I didn’t watch Trump’s address last night, since I assumed that if he said something important, I’d get a news alert soon enough. Trump told media before the speech that he didn’t think the speech would work, and that he didn’t think his trip to the border would work, but his communications staff wanted him to do it. So, as usual when the laziest President of the last century does something he doesn’t really want to do, he phoned in an address of no apparent consequence.
One thing that a lot of the media coverage seems to miss is that a good part of the Republican House and Senate are not overly bothered by the shutdown. They represent the “I hate government” brand, and what better way to show their hatred than by denying salaries to government bureaucrats. At some point, Collins, Gardner and a few others like Murkowski who don’t come from completely retrograde red states will put up enough of a fight to get something through the Senate, but it ain’t gonna be soon.
r€nato
#FTMF #FTMFNYT
Mary G
I’m going to send every Republican senator up in 2020 a postcard notifying them for every day the shutdown goes on I’m putting money in a jar and will be donating it all to their eventual opponents.
If they want to go down in flames they can stick with the president.
e julius drivingstorm
Trump’s communication staff would be…Hannity, Limbaugh, and Coulter etal?
Jerzy Russian
@r€nato:
OK, Russia should recall all of their bots. This “Maggie Haberman” character they invented is just not plausible. No real person could be like this.
Corner Stone
@r€nato: “Only a fool, or possibly a Frenchman…”
Corner Stone
Ahh, Roddy “The Rod” Rosenstein. We hardly knew ye. Reports are he’s leaving in a couple weeks.
r€nato
Actual fucking Nazis: We hate Jews and we are going to round them all up and murder the shit out of them
Jews: Hell no, we do not want you to murder the shit out of us
Maggie Haberman: both sides are talking past each other, tsk tsk
Central Planning
Dolt 45 told the media he didn’t think the speech would work so he would have a way out if it really didn’t work. “See? I TOLD you it wouldn’t work.” Anything to deflect blame from him.
Jeffro
Rick Wilson’s take on Trumpov’s “wet fart” of a speech will give you the giggles:
[Individual 1] mistermix
@r€nato: also this:
AP FACT CHECK (maybe): “Assault victims put the blame for their injuries on the person who assaulted them. But it takes two to get injured: the person throwing the punch and the person taking the punch.”
Gin & Tonic
Anybody who expects Susan Collins to do anything meaningful will be disappointed every single time. She is useless and will do nothing, while making sure cameras are pointed at her furrowed brow.
r€nato
And they still don’t fucking care, because all politicians lie sooner or later. This has been told to me by the few Trump jizzguzzlers willing to give a straightforward answer to the question, “when is Mexico paying for the wall?”
It’s a cult.
Patricia Kayden
@r€nato: Yes, one side wants to waste billions of tax payer money on an unnecessary wall because he made stupid promises during an election campaign. The other side doesn’t want to give in to a racist’s stupid policy on an unnecessary wall.
One side is right. One side is wrong. Stop with the both siderism nonsense.
Mnemosyne
@Central Planning:
This. He was sulking because his advisors told him that it turned out he couldn’t actually get his way by declaring a bogus “national emergency,” so he immediately started declaring that the whole thing had been everyone else’s idea and that was why it was going to fail.
schrodingers_cat
@Central Planning: I can just imagine what my parents would have said if I trotted out the I didn’t study and that’s why I did badly, excuse. He is pathetic.
Mnemosyne
@r€nato:
This, by the way, is why the MSM is doing a full-court press to declare AOC a lying liar who lies. They need someone on the Democratic side that they can point to as (allegedly) just as much of a liar as Trump, and she’s been picked because she has said some false things. Given that she immediately retracted those false “facts” when she was called out, I think her Bernista friends are still feeding her bogus information from that fever swamp, but it’s giving the MSM a chance to bothsides Trump.
guachi
Mexico will pay for the wall when Jesus returns.
It’s not really a shock that evangelical Christians are Trump’s biggest supporters
WaterGirl
@Gin & Tonic: If you put me in a room with Susan Collin’s furrowed brown and Jeff Flake’s pained look of concern, I would be hard pressed to know which one I wanted to punch more.
Mike in NC
@Jeffro:
Remember that best-selling book, “The Shart of the Deal”? My copy of Rick Wilson’s “Everything Trump Touches Dies” has been circulating around the neighborhood.
