Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

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

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

If you can’t control your emotions, someone else will.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

Our messy unity will be our strength.

Trump’s cabinet: like a magic 8 ball that only gives wrong answers.

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

T R E 4 5 O N

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

You are here: Home / Politics / Proud to Be A Democrat / I’ll Take Someone With Faith and a Plan, Any Day of the Week

I’ll Take Someone With Faith and a Plan, Any Day of the Week

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I am reminded of what we used to chant when marching or picketing: “People, united, will never be defeated.”  The Democratic party is united (mostly) and the Republican party is not.  Case in point.

I think I’m a fairly patient person, mostly, but Biden has me beat by a mile.

If this dithering  and lack of Ukraine funding was maddening for all of us, it was surely worse for President Biden, but Biden and the rest of our leadership must have been endlessly planning, pushing and pulling to get us to this point.  Biden, Jeffries, Schumer and more.

You can’t tell me that Republicans came up with the rules to vote on and the method to get there without a filibuster and sabotage being possible.  Democrat leaders were thinking and strategizing and planning, and brought along Republicans as they could.

I imagine it was breaking Biden’s heart to leave President Zelenskyy and Ukraine hanging.  Things take as long as they take, sometimes, and this took too damn long, but Biden hung in there, working to move things in the right direction.  While the middle east was exploding.

Planning and preparing for the moment there would be a breakthrough.  A good portion of weaponry stored just across the border in Poland.  That takes faith and good planning, and a willingness to see a possible positive outcome.

Proud to be a Democrat.  Open thread.

 

 

Reader Interactions

138Comments

  5. 5.

    H.E.Wolf

    Faith and planning and patience and collaboration… and preparation to act quickly and effectively, when the moment arrives.

    We’re seeing that from the Democrats on the national stage, and here at the grassroots with our fundraising and other activities for GOTV groups.

    It works.

  9. 9.

    Martin

    I admire Zelenskyy for resisting the urge to book a flight to DC for his best sniper to solve the problem.

  12. 12.

    WaterGirl

    I think that photo up top might be the best photo I have ever seen of Marge.  She looks kind of happy instead of hateful.  Possibly because she is wearing the headless headdress of her people?

  13. 13.

    Omnes Omnibus

    No matter how well you plan and prepare for something, no matter how many times you rehearse possible scenarios, once you start to actually do it, you have to hope that what you have done is enough.  You have to hope that nothing goes wrong that you can’t fix.  Hope is built into every strategy.

  14. 14.

    Tony Jay

    Proper Preparation and Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Presidenting.

    It’s an ethos, Donny.

  16. 16.

    WeimarGerman

    Am I missing something, or doesn’t this have to pass the Senate before it’s completed?

    If so, wont Rand Paul, Tommy T and others just block it?

  23. 23.

    frosty

    You can count on the NY Post for a good headline. Looks like they’ll toss their ideology for one. Everyone’s all time favorite, though:

    Headless Body In Topless Bar
    (Doo Dah Doo Dah)

  24. 24.

    Another Scott

    Jake Sherman
    @JakeSherman
    3h

    The House Republican Conference is spending the days after passing the foreign aid package in open war with each other on social media.

    [ Wonka ] stop. don’t. [ / Wonka ]

    (via Fritschner)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  26. 26.

    gene108

    @WaterGirl:

    That wasn’t a typo, that was autocorrect. :-)

    There are no longer any typos*, it’s always autocorrect.

    *Unless you’re submitting info in Excel, which doesn’t have autocorrect. Numbers all look the same after awhile…

  28. 28.

    smith

    @WaterGirl: It’s been configured as an amendment to the bill that the Senate already passed. There will have to be a vote, but no filibuster is allowed.

  32. 32.

    oldgold

    Dunning and Kruger called the top level of overconfidence in combination with utter incompetence the Peak of Mount Stupid.

    There can be no question that atop this Peak now stands Marjorie Taylor Greene.

  34. 34.

    gene108

    @Another Scott:

    I doubt Republican infighting will have as much of an effect come November, as I think it should. They’ve gerrymandered themselves into enough safe Republican seats to never lose control of the House for long.

  36. 36.

    lowtechcyclist

    @WaterGirl:

    Pretty sure this crew could raise the money for their plane tickets in 15 minutes or less.

    As long as they renounced their US citizenship so they couldn’t come back.

  37. 37.

