Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

If America since Jan 2025 hasn’t broken your heart, you haven’t loved her enough.

Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

If you can’t control your emotions, someone else will.

The revolution will be supervised.

We can show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

We can’t confuse what’s necessary to win elections with the policies that we want to implement when we do.

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

I’m more christian than these people and i’m an atheist.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

Jesus watching the most hateful people claiming to be his followers

White supremacy is terrorism.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

Our messy unity will be our strength.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Late Night Open Thread: The GOP Death Cult Leaders Despise American Voters

Late Night Open Thread: The GOP Death Cult Leaders Despise American Voters

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  2. 2.

    dmsilev

    JUST IN: McConnell says more than a third of Republican senators will not vote for any coronavirus relief package https://t.co/nDYfPGhH8u pic.twitter.com/mhZdOO0XqR
    — The Hill (@thehill) August 1, 2020

    Meaning that anything which passes the Senate will do so with more Democratic votes than Republican, and therefore that Pelosi and Schumer negotiate directly with Mnuchin, and Mitch gets cut out of the loop.

  3. 3.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    With Congress saying no, Stephen Moore falls on Trump to declare an “economic emergency and announce that the Internal Revenue Service will immediately stop collecting the payroll tax”

    Can the POTUS legally do this?

  6. 6.

    donnah

    This isn’t verified, but if it’s real, we’re going to need pitchforks and tar:

    “32% of U.S. households couldn’t pay their mortgages in July & Trump wants $377M for West Wing remodel in the most recent COVID relief bill.”

    The Republicans should be marched into camps and left there if this is true.

  8. 8.

    Yutsano

    @Patricia Kayden:  It’s an open seat, so Christensen is okay focusing on Yoho now. But I hope he doesn’t forget to switch and focus on his opponent*.

    *disclaimer: I have not looked through his Twitter feed yet.

  11. 11.

    Baud

    Reposting from previous thread.

    The Biden campaign has been tight-lipped about its contenders. But that hasn’t stopped allies and friends from speculating.

     

    “If I had to bet my life on who would be the candidate, I’d still bet Harris,” said Rendell, who is raising money for Biden and frequently talks to his top campaign officials. “She has the least negatives, she’s the most polished. She’s the person who can take on [Vice President] Pence in a campaign debate.”

  13. 13.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Baud: Ed Rendell should just STFU

    But he’s getting his fifteen minutes of fame, so he’s happy

    ETA: I’m glad that now he’s saying nice things about Kamala, but he seems to have been the source of a lot of nonsense over the past few days.

  14. 14.

    Eolirin

    I am inherently skeptical of the seriousness of any candidate that’s trying to make a big deal out of being endorsed by Marianne Williamson and Andrew Yang.

  16. 16.

    leeleeFL

    I want Biden to pick Tammy Duckworth, her wee garden where she used to grow her fucks to give has been empty longer than mine.

    A female, Asian dbl  amputee war hero with an attitude!  That’s the ticket

  17. 17.

    Adam L Silverman

    @dmsilev: No, it means that 1) there may not be enough votes, even with Democrats to clear the 60 vote cloture threshold and 2) if there is and something does pass, should the President decide to veto it there may not be enough votes to overturn the veto in the Senate. McConnell is signaling in his understated way that there will most likely be no more coronavirus relief from the current Congress because there will most likely be no way to get a bill through the Republican controlled Senate.

  19. 19.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): No, but Stephen Moore isn’t actually an economist and he doesn’t actually no anything about how the Federal government works. Which is why he is the Senior Fellow for Economics and Governance at the Heritage Foundation.

  21. 21.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Patricia Kayden: Sigh.  I went and looked up his bio in ballotpedia.  See if you can divine what’s missing.

