i think a good step going forward would be to stop asking shit questions. "do better" is rarely a useful line of criticism, but, you know, do better. https://t.co/ggG9Jsvcp5
— Peloton InfoSec Analyst (Incident Response) (@CalmSporting) February 1, 2021
.@PressSec on President Biden's meeting with GOP senators: It's an "exchange of ideas." This is not a forum for the president to make or accept an offer.
— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) February 1, 2021
As GOP senators meet with Biden tonight on their $618 billion proposal, Pelosi and Schumer file budget resolution that instructs congressional committees to draft reconciliation legislation — with $1.9 trillion in covid relief as outlined by Biden.
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) February 1, 2021
The Biden administration’s $1.9 trillion stimulus plan faces GOP opposition — but the president isn’t backing down.
Here’s what determines how much economic aid Americans will receive in the coming months: pic.twitter.com/GsN1tfR5uR
— Business Insider (@businessinsider) February 1, 2021
"I can't say we miss him on Twitter," @presssec says of Donald Trump. She also says "we don't spend a lot of time talking about or thinking about President Trump here, former President Trump."
— Jennifer Epstein (@jeneps) February 1, 2021
Barbara
Betrayal! I mean, seriously, if I were Biden I would consider the lockstep initial refusal to acknowledge the election results like every other president before him to be such a profound betrayal that, who gives a flying fuck about their feelings ever about anything. The relationship is transactional only and the sooner they learn that the better off the country will be.
Baud
Good on Business Insider for actually comparing the plans.
“People talking about in hallways?” LOL.
evap
I gotta say, I’m a huge Psaki fan-gurl already.
Immanentize
@Baud: She is smart. She makes things go.
pat
that was awesome, what she did. Wow. I could watch that all day.
I wonder what the “reporters” will do when they realize they will not get away with this sort of “people talking” question. Hehe.
Starboard Tack
Psaki smiles. Sticks a pin in it.
Patricia Kayden
kindness
How quickly the Media Villagers go back to their over-riding agenda. Chaos Trump threw them off their game. They’re back now because this Admin isn’t chaos driven. Yeay and god damn those assholes at the very same time.
pacem appellant
Jen Psaki is my newest political crush. She is amazing. Keep killing it. “Are there any specific Democrats you want to call out?” “No, but…” I wish I thought that fast on my feet.
sdhays
Jen Psaki represents the Joe Biden administration so perfectly. She emits a kind and friendly persona while just shutting down the bullshit.
debbie
@Patricia Kayden:
May this be the first of many whistleblowers to expose the treachery of the previous administration.
RSA
Totally impressed with Psaki’s presence in these interactions.
To me, part of her delivery says, “Your questions reflect on you as much as my answers do on me. Bring your A game.”
Starboard Tack
Steve Schmidt’s calling DJTJ “Uday” on Twitter. I hadn’t seen that before. Nice one.
WaterGirl
@Starboard Tack: Schmidt has been doing that for awhile, at least in his podcast with David Plouffe.
Tim C.
I know it’s maybe not the MOST important thing at the moment, but I do think it’s near the top. Is there a way to restore the expertise lost in the State Department the last four years? The exodus of a lot of the staff in January of 2017 couldn’t have been good for the country. It’s not just the political appointments but the whole staff top to bottom I’m asking about.
Yutsano
Ye gods I love her…
Yutsano
@Immanentize: Thanks. Now I’m trying to imagine a Pakled arguing in court.
“I object.”
On what grounds?
“Because I object.”
Baud
OT. Found on reddit, but I assume it’s making the rounds. The Myanmar coup recorded by woman recording her aerobics class.
https://v.redd.it/hg8bi1kcswe61
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Starboard Tack: was that his thread in response to Uday trying to use John Weaver against the Lincoln Project? Schmidt went easy on him, frankly, in not bringing up Ivana’s (to my mind very credible) accusations against his father.
rjnerd
The obvious response if the right starts with a noise campaign about unity, is to add additional monthly $2k checks to the tune of 600 billion to the existing 1.9.
Starboard Tack
@Yutsano:
@Immanentize:
Ha. Didn’t catch the first reference. MAGAts make good Pakleds. Much louder, though.
pat
Is the comment system wonky for anyone else? I keep hitting refresh and finally to to text and never had to do that before.
Anyway, here I am with another comment and it is this:
EVERY Democrat and everyone in this administration seems to have at least 20 IQ points on every repub. They are just SMARTER. Why is that?
Capri
@pacem appellant: Is it thinking fast on her feet, or are the questions just that predictable?
zhena gogolia
@Baud:
I LOVE HER
Ken
@pat: There is a known problem with Firefox 85.0, where the “Visual” tab is unusable. WaterGirl is aware of it.
zhena gogolia
@Starboard Tack:
Yes, it’s her nice affect that really does it. She’s not snarky at all.
WaterGirl
@pat: Are you using Firefox? With their release of version 85.0, the visual mode no longer works, and you have to use text mode.
The BJ thread about this.
Hoping they will come out with an update that resolves that.
If you’re not using Firefox, then tell me more about what’s happening.
Starboard Tack
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
That’s the one. I think the counter accusation would have diluted the message. Plenty of other opportunities to bring it up, like Jean Carroll’s suit.
dmsilev
@pat: Republican ideology for decades now has been that government doesn’t work, indeed that government can’t work. It’s not a position well-suited for attracting people who are good at governmenting.
Ken
Yeah, and how come only Republican politicians are coming down with COVID?
(Question actually asked last October, by rightwing “thought leaders”.)
zhena gogolia
@pat:
It’s true, but it wasn’t that way in the (distant) past. When I was a kid/young person there were some smart Republicans.