    Jay C

    @WaterGirl:

    This. I’m guessing Chuck Schumer (who is turning out to be a much better Dem Leader than I would have expected) has been “in the loop” with the Biden Admin to make sure that the chances of  unpleasant surprises in the Senate are minimized…

  41. 41.

    Another Scott

    @WeimarGerman: The way the House action was structured, it’s an amendment to the Senate supplemental bill.  So it can’t be filibustered the same way a new bill could be (because the Senate has already gone through the “motion to proceed” stuff on this bill).

    See Fritschner on Twitter/nitter/etc for more.

    Note what was in TheHill.com recently:

    While [Sen. Ron] Johnson said there is a great deal of “sympathy” for both Ukrainians defending their country against Russia’s invasion and Israel’s right to defend itself, he expressed concern about not being able to debate the aid in the Senate.

    “We’re not going to get a chance to debate that, we’re not going to be able to get a chance to debate the humanitarian aid that’s going to flow to Hamas,” Johnson said.

    There’s only so much gravel they can throw in the gears on this. It’s going to happen soon.

    Some are saying it will be approved by the Senate on Tuesday. Some are saying “mid-week”. It almost certainly will be in the next few days.

    Slava Ukraini!!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  42. 42.

    lowtechcyclist

    @smith:

    It’s been configured as an amendment to the bill that the Senate already passed. There will have to be a vote, but no filibuster is allowed.

    OK, this is the part I don’t understand. I understood that the original Senate bill was all set to pass, but once Donny Dimwit told them he was against it, the Rethugs didn’t give it enough votes for cloture, so it didn’t pass.

  45. 45.

    frosty

    @zhena gogolia: ​Awesome! You can rest on your laurels. That’s (counts fingers) about as good as 1/10 of all the concerts Raven has seen. Still better than me!

  49. 49.

    JoyceH

    When the Ukraine aid passed the House, I suddenly remembered that moment shortly after the Russian invasion, the first indication we’d received that there was one world leader who’d come from the entertainment industry who was going to be able to rise to the occasion – Zelenskyy’s response to the US offering him and his family transportation and safe haven, “I don’t need a ride, I need ammunition.”

  57. 57.

    JoyceH

    @WaterGirl: Speaking of the National Enquirer – something I’ve been wondering about. The trial is going to get into the catch and kill scheme to bury negative stories about Trump. Will they also get into the completely bogus negative stories about Trump rivals that they ran? I remember one alleging that Hillary had some terminal condition, with a doctored cover photo that made her look about a hundred. If those stories were discussed and coordinated with Trump or the Trump campaign, wouldn’t that be a campaign contribution in kind and illegal?

  58. 58.

    Geminid

    @BruceFromOhio: Max Miller was one of the four Republicans who accompanied Foreign Relations Chairman McCaul to Kyiv in February of last year, a couple days after President Biden visited. They pledged that Congress would not let Ukraine down, so his vote is not surprising. Miller has a lot of Ukrainian and Polish Americans in his northern Ohio district.

  59. 59.

    Chet Murthy

    @JoyceH: No idea, but I seems like no.

    https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/who-are-the-key-players-at-donald-trumps-hush-money-criminal-trial#:~:text=The%20trial%20centers%20on%20allegations,during%20his%202016%20presidential%20race.

    The trial centers on allegations the former president falsified his company’s internal records to obscure the true nature of reimbursement payments to his former fixer and lawyer Michael Cohen, who arranged hush money payments to bury negative stories about him during his 2016 presidential race.

  61. 61.

    WaterGirl

    @JoyceH:

    Will they also get into the completely bogus negative stories about Trump rivals that they ran? I remember one alleging that Hillary had some terminal condition, with a doctored cover photo that made her look about a hundred.

    Yes, it’s my understanding that the negative stories as well as the “catch and kill” will be covered in the trial.

    If those stories were discussed and coordinated with Trump or the Trump campaign, wouldn’t that be a campaign contribution in kind and illegal?

    I do not know.  Seems like there should be consequences for that, but I have no idea.

  63. 63.

    schrodingers_cat

    OT: Godi (Lapdog) media is being booed by Indians when they parachute down to cover election news in the  long forgotten towns and villages of Modi’s Shining India

  64. 64.

    NotMax

    @JoyceH

    Not directly germane to the charges. Enquirer not on trial, Pecker is appearing as a witness for the prosecution about the money trail relevant to specific instances.

  65. 65.

    New Deal democrat

    @NotMax:

    But enough about the Habsburgs….

