! Rand Paul just unilaterally blocked swift passage of Ukraine aid. He wanted the rest of the Senate add language to the bill he plans to vote against anyway bc debt/inflation.
He has this power because the Senate runs on *unanimous consent*, not nearly unanimous consent.
— Steven Dennis (@StevenTDennis) May 12, 2022
McConnell and Schumer both implored Paul to allow a vote on his amendment but let the bill be voted on today. Their joint entreaty didn’t persuade him.
— Steven Dennis (@StevenTDennis) May 12, 2022
If they had any initiative, McConnell and his henchmen would take up a collection to have Rand Paul’s neighbor come back and finish the job. We Dems couldn’t get away with anything like that, but it’d be a winner for the Red Meat side…
Oh, wait — I forgot for a minute that #MoscowMitch is also on Putin’s payroll!
There are workarounds if it actually was an asteroid. You can change Senate rules. And then there’s what I call the power-of-the-gavel option: the chair (VP if she wanted) refusing to recognize a senator to object.
— Steven Dennis (@StevenTDennis) May 12, 2022
The irony of this whole situation is that Democrats agreed to Republican demands to split Ukraine funding from COVID to speed its passage. Now there’s a slow-moving pileup.
— Steven Dennis (@StevenTDennis) May 12, 2022
WYD, Kentucky?
Congress has voted for ten bills now that will draw us further into the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, put US citizens at greater risk, prolong the war, waste tax-payer money, and increase domestic food and energy prices.
I voted against ALL of them.
— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) May 12, 2022
With the inevitable honking clown on a unicycle at the end of the Repub parade…
Just FYI you misspelled “supporting Russian imperialism” as “anti-imperialism.” https://t.co/NYQHN4iaEi
— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) May 12, 2022
War for Ukraine Update 78: The Defenders of Mariupol Fight On!
Dangerman
It’s like a contest of who can be the biggest dick.
HumboldtBlue
UTSW genetic study confirms sarin nerve gas as cause of Gulf War illness
Gin & Tonic
I put up two quarts of pickled ramps today.
Doug R
Glenn really is a special case, isn’t he?
dmsilev
You know, we all thought Glennnn was being paid by the Russians, but given the way sanctions have cut off their cash flow, evidently he’s doing it for free. Or maybe they bought a pre-paid annual subscription plan or something.
Gin & Tonic
@Doug R: Why any sentient human gives a shit what he says is a mystery to me.
BigJimSlade
Did you say Red Meat? Make sure to click through and read the comic in the right side bar to get the feeling of this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Meat_(comic_strip)
Wag
@Dangerman: To clarify, who can BE the biggest dick, not who HAS the biggest dick.
Villago Delenda Est
Rand Paul’s neighbor didn’t use the right tool to deal with Tribblehead.
Wag
@BigJimSlade: Funny, but moderately disturbing.
NotMax
OT.
Anyone linked yet to Ms LuPone?
NotMax
@dmsilev
Yet again grateful my browser never shows anything other than stripped down text in tweets. Nothing about GG polluting my screen whatsoever.
;)
Mathguy
Massie is proof that MIT occasionally matriculates a stupid person.
Mathguy
@dmsilev: I thought Nosferatu Thiel was paying his bills.
Mai Naem mobile
Wonder if Putin has tape of Rand Paul fucking lambs or something and IIRC Massie got caught up in a Russian honeypot situation. Steve Schmidt said Josh Holmes, Mitch’s old COS, is the Manafort/Abramoff of GOP campaigns of these times. Hope wittle Josh ends up in prison like Manafort and Abramoff.
MobiusKlein
The Senate is a broken institution. That’s all.
dmsilev
@Mathguy: Can confirm. Somehow, somebody screwed up and let me in.
Amir Khalid
I suspect that part of Rand Paul’s reason for blocking the bill is that he favours Russia in this war.
James E Powell
@MobiusKlein:
I think the whole American federal system is not broken, but corroded and worn out. The biggest problem is with the voters themselves. When they vote for a candidate because he seems like someone they’d like to have a beer with, well, it’s pretty much over.
Redshift
“Prolong the war” — that and “we’re pro-peace” (heard that one from a top Hungarian official on BBC the other day) are the talking points of Russian puppets/apologists. Especially laughable because while abandoning Ukraine to Russia at the beginning might have accomplished that, at this point, supporting Ukraine is almost certainly going to end the war more quickly than not supporting them.
RaflW
Kentucky ranks 6th in federal dependency. Obviously the totally out-of-whack way our legislative power is miss-allocated means that it would be a long time project, but man guys like Rand just make me want to do all I can to cut off the money flow to those f*kers.
BigJimSlade
@Wag: Yes, a perfect description.
Martin
These problems were a lot less common when senators carried canes into the chamber.
Felanius Kootea
@Mathguy: Oh he is not stupid. Neither are/were the Koch brothers, all proud MIT graduates. We’ll just say that their self-interest places them in a unique space where they are not aligned with their fellow citizens.
You have to admit, getting elected by people who consistently fail to realize that you don’t give a rat’s ass about anything they desire takes special skill.
