Psaki to conservative reporter invoking concern by "tens of millions" that Biden isn't advancing unity for reasons including failure to meet w/House GOP leader McCarthy:
"do you think tens of millions of people are concerned about the president not meeting w/Kevin McCarthy?"
— John Harwood (@JohnJHarwood) April 26, 2021
You think ‘tens of millions’ of U.S. voters — even the Fox viewers — could pick Kevin McCarthy out of a lineup?
“The president’s view is that bringing the country together is bringing the American people together” https://t.co/aoeaJeUi7k
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 26, 2021
Kevin McCarthy refuses to answer Chris Wallace's question about whether it's true that Trump told him, "Well Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are" when McCarthy called and urged him to call off the insurrectionists on January 6 pic.twitter.com/cSYSPUs8OO
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 25, 2021
karl rove pen pal @ron_fournier (long ago blocked me) spent 8 years pushing this almost identical narrative w obama, about how he just had to meet w boehner and that would stop gop from being insane. so biden's in good company. https://t.co/YeXHvVsvDY
— Oliver Willis (@owillis) April 26, 2021
Opinion: Yes, it’s possible the GOP is worse post-Trump https://t.co/jKvKhUT9fO
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) April 26, 2021
Jen Rubin — who’d have expected this, even a year ago? — is right:
… Elected Republicans are certainly more disconnected from reality than they were in that fleeting moment after the Jan. 6 attack when they took exception to the disgraced former president’s role in fueling the insurrection. Now, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is flat-out lying about the former president’s responsibility for inciting violence, arguing that Donald Trump was unaware of events at the Capitol during a phone conversation that day and acted promptly to diffuse it. This is contrary to McCarthy’s own previous account of the phone call, as well as accounts from others, making his latest spasm of political opportunism at the expense of democracy, truth and decency all the worse…
Whether the political insanity and cruelty of elected Republicans drives the right-wing media or the right-wing media drive Republican politicians to new lows, the result is a party that refutes the basic tenets of multiracial democracy and shows zero interest in actual governance…
It would be lovely if Republicans “reformed from within,” as some nostalgic conservatives insist is possible. It would be a relief if the party responded to conservatives telling them hard truths. But if Jan. 6 only made them more deranged and Chauvin’s conviction only cemented their view that racism is nonexistent in policing, perhaps it is time to stop dreaming we can drain their cauldron of toxic lies, rampant racism and juvenile narcissism (I won’t wear a mask ’cause you’re not the boss of me!).
In this context, the media should stop bemoaning President Biden’s “failure” to find congressional Republican support for his policies. Notwithstanding Sen. Joe Manchin III’s fantastical search for reasonable Republicans, Biden is not dealing with a normal party that is capable of transactional politics or that concerns itself with the common good.
Faced with an authoritarian, irrational and racist Republican Party, Biden and congressional Democrats have no choice but to accomplish as much of their agenda as possible, try to secure some basic voting reforms and then beat back the scourge of an increasingly dangerous party in 2022. The stakes could not be higher.
Baud
Republicans saw what happened to the Democratic Party when we shunned our racist past, and they are determined not to go down that road.
debbie
Of course. I have a very clear memory of T**** meeting daily, no hourly, with the Democrats just so he could work in a bipartisan manner. Because that is just how they are.
Baud
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Between worrying about the notion of the FBI paying attention to foreign nations coordinating with white power extremists here (guess he doesn’t want them to get TOOclose to home) and the tyranny of mask mandates, Glenn has a few words to throw about regarding Joe Biden wearing a mask:
MattF
No, it’s not a mystery. Republicans view and have viewed ‘bipartisanship’ as Democrats offering Republicans an opportunity to kill off Democratic proposals. You can ask Obama about that. And Biden was actually present and watching when that happened and so, no, he’s not going to fall into that particular trap.
Ten Bears
A regular thing at my house, Tuesday Throw Them Out. This week’s version, published Monday, reads
Gonna’ keep shouting it ’till someone listens: THROW THEM OUT ~
Newsmax is not a news organization. OAN is not a news organization. Fox … is not a news organization. The Christian Broadcasting Network IS NOT A NEWS ORGANIZATION. They’re not reporters, not journalists reporting in the public interest. They have no business at your press briefings. Throw. Them. Out.
They’re NAZIs … Deport them
MisterForkbeard
@debbie: Right? We just came off of the most famously partisan president ever, one who literally called Democrats “losers” in presidential Christmas messages. And McCarthy is spending his time actively promoting Trump’s view that Biden literally stole the election.
Maybe Biden should say that he would be happy to meet with McCarthy, but he thinks it wouldn’t be too helpful until McCarthy stops promoting insurrection.
