Well, this was remarkable. pic.twitter.com/bqidB7XBZm
— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) July 28, 2020
Democrats want to save as many people as possible. Repubs want to steal everything they can, and break everything they can’t. All else is commentary.
Pelosi says McConnell not ready to make U.S. coronavirus relief deal https://t.co/6GPSCHI8PM pic.twitter.com/cRVXHN0eL9
— Reuters (@Reuters) July 29, 2020
Not accurate. State/local aid is a centerpiece of #HeroesAct & essential to how we kill this virus. https://t.co/S0usRjqvfj
— Drew Hammill (@Drew_Hammill) July 28, 2020
Seems like McConnell wants to keep his job (thankless as it is and little as he needs it), but his nominal boss is determined to make sure that if he gets turfed out, so will #MoscowMitch…
Trump calls new Senate GOP coronavirus bill ‘semi-irrelevant’ – UPDATED w @seungminkim @JStein_WaPo https://t.co/WY1NcXX3l0
— Erica Werner (@ericawerner) July 28, 2020
In retaliation, Mitch refuses to ‘protect’ the FBI funding which is a transparent prefix for protecting Trump’s hotel room rates:
??MCCONNELL throws the White House under the bus: says he’s opposed to fbi money in this covid bill.
— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) July 28, 2020
Republicans are actually, legitimately in disarray. They're not even unified enough to give out free money, let alone cancel elections. pic.twitter.com/QI6YqDhhmA
— Tentin Quarantino (@agraybee) July 28, 2020
"You were right about one thing, Master. The negotiations were short." https://t.co/I71vMO64m6
— Marcher Lord Fred (@LesserFrederick) July 28, 2020
… And ‘LeaderMcConnell‘ gets quite as much respect from his caucus as he has for them. So, at least the rest of us get to watch the Death Cult chew on each other…
I see three options here:
1. All this is for show, and Republicans fold within a week.
2. The markets realize how insane the process is and collapse, Republicans fold.
3. An immense amount of economic damage in August, some kind of crap sandwich in September. https://t.co/GpuCoYagiM— Alex Hazanov (@alexhazanov) July 28, 2020
A day after McConnell released covid relief package, fellow Senate Rs keep throwing darts at it.
"If Mitch can get half the conference, that'd be quite an accomplishment," @LindseyGrahamSC tells @jordainc at lunchtime vote.
So MM enters talks with Rs completely divided.
— Paul Kane (@pkcapitol) July 28, 2020
Oh boy. GOP Sen. Kennedy against White House/GOP plan to switch UI benefits over to wage replacement:
"Many of our state departments of labor — they just got microwaves last week, much less being able to reprogram the computer in 60 days to effectuate a complicated formula"
— Jeff Stein (@JStein_WaPo) July 28, 2020
I'm beginning to think that Mitch McConnell is not the brilliant tactician we thought he was. https://t.co/whBYuuY16N
— Marcher Lord Fred (@LesserFrederick) July 28, 2020
Senate Republican package for the next round of coronavirus relief does not include federal moratorium on evictions that expired on July 24. https://t.co/ejtP0EV4at
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) July 29, 2020
Overall, the Republican coronavirus relief proposal stuffs $8,000,000,000 into Pentagon weapons systems built by defense contractors like Boeing, Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics — corporate titans that sit atop the Washington influence industry. https://t.co/ExsxvpQgSM
— NBC News (@NBCNews) July 29, 2020
For two months, Americans have watched their loved ones die and get sick. Millions have lost jobs, and now millions face eviction. And for two months McConnell has been laser-focused on making sure you can’t sue your boss for catching the plague at work. https://t.co/XGbEITSyac
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) July 28, 2020
Distilling the Republican COVID relief plan. Here are the two major takeaways:
1) Poor people need to make major sacrifices for the good of the economy.
2) Rich people don't.
Very much on brand. It will forever be a mystery to me why anyone would ever vote GOP.
Other than racism.— Slava Malamud (@SlavaMalamud) July 28, 2020
debbie
The GOP showed its true self when they cut unemployment while allowing foreclosures, evictions, debt collection, etc. to start up again.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Goddammit – I wish some news orgs would hire some experienced litigators to ask or at least script questions, someone would start asking who “they”, “many people” or “anybody” are.
Ken
Call-outs to Rabbi Hillel. I like.
I find some of the framing a little weird. They seem to be saying that because the Republicans are divided, McConnell will have to negotiate with Pelosi and the Democrats. No – that was always going to have to happen.
What the division means is that the Republicans wasted a lot of time, and are now in a much weaker position in those negotiations. Well, assuming they have any interest at all in passing some relief, which admittedly some do not.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Ken: Exactly, didn’t the House pass a bill two months ago? What has the Senate been doing?
We know the White House has been hawking beans and fake cures.
Suzanne
Slava Malamud always knows what’s up.
Baud
Why are Dems opposed to the War on COVID?
Ryan
““Many of our state departments of labor — they just got microwaves last week, much less being able to reprogram the computer in 60 days to effectuate a complicated formula””
I think I might see at least part of the problem…
Ryan
@Baud: Did I read right that that particular $8 billion was snatched away to build wall earlier this year?
