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

thanks for the clarifications, guyses

I mentioned on the CA politics thread that particular district CA25 is still a sore spot for many Angelenos as it's where the Rodney King trial was moved to

go to Simi Valley and surely
somebody
knows the address of the jury

pay a little visit
"Who is it?"
"Yo, it's Ice Cube. Can I talk to the Grand Dragon?"
then boom

wait, no: Grand Wizard

makes u think

Trump on coronavirus cases: "When you test, you have a case. When you test, you find something is wrong with people. If we didn't do any testing we would have very few cases."

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) May 14, 2020

Trump has cured cancer by banning cancer screenings

March 7:

“I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it,” the president went on. He started talking about his tour of the CDC he’d taken before his talk to the press. “Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president.”

They didn't call him sir????????

I think sic is trying to be cute perhaps, but:

TO MOST PEOPLE WHO DON'T LIVE HERE, SIMI Valley rhymes with “Rodney King.” The 1992 trial of four LAPD officers accused of beating the African-American motorist was moved from politically charged Los Angeles to this western Ventura County oasis of golf courses and man-made lakes. When the four cops were acquitted, Los Angeles went up in flames, and Simi Valley became synonymous with white racism, white flight, white cluelessness but, above all, white cops because of the high number of law-enforcement employees who called the town home. For every big city, there's a bedroom burg known for having a large share of its police officers living there — Riverhead on Long Island, say, or Novato in Northern California — but Simi's extraordinary population of those in uniform has made it a fabled Copland. If, as Andrew Kopkind wrote 35 years ago, Orange County was the Bavarian heartland of Reaganism, Simi Valley may well be its Prussia.

from https://www.laweekly.com/copland/

The Kopkind quote is rich as it did not foresee neither Reagan's presidency nor his library that would be established in currently CA25 Simi, a white-flight bookend of Nixon's OC.

House Democrats are significantly scaling back the student loan forgiveness provisions in their $3T coronavirus relief package, citing concerns about the cost: https://t.co/h56VehjUsK

— Michael Stratford (@mstratford) May 14, 2020

Slaaaaaay

https://static.politico.com/dims4/default/5d27878/2147483647/resize/817x/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic.politico.com%2Fa4%2Fc3%2Fef3927cf4dcab33da46e810d4003%2F200514-trump-ap-2-773.jpg

Are Dems in danger of spreading apathy among sectors of the electorate they need to vote for them if they don't fight for moneys they said they would.
Just really hoping people aren't going to turn around in November and think it's more of the same old same old.
I guess at least one side isn't a narcissistic psycho but still think they need a pull factor. & seen some really dodgy decisions made by the leadership.

less and worse make-up than Cesar Romero's Joker

more, I meant

I guess at least one side isn't a narcissistic psycho

wait, which side is this

🐦[House Democrats are significantly scaling back the student loan forgiveness provisions in their $3T coronavirus relief package, citing concerns about the cost: https://t.co/h56VehjUsK🕸
— Michael Stratford (@mstratford) May 14, 2020🕸]🐦

Hey look I found a tweet that perfectly encapsulates the current US ilx politics threads zeitgeist

It's a one party system pic.twitter.com/XF8DPEQWdr

— AlwaysAngryinNJ☭Prosecute ICE (@NJRedRev) May 14, 2020

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/jgxxvk/senate-votes-to-allow-fbi-to-look-at-your-web-browsing-history-without-a-warrant

Vote to remove this amendment failed by one vote. Thanks for not showing up, Bernie.

xp that's an odd response to the previous post. And it's not wrong.

this is a minor sideline item in the annals of 2020, but i just want to memorialize a very rare moment: mitch mcconnell has admitted he was wrong about something!!!!!

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) backpedaled on Thursday night after accusing former President Barack Obama administration of leaving President Donald Trump unprepared to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I was wrong,” the GOP leader told Fox News host Bret Baier. “They did leave behind a plan.”

“So I clearly made a mistake in that regard,” he added.

During a virtual Trump campaign event on Monday, McConnell had made the false claim about the Obama administration, which has been manufactured by Trump in an effort to shift blame for his own administration’s feeble response to the outbreak.

“We want to be early, ready for the next [pandemic], because clearly the Obama administration did not leave to this administration any kind of game plan for something like this,” McConnell said on Monday.

Former Obama administration Ebola response coordinator Ronald Klain and Obama administration deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes pushed back on the senator’s claim that same day.

“We literally left them a 69-page Pandemic Playbook…. that they ignored. And an office called the Pandemic Preparedness Office…that they abolished. And a global monitoring system called PREDICT…that they cut by 75%,” Klain tweeted.