Baud
NYT
MisterForkbeard
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
It’s amazing how consistently wrong Greenwald is. #1 isn’t a problem. #2 aren’t people that are influenced by Biden, but are instead influenced by people like Greenwald and Tucker Carlson who actively push against mask wearing.
But he knows this. The guy has been a professional troll for decades.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
I’ll give Rubin credit, she’s taking aim at “nostalgic conservatives”, basically, the historic water carriers for the modern GOP like David Fucking Brooks, et. al.
I’m one of these people who still look at water carriers like Rubin thru driftglass’s “Republican Detachment Disorder” thesis but gotta admit that she’s been consistent over the last couple of years. Which is why she’s dropped off my tumbrel list.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Baud:
Those audits do a lot more than generate tax revenues. They:
1. Inspire a redirection of personal and business revenues into more beneficial investments and uses which actually strengthen the economy and redistribute wealth downward. This inspiration not only includes the target, but also the target’s family, friends and associates.
2. Can help reveal large-scale frauds in the public, as bad practices are revealed and referred to the SEC, FBI, etc.
Baud
p.a.
2+ weeks after my 2nd shot so I’m planning my return to Planet Fitness, where the TVs are statically tuned to CNN, CNBC, and Fox (maybe MSNBC too) so I can do my scan of “what planet is Fox describing today?” Of course I get that flavor online here elsewhere, but the real-time view is patheticdisgustingdisturbinghorrifying. (Could use English being more like German for these types of thoughts.)
Actually went 2 days ago, but wore wrong mask: soft rectangular pleated 2 layer cotton with nosewire. That style gives good coverage for me but once I started breathing hard is sucked right into my mouth & nostrils. I’ll try the oval rigid mask next time.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Also too, this is another episode of the Jen Psaki game where you add those three important (inside) words at the end of one of her great retorts:
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Baud:
I heard that COVID attacks the victim’s tendons in the trigger finger and makes the hands too weak and stiff to carry or operate a firearm.
debbie
@MisterForkbeard:
Yes, I agree. Democrats should be more vocal about the GOP’s seditious tendencies. I know Nancy’s spoken out, but the entire Caucus needs to.
Baud
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
We only want the undiseased in our well-regulated militia.
Wag
Give Jen credit. Throughout the TFG’s presidency she has been a voice of sanity on the right. She hates TFG and all that he stands for with a burning intent equal to any reasonable jackal.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone ???
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
rikyrah
Nobody gives two phucks if 46 EVER meets with McCarthy.
We have seen this bullshyt ?
And,.no, we aren’t going down this road again ??
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Baud:
Ubermann!
debbie
Jen, if they didn’t change their ways after Obama, it’ll never ever happen now. The GOP is nothing more than the Party of Pathological Liars at this point. Not sure it’s much of a long-term strategy, but keep it going, boys! //
germy
Tens of millions fox news fans can’t be wrong.
Kay
“The President’s view is…”
Biden has an opinion on the importance of meeting with Kevin McCarthy and the reporter has a different opinion. They can keep asking the same “question” hoping to get Biden to change his view but I don’t think they’ll be successful.
As usual, they have the rigidly conventional view of what “the American people think” but Biden seems to be going in another direction and surely more than one view is permitted.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Doesn’t Greenwald live in Brazil? I would think he has more immediate concerns with the virus.
germy
The Former Guy Court
“Originalist Bot activated!”
germy
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Greenwald was on Glenn Beck’s show recently. He made Beck almost look like the reasonable one.
Keith P.
@MisterForkbeard: And he lectures us on the tyranny of masks from Brazil of all places.
Geminid
@Wag: Rubin is not alone on the right. The self-described conservatives at Bearing Drift have been resolutely anti-trump. I have found Bearing Drift to be a particularly good source for reporting on the Virginia GOP’s floundering efforts to nominate a candidate in this year’s Governor’s race. Their “unassembled convention” is to be held at 37 locations on May 8.
germy
Maybe I’ve become overly suspicious, but this looks fake to me:
rikyrah
@Keith P.:
The irony cannot be lost ??
germy
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Also, it’s been shown McCarthy is utterly incapable of leading his own caucus. Even if the House flips in 2022 McCarthy will still have to cut deals with the Democrats just to get anything done because the Republicans refuse to vote yes on even the bills they want. There is no point for Biden in wasting his time with McCarthy.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
yesterday, Jake Tapper was bemoaning Biden damaging bipartisanship by not wavering from his $2 trillion dollar infrastructure bill. Vichey is a hellva drug.
NotMax
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
“There’s an app for that.”
