. In DC, Harris got 90% of the vote and Trump got 6%. In Montgomery County, Maryland, it was 75% to 22%. In Alexandria and Arlington, it was 77% to 20%.

These are people who know firsthand how bad a Trump administration is.

The “hurt fans” of Trump assume all these attacks will only hurt the liberals. That’s why Jan 6 was funny to them, or at least nothing to worry about. Well… They are about to find out how fast the downstream effects of the current flood will hit them.

I could be wrong, but I believe the lawsuits will really start to bog down Trump and Elmo’s attempts to punish government workers. But the shutdown or reduction of services will be felt very quickly in “heartland” regions of the country. And the tariffs? They are the fastest possible way to punish MAGA voters in red states. Manufacturing jobs will dry up. Their gas-guzzling trucks that they drive 50 miles just to get groceries will bankrupt them at $5-6 a gallon for gas. And I hope they don’t want guacamole at their Super Bowl parties…!

They think they are sticking it to the liberals, but the fact is that those in urban areas can weather this storm FAR better than those dwelling in rural areas.

Not sure exactly how far the brainwashing goes. I think we will find out. A plane crash in DC in week one can be blamed on DEI and Biden because it’s early and the MAGA crowd doesn’t care about people dying in a far-away city. But when the pain starts to hit home in week 21, or 51 or 101? We shall see how devoted they truly are to their death cult.

One problem for the opposition all along has been the diffuse nature of their communications, versus the concentrated messaging coming from Fox News. I'd like to think that gas prices and cherry tomatoes (we import the latter from Canada AND Mexico and are now deporting tomato pickers from the USA! ) become something even FauxSnooze can't lay off on Biden.. But they'll make an effort, and for a post-factual viewership, who knows, they can say anything that has Trump's stamp of approval on it and sell it to that crowd.

Sure, Trump will take the tariffs off again item by item or possibly en masse, and then claim he has rescued the economy from massive inflation. I'm sadly becoming more cynical by the day when it comes to thinking there's a way to beat fiction with facts in this ever more benighted country.

[ Also, I'm snowed in and almost out of Roma tomatoes, already way pricey in winter even when I can shop ]😡

 

[Thomas Veil]

This is one reason liberal columnists are saying that the Dems have to start going on podcasts and smaller media outlets: because that's where the MAGAts reach "the heartland".

Yeah...maybe. It's worth a try. But if you do, for God's sake, talk to the Republican listeners. Tell them you've been predicting that chaos would happen, and here it is, and this is why it is. Don't just parrot talking points designed for consumption by people like, well, those of us in this forum. We're not the ones that need to be won over. Talk to the rural voters, and tell them they're being lied to, and back it up with real life examples of how it's hurting them.

 

[lizkat]

This is one reason liberal columnists are saying that the Dems have to start going on podcasts and smaller media outlets: because that's where the MAGAts reach "the heartland".

Yeah...maybe. It's worth a try. But if you do, for God's sake, talk to the Republican listeners. Tell them you've been predicting that chaos would happen, and here it is, and this is why it is. Don't just parrot talking points designed for consumption by people like, well, those of us in this forum. We're not the ones that need to be won over. Talk to the rural voters, and tell them they're being lied to, and back it up with real life examples of how it's hurting them.

Exactly. Around here there was jubilation when Biden's ARA passed. because of the infrastructure grants that could finally be obtained to fix over 20 bridges that have remained out or structurally deficient since 2006 floods washed them away or made them unsafe for usually permitted loading.

Two thousand f'g SIX... Nineteen years of driving 50 miles extra to get arugula to a truck to take it to the market for restaurants in NYC, or to get the milk from farm to co-op for shipment. or just to bus the kids to school or make what used to be a 20-minute work commute.​

​

So yeah, jubilation over an end to that extra toll on budgets for gas and vehicle maintenance!​

But now thanks to Trump 2.0 there's confusion about whether the agreed-upon grants will actually end up with money in hand for the county to proceed with taking bids. THAT's what to talk about with rural people.

Some of us may always have thought the money just comes from decisions made by town highway supervisors and somehow people on the wrong side of 20 bridges just have to wait their turn ("Well there are only five or six farms left on this road..."). More recently, some think the money's not coming from anywhere and that it's Biden's fault, not the fault of illegal White House attempts to impound funds allocated via laws passed by Congress. Watch enough Fox News and end up stupid.

But spin the dial to MSN out of curiosity and it will take ten seconds before a rural Republican switches away from outraged reporting over stuff like whether it's a federal civil rights crime or just a sin to paint over a diversity mural on the wall of a fed agency. I figure it's both, but then I'm not a Republican, I'm already a member of the choir the left-leaning mainstream media outlets preach to.

Bottom line for Democrats to make an impression via new or old media: meet the voters where they are.