Starboard Tack
@zhena gogolia:
That’s the thing. She sees the rabbit but just won’t chase it down the hole.
Ohio Mom
It’s not just that Psaki has a warm presence, that she is quick on her feet, that she refuses to play any games — it’s that she is telling the truth.
I can feel myself relax when I see her in action.
Starboard Tack
@zhena gogolia:
Back in the 80’s we had two Republican senators in Colorado that a group I was in did some work with, Bill Armstrong and Ken Cramer. Very conservative. Not stupid.
debbie
@Baud:
That’s some focus!
Starboard Tack
@Ohio Mom:
Almost forgot what that sounded like.
debbie
@Ohio Mom:
And she keeps a straight face the entire time.
Starboard Tack
@debbie:
It seems she takes every question seriously, doesn’t condescend, dismisses stupid questions without dismissing the questioner. I’ll bet she can snark just fine if it’s called for.
debbie
@Starboard Tack:
She appeared on NPR’s Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me last weekend, and yes, she is good with the snark.
Starboard Tack
@debbie:
Thanks. I quit listening to WWDTM during T**** time. I’ll check it out.
Chetan Murthy
@pat:
Bad money drives out good.
Dan B
@Baud: OMG! The revolution WILL be televised. It’s amazing how little is required to arrest a government.
It fits with Modi’s government’s impending slaughter of Sikh farmers. The distaste for democracy is deep as is the zenophobia and the othering.
Ruckus
@zhena gogolia:
@Starboard Tack:
The smart ones didn’t buy the crap the others were selling, because well, it’s crap. It’s not about governing, it’s about filling space so that actual governing can’t happen. And it started well before 1980. My local rep back in the 70s was a Birch Society member but was still working for his constituency. Today I have a democratic rep and nothing. Now granted the population of her district is much larger than his was, almost 50 yrs ago.
japa21
Mrs. Japa loves watching and listening to Psaki.
And I am thrilled to report that both she and i received our first Moderna Fauci Ouchies today. Scheduled for 3/1 for second dose.
Was at one of Chicago’s southern most suburbs, so a bit of a drive, but worth. It was at a convention center and run super smoothly by the Air and Army National Guard. The medic that gave me my shot was really good. They do about 3000 per day at this one site, when they have the vaccine to work with.
zhena gogolia
pacem appellant
@Capri: I don’t know! I never have snappy come-backs, so I assume there’s some talent involved. Maybe it’s knowing which stupid questions to be prepared for.
Starboard Tack
@zhena gogolia:
Sweet! Another duck nibble!
WaterGirl
@zhena gogolia: Hardball! I love it.
WaterGirl
@japa21: If you want your stickers for your shots, go to the I Got the Shot! thread in the sidebar.
geg6
@evap:
She’s fantastic. Throws the best shade I’ve ever seen.
WaterGirl
@geg6: “Oh, so people talking in the hallway, then.”
geg6
@WaterGirl:
I literally LOLed. Just the best.
Dan B
@pat: The GOP has business acumen in the leadership and an understanding that many people can be led astray by propaganda that ponders to their self identity. They have 40+ years of communications manipulation by a vast infrastructure of right wing Think Tanks and political organizations (ALEC) that have organized networks of grifters and wanna be oligarchs. We have two or four years to push back.
These junior plutocrats loathe the little people that are their base. The base cannot give up their tribe so they dance in a terrible spiral.
IQ isn’t everything. Justice Lewis Powell wrote the plan, the Powell Memorandum that was the blueprint for controlling the meta-narrative at a time when the majority of Americans were rejecting the values of the Chamber of Commerce.
Hitler was no genius. Goebbels had talent in a small area. They both believed that they could manipulate the public. And they did.
If the GOP base believes that the high IQ liberals are laughing at them the resentments will build. I love Jen Psaki but she’s got a tough needle to thread. Soon it will be time for her to demand that the quality of questions, or the quality of journalists, needs to improve for continued access. Not all news organizations get access. There are a limited number of seats. She is excellent at the non-put down burn. But it should be limited.
WaterGirl
@geg6: I could never pull that off, because my tone of voice would give it away. But she’s perfect.
She is so nice, but he should have been humiliated because she made it clear that he was wasting everyone’s time with the bullshit question as he pretended to represent some guy who was whining about something in the hallway.
Did she have more makeup on today? Or was it just that I was watching the NBC feed and not the Whitehouse feed?
Jeffro
Love. It.
keep pounding, Biden & Co, keep pounding!!
Yutsano
@WaterGirl:
She could be tweaking her stage make-up. It’s always going to be more obvious if there’s a change. Sometimes that stuff needs to be caked on or you shine like the top of the Chrysler building.
WaterGirl
@Yutsano: She wasn’t shiny the other days, but it looked like she had on a ton of mascara and some blush.
zhena gogolia
She’s from Stamford, CT! Went to William and Mary. Interesting.
dc
@Baud: That’s what the end of the world will be like.
a thousand flouncing lurkers was fidelio
@Chetan Murthy: A part of intelligence is making the effort to solve problems—it’s not just whatever brains you started with, but how much you use them, and whether you push yourself to meet new challenges. Bright but lazy is, eventually, not that bright.
Jeffro
@zhena gogolia: woot! VA represent!!
(CT also, I guess =)
satby
@japa21: Was that at the Tinley Convention Center? A friend’s elderly parents are scheduled there on Thursday, but he has mobility problems. Is it a drive through or is there a lot of walking distance involved?
Chris T.
All of it? No. Some? Sure. Enough is the real question, to which I don’t know the answer.
rikyrah
@japa21:
Yeah???