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Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

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

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

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

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

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Technically true, but collectively nonsense

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You are here: Home / Politics / Biden Administration in Action / Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Why Is It Always *Democrats* Who Have to Be the Grown-Ups?

Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Why Is It Always *Democrats* Who Have to Be the Grown-Ups?

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This post is in: , , , , ,

For better…

Or worse.

(Answer: Because the GOP, under ‘Leader’ McConnell, has gone full Death Cult — and their media enablers refuse to call them on it.)

Good (exasperating!) explainer:

Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Why Is It Always *Democrats* Who Have to Be the Grown-Ups?
(Nick Anderson via GoComics.com)

Reader Interactions

91Comments

  3. 3.

    Nicole

    I’m not tired of Democrats always having to be the grownups, but I am very tired of Republicans NEVER being them.

  5. 5.

    NotMax

    re: one of the items mentioned above, a sponsorship of strange bedfellows.

    …on the 10-year anniversary of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy repeal, US Senators Brian Schatz (D-HI), Joni Ernst (R-IA) and Todd Young (R-IN) reintroduced the Restore Honor to Service Members Act.

    The bipartisan legislation corrects the military records of service members discharged solely due to their sexual orientation to reflect their honorable service and reinstate the benefits they earned, building on Sen. Schatz’s 2020 National Defense Authorization Act amendment that turned the Department of Defense’s temporary process for service members to correct their records into permanent law.
    [snip]
    In the US House of Representatives, companion legislation was introduced by US Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI) and has more than 60 cosponsors. Source

  10. 10.

    John S.

    Instead of going after Lucy for being an asshole, the media wants to know why Charlie Brown is flat on his back again.

  13. 13.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    Here’s something to get your blood pressure going this morning.

     

    The Tennessee state government now recommends vaccinated residents be denied access to monoclonal antibody treatment to preserve supplies for those who are unwilling to get vaccinated and remain most vulnerable by their own choice. A new story from me: https://t.co/ikH6rPKfco— Brett Kelman (@BrettKelman) September 21, 2021

  16. 16.

    rikyrah

    The problem isn’t that the Democrats need to be grown-ups.

    That is who we are

    The problem is the MSM pretending that the other side is.anything other than a bunch of sociopaths.

  23. 23.

    Betty Cracker

    The grown-up vs. tantrum-throwing, mess-making toddler analogy hints at the situation but doesn’t accurately describe it. It’s more like a grown-up with three limbs numbed by malicious Novocaine injections fighting a dozen Damien-toddler clones from The Omen (plus their Rottweilers!) for control of a plane that’s in an alarming nosedive while a full complement of passengers complain about having to wear masks and the lack of speedy beverage service.

  27. 27.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    I just saw mention of a book called Fifteen Dogs that BJers might like. Caution: I haven’t read it. Here’s the quick summary I just read.

    The premise is a strange one: Hermes and Apollo are hanging out in a bar debating whether animals would live happily if they had human intelligence and consciousness. So they decide to go to a dog shelter and give the dogs there (15 of them) human consciousness and see what happens.

    The story then follows these dogs as they deal with their new awareness of existence.

  30. 30.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @rikyrah: The problem is the MSM pretending that the other side is.anything other than a bunch of sociopaths.

    What she said. And it’s not the MSM, it’s their own base that refuses to hold the GOP to account when it fails to govern.

  31. 31.

    Soprano2

    So, is the play here that Republicans are trying to force Democrats to burn their reconciliation bill for this year on the debt ceiling limit? I wish Democrats would pass a law eliminating this stupid kabuki dance; it used to be that when a bill authorized spending, it was automatic under the law and didn’t have to be “re-authorized” again and again by raising the artificial debt ceiling. I wonder if they’ll try to get a filibuster carve out for this, under the theory that it’s fiscally irresponsible to default on the debt or shut down the government.

  32. 32.

    Nicole

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Not saying Tennessee isn’t being terrible in their Covid handling in general, but monoclonal antibody treatment isn’t generally recommended for vaccinated people anyway (other than those who are already immunocompromised, or are very elderly), so I’m curious what the actual text of the recommendation says (the article was behind a paywall).  It’s great clickbait, but it might actually be TN just following the established guidelines.

    https://www.webmd.com/vaccines/covid-19-vaccine/news/20210826/monoclonal-antibodies-vs-vaccines-vs-covid-19

  38. 38.