    Your useless trivia for today: the current heir to the Hapsburg throne, Frederick von Hapsburg, is a professional race car driver who won LeMans a couple of years ago.

  66. 66.

    WaterGirl

    @schrodingers_cat:

    It’s a straw man.

    “Hope is not a strategy” has no real meaning.

    It is simply used as a way to be dismissive, insulting, and condescending to another person.

    What it really does is tell you a lot about the person who is saying it.

  68. 68.

    lowtechcyclist

    @schrodingers_cat:

    What does, hope is not a strategy supposed to mean. Is it only me that finds this sophistry annoying? Is being cynical and pessimistic a strategy?

    You’re not the only one – I’m right with you on this.

    The absence of hope is despair, and I just plain don’t do despair.

  69. 69.

    WaterGirl

    @JoyceH: @NotMax:

    The Enquirer is not on trial.  I agree on that.

    But the bogus negative stores ARE directly related to the “election interference” charges.

    They interfered using “catch and kill” and they interfered by deliberately making up false stories about his opponents.

  71. 71.

    hells littlest angel

    Ordinarily I’m willing to give credit to a Republican for doing the right thing (e.g. Pence, McCain). But Mike Johnson? Fuck him. He only did the right thing when he faced consequences for not doing it.

    On the other hand, I’m fine with him remaining Speaker because Republicans would replace him with someone worse.

  73. 73.

    lowtechcyclist

    @hells littlest angel:

    Mike Johnson? Fuck him. He only did the right thing when he faced consequences for not doing it.

    And held things up for all these months while Russia’s been bombing the crap out of Ukraine’s cities.  Seriously, fuck him.

  75. 75.

    Shalimar

    Ukraine aid passed with 73.5% support.  I can’t even imagine the arrogance of being that pissed off my 26.5% of democracy didn’t get their way.  It’s constant toddler tantrums.

  76. 76.

    NotMax

    @WaterGirl

    Only if there is introduced documentary evidence of coordination on one or more of those stories. Otherwise it is (egregious) editorial slant.

  79. 79.

    WaterGirl

    @NotMax: The fellow from the Enquirer who broke his NDA and speaks about it publicly… I believe he is testifying.  One of the podcasts I listened to last night talked about this very thing

    edit: I could be wrong.  But if I’m wrong, they’re wrong.

  80. 80.

    Scout211

    @WaterGirl:

    It’s a straw man.

    “Hope is not a strategy” has no real meaning.

    It is simply used as a way to be dismissive, insulting, and condescending to another person.

    What it really does is tell you a lot about the person who is saying it.

    Well said.  Thank you.

     

    @Omnes Omnibus: You have to hope that nothing goes wrong that you can’t fix.  Hope is built into every strategy.

    Thank you.

  81. 81.

    Jackie

    @hells littlest angel: Axios is calling Jeffries the Shadow Speaker:

    “Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) found himself in an unusual position for a minority leader last week: It was he, not the House speaker, who had the ultimate power to decide whether legislation came to the floor,” Axios reports.

     

    I like it 👍🏻

  83. 83.

    Geminid

    @Baud: Yes, Senators Jeff Lankford and Chris Murphy took a couple months to hammer out a border security package that included elements of President Biden’s proposals as well as Republican ones. Then Trump spoke against it and Republicans killed it.

  84. 84.

    Another Scott

    @schrodingers_cat: IMHO, it’s supposed to mean that one has to do the planning work, getting one’s ducks in a row, thinking about contingencies.

    What it seems to mean to some, in practice, that anytime someone says they “hope” X happens, then “hope is not a strategy!™” is trotted out to shut down the other person’s comment.  It’s used to try to indicate the other is not a serious thinker – no matter what else they’ve said.

    It’s a cheap rhetorical cudgel, IMHO.

    YMMV.

    FWIW.

    ;-)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  85. 85.

    frosty

    @New Deal democrat: ​ For some reason I feel like F1 got started by random nobles and upperclass idle rich* who needed something to do. Good to see he’s carrying on the tradition.

    *Many years ago a colleague of mine and I quit work and railpassed through Europe for a few months. We were in a taverna drinking beer on a Greek island and asked an English dude what he did for a living. Response: “Oh, I’m idle.” I got the impression that unlike us there wasn’t going to be an end to that!

  88. 88.

    Betty

    @JoyceH: I read that they will get into the broader issues to show the pattern of assistance Pecker gave to Trump. We’ll soon find out because Pecker is the first witness.

