President is two jobs. One is policy driven. One is being a leader. All president’s have to do both, but arguably the latter is more important as president’s can leave policy to aides and congress (and formerly the federal agencies, but that’s gone now). The president is a communicator. Yes most voters like Biden policies, but they don’t know they are Biden policies because Biden does not communicate that. In fact, in many congressional districts the Dem candidates are outperforming Biden while running on the same policies. You can’t blame voters already burdened with living in this capitalist hell hole for not devoting hours into researching candidate policies.

In presidential politics, at the end of the day the buck stops with the candidate. Campaign aids and paid advertising and surrogates on TV can only do so much. You need the candidate to deliver, to speak directly to the voters, to make the case for why voters should choose them and their policies over the alternative. Biden is incapable of that.

It’s Bidens fault.

This movement wouldn’t have any traction if Biden put on even a middling debate performance. We all saw Biden start to answer a question about abortion, then get confused and switch midway into talking about some woman killed by an immigrant. You don’t need a grand conspiracy, it’s a simple case of grandpa being too full of pride to give up his car keys. Except in this case the car is American democracy.

Biden was a great president. He should have asked in his accomplishments and set up a new generation of dem leaders. Instead, he let his pride get in the way, ignored his own decline, tried to hide it by refusing interviews and non-scripted public events, even the softball traditional pre superbowl interview, and then had that disaster of a debate. Yes, I’ll still vote for the corpse of Biden if it means stopping Trump. But will swing voters? What about Trump to Biden voters in purple districts? What about young people and anyone already pissed about the genocide in Gaza? Is the “corpse is better than Trump” argument going to motivate infrequent voters to turn out? Better fucking hope so, cause Biden has us in this fucked position, is refusing to back down, so I guess we’ll find out.

Biden should have booked a tough sit down interview for the weekend after the debate to show he has the mental chops and ability to communicate the stakes of this campaign. Instead it’s been five days now since the debate and Biden hasn’t spoken publicly without a teleprompter. Hell dem governors and members of congress, including party leaders, have not spoken to Biden since the debate. Biden is doing basically nothing to calm people down. Hiding him and only rolling him out with a teleprompter in tow just plays into the republican conspiracy that Biden has had a significant decline. To the point that it’s starting to not seem like a conspiracy. If Biden wants to stay in the race, he needs to fix this, like yesterday. Is the reason he hasn’t done so yet because he can’t do it? If so, wtf is he still in the race??

Banning abortion used to be illegal too…

The whole point of this is to get to the Supreme Court and chip away at legal precedent. That’s why they are framing “the Bible” (as if there was a singular book) as a “historical document” that serves as a foundation for the US legal system. It’s a way of saying, “hey we’re not teaching religion, we’re teaching history”. The Supreme Court has rejected that argument for decades, it was the basis for cases involving displaying the ten commandments in classrooms. But now we have a new ultra conservative supreme court that doesn’t give a shit about precedent. So the bet is, SCOTUS will reverse precedent and buy this argument.

It looks like now that Roe is gone, the new Christian nationalist legal project is dismantling the seperation of church and state. So buckle up, even when dems are in power they are too chicken shit to do anything about this stuff.

Sounds to me like he plans to run for governor of WV again, and knows the Dem brand is too toxic there, even for him. For the sake of the hill folk of WV, I hope Manchins gambit pays off. The R governors have been bleeding that state dry.

“Now that the Jury has rendered a verdict and Mr. Trump is a convicted felon, it is time for him to end his campaign for president. It goes without saying that it is below the dignity of the office and of our politics for a major party to be represented in this campaign by a convicted felon. I am confident MR. Trump will do right by his party and our country by suspending his campaign so that someone more deserving can receive the Republican party nomination. I look forward to a spirited campaign with the eventual nominee this fall.”

• Biden, in an alternate universe where democrats have spines.

Instead we get this one line " look at us, we’re above the fray, we’re not getting in the mud" statement, so the news just fills the vaccume with whatever bullshit trump is spouting at the moment. I guess the Biden campaign thinks convicted felon is not an issue worth campaigning on? Good call guys. Let’s see how that is working (checks polls, Biden down by 5 or more points in 11 swing states), OK cool so we’re fucked thanks Biden.

I’m so mad at the Biden campaign deciding to stay silent on this. Just letting Trump control the narrative, now all the news is talking about is trump’s baseless complaints. Biden should have called on Trump to resign as a convicted felon is behold the dignity of the office. Of course Trump wouldn’t, but at least the conversation would be about whether Trump should resign. Common dems stop being wimps.

