Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

Reality always gets a vote in the end.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

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

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Fucking consultants! (of the political variety)

Everybody saw this coming.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

This fight is for everything.

You cannot love your country only when you win.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

When we show up, we win.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Democracy is not a spectator sport.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

The republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.

It’s a good piece. click on over. but then come back!!

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Archives for 2020

Why I {Heart} Elizabeth Warren: Sometimes All You Have Is Courage

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(I didn’t see this on Political Twitter — I found it on one of the virologist sites I check for corona-virus updates, between links to scientific papers and the latest news about Ebola in the Congo.)

Monica Hesse, in the Washington Post:

KEENE, N.H. — Within three minutes of getting in line for an Elizabeth Warren rally, I’ve been handed a business card for a woman-empowerment organization called Brass Ovaries, and the founder, my linemate, has drawn me into a conversation about Warren that has begun to feel like the only conversation to have about Warren: the kind that’s about hope, and despair, and how it’s possible to love America and also want to throw it out the window.

“I went to one of her events before, and I gave her one of my Brass Ovaries pins,” Michelle Johnson says. “And I started to explain how it’s about fed-up women — but she said, ‘Oh, I get it,’ and I said, ‘I knew you would,’ because Elizabeth always gets it, doesn’t she?…

“I’m leaning toward Warren,” says Frank Brownell, a retired editor who relocated to Keene from Upstate New York. “I’m not a big Buttigieg fan. But I want to pick someone to win.” He sighed, deeply troubled. “Women have such a burden. I actually wish women ran the world.”

If he wished women ran things, I asked him, was there a reason he was still merely leaning toward Warren? Here was a woman he liked who was offering to run the country, and he literally had the chance to give her the job.

“I’m going to vote for her,” he decided, then waffled. “I don’t know, I don’t know.”

His qualms weren’t with Warren. He loved Warren. His qualms were about everyone else, everyone else who might not be ready to vote for a woman. “I’m hopeful but I’m not hopeful. I don’t think America is what I always hoped it was.”…

At one event in New Hampshire, a little girl approaches the microphone, accompanied by her mother.

“My name is Elizabeth,” she says.

“Your name is Elizabeth?” Warren reels back. “Oh wow! Double Elizabeths! I feel the power.”

“I’m seven years old.”

Warren pauses, deadpan. “I’m . . . not.”

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Seattle Meet-Up Reminder: SUNDAY, February 16

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Note from ace party-planner CaseyL:

The Seattle GOTV Postcard Meetup is this Sunday Feb 16 at 12:30, at the Elliott Bay Brewery in Lake City.

Would it be possible for you to post a reminder about it?

There was talk, when this was announced, of doing simultaneous postcard-writing meetups in other cities. This would be a good place to leave a comment, if you’d like to arrange one of those meetups!

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We Are at TweetCon 1, I Repeat – We Are at TweetCon 1! Former Deputy Director of the FBI Will Not Be Charged and/or Prosecuted

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Here’s the letter from the DOJ to Deputy Director McCabe’s attorneys:

page1image2130108960

As we know from both his statements and tweets this week, as well as AG Barr’s kayfabe interview last night and the subsequent reporting about how the President views the DOJ, we can expect that he’s not going to take this well. I have updated the Presidential Daily Temperament Advisory System accordingly. Please take all appropriate precautions!

We Are at TweetCon 1, I Repeat - We Are at TweetCon 1! Former Deputy Director of the FBI Will Not Be Charged and/or Prosecuted

Update at 1:20 PM EDT

It has just been reported that AG Barr has appointed an outside counsel to review LTG Flynn’s case.

https://twitter.com/Susan_Hennessey/status/1228379644119961600

Attorney General William P. Barr has assigned an outside prosecutor to scrutinize the criminal case against President Trump’s former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn, according to people familiar with the matter.

The review is highly unusual and could trigger more accusations of political interference by top Justice Department officials into the work of career prosecutors.

Mr. Barr has also installed a handful of outside prosecutors to broadly review the handling of other politically sensitive national-security cases in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, the people said. The team includes at least one prosecutor from the office of the United States attorney in St. Louis, Jeff Jensen, who is handling the Flynn matter, as well as prosecutors from the office of the deputy attorney general, Jeffrey A. Rosen.

Over the past two weeks, the outside prosecutors have begun grilling line prosecutors in the Washington office about various cases — some public, some not — including investigative steps, prosecutorial actions and why they took them, according to the people. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive internal deliberations.

The Justice Department declined to comment.

Open thread!

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Election Year Open Thread: The Sad Logic Behind (Maybe) Voting Bloomberg

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(History of the Greenwood District Tulsa Race Massacre.)

… [J]ust when you thought it was over, you’re forced to choose between an unabashed white supremacist and a billionaire fugitive slave catcher who submitted a sealed bid for the presidency of the United States.

