This is just the kind of reaction we want to get from the Republican special snowflakes in Congress:
McConnell said the current administration is pursuing an agenda that “folks outside don’t agree with.”
“They had their shot in the election. … But in this country when you win the election you get to make policy. I always remind people, winners make policy and losers go home.”
Nobody likes a whiny “winner”.
Spanky
We’re not going anywhere, turtle-man. Get used to it.
Marmot
I suspect McConnell said nothing of the sort about the Tea Party, somehow.
Major Major Major Major
Remember when obama said “I won” that one time and republicans are still upset about it?
Lurking Canadian
…unless you are a Democrat, McConnell added, in which case not so much.
psycholinguist
But you don’t get to appoint supreme court justices, apparently.
lollipopguild
Obama won twice and Mcconnell spent 8 years kicking and delaying every chance he had. Obama or someone needs to tell Mitch the Bitch to stuff it where the sun does not shine.
Baud
@Spanky: This is the correct response.
Mnemosyne
It sure would be nice if we could convince the morons who voted third party or left the presidential line blank that this is how politics actually works.
It’s not that Hillary “deserved” your vote. It’s that THE REST OF THE GODDAMNED WORLD deserved your vote, and you were too wound up in your own selfish fee-fees to suck it up and do the right thing.
Miss Bianca
I was hoping this post title meant that we got an actual picture of a big baby turtle.
Maybe something like this, but, you know…big.
hovercraft
I’ll go home as soon as he turns back the clock and gets out the goddamn way while President Obama who won two substantial victories is allowed to to appoint who he wants and implement his policies white you sit there with your mouth fucking shut. Until then we are going to be in your goddamn face making you wear your hypocrisy front and center for all the world to see. We cannot stop a lot of their destruction but we can make sure that they own it. No playing possum this go round, we are going to make every moment of this as painful as possible, give you something real to whine about for a change.
NCSteve
The fact that McConnell is constantly brazenly sneering out comments like this without ever one bursting into flames and then exploding into a million sticky bits of corruption and evil from the sheer force of hypocrisy, mendacity and smirking evil is an inexhaustible source of wonder to me.
stinger
“You get to make policy” unless on the day of your inauguration the Senate Majority Leader states publicly that his #1 goal is to deny you anything and everything.
Major Major Major Major
@Miss Bianca: me too ☹️
I have a picture of a beach in Iceland that I took though. https://imgur.com/a/i6ola
dmsilev
@Miss Bianca: Baby turtles are kind of cute. Turtloid Senators, not so much.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
I thought the losers got to throw sand in the gears for eight years to keep the winners from doing anything. Or maybe that’s only for losers who get fewer votes than the winners. If the losers get MORE votes, they have to shut the fuck up. ’Cause, you know, democracy!
donnah
As much as I loathe Trump, I loathe Mitch McConnell even more. Trump’s an idiot, but McConnell is a devious, smug, rotten pig. Nothing would please me more than seeing them both get taken down.
stinger
@NCSteve: Proof that there is no god.
Brachiator
Wasn’t this the same piece of shit who claimed that Obama had no mandate even though he had won the election?
@Major Major Major Major:
There’s a great YouTube mashup of all the conservative butt wipes shouting about how Kenyan Zozialist Obama is not their president.
Miss Bianca
@Major Major Major Major: Nice! Needs moar baby turtle, tho’. : )
XTPD
OT: Michael Tracey sounds cucked.
retiredeng
Hmm. Don’t tell McConnell that more than half (and growing) of the citizens of this country are mad as hell and are not “going home.”
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@Brachiator: Do you have a link to that? I’d love to post it on Facebook. I have some friends who voted for Trump, and they love to go on about how awful it is that people are saying Trump isn’t their president, and how nobody ever said anything like that about Obama.
O. Felix Culpa
@Miss Bianca:
I don’t usually *squee* over turtles, but…cute!
Archon
I remember the good ole days when the Republicans clutched their pearls when Obama mildly rebuked them for demanding that he use his election mandate to implement their agenda by saying “he won”.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@Major Major Major Major:
Oh, yeah… very uncouth of Obama to mention his victory. Now, when W said that he had “earned political capital and intended to spend it,” well, that was just fine.
O. Felix Culpa
@West of the Rockies (been a while): Hmmm…just what could the difference be? Just can’t quite make it out.