Baud
The GOP is lost if they can’t count on people blaming Democrats for not persuading the GOP to do the right thing.
Ryan
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Yes, it’s a mystery why Trump keeps turning to magical thinking and hydroxychloroquine.
Baud
@Ryan: I don’t think the wall money came from military contractors. Different pots of money maybe.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: I saw a piece that it was to backfill the wall money.
Ken
@Baud: I’ve seen reports the military is planning to make a history of COVID disqualifying for service. We may end up with lots of very expensive warcraft and no one to maintain and operate them. I understand staffing was already something of a problem for the Navy, even pre-COVID.
NotMax
Methinks thou meant to say pretext.
Baud
Readership capture.
Turns out “I will kill you” isn’t as effective a reelection message as one would have initially thought.
Baud
Minneapolis is safe from federal troops.
NotMax
@Baud
Gotta restock military excess coffers to supply local police departments, don’tcha know.
//
Ken
Nice that he’s tacitly admitting that the White House priorities are indistinguishable from Trump’s business.
Baud
Credit where it’s due (NYT)
Bluegirlfromwyo
@Suzanne: He forgot sexism and homophobia but yes.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
I’m OK with paying the troops, maintaining bases and equipment and cutting back training by 70% while we’re dealing with the economic and human fallout from the virus.
New equipment acquisition and development need to go on hold for the indefinite future.
John S.
I love the accurate and simple framing in that first clip. It’s so easy to understand.
White supremacists protest with guns and threaten violence: No big deal.
POC protest peacefully and naked women flash lady bits: FEDERAL RESPONSE!
This is fine.
Barbara
@Ken: It could be about his hotel but I think he also wants the chance to control who receives the contract, which can’t be awarded without having the money in place. This has already been tried once and then the contract was canceled.
Baud
gene108
“Republicans revolt against GOP’s initial stimulus plan”…. this is a terrible, terrible no good horrible sentence.
The sentence makes it seem Republicans are opposing another group’s, the GOP’s, plan, and that this is not just the same incompetent infighting we’ve seen for the last ten years.
Boehner and Ryan could not even get a budget passed, without turning it into a clusterfuck. Now it’s Mitch’s turn to deal with how awful he and his party are.
NotMax
Open thread?
Turner I understand. Movies I understand.
Howsoever, Classic can be stretched only so far.
TCM dragging out one of the dregs of the dregs at 9:30 (Eastern time) this morning. You have been warned.
;)
Baud
gene108
@Ken:
Trump trying to use government to so openly help his business needs to be turned into an ad, and played over and over again.
It really is a very big deal.
With the country crashing down around us, I doubt there are going to be high profile hearings on this.
Ads are the best way to reach the most people with this news.
John S.
@Baud: That’s all he had left. Now the media will be in desperate overdrive to find the “But his emails!” narrative, or they won’t have their precious horse race. You can’t fill 24 hours of news with “Trump and the GOP are getting stomped.”
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
So this was a thing yesterday.
Basically, the US Attorney for the Western District of Kentucky invalidated Black Lives Matter by going on about “black on black” crime.
cmorenc
@Ryan:
You can easily solve this mystery by briefly surfing the RW media, such as OAN and Fox to see what relative narratives they’re pushing: They’re trying to pin blame for the worsening COVID pandemic & economic fallout on:
Shorter version: the virus is NOT our fault, and it’s the Dems and fake health establishment authorities who are prolonging the pandemic and economic distress, not us – we could fix both much more quickly but for their interference.
Ken
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Remind me, the US Attorneys are the ones that – as established very early in the Trump presidency – can be fired by the President at any time?
Salty Sam
Nothing makes me happier than to see this particular dynamic destroyed.
Baud
@Ken:
Yes.
John S.
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: White people “explaining” things to those they believe are inferior to them has been a thing for centuries.
Robert Sneddon
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
The Holy Constitution says that all US Government spending has to be apportioned in the form of bills from the Legislature. It doesn’t insist on those bills being specifically about spending so for administrative purposes pretty much any bill about anything gets larded up with financial stuff like the FBI replacement building, a tranche of F-35A planes and so on just to get necessary spending through the sausage-making machinery. It’s actually an indication that this bill will eventually be passed, they wouldn’t stick all that spending stuff into a bill destined to fail.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone ???
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
rikyrah
@Baud:
YESSSSSSSS
Barbara
@Ken: Most US attorneys are asked to resign at the beginning of every new administration. Only in a few situations are they held over and asked to remain. It is not a career civil service job.
Baud
FWIW, groups are starting to put lists together of people to staff the new Biden administration.
rikyrah
@Ken:
What about those on active duty who catch it?
Betty Cracker
@Baud: That’s a good piece — thanks for the link! His conclusion:
Good for him.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Can someone please beat Navarro to death with a baseball bat on live TV for my enjoyment?
Thanks in advance.
rikyrah
@gene108:
Not even smart enough to just put Nancy Smash’s bill on the floor, tell the vulnerable Senators to vote for it, claim victory under the scam of Bi-Partisanship.