Yarrow
@Mnemosyne: Speaking of AOC, I just happened to catch the tail end of the Today Show’s coverage of the speeches last night and they just had to include a clip of her and talk about how “some Democrats, including freshman Congresswoman AOC are pressuring Pelosi not to compromise” or something like that. They didn’t have to single her out but they did.
Yarrow
@WaterGirl: At this point for me it would be Collins. Flake at least had the decency to quit.
SRW1
Ah, that explains why it was on, what, five networks!
Redshift
@Mnemosyne: Exactly.
And there’s no better evidence that the speech was a complete failure than Trump insisting it was someone else’s idea.
The Moar You Know
@Jeffro: Ha, Rick Wilson is OK even if he’s still a damn Republican. I actually took to the Googles to see if Taft had actually given such a speech. The idea that he might have was pretty plausible.
Also, “dumbfuck agitprop” is one for the ages. I may not agree with one scrap of this man’s ideology (save for the part about where Trump belongs in prison) but he can sure turn a phrase.
Roger Moore
@[Individual 1] mistermix:
“Relatives of the victim blame the kidnapper for murdering her, but the kidnapper places the blame on her relatives’ refusal to meet his ransom demands.”
Spanky
Data Point One Million for the Press as GOP Lapdog files: Current CNN.com headline:
The Thin Black Duke
@Yarrow: In spite of myself, I’m beginning to like AOC more and more: she’s pissing off the right people.
Butch
@Gin & Tonic: Someone always beats me to it. Collins will put on her concerned conservative face and rush in front of the cameras to vacuum up as much airtime as she possibly can but in the end she’ll fold. The press should have realized as much by now.
jimmiraybob
Well, it looks like Trump, McConnell, Ryan and the R Party are accomplishing what all the Confederate generals and armies couldn’t – getting America to succeed from America.
Roger Moore
@WaterGirl:
Por que no los dos?
BC in Illinois
From Tom Toles 2011, on Budget Negotiations:
(Now, to be fair to both sides . . . I do look for Trump to either capitulate or lose or both.)
kindness
Another instance of someone giving Susan Collins WAY more credit than she has shown to deserve. Don’t get me wrong. She helped save the ACA when the Senate was prepared to 86 it. Lord knows if McCain & Murkowski weren’t voting against it, Collins wouldn’t have either. Collins is a very principled person you see and her principles hold up like jello that Bill Cosby has given roofies to.
Maine (and we all) deserve better.
Elizabelle
@Mnemosyne:
Ah. So when it gets smacked down, maybe that makes it back, in some part, to those swamps. It’s someone other than the complicit corporate Democrats and that sellout Hillary saying it.
Score.
The Moar You Know
@Yarrow: The Bernie association is always going to give me some pause but that the MSM is coming out swinging this hard, this early, against her tells me she’s a real threat to the GOP establishment and the party needs to back her up and defend her. I DO NOT want to see done to her what they did to Hillary – and we didn’t have Hillary’s back until it was far too late, because shrillness or some bullshit. Warren is not my cup of tea but we need to do the same for her, even though I fear it might be too late. We gotta start backing our effective people (Hillary, Dean, Kerry, Franken are some in a long list of failures) rather than throwing them to the wolves.
schrodingers_cat
@Yarrow: Judy Woodruff did that on Snooze Hour too. Repeated the next day by Amy Walter and Tamara Keith, who continue to giggle inappropriately about every fucking thing.
Skepticat
@WaterGirl:
You have two hands, and I’d bring both of mine.
Yarrow
@Mnemosyne:
I’ve been busy because I have two family members in the hospital plus a huge issue at home so I missed this. What “false facts?”
I can see how she can be a useful tool for hurting Democrats. Hopefully she’ll figure this out quickly and learn who she can and can’t trust. If she doesn’t, then that’ll be a sign. I’m still skeptical of her but I do love how she claps back on Twitter.
randy khan
@Spanky:
I was going to say it was edited for accuracy, then I decided it should be “edited for plausibility,” then I realized it should be “edited for vain hope.”