    Jeffro

    @raven: that’s funny, I was listening to them on the way in to work today!  A mix of stuff from ‘Monster’ forward.  Very trippy!

  40. 40.

    Kropacetic

    Disappointed too many times by promises they’d be raptured into heaven, the pseudo-Christian Cult of Republicanism took matters into their own hands…

  41. 41.

    Jeffro

    @Betty Cracker: half of the passengers are complaining about the masks and beverage service…the other half are unbuckling their seat belts and are about to clobber the Damien clones

    (or so I hope, circa November 2022 & November 2024)

  43. 43.

    Kropacetic

    @Skepticat: But the teeVee told me that Republicans were the big adult businessmen and Democrats were whiny students, pointy headed academics who never saw the world outside a book, and assorted panhandlers.

  46. 46.

    Woodrow/asim

    @Soprano2: They want Biden to fail, they don’t care about the damage it does to people.

    You’re right. They are less vocal than with Obama, yet the goal remains the same.

    And COVID underlines they’re willing them harm anyone who’s not one of “their people,” to get to that goal.

  47. 47.

    WereBear

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Male ALWAYS is more important than female in patriarchal minds. Somehow.

    It’s why the Right Wing pushed conversion therapy (salvage!) and shrugged off women dying for lack of proper care (we’ll just breed more).

  48. 48.

    OzarkHillbilly

    A Texas couple were denied service at a restaurant because they were wearing masks. Natalie Wester spoke to CBS DFW, a local TV station, about her experience with her husband, Jose, and a few friends. Last week, she said, the Westers went to Hang Time, a bar and restaurant in Rowlett, 20 miles outside Dallas, for a rare outing.

    “If you’ve ever been new parents, having those couple of hours out like once or twice a month is so important for your mental health,” Natalie said.

    The Westers are both fully vaccinated but stay masked indoors to protect their four-month-old son, who is immunocompromised. At Hang Time, a server asked them to take the masks off.

    “Our waitress came over, sat down next to me and said, ‘Our manager told me to come over because I am nicer than he is … But this is political and I need you to take your masks off,’” Natalie said.

    When they said they did not want to do so, they were asked to leave.
    ………………………….
    The owner told CBS DFW that while he had not known the Westers had an immunocompromised child, he planned to continue enforcing the policy.

    “I have spent my money on the business, my blood sweat and tears in this business, and I don’t want masks in here,” he said.

    I’m quite happy he is so forthright in his desire that I spend my money elsewhere.

  49. 49.

    Eunicecycle

    @frosty: and of course the media do the “both sides” thing. And refuse to point out which side is really gumming up the works. But Democrats are definitely in disarray!

  50. 50.

    bluefoot

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: ​
      I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I do not understand people who would rather get an antibody cocktail than a vaccine. I understand that all their anti-vax arguments are purely performative, but none of their “reasons” stand up when you compare the Regeneron cocktail vs vaccination.
    It’s so maddening. And a waste of money, and takes away supplies of the antibody for people who may truly need it.

  51. 51.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @Soprano2: They also had a two year period of government when they controlled all three branches, failed to get shit done and want to go right back to that.  They just want failure, there is nothing else beyond that, and as Popehat was pointed out the MSM treats them with kid gloves like that Ted Kopple train ride nonsense.

  52. 52.

    Betty Cracker

    @Woodrow/asim: Are Republicans less vocal about their distain for Biden than they were with Obama? I’m not sure that’s the case. It looks to me like Republicans have weaponized COVID to harm people indiscriminately in hopes of inflicting political damage. There’s plenty of reason to suppose it’s mostly “their people” sucking ventilators and dying since they are the ones who eschew basic precautions and live in the states with the highest infection rates, though people who are careful get harmed/killed too.

  53. 53.

    hueyplong

    @OzarkHillbilly: So his argument seems to be something like, “I’ve worked hard to earn the right to be the highest and best asshole I can be.  Your immunocompromised child is insignificant compared to me own stongly held fee fees.”

    Well OK then.  Guess we can’t ask for more than clarity on his position, which we now have.