//
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Baud: Good for WV
@p.a.: The cafe in my building has FOX on most of the time. Even a short time with it makes my heart pump faster, so maybe it’ll do you good at the gym.
I blogged about writing the blurb on the back cover of The Trickster. I’m bad at it. Luckily, my editor was better. And her intern blew us both out of the water. We should have gone to her first.
germy
https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2021/04/26/new-york-city-department-of-correction-rebecca-hillman-ryan-wilson-suicide-rikers-island/
NotMax
@Enhanced Voting Techniques
California loses one House seat in 2022. May that one be McCarthy’s.
;)
Kay
@germy:
What’s been really notable on the Right with covid is their completely ignoring all the dead people.
It’s really something if you think about it. They go out of their way to ignore the millions of deaths. Fox has done months of covid whining about masks and the bodies were piling up the whole time.
570,000 people died in the US due to this virus. Putting aside whether they “care”, personally, about those people or not it’s surely “news” and they all but pretended it didn’t happen. There’s this giant hole in their coverage of covid and it’s all the dead people.
NotMax
@Dorothy A. Winsor
Clear violation by the governing board of the Eighth Amendment.
;)
PenAndKey
@Wag: Maybe it’s just the knowledge that John was a republican who went through the same process pretty much right before I started reading here, but I haven’t seen anything from Jen they wouldn’t be at home here. Many of us are more liberal than her, but she’s right with us in her open disdain for the modern GOP and I’m glad to see she’s still got a place in the national media discourse.
germy
@PenAndKey:
They must be worried though. They hired her to repeat republican talking points, and now she’s gone against script.
rikyrah
Glenn Kirschner (@glennkirschner2) Tweeted:
Biden isn’t brash, he isn’t boastful. He simply is delivering. As @StevenBeschloss relates: “the number of COVID deaths in the US has dropped from 4,380 people on the day Biden took office to about 700 people a day now.” THAT is a tribute to Biden and an indictment of Trump. https://twitter.com/glennkirschner2/status/1387013795181211650?s=20
germy
They’d only care if it could be used as a weapon against their opposition.
If HRC had won in ’16, Fox would have become the COVID channel… giant graphics of daily death numbers. But it happened when their guy was in. So therefore it’s no big thing.
Soprano2
Jen Psaki is so good at what she does. All press spokespeople should study her. It’s a lot harder to do that than she makes it look. I’d love to see the “Psaki anger translator” on SNL or some other comedy show.
rikyrah
???
2RawTooReal ?? (@2RawTooReal) Tweeted:
Dr. Umar Johnson is purposely misleading black people in regards to What Joe Biden & Kamala Harris have actually done ✅ since they took office. He’s counting on your inability to fact check & understand how government works to stop ? you from getting politically involved. https://t.co/md8hem1qk7 https://twitter.com/2RawTooReal/status/1386757442822938624?s=20
Soprano2
I think they believe it was mostly Democrats who died from Covid, so for them it doesn’t matter. Besides, if they told everyone about the deaths it would make their message about masks and distancing being bad look stupid. The worst thing is that it seems most of the prominent Republicans who got Covid got mild cases, and the ones who were really sick like Chris Christie are Republicans Fox ignores. It sounds like Trump got a serious case but they hid that fact. This makes them think more than ever that Covid isn’t really serious.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: Hence, I have “Pro-Life my ass” on the back of my truck.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Do the Mercers first!
@Wag: Agreed. I hate-read Rubin for years and viewed her conversion with extreme suspicion, but now I regard her as the most righteous of the Never Trumpers.
Cacti
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Is there any topic on which GG isn’t the world’s expert? /s
Ken
@germy: I preferred the response “I’ve seen more realistic workplace safety videos,” but it’s a matter of taste.
Ken
There’s an implicit “because it will pay for itself twenty times over, the lousy cheats” lurking there. It might even be stated in the article, but paywalls.
I will say that the one time I was audited, it was a pleasant enough experience and the auditor was very polite. I imagine it helped that I’d made photocopies of all the checks and electronic transfer records, pre-sorted by category of giving.
Betty Cracker
@Soprano2: She really is so good at her job. It’s the little things that make Psaki’s delivery work so well: the subtle eyebrow arch and polite yet bemused expression as she repeats a propagandist’s loaded question back to him, inviting viewers to marvel at the stupidity of it.
Subtext: you think anyone gives a shit that Biden hasn’t met with Kevin Fucking McCarthy? Really?!?
