Is this for real? This article seems straightforward, right up until it isn’t. Doesn’t anyone know how to write clearly anymore?
According to Axios (sorry!) House Democrats have triggered a vote on whether to expel George Santos.
If true, this seems like a smart play by Democrats.
House Democrats on Tuesday offered a privileged resolution to expel Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) from Congress.
Why it matters: The move triggers a vote within the next two days – which would force vulnerable Republicans into the difficult position of whether to protect a politically toxic colleague or break with GOP leadership.
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), who introduced the resolution, did so with support from House Democratic leadership, a Democratic leadership aide told Axios.
The context: Santos was indicted by the Justice Department last week on counts of wire fraud, money laundering, theft of public funds and lying to Congress in his financial disclosures. Santos pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The state of play: Nearly a dozen House Republicans have called for Santos to step down, but only one, Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas), has gone as far as to say he should be expelled.
So far, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and others in GOP leadership have stood by Santos, whose vote is crucial to their narrow majority.
“The Republicans in the House are going to have to actually go on record and make a decision about whether they’re going to stand for truth and accountability,” Garcia told reporters.
Garcia said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) has “been aware and involved,” adding, “You’ll be hearing, I think, more from our leadership – likely tonight, as well as tomorrow.”
The other side: McCarthy told reporters he plans to talk with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) about referring the resolution to the House Ethics Committee, which is already investigating Santos.
“I’d like the Ethics Committee to move rapidly on this,” McCarthy added, predicting the panel will move faster than the courts.
Why the hell would we even consider shunting this off to the Ethics Committee rather than making every Republican have to take a vote on whether to expel Santos?
Oh, and can anyone tell me what this means? I obviously don’t know the ins and outs of House procedures, but this seems to contradict the entire article above. Can anyone translate this the sentence below Is that true only if we agree to refer the motion?
Republicans will be able to table or refer the motion with a simple majority — though it would only take five GOP defections for it to move to a final vote.
Open thread.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊😊😊
Mike in NC
It would be a disservice to do this to the first member of Congress to walk on the surface of the moon.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
as I read that last quoted sentence, Dems cannot, in fact, force Rs to go on the record. They can say they voted to refer the matter to the ethics committee. I think the best we can hope for is that local Dems can figure out a way to hang Santos around the the necks of those suburban Reps for the next 18 months
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Another Scott
RollCall.com (from yesterday):
Aaron Fritschner says that McCarthy cannot make the Ethics Committee “move rapidly”. The implication being that sending it to the Committee would put off any action for months/years and effectively make it go away.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Wapiti
Santos kited checks when he was in Brazil – he just recently pled to those charges rather than face a court.
That alone should lead to his expulsion.
rikyrah
I am going to expand my original.thoughts on this situation. I originally believed that the GOP thought that they would just arrest hords of the Undocumented and throw them in the for-profit prisons, which have seen their population decline. They would benefit the for-profit prison industry. The sticking point was that the construction industry isn’t hapless. They are always one of the most potent lobbying forces in any state, let alone Florida. So, they must have had some assurances by the GOP that they would see their profit margins increase, by having to pay pennies for a qualified workforce.
The farmers are just shyt out of luck, and better get ready to sell to Big Ag.
Oh well,.they got what they voted for.
Truth is,.they will probably put forth some bill in Congress for farmer bailout welfare. There never seems to be any end.to.the welfare that they can find for farmers.
The monkey wrench in all of this was that they didn’t understand that the undocumented have their own agency, and that they weren’t going to sit around waiting to be arrested. Also, the time of.year was the best for them. They could go elsewhere, and find months of work before winter set in up North.
They also didn’t account that truckers have no intentions of catching a felony in Florida.
Make no mistake. This is already beginning to harm the Florida economy. And, the rotting produce will be felt in the rest of the country.
As soon as it spreads to the rest of the country, the GOP, with an assist from the MSM, will attempt to blame President Biden. The GOP is determined to destroy the US Economy, one way or the other. It is their only way to possible victory in 2024.
Ryan Shead (@RyanShead) tweeted at 6:07 PM on Tue, May 16, 2023:
Today is May 16th, and this is a construction site in Florida.
I see Ron DeSantis’s immigration plan is working out well for Floridians.
#FloridaBoycott #ImmigrationMatters #ImmigrationReform #AmericanDream https://t.co/1z3monvpK1
(https://twitter.com/RyanShead/status/1658610232938106881?t=cAO8rBsd4nS08ydK1G70Ig&s=03)
bbleh
As to “tabling,” I *think* a privileged resolution doesn’t require a procedural “rule” from the Rules Committee since it operates under a standing House rule, but the entire House can still vote either to “take up” (meaning debate and vote on) the resolution, or refer it back to committee, or “lay it on the table” (kill it)
@Another Scott: I’m pretty sure this is right. Moving it to committee would effectively bury it (especially since that committee is MAGA-heavy iirc). But I think the idea is, force the entire Republican caucus to vote on something that either passes it or effectively kills it by some means, and in the latter case howl about how they support corruption blah blah blah.
