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

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.

He's sincere about who benefits from lower taxes.

I liked Don Lemon's line last week about Obama living in Trump's head rent-free. That head will be exploding for the next day or two.

http://www.cnn.com/2020/05/16/politics/barack-obama-commencement-speech-2020-hbcu/index.html

Peter Navarro was on with George Stephanopoulos this morning. When Stephanopoulos tried to pin him down on, uh, "Obamagate," Navarro mentioned Hunter Biden getting a billion dollars from the Chinese. Stephanopoulos said that wasn't true. Navarro: "Be that as it may..." That's a pretty good segue.

one. BILLION. DOLLARS.

wtf?

I thought I might have misquoted, but they put the transcripts online:

STEPHANOPOULOS: The vice president had an op-ed in USA Today in January, he warned in February, all through the month of February the president, President Trump, was praising President Xi of China. He was saying he trusted President Xi of China. He was saying President Xi of China was being transparent, that's why Vice President Biden says that the president was downplaying the threat from China.

NAVARRO: Yeah, well Joe Biden's has got 40 years of sucking up to the Chinese, including the eight years as vice president. And we know about the billion dollars that his son took from the Chinese.

STEPHANOPOULOS: That's just not factual, sir. That is not a fact. He did not take a billion dollars from the Chinese.

NAVARRO: Went into that hedge fund.

Be that as it may, I do think this election is going to be a referendum in many ways on China.

That last line is a big clue to how the Trump campaign thinks it can leverage xenophobia by linking the pandemic, the economic fallout, and bogus Biden scandals all to China in one big murky conspiratorial package, sold to the voters via a tangled web of bold lies soon backed away from, innuendoes, and rumor-seeding, that nobody can unravel.

Aka...OBAMAGATE!