Tony Jay
Over here on the shores of Fiddle-Earth it certainly looks like a critical mass of the financial interests that own the Tory Party have come to the conclusion that, with The Great British Brexit an established boot on the throat of the UK’s workers and the NHS doing sterling work pulling the Government’s exposed knackerjacks out of the Covid fire, they’ve probably squeezed all of the electoral mileage they can out of Flobalob Johnson’s ‘Roly-Poly Rascal with Rumpy-Pumpy Ways’ act and have therefore authorised the drawing and inserting of multiple knives into his wine-soaked carapace.
Leakers have started trashing him to their chums in the corporate media, which is par for the course where Tories and their internal feuds are concerned, but those chums have actually stared filing articles on the trashing rather than keeping it all on the down-low as ‘background’ for their inevitable tell-all books, which is wildly out of character for our doormat Press where their good friend ‘Boris’ is concerned and proof positive that his days of sloth and gluttony are definitely numbered. Word must have gone out from the paramount thrones of media power that the dense protective cordon erected around the Bullingdon Bully long before he won the Tory Party leadership is no longer in effect, leaving political editors across the Infotainment industry aquiver with anticipation over yet another Tory Party coronation.
As to the actual allegations themselves (always secondary in importance to the narrative they’re used to support) it’s being reported as multi-sourced and credibly witnessed that Johnson was overheard around the time of the 2nd National Lockdown angrily refusing to consider the possibility of ordering a 3rd Lockdown, regardless of the scientific advice, saying that he would rather “see bodies pile high in their thousands”. He’s denying it, of course, but he’s also denying –
That there’s anything vaguely sleazy (that’s the word of the moment, ‘sleaze’, so redolent of mid-90s Tory vileness while steering public feeling away from the much more accurate but unsettling ‘criminal corruption’) about his secret text conversations with James ‘I love Brexit Britain so much that I moved my entire vacuum-cleaner production line to the Far East so I can still profit from trade deals with the evil EU’ Dyson about cutting the beardie billionaire some juicy tax incentives as part of the contracts he was gifted to produce ventilators (which his company didn’t, couldn’t and, eventually, still didn’t, because vacuum cleaners and medical ventilators are, like, totally different things) while ignoring repeated offers from actual ventilator producing companies that weren’t owned by Tory donors or friends of Cabinet members. Totally normal, nothing to see here, as evidenced by the current line of chaff being deployed by today’s interchangeable Tory talking-head arguing that Johnson’s detractors have a problem with the medium (texting = new-fangled and trendy comms platform that those fuddy-duddy losers just don’t get, bro) and not the message (Bozo never met a billionaire he wouldn’t bare buttocks for).
That far from being surprised, outraged and intractably opposed to the very idea of a breakaway Super League as he told absolutely everyone last week, Johnson actually had a meeting in Downing Street with Ed ‘Shrunken Head’ Woodward, the (now former) Chief Executive of Manchester United Football Club PLC just a couple of days before the SL was announced. What could they possibly have had to talk about? Not the dramatic example of unrestricted greed and corporate arseholishness that would so dominate the headlines a couple of days later, that’s for sure. Why, the very thought is an outrageous insult to the character and credibility of…. uh…. ah… ummmmm….. let’s move on.
That anyone but our poor, wee poverty-stricken church-mouse of a Prime Minister paid for the recent refurbishment of the living areas above 11 Downing Street into a cross between a Turkish brothel and the reduced section in IKEA. Certainly not rich Party donors, despite it being reported that donations for such were actually solicited. That would arguably be bribery, after all. No, no, Johnson paid for it all himself. What’s that? He paid for it ‘himself’ via a loan from Tory Central Office? That’s that answered then, isn’t it? I mean, there’s no suggestion that Tory Central Office was just the middleman for a corrupt donation from a rich Party donor, is there? Of course not. Just listen to the parade of minor Cabinet drones happy to tell the BBC and assorted other News outlets that they have no idea where Johnson got the money from but they’re sure he was telling the truth when he said whatever he said….. crystal clear now, yes?
