This. SO HARD.

McConnell got his first election win in Kentucky by making promises to union leaders that he promptly turned around and broke as soon as he was in office. He has never cared about anyone or anything except consolidating power under the Republican party. He got exactly what he always wanted but now he’s not happy with who’s at the reigns. Well, guess what, Mitch? That’s the problem with consolidating too much power. You can’t control who wields it.

And ships.

Agreed on all counts.

Newt Gingrich went after Clinton for having an affair…

I don’t want to disagree with your main point, I just want to say that this is a misstatement of what happened with Clinton. He was being sued for sexual harassment by Paula Jones in civil court. He was impeached for lying under oath and obstruction during that investigation.

The hinky part of it is that Kenneth Starr was originally supposed to be investigating whether the Clintons had participated in fraudulent real estate dealings. When that investigation turned up nothing, he was directed to look into Clinton’s testimony about his relationship with Lewinsky, which had nothing to do with the original investigation. It was a massive fishing expedition. At one point they had the FBI working with Lewinsky’s friend to secretly record her talking about the relationship.

I’ve got some old Magic: The Gathering cards.

Except he’s trying to blame Democrats in the state government, who had nothing to do with the painting. There’s no guile here, it’s just him being a crazy asshole as usual.

Anecdotally, my neighbor two doors down is trying to sell his. No takers yet.

Perhaps we could interest him in a modern production of “Our American Cousin”.

Absolutely. Every show he named is at least 40 years old.

Legally, maybe. But who’s going to stop him? Both houses of congress are controlled by Repugnicans.

I think what pisses me off the most is the casual carelessness with which they’re doing this. Like, I’m definitely mad about the stuff they’re actually trying to delete. But they’ve cast such a wide, stupid net that they’re also deleting a ton of stuff they didn’t even intend to, and clearly nobody is vetting any of it. It’s just so senseless.

A lot of the mass produced beer brands are made with a mix of barley malt and rice. And while other low-alcoholic beverages have traditionally been made with a malt base, many of them (especially alcoholic seltzers) are just fermenting cane sugar syrup these days because it’s cheaper and has less flavor to cover up.

They’ve already been firing generals that won’t toe the line. They’re in the process of ridding the military of trans soldiers. Gay/Lesbian soldiers will probably be next, and I don’t doubt there will soon be incentives to rat out any fellow soldiers who are suspected of not being “Loyal Americans”.

That said, I dislike the idea of healthcare being able to pick and choose, for any reason, not to treat someone.

This is exactly the problem. Once you start talking about who does and does not deserve healthcare, you’ve gone to a place I refuse to follow. There is far too much nuance to start drawing lines in the sand.

So basically: “comply willingly with our executive decree or we will fuck all your shit up.”

No. For multiple reasons:

• Vaccines are not 100% effective. They reduce the likelihood of infection if you are exposed. The whole point of trying to get everyone vaccinated is to reduce the infection rate so that there’s less likely to be an outbreak. With a vaccinated population, the virus can’t spread fast enough to maintain a pool of infected people to keep spreading it. But that doesn’t mean nobody gets sick.
• Vaccines are not as effective on some people. There’s a range of effectiveness.
• Not everyone can get vaccinated. People with certain allergies or compromised immune systems in particular.
• Some parts of the population have higher risk factors than others and when they get sick it can be much more serious. Usually the very old and the very young. And again, people with compromised immune systems, or other conditions that complicate the illness.
• Kids whose parents refuse to get them vaccinated are put at elevated risk through no fault of their own.

I could probably keep going, but hopefully you get the idea why that’s just not a viable approach.

The United States v Trump ruling was that a president can not be held criminally liable for their exercise of the powers of the presidency.

But they left it wide open for interpretation of exactly what it means to exercise the powers of the presidency, which was the whole point of the case. No reasonable interpretation would include “encouraging an angry mob to storm the capitol building” but here we are.

Courts can still rule that a president’s actions are illegal and order injunctions, or even find contempt if court orders are not followed. This has already happened several times in the last month.

And when I see someone successfully enforce one of those injunctions, court orders, or contempt charges, and it stands against appeal, I will happily agree that the justice system has not been completely kneecapped.

I really do hope you’re right and I’m blowing this out of proportion. I’m just not seeing the light at the end of the tunnel right now.

It wouldn’t matter. The Supremes decreed that he can do whatever the fuck he wants so long as an argument can be made that it was related to his duties as president. Constitutional limitations on the office of president mean nothing anymore until that decision is overturned.

The billionaire bureaucrat has claimed this defense to his organization’s cost-cutting measures before, saying that DOGE simply makes recommendations for cuts to agency heads, and then it’s up to those heads to execute them.

“It’s not MY fault they did what I told them to do!”

True. They have a high pitched squeak that sounds more like a gull.

We should have gone with the turkey.