    Adam is a business owner and candidate for Congress to fill the vacant seat in Florida’s 3rd district. Born in Olathe, Kansas, Adam was raised in Palm Harbor, Florida pre-recession before moving to Indiana, where his father got a job for Eli-Lilly. Following his graduation from high school, he attended and graduated from Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia as a 3-sport athlete with a degree in Biology. Following college, Adam decided to move back to Florida and started his first company with $3,000 in his pocket. Two years later he and his business partners started a second company, both of which still operate in Gainesville, Florida. Having grown up a republican in a deep red state, he saw first-hand what can happen to communities hit hardest by financial greed. Rising drug costs, the opioid epidemic, and the housing crises affected every part of the state. This experience helped him form the belief that systems that are designed to prey on the poor and middle class should not exist in a just or moral society, and that the greed of these systems is what has caused the majority of the issues and hurt that we have today in Central Florida.

     
    Hell, maybe he’s great. But geez, he never describes what these businesses are, nor even their names. We literally have nothing on which to evaluate his abilities. Nothing.

  25. 25.

    dmsilev

    @Baud: Rendell was part of the old white fossil brigade who was slagging Harris (‘she’s too uppity ambitious’) only like a week or two ago. Not sure why anyone should even pretend to care what he thinks.

  26. 26.

    Anne Laurie

    @Cheryl Rofer: Apart from the reliable worthlessness of Ed Rendell, that WaPo story is by Annie Linskey.  She was hired over from the Boston Globe to hate-follow Elizabeth Warren, but since Warren conceded, she’s been chewing on Biden’s ankles.  Anything she ‘reports’ about any Democrat should be taken with entire shakers of salt.

  28. 28.

    James E Powell

    @dmsilev:

    We need the names of the Republican senators who are not going to vote for any relief package. We need names & statements on the record.

  33. 33.

    Eolirin

    @Adam L Silverman: If McConnell can’t manage to get 13 votes to clear cloture if there’s an agreement between Democrats and the White House, he has no business being majority leader.

    And if Trump decides to veto after coming to an agreement with the Democrats that’s going to go really badly for him.

    Whether an agreement can be reached at all, we’ll have to see. But I can’t imagine that if one is reached that it won’t get through the senate and signed. And if it some how doesn’t, we better bury them with it.

  37. 37.

    jl

    @Adam L Silverman: Lemmings…. cliff…

    Many of those Senators are about to politically die, and if it were not for the disaster they will create, I would salute them.

    Extremists and corrupt oligarchies usually turn on each other and destroy themselves in crazed way that is hard for those on the outside to understand. Sad thing so many lives will be sucked into their orgy of self destruction and be ruined.

  38. 38.

    Mai naem mobile

    I am wondering if these GOP senators are seeing the polls and seeing a blowout and trying to leave the situation as bad as possible for a Biden presidency and a Dem controlled Senate. This type of thinking is not out of the realm of possibility for these domestic terrorists.

  40. 40.

    Anne Laurie

    @Adam L Silverman: McConnell is signaling in his understated way that there will most likely be no more coronavirus relief from the current Congress because there will most likely be no way to get a bill through the Republican controlled Senate.

    … Or so #MoscowMitch would like (us) to believe.

    He’s reached the point where, to quote an old joke:  If McConnell walks into the room soaking wet and tells you it’s raining, check out the window before getting your umbrella.

    He also told ‘his’ coalition to feel free to ‘distance themselves’ from Trump if they need to, so I figure he’s just hoping to avoid getting strung up — at the polls if not literally — before November 3rd.

  43. 43.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Anne Laurie:

    that WaPo story is by Annie Linskey 

    Anything she ‘reports’ about any Democrat should be taken with entire shakers of salt.

    Would a hill of salt be better?  I know where to find some.

  46. 46.

    Adam L Silverman

    @leeleeFL: Nope. The odds are he will hold his majority in the Senate, if only by one vote. The President still has the same 33% chance of losing the popular vote, in fact losing it by even larger amounts this time, and while eking out a very narrow victory in the Electoral College.

  47. 47.

    dmsilev

    @Adam L Silverman: Getting to sixty would be easy for a bill that McConnell allows to the floor, assuming it’s not a poison-pill thing like what he was floating last week. That would only take about one quarter of the Republican caucus, plus all the Democrats. In that scenario, Trump wouldn’t veto. He’d instantly take ownership of every bad thing happening in the economy, and he’s far too much of a coward to do that.