  54. 54.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Betty Cracker: I think the personal rhetoric about Biden is less intense, because he’s a white guy. It’s more trying to depict Biden as a Bizarro projection of Trump (mentally deteriorating, a sex pervert).

  55. 55.

    Starfish

    @Woodrow/asim:

    And COVID underlines they’re willing them harm anyone who’s not one of “their people,” to get to that goal.

    COVID underlines their willingness to harm even their own people for power.

  56. 56.

    WereBear

    @Matt McIrvin:

    It’s more trying to depict Biden as a Bizarro projection of Trump (mentally deteriorating, a sex pervert).

     
    Since I don’t pay much attention to them I hadn’t realized that. But it’s ALWAYS projection, isn’t it?

  59. 59.

    MoCaAce

    @Woodrow/asim: And COVID underlines they’re willing them harm anyone who’s not one of “their people,” to get to that goal.

    They are more than willing to harm, even kill, their own people too… as sociopaths are want to do

    ETA.  Starfish got there first.

  61. 61.

    rikyrah

    @Nicole: 

    but I am very tired of Republicans NEVER being them.

    I’m not. I’m tired of the MSM pretending that they’re anything resembling an actual party interested in governing.

  62. 62.

    prostratedragon

    RIP Sarah Dash, singer extraordinaire with the group Labelle.

    There does not seem to exist any good footage of their best live shows, unfortunately, but here’s a grainy video from a tour of which I saw a differently staged performance. Ms. Dash is the first singer. The nightbird I believe is Janis Joplin.

    “Nightbird”

  63. 63.

    rikyrah

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques:

    They also had a two year period of government when they controlled all three branches, failed to get shit done and want to go right back to that.  They just want failure, there is nothing else beyond that, and as Popehat was pointed out the MSM treats them with kid gloves like that Ted Kopple train ride nonsense.

    Only thing they did was pass phucking tax cuts and try to take away people’s healthcare.

  64. 64.

    hueyplongex

    Wouldn’t mind seeing Paul and Cruz explaining to a grand jury the extent to which they were contacted and agreed to do their parts in the furtherance of the six-step coup plan.

    This sure puts the OMG DON’T INVESTIGATE stance in perspective.

    Wow, Sen Manchin, I see no reason to suspect that there would be any problem routinely getting to a bipartisan 67 with these guys on matters of import to the nation during a pandemic.

  65. 65.

    Jeffro

    @Amir Khalid: all it would have taken would have been for Pence to follow through on that first step – not accepting the electors for the 7 states in question – and we would have been off to the races.  Either those states’ electoral votes wouldn’t have been counted, or the election would have been thrown to the House, RWNJ noise machine screeching and working the refs all the while.

    Despite Biden beating trumpov by over 7 million votes.

    We have got to get going on this, Dems.  No more workarounds, the EC has got to go.

  67. 67.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Jeffro: all it would have taken would have been for Pence to follow through on that first step – not accepting the electors for the 7 states in question – and we would have been off to the races.

    He had no power to do that.  His role was ministerial.

    No more workarounds, the EC has got to go.

    Best of luck with that Constitutional Amendment.

  70. 70.

    Zelma

    @Nicole:

    I don’t know about the antibodies not being recommended for breakthrough cases. I have two friends who had such cases and they got the antibody treatment here. It helped them a lot.

  71. 71.

    Another Scott

    @Jeffro: I don’t think that’s right, and getting rid of the EC anytime soon isn’t going to happen (unfortunately).

    Pence’s role was purely ceremonial. If it were this easy to overturn an election, surely it would have been done before. Why hasn’t it?

    Jane C. Timm at NBCNews (from January 5):

    Pence, in his role as president of the Senate, is scheduled to preside over Congress’ certification of the results Wednesday, as detailed by the 12th Amendment. But he can’t intervene in the process.

    The law governing the certification process, the Electoral Count Act of 1887, specifically limits the power of the president of the Senate precisely because a president of the Senate had intervened in the count previously. In 1857, after James Buchanan’s win, the Senate president overruled an objection against Wisconsin electors who had been delayed in their certification process by a snowstorm in 1856.