Yarrow
@schrodingers_cat: It stuck out to me because there was no reason to include her. None. She didn’t give either of the speeches and they didn’t need to include any additional members of Congress, either in video clip or photo (they had both of her). It was blatant manipulation.
Fester Addams
You know, any section of a steel barrier wall that wasn’t closely guarded around the clock would quickly be cut up and trucked away to be sold for its scrap metal value. So many kinds of stupid.
chopper
counting on susan “is a man not entitled to the furrow of his brow” collins to ever do the right thing is just completely stupid.
Fair Economist
@The Moar You Know:
Yep, the media handles Bernie with kid gloves and goes after AOC with guns blazing. They don’t think Bernie is a threat – they have a huge pile of opposition research on him and his policies are generally not realistic – even President Bernie would not get much done. AOC often isn’t realistic either – *yet*. She’s only been on the job one week. In 10 years she might become very sharp indeed – and she won’t even be 40 yet.
randy khan
@randy khan:
I see that I forgot to remember how to do the tag properly. Oops.
Frankensteinbeck
@The Moar You Know:
I think that’s sort of peripherally true. What I see is the decades-long, entrenched-down-to-bedrock belief among the press that liberal ideals are childish. Racism, sexism, and the belief that only hurting people is brave and responsible are built into almost all national press coverage. It’s an ingrained reflex for them to find the strongest liberal voice and paint that person as a non-serious extremist. It’s one of their uses for Sanders. They get a twofor with him. Liberal policies are crazy socialism AND even they think Democrats are corrupt and weak! The thing is, society has moved on and left them behind. They’re talking to 1980s America. Increasingly, when they make jibes like this, the response they get is head scratching or ‘This socialism thing sounds pretty good!’
LC
@Fair Economist:
This is my view. If she doesn’t flame out she is going to be hella dangerous when she’s 40 and has experience under her belt. She seems to learn fast, is quick with a quip, she’s telegenic. She does seem to go right for facts that are “emotionally true” first (which tended to be a thing among a lot of Berners I know. It supports the narrative so they won’t look into it) but she seems to have realized that with a spotlight that isn’t going to fly and she also now has a staff to vette research. I suspect she is just going to get stronger and stronger.
But her emails!!!
@Yarrow:
It’s a 2 for 1 deal. They get to simultaneously paint AOC as a radical to discredit her with the middle and paint Pelosi as a squish to undermine her credibility with liberals.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
And, ironically, this makes it impossible for them to do the dictatorship they clearly want. Ironically it’s worth noting that almost all the of 20th C dictatorships were driven by ideologies like Communism that firmly believed government was the solution.
The Base is nothing but a pack of anarchist with money. Deplorable indeed.
tobie
We had a devil of a storm last night in Maryland and I was unfortunately on the road at the time so I didn’t see the speech or the responses on TV but heard them on the radio and have to say that Schumer sounded very good: to the point and punchy; his pronunciation was also good. Pelosi sometimes slurs her words but her speech was short so it didn’t matter. Both made very clear that Trump is taking the nation hostage for a wall that, in spite of his many promises, Mexico’s not paying for. So, given all this, it’s surprising to me to see just how negative the press has been about their responses. Were the optics, as opposed to the audio, bad?
rikyrah
And Junior?
You aren’t covered by Executive Privilege…
BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
BREAKING: Donald Trump, Jr will be the first to be served with a subpoena to testify in front of the House Intelligence Committee’s reopening Russia probe. Rep Speier confirmed last night. Good. Get him in there yesterday. Refer any and all lies for criminal prosecution.
— Scott Dworkin (@funder) January 9, 2019
Kay
@LC:
I have to admit I have fallen under her spell :)
She seems to actually enjoy this work, which is just so nice to watch. A lot of the rap on Lefties is they’re preachy and scolding and grim, which is true enough that the stereotype holds. She just doesn’t have any of that.
It plays nice off the Trumpsters, too, because they’re all so mean-spirited and cynical and negative. Whatever one thinks of the “green new deal” or Medicare for All, these are positive ideas that people can sift thru and back or reject. Compare to the big, dumb, blank wall.
catclub
@Jeffro: I liked Alexandra Petri’s response better.
rikyrah
Michael Slager was sentenced to 20 yrs in prison for fatally shooting #WalterScott and the sentence stands!