  49. 49.

    cope

    So when Mnuchin sold OneWest to CIT Group in 2015 and reportedly walked away with several hundred million dollars, he was inclined to never work a day in his life again after being so “overpaid”?  Why ever did he go to work for the government then???  What was his incentive to work?

  50. 50.

    Adam L Silverman

    @James E Powell: The only ones who will definitely vote for it are Gardner, McSally, and Collins. Alexander and Roberts who are retiring might. As might Tillis and Ernst and the guy in Alaska who are in very tight races. Graham might too for the same reason. But that’s it.

  55. 55.

    Mai naem mobile

    Ed Rendell was a real douchebag about Obama in ’08 as well. Hmmm…wonder what Obama and Harris have in common??? I always remember Rendell and Bob Kerrey who liked emphasizing  Barack Hussein Obama.

  56. 56.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Eolirin: McConnell doesn’t want the votes to clear cloture. He doesn’t actually believe that the Federal government has any business providing this type of public good to the citizenry. He doesn’t actually believe the state and local governments do either. Basically McConnell doesn’t not believe in promoting for the general welfare, which is itself not surprising as he is the inheritor of the American political tradition that never believed that there is a general welfare or that the government should promote it. IN fact the one thing that the Confederates didn’t copy from the US Constitution was the clause about promoting the general welfare.

    This isn’t McConnell being bad at his job. This is McConnell doing what McConnell thinks the job is: ensuring the Senate, and by extension the Congress, legislates as little as possible. And certainly does no legislating that isn’t a benefit to his donors.

  57. 57.

    mrmoshpotato

    BEAT HIM WITH HIS OWN BONES! Fucking shitstain.

    That an asshole in a boat flying a Trump flag got between recovery vessels and the astronauts, is just another example of how they feel entitled to endanger anyone, at any time, for their personal pleasure.— Mark Sumner (@Devilstower) August 2, 2020

  58. 58.

    Redshift

    I was pretty amused to see that Trump tweet is such gibberish that Twitter assumed it wasn’t English and offered to translate it.

  59. 59.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Anne Laurie:

    He also told ‘his’ coalition to feel free to ‘distance themselves’ from Trump if they need to, so I figure he’s just hoping to avoid getting strung up — at the polls if not literally — before November 3rd.

    No, he allowed someone to tell a gullible reporter this.

  62. 62.

    Adam L Silverman

    @cope:

    Why ever did he go to work for the government then???  What was his incentive to work?

    He runs the department that actually prints the money. Which makes it easier to steal it.

  66. 66.

    jl

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: “He does have a MA in Economics, though from George Mason.  Technically, an Economist.”

    I dunno. In some programs all you have to do is learn to draw an X and say problems solved.

  68. 68.

    jl

    @different-church-lady: “He wants to update it before he puts it on the market. ”

    Whew boy, after Trump leaves we’ll find out he time shared it out to some billionaire buddies. Will be a big problem to get that fixed.

  69. 69.

    jl

    @Adam L Silverman: To pass the cognitive damage test Trump is bragging about, you have to draw a 3-D box on a piece of paper. Harder than drawing an X. Make of that what you will regarding economists.

  70. 70.

    Chetan Murthy

    @jl: George Mason U.  Home of the Mercatus Center.  Koch-funded department of libertarian nutjobs.  Gosh, I bet that place has had libertarian nutjobs for fucking ever.

  74. 74.

    Eolirin

    @Adam L Silverman: This doesn’t make sense to me.

    Not that McConnell is like that, I know he is. But there is no political upside for McConnell in allowing an agreement between the White House and the Democrats to be reached, and then for a bill to come to the floor, only for it to get blocked by Republican senators.

    He’s much better off if the agreement never gets reached in the first place. He’s at least got cover then. If there is one, he’d have to buck Trump and it’s an issue that has overwhelming public support behind it. That’s a double whammy of bad.

