Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Bark louder, little dog.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Republicans in disarray!

Not all heroes wear capes.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

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

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

A Senator Walker would also be an insult to reason, rationality, and decency.

The words do not have to be perfect.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

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

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

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

Battle won, war still ongoing.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Americans barely caring about Afghanistan is so last month.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Thursday Morning Open Thread: Process

Thursday Morning Open Thread: Process

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Possibly because the BBC is not American, this is the best analysis of the Recovery Act I’ve seen:


Suspect it’s a general consensus that the $15 minimum wage will have to be sacrificed, for the moment, but I hope & believe that Biden will dig in hard on providing aid to local governments. Conclusion:

Congressional Republicans are lining up to oppose the entire Covid-19 relief bill, even though there has been little organised national effort to turn public opinion against it.

Conservatives will object to the $1.9tn price tag as too high given the skyrocketing US national debt and then specifically focus on more controversial items like the minimum wage increase and payments to Democratic-controlled states and cities.

In the end, there may be a few Republicans who break ranks and reluctantly support the bill rather than be seen opposing the legislation’s popular measures.

On Tuesday, Biden told reporters that he was optimistic the legislation would pass, but it wouldn’t be “by a lot”. He is probably right on both counts.


Elsewhere:

Reader Interactions

238Comments

  1. 1.

    Baud

    President Biden said Wednesday that he has read the report on the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

     

    “Yes, I have,” Biden told reporters in the State Dining Room after signing an executive order on the economy, without elaborating further.

    The Biden administration is expected to soon release an unclassified version of the report on Khashoggi’s death. Biden also said that he would speak with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman, but did not offer a timeline or confirm reports that the call would take place on Wednesday

  5. 5.

    Ken

    I like “failure to have a transition that was rational”.  It lets the reader infer “irrational” without coming out and saying “crazy man occupying the White House refused to accept reality”.

  6. 6.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Man leaves church and reunites with family after years in sanctuary from deportation

    After three and a half years living inside a Missouri church to avoid deportation, a Honduran man has finally stepped outside, following a promise from Joe Biden’s administration to let him be. Alex García, a married father of five, was slated for removal from the US in 2017, the first year of Donald Trump’s administration. Days before he would have been deported, Christ Church United Church of Christ in the St Louis suburb of Maplewood offered sanctuary.
    ………………………………….
    Myrna Orozco, organizing coordinator at Church World Service said 33 immigrants remain inside churches across the US and that number should continue to drop. “We expect it to change in the next couple of weeks as we get more clarity from Ice or [immigrants] get a decision on their cases,” Orozco said.

    Others who have emerged from sanctuary since Biden took office include José Chicas, a 55-year-old El Salvador native, who left a church-owned house in Durham, North Carolina, on 22 January. Saheeda Nadeem, a 65-year-old from Pakistan, left a Kalamazoo, Michigan, church this month. Edith Espinal, a native of Mexico, left an Ohio church after more than three years.
    ………………………………..
    Garcia’s exit came just two days after Representative Cori Bush, a St Louis Democrat, announced she was sponsoring a private bill seeking permanent residency for Garcia. Bush said on Wednesday that she will still push the bill forward.

    “Ice has promised not to deport Alex, and we will stop at nothing to ensure that they keep their promise,” Bush said in a statement.

    García fled extreme poverty and violence in Honduras, and after entering the US in 2004, he hopped a train that he thought was headed for Houston – but instead ended up in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, a town of about 17,000 residents in the south-eastern corner of the state. He landed a job and met his wife, Carly, a US citizen, and for more than a decade they lived quietly with their family.

    In 2015, García accompanied his sister to an immigration office for a check-in in Kansas City, Missouri, where officials realized García was in the country illegally. He received two one-year reprieves during Barack Obama’s administration.

    But both parties are the same.

  7. 7.

    Princess

    I think the $15 minimum wage is very important for so many reasons, not least the political one that future Dem election chances may hinge on it. I think this is one worth calling your reps/senators about.

  8. 8.

    Baud

    I’m not a big Vilsack fan, but I’m not sure about Bernie’s decision to be the first person in our caucus to vote against a Biden cabinet pick.  Seems it gives a little bit of extra juice to Manchin and Sinema to go their own way.  Hard to measure the impact though.

    ETA: It was a symbolic vote. He was confirmed overwhelmingly.

  9. 9.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Jill Morrison has seen how the bust of oil and gas production can permanently scar a landscape.

    Near her land in north-east Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, where drilling started in 1889, more than 2,000 abandoned wells are seeping brine into the groundwater and leaking potent greenhouse gasses.

    Unplugged wells, either orphaned well, which have no liable party, usually due to bankruptcy, or idle, abandoned ones, where the company has walked away, but could still be liable, cause rampant methane emissions – up to 8% of US total according to a 2014 analysis. They also leak brine, oil and fracking fluid into the groundwater, and carcinogenic gases, like benzine, into the air, and as their numbers increase the impacts grow.
    …………………
    “They drill baby drilled themselves right out of business,” Morrison said. “We’re seeing something we’ve never seen before in the oil and gas industry, in terms of the downturn, and there’s going to be a billion-dollar mess to clean up.”

    And who’s gonna clean up that mess?

    The penalties for not cleaning up a well are minimal when there’s nothing but a small bond holding a company responsible. “How do you convince operators to comply when there’s no carrot and no stick?” said Frank Rusco, a director in the US Government Accountability Office’s natural resources and environment team.

    That means the profits for drilling go to individual companies while the damages, both environmental and financial, are largely borne by the local community and by state and federal taxpayers. “Unplugged wells devalue property, they’re a mess to work around, it can lead to groundwater pollution, and no one is really tracking it,” Morrison said.

    The thinktank Carbon Tracker, reports it could cost $280bn to reclaim wells, and public bonding data indicates that states have less than 1% of that money in secure bonds.

    Bend over.

  10. 10.

    Betty Cracker

    @Princess: Agree, not that my calling Rick Scott and Marco Rubio will do any good. Floridians — most of whom voted for He Who Shall Not Be Named — also approved a ballot initiative raising the minimum wage to $15 by the required 60% margin.

    But as usual, the wingnut statehouse is telling voters to fuck off, just as they did on the ex-felon voting rights restoration, all manner of conservation measures, etc. As long as the consequences of defying the will of voters never fall on the actual perpetrators, we can’t make progress.

  11. 11.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: By and large, most Senators have an over inflated sense of their own importance in the grand scheme of things. Give them a chance and they’ll happily grandstand.

  12. 12.

    topclimber

    I hope we at least get indexing for minimum wage. Indexing tax brackets 30-ish years ago was one of the few GOP initiatives I could back. There is COLA for just about everything. Why not the minimum wage?

    Maybe we need to tout an increase as a deficit reduction measure (or maybe I need to find out if that is being done already). Boost the income of the working poor and you help Social Security and the Federal budget, not to mention the regressive sales taxes in probably every one of the United States.