    “One of the points of the Electoral Count Act is to constrain the vice president given this earlier episode and make it clear that he’s a presider, not a decider,” said former Federal Election Commission Chairman Trevor Potter, president of the Campaign Legal Center.

    The Electoral Count Act, Potter said, offers a detailed playbook for how Congress’ counting is supposed to go, and it specifically limits the vice president to ceremonial duties.

    “It says the vice president shall preside and he shall ensure that the certifications and votes from the states are opened and read out,” Potter said.

    Potter, a Republican, was general counsel for both of Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaigns.

    The 6-part plan was bizarroworld thinking – as one would expect from John Eastman…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  73. 73.

    cain

    @rikyrah: ​
     
    Also all these journalists are handsomely paid so they are not at all affected by whatever so everything is looked at from a ‘oh so quaint’ point of view.

    What do they care if we defaulted on our debt ceiling.

  74. 74.

    Kay

    I have done it myself, but I’ve come to think portraying them as childish or clownish is a mistake. It’s about raw power and they’re fairly effective at getting it and more radical in pursuit of it every day.

    Clownish or childish just isn’t accurate and it doesn’t inform the public adequately as to the anti-democratic nature of the Trumpian/conservative “movement”. I don’t think you have to have your hair on fire or scream and yell to accurately describe a threat. It’s just a choice of depicting it accurately or minimizing it. One or the other might be useful or politically palatable but only one is true. I think we should go with the one that is true, that it’s time for that.

  75. 75.

    Ksmiami

    @cain: that would sink the economy and all their investments. The dollar would go to near zero and the banks would fail… believe me, every American, despite the moronic, craven GOP leadership, has a stake in the full faith and credit of the American financial system

  76. 76.

    Ksmiami

    @Omnes Omnibus: your problem is you keep thinking we have to work within the failing paradigm we have versus a complete reconstruction. If things get as bad as I think they will, there will be a call for massive reforms…

  77. 77.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Ksmiami: Well, there are still a few steps between the current intransigence of Manchin and Sinema and the complete collapse of the US.  So, yes, I am looking for solutions that don’t involve societal collapse and revolution.  Sue me.

  78. 78.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @NotMax:

    I count on some asshole combo of Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton to throw a tantrum and tie it up.

  79. 79.

    Sean

    Do the Democrats have any method to raise the debt ceiling outside of reconciliation? They’d have to amend the budget resolution for that (getting it thru committee) then have 2 15 hr + vote a ramas just to set up that vote, and that’s if we get thru the parliamentarian (or overrule them).

    If the GOP refuses to vote for the govt funding bill now proposed (they will refuse) then that is out. If they won’t vote for cloture on a stand alone debt ceiling bill (they won’t) then dems are holding the bag. If we’re days or hours away from default at that point, reconciliation isn’t really a great fall back. Can the senate carve out a filibuster exception for the debt ceiling? Is that a 50+1 vote on that specific rule change?

    Additionally it means basically sacrificing the reconciliation bill because we aren’t going to get all that negotiating done in time to prevent default AND get in every detail of a bill Manchin and Synema are already saying they won’t support.  I honestly think that barring the GOP allowing a clean debt ceiling hike by voting for cloture but not the actual increase (seems unlikely) we may actually be looking at a default this time, unless we torch the reconciliation bill in time, jump all the hurdles to amend the budget resolution and force that vote with none of the 3.5T in priorities anyone was hoping for. – Whis is what the GOP wants and would be just an absolutely horrible result.

  81. 81.

    Another Scott

    @Sean: More options. RollCall:

    […]

    “There is a big difference between avoiding default by months or minutes,” Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen wrote in The Wall Street Journal on Sunday, citing the 2011 debate that went down to the wire and led Standard & Poor’s to downgrade U.S. credit.

    But with Republicans taking a hard line and 60 votes likely needed to advance a debt limit measure in the evenly divided Senate, there’s no clear path to avoiding what Yellen calls a “default” on U.S. obligations.

    No one, least of all the White House, is talking publicly about the possibility that President Joe Biden might consider, for the first time in U.S. history, ordering Treasury to defy the $28.4 trillion debt ceiling and continue to borrow.