  89. 89.

    japa21

    Re: Hope is not a strategy. It refers to hoping something will happen but not doing anything to make it happen. However, all strategy, as OO pointed out above, has an element of hope involved. So the statement itself is not totally meaningless, but it is sometimes used, as WG said, in a demeaning way.

  90. 90.

    frosty

    @Baud: ​If the February passage is right, then then Johnson dicked around two months less than the Senate did (Oct-Feb vs Feb-Apr). I had no idea! I thought it was six months of the House doing nothing.

    Is this right?

  91. 91.

    karen marie

    @schrodingers_cat:  You seem to misunderstand the phrase to say that one should not hope.  It’s meaning is the same as “if wishes were horses, then beggars would ride.”

    If you don’t get off your ass and do something, hoping ain’t going to get you there.

  93. 93.

    frosty

    @japa21: I’ve seen Adam use the phrase on the Ukraine updates and I take it to mean what you said. Hope won’t get you there, you have to do some work beyond that.

    I don’t think he’s being cynical and dismissive. Maybe despairing though, like the rest of us.

  94. 94.

    PAM Dirac

    @WaterGirl:

    They interfered using “catch and kill” and they interfered by deliberately making up false stories about his opponents.

    That depends if any of the falsified business records were falsified in order to cover up payments for the false stories. As I understand it, falsifying business records is a misdemeanor. It rises to a felony if it being done to cover up other crimes. You don’t even have to prove the other crime, you just need to show that the falsification was done to hide what you think might get you in trouble. The prosecution seems to have plenty of evidence that the drumf campaign really wanted to cover up the sex stories. I don’t know if there is similar evidence that there was a cover up of the false stories.

  95. 95.

    West of the Rockies

    @schrodingers_cat:

    I completely agree with you.  Nobody is saying, “We don’t need to discuss climate change (or Ukraine, or Israel, or whatever) and consider science, logistics, etc.  All we need is hope, by gee, by golly, by gosh, by gum!”

  96. 96.

    Another Scott

    @frosty: Except funding bills, and this certainly is a funding bill, are constitutionally required to originate in the House.  (That’s why the House Rules for this talk about House Bill HR 815 as being the Supplemental (the Senate took HR 815 and stripped out stuff to put the Supplemental into it.))

    Johnson was a huge part of the delay.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  98. 98.

    Jackie

    Poor Donny… TIFG must actually be listening to his attorneys – for now, anyway. He’s shifted his current rants to some of his former staff:

    …The attack began by referencing the news outlets on which some of his former employees and White House aides now appear.

    “So many lightweights and fakes go on MSNBC & CNN, along with other ratings challenged networks and platforms, purporting to know me as though they were a long lost relative, only to have virtually no knowledge of me, or anything about me,” he said. “A weak and pathetic RINO named Miles Taylor, who worked with one of the dumber Generals around, John Kelly, speaks as though he has intimate knowledge of everything Trump. Other than seeing him on TV, I have no idea, from the Administration days, who the hell he is.”

    Trump then teased that he might be announcing other names of now-enemies who once worked for his own presidential administration.

    “But that doesn’t matter to NBC, to me one of the worst news organizations in the world,” he added. “There are many other of these phonies as well, and I’ll let you all know who they are as soon as I get a chance. TRUTH!”

    https://www.rawstory.com/trump-john-kelly-miles-taylor-fakes/

    Miles Taylor is the author of the Anonymous letter to the editor stating there were adults in the WH keeping TIFG under control…

  99. 99.

    Chet Murthy

    @Jackie:

    there were adults in the WH keeping TIFG under control…

    and as difficult as that is to believe, it appears to have been true, until just the end of his regime.  Just imagine what it would be like if he didn’t have anybody controlling him!  I sure hope we don’t get to find out!

  100. 100.

    Scout211

    @Jackie:

    [Trump:] “Other than seeing him on TV, I have no idea, from the Administration days, who the hell he is.”

    This is not the insult that he thinks it is.

    #Donniecan’tremember

  102. 102.

    Eolirin

    @West of the Rockies: At least half the pushback against “Doomerism” that happens here is absolutely that though.

    You can’t prepare for what happens after failure if you refuse to consider that it can happen.

  103. 103.

    Another Scott

    @Betty: I like this take:

    Mrs. Betty Bowers
    @BettyBowers
    2h

    The Trumpiest thing about the Stormy Daniels saga is Trump pressuring Michael Cohen to slow-walk payment to Daniels until after the election. And then not pay her because it wouldn’t matter if she talked then.