Redshift
@MobiusKlein: A system of unanimous consent can only work through norms and acting in good faith. Republicans have long since abandoned both, and since they are now an anti-government party, they are nearly always fine with stopping government from doing anything.
Redshift
@Mai Naem mobile:
I always think that blaming blackmail or threats is giving conservatives too much credit. They’re not being forced to do these things, they want to do them, and they used to be constrained by the risk of losing their power and status, but not any more.
Also, Putin has sold them on the completely fake idea that he’s a white Christian nationalist, so naturally lots of them want him to win. Most of them are better at hiding it now that it’s not popular, though.
columbusqueen
You know, I’d finally watch a season of Survivor if it involved a pack of conservative pricks from the House & Senate (including Tribblehead), and the usage of weapons to injure. I could really get into that!
Roger Moore
@James E Powell:
“He seems like someone I would want to have a beer with” is really a wrong way to express the issue. What they really mean is he seems like someone who shares their identity, but they can’t admit they have one. They define themselves as having no group identity and it’s only those other people who are disrupting things by insisting on defining themselves by their differences. For them to admit that White, straight, Christian, cis-het is an identity just like any other would mean accepting they are just like everyone else.
Ksmiami
@James E Powell: America needs an upgrade! That’s my whole platform- the country has been using ms-dos institutions in a C++ world. And it means we can’t get anywhere
NotMax
@columbusqueen
Bulk of the season would end up consisting of interminable harangues disputing the vote.
“Okay, we’ve had enough. Time to hand out the electric cattle prods.”
//
columbusqueen
@NotMax: Sounds good to me.
eclare
@Roger Moore: Nailed it. A former friend, straight White Christian male, derided “identity politics” ahead of 2016. Yeah, because you think your identity should be the default!
Did I mention “former” friend?
SFAW
@Mathguy:
As Leo Gorcey might say: Hey! I resemble that remark!
SFAW
@columbusqueen:
For various meanings of “injure.”
Redshift
@Roger Moore:
Yes, it is essential to the conservative worldview that straight white cis male be seen as the backdrop for everything, just “normal,” not a thing. So anyone else demanding what they have (rights, privileges) is getting “special” rights, even if it’s equality, because “normal” just automatically has those.
It’s why they can pass a bill saying you’re not allowed to talk about gender identity or sexual orientation, and it can’t mean not talking about cishet people and straight marriages, because that’s not a gender identity or orientation, it’s just the default, “normal.”
matt
Rand Paul and his sister are doing it again they’ve got the finest home movies that you have ever seen.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
hahahhahaha
I love it. Griftwald trashes his usual apologists like Katrina vanden Heuvel, Amy Goodman, Bob Scheer as out of the mainstream for supporting russia.
This is Catch-22 in it’s lunacy. He trashes the mainstream left for opposing russia’s invasion, while implicitly trashing leftist who support russia as being out of the mainstream.
Golf clap.
gene108
@RaflW:
Lot of Republican state dependence is due to poverty. Mississippi, for example, has a large poor African American community that votes for Democrats and probably receives a lot of federal benefits.
I also wonder how much federal spending in a state is tied up in military bases?
Anyway, Democratic controlled states are preventing some level of human suffering in Republican states.
Maybe we should stop? Pass a law that each state gets back what they pay to the Federal government.
Kay
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch:
200 years of neutrality and Sweden wants to join NATO. I’ll take their estimation of who the war mongering aggressor is over Glenn Greenwald’s.
Baud
@Kay:
I don’t know. Is Sweden on substack?
TonyG
@Mathguy: In my own experience with “engineering types” (software developers) some of them are extremely competent at what they do for a living, but pretty dumb about everything else. Of course, Massie might be dumb across the board.
TonyG
@Kay: I’d respect the opinion of a random guy in a bar over that of Glenn Greenwald.
kalakal
@gene108: Next time the GQP starts wibbling about ‘Balanced Budgets’ the Dems could agree but insist that it applies to Federal to State funding as well ie States can only get back up to what they put in*. Watch them backpedal so fast. All those ‘no state income tax’ braggarts like DeathSentence would be screwed. Fed subsidies make up 19% of FLs budget
*I don’t think this is a good idea, it would be a disaster, the suffering would be terrible
oatler
@Ksmiami:
[Colbert voice] Damn you, ms/dos institutions! Best wishes to Stephen as he recovers.
Betsy
@gene108: You are just repeating the myth that Black people tend to be more welfare dependent than white people. It’s white people who receive the majority of government welfare benefits.
and yes, there are still more white people than Black people in Mississippi Alabama Kentucky and the rest of the lot
And I guarantee you that the total of farm subsidy payments to white landowners in those states are far larger than anything that’s going to feed actual families or provide medical care for children.
You would do well to examine the implicit racism in your comment. Not to mention that it repeats right-wing messaging falsehoods.
brantl
@Martin: At the time, it was largely the assholes carrying the canes?
brantl
@Ksmiami: You’re mixing horrendously different metaphors.