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: So this thing that appears to be too good to be true, is in fact too good to be true. Sigh.
oldgold
Two things:
Invoke the 14th Amendment and end this debt ceiling hostage taking now and for the future.
Hold a vote and throw Santos out.
The 14th Amendment is really not an amendment per se. That is, it did not just amend the Constitution; rather, it restated it. Beyond ending the debt ceiling mischief, the 14th Amendment needs to be used to rein in gerrymandering.
Scout211
Do you remember this? House Republicans voted to gut the Office of Congressional Ethics, and George Santos said it was ‘fantastic’
Frankensteinbeck
@rikyrah:
I don’t think either of these is true. Look at the Disney thing. The GOP doesn’t think about how this stuff affects big business anymore. If the business objects, fuck them, nothing is more important than flying the asshole bigot freak flag. Sure, they love to do favors for businesses, especially slimy businesses and favors that hurt minorities, but this? A major act of bigotry? If it helps or hurts businesses that’s incidental. The big rich people political money comes from mean-ass bigot billionaires anyway, and they’ll take a financial hit to hurt women and minorities.
mrmoshpotato
@Mike in NC:
C’mon. Credit where credit is due – this massive fraud invented the Moon!
Omnes Omnibus
I would wait until he is convicted.
jonas
This fuckin’ guy. Meanwhile, McCarthy’s boy James Comer is holding press conference after press conference to announce that they definitely have suspicions about Hunter Biden and China something argle bargle scandalmurdercoverup, etc., and that’s totes ok, apparently.
As someone recently put it, shamelessness is their superpower.
Sanjeevs
https://www.wsj.com/articles/jeffrey-epstein-noam-chomsky-leon-botstein-bard-ce5beb9d?mod=hp_lead_pos2
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Mike in NC: I hope he does get ejected, although I suppose it’s more likely he’ll be humiliated at the 2024 polls and join the “the election wuz a FRAUD” caucus.
But meanwhile, I love how he’s already become the punchline for a certain style of joke, and I hope that goes on forever.
Another Scott
@WaterGirl: Yup.
Leadership always has ways to bend the bodies to their will. That’s why holding leadership, and of necessity having the majority, is so vitally important in the legislatures. As long as the other party is insane, we have to support our team no matter who the players are…
Cheers,
Scott.
Ksmiami
@Sanjeevs: lol that’s not how any of this works… what a useless, corrupt pos.
Geminid
@jonas: I can’t help but speculate that McCarthy doesn’t just want to keep Santos for his vote, but is also worried about Santos possibly dishing dirt on other New York Republicans. That might just be wishful thinking, but Santos does seem to have been the nexus of a lot of funny money raised for last year’s elections.
Geminid
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Even if he runs, Santos won’t win the 3rd CD Republican primary next year.
Baud
@Sanjeevs: Not a big fan of either guy, but receiving money from Epstein seems less scandalous than sending money to Epstein.
jonas
@Geminid: That may be right. I wonder if it’s not Stefanik here pressuring McCarthy to go easy on Santos. Problem is, Santos is now an albatross that can hung around the neck of a number of NY Republicans in Biden + districts who were able to take advantage of some headwinds for Democrats last year, but have to burnish their (fake, of course) moderate/independent bonafides if they have any hope of reelection.
WaterGirl
@Scout211: I had forgotten about that! So they have a shell of an Ethic Committee, that doesn’t really exist anymore, so they would shunt this off to that? It just gets worse.
jonas
@Sanjeevs: No surprise about Chomsky there — Epstein routinely used MIT as a cover for his supposed science and philanthropy projects that we now know, of course, were a cover for his real project: a sex trafficking ring.
I can’t get past the paywall, so I have no idea how Botstein — a conductor and long-time president of Bard College — got drawn into Epstein’s orbit.
sdhays
Does the Ethics Committee have any staff? I recall one of the promises Qevin made to the Hitler-caucus was making Ethics Committee staffing contingent on being fully staffed in some ridiculous timeframe – like 7 days or something. This was a way of gutting it without explicitly gutting it.
Did they get around that or is it gutted as expected?
H.E.Wolf
Electoral-Vote blog’s commentary on the “Santos” resolution by Rep. Garcia:
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2023/Items/May17-6.html
Wapiti
@Baud: Having Epstein as one’s financial advisor suggests a hook got set at some point.
Geminid
@jonas: There’s a lot we don’t yet know about the the Santos story, and I don’t think any of it will be good news for New York Republicans when it comes out.
schrodingers_cat
Rs superpower is shamelessness so Santos is not going anywhere until he is found criminally liable and may be not even then.
Lawyers of BJ can a convicted criminal be a Congress Critter?
Manyakitty
@H.E.Wolf: I especially appreciated the sneer quotes around “Santos.” 😂
Sure Lurkalot
@Omnes Omnibus: I read that his first hearing is June 30. It appears that George will have plenty of time to embellish his embellishments before the case(s) go to trial.
schrodingers_cat
OT Art update: I bought myself some cool Kuretake water brush pens and scored a sweet deal on eBay. They are so much better than the off-brand Amazon knock offs I have been using.