It would be that easy.
Yes, it would be a Democratic bill, but it would be positive for the GOP.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Baud: Good. Biden needs to be ready to fire the incompetent and corrupt and replace them with people who know what they’re doing on day one. People will be expecting to see action.
rikyrah
@Baud:
Uh huh
Uh huh ??
rikyrah
@Baud:
I mean, he should have names ready for multi-levels of the Government.
No time to waste.
Vet people now.
I am of the belief that he should present his top Cabinet picks and invite folks to compare to what we have now.
rikyrah
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Come sit by me ?
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Agreed, although I’m disappointed about not having the opportunity to serve.
SFAW
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Your enjoyment? Selfish prick. What about the rest of us?
Kay
83 people infected at one event here in Trump Country, Ohio on July 11, including 4 of the wait staff at the event. No masks for anyone including catering staff.
SFAW
@Baud:
Even with COVID shutdowns, I’m sure there are restaurants willing to give you a few tables. Tips might even be better these days.
Or did you mean something else?
rikyrah
rikyrah
@Kay:
?????
sanjeevs
Trump confirms he didn’t raise the bounties in his call to Vlad
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-says-he-has-not-spoken-to-putin-about-alleged-russian-bounties-on-us-troops/2020/07/29/c8037944-d186-11ea-8c55-61e7fa5e82ab_story.html
Betty Cracker
Did y’all see Trump’s shit-show of a press conference yesterday evening, when he stomped off in a huff after being asked about promoting a kooky doctor who believes medicine contains alien DNA? JFC. Any bets on how quickly the low-quality hires pull the plug on press conferences this time?
SFAW
@rikyrah:
Maybe Rubin has finally turned the corner/page on the GOP? [I know she’s been thrashing the Murderer-in-Chief for awhile, but I always had the sense that she was similar to the Lincoln Project — more upset with Trump’s vileness than with the evil of the GOP.]
Probably not, but a boy can hope.
SFAW
@Betty Cracker:
Someone told me that same doctor believes that all (or many) diseases are caused by demons or demon sperm or something?
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Betty Cracker:
Who’s been getting the fun of demon sex? I feel left out…
zhena gogolia
Lincoln Project on Susan Collins, a thing of beauty, so concise and powerful:
Baud
Baud
@Kay: Trump County, MN feels your pain.
SFAW
@Baud:
Somewhere in the great beyond, Cyril Kornbluth is either weeping, or laughing uproariously.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Baud: Are you saying you haven’t been in secret talks with Biden? I’m shocked! Shocked, I tell you.
Kay
@Baud:
Well, our local event was July 11th and the cases were reported July 28th, so if I were Minnesota I’d watch that.
rikyrah
@zhena gogolia:
??????
Martin
Here’s the next shoe to drop in the fucked up Covid response – a dozen states are running out of ICU doctors. They’re getting sick because they don’t have the equipment they need and because we won’t fucking stay home.
Beds and PPEs are a lot easier to get more of than trained doctors.
mad citizen
@gene108: I’m right there with you on this. It’s been top of mind with the FBI building/move story. It’s corruption through and through. Dems need to talk about corruption corruption corruption–at least Warren did that a lot.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@SFAW: She says endometriosis is caused by women having sex with demons in their dreams.
Where do they come up with this stuff?
rikyrah
@Betty Cracker:
But, his ‘tone’ was changing.
That’s what the MSM said ??
SFAW
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
The voices told her, I expect.
Soprano2
I agree, Biden needs to be vetting staff for positions now. I assume we’ll still be in a COVID emergency and a financial emergency in January, so there’s no time to waste. He needs to be able to replace all the incompetent Trump hires immediately, and have agencies be able to start functioning correctly ASAP. If I remember correctly, they confirm Cabinet secretaries ahead of the swearing-in, or they can because the new Congress is sworn on January 3rd. They need to be ready to go, with no unpleasant surprises if possible, because he’s literally taking over a country that’s in a blazing emergency! It’s worse than what Obama faced when he first took office.
Dorothy A. Winsor
The resident with COVID here seems to be doing ok. She’s still home and has been sitting out on her patio. The twenty or so people who had contact with her are done with their quarantine. Maybe we’ve escaped this time.
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
The endometriosis is a modern twist.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Martin:
Facebook has a plethora of medical experts that managed to pass high school biology with a C- and some treatable chlamydia, so we’ll all be fine for medical treatment.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Baud: Organized (ie patriarchal) religion is awfully obsessed with sex.
Just One More Canuck
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: ooh ooh, pick me! Pick me!
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Control the sex, control the person.
oatler.
From Joe My God:
“The Truth will set us all Free! But some people dont want to hear the truth. Especially the people in power who stand to make money from this long drawn out search for a vaccine. Which has been proven and has been available for months. They would rather let fear control them and let the rich get richer and the poor and sick get sicker. This woman is my hero. Thank you Stella Immanuel. – Madonna, posting last night to Instagram.
different-church-lady
@Baud: They’re really not going to like viral overreach.
different-church-lady
@Dorothy A. Winsor: C’mon, people have know that for thousands of years.