  13. 13.

    Anne Laurie

    @debbie: Any chance of sanctions?

    To be honest (I’m planning on posting more about the Kashoggi report later today), I think releasing the report is much like the Canadian in the late-night tweet video giving that young lynx a good talking-to about not killing chickens.  You don’t expect Mohammed Bone Saw to appreciate your viewpoint about the wrongness of extrajudicial murder, but you can hope to make the news sufficiently unpleasant for him that he’s deterred from trying it again — at least right away, at least against an American green-card resident.

  17. 17.

    Betty Cracker

    Maybe it’s my particular Twitter bubble, but Sanders sure seems to get a lot more blame for attempting to tank Tanden’s nomination than Manchin does. IMO, that’s nonsense since Manchin announced he won’t support Tanden, whereas Sanders hasn’t said one way or another but almost certainly will.

    This is a dysfunction on “our side,” IMO — this tendency to frame intraparty disputes in a way that confirms our biases instead of in response to individuals’ actions. Another example is when the Squad gets vilified for insufficient fealty to Pelosi when it was Blue Dogs who attempted to rise up against her.

  19. 19.

    rikyrah

    It is not just Joe Manchin blocking Neera Tanden. It is also Bernie Sanders blocking her as retribution for 2016. They don't talk about the damage Bernie has done to our party since 2015. Instead they cover him like he is the figurehead of our party although he is not a Democeat— Joe Manchin's A Big Biatch (@lynnv378) February 25, 2021

  20. 20.

    Geminid

    @Baud: Sanders wants to maintain crediblity among the lefties. A lot of them suspect he is a squish, and now talk up tougher heros like Nina Turner. As far as Senate work goes, Sanders’ bark is worse than his bite. He has been enough of a team player to have a lesser whip position on Chuck Schumer’s leadership team. (Interestingly, Sanders and Schumer are graduates of the same Brooklyn high school). And last year, when a bipartisan Senate majority rejected his amendment to cut 10% from the humungous Defense Authozation Act, Sanders could have made a thunderous speech denouncing the many Democrats who chose bullets over babies, but let the moment pass.

  21. 21.

    debbie

    @Anne Laurie:

    I know you’re right, but I’d still like to see some sort of time out, like maybe banning him from economic summits/conferences for a year or so.

  23. 23.

    SFAW

    @Betty Cracker:

    But as usual, the wingnut statehouse is telling voters to fuck off, just as they did on the ex-felon voting rights restoration, all manner of conservation measures, etc.

    When I heard about FLA-ians supporting the $15 min, I figured the lege would pull the same crap they did with reinstating voting rights. Sorry to see I was apparently right.

  25. 25.

    Kathleen

    @germy: Sad but not at all surprising that AA employees are experiencing those issues. FTFNYT is redolent with insular, arrogant, smug, white male entitlement. Now they’re lambasting Biden for his EO’s.

  28. 28.

    rikyrah

    ???

    THREAD: Today at 7:30 am, the GOP-led GA Senate Ethics Committee is hearing #SB241, a bill that would ban no-excuse mail voting, add witness requirements to vote by mail, add new photo ID requirements – one of the most devastating voter suppression bills in the country. #gapol— Marisa Pyle (@marisapk) February 25, 2021

  30. 30.

    Baud

    @Geminid:

    I agree, he’s been better.  I said yesterday that I hope he realizes that his last shot at a legacy depends on the Dems keeping or expanding its majority

  31. 31.

    rikyrah

    Neera Tanden's biggest sin seems to be replying to critics rather than just letting them sandbag her. Most of the people crying about her are some of the meanest people on this app, while her supposed "mean" tweets are tepid by comparison.— Jean-Michel Connard (@torriangray) February 24, 2021

  32. 32.

    Betty Cracker

    @rikyrah: Timely example of what I was talking about at #17. Sanders has not blocked Tanden, and to equate the noises he made in the hearing with Manchin’s announcement is flat-out misleading. If Sanders announces he won’t support the nomination or votes no (if the nomination comes to a vote), then fuck that old coot, but he hasn’t done either of those things! 

  33. 33.

    rikyrah

    #SB241 and #HB531, along with the nearly 60 voter suppression bills in the GA Legislature, show that we need federal action NOW to protect voting rights. We need HR 1 and HR 4, the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. We CANNOT wait – our democracy literally hangs in the balance. #gapol— Marisa Pyle (@marisapk) February 25, 2021

  35. 35.

    randy khan

    It’s interesting that the state aid – which both red and blue state governments want and that polls about as well as the other big-ticket items in the bill – is being treated as controversial.

  36. 36.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Percy update: He seems to be doing a little better now. Tuesday night I tricked him into eating a few nuggets of dried dog fud by hiding a few pieces of pupperonis among them. Last night I added even more and he actually ate most of his evening dried food allowance. I’ll probably do the same again tonight, then tomorrow night I’ll top his dried food with some of Momma’s special seasonings.

    We’ll see. He’s a finicky little cuss.

  38. 38.

    The Fat White Duchess

    @germy: um, Khashoggi was a hero and deserves full honors—no shame. I think you mean King Salman, and even more so the crown prince, MbS, may he rot in hell.

  39. 39.

    Gorilla Meek

    @Betty Cracker: Couldn’t agree more, $15 minimum should have been 1st thing enacted, will give people the $1400 stimulus payment in the same or less time than it takes to pass the woefully inadequate COVID package. Also gets rid of the filibuster and is wildly popular.

  41. 41.

    The Thin Black Duke

    Good morning, my fellow BJ jackals. My latests essay on Medium explores an alternative history where Hillary Clinton won the presidency. It’s depressing to think how devastating Clinton’s loss was to this country.

  48. 48.

    Baud

    BTW, while we correctly fret over Manchin and Sinema, we should note that the House Dems seem wholly unified despite their diverse ideology and reduced majority.  Kudos to them and Nancy Smash.

  49. 49.

    artem1s

    @debbie:

    Any chance of sanctions?

    to hell with sanctions.  HLS should seize assets in US of the Crown Prince and those who helped murder Khashogghi until they are tried in the Hague for international war crimes.  The King should welcome the US efforts to defang the presumptive heir to the throne who will likely throw that country and the world into complete chaos.

  52. 52.

    Geminid

    @Betty Cracker: The people like Seth Moulton (MA), Kathleen Rice (NY), and Tim Ryan (OH) who opposed Nancy Pelosi’s bid for speaker were not Blue Dogs, but members of the moderate New Democratic Caucus, largest of three groups within the Democratic Caucus. The Progressive Caucus is second largest.

    The Blue Dogs had a tough election cycle last year, going from 25 members to ~17. Veteran Blue Dog Ted Lipinski (IL) lost his primary to Marie Newman, which was good, and promising freshmen like Kendra Horn (OK), Xochitl Torres-Small (NM), and Joe Cunningham (SC) lost purple districts, which was not so good.