It’s almost delicious that the source of the “pile up the bodies” quote might be Dominic Cummings, the Megamind-lookalike and semi-professional sociopath who Benedict Cumberbatch’s portrayal made look like slightly less of a highly-effective Russian intelligence asset responsible for masterminding the pro-Brexit social media campaign of 2016 and more like a head-in-the-clouds blameless boffin. Cummings was Johnson’s handler/dragon up until he was somehow forced out due to a conflict with Johnson’s latest mistress (sorry, what’s the proper Media gloss? ‘Loving partner’? ‘Influential girlfriend’? Something like that). It was always a known-known that Cummings remained close to Johnson’s ex-chum and current (totally invisible) Northern Ireland Secretary, Michael ‘Sockpuppet’ Gove, and through Gove to his ultimate master Rupert Murdoch, so Cummings slipping the scalpel into Johnson’s hide isn’t exactly a dramatic twist. What makes it funny in a blackly comic way is that most of the Hoi Polloi will know Cummings best for his overt breaking of the first Lockdown this time last year and the humiliating way every single member of Johnson’s Cabinet rejected observable reality in order to protect Obvious Putinist Asset from facing any consequences. Now the same Cabinet lackies are trying to suggest that no one sensible believes a word that crazy rotter Cummings says, and it’s not working. When the BBC’s Chief Political Propagandist Laura Kuenssberg (think a blonde Maggie Halberman with a career-defining fetish for naughty public schoolboys in blue rosettes) has abandoned her in-your-face crush on Johnson to act as Cummings’ pukefunnel, it doesn’t take a political genius to read the tealeaves.
All that said, the Tories are obviously hoping that they can offload Johnson with all the responsibility for everything stuffed into the pockets of his ill-fitting suit jacket. Brexit, corruption, cronyism, 150,000 plus dead of Covid, everything. Not us, Guvnor, it was the fat TV celebrity wot done it, Vote Conservative for a Fresh Start. I’m sure the British Media will bend over like the spineless salarymen they are to help them do it, and it’s hard to see Labour’s incompetent throwbacks mustering any kind of compelling anti-Tory narrative out of it since their entire ‘policy platform’ consists of Hippy Punching and doing whatever they think the pro-Tory Press will find least objectionable, and doing even that incredibly badly, but you have to take your pleasures where you can in the Franchised Oblast of Brexitannia Minor, and seeing the expression on Flobalob’s face when it finally sinks in that he’s not going to be able to smirk his way out of it this time will be…. nice.
Maybe. We’ll see what happens. I’m hoping for retaliatory blow-back all the way down the pipe. Chew each other to pieces you dinner-party fascist fucktards, I’ll be in the garden with a beer.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@OzarkHillbilly: Holy cow, you have nerve
Ken
He’s somewhat underinformed about the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Jeffro
That Rubin piece is good (as always), Psaki is totes awesome, and there almost can’t be enough auditing of high-income earners in this country.
They really need to hustle up with that Jan 6th commission. This country is in grave danger until the insurrectionists (including their tour-giving, attack-coordinating allies in Congress) are very publicly charged, tried, and put away.
Jeffro
WaPo: Kevin McCarthy shows why the country (desperately) needs a Jan 6th commission.
Someone get this clown (and so many, many others) testifying under oath, STAT:
The Vice President’s life (and that of the VP’s family!) is in danger at the Capitol, they’ve all been hustled to a secure location…and the first trumpov hears of the violent rioting is Kevin McCarthy’s phone call?
John S.
Fuck the media and their bullshit narratives they try to invent.
Joe Biden 100 days: Does Donald Trump also deserve credit for vaccine?
Simple answer. NO.
Soprano2
I saw one of the new “outrages” making the rounds in right-wing circles on FB this morning – did you know the state of Virginia is going to get rid of all advanced math classes below grade 11 in the name of “equality”? Does that sound like made-up bullshit to you? Congratulations, you’re smarter than most conservatives, who will automatically share something like that without bothering to do a 5 second Google search to find out if it’s actually true. In this case, it’s based on something one guy wrote on his Facebook page, but they’re copying and pasting it as if it’s the gospel truth! When I replied with a link to the WaPo story about it, I commented “why do people feel the need to make up stuff to be outraged about?”.
Soprano2
I always tell them that Trump deserves credit for doing what literally any other president would also have done. That’s it. Sometimes I remind them that Trump thought injecting disinfectant into the body might have been a legitimate way to treat Covid.
OzarkHillbilly
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I haven’t kept the death talley up to date, it is stuck on the number dead when Biden took over.
As far as my truck, I’ve been provoking Republican voters with it ever since the Michael Brown marchers to Jeff City were harassed by the fine citizenry of Rosebud MO in 2014. Fuck ’em. If they don’t like it, they can look away. When I started this, I fully expected to lose some glass*. I still do, but it hasn’t happened yet. I have gotten some looks, and I once got hate honked, but all the comments to my face have been positive.
* my son took note of the fact that when I park at river accesses and conservation areas, I always pull in with my ass to the trees. No sense in making it easy for them.
OzarkHillbilly
@Jeffro: I can’t wait for the moment McCarthy tries to claim the 5th. It will be the TV we’ve all been waiting for.
Soprano2
Can a CA Juicer explain to us how this recall works? It’s been a long time, but what I remember is that the question of whether or not to recall the governor is on the same ballot as all the candidates who are running to replace him. Is that right? That seems nuts to me.