Betty Cracker
@zhena gogolia: The LP people are so refreshingly forthright. They don’t mince words! Collins is a “fraud” and a “Trump stooge.” It’s true, and they just say it.
narya
Ventured out last evening–local CSB (community-supported brewery) had a members-only event at their new space. HUGE space (very high ceilings, too), widely spaced tables indoors, some tables outdoors, limited size groups (everyone had to pick a time slot so they could clean between groups), masked when not at your seat. Beer was free. Was there about an hour, and felt reasonably safe. The owners are extremely careful (fun fact: I went to college w/ two of them), and the patrons were as well; one owner said that several folks had said this was the first time they had ventured out. Not ready to do it often, but was practically the first time I’ve been out since March (exceptions: morning run, grocery store, farmers’ market, small gathering on a back porch last week that actually felt more uncomfortable than last night, plus workers in part of my house). Still overwhelmed today, but a little better able to feel grateful, too, that I’ve been able to isolate this much.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Betty Cracker: One would think defeat would bring some self examination but here in California the GOP has been non existent in state politics for almost a generation and no change.
Baud
@different-church-lady: As long as it’s a free market virus and not a government virus, they’ll be happy.
Anya
@Baud: . I’ve followed him on twitter for years, even before Trump, and I’ve always found Stuart Stevens very reasonable.
Falling Diphthong
So Republicans are in open revolt against their own bill, and we have sex demons. (I did not see the sex demons coming. Did anyone out there have “sex demons: last week of July” on their bracket?)
I’m afraid to see what August manages.
Anya
@John S.: She was magnificent. Not loving the whole “kill black bodies” thing but she put that smug criminal in his place.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@different-church-lady: I did not realize the whack-a-doodles were so common.
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Just don’t have sex with a whack-a-doodle in your dreams or you might catch an Ovarian cyst.
Kay
I do think Michigan is gone for Trump- Michigan was always a fluke for him anyway- but some of the other contested states will tighten because some of the Trump 16-ers will come home.
Cameron
@rikyrah: Maybe they meant he’s less orange?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Baud: Lot older than that, Sumerians talk about the same thing. So good to see someone with a Phd subscribes to the finest medical thinking of the Bronze Age.
different-church-lady
@Falling Diphthong:
Abstinence demons?
Kay
Chris Johnson
from way downthread on an Adam post, but just as relevant here…
So yeah, bear in mind please that we’re many years into a really intense war with Russia waged one-sidedly on the internets. This is not an abstraction, it’s extremely tangible and has very specific aims towards the goal of killing us as much as possible, which is more or less the idea of war on America so points for consistency I guess. Can’t blame them after we stuck them with Yeltsin… no, wait, yes I can, because that shit’s got to stop and not just escalate.
What you need to know about this, in the event that you agree that Russia has gone to war against us by informational/propaganda means, is that the influence and propaganda operation has two obvious goals.
One, to get both the government and the people totally fascist (this, while also propping up the leftist radicals and doing everything possible to MAKE ’em violent: remember, Russia does not want Trump to WIN or RULE or anything. Remember they want both sides to lose)
Two, to claim all manner of bullshit for the purposes of scaring and radicalizing everyone. So, to the rightwingers they have a whole line of crap fed through QAnon about how everyone on the left are baby-eating savages, blah blah you know the drill.
For US, they have a line of crap about how QAnon is a huge popular uprising taking over the nation, and they’re trying very hard to get as many Republicans throwing themselves on that sword as possible. Remember they do NOT want to protect the Republicans. They’re meant to be martyrs, they’re meant to fail. Ideally they’re meant to draw out wild reactions that can further be propagandized.
Stay calm and carry on. Fight the institutions that are being twisted, and work towards shoring up the institutions that aren’t failing. If you conclude that everything is fucked because QAnon will rule for 1000 years you’re doing Putin’s work for him and you’re also ignoring the fact that Putin would literally turn around and begin sabotaging QAnon in turn the instant they started to show actual power. Russia does not suddenly love the American right.
I would add that of course the Republicans in Congress are flailing and in desperate shape. They are not meant by Russia to be a ruling, powerful fascist party. They are meant to fall and it shows. They’re meant to be destroyed while ‘heroically failing to impose fascist rule’ as we’d see it, but they cannot be allowed to actually do that because it would be political power and Russia never wanted them to actually be powerful.
Kay
Giving liars a platform works for both ends of the business model because after allowing the liar to promote the lie the CNN anchor now has his role laid out- he corrects the lie. Over and over and over for the last 4 years, every day.
Both people play their roles.
germy
I had someone tell me in all seriousness that he had been attacked by a demon in his sleep. This is a college educated man, considered intelligent by his associates.
He explained to me what happened: He awoke from a slumber, and found himself unable to move. He felt the presence of a … being … in the room, moving closer to him with malevolent intent.
(For some reason, people tend to share these sort of things with me. There’s something in my face or my personality that gives people the impression I welcome these stories.)
Anyway, I told him “You were sleeping on your back, right?”
“Yes!”