  53. 53.

    Roger Moore

    @Betty Cracker:

    Maybe it’s my particular Twitter bubble, but Sanders sure seems to get a lot more blame for attempting to tank Tanden’s nomination than Manchin does. IMO, that’s nonsense since Manchin announced he won’t support Tanden, whereas Sanders hasn’t said one way or another but almost certainly will.

    A big part of this is that it’s Bernie’s followers in Red Rose Twitter who have been carrying on a vendetta against Tanden for years.  That makes people blame Bernie for opposition to her on the left.  Blaming Bernie may be wrong, but blaming his followers probably isn’t; many of the right-wing attacks on Tanden mirror the ones the Bernistas have been making for years.

  54. 54.

    germy

    New: Pornhub is telling its digital premium customers in the Orlando area, where CPAC will kickoff tomorrow, to expect major video buffering delays between today and Sunday. Plan accordingly.

    — YS (@NYinLA2121) February 24, 2021

  55. 55.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @germy:

    Directed at that tweet, not you: That whole “defund the police” thing is a non-starter with a lot of people, even if it doesn’t mean getting rid of police entirely. As they say in politics, if you’re explaining you’re losing.

    What is that robot dog even supposed to do?!

  59. 59.

    germy

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    Poop batteries.

    Robot Dog name is Digidog. It weighs about 70 pounds and is able to run about three and a half miles per hour and climb stairs. It’s covered with cameras and lights to get a real-time look at things.

    I wonder if they tried a robot cat first, but gave up after it refused to follow orders.

  61. 61.

    Soprano2

    Here’s a link to a good WAPO article that breaks down the Republican objections to the COVID bill. It explains why there is assistance to transit in the bill, which I’ve started seeing my Republican friends bitching about. Of course, since the two largest transit benefits go to an international bridge in New York and BART in San Francisco, they’re braying about Pelosi and Schumer being corrupt. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/02/25/dissecting-house-gop-spin-against-bidens-19-trillion-covid-relief-bill/ I also heard an interview with GOP Rep. Mace from South Carolina on Morning Edition this morning that had me talking to my radio. The rep mentioned “opening schools” many times, and Rachael Martin never said that school opening is a state and local decision, not the federal government’s, and she never asked Rep. Mace if she thought the federal money for schools should be based on schools reopening for 5 days in-person learning, which is obviously what Republicans want to do. It makes me crazy when the reporters aren’t ready for these well-known talking points.

  62. 62.

    Betty Cracker

    @Roger Moore: I agree that 99% of the drama is driven by Twitter-dwelling Sanders cultists, and they truly are terrible. But focusing on those chowdaheads just perpetuates the rift in the party in a way that is counterproductive, IMO.

  64. 64.

    Gin & Tonic

    Mildly concerned that they gave me a placebo instead of the Pfizer yesterday, as I’m experiencing no side effects at all.

  65. 65.

    PJ

    @Baud: Yeah, Manchin’s been squawking about his opposition to the $15 min wage, and we sure ain’t gonna get 11 Republicans to support it.
    After the Covid Relief Bill and the Infrastructure Bill are passed through reconciliation, the first bill up should be the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.  If that doesn’t move Manchin and Sienna to get rid of the filibuster, nothing will.  (And if that doesn’t pass, you can kiss any further legislation and 2022 and prob 2024 goodbye.)

  66. 66.

    Soprano2

    @OzarkHillbilly: Ozark, I never got a chance to say I’m sorry about Woofie. He sounds like he was a truly great dog. I hope you get Percy eating again. Sounds like you’re making progress.

  68. 68.

    Soprano2

    @randy khan: It’s interesting that the state aid – which both red and blue state governments want and that polls about as well as the other big-ticket items in the bill – is being treated as controversial.

    Yeah, they dishonestly characterize it as pension bailouts rather than what is really is, money to help keep states and cities from having to lay people off, and to plug budget holes. I wish reporters would call them out on never wanting to help people who live in liberal states, by asking them why they only want help for states that vote for Republicans, because after all we’re all Americans.

  69. 69.

    Baud

    @PJ:

    If I had to bet, I think the Republicans will provide enough votes to pass that (in some form) so that Manchin and Sinema don’t have to decide whether to filibuster.

  71. 71.

    Ken

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): What is that robot dog even supposed to do?!

    Running through the list of usual K9 duties and striking off the ones that use the sense of smell doesn’t leave much.  Crowd control, maybe?  Not bomb detection and disposal, we already have (cheaper) specialized robots for that.

  73. 73.

    PJ

    @Baud: That would be a good strategic move, but I think the need to support voter suppression, without which Republicans cannot get elected President, and statewide in more and more states, will override that.  The prospect of losing more Senate seats and more Governorships is not something that they can accept.

  74. 74.

    Baud

    @Soprano2:

    Ain’t nothing more corrupt than Democratic Senators doing things to help out the states that elected them.  Where’s the altruism in that?!

    I bet they’re doing it because they want to be reelected.  Bastards!

  75. 75.

    germy

    Manchin and Sinema are both great names.

    I suspect the screenwriters of our particular timeline are heavily into wordplay.  “Man Chin” as a strong and ignorantly tenacious politician.  “Cinema”  being visually flashy but often disappointing.

    Sometimes I think the screenwriters lay it on a bit too thick.   “Trump”  ?   I mean, come on.

  76. 76.

    Soprano2

    So I took my mother to get her first shot yesterday; it went well. I’m more excited that I got to make my husband an appointment to get his first shot on Friday!!! He just turned 74 and has diabetes and high blood pressure, so I’ll feel a lot better once I know even if he gets COVID again it won’t cause him to die or end up in the hospital. I figure I’m way down on the list unless I get a vaccine through the city I work for. They sent out an e-mail a couple of days ago saying the city is getting 60,000 more doses, and 16,000 of them are being directed to the Health Department. I think they’ll probably set up clinics for us to get vaccinated like they do with the flu, since we’re all considered essential workers. It’s pretty hard to clean or repair a sewer while working at home, same for a lot of other city government jobs.

  77. 77.

    Baud

    @PJ:

    Right.  It’ll be a delicate dance.  We would need to convince the pro-filbuster Dems that the GOP is acting in bad faith for us to get something passed.

  81. 81.

    Betty Cracker

    @Baud: You think Republicans will make sure the voting rights act passes to preserve the filibuster? Wow, I sure do hope you’re right, but I don’t see that happening.

  82. 82.

    jeffreyw

    @Gin & Tonic: We had the first round of Pfizer shots yesterday, Mrs J was more affected than I was.  She complained of achy tiredness and went to bed early.  I didn’t suffer anything like that – we both notice soreness at the injection site in our arms today.

  83. 83.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Feeling the need to point out that the alternative, “reform the police”, also means we are losing because time and again we have to explain why nothing ever changes.