The 4th Circuit was unanimous in finding that MURDER, not manslaughter, was the appropriate base offense for Slager’s sentence b/c of his malice. https://t.co/9lzWG5c8vK
— Kristen Clarke (@KristenClarkeJD) January 8, 2019
Brachiator
@Mary G:
They want to go down in flames and are sticking with the president.
I noted in an earlier thread that the California Republican Party will soon elected a new chair person. The California GOP is so decimated that soon you will know them by name. “That’s Otis, the town drunk. And over there is Ronnie, the town Republican.”
Despite this, the guy is relatively moderate has dropped out of the contest, leaving two dopes who want to push the California GOP closer to Trump.
@e julius drivingstorm:
Apparently, even high priced conservative political strategists thought that Trump should “take his message to the people.” These people know a sucker when they see one, and there’s easy money in playing to Trump’s ego. The GOP is determined to find a way to give Trump something that he can use to declare a victory.
Kay
It’s VA so I assume they have a lot of federal employees Trump refuses to pay :)
Once a deadbeat always a deadbeat! He’s stiffing them on wages.
One of the things that I remember from the depths of the financial crisis here was when the public library set up bag lunches for kids because school was out. It’s the kind of thing people remember, I think. Who helped them. Who went out of their way.
cmorenc
@Gin & Tonic:
Susan Collins is a specimen example of a concern troll crossed with the Lucy-and-the-football schtick from “Peanuts”
Kay
@cmorenc:
What kills me is she’s overrated even within the teeny-tiny category of “GOP moderate senators”
Murkowski is much better! By a fucking mile. OVERATED. Unearned.
Citizen Alan
@catclub:
Dammit, I’ve used up my free WP articles. I love Petri, but not enough to pay even a penny to the paper that still employs swine like Hiatt, Thiessen, and McArdle (whose latest idiocy per the headline at least is about how we should pay poor people to donate their kidneys to rich people).
Frankensteinbeck
@Brachiator:
I’m not convinced here. I’m sure that’s a motivation floating around, but it seems to me this all comes down to McConnell. McConnell is blocking this budget, and blaming Trump, but between the probability of a veto override and Trump’s history of never vetoing anything even if he hates it, blaming Trump is almost certainly a ploy. A scapegoat. It’s McConnell who wants this shutdown.
So… what the Hell is McConnell thinking?
Jeffro
@catclub: Loved that too!
‘Drugs are coming to behead your family’ actually sounds like something trumpov would blurt out, doesn’t it? LOLOL
Brachiator
@The Moar You Know:
AOC is a brand new member of Congress. She is not a threat to anybody. The negative focus on her coming from Fox News and right wing nut job social media is approaching stalker level harassment. They hate her, and believe that it is always easy to attack a woman, especially a woman of color, and double bonus points if she can be painted as an unhinged radical lefty.
The MSM is lazy and stupid, and grateful that they have found someone who is telegenic and fast with a quip or a soundbite that they can convert into instant news coverage.
Yes, she definitely needs to be backed up and defended. In an ideal world, she would be allowed to just get on with her work. But this ain’t an ideal world or normal times. The right wing nut jobs can’t let go. But the MSM can be discouraged from indulging in obsessive coverage.
The Moar You Know
@Kay: It’s been traditional, when shutdowns are over, to back pay all the fed workers who lost time and/or worked for free. I don’t think that will happen this time and I kind of hope it doesn’t. About 40% of the unionized federal workforce routinely votes GOP and they need to be cured of the idea that Republicans are in any way good for them.
TriassicSands
@r€nato:
The Times is a bastion of anti-Trump vitriol when compared with Steve Inskeep on NPR.
Most likely Inskeep is a “ultra-moderate” Democrat who bends over backward to provide “balance” and prove that he’s “fair.” (On the other hand, he might just be a loyal Republican.) In his interviews this AM he dwells on Trump’s expressions of affection for legal immigrants — you know, those occasional (rare?) law-abiding immigrants among the hordes of murderous rapists.
Haberman, one of the Times’ worst, is correct that both sides are talking past each other, but it is important to always point out that Trump’s “facts” are typically lies, exaggerations, and pure nonsense and he has no interest in having a reasonable discussion based on reality. Inskeep insists on taking Trump’s statements at face value as though the president wouldn’t just make things up in an attempt to sound presidential.