Jerzy Russian
Christ, what an asshole (the senator that is).
John Revolta
Christ, what an asshole.
dmsilev
@Miss Bianca: Here you go.
(photo I took a few months back)
Felonius Monk
@XTPD:
WTF is a Michael Tracey and why should we care what he blows out of his ass?
jl
What policy has McConnell been able to make so far? They are about of a third of the way through their epic first hundred days.
All they have done is squabble with each other and the GOP House and scramble to cover for dangerous dumbass and degrading Frump stunts.
Hope McConnell’s winners streak stays true to form.
Here’s hoping past performance continues apace.
Major Major Major Major
@Felonius Monk: He’s with The Young Turks, an RT-compromised leftist media group.
gex
@Mnemosyne: I am not really seeing much regret from those folks though. I just saw a bunch of Bernie supporters on FB tear into John Oliver for being on Hillary’s payroll or some such nonsense.
The Moar You Know
Can’t deny it. No matter how much you wish it were otherwise.
hovercraft
@Major Major Major Major:
What is wrong with all of you people, Obama didn’t win, millions more Americans accidentally voted for him over McCain and RMoney, but everyone knows they really meant to vote for them and the republicans, you cannot take millions more votes as a mandate, he lost the white vote. Everyone knows that that is the only thing that can give you a mandate, white peoples votes.
Miss Bianca
@dmsilev: Awww, now *there’s* a squeee!
John Revolta
@Jerzy Russian: Damn Russkie. What exit, tovarich?
Miss Bianca
@hovercraft: Plus, don’t forget those eleventy-million totally intentional but ILLEGAL votes!!
A Ghost to Most
@Jerzy Russian: @John Revolta:
The classics never go out of style.
japa21
So Chicago just missed having its fifth straight record high by one degree today. Not to worry though, the next two days are forecast to easily break the record again. Going to cool off the end of the week, but our lilac is starting to bud out. Not good when the freezes come again.
delk
Losers go home and hide from their constituents.
West of the Rockies (been a while)
@hovercraft:
Yes, the poor aggrieved folks in flyover country, the heartlanders, the real Americans! They didn’t vote for O, therefore his wasn’t a true victory. Rinse and bloody repeat.
gex
@gex: Apparently this is based on an Infowars “fact”
hovercraft
@gex:
The Naderites and Nader himself are still self righteously proclaiming that they had nothing to do with Al Gore’s loss, and that they were right because he would have been just as bad as Shrub anyway. Many of the purity ponies were using what happened in 2000 as a cautionary tale to the rest of us, vote Wilmer or we will do this shit again. They do not learn they do not want to learn, they are like the abusive partner who says look what you made me do. It’s our fault for not giving them what they want.
The Moar You Know
All those hollering “but Obama won twice!”: Read carefully. Yes he did, but the Democratic Party NEVER had absolute control of Congress during either of his terms. The GOP now has won the ballgame, not just a few innings.
ETA: oddly enough, I don’t think they’ll do much better. We were already far down the road they’d laid out for America anyhow. It’s Trump’s fucking Twitter account that’s going to do the most damage.
Omnes Omnibus
@Miss Bianca: So was I.
TS
They have no shame – but that has been known since forever. They are still smarting because they couldn’t get any scandals/lies to stick to Obama. Don’t think they thought it through when signing up behind trump.
Major Major Major Major
@The Moar You Know:
Uh…
FlipYrWhig
@Major Major Major Major: Meh, who can remember back that far? :P
The Moar You Know
60 banked in the Senate? No we didn’t. We had that asshole Liberman, remember?
A Ghost to Most
My hope for Yertle and all the rest:
Major Major Major Major
@The Moar You Know: if you’re discounting independents then there was Bernie too. But they both caucused with the Dems. I’ve never seen anybody not use “who caucuses with the party” as the way of counting seats.
Oatler.
Guillotine…[gurgle] Guillotine…
Baud
@The Moar You Know: There will always be an asshole. Often several.
Yarrow
@The Moar You Know: I’d happily forgotten about him until he showed up seated in the front row being that idiot Betsy DeVoss during her confirmation hearings. Not really surprised he landed with that type of person.
