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Created
Sun, 05/01/2025 - 06:00
Via Raw Story: Politico reported Friday evening that Johnson securing the 218 votes necessary to be speaker came with conditions. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), who is a member of the arch-conservative House Freedom Caucus, told the outlet that there would be potential “consequences” for the speaker if he failed to uphold his end of the bargain on certain sticking points “Let’s make no mistake about it. There will be things that are, in fact, red lines that we need to deliver,” Roy said, referencing Johnson’s reliance on Democratic votes to push a must-pass government funding bill across the finish line in late December. “We can have no more of the nonsense that happened before Christmas.” They changed the rule on the Motion to Vacate to require 9 votes to take out the Speaker. Roy pointed out that there were 9 votes that objected in one way or another to the speaker yesterday. He said there were more ready to join in if Johnson didn’t do exactly what they wanted him to do. It’s not going to be pretty. But nobody deserves it more than this wrecking crew.
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Sun, 05/01/2025 - 07:30
In this video, Tulsi Gabbard pledges her undying love and devotion to her guru Chris Butler who, as reported in the New Yorker, asks his followers to eat his toenails as a gesture of devotion. pic.twitter.com/GMjO26TBNI — I was warning about this back in 2005. (@brucewilson) January 3, 2025 Wonkette took a look at Gabbard’s cult in its inimitable fashion: The group is called Science of Identity Foundation (SIF), founded by an acid-dropping white surfer guy named Chris Butler, AKA Guru Dev Srila Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa, AKA Jagad Guru, AKA Sai Young, in the 1970s, as an offshoot of the Hare Krishnas, AKA the International Society for Krishna Consciousness.  Butler got his start as a guru teaching mediation and yoga, and was drawn to the Krishnas, but he didn’t want to shave his head or wear robes or do other Hare Krishna stuff. So he founded his own thing, which involved him living with two dozen 18-to-22-year-olds in a Quonset hut under a freeway, beating bongos and arranging his followers’ marriages. Two of his hut-dwellers were Tulsi Gabbard’s parents, Mike and Carol, who joined the group in 1983.
Created
Sun, 05/01/2025 - 09:00
I’ ve been reading some of the reporting on the Las Vegas Tesla suicide attack and it just gets weirder and weirder. I won’t go into all the crazy stuff out there right now about Chinese drones and Afghan war crimes because it all seems way too out there to even analyze at the moment. You can click that link if you’re curious. But there is some easily verified stuff in the attacker’s “manifesto” that’s been released that isn’t getting any coverage and it’s ridiculous. Yes, he was obviously a disturbed man who suffered from PTSD after many deployments. He needed mental health help that he reportedly didn’t obtain from the military for fear of losing his position as a special forces specialist. But he was also a radicalized, red-pilled MAGA cultist little different than the ISIS radicalized former vet who killed all those people in New Orleans. Josh Marshall writes: [A]t least for the moment there is a pretty striking lack of attention to the political motives he expressed in at least two documents or what I guess we might call minifestos that investigators found on his iphone.
Created
Sun, 05/01/2025 - 10:30
Here is another piece of Michael Podhorzer’s in-depth analysis of the election using some of the very reliable vote cast data. He finds that the problem is not that voters moved right — Trump got essentially the same proportion of the electorate he got in 2020 — it’s that a lot of Democrats decided not to vote, especially in Blue states. There may have been many reasons for the loss but it does not appear that it was a rousing endorsement of Trumpy fascism. One reason this happened is because Trump the pathological liar has the benefit of people not believing anything he says, which I would never have thought would be an asset for a politician but here we are: Anat adds: “Further, as we heard from this cohort across focus groups, they’re skeptical that electing Democrats would actually prove an effective check on MAGA’s power.” This is the one-two punch that knocked out Harris’s chances this year: disaffection with Democrats, combined with incredulity at the idea that Trump might actually implement the worst parts of the MAGA agenda. Why did they think the Democrats would be an ineffective check?