Jeffro
@Kay: Received that one as an FCPS parent! =)
Fairfax County is pretty progressive and the school system is well-aligned with its families’ values, so this really came as no surprise.
The ‘hiring event’ is one more way you know there is a severe teacher shortage (and school bus driver shortage, and substitute teacher shortage, and…) in the entire Commonwealth and especially in FCPS.
(Bonus 2 cents: they sure could help themselves out by getting a serious ‘grow-your-own’ teacher program going. Neighboring school divisions do, and those divisions are experiencing great success with GYO programs).
Gin & Tonic
@Brachiator:
How?
Jeffro
@Brachiator: Agree with all of this. In a sane world, the media would be endlessly absorbed with all of the new Democratic members of congress. Rikyrah put a clip up in an earlier thread of one new female member – Pressley, I think it was, from Massachusetts – who was just spectacular on the floor of the House. There are dozens. Yet all they can do is AOCAOCAOC themselves into a tizzy, for the reasons you noted. Sad!
Mnemosyne
@The Thin Black Duke et al:
It’s still early days, but AOC seems willing to learn from her mistakes and to be interested in learning how the levers of power actually work before she gums things up at random. We’ll know for sure when the Bernistas denounce her as a centrist corporate shill.
@Yarrow:
She repeated a “progressive” meme about how all of the waste, fraud and abuse at the Pentagon could totally cover Medicare 4 All, but the numbers were comically wrong and the report they were pulled from basically said the opposite of what online “progressives” were claiming.
She apologized and retracted the claim, but the MSM is still bashing her for it because she said that making a mistaken claim and then retracting it is not as bad as Trump repeatedly lying about immigrants and refusing to admit that he lied. The WaPo ran a very scoldy op-ed about how naughty she was for saying that some lies get policed more than others.
Jeffro
@Gin & Tonic: “how” = email the editors of the papers, the news show producers, etc. Tell them what sucks about their coverage and why, and what you’re going to read/watch instead of their show if it continues. Then put all of THAT on your social media and encourage others to do the same.
Mandalay
Marco Rubio this morning:
He might be a spineless hypocrite, but he can lie just as well as Trump.
Brachiator
@Frankensteinbeck:
This is not just my opinion. A fairly prominent GOP strategist, John Thomas, appears on a local Southern California radio station. He is relatively honest in peeling back the layers and revealing what GOP leaders think and in noting what advice he would give Trump. He is well connected with the weasels who advise Trump.
Interesting. I don’t know what McConnell’s game might be or how a shutdown benefits him.
Frankensteinbeck
@Mnemosyne:
Yeah, but Trump is saying brown people are scary, so as far as the MSM is concerned he’s right about the core principle and they just wish he’s stop saying it in such a stupid way.
Brachiator
@Gin & Tonic:
The media want access to Congressional leaders. Ease of access is always subject to negotiation.
Frankensteinbeck
@Brachiator:
Neither do I. My best guess is that he hates Trump, hates Pelosi, gets a kick out of watching average people suffer, and is rooting for injuries. I’m sure of the first three. Whether they add up to the last is speculation.
Mandalay
@Brachiator:
There were plenty here on BJ attacking her at every opportunity before she had even started in Congress. And you’re expecting the media to defend her? Good luck with that.
lee
I watched Stormy Daniels fold clothes for 8 minutes (Live stream on Instragram). My time was well spent compared to those that watched.
schrodingers_cat
@Mnemosyne:BS from Vt’s numbers for the free college funded with transaction were also complete nonsense, for example.
@TriassicSands: USCIS is treating legal immigrants, long term visa holders etc with barely disguised contempt. Inskeep can interview immigration attorneys or the immigrants themselves to find the details
Barbara
@Jeffro: We have had several really superb GYO teachers in Arlington, though I don’t know whether it’s an official program.
catclub
good news everyone!
A bright side.
Barbara
@schrodingers_cat: Speaking of BS — no one seems to have noticed that he was supposed to have his own response to Trump’s “message” last night. Did he cancel after it became clear there was nothing more for him to say? Not that I want to look at it, a summary will do nicely if you have it.
randy khan
@Frankensteinbeck:
I think McConnell actually is really ticked off at Trump for cutting and running on the deal they’d made in December, when the Republicans still controlled the House. He won’t say it, but his utter disconnection from the negotiations is a way of reminding people it never was his fault.