John S.
@Soprano2: And then in response we hear “argle, bargle, WARP SPEED!!!”
Except all that did was fast track FDA emergency approval and make it easier to get vaccines to market. It did nothing to address the supply chain, distribution or actually getting the fucking vaccine into people’s arms.
It’s just getting so exhausting living in a world devoid of facts.
Just One More Canuck
@John S.: Once Trump starts taking the blame for killing hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people through his dismissive, bigoted approach to the pandemic (that gave carte blanche to assholes like Bolsonaro to do the same), he might get some slight credit for not actively blocking the development of the vaccine
Betty Cracker
@Tony Jay:
LMAO! Kind of on-topic, I listened to a Marc Maron interview with Hugh Grant the other day in which Grant patiently explained to Maron that the UK is actually run by about five newspaper barons.
different-church-lady
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: The first item isn’t a reality, never mind a “major” problem.
Jeffro
Btw if anyone needs a good chuckle and doesn’t mind clicking over to That Paper, one of the editors of Reason Magazine (“the leading libertarian magazine!”) has an op-ed* up and, um, yeah:
The Republican Party is Failing In Too Many Ways
hoo boy, tell us about it, Mr. Suderman…
Oh, I disagree with that, Pete. They most definitely have an idea of who government should be for, and who it should keep
under its bootin check.And why is that, Pete? Could it be that for 40+ years, GQP voters have basically been told government is the problem/is not coming to help them/only exists to funnel benefits to the unworthy? Also, have GQP voters gotten anything (economically speaking, I mean) for their votes? Anything at all? No? Then why should that motivate them or cause them to care about economic policy?
Does this have to be a ‘quandary’? In an advanced and wealthy modern society, why would we be arguing extremely polar positions on things like paid sick leave, public preK, etc? Most reasonable people would agree on these things, and we’d just be sorting through the variations. Right? Or perhaps this is what happens when batshit Randians, racists, and religious nuts take over one party – we’re not talking ‘variations’, we’re talking Italian vs tire rims n’ anthrax.
And here is where he just goes right off the Cliff of Complete Misunderstanding: the GQP doesn’t need a theory of economic policy and legislation to critique Democrats. It can’t: its entire economic policy has consisted of handing the 1% a nuclear-powered cash vacuum and letting them run it on full tilt over our economic carpet for four decades.
Where’s the audience for any sort of blessed “GQP economic policy”, for Pete’s (literally!) sake? There is none.
Which raises the question (and obvious answer): if the GQP’s not bothering to make economic arguments, Pete, what are they using to motivate and rally their voters?
Quit trying to get them to care about blessed economic policy, and start giving them both barrels over how they’ve betrayed their own voters and country.
*btw That Paper’s calling them “guest essays” now, since in this digital age, nothing is really “opposite the editorial page” anymore ;)
Another Scott
@Soprano2: It’s what they do. We can’t have policy disagreements any more, because they always lose on policy and they know it. They win by ginning up outrage in their supporters – it’s all they have. Their opponents aren’t wrong, they’re evil and godless and subhuman. And they’ll keep being this way until it stops working.
HTH!!
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
different-church-lady
@Cacti: Humility?
Chief Oshkosh
@Baud: Finally. AFAIC, the IRS should spend ALL of it’s effort pursuing the top 0.1%ers. Like Sullivan the bank robber said: That’s where the money is.
PST
@Soprano2:
Obviously she has put a lot of thought into what exactly it is she is trying to accomplish every day. I’ll bet her team and her bosses have done so as well. She’s brilliant at executing the strategy, but it helps that there is a strategy. Everything she does with the right wing media seems aimed at making their questions and her answers uninteresting. This can mean avoiding zingers. The snark, when it is there at all, is dry and understated. If she got mad, or she stopped calling on them, or she responded with obvious sarcasm, that would be news. It would play on their outlets and be noted (probably with joy) on MSNBC and others. She turns them into mere irritants and nuisances. In contrast, the only strategy her predecessors followed was to try to please TFG. Even if what they were saying and doing undermined their boss and his objectives, they made sure to say what they thought would make him happy. Which is, of course, what they had to do keep their jobs and maintain a glidepath toward lucrative post-administration employment.
different-church-lady
Psaki Is a human buzzsaw, and reporters just keep walking in to her.
Spanky
@Chief Oshkosh: That was Willie Sutton.
/pedant
Chief Oshkosh
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
I think you’d capture more of your target market if you point out that for those same reasons, COVID makes masturbation nearly impossible.