Mike in DC
The GOP doesn’t have 60 banked votes in the Senate, either, and though there are a lot of Dems up in 2018, they also have to worry about potential primary challengers if they vote with Republicans.
dmsilev
@The Moar You Know: The GOP doesn’t have 60 votes in the Senate, not even close.
hovercraft
Sore winners are um sore.
Patriots linebacker toying with winners who are mad that he’s not going to the White House.
Thru the Looking Glass...
@Spanky: Right… keep this quote handy…
All tides turn… the mule always kicks back…
Brachiator
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
Here you go. One of the best. YouTube mashup of all the conservative butt wipes shouting about how Kenyan Zozialist Obama is not their president.
When a Trump fans tells you to “respect” your president, Show Them This
Major Major Major Major
@Thru the Looking Glass…: before some jackass says it sincerely, let me just add sarcastically, “assuming they let us have elections.”
dmsilev
@Brachiator: If Trump gets through his Hate of the Union speech next week without some Democrat shouting “You Lie!” at him, he’ll have gotten more respect than Obama.
SatanicPanic
Pointing out Republican hypocrisy will get you nowhere. They don’t care.
danielx
Cannot….process….
Peale
@The Moar You Know: Yep. Franken wasn’t installed until the summer. At which point, Kennedy opted to die adn the good liberal voters of Massachusetts decided to send a Republican to Washington, as they are prone to do. I think our most reliable Senator was Byrd, who was for all intents and purposes comatose most of the time and had to be revived to vote.
hovercraft
I guess we know the next person Twitler will fire.
FEC Commissioner Tells Trump: ‘I Will Not Be Silenced,’ Provide Fraud Evidence
…………….The statement cites a group funded by the Koch brothers, Cause of Action, which sent a letter Tuesday to the inspector general of the FEC, requesting an investigation into what it claimed was Weintraub overstepping her authority as a commissioner.
The commissioner, Cause for Action claimed, “violated applicable ethics regulations when she used government property and official time to call on President Trump to provide evidence of his claims of voter fraud in New Hampshire and then continued to promote her statement after it was issued.”
“The President of the United States has, without providing evidence, alleged a massive conspiracy to bus thousands of voters from one state to another to cast illegal votes in the 2016 elections,” commissioner Ellen Weintraub wrote in a statement posted online Tuesday.
“Any such allegation challenging the legitimacy of federal elections would be of great concern to me,” Weintraub continued. “As it happens, this particular allegation falls squarely within the jurisdiction of the Federal Election Commission, since the expense of these buses has not been accounted for on any campaign-finance filing. Accordingly, I have asked the President for his evidence.”
On Feb. 9, Trump reportedly told a closed-door meeting of senators that “thousands” of people who were “brought in on buses” from Massachusetts voted illegally in New Hampshire, costing him the state’s electoral votes, and former Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) her job.
Trump reportedly provided no proof for his claim, and neither did his senior policy adviser Stephen Miller, when he repeated the claim during an interview with ABC’s “This Week.”
“But let there be no doubt: It is absolutely within my official duties as a federal election official to comment publicly on any aspect of the integrity of federal elections in the United States,” Weintraub concluded. “I will not be silenced.”
Weintraub, a Democrat, was first appointed to the FEC by George W. Bush in 2002. The commission has been plagued by obstruction for years: no more than three of its six members can be of the same party, while four members must agree to begin an investigation.
Miss Bianca
@Mike in DC: yes, particularly because there are some lefty assholes out there who still refuse to acknowledge that having a Democratic representative from a deep-red state who votes with the Republicans occasionally, is better than having a Republican one who votes with the Republicans ALL THE DAMN TIME.
p.a.
Losers organize for the next election you motherfucker.
MCA1
That this shameless ass is one of the ten most powerful people in this country says all that needs be said about our politics. Party over country always and forever with McConnell. The ends always justify the means, and the ends are always, invariably nothing more or less than GOP electoral gain, period end of story.
debbie
This was the bit that really ticked me off:
Like you did in 2008 and 2012, Mitch?
Every time Mitch lies, his chin recedes just a bit more. Not long until it’s poking out the back of his head.
trollhattan
@The Moar You Know:
Also, Franken wasn’t seated for half a year during his recount fight.
Major Major Major Major
@trollhattan: And Specter had to switch sides first. This does not change the fact that, if you include co-caucusers (and I see no earthly reason not to), the Democrats did in fact have a Congressional supermajority during part of Obama’s first term.
trollhattan
@hovercraft:
Ann Ravel has already resigned, so it looks like the turnover is occurring.