Also, from a political perspective, which really is how he looks at nearly everything, he doesn’t see any upside in getting involved until there’s a deal that the President says he supports publicly. All of the other paths lead to potential disaster for the Senate Republicans, and so he wants to avoid them at all costs.
Jeffro
The only rationale for the shutdown, which benefits both trumpov and McConnell, is that (in theory) it keeps the GOP unified and focused at the Dems (instead of trumpov) while also (in theory) keeping the Dems from opening up the throttle on all the investigations/oversight. The problem with these theories is that they suck – we’re already seeing some Republicans drift away from the party line, the Dems are staying unified, and the investigations will most definitely get going and continue nonstop. (We can walk and chew gum, after all).
The GOP certainly can’t keep this up until the 2020 elections. TSA and the Coast Guard won’t work for free forever. The public is never going to ‘come around’ to the view that Democrats are being unreasonable, are against border security, yadda yadda yadda. And the environment for both trumpov and the GOP is going to keep deteriorating in a very big way across the next few months.
Aziz, light!
@The Moar You Know:
Fuck you, asswipe. I’m headed for a month or more of missing pay. Why don’t you give me your address so I can send you my mortgage statement?
Yarrow
@Mnemosyne: Thank you. I missed all that. It does sound like she’s still in with the Wilmerites and if she’s not paying attention or careful she can be a useful mouthpiece to spread bad information. It also can make her look bad and untrustworthy, which is probably part of the goal. Wilmer is not a friend to Democrats. The sooner Dems learn that, the better.
@Barbara: Someone in the morning thread said he did it but it had low YouTube views and low retweets.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
I have one slight disagreement with you: I think that the Republican establishment has correctly identified AOC (and the other newly elected women in the House for whom she is an avatar) as a threat to their established order and grip on power. If Kids These Days start listening to AOC instead of young Republican up and comers like Cruz and Rubio, Republicans will never win another election.
And, of course, the mopes on Twitter are obsessively jerking off to videos of her and then weeping about how much they hate her, they really hate her. Those are the ones who make me hope that the Secret Service is keeping a close eye on her.
Frankensteinbeck
@Aziz, light!:
Yeah, seriously. I feel bad enough that regular people are caught in the crossfire here. I understand the need to stand up to Trump on this, but Christ, Republicans are assholes for holding people like you hostage.
Jeffro
@Barbara: That’s awesome! I don’t know if APS has an official GYO program or not, but they pay their teachers so (relatively) well, and are well-led at all levels, so I would imagine they don’t have to do much recruiting in general. There are so many aspects of GYO that cost so little, though, it’s hard to understand why some divisions aren’t focusing their efforts there.
TriassicSands
@schrodingers_cat:
I don’t think that — or anything — would change Inskeep. Unlike his approach with Trumpists, Inskeep was much less accommodating when Obama was in office. NPR boasts about its balanced coverage and hasn’t re-adjusted to having a mindless liar as president. They continue to feature people like Mara Liasson, who undoubtedly gets most of her income from Fox News (no conflict there) and Cokie Roberts, who hasn’t had an original thought in decades. But it is Inskeep I find most objectionable.
Emma
@The Moar You Know:
What, and lose our moral superiority?
Sorry. I am a bit sour today.
Kay
@Jeffro:
Good point. I had not considered that. I never worried about the legal process continuing, no matter what Trump says.
That’s just how it works. Once the big legal machine gets rolling it doesn’t stop until it’s done, and it decides when it’s done. The inexorable nature of it sort of crushes defendants. They get it, eventually. Not stopping.
Trump, who has been privileged and protected his whole life has not had that kind of power directed his way, so he’s fighting reality a lot longer than ordinary defendant’s do- he still believes he can somehow end it. He can’t. It may end with a whimper instead of trials, but if it does that will be because prosecutors wrapped it up. It won’t be because Trump stopped it.
They’re just flailing around throwing rocks at a bulldozer. Crunch, crunch, crunch.