    People are tired of the same old empty promises. We need to find a way to make them reality.

  84. 84.

    Baud

    @Betty Cracker: The Republicans will try to dilute it, of course, in exchange for their votes.  That’s why I referred to it as a delicate dance in my later comment.  We’re not going to get Manchin and the others to eliminate the filibuster with a take-it-or-leave-it approach to the voting rights bill. So the question will be how much weakening we can accept, and what would it take for the pro-filibuster Dems to say “no more.”

  86. 86.

    Geminid

    @Betty Cracker: The rifts between the House Democratic Caucus became very fraught during the blow up over emergency border funding in June 2019. I think the Caucus came out stronger after this conflict, and the different wings have greater mutual understanding and respect. Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s Chief of Staff did walk the plank a few weeks afterwards.

    But most of the die-hard Sanders fans that people like Lobster Ragnarok pound on are not, in fact, Democrats. For some like David Sirota, Sanders was a Trojan Horse. Like vicious pirates, they poison the wells on the way back to their ships, after failing to storm the city.

  87. 87.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @germy:

    “Where the hell is the robot cat going, and why is it randomly leaping up on shelves to knock things onto the floor?”

  93. 93.

    debbie

    @The Thin Black Duke:

    Did you ever read Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America? It reimagined America if Charles Lindberg had been elected president instead of FDR. I wish Roth could reach out from whatever great beyond he now inhabits and comment on how close we came to the world in his novel with the Trump period.

  96. 96.

    Roger Moore

    @Soprano2:

    The maddening thing is that there’s a bunch of funding in the COVID bill to help schools reopen.  For them to reopen safely, they need a bunch of upgrades to things like ventilation that cost a bunch of money.  Demanding they reopen before they get funding is ass backward; it pushes them to do stupid, unsafe stuff to get the money they need to be safe.

    It seems to be an article of faith among Republicans that the schools want to shut down for in-person education for some nefarious reason.  I’m not sure exactly why this is supposed to be true, but it’s probably because the teachers want to continue to be paid to do nothing indefinitely, as if they’ve completely abandoned their duties and aren’t working harder than ever to overcome the problems of teaching remotely.  The key is that the only solution is for the schools to reopen immediately, and any aid should be held hostage to those demands.  It’s totally untethered from reality, as so much of contemporary Republican “thought” is.

  100. 100.

    The Thin Black Duke

    @debbie: Yes, I did read it. Roth was always very clear-eyed and ruthlessly unsentimental about the direction he saw America going. Fascism never sleeps.

  101. 101.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: I worry about loopholes. We had a state amendment establishing a nonpartisan commission to draw up voting districts. It passed with over 60% of the vote. The GQP said, “Oh yeah? Fuck you.” and put an amendment on the ballot gutting the previous one with a lot of misleading language. It passed too.

    Say hello to Status Quo.

  102. 102.

    Betty Cracker

    @Geminid: Agree with you on bad-faith actors like Sirota, but I see a lot of misleading claims about lawmakers circulating in my feed, including about Sanders. I am not a Sanders fan, but there’s no excuse for misleading people about his position on Tanden. He meeped about mean tweets in the hearing, which wasn’t helpful, but unlike Manchin, Sanders hasn’t said he’ll vote no. I get why anti-Bernie bros are a thing, but in some cases they’ve become single-minded cranks like their nemeses, IMO.

  105. 105.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Baud: I’ll see his $6/hr and put it up against my $1/hr. (plus tips, I made a lot of money in tips) The nontip minimum wage was $2.35, I think.

  107. 107.

    different-church-lady

    @Gin & Tonic: After my performance Tuesday night, it’s probably the most prudent thing I have to offer.

    (actually it’s because sometimes FYWP won’t give the iPad any way to abort the comment window other than the post button.)

  108. 108.

    Baud

    @Betty Cracker:

    but in some cases they’ve become single-minded cranks like their nemeses,

    As the saying goes,

    Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster… for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you. 

  113. 113.

    Cameron

    @Betty Cracker: I see that single-mindedness on various blogs where, no matter the topic, there are posters who can inject Bernie into everything.  “OK, today’s class on family farming will be about mulching…”  “Does BERNIE SANDERS use mulch on any of his squillion properties?” “Uh…”  “BERNIE’s a multi-billionaire who probably doesn’t know what mulch is!”

  114. 114.

    topclimber

    @OzarkHillbilly: I have seen “rebuild the police” and “re-think policing” as counter-bytes.

    There’s gotta be a way to connect a slogan with Build Back Better.

  115. 115.

    Soprano2

    @Roger Moore: The maddening thing is that there’s a bunch of funding in the COVID bill to help schools reopen.  For them to reopen safely, they need a bunch of upgrades to things like ventilation that cost a bunch of money.  Demanding they reopen before they get funding is ass backward; it pushes them to do stupid, unsafe stuff to get the money they need to be safe.

    It seems to be an article of faith among Republicans that the schools want to shut down for in-person education for some nefarious reason.  I’m not sure exactly why this is supposed to be true, but it’s probably because the teachers want to continue to be paid to do nothing indefinitely, as if they’ve completely abandoned their duties and aren’t working harder than ever to overcome the problems of teaching remotely.  The key is that the only solution is for the schools to reopen immediately, and any aid should be held hostage to those demands.  It’s totally untethered from reality, as so much of contemporary Republican “thought” is.

    When I hear interviews about how schools can reopen safely it makes me crazy how they gloss over the “ventilation” part. They say “better ventilation” without saying what that actually entails – tens of thousand of dollars spent on HVAC upgrades on hundreds of thousands of school buildings! They say “open windows” as if a) it’s not below freezing in a lot of the U.S. right now and b) many school classrooms don’t even have windows that can open!! As for the idea that teachers don’t want to go back to the classroom, I’ve seen it framed as “those lazy teachers just want to stay home and sit on their lazy butts doing nothing rather than doing their jobs. It’s the teacher’s unions that are keeping your child out of the classroom”. I know several teachers, and these things are the furthest thing from the truth imaginable. Wanting to make sure you don’t die while doing your job is framed by Republicans as being selfish!!

  116. 116.

    Geminid

    @Cameron: Sanders certainly brings out a lot of animus in people. And solidarity too. I remember how last winter the jackals on this forum would bark at each other over the relative  merits of Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden. But when a Sanders proponent showed up, the jackals would turn in unison to bark and snarl at the cur-dog.

  117. 117.

    Soprano2

    @OzarkHillbilly: You know how that passed – Republicans fearmongered people in rural areas that “they” were going to draw “long, skinny districts and put (those) people in the cities into your district”. It makes me crazy, because Clean Missouri passed with 62% of the vote, while that Republican abomination only got 52%! Did you hear a rep is going to propose a bill to repeal the minimum wage increases we put into the Constitution?

  119. 119.

    Immanentize

    @WaterGirl:  the NYTimes today said that sanctions might we’ll be the same as for the other killers — travel ban, seize assets, banking sanctions, etc.

