US Politics, May 2020 — I will never lie to you. You have my word on that.

i mean, look at his record

Oh yay

https://www.wcax.com/content/news/China-focus-on-jobs-fighting-virus-as-layoffs-sweep-globe-570686091.html

Obviously he has no legal authority to do it, but we know what will happen.

1) Trump-friendly Governors, most will do what he says

2) Those who refuse, he'll threaten to withhold Federal funds

3) Lawsuits will probably filed in reaction to this Quid Pro sequel, to block withholding of funds

4) Hundreds of churches if not more reopen.

I fucking hate this man, this country. If only these assholes would just be killing themselves and not other people

One thing I did on this beautiful #EarthDay is read Ed Markey's seminal climate legislation, Waxman-Markey.

(JK it is 185302598475 pages)

But here is a fun fact. One word NOT included in said seminal climate legislation:

Justice.

— Emily Kaufman (@emilybrowne) April 22, 2020

Reincarnate Lee Harvey Oswald

"I tested very positively in a — in another sense. So this morning, yeah — I tested positively toward negative, right? So, no, I tested perfectly this morning. Meaning — meaning I tested negative. But that’s a way of saying it: Positively toward the negative."

https://youtu.be/Vah-601KJzg

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/22/opinion/coronavirus-senate-unemployment.html

Lawmakers need to start thinking beyond the near term. One obvious way to drive economic recovery while looking to the future: a major infrastructure package.

Shoring up roads and bridges, updating lead-riddled water systems, investing in broadband and renewable energy — the United States has a nearly limitless number of projects that need to be addressed. (Parts of Central Michigan are underwater right now, and 10,000 people have been evacuated, following two catastrophic dam failures.) Interest rates are low, and workers are readily available. The government can ease the nation’s pain by spending while the private sector is convalescing.

President Trump has long expressed an openness to infrastructure investment. Some Republican lawmakers are sounding similarly inclined. “I want to do infrastructure,” Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told CNN this week, noting that he’d told the president this “really is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to give a face-lift to the country.”

what America needs right now more than anything is infrastructure week

not sure what to make of comparing fixing vital infrastructure to cosmetic surgery, feels telling

give our highways some breast implants while you're at it

Give unemployment a little lipo

Unfortunately, the way that metaphor would actually work is trimming the fat from entitlements to give the military a bigger butt

Kayleigh McEnany, who provided this thread title--caught the tail end of the briefing yesterday (I thought they'd stopped doing them altogether). She is totally Sean Spicer Part II. Besides goading the room, she's condescending as fuck.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnAbeCGNPe4

"Perhaps if I write them out in a slide format--maybe we're visual learners."

you could write it in cuneiform and it wouldn't change the stupidity of what yr saying, Kayleigh

i can't fucking deal with that, had to turn off at 5 minutes, she enrages me

i know why Infrastructure Week is a running joke. it's the trump admin's fallback "this is the serious thing we're working on" item when they need to distract. however, it must be said: it's really, really sad that Infrastructure Week hasn't actually taken place, 3 and a half years into the trump admin. at this point it's worth pushing it to a democratic administration so that the infrastructure can be Green Infrastructure, as much as possible (especially upgrading the grid). but they really could and should have done something years ago. it's sad

if the republicans really cared about governing i think they could have pushed this through during the first couple years of the admin. i think they'd easily be able to pick off enough democratic votes to pass it in a technically "bipartisan" way, too. oh well.

Green New Deal is the Democrats' version of Infrastructure Week, but a little better focused and much more seriously intended.

yep, and it's going to run into a steamroll of opposition, too, sadly. i am gearing up for a couple years of agony (but also progress) for what's likely to happen in 2021-22 under the administration of the most inspirational leader of the 21st century, joe biden. i am guessing that if the green new deal can get some momentum (and it fucking better - it has to) it will be a war on the level of the obamacare wars of 2009-2010. it will be agonizing.

I honestly try to avoid hearing about the progress of The Wall, but I understand it is continuing and costing lots of $$ (corruptly of course). I don't need to say this to you guys, but obviously infrastructure talk was always a lie to win votes and nothing more. Contradicting myself and giving a hateful prick the benefit of the doubt, but I assume Graham called it a "face-lift" to find some new way to appeal to trump's pathetically limited preoccupations

i'm not sure i'm following what you're saying. you mean "infrastructure week" is just code for "build the wall", and people like graham get that but they can't convince trump and other top officials to actually put in the work to pass legislation on it?

when i'm talking about infrastructure, i mean actual infrastructure. i assume graham and trump and his whole universe of fucking pricks are talking about the most possibly racist version of infrastructure that they can possibly imagine, because that's what they do with every policy area. that's their thing. but there's still a very overwhelming case for actual infrastructure that should be obvious to all of congress. the grid needs a massive upgrade everywhere in the country, not just in liberal enclaves

sorry Karl, I wasn't really directly responding to your posts. I was incoherently reacting to two things:
1) This line in the NYT article: "President Trump has long expressed an openness to infrastructure investment," which strikes me as naive. I'd say "infrastructure week" was code for "vote for me" and "I am the building guy who builds things" and not much else. It holds as much value as him screaming about how he brought jobs back to the USA. Building the wall is its own mythology, however...