Mnemosyne
@randy khan:
If McConnell can’t get Trump to publicly support a deal and say he’ll sign it, he’s going to have a rebellion within his ranks unless McConnell agrees to pass the legislation with a veto-proof majority. And overriding Trump will (A) REALLY piss him off and (B) make the fractures in the Republican Party even worse than they already are.
That’s why the MSM is starting to babble that this is really all the fault of the Democrats for not knuckling under and doing what Trump wants. But Nancy and Chuck ain’t budging, because they know as well as McConnell and the MSM do that they don’t have to. The Republicans created this mess, and they can clean it up.
rikyrah
You do not lie. She should just do her phucking job….did you see Whoopi tell her off on The View during Hot Topics?
Mnemosyne
Also, to expand on Yutsy’s favorite saying about NDP, “Don’t fuck with the nonnas” …
Nancy Pelosi raised 5 children. She knows that if your 5-year-old throws his dinner on the floor and says that he hates it, you don’t let him watch cartoons while you mop the floor. You make him clean it up.
The Republicans made a mess, and Nonna is going to stand there and wait until they clean it up. She’ll stand there all night if she has to. ?
Jeffro
@Kay:
Great analogy.
Hey – someone with some tweet-embedding ability (aka, not Jeffro) needs to put up a thread by one David Measer (@dmeaser) re: Manafort sharing that polling data. It’s succinct for a twitter thread, for one thing; more importantly, it gets to the heart of the trumpov campaign’s conspiracy with a hostile foreign power. Please oh please?
Kay
Guffaw. Not good when you’re openly contemplating ABSOLUTE VICTORY by your opponents. Good God, even I wouldn’t have described it like that and I’m hoping like hell they LOSE and lose and in the most humiliating manner possible!
catclub
I liked this take by Damon Linker.
pretty clear about made up crisis.
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
I think that, to some extent, AOC is aware that she’s a lightning rod for the haters and is using that to keep the scrutiny off the other new members so they can find their footing. If you see video or photos of her with the other women in Congress, they all look like they’re getting along great.
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
Here’s one example: AOC and Ayanna Pressley both say that they’re BFFs.
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-bffs-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-ayanna-pressley-met-2019-1
catclub
@TriassicSands: As a guess, I would say that Inskeep was brought in after Bob Edwards was fired /purged
for clearly being too liberal. So what do you expect?
randy khan
@Mnemosyne:
This is part of McConnell’s problem. He’s stuck, in part because he knows he can’t trust Trump to keep a promise, even for 10 minutes.* It makes me so sad for him.
*This is a lesson that the Dems learned last year, and they seem to actually have learned it.
catclub
@randy khan: I think McConnell is definitely of the side that would just as soon have the government do nothing, not pay any of its employees, Prove that government cannot work well, etc,
Otherwise he would allow individual bills funding individual agencies to pass, then let Trump REALLY take all the blame.
VOR
Karin Housley ran for the US Senate from Minnesota in the 2018 election on a platform of being a Trump rubber stamp: “I will talk again about the importance of this election and making sure this is a rubber stamp for the policies that the president is putting into place that are working. It’s his promises made, promises kept tour and things are really moving in the country.”
Housley lost to Tina Smith, who had been appointed to fill Al Franken’s seat. The Republicans lost all state-wide offices (which were Dem incumbents), lost the Minnesota House, and only have a 1 vote majority in the Minnesota Senate. Suddenly she has changed her tune: “The legislature will tackle a host of issues that will be challenging, but important. It’s a new session, but the goal remains the same: bipartisan solutions on the serious issues facing Minnesotans.”
rikyrah
The Only Tool Trump Has Is Fear
by Nancy LeTourneau
January 9, 2019
One of the reactions I’ve seen to Trump’s speech from the Oval Office Tuesday night is to suggest that he didn’t change any minds. That assumes he was trying, which is a fundamental error people make about this president. Ezra Klein demonstrated why it is important to put the speech in the context of what we know about the man who gave it.
People looking for persuasion from Trump are always disappointed. Trump practices polarization, not persuasion. His speeches are about firing up his side. They’re about raising the stakes.
Problem is, his side is getting smaller, and they no longer control the House.