TenguPhule
@A Ghost to Most: I say we ignore the cruel and unusual punishment ban and just bring back drawing and quartering. Or staking.
jl
Always important to remember that McConnell is thoroughly cynical opportunist. He was a moderate GOPer until Reagan won his landslide, and then McConnell had a sudden epiphany and turned into a public reactionary who would out-Reagan Reagan.
For the dear BJ commentariate who are not familiar with the word ‘epiphany’, it is slang for ‘epic fainting spell over his political fanny’
This is also the jerk who blamed evil Democratic environmental legislation for loss of coal jobs for years, and then backed off as soon as Trump was elected on his ‘The Future is Coal’ jobs program for KY and WV. McConnell knew he was spouting BS all those years to dupe his voters. His constituents could go to hell as far as he is concerned, as long as he can fool them into blaming someone else and he gets his ass back in DC.
TenguPhule
@Major Major Major Major: During the Great Meltdown, a fight over a Congressional seat by sore loser Republican, Trying to pass healthcare reform and then Kennedy died.
Murphy just had it out for Ds that terms.
trollhattan
@Major Major Major Major:
Did the Ds ever have sixty Senate votes? Been awhile but my recollection was Kennedy’s death and hot pants Scotty’s replacing him essentially took away the ability to stop a fillibuster (years before Reid’s nuclear option).
jl
@trollhattan: Franken has been such a good Senator, hard to believe he barely squeaked by in his first election. I forget the nonentity he defeated.
Baud
@trollhattan: Yes. That’s how Obamacare passed.
Thru the Looking Glass...
@Major Major Major Major: Well… yes… we most definitely have out work cut out for us…
I would be lying if I said I wasn’t scared… not afraid to fight back… but scared…
Thru the Looking Glass...
@jl: Yes, he’s turned out to be as good as you could hope for…
He may have played a buffoon on SNL, but he always was as smart as they come…
trollhattan
@jl:
Bag o’ flesh Norm Coleman. Final gap was a bit more than 300 votes between them. And yeah, thank bog for Senator Franken!
Major Major Major Major
@trollhattan: The ACA passed with Specter’s vote, then Kennedy died and Brown got elected and the Dems thrashed around for a while trying to decide whether to ‘ping-pong’ the Senate bill back from the House as-is or let the bill die. They picked the *former, obviously, and then passed a package of tweaks (as well as some student loan reform) via reconciliation.
ETA: @trollhattan: Whatever did they end up doing with the Lizard People ballot?
trnc
Huh. A google search of that sentiment limited to 2009-2010 doesn’t seem to yield any results of McConnell saying that. Weird.
hovercraft
@trollhattan:
They did briefly have 60, that’s how Obamacare passed, what happened was that once Kennedy died and Scotty was elected they had to keep the version the senate had passed. Both houses passed bills, and normally they would go to a conference committee to merge the two, but because they lost the 60 , house democrats had to vote for the senate version. There was talk of using reconciliation but I think they republicans squawked so loud that the house just kept the senate version. This is my murky recollection of events.
ETA: What Major 4 X said.
NR
@Mnemosyne:
It sure would be nice if we could convince the morons who keep running losing campaign after losing campaign, and the morons who continue to support them, that this is how politics actually works.
I know that this particular brand of moron thinks that “sticking it” to the left is more important than actually adopting a strategy and message thar can beat the Republicans, but the rest of the world is more important than your selfish fee-fees.
Baud
@hovercraft: Obamacare is actually two bills. The Senate bill and then an amending bill that they could pass through reconciliation that gave the House some things it wanted.
ETA: Just saw Major’s explanation.
Major Major Major Major
I apologize for using the Sainted One’s real name above.
rikyrah
He believes that fat meat ain’t greasy and that they’ll be able to blame all of the evil rotten AZZ shyt that they want to do to this country on Dolt45.
quakerinabasement
…in this country when you win the election you get to make policy.*
(*Certain restrictions may apply. See the Republican leadership for details.)
Baud
@Major Major Major Major: I was wondering what happened.
Cogitari Safari
I see this is in the “Guitars, Not Guillotines” category. Any chance of starting a “Guitars AND Guillotines” category?