  121. 121.

    Geminid

    On a different topic, yesterday Politico had a good article on Beto O’Rourke and the prospect of him running for Texas governor. I really hope he does.

  125. 125.

    jeffreyw

    @Baud: Gerrymandering reform is an existential threat for Republicans, as is making it easier to vote.  They will allow it “over their dead bodies”, as the saying goes.

  126. 126.

    Soprano2

    @Geminid: But when a Sanders proponent showed up, the jackals would turn in unison to bark and snarl at the cur-dog.

    If I’m honest, I still have a lot of resentment toward him for how he and his followers treated Hillary in 2016. Also, he’s not a Democrat. Further, if he had been the nominee in 2020 we’d probably have a second Trump term right now.

  128. 128.

    Ken

    @Gin & Tonic: How did you make it all the way to February 25?

    Sheer dumb luck. I live in a highly conservative area, and – as P*rnhub’s warning about CPAC in Orlando shows – it’s simply impossible to stream smut at an acceptable rate.

  130. 130.

    Betty Cracker

    @Geminid: I like O’Rourke and believe he would make a fine gov, but I’m sure he’s mindful that if he strikes out again, he’s done as a statewide candidate. Also, while I greatly admire the courage and conviction it took for an ambitious, TX-based pol to say, “yeah, we’re coming for your AR-15s” on camera, I wonder if he can win when Abbot or whomever plays that on endless loop.

  133. 133.

    Betty Cracker

    @Cameron: I’ll always resent Sanders for the 2016 antics that sandbagged Clinton, and I think staying in the 2020 race after his heart attack — when he should have dropped out and endorsed Warren — was appallingly selfish. But I agree with him on policy 95% of the time, and as a senator with a high profile, he can do a lot of good if he focuses on the job. So far, I think he is.

  134. 134.

    Ksmiami

    @Soprano2: yeah well I still partly blame Sanders for Clinton’s loss and the loss of the Supreme Court. The idea that Trump would usher in a progressive era was folly and now all I see is death and devastation that we won’t fix for years if ever

  135. 135.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @germy: Considering the schooling disadvantages due to economic differences, minorities typically are English is a second language or they have heavy dialects, that takes a really pathetic white guy who needs to resort to racism to compete with minority as a professional writer.  It would be the NYT, of course.

  139. 139.

    Geminid

    @Betty Cracker: I would not be surprised if O’Rourke walks back the comment about AR-15’s and AK-47’s. That wouldn’t cost him any votes, if he still has a good gun safety platform. After Virginia Democrats finally took the state House and Senate, polling showed 75% or better support for measures like universal background checks and preventive seizing of firearms by court order- a so-called “red flag” law. A ban on asssault style weapons was favored more narrowly, something like 53-44,  and legislation was punted to a crime commission to work out technicalities, and apparently will not be brought up this current session. But six good gun safety measures were passed. And while the prospect brought over 10,000 armed gun rights activists to Richmond last January, the new laws went into effect last July without any protest that I heard of.

  140. 140.

    different-church-lady

    In 2016 I went from saying “Why can’t Bernie win?” to “That goddamed fuckface!” in the space of about four months.

  141. 141.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Roger Moore: That is what the acolytes of BS and Socialist Jesus himself did to HRC. Gave the Orange ? ammunition to attack HRC. Fall campaign echoed many of the same attacks. This is a repeat of their successful campaign against Hillary.

  142. 142.

    Soprano2

    @schrodingers_cat: Sanders’ stupid attacks on Clinton for giving speeches to Goldman Sachs were damaging, and stupid. Politicians get paid to give speeches to all kinds of groups all the time; doesn’t mean they agree with everything those groups do.

  145. 145.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Betty Cracker:

    “yeah, we’re coming for your AR-15s” on camera, I wonder if he can win when Abbot or whomever plays that on endless loop.

    I always say Biden was the only top-line Dem in 2020 who didn’t wildly misread the political map and the results of ’16 and ’18 *. This was one of the best examples of the whole “they’re gonna call us sosh’lists anyway, so let’s be legends!” phenomenon. O’Rourke coming back from that would indeed make him a legend.

    * And I keep bringing it up because the ’22 battlegrounds are in Biden country, not Brooklyn.

  146. 146.

    Ken

    @Peale: $2.10 was good enough for me. Its certainly enough for my great grandchildren.

    Ah, yes, the “Back in ’47 I bought a house and raised a family on $2.40 an hour, why can’t young people nowadays do the same” argument. Often coupled in the same breath with a complaint that the SS cost-of-living increase was only $3 a month.

  147. 147.

    Baud

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    This was one of the best examples of the whole “they’re gonna call us sosh’lists anyway, so let’s be legends!” phenomenon

    I hate that too. The antidote for political fecklessness is not political recklessness.

  155. 155.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @schrodingers_cat:  @Soprano2: wasn’t it 2018 that he decided to prep the ground for his ’20 run by bellowing at anyone who wanted to listen, and many of us who didn’t, that the Democratic Pahw-ty has been a fayl-yuh for the last 20 years? This includes, of course, the entirety of the Obama presidency, which is something I suspect Bernie believes to his bones. The refusal to recognize the place Obama holds in American politics, and the Democratic Party, was a big part of the Great Misread I mention above. Warren and Sanders (IIRC) started running ads featuring themselves and Obama in the run up to South Carolina. I chuckled at Warren’s late awakening, but for the Small God Of Burlington (“Oh, he’s so authentic!”) to be so blatantly hypocritical was just one more reason to despise him.

  156. 156.

    Geminid

    @Geminid: Personally, I think that AR-15 type rifles that fire rounds that can turn someone’s liver to pudding from a half mile distance should be limited to single shot, or at most bolt action. But even California has not yet banned assault weapons. Otherwise, I think their firearms laws are exemplary, and I hope Virginia gets to that level of firearms regulation before too long.

  157. 157.

    karen marie

    @Geminid: Because he and they are, A, not Democrats and, B, they’re assholes.

     

    @Soprano2:

    I made $156/week or $3.90/hour as a secretary in 1978. Two other young women and I rented a 3-bedroom on lower Charles Street (Boston) for $600/month. I wish I could afford what they charge now.

  160. 160.

    Ken

    @Baud: And now the accountants go to work.  There’s a scene in Terry Pratchett’s Going Postal that I absolutely love, where they’re unravelling a fraud; something like “The warfare of clerks, who harry the enemies through files and columns of numbers, with a patience that at first bores and then terrifies.”

  161. 161.

    Geminid

    @Soprano2: I think we would have also lost the House, and that the Republicans would still control the Senate. I was really sweating the prospect of a Sanders nomination last winter. He was raising lots of money and doing well in polling. I was relieved, though, after New Hamshire and the following caucuses, when I saw he was underperforming his 2016 support. Then after South Carolina, I figured Sanders was done for. But I was really worried for a while.

