US Politics, March 2020 — There’s a very good chance you’re not going to die.

for those that did not watch, when a reporter asked him about the senators that sold right before the market meltdown, (from memory) trump said he didn't know anything about it...but then stated Diane Feinstein only ...and others...all fine people. So the reporter stated the other names who sold and Trump totally jumped on the reporter for not mentioning Feinstein too. It was kind of hilarious.

uh, what?

The young Jedi B-Team that is the White House Press Corps have now been Groupon comp Lyfted back to their real jobs being overly astounded by new tailgate kick plates in unctuous Chevy Truck commercials.

— Dennis Miller (@DennisDMZ) March 20, 2020

oh

What is the coronavirus fix is to eat a Tide pod?

— Dennis Miller (@DennisDMZ) March 9, 2020

lmao

who has aged worse than dennis miller

rob schneider

donald trump

but tbrr that whole generation of SNL is a shitshow of execrable assholes

hoo boy

I still like Carvey (his show with Smigel was incredible), Nealon, and Hartman was great until the end...

Norm is still funny but his politics suck

Hartman's great obviously

He's been quiet.

political power getting confused with legislative power up in here

what's an example of political power that does not involve the legislative or legal process

power is, by definition, the capacity to achieve an end

Political power is wielded every day by people not in office. Barack Obama has tremendous political power. His endorsement, for example, his weighing in on most any issue.

Unions have poltial power. Fucking Sean Hannity has political power.

...to achieve legislative or policy ends

power to do what? convince voters or legislators to vote a certain way, right?

Biden currently has no significant power over anybody in Congress, and the power he is building up to the election is to motivate voters to vote for him. That is literally all the power he has. Making combative statements about Trump is not an exercise of power, it would be an attempt to accrue power (ie, votes in November)

or convince the public, yes, to sway opinions, to broker btw parties, to curry favor—all of it—which in turn can influence legislators, or in the case of the President mainlined from TV

political power is not restricted to office holders

I can't believe we're having a back and forth over wheter or not Joe Biden has any political power

I don't think Biden has much power to sway opinions, broker anything with the GOP (I mean come on, that is very lol), or influence legislators at the moment tbh. Nobody in the Senate, much less the House, is looking to him for leadership when he doesn't even have the nomination yet, much less hold an office.

like you think something Joe says is going to sway GOP voters? ok

it seems to me like what people wanted on this thread was someone to make them feel better about having sat through a Trump press conference, someone to express outrage in public - which isn't an exercise of power, it's an exercise in catharsis

This argument is really stupid

p much

xp nope, not looking for catharsis. expressions of public outrage at misinformation are necessary when people's lives are in the balance

I'd also prefer it if Biden didn't help Trump portray him as a crash test dummy during this business, but I guess that's inevitable

He's been on a a roll:

My Q: When will everyone who needs a coronavirus test be able to get a test?

Pres Trump: “No-one is talking about this except you, which doesn’t surprise me."

My Q: What about people w/ symptoms who cannot get a test?

Trump: "Yeah, well, OK. I’m not— I'm not hearing it."

— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) March 20, 2020

This argument is really stupid

Board description

that lash out at that reporter was fucking weird. Dude is cracking up

Perhaps... increasingly isolated?

I'd call it Biden-esque

No different to the four years previous. Question you don't want? bully or ridicule the questioner, move on because nobody will ever call you out on it.

https://www.cbpp.org/blog/senate-gop-response-to-pandemic-recession-is-seriously-inadequate

Take two families of four, with incomes of $35,000 and $150,000. Both families have two children, who receive $500 each. The adults, however, are treated very differently. Each adult in the higher-income family gets $1,200, while each lower-income adult receives just $600. This means the less financially vulnerable family gets $1,200 more than the family that has a tougher time making ends meet. (See chart.)

That should be unacceptable on both humanitarian and hard-headed economic grounds.

That's not a bug, it's a feature.

Is it just yesterday that I observed that America is bad and stupid

Doug Henwood proposes some financial/policy measures:

"There are some people on the left who doubt the wisdom of saving the banking system, but to let it collapse would be to repeat the mistakes of 1929–1932, when a cascade of thousands of bank failures magnified a downturn into a Great Depression. Actions like the Federal Reserve’s repos and securities purchases are a bare minimum to prevent a replay of the slide into depression 90 years ago. It’s important to point out that all these trillions are not taxpayer money—it’s money created out of thin air by the Fed. That’s not a financing strategy for all time—it can’t fund Medicare for All or a Green New Deal. That will take real resources. But it’s essential in this moment of crisis.

"But I share the frustration with how the Fed is spending trillions in an effort to restore the status quo before this latest crisis. That’s what happened in the 2008–2009 crisis: extraordinary measures were undertaken, but that left the long-term causes of that crisis, like income polarization and unregulated financial buccaneering, unaddressed. Stronger measures are called for this time, for example. Here are some ideas."

https://lbo-news.com/2020/03/20/a-few-ambitious-points-on-fighting-the-crisis/

well I hope y’all are happy now

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/20/biden-coronavirus-plannings-139629

Narrator: they weren’t happy

My fellow Americans, I would like to address some of the untruths currently being propagated by our president regarding the coronavirus outbreak. Number one... (turns and wanders out of frame while continuing to speak, walks back into frame shirtless twenty minutes later)

That makes me a bit happier to see Biden talking shit.

He's alive!

jay rosen concurs with shakey:

It is believed by many people who follow me that tougher, more confrontational questions — and more determined follow-ups — are the answer to press briefings on the virus that allow Trump to elude accountability.

I disagree. It's is one of my least popular conclusions. THREAD 1/

— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) March 20, 2020

[It is very widely believed — among people who talk to me on this website, but also among journalists who report on politics — that tough questions and determined follow-ups can prevent the president from using the briefings to inject falsehoods into national discourse.

lol nobody thinks this, do they? The reason to counter his lies is because they are lies. Not because anybody thinks he’s going to stop lying

This is the impeachment debate redux

Cable news, man

Jay Rosen is completely otm in that thread

I can understand that it's impossible for any news network to stop airing the press conferences but they should treat them as if they are separate and distinct from actual information. Trump needs to stop being made the main character of the news

"Biden plans shadow coronavirus briefings"

Trying to imagine how much that headline would have baffled me a year ago.

Waiting for a pool reporter to push back at being chewed out by 45 and call bullshit but that’s never gonna happen, right?

There's no time allotted to push back. The system is built so that "pushing back" means you have to shout over the POTUS and every other reporter in the pool all at once. Some other clown is always going to have a question they want to ask, so you get one shot and that's it. Collective action problems.

I was taken by this in WaPO:

“President Trump has taken historic, aggressive measures to protect the health, wealth and safety of the American people — and did so, while the media and Democrats chose to only focus on the stupid politics of a sham illegitimate impeachment,” Hogan Gidley said in a statement. “It’s more than disgusting, despicable and disgraceful for cowardly unnamed sources to attempt to rewrite history — it’s a clear threat to this great country.”

What is a Hogan Gidley? How did Hogan Gidley come on the scene without me noticing?