Art break:
From my sketchbook, with water color pencils and colored pencils
JWR
Jeebus…
She threatened to spit on him. Okay then. Fire away! :(
Betty Cracker
@Frankensteinbeck: I think you’re probably right about DeSantis trying to impress hard-right billionaires (including many who live out of state) rather than traditional allies like FL agribusinesses, construction firms, etc. It’s a play for the 2024 nomination, and DeSantis doesn’t give a flying fuck how it affects the state.
That said, this could definitely blow up in the FL GOP’s face, and I do wonder how DeSantis convinced people who represent rural districts that absolutely rely on immigrant labor to shoot themselves in the dick like this.
I wouldn’t put it past DeSantis to dangle the promise of cheap prison labor, but that’s just speculation AFAIK. I don’t know that he’d need to round up immigrants for that purpose; there are plenty of native born prisoners in Florida.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@H.E.Wolf: I saw Garcia on TV yesterday. At least I think it was him. He’s a new member and is president of the D new member caucus. He sounded energetic and smart. He also sounded like he’d been exploring the various rules and loopholes for D advantage.
Baud
@Wapiti:
Yeah, it would have been more prudent to get financial advice from the Wizard of Wall Street George Santos.
Geminid
@Wapiti: Epstein was more than a blackmailer and a trafficker of minors. He seems to have run a larger influence and espionage operation, using his money to get close to influential people. That may have been the basis of his association with Chomsky.
Manyakitty
@Geminid: I always wondered why the Epstein-Barr (ugh) connection never got more interest. Epstein started his teaching career at the posh private school where Bill Barr’s father was headmaster.
Frankensteinbeck
@jonas:
Everyone was in Epstein’s orbit. That’s why I don’t get too suspicious when anyone is named as a friend or rode on his plane or whatever. Epstein was a schmoozer. He went out of his way to make friends with every famous or powerful person he could find an excuse to meet, way beyond his customers. I’m sure it was very useful both in finding customers and making lots of important people go “Don’t listen to that rumor. I know Epstein. He’s a great guy.” Regardless of practical use, it was his Thing.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Other than being drawn to any famous person like a moth to flame, what would Epstein have to gain from Noam Chomsky?
Baud
@Frankensteinbeck: That’s how I see it too.
Sure Lurkalot
WSJ:
In response to questions from the Journal, Botstein said he received checks from an account linked to Epstein in 2016 totaling about $150,000. Botstein said he donated the sum to Bard that year as part of a more than $1 million donation. A spokesman for Bard College confirmed that the school received the donation from Botstein.
Botstein said Epstein designated him as a consultant of an entity and made the payments as if they were fees for consulting work, but he said he didn’t do any consulting work for Epstein. A spokesman for Botstein said the funds were compensation for serving a one-year term on an advisory board for Gratitude America. Epstein created the foundation in 2012 and used the charity to steer funds to various causes, the Journal has reported.
“I have no idea why he concocted this scheme,” Botstein said. “He didn’t want to write a check to Bard. He took pity on me, and he said, ‘I’m gonna give you money and you do whatever you want with it.’”
In a previous interview with the Journal, Botstein said Epstein gave the school $75,000 in unsolicited donations in 2011 and that he met with Epstein more than a dozen times but had been unsuccessful in raising more funds.
He later said he didn’t remember the 2016 payments until asked by the Journal since they didn’t appear as donations from Epstein in the school records.
“The important thing to recognize is that I did not personally benefit,” he said. “Each fiscal year I give more in philanthropic gifts to Bard and the [American Symphony Orchestra] than anything that has come my way—conducting fees, writing fees, consultancies, speaking etc.—in order to protect myself and the college of the suspicion that I am enriching myself by exploiting my position.”
WTF?!?
Hoodie
@Betty Cracker:
After all, he is from Pennsylvania and Ohio.
RedDirtGirl
Was just perusing Electoral-Vote and saw this
Slate’s Jim Newell is one of the best political reporters working today. And he published a piece yesterday about a brief conversation he and a fellow reporter had with Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). Here’s the key portion:
We provide the full text so readers can judge for themselves, but for our part, we agree with Newell’s conclusion: “The senator seems to not remember being absent from the Capitol.”
Barbara
@Geminid: Epstein donated to a lot of science based organizations (like various labs at MIT) and cultivated the scientific luminaries associated with these organizations. An article at Slate a few years ago detailed the various ways that Epstein tried to “commune” with these people, e.g., at conferences he funded and so on. The author reached out to the people who attended events and visited Epstein at his properties, especially in New Mexico. Most were defensive and angry about being tainted with his wrongdoing, but descriptions of these events were pretty wild. Apparently, during the course of “educational” sessions, Epstein would lie on a dais only partially clothed, and receive massages by young lovelies who were also scantily clad. I mean, if it weren’t so gross it would be funny. I don’t know the extent of Chomsky’s involvement, but at least one high flier at MIT had to resign as a result of Epstein’s funding for his lab.
CaseyL
This is an open thread, so my comment – really an observation – can’t be “off topic,” right?