  163. 163.

    laura

    @Baud: Absolutely sure how I feel about this man getting even more air time-  I ain’t fer it, I’m agin it. Was Sirota not available?

  165. 165.

    trollhattan

    @Geminid:

    California has the Assault Weapon Control Act of 1989, but there are a ration of workarounds to contend with–gun humpers are always a step ahead.

  167. 167.

    taumaturgo

    @Betty Cracker: Maybe it’s my particular Twitter bubble, but Sanders sure seems to get a lot more blame for attempting to tank Tanden’s nomination than Manchin does.

    The records amply show the liberal left in the Democrat’s caucus has no worse political critics than those within the caucus, it then spills over to the base.

  168. 168.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Baud:  @laura: I figured something like this was coming when he started subbing for Hayes, and I’m sure the Eternal Grad Student lobbied for this. He’s probably the least obnoxious of the Intercept Bros, but he’s very much an Intercept Bro.

    Politics aside, I don’t know how successful he’ll be if he doesn’t learn to modulate his shouty, hectoring affect for TeeVee.

  170. 170.

    trollhattan

    @Ken: ​
    Why, in my day…[leans back, yanks LaZBoy handle, reaches for beer].

    My folks’ Seattle house “Zestimates” at exactly 100X what they paid for it when we moved there from Iowa. And yet they both worked to feed three kids and make the mortgage payment (and car payment, etc.). Golden Age not all that golden.

  171. 171.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Baud: Because it will be touted as a win for Modi and his draconian Kashmir policy. And at this stage the greatest danger to India is not Pakistan but the fascist state bent on destroying the plurality and diversity of India by attacking its democratic foundations

  173. 173.

    Soprano2

    @Geminid: But I was really worried for a while.

    I was absolutely panicked for about 2 or 3 weeks. All I could see was Sanders getting the nomination, and Republicans running a million ads saying Bernie was a socialist and communist with the added benefit that both of those things are mostly true! No matter what people on liberal blogs might think, for the majority of voters these labels are killers. He would have dragged the whole ticket down, and we probably would have lost the House and the Senate as well as the presidency. I kept saying, and still believe it , that a Sanders candidacy would have meant a 40-state Trump sweep of the Electoral College.

  174. 174.

    Geminid

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: In 2011, Sanders appeared on the Thom Hartman show and told Hartman he thought someone should give President Obama a primary challenge. (Sanders himself faced reelection the next year, and wasn’t about to sacrifice his own job). Anti-Sanders groups ran that tape on radio a lot before last year’s South Carolina primary, evidently to good effect. I imagine Hartman, who seems like well-meaning guy, was a little chagrined about this.

  175. 175.

    J R in WV

    @rikyrah: ​
     

    Rand Paul Wants Mail-In, Absentee Voting Eliminated Entirely

    Rand Paul wants voting suspended for all non-Republicans, actually. You, me, nearly all the jackals.

    He doesn’t believe in democracy as a legitimate form of government at all. Nor equal rights, nor freedom for all.

  176. 176.

    Doc Sardonic

    @taumaturgo: Well he still can’t win the D nomination and he ain’t the President so his higher favorability  on one issue is just a birthday candle on dog shit.

  177. 177.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Geminid: I listened to Hartman for a while when Air America was going through its prolonged death spasm on Sirius/XM. I remember when that show was Sanders’ biggest megaphone.

    His call to primary Obama got some play in 2016, one of those things he hand-waved away as “a very long time ago”.

  181. 181.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Baud: That was Modi’s opening salvo. He made Kashmir a non-state. Imagine if an R President makes a majority-minority state (say California) a province like Guam. That’s what Modi’s BJP did to Kashmir,  India’s only Muslim majority state in 2019.  Kashmir now has diminished representation in the Loksabha and the Rajyasabha (like the Congress and Senate) and is governed from the Center (by the Federal government)

  182. 182.

    Miss Bianca

    @Betty Cracker: You know, I was one of the most die-hard Never-Bernies out there, and I have to agree with you on this point – he’s catching flak that he may not actually deserve on this one.

  183. 183.

    Miss Bianca

    @Soprano2: The other maddening thing is that all the teachers I know are working HARDER than they ever have, just trying to keep things going via Zoom. So this “lazy teachers” trope isn’t just wrong, it’s actively, grotesquely insulting.

  187. 187.

    trollhattan

    @J R in WV: ​
    “Principled Libertarians” [I crack myself up sometimes] want the Post Office eliminated and therefore, Rand Paul is just protecting voters from selecting a non-viable method of casting their ballots.

    Yeah, that’s the ticket.

  188. 188.

    Geminid

    @Omnes Omnibus: For some people, the urge to Bernie-bash is hard to resist. Last year I tried to give it up for Lent, but could only hold out a few days. But Sanders is ok by me now…mostly…kind of…

  189. 189.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Geminid: I’m not going trust him, but I won’t bash him unless he does something egregious in his current role.  His future as a presidential contender is in the past.

  190. 190.

    Geminid

    @Omnes Omnibus: Yes, it’s better to look at the present, with an eye to the future. And even when it is apoarantly a slow news day, there is still plenty of imporant stuff going on if one looks for it.

  191. 191.

    Brachiator

    @taumaturgo:

    Bernie on top.

    Who cares?

    Bernie’s value, and it might be substantial, is as a smart senator who can help champion Biden administration policies.

  193. 193.

    J R in WV

    @OzarkHillbilly: ​
     

    Percy update: He seems to be doing a little better now.

    Want to repeat my condolences at your family’s loss of the Woofmeister, he seems to have been a great dog companion.

    I would think that Percy may well be as upset at the loss of Woofie as you two-legged folks are. I know that last winter (winter of 19-20) when I had to take Happy Dog on her last trip to the Vet ER, Alice the younger big white lab-mix tank of a dog became depressed and much less active.

    She came back to her old self after we adopted the two black puppies and Alice had to train them as to who was in charge. The puppies, who were full grown when neighbor delivered them, but kind of wild farm yard dogs who had never been inside before, carried on, ate several precious things (remotes, tablet, fav shoes, etc) but needed no house training. But so affectionate it’s hard to yell at them…

    So after Percy settles down and resumes his regular diet, you might consider a younger smaller dog to be his new buddy. Always some sweet dogs that need a rescue out there. When you’re ready, of course. Hope Percy and you taller folks all get better quickly, take care, stay safe!

  195. 195.

    Gravenstone

    @Roger Moore: it pushes them to do stupid, unsafe stuff to get the money they need to be safe.

    Which will then be used as a campaign cudgel to bludgeon the Democrats for “opening schools too early”. No thought or concern given to the illnesses and deaths that their little political stunt will end up causing. It’s just another tool to be used to regain political power.

  197. 197.

    lowtechcyclist

    Suspect it’s a general consensus that the $15 minimum wage will have to be sacrificed, for the moment

    “For the moment”?  If it’s not part of this bill, when’s the moment that it can pass?