I told him “It sounds to me like a common sleep disorder. Perhaps you had an episode of sleep apnea which awakened you partially, but not enough to overcome the normal paralysis we all experience while dreaming, that prevents us from flailing around in our sleep.” I told him he might benefit from a professional sleep study and a c-pap machine.
He nodded, but I’m not sure he believed me.
Jinchi
Odd phrasing in that headline. Trump barely squeaked by in Michigan in 2016 and Biden has been 5-10 points ahead of him there for at least the last year.
germy
different-church-lady
@Baud: If Machina’s law holds, then they’ll be just fine with it as long as more black and brown people are dying than them.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Just One More Canuck: You have to promise to allow him a few minutes to justify his life, and then to do some body/leg blows first, just for the screams.
arrieve
@NotMax: Wow. Thankfully I saw your comment in time to catch the movie. Although, I think having watched the trailer I no longer need to see the actual movie. Thinko the robot? They spent a lot of time coming up with that name.
rikyrah
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
They NEVER INTENDED TO PUT UP A BILL.
NEVER EVER.
I don’t know why this isn’t pointed out in every story about this.
They had 2 months and had NOTHING, cause they planned on NOTHING.
rikyrah
Vance Ginn says Texas schools should reopen since coronavirus killing Hispanic, elderly https://t.co/nLQKweVfR3
— Joshua Holland (@JoshuaHol) July 29, 2020
Betty Cracker
@Kay: I’m trying to brace myself for the inevitable tightening, but it’s hard! As horrified as I was on election night 2016, at least I could tell myself that some percentage of the 62 million who voted for Trump were taking a flyer on a sexist, racist reality show creep as a sick joke — a burn-it-all down because both suck gesture. That was stupid and irresponsible, of course, but their active malevolence was an open question, at least with some portion of Trump voters.
Well, not this time. The Trump administration has been just as horrible as we imagined — the corruption, the incompetence, the divisiveness, the racism/sexism/xenophobia, the kowtowing to authoritarians, the sabotage of institutions, loss of international prestige, etc. And yet somewhere around 40% still express approval FOR THAT when pollsters call. This election will sort out what that means, and I’ll admit, I am afraid of the answer.
rikyrah
PsiFighter37
@Betty Cracker: No way he wins MI and PA again…the GOP got demolished statewide in 2018.
Wisconsin will be close, but I am heartened by Tammy Baldwin crushing her opponent in 2018. I have to think that Biden will be fine here as well…but take nothing for granted. I am heartened to see that it seems like the Biden campaign is choosing to go on offense in some states (e.g. Georgia). More the merrier, and if we can somehow steal both of Georgia’s Senate seats, that would be gravy.
rikyrah
@Kay:
I have to ask…
as deaths increase and the economy gets worse…
what reasons will they give themselves to ‘ come back home’.
The Thin Black Duke
@Betty Cracker: I already know what the answer is, but I can live with that because there is still more of us than there is of them and we can put the brakes on these assholes once we make a commitment to it.
rikyrah
@Kay:
This is why I know they are distraught over not having found the BUT HER EMAIL for 2020.
They were desperate to find it.
They want their horserace.
germy
germy
Ken
Check the 10-day forecast.
taumaturgo
@cmorenc: This is all about conspiracy theories. The GOP ate them up in 2016 election cycle up to today. Will they get away with it again?
Uncle Cosmo
How do you know his team isn’t doing exactly that?
I strongly disagree that he needs to announce Cabinet nominees. Anyone he announces for any role in a Biden administration will immediately draw furious attacks from the Trumpistas – they can’t lay a glove on him, so they’ll beat up any- & everyone else. (Watch the fury next week when he announces his running mate.)
He should announce key appointees only once he is certified as the winner of the 2020 Presidential election. Any earlier & the Thugs will try to use the announcements as an excuse to raise hell with the intent of keeping Trumplethinskin in power.
Betty Cracker
@The Thin Black Duke: I know there are more of us too, but it feels like we have to not only win but curb-stomp the bastards to make any headway at all. And for a shitload of reason, I’m not confident we can do that, and we’re running out of time. Hence the dread. But there’s nothing to be done but work toward that goal.
AnotherBruce
That’s my congresswoman, and I love her.
Matt McIrvin
@germy: Oh yeah, I used to get that a LOT more before I got my CPAP. Classic sleep paralysis incident.
The Thin Black Duke
@Betty Cracker: I saw how Pramila Jayapal disemboweled that punk Barr the other day. I think our side is tough enough.
cmorenc
@Baud:
I have heard through reliable sources that you will shortly be contacted by the Biden campaign about a Cabinet post as Secretary of Baud, a position for which they understand you are well-qualified and ready to hit the floor running on day 1.
geg6
@Kay:
I’m not sure that’s going to happen here in PA. Will my county go for Trump? Almost certainly, based on the people around me. But Pittsburgh and Philly and their close suburbs are out of reach for him. And there are places like Lackawanna County that will almost certainly come out strong for Biden. Lackawanna and its major city of Scranton are pretty much all white (I think about 85% white) and non-college working class and retirees. It’s been a Dem bastion for eons but Trump almost won it in 2016. Anecdotal evidence is showing a big swing back to the Dems this year, mostly due to COVID.