    I can’t see him doing that. He’s power over ideology all the time. Odds are in favor of us getting to at least 50 now, given the shifts that have been happening in the polls. His majority is absolutely at risk. There’s no way they hold the senate if they drop the economy off an even bigger cliff while making tens of millions of people homeless and then take ownership over the entire mess by blocking a Trump approved stimulus bill.

    Everything I said was contingent on that deal being reached. In absence of a deal I expect McConnell to allow nothing to reach the floor in the first place, making the filibuster threat unnecessary.

  75. 75.

    different-church-lady

    Crissake, I’m in such an angry, hopeless mood I’m starting to think I would have been better off dying from the fuckin’ thing back in March…

  76. 76.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Eolirin: McConnell controls what comes to the Senate floor. What he’s signaling is that no bill will come to the Senate floor. He won’t bring one. They’re going to come back tomorrow, spend Monday evening through Thursday noon in session doing nothing much but handling some DOD nominations and some committee hearings, he’ll have some meetings with Mnuchin and Meadows, and, at best, we’ll get a short term stopgap, which we could’ve had this past week. That’s it. All the rest of this is theater for the political reporters.

  78. 78.

    Ruckus

    @Adam L Silverman:

    A piece of paper. He didn’t even have to attend one class to get it. Just have the right person ask for it.

    So while he may have the paper, the skill set, as you say, no bueno.

  79. 79.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Adam L Silverman:

    My understanding is that 2016 was a perfect storm and the dynamics and current conditions are very different now. Nothing should be taken for granted, of course, but Trump and the GOP are in very deep doo doo.

    And even if that 33% scenario were to pass (hopefully this doesn’t happen) Trump would be like the proverbial dog who caught the car; given all of the other shit such as the economic downturn, the pandemic, and this being the second time in 4 years that an unpopular asshole has been “elected”, I don’t think a lot of people are going to be in the mood to just accept it like last time

  80. 80.

    Chris T.

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    With Congress saying no, Stephen Moore falls on Trump to declare an “economic emergency and announce that the Internal Revenue Service will immediately stop collecting the payroll tax”

    Can the POTUS legally do this?

    Probably not, but I sure hope someone says out loud: “Payroll taxes fund social security, so that means: no social security payments for you!”

  82. 82.

    mrmoshpotato

    “You clearly do not understand how butts work.”

    -John Oliver, Last Week Tonight, August 2, 2020

  83. 83.

    sanjeevs

    Neighborhoods across the Philadelphia region are experiencing significant delays in receiving their mail, with some residents going upwards of three weeks without packages and letters, leaving them without medication, paychecks, and bills.

    Valerie Rice, of Overbrook Park, said her mail only arrives once every two weeks. She receives medication for her autistic grandson through the mail, but now it doesn’t come. “I try to stay by him & pray for life that I have what I need to take care of him,” said Rice, 65.

    Policy changes at the hand of a new Trump-appointed Postmaster General eliminate overtime, slash office hours, & order mail carriers to leave mail behind — things which carriers said are sacred tenants of their job. These are exacerbating staff shortages due to COVID-19.

    Carriers said they’re being forced to prioritize delivering Amazon packages. They said their stations are overflowing with parcels, & that piles of first class mail are sitting on the floor, often unscanned. One works 90 hours per week, but still can’t finish his route.

    A Delaware County carrier of 20 years said if a carrier is out for the day, their route often goes undelivered because there aren’t enough people to fill in. He said OT hasn’t been cut from his office, but if it is, it will be detrimental. “The mail wouldn’t go out,” he said.

    An expert said the current changes are part of the Trump administration’s quest to turn the public against the post office— the most beloved & trusted public agency— and ultimately privatize It. Union leaders said it’s working— customers are beyond frustrated.

    Experts also said the actions violate Title 39, the 1970 act outlining the USPS’ role. One line: “The costs of establishing & maintaining the Postal Service shall not be apportioned to impair the overall value of such service to the people.”