    That proves payment was about the election, not Melania finding out.

    Apr 21, 2024 · 9:36 PM UTC

    As usual, since he never faced any consequences, he didn’t even do his criming right.

    [16TonWeightFalling.gif]

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  117. 117.

    Miss Bianca

    @WaterGirl:

    Sorry, I still think the Weekly World News’s “Cabbage Patch Doll Strangles Mom” has got to be the best tabloid headline of my (admittedly limited) experience.

  119. 119.

    A Man for All Seasonings (formerly Geeno)

    @frosty: The all time winner is “Foote Heads Arms Body” when a guy named Foote was tagged to lead a UN armaments committee.

  124. 124.

    Jackie

    @Miss Bianca: Speaking of Cabbage Patch dolls… My mom used to keep The National Enquirer and other tabloids in her bathroom. I don’t remember how many arguments I had with my preteen daughter about what she’d seen “in the news.” I finally figured out where she was getting her information from – grandma’s “newspapers!” I had to ask mom to remove them from her bathroom. Mom argued at first, then finally realized my daughter didn’t understand the difference between newspapers and tabloids, and thought the tabloids were legit news. 🤦🏼‍♀️

  125. 125.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    How about “Nut screws and bolts”?

    Insane asylum patient rapes a nurse and escapes.

  127. 127.

    Gvg

    @WaterGirl: from what i understood the practice started before Trump ran. They probably didn’t even bother to think about election laws. Both men are very corrupt. I wonder if it may make it hard to prove?

  128. 128.

    A Man for All Seasonings (formerly Geeno)

    @Odie Hugh Manatee:  Foot Heads Arms Body is supposed be a real headline from the Times of in the late 70’s about Labour Party politician Michael Foot. It’s a well known story, but even though the Times editor says he wrote it up that way – no one can find it in the archives.

    ETA: added the ‘e’ thinking of another Foot(e).

    Clarification: The London Times

  130. 130.

    wjca

    @frosty: If the February passage is right, then then Johnson dicked around two months less than the Senate did (Oct-Feb vs Feb-Apr). I had no idea! I thought it was six months of the House doing nothing.

    Here’s the thing, this is a bill to spend money.  And spending bills are required to come from the House.

    When it became obvious that the House wasn’t going to do that, the Senate contrived a work-around: they took another bill that the House had passed and sent to them and amended it.  By total replacement.  That is the bill that they passed and sent to the House.  And which, with the just-passed House amendments, will be passed by the Senate and signed by Biden.

    So it’s a stretch to blame the Senate for all the time before they passed something.  Because part of that was waiting for House Republicans to do their fucking job. Sure, they could have abandoned hope and started sooner.  And they could have written the bill faster.  But still, a lot of the nominal “Senate delay” shouldn’t actually be on them.

  132. 132.

    S Cerevisiae

    @Miss Bianca: I miss seeing the Weekly World News at the checkout line , where else am I going to find the latest about Batboy ?

    My favorite headline from there:

    Redneck Aliens Invade Trailer Park- the picture was so bad it was great.

  133. 133.

    sxjames

    @A Man for All Seasonings (formerly Geeno):

    I’m fond of the headline about some UK school boys that got ahold of V i a g r a  and took it during school

    “Stiff discipline in School boys Viagra Prank”

    And of course, there is the classic regarding Hooker chemical Co. and the Love canal environmental contamination

    “Hooker ordered to clean Love Canal”

  135. 135.

    frosty

    @West of the Rockies: Sorry, no. The SLR was to big to carry and secure so it wouldn’t get stolen in a hostel. No photos except one of me sitting in the Luxembourg train station at the end of the trip waiting for my travel buddy to show up. Sat there most of a day. Connecting without cell phones was much different!​
     
    Plenty of words, though. I kept a travel diary and I still have it!

  136. 136.

    Melancholy Jaques

    @japa21:

    I feel like the “hope is not a strategy” thing was discussed at some length on this very blog maybe a month or two ago.

    It is directed at those who only express hope, but do not take any action. It’s like the Dusty Springfield song.

    It’s over-used, but apt for some tote-baggers I know.

  137. 137.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    Hope is not a strategy, but it is a critical part of a well-balanced arsenal.

  138. 138.

    WaterGirl

    @Melancholy Jaques: If you can name even 5 people on this blog who express hope without recognizing that action is required in order to change things, then I’ll agree with you.

    To throw that phrase to people who are hopeful and also recognize the need for action, that’s an insult.

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