— Ezra Klein (@ezraklein) January 8, 2019
https://washingtonmonthly.com/2019/01/09/the-only-tool-trump-has-is-fear/
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Brachiator:
Turtle gets to avoid get caught doing governance by his “I hate the goverments” supporters and gets to blame Trump for it would my guess
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Mnemosyne:
Did they give her a bajillion pinocchios, too, while they were at it?
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@VOR:
She better get checked out by a doctor for that nasty whiplash she got from that 180 degree turn.
The Moar You Know
@Aziz, light!: So am I, and as a Fed contractor I never get back pay. Send your mortgage bill to Trump. He did this.
Captain C
@Brachiator:
I suspect it’s a combination of him being a bitter, bought-and-sold power-hungry nihilist, and perhaps some kompromat, either financial (Turtle’s apparently a multimillionaire on a government salary), or having to do with his rumored proclivities (for which Elaine Chao seems to be his beard).
Yarrow
@rikyrah: No, I didn’t see it. I’m way behind on things because I’m dealing with various crises.
@Mnemosyne: They may be BFFs but how long have they known each other? It’s great if they are, but I’m also watching to see what everyone does as time goes on. It’s easy to bond early and then realize several months later that person isn’t actually your friend. Not saying that’s what’s happening here but I prefer to see what people do over a period of time. I do love the social media game of some of the new members though. So refreshing!
rikyrah
I Was Pregnant and in Crisis. All the Doctors and Nurses Saw Was an Incompetent Black Woman
By TRESSIE MCMILLAN COTTOM
January 8, 2019
catclub
@rikyrah:
not even surprise! Not even ruthless efficiency! not even fanatical dedication to the Pope!
sad.
Ruviana
@Mnemosyne: Rubio and Cruz are 47 and 48 respectively so they’re not the most up and coming these days.
David Evans
@Fester Addams: Oh, didn’t we mention the gun towers and the searchlights? Putin is doing us a very good deal on those. The best deal.
Mnemosyne
@rikyrah:
Ugh. So horrifying. And so enraging that the doctors and nurses expected a first-time mother to be able to explain that she was in labor when she didn’t know herself. ?
I would highly, HIGHLY recommend that every pregnant Black woman who can afford one hire a doula to accompany her to the birth so she has someone who is there to be on HER side, not on the side of the doctors and nurses.
Mnemosyne
@Ruviana:
Yep, that was the joke — the Republicans don’t have any up and comers anymore. It’s all old men. All of the fresh, young faces are on the Democratic side.
WaterGirl
@Roger Moore: I was hoping that would translate into “why not both?”, and indeed it did!
schrodingers_cat
@Barbara: Here you go. He seems to have talked about his favorite subjects, anything but immigration.
goblue72
@Mnemosyne: Your obsession with hippie punching is an effing embarrassment.
goblue72
@rikyrah: And everyone under the age of 50 who saw that was LFAO at Whoopi who was clearly incensed at the idea that somebody might raise taxes on her millionaire rear end. It wasn’t the Green New Deal that got Whoopi squawking. Its wasn’t about defunding ice. Its was about taxing income over $10 MILLION dollars at a Nordic-style 70% tax rate. THAT is what got Whoppi to squawk.
Meanwhile, out here in the reality that is the coming future that is going to finally displace the Baby Boomers, every liberal who isn’t AARP eligible who saw AOC propose a 70% tax rate on the wealthy was cheering “Hell yeah!”
goblue72
@schrodingers_cat: He said there is no immigration crisis and that its completely manufactured by Trump. And that the actual crisis the country faces is climate change and the complete lack of social safety net. All of which is totally true.
But hey – keep yelling at the TV at the old socialist from Vermont. Sure gonna win you a lot of votes with under 65 crowd.
Michael Cain
Did you read the letter the National Governors Association sent to Trump and Congress a couple of days ago? Reading that with my old state legislature budget analyst hat on, the message is, “The wheels are about to come off state budgets. Turn the dollar spigot back on now. Settle your political squabbles later.” 29 Republicans, 21 Democrats, no dissenters have come forward. I imagine the phone calls they’ve been making to their Congress critters in DC are absolutely blistering.
It’s legislative season again. My best guess is that about the end of next week, under our budget rules, my medium-sized state’s General Assembly will be looking to cut a half-billion dollars out of the current budget, perhaps more.