I just had a small revelation: the people you see in YouTube series sometimes have extensive professional backstories, and are famous in fields you didn’t even know they were in.
Among the many YouTube channels I subscribe to are a couple from PBS: Eons and Bizarre Beasts. Among the hosts/presenters is a fellow named Hank Green, who has a brother named John Green. The two look very alike – enough that I have trouble remembering which one I’m watching – but are 3 years apart in age.
So I figured these two were science nerds who managed to turn their passion into a fairly successful vlogging career, right?
Well, yes and no. They are that… but they’re also best-selling authors (one of John’s books, The Fault In Our Stars, was made into a movie), speakers, event organizers, and all round Energizer Bunnies of entrepreneurship. The YouTube channels that I found them in are just one part of their overall work and impact.
It’s like finding out a famous rock musician is also a famous and respected astrophysicist. (Brian May, in case you didn’t know.)
Barbara
@RedDirtGirl: I can’t stand Jim Newell. He slants everything he writes to make it seem as if Democrats are hapless and corrupt. He might be right about Feinstein, who clearly should resign, but I don’t trust Newell to give an honest account.
Baud
@RedDirtGirl:
It wouldn’t surprise me in the least that Feinstein is not with it mentally, but they didn’t provide the full text of the questions that were asked. Just her responses. I will assume the article paraphrased the questions accurately, but that’s different from providing the full text.
oatler
@Betty Cracker:
When it comes to burning the locals, DeSantis might end up like Tommy in Goodfellas. In a non-face-removing way, of course.
Dorothy A. Winsor
The Supreme Court has refused to block weapons’ bans in Illinois. Score one for the good guys.
RedDirtGirl
@Barbara: Good to know. I think of Electoral-Vote.com as having a good rep, so I thought their take would be a good one.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for US?
@oldgold: I don’t understand why the 14th Amendment even needs to be invoked to end the debt ceiling issue, honestly. I don’t mind going that route but think the Administration will go through with the kabuki theater of negotiating up until the last second.
Here is the situation though…Congress passed a series of laws, dozens or more, that require the spending that exceeds the debt limit. Then, there’s this ONE statute set against those dozens or more of statutes, that says we can’t borrow to make the legally mandated payments. What makes that ONE statute the governing statute as opposed to the dozens of other statutes Congress passed?
I mean, if I’m the POTUS I bring that to the courts and ask them to stay the debt ceiling and allow borrowing as normal until the issue is resolved in court. I would raise the following arguments: there are dozens of statutes Congress passed that authorize spending, then there’s this one that prevents spending. There’s a general history of Congresses raising the limit without issue or precondition over the course of a century, to fund statutory spending, until very recently. To me the course of lesser legal jeopardy is to violate the ONE statute that is in conflict with the dozens of statutes that authorize this spending. Please rule on this issue so that I know which Statute governs, the debt limit or all the other ones. Also, if I must violate all the other ones the Courts, or Congress, must decide which spending I can zero out and which should be carried out based on incoming receipts. Until that happens I can’t really do anything because SCOTUS ruled in The State of NY vs. Clinton that the POTUS cannot prioritize one statutorily mandated spending item over another. All must be carried out otherwise it is tantamount to giving the POTUS a line item veto over Congressional spending, which SCOTUS ruled was unconstitutional. So if I don’t have the funds to execute ALL the spending then SCOTUS has to tell me which spending I can leave on the cutting room floor as SCOTUS has ruled previously that I can’t make that call.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Barbara: I was surprised when Slate, once of the home of so many stodgy centrists, hired Alex Sammon, then I remembered Jim Newell.
At this point, I’m ready to just white knuckle it with Feinstein for as long as we can/need to. Her departure, however it came, would fuck us on the Judiciary C’tee, as I understand it
brantl
What they’re going to be saying is that he’s not been convicted, except he went nolo contendre for check kiting in Brazil.
JPL
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Strom nodded his way through votes, and if that was allowed so should this. There is no way the republicans will allow another democrat to replace her on the committee.
rikyrah
@Betty Cracker:
Once again, I will refer you do Alabama.
They had one of these laws, and they chose the prison labor thing.
It did not work out.
It’s manual labor,but, it’s not UNSKILLED labor.
Those presently doing this hard work, know how to do it, and how to do it efficiently. They also are motivated by the check they get.
Prisoners who don’t know how to do the work. And, have no incentive to do it as well. And, that’s just the farm work.
What are the restaurants and other hospitality sources going to do. Have prisoners do it?
And, then, what about the construction industry? Have no-knowledge prisoners working on the sites?
Alabama wound up repealing the law.
oldgold
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for US?:
I think this is simpler route and one that will spike this nonsense going forward.
“Section 4. of the 14th Amendment
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.”
brantl
@WaterGirl: Not if 5 repubs vote for it. There ought to be 5 rethugs they can foist this off on, to get rid of lyin’ Georgie. Thats the best outcome for Republicans, barring all Republicans voting for it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
The language of the Fourteenth Amendment wrt to the debt ceiling is as clear as a bell to me, but IANAL, much less a sitting USSC Justice, so….