    This thread is gaining a lot of traction. I had heard about changes in the post office through national outlets, but hadn’t seen anything in Philly. Then a reader emailed me — Robert Young Sr., one of the subjects— asking if I could help him figure out why his mail wasn’t coming.

    He was desperate, & angry. I called around just to ask what was up, & in the process, discovered an entire crisis. Dozens of other residents started calling me with similar stories.

     

     

    https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1289880547536166912.html

  84. 84.

    Kent

    @Chris T.: Trump trying to bankrupt Social Security seems like a winning campaign issue in Florida and Arizona.

    If real people weren’t getting hurt I’d be enjoying the flailing around a lot more.

  85. 85.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Kent: Trump trying to bankrupt Social Security seems like a winning campaign issue in Florida and Arizona.

    And every other state that has senior citizens living in it.  And Washington DC.

  87. 87.

    Kent

    @sanjeevs: If the Biden campaign can’t make political gold of this attempt by the Trump junta to destroy the Post Office then they are fucking incompetent.   I can’t think of an easier add to make.  All-American mail carriers delivering the mail in heartland America (like Reagan’s famous morning in America ad) all getting destroyed and sidelined by Trump.  A few interviews about how they really want to do their job but can’t anymore because the bosses imposed by Trump (who have massive conflicts of interest) are fucking everything up.   Just do voice-overs of frustrated mail carriers talking about the problem while the video plays mail trucks delivering the mail through picturesque Normal Rockwell farmland and on foot in friendly All-American neighborhoods.

  89. 89.

    sanjeevs

    @Kent: I think the purpose is to cause election chaos. If letters are piling up now just wait until three months from now.

  90. 90.

    Yutsano

    @Kent:

    picturesque Normal Rockwell farmland

    Hey I’ve driven through rural Wisconsin too bub. But Norman Rockwell might be aghast at being considered “normal”. :P

  92. 92.

    Kent

    @Adam L Silverman:@Eolirin: McConnell controls what comes to the Senate floor. What he’s signaling is that no bill will come to the Senate floor. He won’t bring one. They’re going to come back tomorrow, spend Monday evening through Thursday noon in session doing nothing much but handling some DOD nominations and some committee hearings, he’ll have some meetings with Mnuchin and Meadows, and, at best, we’ll get a short term stopgap, which we could’ve had this past week. That’s it. All the rest of this is theater for the political reporters.

    The dumbfuckery of all this is that the extra trillion or so in the Dem bill that goes to unemployment is still basically going to go straight into the pockets of big corporations and McConnell’s business constituency.  WTF do they think unemployed people are doing with their checks?  Putting them in Cayman Island bank accounts?  No, they are spending them on food which goes to Wal-Mart and all the other chains, and they are spending them on rent, which pauses momentarily in the hands of landlords but ends up propping up all the banks big and small.

    And they could extort a shitload of conservative wish list stuff out of a must-pass coronavirus rescue and the House would probably go along with it if it was relatively subtle stuff.

    I would think the politically astute thing would be to break open the piggy bank in the attempt to maintain GOP control and then hand Biden the biggest deficits in history and say “sorry, we are out of money, we can’t do any of your liberal shit” which is what they are going to say anyway.  But if they hang onto a few more seats they can actually make it meaningful.

    But no….they gotta demagogue a fucking pandemic.

    Fuck the lot of them.

  94. 94.

    Kent

    @sanjeevs:@Kent: I think the purpose is to cause election chaos. If letters are piling up now just wait until three months from now.

    I agree that is the purpose.  Of course they are trying to fuck the election.  But you don’t even have to accuse them of that in campaign ads which would make them sound sort of conspiracy theorist. Just fucking up the postal service is enough of a horror on its own.  People aren’t going to get their meds and their Readers Digest and whatnot.

  95. 95.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Kent:

    This really pisses me off and scares me. My father relies on the mail to get his prescription meds. I haven’t noticed any delays in my area yet.

    BS like this is why I’m planning on sending my absentee request a month and half early and then handing the ballot to the Board of Elections in person

  96. 96.

