Enough With The Cutesy Titles, People Are Dead: US Politics January 2021 pt 2

the democrats in the senate don’t seem to want to capitulate completely on the filibuster ahead of time, so - gridlock

aimless fuck off

i mean the Executive branch has way too much power, don't disagree there, and would love to see that addressed and curtailed to a ridiculous degree. but with a split Congress it's the only way to do anything now as a President due to the tribalism present - with a Dem Congress right now, it should slow down once he's done reversing Trump's racism.

but I do miss the days when people uttered the old chestnut "the President's powers are limited" and it was actually somewhat closer to true. kind of scary how much it's expanded in just the 21st century

Government by executive order and agency administration sucks, but what, really, is the alternative now? If we enshrine as a bedrock principle of democracy the (actually very new) idea that you have to have 60 Senators agree to pass a law, you are not going to pass any laws.

This problem has a name, and its name is Mitch.

Like, seriously, do NOT fucking try to #bothsides it.

McConnell's one trick is obstruction, and he is good at it.

maybe this will give us senator AOC

McConnell isn’t forcing Sinema and Manchin to betray the party.

not to mention their constituents

that’s not the sticking point though

Mitch is so cynical telling his fellow Republicans to vote their conscience as if they had one.

McConnell isn’t forcing Sinema and Manchin to betray the party.

Manchin and Sinema are effectively murdering the Democratic majority. That is a political crime of the highest order. But when you say they are 'betraying the party', it means you are tacitly accepting that the party, in the form of 48 senators and VP Harris, are prepared to nuke the filibuster if necessary to move their agenda. That's quite a noteworthy sea change in 'the party'.

McConnell is playing hardball to nail the coffin shut on Biden, the House, and the entire democratic agenda. Manchin and Sinema are handing him the hammer and the nails. But it won't do any good to punish them or drive them out of the caucus. They're selfish fuckers and deserve to be spat on when they show themselves in public.

tester, coons, and a couple others have also not committed to nuking the filibuster

i should say, they've expressed opposition to eliminating the filibuster

It is possible to move forward without completely nuking the filibuster (yet), but even that is too much to ask of these spineless idiots.

the midterm is going to be a slaughter lol

xp how is it possible to move forward, though, if the democrats and McConnell can’t agree to the rules

I'm not freaking out yet after five years of freaking out.

hmm

Manchin and Sinema were enough for McConnell to relent

“Today two Democratic Senators publicly confirmed they will not vote to end the legislative filibuster ... With these assurances, I look forward to moving ahead with a power-sharing agreement modeled on that precedent.”

— Burgess Everett (@burgessev) January 26, 2021

as i was saying, brilliant bit of play acting by manchin and sinema, who will doubtlessly vote to nuke the filibuster next week

here’s hoping

Well that's an unexpected turn. Is it safe to assume McConnell was feeling the heat behind the scenes?

This announcement sounds a lot like a face-saving formula. If Biden had anything to use as leverage on Mitch, I hope he put the screws to him.

I'm still not following the nuances of what happened in the last hour, but flipping past the hack shows on CNN and MSNBC on my way to turning to the Criterion Channel, I saw variants on "McConnell Folds."

ew i don't wanna think about his 'folds'

Basically Schumer have nothing up, but McConnell took the opportunity to saw he gets what he wants in practice (which may be true).

It’s not out of the question btw that the dems will pick up senate seats in 2 years purely based on the map. Trick is to do that without losing the house. Ha shit.

*gave

Meantime, Twitter acting again:

Twitter snoozes MyPillow Guy pic.twitter.com/NaumFvmvn6

— John Kruzel (@johnkruzel) January 26, 2021

snooze is a suspension, if he's permabanned it should say smothered

The jokes are already flying on that front.

🤷🏻‍♂️

McConnell didn’t get anything here. Manchin and Sinema said the same thing they’ve said before. Bringing them around to reform is and was always going to be a process that likely requires repeated GOP obstruction. McConnell picked this fight, lost and is now doing a little CYA. https://t.co/pq0qYmFK4C

— Adam Jentleson 🎈 (@AJentleson) January 26, 2021

What fight did McConnell pick and lose? I feel like I'm missing part of the context.