JWR
@Barbara:
Yeah, I read that piece earlier and got the impression that, while DiFi might be totally out of it, her answers as quoted seemed more like a mental fart than a person in the throes of dementia.
Geminid
@Barbara: Back when tech journalist Xeni Jardin was still on Twitter, she had a lot to say about Epstein’s role in Edge Foundation dinners that she attended during the last decade. These dinners brought together various Silicon Valley tech titans. She believed Epstein ran an espionage and influence operation.
Jardin was known as a tech culture journalist featured on media sites like Wired and Boing!Boing! She also had a very popular (250k follower) Twitter account up until last October. She bailed on Twitter when it was clear that Elon Musk was going through with his purchase.
Jardin seems to have stayed off of social media since. She has health challenges and may have decided to concentrate on a healthy and happy life. Jardin left Southern California for Southern Utah a few years ago, and liked it there.
sdhays
@Frankensteinbeck: I’m going to be suspicious of anyone who continued to associate with him after his conviction, if for no other reason than they didn’t consider his crimes bad enough – or risky enough – to cut ties. We’ve established that they are morally deficient, we just don’t know how deep it goes.
glory b
@Betty Cracker: “Wonder how DeSantis convinced people who represent rural districts that absolutely rely on immigrant labor to shoot themselves in the dick like this.”
Read “Dying of Whitenees” by Jonathan Metzl.
Farmers voted for Republicans who removed food stamps from Agriculture, even though that was the way farmers insured the funding of the program that provides for much of their income.
Layer8Problem
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Insights into context-free grammars?
oldgold
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The clarity of the language is a real problem for the “textualists” that now form a majority of the Court.
prostratedragon
@Manyakitty: And elder Barr reportedly bent some rules to hire him without the degrees that teachers at that school (Dalton iirc) normally have. I think the tfue Barr family business is acting as some kind of functionary like that.
gvg
@Wapiti: It also seems to me that is how Epstein existed so long. He hung around and was photographed with as many important people who cared about their reputations as possible. Did not need to draw them into anything, just make it appear that they could have, as many as possible. That meant that the real sleeze were hidden for a long time by a cloud of normal rich and powerful AND that those powerful people had a big incentive to make problems go away. After everything started to be revealed, I imagine they also were somewhat persuadable by not quite provable blackmail…lots of gala pictures where there was nothing except it was held by Epstein. Now every single thing he did is looked at as debauched, but older stories said there were two different kinds of parties.
I have not followed it in detail though.
I will say I think his financial advice would be untrustworthy, but then Chomsky has seemed like a fool to me for a long time.
glory b
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: It would.
We would need 9 Republicans to agree to have her replacement assigned to her committees, and ALL of them have said forget it. They aren’t going to help the Dems push through more judges. Without her, Judiciary grinds to halt.
Manyakitty
@prostratedragon: that aligns with my impressions. Imagine the horrors. Sounds to me like a perfect project for a motivated journalist.
karen marie
Is that like the process Jordan Neely got?
Sure doesn’t look it.
Betty Cracker
@rikyrah: Just to be clear, I’m not suggesting it’s a good idea, but the Repub legislators who screwed themselves by backing this bill may have been sold that or another harebrained scheme. Or maybe they’re just stupid. That’s a possibility too!
Layer8Problem
@brantl: ” . . . and I mean Brazil’s in South America, so is it even really a country anyway? At least that’s the position of the Freedom Caucus, and who am I to argue with them?”
– Kevin McCarthy, probably.
Gravenstone
The pessimistic take is that Republicans are so immune to shame that even voting to retain Santos (and yes, they’ll hide behind the fiction that the Ethic Committee will deal with it) won’t cause them any heartburn. And of course Qevin doesn’t want to lose Santos’ critical vote until he absolutely, positively has no other choice.
schrodingers_cat
You gotta love the xenophobic bigots its both, immigrants are stealing mah job and they don’t want to work and want to live on dole.
Geminid
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Rep. Robert Garcia has an interesting background. He was born in Lima, Peru in 1978, and immigrated to the US with his mother at age 5. Garcia went to college at Long Beach State, and eventually earned a Education Doctorate. He taught courses at local colleges in communications and public policy, and also started a successful local internet newspaper, the Long Beach Post.
Garcia sold the newspaper when he was elected Long Beach Mayor in 2014, becoming both the city’s first Latino and first openly gay mayor. He was also the youngest. Garcia won his Congressional seat last year, and his fellow first year colleagues elected him to their leadership post.
Jacqueline Squid Onassis
@JWR: He threatened. It was a man who was shot and killed by Walgreen’s security.
Gravenstone
A whole lot of farmers today are Big Ag. Either as subsidiaries to larger stakeholders, or as the stakeholders themselves. It’s getting rarer and rarer to find “small farmers” who actually own and work (or lease in the case of my retired stepfather) their own land.
schrodingers_cat
I am so old that I remember two male senators (Kennedy and McCain) dying of brain cancer were not facing the pressure to resign that DiFi is from the bro-left right now.