    Kent

    @joel hanes: Yep, Rendell and Lieberman as well.    Why anyone still listens to him is beyond me.  They think he has some magic white working class Pennsylvania fairy dust I guess.  It’s the only explanation.

  97. 97.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Kent: I would think the politically astute thing would be to break open the piggy bank in the attempt to maintain GOP control and then hand Biden the biggest deficits in history and say “sorry, we are out of money, we can’t do any of your liberal shit” which is what they are going to say anyway.

    Illegally invade and bomb the shit out of a Middle Eastern country too for old times’ sake.

    Fuck Dick, Donnie and W.

  98. 98.

    patrick II

    You may remember back in 2008 when Republicans in the House refused to vote for the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act that was needed to save the country from going into a tailspin. They were going to let the Democrats take the entire hit or let the country’s economy die.  Pelosi said that wasn’t going to happen and refused to have democrats until enough Republicans voted for it to meet her satisfaction.

    In times of crisis Republicans can always be counted on to figure out how to place blame, not pass bills that actually have useful and necessary policy.

  100. 100.

    Kent

    @mrmoshpotato: Unfortunately for Trump, due to the Pandemic they are all mostly behaving, at least temporarily.  Even Isis was doing lockdowns and social distancing as is the Taliban.

    You gotta at least have some plausibly made-up reason to go to war.  I don’t see any on the horizon in the next 90 days.

  101. 101.

    joel hanes

    @Kent:

    I’ve come to the conclusion that Trump’s too big a coward to do an actual war.   He’s all about publicity gestures, like the you’re-getting-a-check letter with his signature, and seems to eschew acts that require real decision.

    Also, I believe that the Joint Chiefs have, at this point, essentially told him to pound sand once over Trump’s stupid attempt to suborn them into domestic police work in DC and Portland, and will not be in the mood to stage an invasion solely to bolster the political fortunes of a President who has less than six full months left in office.

  103. 103.

    Kent

    @mrmoshpotato:What a phrase!  Still – fuck Dick, Donnie and W!

    Remember the last big war?   Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld, Rice, etc. al. spent nearly a year building up their fake case for war with the complicit participation of scum like Judith Miller.  Maybe we are in a new era with Trump.   But there was in the near past a time when political warmongers at least made considerable time and  effort to come up with plausibly made-up causes for war.  Trump has neither the time nor the effort

    And if he actually started a shooting war he’d have to sit around in the situation room and not go golfing.  I don’t know if he can do that.

  104. 104.

    Sebastian

    I am wondering when is the media starting to talk about the senators who went to see Putin the Bountypayer on Fourth of July?

    And Senator Rand Paul who flew to Moscow to speak to the Bountypayer personally?

  105. 105.

    Sally

    @Sebastian: Yes! If not the media, then Democrats should be asking the PutinPuppets all the time! And asking the ones who didn’t go, what do you think of your colleagues who chose to spend 4th July In Moscow with Putin?

  106. 106.

    piratedan

    @Sebastian: my thought on this is that there are certain elements in the media that absolutely do not want to touch this because it….

    1) doesn’t suit their framing
    2) would endanger their supposedly tenuous access
    3) they’ve been instructed not to

    naturally ymmv

  108. 108.

    piratedan

    this is going to sound totally bizarre and strange and I just can’t get it out of my skull….

    What I want to see now is a mashup of Joe Biden and Senator Harris in a mashup of the 1965/1966 Old Avengers TV show set to the Laurie Anderson music…

    I have no idea what this thought came to mind and yes, I know that for the mid-60’s while it was totally sexist to see Ms. Rigg’s wardrobe from those days; yet it also portrayed women as being completely badass capable.  Biden plays the somewhat older classy fellow who’s been there and done that and teamed up with this awesome young talent, righting wrongs and bringing a sense of justice and order to the world…

  110. 110.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @opiejeanne: What I found interesting, is they were talking about prioritizing Amazon deliveries over other mail.  Over the last month or so, none of my Amazon deliveries have been by USPS, either UPS or Amazon’s own folk.  In the past USPS has more often than not been the folk doing the delivery.