Please?
Merci.
Joy in FL
@Major Major Major Major: That is awesome. Thanks for posting such great photos.
I was in Iceland for 3 days in 1982. I would go back in a second and hopefully stay longer. It was wonderful.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
Collaborator says what?
Sorry, you can make excuses all day long, but the fact remains that you had a chance to resist fascism at the ballot box, and you failed. Not getting girl cooties on the White House was more important to you than resisting fascism.
Major Major Major Major
@Joy in FL: thanks :)
You know, airfare is actually pretty cheap right now, and Airbnb is affordable too if you bring a friend.
I’m thinking of having the high-rez of that pic printed…
Mnemosyne
@trollhattan:
Well, that can’t be right, because I’ve been assured repeatedly that Minnesota is a solid blue state from top to bottom, and it’s only the pernicious influence of Obama that gave Hillary a squeaker victory there. If Franken barely squeaked out his victory over Coleman, that might mean that MN is not quite as 100 percent true blue as I’ve been told by certain trolls, and that’s clearly unpossible!
Miss Bianca
@Mnemosyne: Oh, look, it’s “Guy who can’t be bothered to do anything to bring about the Great Leftist Democrat Revolution except tell people on some blog that they’re Democratin’ Wrong”. Do.Not.Engage.
NR
@Mnemosyne: I voted for Hillary.
Sorry, but you can make excuses all day long, but the fact remains that the Democratic party leadership that you continue to support fucked up and lost the whole country to the Republicans. Putting the left “in their place” was and is more important to them, and you, than resisting fascism.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
Yep, voter suppression had nothing to do with it. Russian interference in House races had nothing to do with it. Dark money from the Kochs and Mercers had nothing to do with it. It was all Hillary’s fault, and the anti-Semitic white supremacists wouldn’t have attacked St. Bernard the Incorruptible for being Jewish.
You keep telling yourself those fairy tales. They seem to comfort you even though they’re not true.
Mnemosyne
@Miss Bianca:
Collaborators gonna collaborate.
Goku
@NR:
In a democracy, the citizens are ultimately responsible for the government they elect, especially when the people they’re voting for are clearly deranged and unfit for office. It’s not the other side’s fault that so many people in this country are either stupid/bigoted/insane or combination of the former. They had their chance to do the right thing and they failed. Miserably.
They voted away their country to a hostile foreign power and they either don’t know or don’t care about that fact, foolishly believing that the Russians have their best interests at heart; really. Honest. They reap what they sow and if Trump and the Republicans have their way, these morons will find out what it’s like to live in a dystopian hell hole like Russia. Only they won’t recognize it as such. They’ll think they’re free.
NR
@Mnemosyne: You’re the one spinning fairy tales about some lefty bogeyman who is at fault for all of the Democratic party’s woes. Except you just rattled off another list of people and things to blame, so I guess that means it can’t be all the left’s fault. Can you even keep your scapegoats consistent?
NR
@Mnemosyne:
https://youtu.be/wujVMIYzYXg
NR
@Goku: I mostly agree with what you say about Trump and the Republicans. But the problem is, that by itself is not enough to get people to vote for Democrats. The Democratic party needs to appeal to a sufficient number of voters to win elections. We’ve seen over and over again that the milquetoast, status-quo centrism of the last eight years won’t accomplish that. The party needs to change or it will keep losing.
Kat
@Mike in DC:
Has anyone seen a list of Dem Senators up for reelection in 2018, along with their voting record and an assessment of their prospects? If so, please link it. Best to start pondering strategy now, since, for all we know, we’ll have to take up the DNC’s copious slack [again].
Goku
@NR:
In my opinion, it already is. Democratic politicians and supporters alike are becoming much less forgiving and more openly defiant of Trump and Republicans. There’s a lot of momentum right now as evidenced in marches, protests, and the phones of congresspeople getting blown up with angry constituents. If this kind of energy can be kept and translated into political action then we will win. As others have said, Trump has to be tied to Republicans and endlessly portrayed as being incompetent and dangerous to the country.