Hoodie
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for US?:
I doubt the 14th Amendment would ever be “invoked” except, perhaps, in the context of Biden explaining to the press why he’s told Treasury to continue issuing debt. Legal action would likely not be instigated by the White House, but rather by the House, arguing that Biden’s action violates the debt ceiling statute. That’s when all those arguments get trotted out.
I think this is why Biden is talking with McCarthy and not running around with his hair on fire. At this point, it’s probably better to run out the clock while acting like you’re negotiating. If the GOP calls off the game of chicken and accepts a meaningless fig leaf, great; that option leaves alive the possibility that the “debt limit” actually means anything (consider that the tradition of upping it as a normal matter of course is roughly equivalent to saying it’s meaningless). If the GOP stays on its current maximalist course, I would not be surprised if Biden lets the deadline pass and tells Yellen to either continue issuing regular bonds or do something like issuing consol bonds as an emergency measure (whichever she and the WH lawyers feel more comfortable with). That may or may not lead to litigation, but Biden’s not going to trigger litigation pre-emptively.
If we get to that point, the ball is really in the GOP’s court. Will they really file a litigation that implies that debt issued by the US Government is invalid, especially when, as you note, there is a good faith argument that Biden had no choice? There are so many positions out there that are intertwined with Federal debt that there’s no way for the financial community to unwind in anticipation of that, especially when no one knows what, if anything, will happen if the debt limit is exceeded. So I would bet the markets will price some of the risk in but will generally keep doing what they always do because they know good faith purchasers of US debt will very likely be protected. Will the Supreme Court really go along with upsetting all of that? I doubt it. The GOP justices are corrupt, but they’re owned by corporate interests who won’t want things to go down that way.
Betty Cracker
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I also see no other choice but to hope the senator can be wheeled out and relied upon to press the right button. I’d say we’re lucky she was able to make it back to DC at all, but luck has nothing to do with this shitty situation. Good lord.
Hoodie
@Betty Cracker: Yeah, looks like we’re stuck with her until 2024, assuming she lasts that long. Whose bright idea was it to put her on Judiciary?
Kay
@gvg:
He never went after their girls. Although they hired him to teach at their private schools and summer camps, he (wisely) raped and trafficked only low income girls from marginal families that no one cared about – including the US Department of Justice, who didn’t prosecute because they determined the victims weren’t important and the perpetrator was important. The Epstein victims were throwaway girls.
It isn’t just who the perp is- it’s who the victims are. If it had been any other combination other than “high class perp/low class victims” he would have been stopped; low class perp/high class victims or low/low or high/high.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?
@oldgold: I think that he should sue on both arguments. They’re not mutually exclusive. I just think the “there’s this one act of Congress that’s basically diametrically opposed to all these other acts of Congress” is a strong legal argument and also makes it clear that the responsibility lies with Congress to fix. The courts CANNOT say that Congress has the legal authority to pass conflicting laws that put the POTUS in the position where the executive can’t possibly obey all the laws passed by Congress.
I think they should pursue both arguments – this and the 14th – and ask the courts to authorize continued borrowing while it’s being litigated. That’s where I see this heading if they can’t find a deal.
Geminid
@Hoodie: Senator Feinstein has sat on the Judiciary Committee for a long time, maybe even since 1992. So the question is really, why didn’t her Democratic colleagues take her off the Committtee before January, 2021 when the current Congress began?
Paul in KY
@Mike in NC: He also invented the ‘moonwalk’ dance step.
Burnspbesq
@schrodingers_cat:
Depends. In most cases, yes. There are, however, some criminal statutes that explicitly disqualify persons convicted of them from holding office. One such statute is 18 U.S.C. Section 2071, which is likely to figure in any potential indictment of Trump in the documents matter.
rikyrah
PraiseThe Lord 4Geminis (@GullahRehabbed) tweeted at 11:44 AM on Tue, May 16, 2023:
Manchin’s political career is likely coming to an end.
This would be a great time to pretend to be within the mainstream of our party and support the President.
The hatred & mistrust he has for poor and middle class Appalachians is repulsive.
(https://twitter.com/GullahRehabbed/status/1658513727589580821?t=n-m-j9ILLQItIQNIz6KD8w&s=03)
Betty
@Hoodie: My understanding is that once you are on, you stay as long as you want. The Senate has a lot of undemocratic rules, and seniority is everything.
oldgold
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?: Biden could bring a mandamus action, but I think he should just order order Treasury to pay the lawful debts of the federal government pursuant to the clear language of the 14 Amendment. He does not need the
politicalhacks in robesCourt’s permission.Paul in KY
@JWR: I think she either did spit at him or mimicked it. No reason to be shot dead, though.
Paul in KY
@Barbara: Sorta like Caligula getting a massage while his engineers show him models of the latest catapults & whatnot.
JWR
@karen marie:
Jordan Neely’s defense will be that he put his life in danger to protect that of himself and that of his friends, to which I say it’s not what Neely did, per se, it’s that his training apparently didn’t include the part about not killing the person being detained, as in easing up just enough to allow the guy to breathe.