Leto
Open thread? The Michelle Obama Podcast is out and her first chat is with Barack. She’s also discussing our (communal sense) relationship to our community and country.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
I think the curb-stomp, while welcome, is less important than winning over time, instead of giving the Dems only two years to fix everything. For some reason, in politics, a lot of our people act like CEOs who think only about the next quarter instead of the long-term.
Baud
@Leto: What a get!
Baud
@cmorenc: Already happened. Biden decided to go with Pete Buttigieg. He said it was too important a job, and he wanted it done right.
Kathleen
@Baud: It’s early. McConnell is blaming Pelosi for people losing health care during Covid crisis so the bleat goes on.
Leto
@geg6:
Montgomery County checking in. This tracks how this county has voted for the past few decades on the state/national level. Reading up a bit more, seems that Dems have put a bigger focus on the local levels and have been picking up seats since 2008. Even though Trumpov won the state, MontCo was one of the few places that went for HRC by greater numbers than Obama.
I’m hopeful (dare I use that?) that we can keep the momentum going from 2018.
Bobby Thomson
@Baud: “Slip?”
I mean, I suppose it was close enough last time that switching a few votes was sufficient, but it was never his.
Kay
@rikyrah:
It’s just that it always seems to revert – all voters tend to go back to the Party they favor as it gets closer. We saw that in Obama’s re-elect in Ohio. The squishy Democrats who were “dissatisfied” so created all the drama with polling ended up back at Obama. Republicans here were really confident Romney would win- the standard answer from even moderate Republicans was “Obama is toast”. When they don’t know what to do they go back to what they’ve already done. Democrats did that in ’12 and Republicans might do it in ’20.
Captain C
@Baud:
It doesn’t shift over easily from “I will kill everyone you don’t like.” Imagine that.
Ken
@Jinchi:
It’s a report from a media organization, that the Trump campaign is not buying media ads. There may be a sliver of self-interest there.
To me, the real question is why they’re cutting back on ads. Do they think they’ve got the state in the bag, or conversely that it’s a no-hoper at this point? Or – and I’m leaning toward this – does it mean there will be more money in the campaign fund in November, and Trump thinks he’ll be able to walk off with it?
trnc
@cmorenc:
And perish the thought on getting answers from them for how S Korea, Japan and other countries much closer to China than we are managed to tamp down the virus without any of the quack medications push by DT and the QAnon Qrew.
zhena gogolia
@NotMax:
James Mason’s wife appearing in this flick is the greatest thing that happened to him since he made that Thunderbird commercial.
dmsilev
Send Thoughts and Prayers(tm):
Rep. Gohmert Tests Positive For COVID After Perennially Refusing To Wear Mask
Frank Wilhoit
@rikyrah: The same and only reason since 1979: to keep the Democrats out.
Seriously, everybody needs to stop with the old wrong framing.
No one votes FOR a candidate. No one even votes FOR a party, or a platform, or a pseudophilosophy.
Everyone votes AGAINST a party.
The number of people who will always vote against the Republican Party and the number of people who will always vote against what they so proudly call the “Democrat Party” are so nearly equal that the only, very crude and wobbly, measuring device that we have, viz. first-past-the-post elections, cannot reliably distinguish between them. Elections are decided by who sits home. (The semantics of sitting home is declaring that you are okay with any possible outcome; every vote not cast is cast for the winner, whoever it turns out to be.)
Chyron HR
@cmorenc:
So the plan is to deliberately make the pandemic worse and hope that people blame someone else? I don’t mean to sound like a liberal elitist, but isn’t that kind of a bad plan?
Leto
@Baud: Again, listening to adults just sit and talk is not what I thought I/we would need in 2020, but here we are it’s just really nice
Edit: there’s things that they’re discussing in the first fifteen minutes, stuff their parents taught them/things that they envisioned for themselves, that feel like their parents were my parents. But it also sounds like conversations I’ve had with so many other people. Basically there’s more that unite us/we have in common, than separate us.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
/thinks un-christian thoughts about how close… bites virtual tongue…/
I wonder if the test was part of a pre-Air Force 1 screening
Kathleen
@SFAW: She’ s of the “Both Trump and GOP need to be obliterated” school. She lays it down! I love her.
Kay
@rikyrah:
This is what I look for. The difference between 100 and 83. Too big. These are the people who drive me crazy. I swear to God predicting what this sort of voter will do is a fool’s game. They’re squirrely. I have no idea how they manage to decide what to have for lunch let alone who to vote for.
I want the blank space between 83 and 100 filled in, because you cannot trust these people :)
Jinchi
I don’t expect the race to tighten. If anything, the polls may get worse for Trump as the pandemic continues to rage, schools remain shuttered, millions remain unemployed, and he continues to lurch from one scandal to the next.
Polls this year have been remarkably consistent. Unlike 2016, when the average would regularly swing by 8 points over the course of a week. At his best, Trump has never been within 4 points of Biden, more often he’s been behind by 10. People are done with Trump.