Both of those things are true, no need to lie or bend the truth. I believe that enough of T’s supporters will wake up eventually. The dead enders like that kook on stage at his rally in Florida will never be reached. Finally, a big reason I think Democrats in Congress are growing a spine is because people protesting and voicing support for them is partly what is allowing them to take these stands. That and the fact that their fundamentally better people.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Looking back in time, I should have curb stomped him into a coma when I spotted him in that parking lot in 1982 or 1983 and called him “a Howdy Doody looking motherfucker” after some Republican event where he spewed some odious bullshit. He skittered off, kind of concerned.
As I remember, that was about some power grab, too – he was the County Executive for the county in which Louisville exists (which was a REALLY weak office), and he really wanted his writ to apply in the urban core more so than it already did. I was all of 21 and probably more of an asshole than I am now.
Goku
NR:
In my opinion, it already is. Democratic politicians and supporters alike are becoming much less forgiving and more openly defiant of Trump and Republicans. There’s a lot of momentum right now as evidenced in marches, protests, and the phones of congresspeople getting blown up with angry constituents. If this kind of energy can be kept and translated into political action then we will win. As others have said, Trump has to be tied to Republicans and endlessly portrayed as being incompetent and dangerous to the country.
Both of those things are true, no need to lie or bend the truth. I believe that enough of T’s supporters will wake up eventually. The dead enders like that kook on stage at his rally in Florida will never be reached. Finally, a big reason I think Democrats in Congress are growing a spine is because people protesting and voicing support for them is partly what is allowing them to take these stands. That and the fact that their fundamentally better people.
TenguPhule
@NR:
And this is why sane people hate purity ponies and third party trolls. You vote for the non-evil that’s there, not the one you wish you had. Otherwise, you’re part of the problem and have earned your spot on the wall when the revolution comes.
TenguPhule
@Kat:
Komrade Manchin is definitely one of them and really needs his kneecaps broken with a bat as one of Les Collaborators.
Goku
@Goku:
So once again, citizens in a democracy are responsible for the country they live in. Citizens getting engaged and involved are affecting current politics as we speak. Implied in “consent of the governed” and all that.
NR
@TenguPhule:
And this is why “sane people’s” hate is misguided. We’ve seen over and over and over again that people simply will not vote for Democrats just because they’re not Republicans. And yet the Democratic party leadership continues to run campaigns that range from being in the middle to being somewhat to the right of it, campaigns which are mainly focused on not upsetting their big corporate donors too much, in the hopes that maybe this time people will do just that. With predictable results.
You can rant about “purity ponies” until you’re blue in the face, but the fact is that what the Democratic party is doing now is not working. Your energy would be better spent trying to get them to adopt a strategy and message that will work.
NR
@Goku: I have seen some encouraging things come out of the Democratic party lately. They stood together on opposing DeVos, for example. But a lot more is going to be needed if we’re going to turn things around in 2018 and 2020. The party needs a message, and the great thing is that one is coming from the people on the ground. All they have to do is listen to it instead of their corporate donors. We’ll see if they can manage that.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
I realize that you find it impossible to conceptualize a situation where multiple factors caused an outcome, which is why you’re laser focused on It’s all the Democrats’ fault!, but the rest of us can hold more than one thought in our heads at a time.
Mnemosyne
@NR:
Collaborator: a person who cooperates traitorously with an enemy; a defector.
“he was a collaborator during the occupation”
Nope, looks like I have the definition right.
Goku
@NR:
You admitted yourself that they are listening as evidenced by DeVos. Unfortunately, despite what I said before about some of T’s supporters eventually waking up, I’m not sure what kind of message you could give a lot of the rest of them without compromising our own values re: only white people should get benefits, etc that’s running pretty rampant these days among whites. My impression of most Republicans is that they truly believe that Trump can do no wrong. It will take a fuck up of massive proportions like Katrina to get them to snap out of Donald’s personality cult.
Fr33d0m
Mr. Trump may have won the Electoral College and therefore became POTUS, but he lost the popular vote to a Democrat by nearly three million votes. The majority of voters did not vote for his policies and are rather vociferously against his policies and the racist Republican party he represents.
So now the turtle, Republican, would like the majority to shut-up so he can enact the Republican policies a minority of voters presumably voted for. This after eight years of ignoring the more than 69 million (nine million more than the Republican, Mr. Trump’s 2016 minority showing) voters who voted to put the Democrat, Mr. Obama in office.
He has spent the past eight years shitting on the will of the people of the United States of America, what else do we think he’s going to do?