Betty
@Tony Jay: That is not a pretty picture. It’s hard to see how the UK finds its way forward with that political mess.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Jeffro: This is brilliantly put
Ken
Have you even tried?
BTW does anyone have experience using change.org? I am thinking of creating a petition to make Tony Jay a front-pager.
Tony Jay
@Betty Cracker:
Yup. The truth of this is underscored by the repetitive honking from the usual subjects about how accusations of media bias are “conspiracy theories” and there being no correlation between public attitudes to political figures and how those figures are represented in the Press.
All those successful revolutionaries, coupists and dictators who went balls out to ensure their command of the airwaves and printing presses were obviously “doing it wrong”. (eyeroll)
Other MJS
But Obama did meet with Boehner.
https://youtu.be/dPVcGpNz4oA?t=75
Ken
See Betty Cracker above. If she’s correct*, “forward” will be whatever the five newspaper barons decide, and they’ll make sure all public discussion is framed in their terms.
* EDIT: And I see Tony Jay agrees, so we can assume she’s correct. This does reveal a missing word in the English lexicon; what would “government by newspaper baron” be? “Ephemeridocracy”?
Another Scott
@Other MJS: But my gut tells me he didn’t, so … [/Colbert]
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
Tony Jay
@Betty:
Immediate legislation to break-up media monopolies, beef up the remit and authority of the Press Complaints and Monopolies and Mergers Commissions, sack every executive installed at the BBC during the last ten years, establish and fund a huge social media operation to inform the public on the issues of the day, lure Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch to a quiet lay-by with the lure of a meal of freshly removed infant hearts and garotte the pair of them, carving ‘consequences’ on each of their foreheads so they don’t die confused.
That might work. For a bit.
Tony Jay
@Ken:
Absolutely no chance. That’s hard work.
WereBear
@Tony Jay: I love your stuff, Tony Jay!
And glad I never bought a Dyson vacuum.
Jeffro
@Dorothy A. Winsor: thanks! I will award myself a half-Betty (at most) – she is the queen of the artfully insightful political metaphor!
Tony Jay
@WereBear:
Me too!
I mean the vacuum cleaner.
Ruckus
@MisterForkbeard:
I’m not sure Greenwald actually does know or is that smart.
He’s basically a contrarian, making waves and garnering attention for calling out people with bullshit. Has he ever actually been correct about anything? Or does he always twist facts to suit his attention grabbing? I’m going with #2.
laura
@Soprano2: I’ll take a run at this – the recall is the second time in recent memory that the losing party is attempting to nullify the election, and how we ended up with a Governor Schwarzenegger. The ballot has two parts; the first of which is recall Newsom yes or no. The second is which candidate do you vote for to replace him.
It is of a piece with the GQP refusal to countenance the legitimacy of the democratic party. I voted for the workhorse John Chaing – and hope he runs again when Gav’s term ends, but I’ll be voting no on the recall and voting for Newsom on that ballot. Fuck these republican fuckers and the money and time wasted on this bullshit.
Tony Jay
@WereBear:
Deleted
Villago Delenda Est
The “reporter” in question is a jackhole from the Pat Robertson jeebofascist propaganda channel.
Soprano2
@laura: Thanks, that’s how I thought it worked but that seems crazy to me. It seems like first you should have the recall vote, and only if the vote is to recall him should there then be an election where other people run. It seems confusing to me to have the recall and all the candidates on the same ballot. I remember when they recalled Davis – that was a crazy election!
Zelma
@Tony Jay:
I love your insights into British politics. The Tory Party today resembles nothing so much as the royal court, king and nobles, during the reign of Charles II who were in the pay of Louis XIV.
Tony Jay
@Zelma:
Couldn’t agree more, and that’s exactly how the people running things want it.
We could have had better, but the Establishment and those who desperately want to climb up its greasy poles decided otherwise.
laura
@Soprano2: It is crazy, and there shouldn’t be a recall unless/until an elected official has violated the law, committed a crime or done something. This recall has no justification though its proponents have made word like sounds about some stuff. As goes CA, so goes the nation and it is not at all hard to find hundreds of examples of defying the will of the electorate by the GQP in every state. Keep you eye on Cleta Mitchell who is the devil’s minion behind much of this.
different-church-lady
@Ruckus: He’s a troll. But he’s so much better at being a troll than most that he’s managed to made a very public media career from it.
rikyrah
@Tony Jay:
I love your dispatches from across the pond :)
smith
@Tony Jay: I know you’re not a fan of the Gruniad, but I was struck today by its report from Tory sources of BoJo being ‘isolated and at risk of becoming uncontrollable.’ It sounded exactly like a typical Last Days narrative, very similar to what we were hearing about TFG in Dec and Jan. I’m assuming, however, that BoJo lacks the ability to call upon a mob of yahoos to storm Westminster.
artem1s
@NotMax:
Ohio will also lose a seat. No chance it will be one of the Cult45ers. I’m hoping there is a full congressional or DOJ investigation into the TFG handling of the census. No way in hell was everyone counted in blue states. I’ll be surprised if the ACLU or Southern Poverty Law center doesn’t file a lawsuit too. Just look at the map. Colorado and FL gaining a seat is maybe believable, but Montana? Ohio was a tad over 11K short, wanna bet which areas were undercounted?