    If it’s not part of this bill, the GOP can filibuster it, and they will.  Mitch will let anyone vote for cloture whose re-election in 2022 might depend on it, but it still won’t get anywhere near 60 votes.

    Manchin’s gonna kill us with his insistence on a rigorous interpretation of the Byrd Rule that would exclude the minimum wage hike.

  199. 199.

    Miss Bianca

    @Omnes Omnibus: Well, as someone who is earning less than $15 per hour doing some pretty highly skilled work at less than full-time, “Manchin’s gonna kill us” doesn’t actually seem like hyperbole to me. YMMV

  200. 200.

    Brachiator

    @trollhattan:

    Read a description: “Millions of pages.”

    Dumpster-diving in both senses.

    From the CNN report:

    The millions of pages of documents, sources say, contain Trump’s tax returns spanning from January 2011 to August 2019, as well as financial statements, engagement agreements, documents relating to the preparation and review of tax returns, and work papers and communications related to the tax returns.

    A good team of forensic accountants might love this stuff.

    I knew someone who was on the team going after the S&L’s in the 80s. Some of the bankers would try to deluge the investigators with paper work. Bad move.

    It was like, “thanks for providing me with a thorough paper trail. I can go through this stuff and tell you where you are likely to eat breakfast next week.”

    From his past behavior, I would have thought that Trump would try to leave as little as possible for investigators to work with.

    We will see what happens.

  202. 202.

    Baud

    @lowtechcyclist:

    It’s the parliamentarian who’s initially responsible for interpreting the Byrd rule.  Manchin simply refuses to overrule the parliamentarian.  It would be interesting to see what Manchin will do if the parliamentarian decides that the minimum wage hike complies with the Byrd rule.  Would Manchin then scuttle the whole bill based on $15 wage?

  203. 203.

    JAFD

    @Ken: Back in ’71 I turned 21 and got my real estate salesman’s license (in my father’s firm), and spent most Saturday and Sunday afternoons of 1972 sitting in a sample home in a new development.  Intend, sometime this summer, to wander back, take some pics, show you young’uns what $29.990 would buy back then…

  204. 204.

    J R in WV

    @OzarkHillbilly: ​

     

    @Baud: I’ll see his $6/hr and put it up against my $1/hr. (plus tips, I made a lot of money in tips) The nontip minimum wage was $2.35, I think.

    My first job was summer vacation relief and mail boy, I was in Jr High and got $0.80/hr. The next summer it was $0.90/hr.

    By the time I worked over the summer after my freshman year in college it was ~$1.50 IIRC. But in the Navy I think I was making $90/month, plus room and board, in 1970-71.

    After we got married there was a pretty big bump for “family man” wage… Maybe $200+ a month, and Wife got a pretty good job pretty quickly.

    But Sen Thune’s $6/hr was 600% more than I made my first job.

  205. 205.

    Brachiator

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Unplugged wells, either orphaned well, which have no liable party, usually due to bankruptcy, or idle, abandoned ones, where the company has walked away, but could still be liable, cause rampant methane emissions – up to 8% of US total according to a 2014 analysis. They also leak brine, oil and fracking fluid into the groundwater, and carcinogenic gases, like benzine, into the air, and as their numbers increase the impacts grow.

    I am not automatically against some pipeline projects, or drilling, etc., but I think that clean-up costs should be built into the contracts up front. Then, if that makes the projects economically non-viable, they should not be approved.

  206. 206.

    Geminid

    @Brachiator: New York County DA Vance recently hired a former head of the Criminal Division for the U.S. Attorney, Southern District of New York. Mr. Pomerantz is considered to be an expert in the trial of financial crimes.

    And E. Jean Carroll has moved a step closer to having trump deposed in her defamation case against him. She hopes to be there when trump is questioned by her attorneys. One of them, Roberta Kaplan, is lead attorney for plaintiffs injured at Charlottesville rally of Audust 11, 2017. (They were injured in the deadly car attack, and are suing the the organizers of the rally). Kaplan also successfully represented Edith Winsor in Winsor vs. U.S.

  208. 208.

    dnfree

    @Baud: my first actual programming job in 1966 paid $1.85 an hour. There was a woman who had been there two years making the same amount, and she was ticked that I started at that wage.

  209. 209.

    Brachiator

    @rikyrah:

    A Capitol rioter texted his ex during the insurrection to call her a “moron,” feds say. She turned him in

    Hell hath no fury like the payback dealt to a traitorous asswipe like this dumbass guy.

  210. 210.

    Ken

    @JAFD: Oh, I know what $29,990 would buy back then, that was my parents’ house.  In my area when such a house goes on the market, the builders grab it, tear it down, and put up one of the Borg Cubes which seem to be the style.  There’s no such thing as a family “starter home” any more, which makes me wonder what the school districts will look like in ten years.

  211. 211.

    Brachiator

    @germy: ​
     

    New: Pornhub is telling its digital premium customers in the Orlando area, where CPAC will kickoff tomorrow, to expect major video buffering delays between today and Sunday. Plan accordingly.

    Now that is some championship level trolling.

  212. 212.

    JoyceH

    @Anne Laurie: ​
     

    To be honest (I’m planning on posting more about the Kashoggi report later today), I think releasing the report is much like the Canadian in the late-night tweet video giving that young lynx a good talking-to about not killing chickens. You don’t expect Mohammed Bone Saw to appreciate your viewpoint about the wrongness of extrajudicial murder, but you can hope to make the news sufficiently unpleasant for him that he’s deterred from trying it again — at least right away, at least against an American green-card resident.

    I dunno. It occurs to me that there might be something bigger going on. When a reporter asked Jen Psaki when the President was going to call MBS and she replied, “The president’s counterpart is King Salman”, I went – “hmm”.

    Saudi Arabia doesn’t have this cut and dried line of succession where the King’s eldest son is automatically the crown prince. MBS became the crown prince a few years ago when the king deposed Mohammed Bin Nayef as crown prince and appointed MBS in his place.

    Everybody treats MBS as the real ruler of Saudi Arabia, and he acts like he is. But he CAN be replaced. It’s happened before. And I wonder if that’s what the Biden administration is aiming for.

  213. 213.

    JoyceH

    @lowtechcyclist:  “For the moment”?  If it’s not part of this bill, when’s the moment that it can pass?

     

    The last time a minimum wage hike was passed, it was part of a “must pass” Defense Authorization Bill. Just sayin’….

  214. 214.

    Brachiator

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): ​
     

    Directed at that tweet, not you: That whole “defund the police” thing is a non-starter with a lot of people, even if it doesn’t mean getting rid of police entirely. As they say in politics, if you’re explaining you’re losing.

    People sympathetic to the cause have no problem.
    Fuck the others. They can translate “Defund the police” into “Reform the police” or whatever makes them happy.