    But Biden was there as vice president during the Obama-era fights with intransigent Republicans, and his entire agenda could be at risk if there’s another extended stalemate over the full faith and credit of the United States.

    Separation of powers
    Setting borrowing limits has always been a power reserved for Congress, to which the Constitution grants sole authority to raise revenue, spend taxpayer dollars, “pay the debts” and “borrow money on the credit of the United States.”

    But some scholars argue if Congress does not raise the debt limit, the president can justify continuing to borrow money by citing the “Public Debt Clause” of the 14th Amendment, which was ratified in 1868, three years after the Civil War ended.

    The 14th Amendment granted citizenship to most individuals born or naturalized in the U.S., including Black people, though the status of Native Americans wasn’t clarified until 1924. The 14th Amendment also barred anyone who engaged in rebellion or treason from serving as a state or federal official.

    And in Section 4, the 14th Amendment says the “validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.” The section prohibited the federal government or states from paying any debt or obligation incurred to aid the insurrection “or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave.”

    […]

    There’s always the $1T platinum coin, also too. ;-)

    The US won’t default. Reconciliation will get done. How we get there is still a bit up in the air, and we probably won’t know until September 32nd.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  82. 82.

    Platonicspoof

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    I wasn’t willing nor able to access the Kelman article either, but from one of his Twitter comments I found a DHHS document describing the implementation of monoclonal antibodies (mAbs). It’s 69 pdf pages, so I wasn’t able to see any discussion of vaccinated vs. unvaccinated, but on page three (large chart) it says if you’re in the ICU, it’s too late to use mAbs.

    Hopefully the vaccinated (nor unvaccinated, for whatever reason) don’t end up there.

  83. 83.

    Kelly

    @OzarkHillbilly: Tis long been thus. A. Lincoln’s Cooper Union speech (slightly updated).

    This, and this only: cease to call slavery masking wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly – done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated – we must place ourselves avowedly with them.

  84. 84.

    Philbert

    @Just Chuck: Poor people get less medical care and are generally in poorer health anyway, and are less likely to be able to distance etc. They figure that Covid will thin the ranks of Those People more than their own.  Kushner said something of the sort re cities and blue states. Bio warfare.

  86. 86.

    Sean

    @Another Scott:

    I feel a great deal less optimistic. That article hardly presents the “borrow anyway” alternative as a 100% viable one.  The markets would still tank even if that’s the direction Biden took, just because of the uncertainty and legal ramifications.

    And I don’t think the 1T coin is anything but a cartoonish pie in the sky idea for resolution of the problem. No one is indicating they’re taking it seriously.  I guess it could buy time until reconciliation could pass, but I really can’t imagine them going this route.  Maybe “borrow anyway” and grimace our way thru reconciliation, but that would come at probably the worst political cost on top of everything else because, let’s face it, Democrats will get blamed and the GOP will Benghazi Biden’s actions to death.

    I honestly don’t know what is going to happen, but whatever it is, I’m feeling less and less certain it is going to be a good outcome. I wish they’d just planned to do it via reconciliation, raised it with little drama (drowned out by all the good infrastructure news), and everyone would have forgotten in 2 weeks.

    Instead, we get non stop reconciliation/debt ceiling “the democrats have no plan” stories for a month and a questionable outcome.

  87. 87.

    JaneE

    Yellen said that a debt default would leave America weaker.  That is what the GOP has been working for for decades.  They do not want a strong United States of America.  They want a divided, ineffective and vulnerable United States of America, not one that can stand up for democracy and human rights around the globe.

  88. 88.

    cain

    @Ksmiami:

    @cain: that would sink the economy and all their investments. The dollar would go to near zero and the banks would fail… believe me, every American, despite the moronic, craven GOP leadership, has a stake in the full faith and credit of the American financial system

    You and I know that – but do these people know that? I feel like they still look at everything from some disconnected point of view because they are independently rich.

    After all if there is indeed a collapse the news media will make moola reporting on it. It’ll be just like war reporting. Of course, nobody will be able to afford newspapers or even cable.

  90. 90.

    Gravenstone

    @JaneE: They do not want a strong United States of America.

    Hard to square that view with their constant demand that we take assorted small countries and “throw them against the wall” militarily in order to swing our biggus dickus all over the fucking place.

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