Created
Fri, 03/01/2025 - 01:00
Coincidences or not? As authorities investigate Wednesday’s New Orleans truck attack on Bourbon Street and the Cybertruck explosion in front of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas, one odd detail links the two. Or doesn’t. Both vehicles were rented using the peer-to-peer rental app, Turo. Axios reports that Clark County/Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Sheriff Kevin McMahill said “there was no immediate indication of a connection between the two events, but ‘we are investigating every aspect of this.’ “ The New York Times reports: The owner of the Ford pickup truck used in New Orleans recognized his vehicle when he saw footage showing the truck and license plate on the news. He had rented the truck to a 42-year-old Army veteran who then used it to ram into crowds on Bourbon Street, killing at least 15 people and injuring dozens more. […] In Las Vegas, the police said during a news conference that the Tesla Cybertruck that exploded outside the Trump Hotel’s lobby entrance, killing one and injuring at least seven others, was also rented from Turo.
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Fri, 03/01/2025 - 02:30
Chuck Schumer weighs in on DNC chair race This is new (Politico): Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer is endorsing Ben Wikler to lead the Democratic National Committee, a boost for the Wisconsin state party leader in a race that has drawn little attention and few big names. Schumer’s endorsement — shared first with POLITICO — comes as Democrats prepare for a month-long campaign to run the DNC, with four candidate forums in January. Following the party’s bruising losses in November, members of the committee will elect their new chair on Feb. 1. Schumer, the most prominent Democrat so far to weigh in publicly on the race, called Wikler a “tenacious organizer,” a “proven fundraiser” and a “sharp communicator” in a statement. He emphasized Wikler’s work in 2024, when Democrats in Wisconsin held on to their Senate seat and flipped 14 state legislative seats, even though Kamala Harris did not win the state. “Ben has what Democrats need right now — proven results — and that’s why I’m backing Ben,” Schumer said. Kudos to Wikler, 43, who I met in 2019.
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Fri, 03/01/2025 - 04:30
Not Gonna Happen Trump has a tremendous amount of power as the executive (some of it still subject to judicial interpretation.) But anything he wants to do that requires Congress is going to be an extremely heavy lift. Notus reports: But as Republicans try to shake off a close call with a government shutdown and prepare for Donald Trump’s first 100 days, lawmakers are starting to grapple with a simple reality: They may not be able to do much of anything. “They can’t even extend government funding,” a frustrated Sen. Josh Hawley told NOTUS in December, as the House GOP nearly imploded over a stopgap spending bill. “They’re going to do this all over again in March. There’s a debt ceiling fight coming up,” he said. “Good luck.” Before Trump even takes office on Jan. 20, House Republicans must elect a speaker — a delicate, historically difficult task given the mutiny currently on Mike Johnson’s hands. Republicans then had to agree to a rules package, which was released on Wednesday.
Created
Fri, 03/01/2025 - 06:00
Ernie Tedeschi, the director of economics at the Yale Budget Lab who in March wrapped up a three-year stint on the White House Council of Economic Advisers was asked by Business Insider, “was the “vibecession” fake?  He replied:   “The short answer is no. The vibecession was not fake. The long answer is no, but … ,” he said. Perceptions of the economy have to do with more than the economy itself. That doesn’t mean that people were lying or that their answers didn’t have some real economic motivation, but there’s clearly more to it than the material conditions in front of them — it’s also about their ideological leanings and how that shapes what they believe is ahead.”Perceptions of the economy are definitely deeply partisan,” Tedeschi said. That’s right.
Created
Fri, 03/01/2025 - 07:30
More infighting in MAGAworld: Billionaire Trump surrogate Elon Musk defended his decision to strip critics of their ability to monetize content on X after cracking down on dissent on the social network. Responding to a supporter who defended “people getting demonetized for their inexcusable behavior,” Musk declared, “Exactly. The first amendment is protection for ‘free speech’, not ‘paid speech’ ffs.” He demonetized people who criticized him specifically. I don’t know why anyone would be too surprised by that. He’s essentially an employer of people making money on X and employers have every right to muzzle speech on the job. Of course he did that. All you have to do is read his Twitter feed to see what an onanistic, self-indulgent, narcissist he is. In any case, his “free speech” crusade is very contingent on whose speech should be protected, not what or where. He likes to have it both ways.