Bibi is obviously evil, but also a moron if he does this. Electorally, if Bibi wants Trump back in the Whitehouse, one the better strategies to do that is keep democrats divided on Isreal. In other words, Bibi hugging Biden drives progressives away from Biden, hurts enthusiasm, reduces Dem turnout, all good things for Trump. Bibi coming to speak to the Republican conference (he is already meeting with Republican senators today virtually) only serves to make support for Isreal more partisan by pissing off Dems and aligning them against Isreal. Not to mention pissing off Biden who he needs.

I guess the strategy is to scare Biden and Dems into supporting Isreal more to stave off attacks from Republicans who would be viewed as more supportive of Isreal by voters? Sounds like a dumb move, public opinion is turning against Isreal, and an invasion of Rafaku isn’t going to make Isreal any more sympathetic to the average non racist and non biblical prophecy believing voter. Again, Republicans attacking Biden for not supporting genocide enough only serves to shore up Bidens base, and independent looking at the chaos and suffering in Gaza aren’t going to ding Biden for not being Bibi’s bitch.

Would be a dumb move I reckon.

Tonight I’m going to sleep in my warm bed in my house. Navarro is going to sleep tonight on a cot in a cell. No amount of playing the victim to cameras will change those facts. I am going to smile falling to sleep tonight thinking about that.

That’s literally what happened. A book was published in which white house officials shared stories which questioned his mental fitness. The stable genius thing was from a series of tweets he sent attacking the book.

“Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart,” the President continued. “Crooked Hillary Clinton also played these cards very hard and, as everyone knows, went down in flames. I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star … to President of the United States (on my first try). I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius … and a very stable genius at that!”

https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/06/politics/donald-trump-white-house-fitness-very-stable-genius/index.html

So much of this shit went down the memory hole, I worry a lot of voters won’t remember what it was like to live in that daily chaos.

To me this just shows how broken Congress is. US social media companies have been collecting our data, building profiles of us, manipulating us with the content they show in various ways, harming teen mental health, and all of that for decades, but Congress did nothing. Facebook in particular was used as a tool to manipulate the 2016 election by Russia in various ways, but apart from some show hearings, Congress did nothing. But TikTok is alleged to do the same thing (remember nobody has actually shown proof that the CCP is like directing TikTok to promote pro-China content for Americans), and we get bipartisanship somehow. That vote was more bipartisan than a stopgap bill to prevent a government shutdown.

And the reason is “China bad” is a message that voters agree with, and because Google and Meta are more than happy to reward these people for helping to kill their biggest rival in social media. At the end of the day TikTok users are forced onto less desirable platforms so their data can be harvested by American companies and all that, our brave congresspeople get to pretend to be “tough on China”, and Big Tech rakes the profits they were losing by being outcompeted in the market. So few in Congress, on either side, have integrity.

To be clear how off the deepend they went, they released a poll after the election “proving” that Kari Lake won the AZ Governor’s race by 8 points. The article implies the final stray was when they released a poll showing that 1 out of 12 Americans have been paid to vote in a certain way (or at least received an offer).

Republican media has convinced their viewers that Biden is basically constantly confused and just slackjawed and drooling constantly. They set expectations for him so low, when reality didn’t bare out their caracicture they had to pivot. I think the implication they are going for is Biden was dosed with something to make him seem coherent, basically the weekend at Bernie’s president. Dumb, but so are Fox News viewers, so I’m sure it’ll go over just fine with them.

That said, it did seem like Biden was yelling a lot. The few moments where he slowed down to talk about some somber topic came as a relief to me. To put a metric to it, I saw in Politico that the written version of his speech contained 80 more explanation marks than last year’s speech.

“It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.”

I really think that’s the answer. No deep conspiracy, just money. I looked it up today, and NYT subscriptions fell off a cliff as soon as Biden took office. Chaos means newspaper subscribers and cable news viewers. The fate of the country be damned, there’s money to be made off of four more years of daily outrages and instability.

I’m old enough that for me the NYT lost a lot of credibility with their cheerleading of the Iraq war and WMDs and serving as a tool for Cheney to get revenge on a whistleblower and all that shit. The same organization that is now writing haikus to avoid saying Isreal massacred starving civilians in their headline, “As Hungry Gazans Crowd a Convoy, a Crush of Bodies, Israeli Gunshots and a Deadly Toll”.