Attempted to block an organizing resolution for committees and power sharing unless democrats pledged to preserve the filibuster.

he let things proceed once sinema and manchin kissed his ring in public

i didn't realize asking raffensperger to "find" enough votes to overturn the election in georgia was part of the article of impeachment. i thought it was all jan 6 stuff. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/01/11/us/articles-impeachment-trump.html

awesome. fuckin needed to be in there

Attempted to block an organizing resolution for committees and power sharing unless democrats pledged to preserve the filibuster.

― Mr. Cacciatore (Moodles), Tuesday, January 26, 2021 12:35 AM (thirty-nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

(1) he got the filibuster preserved - why is that an L for him, because that would have happened anyway?
(2) how is a power sharing agreement an L for the party that doesn't have the majority?

Good questions! I wonder what the point of the power-sharing agreements are, especially since 2008.

and they aren't rhetorical questions. But I am a little concerned about dems' tendency to underplay a strong hand and then call it a win.

The U.S. Supreme Court dismissed two cases against former President Donald Trump Monday that alleged the president violated the Emoluments Clause by illegally profiting off the presidency, saying the cases are now moot as Trump has left the White House.

crimes are irrelevant if they happened in the past

weird coincidence that they only got around to addressing them a week or so after his last day in office, when it was clear on day negative 100 of his term that he would repeatedly violate the emoluments clause

So I can embezzle funds at work, quit, and then not be prosecuted since I'm no longer employed there. Good to know.

(1) he got the filibuster preserved - why is that an L for him, because that would have happened anyway?
(2) how is a power sharing agreement an L for the party that doesn't have the majority?

1. the filibuster was never going to be dropped as part of the organizing resolution. that wasn't either side's goal. schumer wanted to retain the option. mcconnell wanted a promise to preserve it. schumer got what he wanted. mcconnell didn't. he's relying on those 2/50 senators not changing their mind and no democratic pickups in 2022.

2. because he didn't get what he wanted from the agreement. (they do need an agreement btw. the dems don't have a majority either.)

As Paul Kane reminds us, these two headlines happened in the same year https://t.co/YAMemtxLai pic.twitter.com/oITF0pR1sR

— David Nir (@DavidNir) January 26, 2021

I heard a logical sounding argument about Manchin being less of a force of bad than the Republican who would be in his seat otherwise. Since that replacement would probably be actively seeking to do GOP evil instead of not doing egalitarian good or something to that effect. But at least it does mean there is a point that doesn't get reached to have a nominal Dem there.

Also wonder how Garland feels about McConnell after not getting onto Scotus.
A dish of cold revenge reopening the various scandals of a couple of years ago to full investigation would seem really appetising . Probably not entirely neutral or objective though. Hope that wouldn't be enough to stop him pursuing that line of enquiry though.

What earthly use is a Kirsten Sinema? Same source that was arguing there was some positive to Manchin considering the voting trends of his constituency was pointing out that she didn't have anything like the same environment so had far less reason for taking the stances she has.

seems like Kellyanne Conway posted a nude of her daughter Claudia that she'd stolen off the daughter's phone, then Claudia facetimed a friend so the friend could livestream Kellyanne calling cops to the house and requesting they section her daughter, after seeing Claudia posting calls for help in morse code on tiktok?

... Claudia Conway is a minor, fucking hell

Claudia has, over the latter months of 2020, posted footage of her mother verbally abusing her, hitting her, and actively trying to infect her with COVID. In twenty minutes of that livestream, Kellyanne's only & repeated maternal criticism of Claudia is that Claudia "is addicted to" the phone that she uses to broadcast calls for help.

(speculation not facts: the repeated "excuse me! (reframe)" indignant cutting-off tactic maps to Kellyanne's behaviour in press conferences, but in this context rings of hand-me-down abuse. her constant "that didnt happen" statements echo like alcoholism here, feeling a different tone to the ones she made in a formal capacity to the entire world about her government. but oof it all works similarly.)

Has Elizabeth Warren got a role yet. Or is she just fading into the background again.

That’s a good question, Stevolende - I *feel* like she’s up for something but it’s been a long three months and I barely remember now

Mitch folding on this one is good news. It's at least *conceivable* that when the filibuster conversation goes from being an abstract hypothetical to "the minority of republicans are blocking a huge COVID-relief/stimulus-package/also-btw-the-stimulus-includes-eight-hundred-infrastructure-projects-in-west-virginia bill," then there's still a shot at nuking the thing and the Dem majority getting shit done for a year and a half rather than just shuffling towards its own destruction while the country finishes collapsing.