I’d like to think that if I were there, I would’ve tapped Neely on the shoulder and asked that he do just that. “C’mon, dude, ease up a bit. Let him breath!”
Jackie
Great new ad for Joe🥰 I can’t help but notice the stark differences between Democratic and GQP ads. Hope vs fear.
”Unite the Country – Freedom”
“A pro-Joe Biden super PAC is taking to the national cable airwaves with a new minute-long advertisement casting the president as a defender of key rights it says are at stake in the next election,” NBC News reports.”
The ad is linked to above.
Geminid
@Geminid: Well, I got that wrong. Senate Democrats could have taken Senator Feistein off the Committre before the current Congress opened in January of this year.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Great Moments In Romance, married person edition:
Just surprised my wife with a bunch of flowers from the grocery store where I stopped off to get a couple things.
Turns out half of them are dead.
Kosh III
Sen. Feinstein is a good example of why we need an age limit on office holding. I’d suggest 70 but no more than 75. There is a minimum age, why not maximum?
Manyakitty
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: full credit for the effort at least, right?
rikyrah
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
But, half aren’t. :)
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Manyakitty: @rikyrah: She’s a good sport and says it’s fine. But I’m embarrassed.
rikyrah
Clap clap clap
Candidly Tiff (@tify330) tweeted at 5:26 PM on Tue, May 16, 2023:
4 judges will be confirmed this week. The first Latino on the DC Circuit (confirmed), the 1st Black woman on the Eleventh Circuit, and 2 more Black men District Court Judges (LA and IL). Ask me if I give a damn about what Jake Sherman and leftists think? I DON’T https://t.co/kbwcsFdhMm
(https://twitter.com/tify330/status/1658599935128772611?s=02)
lowtechcyclist
@oldgold:
The problem is, if Biden decides the 14th allows him to ignore the debt ceiling, the House Republicans will challenge it in court. (ISTM they’d surely have standing, but am open to being corrected by our assorted lawyers.) Then we’re rolling the dice on what the Fascist Five do.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Glass half full!
JWR
@Jacqueline Squid Onassis:
Yeah, that story was written awkwardly as far as pronouns. (I’m still a bit confused on this one.)
rikyrah
uh huh
uh huh
The Intellectualist (@highbrow_nobrow) tweeted at 7:13 AM on Tue, May 16, 2023:
NEW: Lindsey Graham used $350,000 of campaign money to pay Jones Day, the law firm that unsuccessfully tried to get him out of testifying about attempts to overthrow the 2020 election in Fulton County, Georgia. @Forbes
https://t.co/Oi7ArMrzRQ
(https://twitter.com/highbrow_nobrow/status/1658445600059461634?s=02)
Kelly
@JWR: I got what you are trying to say, but Jordan Neely is the victim Daniel Penny is the killer.
Ksmiami
@JWR: A minor rebuke, but Jordan Neely is the deceased victim… I guess I still don’t understand why bystanders didn’t stop him. I really don’t,
Ksmiami
@Kelly: you beat me
Ken
I wonder what the US response would be if Brazil requests Santos be extradited for those check-kiting schemes?
AlaskaReader
What I tend to notice about the focus on Santos,
…is that the others who are pulling the same scam are being ignored.
Anoniminous
@Gravenstone:
Or Debt Peons one bad harvest away from bank foreclosure.
rikyrah
@Ken:
Came out last week. Santos used his position as a Congressman to settle with Brazil and pay restitution.
rikyrah
@AlaskaReader:
They have been in long enough to know how to clean their money. Santos hasn’t, so it was easier for law enforcement to follow all his money scams.
JWR
@Kelly: Oof! Dammit and Thank you! I really shouldn’t comment when I’ve been painfully, (Sciatica pain), awake all night. A great big sorry to all who may have been confused by my confusion. :
ETA in any case, I’ve posted about two separate and needless deaths. One with a gender slant, the other w.out, so to avoid further confusion, I’ll avoid both subjects for the rest of the day.
Old School
I guess the Trump town hall went well.
Baud
@Old School: If you ignore the ratings.
Jackie
ZING!!!
“By the way, you want to meet some gay people… go to the Republican caucus meeting in the United States Senate… I am just saying, they are throughout the Republican Party in South Carolina.”
— Joe Scarborough, on Morning Joe.
I watched this this morning and literally choked on my coffee in startled surprise! He actually started out by suggesting places one doesn’t go to meet gay people, and concluded with the above. Click the link to watch 🤣🤣
oldgold
@lowtechcyclist: This occurs just before the default. At that point, there is nothing to lose.
cmorenc
@Baud: Feinstein, like lots of older folks who were once very competent, capable people who are progressively diminishing in mental capacity, can be stubbornly resistant to acknowledge or recognize what is increasingly obvious to others about their impaired mental function. They do so because: a) acknowledging the degree of impairment implicitly represents loss of autonomy, status, and power; b) impaired mental faculties include impairment of the person’s capacity for insight into their own condition.