2) The enraging fact that wall construction is continuing while the republicans tell us there's no money available for economic relief. ftr, I wholeheartedly agree that infrastructure spending is vitally necessary and that should be obvious to everyone. I still think about this chilling Dan Rather investigation I watched like a decade ago about how absolutely fucked all the bridges in america are.

come on, so millions of Americans will either go bankrupt or be relying on food banks to eat, and probably be forced to leave their homes when the moratorium on the evictions/foreclosures ends, and businesses are going under, clearly the best way to combat that is continuing to build a wall that will provide prosperity for all.

1. Build the wall
2. keep out foreigners
3. ???
4. profit!

2) The enraging fact that wall construction is continuing while the republicans tell us there's no money available for economic relief.

14 miles of new bollard fencing (WALL) has been constructed, at a cost of $3.26 billion.

Just a few thousand miles left!

Man even before pandemic I hadn't heard about the immigration "crisis" in quite awhile

Nobody wants to come here now because Covid-19.

With the possible exception of thousands of asylum-seekers from Central America forced back into Mexico to await hearings that the Trump administration is ensuring they will never get. Probably not so many Norwegians, Trump's favorite non-shithole-country immigrants, clamoring to get in right now.

xpost np rob, that makes sense!

XP Well, yeah.

In the early days of the pandemic, Dan Crenshaw and other water carriers/boot lickers were citing the new travel bans (and other immigration hurdles, like THE WALL) as ways to stop/contain the spread, but they've all since moved on to other talking points.

I HOPE ALL AFRICAN AMERICANS WILL READ AND STUDY THIS. 100% CORRECT. SLEEPY JOE WILL NEVER GET YOU THERE. HE NEVER HAS IN THE PAST. I WILL & HAVE!!! https://t.co/j15DLun4KV

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 24, 2020

They're reemerging from the slime pit of 2016: first, Kayleigh McEnany, now Katrina Pierson. Calling Jeffrey Lord.

Heard new infrastructure plan includes building a pyramid to pharaoh twoscoop in vegas. biggest. ever. real stone. classy.

fucktons of manual labor involved. possible guest worker visas! it’s lifetime employment, no bennies, one-way agreement with bulletproof ndas.

you’d think republicans would be all over infrastructure because it gives them a chance to shovel money directly from the taxpayer to all their developer/contractor friends

It would probably be a win for them, but they shut it down in the Obama years also, they can't allow anything that benefits both parties.

Yeah exactly, it’s actually too on the nose to write a bill that specifically calls out red states by name as the only beneficiaries, so better to write nothing at all

disagree. nothing is too on the nose for these jackals. optics mean nothing, principle means nothing. so i dgi.

It would never get past the house if it only called out reliable red states because it would leave too many rural GOP congresspeople hanging. So it’s too on the nose and impossible to squeeze through the legislature.

The only way to make it work is compromise, and at least one side would rather just burn shit down.

you’d think republicans would be all over infrastructure because it gives them a chance to shovel money directly from the taxpayer to all their developer/contractor friends

they've found ways to do that without making their developer friends actually spend the money on building anything.

besides, making it look like government is capable of improving anything is against the creed

golf (exercise)

http://www.cnn.com/2020/05/25/politics/trump-threatens-charlotte-republican-convention/index.html

I would think you'd gladly call his bluff. I know a convention, under normal circumstances, is worth tens of millions in tourism, but unless you think all of this is miraculously gone by August, that won't be anywhere near the case this time. I'd jump at any chance to get it moved somewhere else.

Man, Pence's response is master class in oleaginous kiss-assery.

of course he has to add in some total fucking nonsense like "we would be spending millions of dollars building the Arena to a very high standard" about a facility that's already home to an NBA franchise. unless the RNC is planning on leaving behind some three-point shooters and draft picks, then maybe we can talk.

we'll build a new arena using corpses as the foundation

I would think you'd gladly call his bluff. I know a convention, under normal circumstances, is worth tens of millions in tourism, but unless you think all of this is miraculously gone by August, that won't be anywhere near the case this time. I'd jump at any chance to get it moved somewhere else.

Apparently Charlotte was the only city that put in a bid in the first place. So...

Oh I hope he moves it to a state where they let him pack thousands and thousands of republicans in tight to a confined space in August.

and then seal it shut shortly before the end of the convention so they can't get out and infect other people.

Apparently Charlotte was the only city that put in a bid in the first place. So...

If you're a Democratic governor, that might even increase the temptation to call his bluff. If he has nowhere else to go, you'll force him to publically recant (and, no doubt, concoct some preposterous rationale for doing so).

"As we have no intention of easing precautions whatsoever, we understand totally why the president will need to relocate. With all respect to the president and the Republican party, we will not contest this."

bold ignorance

"I love the Great State of North Carolina, so much so that I insisted on having the Republican National Convention in Charlotte at the end of August," Trump said in a series of tweets. "Unfortunately, Democrat Governor, @RoyCooperNC is still in Shutdown mood & unable to guarantee that by August we will be allowed full attendance in the Arena. In other words, we would be spending millions of dollars building the Arena to a very high standard without even knowing if the Democrat Governor would allow the Republican Party to fully occupy the space."

shutdown mood