The simple fact is a second Trump term is good for the NYT. Trump does crazy shit, people are outraged, they buy newspaper subscriptions to read about it. The NYT monetizes doom scrollers, and Trump is a endless supply of doom.

So is it money, or is the NYT always just been a mouthpiece of neocons? Or both.

That’s the bare minimum, we arm Isreal and veto resolutions against them at the UN giving them license for genocide, and then air drop a pittance of supplies since Biden won’t end the indescriminate targeting of civilians or force Israel to let aid in.

Remember, Biden could end this all with a phone call.

As the WHO points out, airdrops will provide far less aid then if Israel just opened up border crossings and let trucks in:

“It’s absolutely not needed in Gaza. The simplest, safest way and most effective way to deliver aid to people is through crossings. Not just Rafah. It should [also] be Kerem Shalom,” he said, referring to the crossing with Israel known in Arabic as Karem Abu Salem.

He added that the UN has been “more than ready” to supply Gaza with the aid it desperately needs but “a lot of our missions got delayed [and] denied [by Israel]”.

Air drops will undoubtedly provide some benefit, but they will be no means substantially ease the suffering in Gaza. This is an optics play, plain and simple, Biden provides the military means and international cover for Israel to create the famine in the first place, then makes a big show of getting some aid (five months into the genoicde) in to Gaza (using the least efficient means) to try to appease his critics.

Hooray I guess. I hereby nominate Biden for the Nobel peace prize.

Maybe I wasn’t clear, as I was trying to follow the metaphor of Biden being the equivalent of “eating your vegetables”. Biden has been sending arms to Israel as it commits genocide, publicly locking arms with them no matter the attrocity of the day, and actively protecting them from consequences in the UN. So he’s not just some boring politician doing a good job even if he’s not inspiring. He’s a actively contributing to crimes against humanity. Supporting Biden, and by extension genocide in Gaza, just to avoid Trump is not like eating vegetables, which are not tasty but good for you.

My vegetables usually don’t support, defend, and finance genocidal states.

Another logical inconsistency I’d love a reporter to actually press a politician on. Republicans believe “life begins as conception” and have signed onto fetal personhood amendments. Fine. But if you believe that life begins at conception, when sperm meets egg, then you must believe that you sky daddy creates a new life at that exact moment.

The logical conclusion of this position is exactly what the Alabama supreme court decided. If you believe that life begins (i.e., god created a new sacred human life) the moment that little spermy wiggles into the egg, then what does it matter where that happens, in utero or in a petri dish? The cells still divide and grow the same way in either case. So, if that’s your belief, and you force that belief on everyone through laws, then of course it’s “murder” to destroy an embryo.

What’s fucked is Republicans realize the practical effect of carrying that logic through is an effective ban on all IVF, or at best a major reatriction on how it’s done (one fertilization at a time, instead of fertilizing a bunch and implanting the most viable candidates), and that’s unpopular as shit. So now their trying to back track with dumbass stances like it doesn’t count if it’s not in the womb. BULLSHIT. Don’t let them off with that shit. It’s either the sperm goes in and the magical old man gives it a kiss and now it’s a baby, or not, it doesn’t matter where it happens. If Republicans try to wiggle around that, journalists need to press them and get them to specifically answer when exactly is it that the fairy dust turns these cells into a person, and why doesn’t the fairy dust work outside the womb, and does the fairy dust start working the moment it goes into the womb, or what?! Republicans want to impose their dumb shit religious beliefs on all of us, they should at least be able to (and should be forced to) explain them in detail.

There’s tons of legislation, proposed and enacted, aimed at lowering rent prices, primarily aimed at increasing supply. Things like prohibiting zoning restrictions that limit single family housing, providing incentives for infill developments and affordable housing bonuses, and allowing rent control ordinances.

The article doesn’t say “there is only one bill related to housing this legislative session and it’s for pets”. Just because a bigger problem exists doesn’t mean you have to ignore every other problem until the big one is fixed.

Landlords prohibiting pets is a housing issue because it effectively limits the housing that is available to people. I know when I was looking for an apartment because I had two cats that eliminated probably 50% of housing options I had. I don’t know what this does to the market overall, but I’d bet it does something.

Per ownership is also an objectively positive thing, both for animals in shelters that need homes and for the mental health of people. Landlord restrictions functionally turn pet ownership into a privilege only available to the landed gentry. It’s shitty.

So anyway, this bill addresses a problem and does some good. Just because it won’t singlehandedly solve all the country’s housing affordability problems in one swoop doesn’t mean you have to dismiss it.