  215. 215.

    Miss Bianca

    @Brachiator:

    I am not automatically against some pipeline projects, or drilling, etc., but I think that clean-up costs should be built into the contracts up front. Then, if that makes the projects economically non-viable, they should not be approved.

    I approve this message.

  217. 217.

    lowtechcyclist

    @JoyceH:

    The last time a minimum wage hike was passed, it was part of a “must pass” Defense Authorization Bill. Just sayin’….

    2007. Yes, I remember that.

    But the GOP was rather quiet a couple months ago when Trump threatened to kill this year’s defense bill over how he was being treated by the keepers of various social media.

    And really ever since the GOP threatened back in 2011 to default on the Federal debt, I’m not sure they’ve considered anything ‘must pass.’ They’ve already shown they’ll destroy the USA six ways from Sunday if they can’t have things the way they want.

  218. 218.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Brachiator:

    People sympathetic to the cause have no problem.
    Fuck the others. They can translate “Defund the police” into “Reform the police” or whatever makes them happy.

    It’s not on the audience to “translate” a slogan.  “Defund the police” was stupid, clear as mud and misleading if that’s not what they actually meant.

    “Abolish the police” was even stupider and more asinine.

    “Well, what ‘Defund the police’ means is…”

    Sorry kiddos.  Words actually have definitions still.  And if you have to explain a slogan or rallying cry, you’re losing.

    ETA – “Defund” is not a synonym for “reform.”

  219. 219.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Baud:

    It would be interesting to see what Manchin will do if the parliamentarian decides that the minimum wage hike complies with the Byrd rule.  Would Manchin then scuttle the whole bill based on $15 wage?

    That’s the $1.9 trillion question, isn’t it?  Because yes, he can do that. He can raise a point of order and some such – I went and read the damn Byrd Rule a week or so ago.

    But the Dems’ best bet seems to be to include it in the House bill, and make sure it’s in the version that comes out of House-Senate conference, thereby daring Manchin to blow the whole thing up at the last minute.

  221. 221.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Hyperbole much?

    OK, you tell me how a minimum wage bill passes in this Congress if it’s not part of this bill.

    You’re welcome to say the Dems will attach it to a must-pass bill, but I think it’s pretty clear that it would turn a must-pass bill into one that the GOP would regard as a must-kill bill.

  222. 222.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Omnes Omnibus:  I wish I could be so certain.  He talks like he regards the Byrd Rule as an expression of the highest principle imaginable.

    Anyhow, what I was responding to was the suggestion that the minimum wage hike wouldn’t even be in the final bill.  If it’s not there, then this whole discussion about what Manchin might or might not do if it IS there is moot.

  223. 223.

    Brachiator

    @mrmoshpotato:

    Sorry kiddos. Words actually have definitions still. And if you have to explain a slogan or rallying cry, you’re losing.

    The slogan does not have to be explained. It is not an issue to those who are truly sympathetic.

  224. 224.

    JoyceH

    @Brachiator: The slogan does not have to be explained. It is not an issue to those who are truly sympathetic.

    You’re not attempting to gain the votes of ‘those who are truly sympathetic’ – you already have them. You’re trying to convince people, many of whom only pay attention to politics maybe once every two or four years, to vote for your candidate. To that individual who doesn’t normally pay attention to politics, ‘defund the police’ is a campaign-killer. IT DOESN’T SAY WHAT YOU MEAN. It turns off the people who might be with you if you DID explain what you meant, but why would they listen? Just the slogan itself is such a turn-off (and I say that as someone who IS sympathetic) that they’re not going to be listening to you.

  225. 225.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Brachiator: 

    The slogan does not have to be explained.

    Oh, so “Defund the police” actually means defunding police departments? Cool! Bye bye police departments! Because no one’s gonna work for free (and also pay for necessary equipment with non-existent funds.)

    Again – words have definitions.

  227. 227.

    JoyceH

    @Brachiator: ​
     

    Again, this is not an issue for those who care about the issue of police brutality.

    Wrong. I care about the issue of police brutality and it’s an issue for me. I doubt that I’m alone.

    I care that you’re making a BAD slogan the hill we’re supposed to die on. It doesn’t work. It simply does. not. work.

  228. 228.

    Brachiator

    @JoyceH: 

    I care that you’re making a BAD slogan the hill we’re supposed to die on. It doesn’t work. It simply does. not. work.

    I did not come up with the slogan. Feel free to offer an alternative, 3 or 4 words max, which is just as powerful.

    In the 60s, it was sometimes “Off the Pigs!” which admittedly scared the shit out of some people.

  229. 229.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Brachiator: To quote JoyceH at 224

    IT DOESN’T SAY WHAT YOU MEAN.

    Also, everything else she said about convincing people which is what should be done. Preaching to the converted isn’t needed.

  230. 230.

    JoyceH

    @Brachiator:

     

    I did not come up with the slogan. Feel free to offer an alternative, 3 or 4 words max, which is just as powerful.

    Well, criminy, if your issue is police brutality, how about “Stop Police Brutality”? Kinda clunky, but at least it has the virtue of SAYING WHAT YOU MEAN. How about “Reform the Police”? I think that’s what you really mean by ‘defund’, but it doesn’t create the mental image of police departments empty and growing cobwebs while granny is left to the mercy of gangs and thugs. “Demilitarize the Police” is another option. There are plenty of possible slogans. A little longer might be ‘Don’t send a cop to do a social worker’s job’.

    But what I don’t get is why you are so insistent that we MUST cling to a slogan that isn’t accurate and is actually harmful to the cause you seem to care about.

    As for ‘Off the Pigs’, ask the folks who were there if that slogan helped or hurt.

  232. 232.

    Brachiator

    @JoyceH:

    But what I don’t get is why you are so insistent that we MUST cling to a slogan that isn’t accurate and is actually harmful to the cause you seem to care about.

    I am not particularly insistent. That’s why I asked for alternatives.

    As for ‘Off the Pigs’, ask the folks who were there if that slogan helped or hurt.

    The folks back then and the folks today have the same question:  Are you going to waste time getting hung up on finding the right slogan, or are you going to do something to solve the problem?

  233. 233.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Brachiator:

    The problem with this, of course, is getting enough people to vote for you to win elections and not scaring voters off. I’ve seen plenty of blue porch lights on houses the last year and it gives me the fucking creeps. May reliably blue county that hadn’t voted Republican since Nixon voted for Trump likely because of the “Defund the Police” BS

  235. 235.

    Brachiator

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    The problem with this, of course, is getting enough people to vote for you to win elections and not scaring voters off. That’s what you and others don’t seem to understand.

    It might be nice if people came up with a slogan that you approved of. I don’t have a problem with that. But what if they don’t read this blog? Neither you nor I have any control over that.

    I understand the political calculations at play here. But there are other issues as well.

    Some people cannot be moved no matter what the slogan might be.

    ETA: no offense taken.

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