TenguPhule
@NR:
And you’d be wrong. People do. I do. I don’t like the Democrats. But I hate the Republicans with the fire of a thousand red suns.
Its a binary choice. Evil or non-evil. There is no third option.
NR
@Mnemosyne:
Except, of course, you and the party leadership you support never have any role whatsoever in causing bad outcomes, even when you are completely in charge and the people on the left who you love to rail against are sidelined with no power at all. No, you are completely perfect and blameless in all things. You and the party leadership you support cannot fail, you are incapable of it. You can only be failed, by whatever scapegoat you find it most convienent to blame that day.
So it seems that there are some thoughts that even your high-and-mighty head is incapable of holding in it. Hmm.
cmorenc
@Mnemosyne:
I have an otherwise very bright, companionable friend who, when we were chatting two weeks after the election about how much more awful Trump was proving than we each thought possible – then admitted he’d voted for Gary Johnson, because “I just couldn’t bring myself to vote for Hillary”. It took considerable willpower for me to keep a calm poker-face and rather than start yelling at him in front of a crowd of people what a fucking self-indulgent moron he was – to instead launch into a real-politic explanation of the forced binary nature of our current political system, and the consequence that voting third-party in a close election nearly always resulted in perversely benefitting the major-party candidate most abhorrently damaging to the goals their vote for the 3P candidate supposedly helped support. Did I get through to him? Hard to tell – would screaming at him instead of attempting rational persuasion have been more effective (and for whom, me or him)? Hard to tell.
NR
@Mnemosyne: Considering that nothing in that definition applies to me, no, you clearly don’t have it right.
NR
@Goku: Sure, some of Trump’s supporters would only respond to a message like the one you described. Maybe even a majority of them. But there are plenty out there who are reachable with the right message, similar to the one the party used to advance before corporate donors became more important than the working class. And this is to say nothing of non-voters and third-party voters, some of whom can also be reached.
If the Democrats in Washington listen to the people on the ground across the country, we have a chance. We’ll see if they do.
NR
@TenguPhule: Sure, that’s the calculation you made. It’s the one I made this time too, which is why I voted for Hillary. But the fact is that not everyone will make that same calculation. Enoughpeople will not vote for the Democrats just because they aren’t Republicans, and it’s foolish to continue to act as if they will.
Goku
@NR:
This kind of shit is really counter-productive. Which I can’t help but think is the point. It doesn’t matter anymore. So Hillary wasn’t the most inspiring politician. So what? Voters are ultimately responsible for the choices they make and the fact that Hillary didn’t check every one of their boxes doesn’t mean that they shouldn’the have voted for her. She was the most realistic progressive choice that had a chance. She won the primary as well as the popular vote in the general. Obviously a lot of Democrats and general voters liked her. It was pretty damn close. There were several factors that worked against her, including Russian interference. Trump’s team was caught talking to Russian officials during the campaign. Focus on that. Depending on what was said in those convos, it could spell doom for Traitor Trump.
patroclus
@NR: What’s the right message? Please elaborate.
Goku
@NR:
Specifics?
Mnemosyne
@NR:
No? You’re knuckling under to the fascists and insisting that any problems the Democrats face are solely their own fault.
Smells like a collaborator to me.
NR
@Goku:
Tell that to people who insist on blaming the left for Trump and everything else that’s wrong politically in America.
I’m happy to move on and focus on defeating Trump if everyone else will too. But I am not going to stand by and let people blame the left for the failings of the Democratic party leadership, which is anything but left.
patroclus
@NR: What’s the right message? Please elaborate.
NR
@patroclus: Briefly, because I am not a speechwriter, the idea that we can and will make the government work for the people again, and in particular the working class. In a democracy, one of the most important functions of government is to serve as a check on the power of other entities that do not have the best interests of the citizenry at heart. In this day and age, that’s large corporations. The problem is that for a long time now, the government at best has not been a very effective check on increasing corporate power, and at worst has actually aided and abetted it.
If you listened during the campaign, that was one of Trump’s core messages: Washington isn’t working for you. Now some people saw that to mean that it was working for black people instead, and that’s sad and I don’t know if there’s any way to reach those people. But others heard that message and took it to mean that Washington is working for the companies that sent jobs overseas, screwed them over, and destroyed their communities. And in some cases, that’s actually true.