Ken
Well, I hope there will be some changes from the current policy, which is to ignore it and ship them to an island base. Or ignore it, and cashier their commanding officers if they complain.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@dmsilev:
Who needs v!agra when there’s a story like that? I just hope he drowns in his own lung fluid, alone.
Kay
@rikyrah:
“I” shouldn’t stand for Independent, it should stand for Indecisive and when you talk to them you’re just shocked and horrified at what they base their decisions on- that’s IF they tell the truth.
zhena gogolia
@NotMax:
This film has a feminist message.
The Thin Black Duke
@Chyron HR: Republicans don’t have a plan ‘b’.
rp
@Kay: I agree with you about the undecided voters, but 39% for an incumbent Senator…just wow.
trnc
Cool! I see some of the twitter responses saying she’ll be very disappointed, concerned, etc, but that isn’t quite right. “Concern Theater” is for Russian bounties on US soldiers or brown kids being permanently separated from their families. She’s probably livid over this ad.
Jinchi
The blank space may never be filled in. A lot of those 17% may decide not to vote at all.
Matt McIrvin
But they don’t want to give out free money.
germy
@dmsilev:
Pray for everyone he infected.
dnfree
@arrieve: when I was a young child in the 1950s I saw a terrifying movie in which the name of the robot was TOBOR. Get it? Robot spelled backwards! TOBOR rescued a little boy from the bad guys at the last moment. I wonder if that one will ever show up on TCM.
Omnes Omnibus
Herbert Hoover got nearly 40% of the vote in 1932. Just something to keep in mind.
Matt McIrvin
@Chyron HR:
Deliberately make the pandemic worse and hope it kills more Democratic voters than Republican voters, so they win.
japa21
@dmsilev: Did he cough on Barr yesterday? Or even breathe on him? One can only hope.
Jinchi
I’d rather not see him at all. The idea that he’d be going out (masked or not) after testing positive is just idiotic.
Stay home Congressman.
germy
@japa21:
They’re careful when it comes to themselves:
Betty Cracker
@Jinchi: I believe people are done with Trump too, but 2016 PTSD is going to have me on pins and needles until the outcome is certified, I guess. I needed to hear what you said, so thanks.
Kay
@rp:
I read yesterday that McConnell stripped a financial reg she’s proud of under the guise of his “stimulus” bill which apparently means he considers her as defeated and no longer needing to be accommodated.
So that’s positive! :)
Ruckus
@rikyrah:
Let’s be honest here.
Can anyone tell me when, in the last 100 yrs, that the republican party has been for anything positive?
I’ll wait.
Positive is not who they are and it’s gotten worse in the last 50-60 yrs. They are the minus sign of American politics, the accountant who knows the only way to be profitable is to cut wages and employees, the doctor who only knows the amputation saw, the thief who robs churches because look at all the nice furniture.
germy
Jinchi
Not in times of crisis.
Look at the polls for McCain vs Obama in 2008 or Reagan vs Carter in 1980. When people lose confidence in the president and his party, they’re gone.
chopper
@The Thin Black Duke:
hell, republicans don’t have a plan A. outside of ‘steal everything that isn’t welded in place’, which is more of an ethos.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: I like to imagine Collins getting that memo and thinking, “But… I’ve always done what Mitch wanted, and now… he’s throwing me overboard?” Face-eating-leopard party, et cetera…
OzarkHillbilly
They have the same thing for lunch every day: Bologna with miracle whip on white bread and a bag of lays potato chips. A couple chocolate chip cookies too.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
OTOH Trump giving up on Michigan is good news because the set of states that includes Michigan have some similarities in terms of voters and the conventional wisdom is if one moves the others move too.
So if he’s even in Ohio (and he is) you can work backward to PA and MI and guess that he’s back further than 5 there, because they’re bluer than Ohio in a predictable way. That’s what Ohio political people do anyway. They look at the whole set. So Trump up that far in OH in ’16 should have been a flashing light for Clinton in PA and MI.
Jeffro
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I’m totally down with that…can I use my own bat?
Jeffro
@Kay: Pennsylvania appears to be gone, too. Wisconsin, who knows but I have been seeing pretty regular polling number where Biden’s up by 8-10 points.
What’s trumpov to do – try and flip California or New York, at this point?
Leto
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: But what does Collin’s brow think of it? We need The Brow’s reaction.
Jeffro
@rikyrah: true, and kind of horrifying.
The upside, if there is one, is that in so many states, Biden is up over the 50% mark. Trumpov’s people can ‘come home’ all they want, but at this point, they will have to figure out how to convince people (mostly blessed ‘independents’) who have made up their minds to vote for Biden/vote out the incumbent/save themselves to switch to trumpov.
What’s he offering? Any changes in tone’ last a couple of hours at most.
He’s sunk and the smarter reptiles in the GOP high command know it.
Jeffro
@Uncle Cosmo: I agree with “vet them and have them ready, but don’t announce them until absolutely necessary”.
But whew, does Uncle Joe need to have wave after wave of appointees ready and raring to go…
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Teddy Roosevelt! Oh wait, that’s more than 100 years. Starting in 1920, we have Woodrow Wilson, Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover…
Hmm. Well, maybe Calvin Coolidge wasn’t 100% awful?
