Vicente Fox with a message for Donald Trump. The best is how he refers to him as the “current President of the Electoral College of the United States.”
Lol.
This post is in: Excellent Links
Vicente Fox with a message for Donald Trump. The best is how he refers to him as the “current President of the Electoral College of the United States.”
Lol.
This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Dolt 45, Open Threads, Republican Venality, Ever Get The Feeling You've Been Cheated?
This is happening now pic.twitter.com/anYsuzS7Ll
— Steve Kopack (@SteveKopack) June 9, 2017
Remember “Infrastructure Week Forty-minutes-on-Friday”?
Per the Washington Post, “‘Infrastructure week,’ designed to challenge Democrats, finds no takers“:
… The Trump infrastructure push, meant to be at the very least a welcome political distraction in a scandal-dominated week, has become the latest example of the president’s vanishing clout. A White House “signing ceremony” had the president sending a toothless letter to Congress. A speech in Cincinnati offered few details and plenty of digressions. And an accompanying memo to reporters contained more about the problems with President Barack Obama’s 2009 stimulus bill than the details of Trump’s $200 billion infrastructure goals.
The result: Democrats, who once worried about the president barnstorming the country to take credit for new jobs and investment, are feeling no pressure to act on an amorphous and easily demonized plan.
“When he called for a trillion-dollar infrastructure bill, we thought that was great,” said Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) at this week’s news conference. “What they’ve proposed is privatizing most of our infrastructure to give wealthy financiers tax breaks on projects they were probably going to build anyway … it’ll lead to ‘Trump tolls’ from one end of the country to the other.”…
What had worried Democrats, after a surprise 2016 defeat powered by a collapse of Rust Belt and labor support, was an infrastructure plan that would have doled out no-strings money to states… To the surprise of defeated Democrats, the infrastructure plan re-emerged as a tangle of public-private partnerships, where — according to the few available details — local governments would trade the traditional federal match for infrastructure projects with 80/20 or 90/10 private/public funding.
“It’s been the most convoluted thing you could imagine,” said Ron Klain, who was Vice President Joe Biden’s chief of staff and led the stimulus team in 2009. “I thought to some extent that when Trump had a highly simple message — I’ll spend money here — he’d learned our lesson. We had this bill that was like Noah’s ark for every project, and he’d just spend money. And instead it’s like Pharaoh telling people to build bricks without straw, because Republicans don’t want to spend the money.”
Could’ve been a yoooge opportunity for Repubs to steal — er, privatize — more of our common resources nationwide, if only Lord Smallgloves had been able to focus for more than fifteen minutes on anything beyond his own grievances…
***********
What’s on the agenda as we wrap up another hellacious week?
Friday Evening Open Thread: Oh, Yeah — <em>Infrastructure!</em>Post + Comments (143)
by DougJ| 184 Comments
This post is in: Music
What are your favorite songs that get played on oldies radio? For my list, I’m going to make a couple stipulations. First, I’m not going to include any Michael Jackson because then that would be most of the list. I’m also not putting any Beatles/Stones on it, because none of my favorite Beatles/Stones songs were radio hits (except maybe In My Life and Wild Horses). I’ll go with:
1. Maggie May — Rod Stewart
2. Got To Get You Into My Life — Earth Wind & Fire
3. Walkin’ on Sunshine — Katrina and the Waves
4. I Wish — Stevie Wonder
5. Heard It In A Love Song — Marshall Tucker Band
What oldies do you hate the most? I’m going to stipulate no Doors songs because otherwise my list would be all Doors. I also decided to have the bad list consist of songs by people who have at least one other song that I do like, with one exception.
1. I Just Called To Say I Love You — Stevie Wonder
2. Do Ya think I’m Sexy — Rod Stewart
3. Hands Across The Water — Paul McCartney
4. If A Picture Paints A Thousand Words — Bread
5. Feel Like Making Love — Bad Company
This post is in: Domestic Politics, All we want is life beyond the thunderdome
Republican Senator Chuck Grassley is the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He wrote a letter to the White House requesting that the Office of Legal Counsel withdraw its opinion that Democrats’ requests for information be ignored.
Unfortunately, the May 1, 2017 Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) opinion authored by Acting Assistant Attorney General Curtis E. Gannon on this topic completely misses the mark. It erroneously rejects any notion that individual members of Congress who may not chair a relevant committee need to obtain information from the Executive Branch in order to carry out their Constitutional duties. It falsely asserts that only requests from committees or their chairs are “constitutionally authorized,” and relegates requests from non-Chairmen to the position of “non-oversight” inquiries— whatever that means.
This is nonsense.
…
For OLC to so fundamentally misunderstand and misstate such a simple fact exposes its shocking lack of professionalism and objectivity. Indeed, OLC appears to have utterly failed to live up to its own standards. You are being ill-served and illadvised.
Six pages, with footnotes.
It’s good to see a senator doing his job. And the fact that he’s Republican shines a little ray of hope.
Here’s an article about it in Politico, if you want to go there.
by Betty Cracker| 186 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics, Nature, Open Threads
Instead of rehashing the 2016 Democratic Party primary for the millionth goddamned time or arguing counterfactuals based on an election outcome in another country, how about looking at this lovely giant swallowtail butterfly that briefly graced a bamboo tree in my yard?
Open thread, except for the aforementioned topics, which can be engaged downstairs. C’mon, man. There’s plenty of other stuff to talk about. Weekend plans? Cooking? Pets? Irritating bosses? Read any good books lately? Anything except you-know-what. Don’t make me come down there!
by David Anderson| 46 Comments
This post is in: Anderson On Health Insurance, Fuck The Poor
Delaying massive cuts and eligibility restrictions is still voting for massive cuts and suffering.
Call the Senate
The Senate's #Medicaid compromise would not preserve anyone’s coverage in the long run: https://t.co/dqCBCehp21 #MedicaidWorks pic.twitter.com/Oj7n9PNe7L
— Center on Budget (@CenterOnBudget) June 8, 2017
When you call a Senate office, ask to speak to the relevant Health Legislative Assistant. Hey look, a list of staffer names! 18/ pic.twitter.com/UQ0yZNaSxc
— Ben Wikler (@benwikler) June 8, 2017
by $8 blue check mistermix| 289 Comments
This post is in: Election 2018
Atrios has a good take on the Tories’ semi-defeat yesterday, which is consistent with this Guardian analysis:
The “youthquake” was a key component of Corbyn’s 10-point advance in Labour’s share of the vote – exceeding even Blair’s nine-point gain in his first 1997 landslide. No official data exists for the scale of the youth vote but an NME-led exit poll suggests turnout among under-35s rose by 12 points compared with 2015, to 56%. The survey said nearly two-thirds of younger voters backed Labour, with Brexit being their main concern.
The youngs are getting fucked over here, too, and if Democrats can turn them out in larger-than-average numbers, we will take back the House and have a shot at the Senate. If we do win the House, we ought to pass different versions of free tuition, and Medicaid/Medicare for all, until hell won’t have it anymore. Finance both of those with tax increases on the Trumps of the world.
Our definition of “young” needs to change, too. 55 year-olds are “young” for the purposes of fighting Republicans. Hell, even 65 is young when the Republicans are going to raise the Medicare eligibility age to 67. Lots of people put off major elective procedures until they are 65 – the thought of two more years of pain with a bad hip or bad knee prior to replacement should get a few people hobbling to the polls to cast their ballot for a party that clearly wants to push Medicare eligibility to 60 or 50 or, why not, birth. And as I assume 40 commenters will tell me, “Medicare for all” may not work in detail, but we can work out the details once we have the House, Senate and White House.