Pelosi and Schumer are going to go down in history as being completely useless. They may as well be on Mitch's side. They are both pathetic. Come on death, take them out so we can move on.

okay

They may as well be on Mitch's side.

Gosh! If that's true, then my friends should've just voted for McCain and Romney in 2008 and 2012! Shit, they may even have gotten health care!

So did McConnell push this vote through yesterday because he knew at least two likely votes for blocking it weren't in attendance?

Great job to the 10 Democrats who voted *against* the Wyden-Daines amendment that would have prohibited FBI warrantless surveillance of web browser history. Special shout out to Bernie Sanders who didn’t show up to vote. It was defeated by *one* vote.

— jeremy scahill (@jeremyscahill) May 13, 2020

Great job to the 10 Democrats who voted *against* the Wyden-Daines amendment that would have prohibited FBI warrantless surveillance of web browser history. Special shout out to Bernie Sanders who didn’t show up to vote. It was defeated by *one* vote.

— jeremy scahill (@jeremyscahill) May 13, 2020

this is disappointing

yes, have to wonder if this doesn't fall in Schumer's lap w/r/t vote counting

I can't imagine this happened and they knew how many votes they had

just sloppy and unnecessary

i'm happy to spread the blame around. but bernie is also at fault, much as i admire him

the student loan issue is also atrocious. if we're entering a depression we can't have young workers saddled with hundreds of thousands of debt, it's insane.

yes, have to wonder if this doesn't fall in Schumer's lap w/r/t vote counting

I can't imagine this happened and they knew how many votes they had

― Yanni Xenakis (Hadrian VIII),

otm

Whatever plan the house comes up with has to go through the senate, right?

democrats who voted NO:

Carper, Thomas R. (D-DE)
Casey, Robert P., Jr. (D-PA)
Feinstein, Dianne (D-CA)
Hassan, Margaret Wood (D-NH)
Jones, Doug (D-AL)
Kaine, Tim (D-VA)
Manchin, Joe, III (D-WV)
Shaheen, Jeanne (D-NH)
Warner, Mark R. (D-VA)
Whitehouse, Sheldon (D-RI)

i'm surprised by Whitehouse. I thought he was relatively cool? maybe he's not

me too, surprised

can only hope this insider trading business is somehow the end of Feinstein

barely picked up any traction i feel like

do none of these people ever die

She'll be 90+ when her term ends, surely this is the last term.

can't kill 'em they were born dead

Whatever plan the house comes up with has to go through the senate, right?

Yes. Bills also must be signed by the president.

As for backing off on their first position on student loan forgiveness, I hear endless complaints about Democrats not knowing how to ask for more than they think they'll get as a negotiating tactic and pre-emptively conceding ground. Now, when they actually do propose a plan that the Senate would never agree to, but represents a strong opening position, I hear how useless they are because they didn't succeed in getting their opening proposal, uncompromised.

(scratches head) It's almost as if some people will always find a reason why the Democrats are bad, incompetent and corrupt, because this is an article of faith that cannot ever be contradicted, only confirmed, by the evidence, no matter what the evidence is.

there's a ton of political pressure on both side to push these bills through right now, and there's zero excuse for not including things like student loan forgiveness—*at least* as sacrificial pawns in order to preserve the next-least likely components

Maybe it's time to stop believing a faction of Democrats are exercising realpolitik and understand instead that they DON'T WANT things like student debt forgiveness

how is this guy still employed, and what the actual fuck

Excuse me what?? pic.twitter.com/OgPfi4v4z1

— Secular Talk (@KyleKulinski) May 15, 2020

but the leadership did include student loan forgiveness. then Pelosi counted votes. if you want to blame 'the democrats', then blame the remaining twenty or thirty 'blue dog' democrats, not Pelosi (who can count votes) or the bulk of the caucus. then primary the hell out of those blue dog democrats.

it so happens that my rep is a timid blue dog democrat named Kurt Schrader. he had a primary opponent to his left. guess who I just voted for.

Pelosi is not merely a vote counter. She has demosntrated the power to build party concensus around these things.

You know what she does if she thinks this is important? She calls your rep in and tells him how's he's going to vote, what their plan is for insulating him, and how she will make it worth his while. Stop apologizing for her priorities.

yeah this whole routine about Pelosi just innocently counting the votes is bullshit. to pretend she doesn’t have any kind of vision or agenda as Speaker is weird.

Let's stir the pot: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/5/15/21247994/nancy-pelosi-democratic-party-molly-ball

Many XPs

Nunes has a picture of Trump on his shelf? What a fucking toady!

If Pelosi is just a human abacus, perhaps the Democrats should consider stronger leadership.