First, you try to get free.

When all else fails, you vote for Michael Bloomberg…

Michael Bloomberg is a white quadrillionaire with infinitely deep pockets and a record of getting shit done. Even if the “shit” he got done came at the expense of our sons and daughters, defeating Donald Trump is the most important factor in a lot of people’s decisions on who they will vote for. Michael Bloomberg’s rise isn’t a condemnation of the other candidates as much as it is an example that black people know white people better than anything else in the universe.

One of the biggest factors in a large number of black people’s primary voting criterion is who they think white people will vote for when the curtain closes behind them in the voting booth. We know Bernie has better policy plans. We know Elizabeth Warren is a better communicator. We have seen Buttigieg’s Douglass plan.

But we also know white people.

Donald Trump is proof of what they will do.

For many black people, the prospect of an unchecked, second-term white supremacist outweighs the choice between Medicare for All and a public option. It’s heavier than student loan forgiveness or foreign policy. It’s bigger than all of the economic proposals and tax plans combined. It’s not even that people don’t think the other Democratic candidates can defeat Donald Trump. We just don’t know if they can defeat the overwhelming self-interests of white people.

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Let’s Play a Game Called Cover Your Ass

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That tweet pretty much encapsulates what I think is happening here with Barr. He’s telling Trump to STFU and let him cover up Trump’s crimes on his own terms. But Trump won’t shut up, and, frankly, why should he? He got away with it before and he will again, as long as Republicans have enough votes in the Senate, which they always will have.

Also, the Times is hopelessly compromised by their bitter clinging to the notion that there will be some decent person who Trump hires that will finally turn things around. Not gonna happen.

Update: NPR has the same problem as the Times:

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Tinkering while acknowledging 218-60-1-5 constraints

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The most important number in health policy is 218-51/60-1-5.

218 votes in the House

51 or 60 votes in the Senate

1 President to sign and implement the bill

5 votes on the Supreme Court to support the bill amidst political and legal challenges.

All of those elements need to be lined up for a major policy change to be embedded into our social-economic-political system.

Since March 23, 2010 major individual market changes have not had that coalition.  At times, there are sufficient votes in the House plus a friendly White House and a Supreme Court that would be on board with those changes while the Senate was a vote short (Summer 2017).  At other times there would be a supportive signature in the White House and no working Congressional majority in Congress (3/24/2010-1/20/17 and 10/1/17 to present) where both chambers could agree on something for the White House wants to sign.

This logic constraints my thinking.

It also appears to constrain AOC’s thinking:

When there aren’t huge working majorities, this creates a constraint on massive change.

So I can understand the frustration of someone like TC in a comment to a recent technocratic tinkering post:

This post is exhibit A for why the ACA is a failure.  Only the nerds care anymore how if we could only tweak this and incentivize that we might be able to keep all the interests happy and make it work.  Not.  The rest of us know it’s the kind of cluster-fuck Rube Goldberg contraption you get when you have way too much ‘compromise’ creating a bill that should have been M4A from the start

I agree that an elegant, simple, straightforward solution is referable than a solution that is complex, messy, and counter-intuitive provided that there is an equal chance of actual implementation. But I think that implementation probabilities have to be weighed.

My big question to comments like this is HOW???

How could the Obama Administration keep on board Nelson, Nelson, Baucus, Lieberman, Lincoln, Pryor, Landrieu, Bayh, Conrad, Dorgan and MacCaskill for a bill that completely up-ends the insurance of 70% of their voters?

How could Pelosi wrangle enough votes from Blue Dogs representing a lot of districts well to the right of the median voter for an even more disruptive bill when she was able to get the ACA to pass with 3 spare votes?

HOW?

How does a future Democratic administration get Medicare for All passed when the decisive vote in a reconciliation vote is either Senator Manchin or Senator Sinema?

How does Pelosi wrangle 218 votes to massively upset the status quo biases when again, her median vote is representing a district well to the right of the median voter.

How does this bill survive a Supreme Court challenge?

I have a hard time coming up with positives answers to the HOW? question in 2021 that don’t involve either pictures of multiple Senators with goats or high quality peyote.

This is a significant constraint on my thinking and it limits me to spend most of my effort within a paradigm of what is, and what is a modest displacement of the now.

By nature, I’m an incrementalist. And I have a real hard time seeing how the political stars align for Medicare for All bills to pass and survive challenges in the current political configuration.

218-51/60-1-5 rules my world.

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Friday Morning Open Thread: TGI… Oh, Damn…

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Our Valentines Day plans are to go buy new tires (so the Spousal Unit isn’t stuck at the dealership on the last day of the sale), and then go to our favorite German deli for desserts (and maybe also dinner, if there’s anything on the menu looks good). It’s worked for the last forty years, so don’t sneer too much…

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