The government needs to work for the citizens again. It needs to work for the working class. The fact that the Democrats let Donald Trump, of all people, co-opt that message has to be one of the biggest acts of political malpractice in the last 100 years at least. We need to reclaim that message, and that will involve more than just talking about it. We need to walk the walk.
NR
@Mnemosyne:
That’s because you have no clue what you’re talking about.
scott alloway
@hovercraft: As a long-time Patsies fan (remember Babe Parilli?), I am so so proud of Chris Long.
tybee
@NR:
so no specifics.
figures.
EBT
@Mnemosyne: He voted for this, so of course he is here to piss in everyone’s Cheerios again.
NR
@EBT: Do you ever get tired of spouting bullshit?
NR
@tybee: Specifically, you’re a moron.
Kat
@Major Major Major Major:
But, if memory serves, they didn’t have their major legislation ready-to-go at the time when they had the supermajority. The lobbyists and corporate advisers weren’t through effing with it yet.
I was thinking to myself at the time, the overly optimistic sumsabritches are going to miss their window because they can’t or won’t get the legislation ready ahead of time — in case unforeseen things like brain cancers and recounts get in the way of their traditional post-election timelines.
Kat
@NR:
Thanks! I was beginning to think I was the only one. They’re picking their dear leader this coming Saturday — with no input, as far as I’ve seen, from those of us who have to put up with their worse-than-useless crap for decade after decade.
No democrats ever campaigned to me on this agenda: How Post-Watergate Liberals Killed Their Populist Soul – Oct 24, 2016. They always made up excuses such as, ‘Well, we have to vote more to the center on some things or we won’t get reelected in our districts’, and ‘we use the promise of our votes to get some things in the legislation changed to better-protect our supporters.’ No, they told lies to their supporters about their real agenda — which, as we can now clearly see, sold us down the river economically. They were as bad as the Republicans who promised to create jobs — without admitting those jobs were going to be in China, etc.
And now, whenever I read about the DNC meeting to plan whatever, the only thing they talk about is how to get votes, not what they want to do for the country. Sure, I support their liberal social agenda – equal rights are guaranteed in the Constitution, which Republicans apparently have still not bothered to read. But all the blacks, browns, gays, immigrants, etc. in that social agenda would be far better off in many ways if the NEW Democrats hadn’t gotten rid of anti-monopoly agenda of the old democrats who had suffered through the Gilded Age and knew what they were talking about.
No, I’m not a Berner. I’m over 60, and haven’t even listened to a complete youtube of his speeches. And I held my nose and voted for HRC. So I suppose I’m a pragmatist. But if I ever get half a chance to elect a Congressful of stiff-spined Democrats who are dedicated to tearing down the oligarchy they’ve been pushing for 40+ years, I’d spend everything I’ve got to put them in office.
What do I mean by tearing down the oligarchy? A progressive income plus capital gains tax plan that exempts the first $50,000 made from any income tax, taxes from $50,000 -$100,000 at a very modest rate, taxes from $100,000-200,000 at a slightly higher rate, then begins gradually steepening the rate in similar stages from there on up, until anything over a billion a year in income is pure tax. And I’d increase the cap on social security taxes to $100 million so that everyone who gets Social Security would get the same amount each month, and do away with the Medicare premiums that are deducted from them.
We’d have the middle class back in wonderful shape in no time, with a helluva jump in GDP from all those people out ‘stimulating the economy’ again. With that kind of money flowing around, maybe we’d get some merchandise back in the stores that was actually worth buying. If you don’t know what I’m on about, Target had “cable-knit sweaters” on sale a couple of months ago for $30 and up, but they were thinner than my Kirkland brand tee-shirts. One dropped stitch, and you’d have a cup-size pile of loose “yarn” in the bottom of your washer. And the government would have enough income to actually fix our aging infrastructure, not just talk about it.
Almost forgot… Doesn’t anyone else remember that the Republicans quit giving federal aid to land-grant colleges and universities on the premise that we didn’t need people studying agriculture anymore? Then they made it so your guaranteed student loan stuck with you after bankruptcy. Then they started all those for profit colleges because the land-grant schools had had to raise their tuition sky-high. Then the let everybody have guaranteed student loans to go to things like Trump university. And now we’ve got a $1,000,000,000,000 in unpaid student loans to worry about. And that’s how Repubs balance the books.