  111. 111.

    opiejeanne

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: I was thinking something similar, but my Amazon orders mostly stopped coming by mail at least 6 months ago. What will change will be the few vendors who sell through Amazon and  ship by USPS, those vendors will use another method for their shipping.  I got something on Sunday delivered by an Amazon truck that was small enough they could have mailed it.

  112. 112.

    Kathleen

    @Adam L Silverman: His recent campaign ads claim he’s responsible for saving Kentuckian’s health care (Nancy Pelosi was going to take it away) and businesses (PPP). Isn’t it ironic.

  113. 113.

    janesays

    @donnah: It’s real, though apparently the West Wing modernization has been planned for a long time – it was going to happen under Obama in 2013, but kept getting delayed.

    https://apnews.com/589692882c67650b87daeec5765660c5

    There hasn’t been a complete modernization of the West Wing since 1933, and the $377M project would require all staffers – including the president – to vacate the building for many months, perhaps even a year or more. That includes the Oval Office. I think they would basically be completely gutting the building down to the studs and rebuilding the whole thing from scratch, similar to what was done with the Executive Residence during the Truman Administration. The entire West Wing staff would operate out of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building across the street during the renovation.

    In any event, it’s insane to include that in this bill, and even if it were to get included in the relief package, the work wouldn’t actually begin until long after Trump has been evicted from the White House, probably not until late 2021 or even possibly 2022.

  115. 115.

    RSA

    Treasury Secretary Mnuchin tells @MarthaRaddatz “there’s no question” that $600 unemployment insurance is a disincentive to find a job in “some cases.”

    I wish some reporter would ask Mnuchin, “You are rich enough to go ten lifetimes without working and sill live in luxury. Why isn’t that a disincentive to work?”

    His answer (assuming it’s not pure greed, which is not really a safe assumption) might tell him something about other people.

  116. 116.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Kent: I’ve noticed for a while that conservatives seem to think poor people literally eat money and cause it to be destroyed. Or that if they do use it to purchase goods and services, this is somehow a moral evil that cannot be tolerated.

    Then they turn around and wonder what happened to aggregate demand. Economy goes in, economy goes out, you can’t explain that.

  117. 117.

    Matt McIrvin

    @RSA: I suspect his real answer would “because I’m a go-getter, which is why I’m where I am today–those slobs down in the street clearly are not; they only understand economic force.” For conservatives everything’s about inherent virtue and vice, and the lower orders are not the same sort of people as the movers and shakers.

  118. 118.

    SFAW

    @janesays:

    In any event, it’s insane to include that in this bill, and even if it were to get included in the relief package, the work wouldn’t actually begin until long after Trump has been evicted from the White House, probably not until late 2021 or even possibly 2022.

    My fearless (so to speak) conspiracy-theory-laden prediction: if the Traitor-in-Chief loses on November 3rd, “renovation” work on the West Wing will start by November 10. And by “renovation,” I mean demolition of the inside, down to the studs. Unfortunately, they will not be able to start any rebuild before 1/20/21, because *shrugs shoulders*
    No, I don’t think that would actually happen, but with the Murderer-in-Chief in charge, there no longer are/will be any real constraints on his behavior. Of course, the FTFTFNYT would cover it as a “both sides” thing, somehow.

  120. 120.

    J R in WV

    @different-church-lady: 

    August 2, 2020 at 11:50 pm

    @donnah:

    Trump wants $377M for West Wing remodel

    He wants to update it before he puts it on the market.

    We would have to start calling it the Gold-Lame House after a Trump remodel. I can’t imagine how ghastly it would be inside after Trump was done with it, after looking at his Louis XIV or XVI style bedroom photos.

  121. 121.

    SFAW

    @J R in WV: 

    after looking at his Louis XIV or XVI style bedroom photos.

    The Murderer-in-Chief would go for late Louis XIX because he was “GREATER than Louis I through XVIII. In fact, I’m greater than ALL the Louiseseses what ever lived!!”

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