I never realized what a lock the Republicans had on the White House in the early 20th century till the Great Depression and FDR. We really are kind of repeating history here 100 years later.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Why are you including Wilson in your list of Republicans?
rp
@Ruckus: Eisenhower and the interstate highway system? That’s all I got.
JPL
@dmsilev: sad
trollhattan
@Betty Cracker:
Yup. Once the dog steals the leg of lamb off the dining table you never take your eye off that dog at dinnertime.
Ken
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Don’t forget Lincoln. Many people were not aware that Lincoln was a Republican, until Trump announced it.
RobertB
@rp: Nixon with the EPA and normalizing relationships with China. And now I just threw up a little bit, and my papaw will haunt me.
germy
Only the best celebrities.
different-church-lady
@Matt McIrvin: It’s more like this:
1) Make pandemic worse
2) ?
3) Win re-election!
different-church-lady
@germy: In Russa, virus kill you.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Omnes Omnibus: Ah, OK. Thanks for the correction. He was the only one I wrote down without googling to make sure of the party.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Think of it this way, he may have been a virulent racist, but would a Republican have worked so hard to establish something like the League of Nations?
Lyrebird
About that state and local aid… can we please get more people shouting about how McConnell is defunding the police around the country? Beinart said it at the Atlantic,
there was an article from the Tax Policy Center
along the same lines, and our county might see a 20% reduction in police, WITHOUT any complementary increase in social services.
I wish we could get wall-to-wall Biden and Demings on how to train and pay police officers better in contrast with this backstabbing mess from the Turtle.
catclub
I always think the
‘all else is commentary’ is a reference to that rightwing Jewish magazine.
Just One More Canuck
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Those are agreeable terms – I’ll lay it all out in my engagement letter
Captain C
@Jeffro:
Hope someone with no extradition treaty with the U.S. will take him in.
J R in WV
@rikyrah:
They could even change the name of the bill to the Donald J Trump Rescue Bill, or the McConnell-Trump Recovery Bill, leave everything else the same… but nope!
Nope!
Can’t pay people for staying home instead of working, even in the Trump Plague Times. Especially in the Trump Plague Times!!!
J R in WV
deleted
Brooklyn Dodger
@NotMax: A gentle au contraire, to you dear BJer. I mean, Albert ZUGSMITH’S Sex Kittens Go to College? Why have I not heard of this before? I think TMC is doing their job. Love it and thanks for the, er, pro-tip.
J R in WV
@Ruckus:
Nope. They weren’t even in favor of defending the free world from fascists during WW II until Pearl Harbor was attacked.
Then they weren’t in favor of the war, they just stopped being against it in public. Lest they get arrested for hindering the war effort and go to one of those remote “camps” where they wouldn’t be able to take contributions from big companies any more.
catclub
@J R in WV: The interstate system?
Connor
@SFAW:
The Marching Morons, indeed…
Subsole
@rikyrah:
I have family parroting the leftybros’ Tara Reid story as their excuse not to vote, so, y’know. Thanks for that, you useless socialist assholes.
@J R in WV: Incubi if you want a male. Succubi if you prefer female.
rikyrah
@dmsilev:
womp womp
did he vote against the first COVID bill?
rikyrah
@Kay:
Ok, I understand you on this. I see your point.
Anya
@zhena gogolia: Usually I think the Lincoln Project’s ads are ineffective outside of getting under Trump’s skin (which super easy) and giving those of us who hate him some cathartic release. This ad though is very effective. And Susan Collins’ team seems to be ineffectual. They ran an ad that seems to be like a positive ad for her opponent. Just shows how removed Collins and her team are from her constituent.
Uncle Cosmo
@dnfree: In Heinlein’s 1955 juvenile Tunnel In The Sky, the final exam for a HS Advanced Survival class is to stay alive on an unfamiliar planet (to which they are transported by means of a stargate) for 2-10 days**. Their instructor’s final written message to the class says (among other things) “watch out for stobor.”
There’s some discussion among the kids as to what “stobor” are – once on the test planet a general consensus settles on a large lion-like predator on the – but no one ever notices that “stobor” spelled backwards is “robots” & appears to refer to anyone in the party who is acting robotically, c’est-à-dire inflexibly, & therefore likely to get themselves & anyone in their immediate neighborhood killed.
** Recovery fails & the kids are stranded on the test planet for more like 2 years. Otherwise there wouldn’t be a novel!
Miss Bianca
@NotMax: Wow, I…I feel…strangely moved. To want to watch this movie. Whoa…maybe Mamie hypnotized me!
different-church-lady
@rp: The question was name something positive…
oatler.
@Uncle Cosmo:
“I’ll save you a rock, sweetheart.”
Ruckus
@different-church-lady:
It was sort of positive. It was much slower to drive any distance before the system was at least 75% finished. Problem was that it had no real plans for the future. Places growing rapidly, even for the time quickly outgrew the system and now several big cities have crunch issues and little ability to fix the worst problems because growth was not factored in at all.