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

🐦[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.

I totally would. Who are the candidates?

I don't want a speaker who agrees with me -- that's not her job. I want a speaker who responds to constituent prodding.

Adlai Stevenson

Impeach fucker again, plz

https://www.npr.org/2020/05/16/857334790/president-trump-removes-state-department-inspector-general-steve-linick

Amash is out.

After much reflection, I’ve concluded that circumstances don’t lend themselves to my success as a candidate for president this year, and therefore I will not be a candidate.

— Justin Amash (@justinamash) May 16, 2020

I think it's good on the whole he is not running for President, but I have to admit that, as a non-libertarian, I see Amash as vastly smarter and more principled than most people who call themselves by that name, so I hope he stays high-profile because it will make other people who identify as libertarians be better and smarter.

It took him "much reflection" to reach that conclusion? The idea that maybe he's a bit slow on the uptake doesn't begin to cover it.

"I'm running"

"Hey you shouldn't"

"Wow, I never thought of it that way! Good lookin' out!"

One Easy Way for People Who Identify as Libertarians to be Better and Smarter (Number One Will Surprise You!)

It took him "much reflection" to reach that conclusion? The idea that maybe he's a bit slow on the uptake doesn't begin to cover it.

― A is for (Aimless), Saturday, May

It's PR boilerplate.

Surprised he didn't invoke his family in some way.

True libertarians don't have families. Children are nothing but takers.

Children are known as "Secondary Income Providers"

Having finished Tim Alberta's pretty good Trump book an hour ago, I summarized Amash as one of DC's few honest men about policies that kill people.

including those that kill indirectly?

no, directly.