JustRuss
Late to the party, but just want to say how much I love Psaki’s “Let me accurately rephrase your question to point out how incredibly stupid it is” routine.
Another Scott
@artem1s: Things will be shuffled more if/when DC and maybe PR become states. DC would presumably get 1-2 House seats (like WY), PR has roughly 2.9 M so would presumably get 2-4 seats. Dunno about the timeline for making that happen. Let’s see…
Hawaii Admission Act was enacted March 1959 and Hawaii was admitted in August 1959.
Hawaii and Alaska each had one member in the House (bringing the total to 437) until the 1960 Census and reapportionment. Interesting – that would imply the best time to admit new states is just before a Census but we really don’t want to wait another 8+ years… :-(
Cheers,
Scott.
Tony Jay
@smith:
The Guardian – can – do better, my problem is that it chooses not to and is entirely hypocritical in the way it operates.
Sure they’ll slag off Johnson, it’s what their readership wants and anonymous, source-focussed politics by gossip is soooooo easy to do, but they’ll also fellate the wing-wang out of equally scummy vermin like Rishi Sunak, pretending that he’s a genuine prospect for the PM slot even though the Conservative Party will never, ever, vote for a dusky type to lead them, and without ever admitting that one of the main reasons they like him is because the Guardian’s hedge-Fund owners would really like to have a soulless banker top of the heap.
Grrrrrr, feckem.
Tony Jay
@rikyrah:
I live to serve. And I vent to live. 8-)
Pennsylvanian
@Kay: I also really wonder how all the dead are going to affect future elections. For a lot of places in the country, statewide elections tend to have pretty thin margins, don’t they? Take 40 or 50 thousand out of the totals in some states and it could tip the balance.
I don’t know if it is true, but I speculate that republicans have been more likely to contract and die of COVID because they are fucking idiots who take their medical advice from TFG.
I guess it’s pretty rude and grim to speculate on this at all, and maybe too soon, but I do wonder what the long term political cost of COVID could be when anti-maskers and some of the cohorts that lean GOP seem to be much more willing to “take the COVID challenge.”
Steeplejack
Goddamn, I wish someone covering these press conferences—looking at you, Aaron Rupar, since you seem to do it a lot—would identify by name and organization the hacks asking these bullshit questions. Name ’em and shame ’em.
Elizabelle
@PST: re your comment on TFG’s “press secretaries” and their blustering and lying their asses off to keep him happy:
Except: they turn out to be unemployable. Except for Fox News (the Kayleigh creature), so we can make that “unemployable at any reputable organization.”
Surprise!
bnateAZ
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Greenwald is insufferable
J R in WV
@Tony Jay:
Dear Tony:
I must confess my adoration for your writing style with regard to Brexittanian governmental affairs and mis-steps over the past few years. Another great screed revealing details not obvious to we poor colonials across the pond~!~
I hope you plan to bind all these posts together with transition words in order to create a book about the snakes (aka fascist Tories) currently stealing the British peoples’ birthrights, because that would be a best seller for sure.
Keep up the good work over there, while we are working on a recovery over here, until our own Fascist thieves manage to steal another election.
Have you been vaccinated at all yet? If you have been, you should be warned that you can’t teach in some private (public in B=GB) schools being mis-managed by Trumpian fabricators of Vaccine lies. Even if your new tail didn’t come in, nor a third eye either.
Best wishes, from the colonies.
J R in WV
@Chief Oshkosh:
OMG~!~ Really?!? Thank Dog I’m vaccinated~!!!~ ;~)
Tony Jay
@J R in WV:
As ever, JR, you’re too kind. Glad you enjoy the venting, it certainly helps me stay sane…. ish.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: I have a vague recollection that we are REQUIRED to do the census every
410 years but that it can be done outside of the timeframe, as well.I do not recall details, and it’s possible that I may have this wrong.
edit: 4 was a typo, I knew it was 10.
the pollyanna from hell
@WaterGirl: 10, not 4
WaterGirl
@the pollyanna from hell: Thanks. I knew that, 4 was a typo.