Kay
@gvg:
Federal prosecutors treated the girls as prostitutes, as if the only issue was they were minors (who were prostitutes). They weren’t prostitutes- they were high school students. To protect Epstein they smeared the victims.
“The people” were unrepresented. Everyone was on Team Epstein, prosecution and defense.
They issued a 250 page report exonerating themselves and no one got fired. Amusing though that Chomsky missed the obvious class implications in the case. Like a lot of Lefties, he’s weirdly blind to women and girls being abused and exploited. The Men of the Left. Yuck.
WaterGirl
@glory b: I wonder if there is a single Republican still in office who knows what a statesman is and also thinks that would be a title they would be honored to have.
Romney, possibly.
WaterGirl
@schrodingers_cat: We have no control over actions of Republicans. As for as Kennedy goes, I don’t recall his extended absence holding back critical things like getting judges appointed.
Am I wrong on that? It was a long time ago, and the political world now vs. then is as different as night and day.
Ken
@rikyrah: I’d heard that, but assume that Santos wasn’t completely honest in his statement, and Brazil finds more check-kiting or other crimes. They’d likely feel less accommodating, and ask for extradition. Would the US have to comply?
Geminid
@Ken: I think the Justice Department would keep Santos around until his felony charges are resolved.
H-Bob
@lowtechcyclist: “Fascist 5” — isn’t it really the “Gang of Six”?
Jackie
The Lincoln Project is targeting CNN advertisers after TFG’s MAGA town hall, including renaming the network “TNN.”
“…Ratings are down and advertisers are being encouraged to reconsider whether they want their products associated with Trump and a network that’s willing to prop him up despite the attempts to overthrow the U.S. Government, the sexual assault ruling, and the rest of his terrible reputation.”
“The Lincoln Project is asking advertisers to stop and consider this before buying commercial air time on CNN.”
”In a new ad, that will be aired on a geofence around CNN‘s New York headquarters, they point out just how horrid the Town Hall was — pointing to his mockery of a sexual abuse victim — and ask whether the Trump News Network is a good brand.”
Ad included in the link.
https://washingtonpress.com/2023/05/17/blowback-cnn-advertisers-get-a-serious-warning-about-branding/
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?
@oldgold: I kind of feel like it might be helpful for the court to issue a stay while they hear arguments and ponder a decision l. Who is going to buy that debt if there’s a chance it may not have been issued legally and hence may not be valid?
Barbara
@Kay: They also tried to immunize people who were not actually being prosecuted. That was part of Ghislaine Maxwell’s defense to criminal wrongdoing — that the federal settlement meant she couldn’t be indicted in New York. Evidently, that didn’t work, but I think it’s because they were able to indict her on actions that occurred after the settlement.
This deferred prosecution agreement was so corrupt.
Sister Golden Bear
@JWR:
FYI, while the police misgendered him, Brown was actually a trans man. Unhoused, like too many of SF’s trans population.
Sister Golden Bear
@CaseyL:
That explains why I was confused why sometimes someone I thought was the same guy used different names.
Another interesting angle is Hank is based on Montana (not sure about John) and I suspect the shows may be produced there as well. PBS also has SciShow, with a couple of spin-offs, SciShow Psych, SciShow Space, an animal-related show that I don’t remember the title of, etc. Shows are usually no more than 5-10 minutes, so they’re good for short attention span evening — still got a bit of post-Covid brain fog.
One of the other things I like about the shows is all the various hosts are “real people,” i.e. lots of different body types, people who would get passed over for not “looking good enough,” etc.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Jackie: not the first time Scarborough has gone after Lindsey with gay-baiting. They were Junior Gingrichites in the House together, I wonder if there’s some history there, beyond Joe’s essential aging frat-boy schtick.
Captain C
@Sanjeevs: Chomsky’s really looking worse the more time goes on, isn’t he?
Chris Johnson
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: If we suggest that Russia worked through Epstein, Epstein stood to gain control of a prominent leftist who was already sympathetic to authoritarian dictators as long as they weren’t the USA.
Why wouldn’t Epstein take advantage of Chomsky? Belt and suspenders strategy. It’s incredibly valuable to Russia to seize control of the extreme left and extreme right. It’s literally what they did: this is how. People trusted Chomsky (more fools they).
Origuy
@Sister Golden Bear: You might like the Brain Scoop series on YouTube. Hank fostered that, featuring a young woman named Emily Graslie, who started out working at the University of Montana and went on to work for the Chicago Field Museum and PBS.
laura
@Kay: i was very fortunate to attend the Trade Union Certificate program in the winter of 2011. Noam Chomsky spent an afternoon with the class and I was able to ask him a question – as best I can recollect, it was about conventional wisdom and manufactured consent. He spent almost a half hour spooling out his thoughts and his reasoning and then reeled it back in to answer with a caution to look beyond words and focus on actions of who benefits. It was so elegant, and I felt fortunate for the exchange- it left an impression at the time. Now, in light of this Epstein mishigas, all I have left is cringe and distain.
No One You Know
@Kosh III: No. Only the ability to do the job matters. If she can’t be expelled for that, she can’t be expelled.