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

xp

yes, which is why everyone's expecting the goal to go up (to 1.5M doses per day, or 150M over 100 days). the problem is that it's unclear right now how many vaccinations are being held up, if there are previous ones that can be released, etc etc. the trump admin left them a project management shitshow, this is one of the most complicated projects, ever, and it's been 6 days.

“None of us on either side want to live in a scorched-earth Senate,” McConnell said from the floor of a Senate whose earth he has been instrumental in burning to an absolute fucking cinder.

it's weird to see these quotes from McConnell carry that implied "yes, we're evil, we have no choice but to be evil"

so rather than immediately jumping the gun and saying "1.5M a day is the new goal!", they're waiting until they know what they actually have now and can expect in the near future, so they can set a realistic expectation rather than aim too low again (or too high)

xp

It's a great joke, I don't care if he runs it into the ground.

Here is the video... https://t.co/aFv10lufrb pic.twitter.com/1jHIsF9vPi

— Johnny Verhovek (@JTHVerhovek) August 8, 2020

it's weird to see these quotes from McConnell carry that implied "yes, we're evil, we have no choice but to be evil"

it's the kind of abusive posture that defined Trump but was normalized by McConnell as senate majority leader during the obama years

Doocy is gonna be busy, damn

Biden with a Reagan-esque exit line.

things will come full circle if Biden starts throwing Bernie memes at Doocy every time D asks a question

I believe Biden is raising the goal to 1.5 million a day. I don't know when. Supply of the vaccines is obv a bit of a problem in getting there.

I mean, yeah, why be aggressive in pushing vaccine distribution at all? Be chill, take your time, weigh all the options. What's another 100,000 dead Americans?

i support Biden's bully campaign against Peter Doocy

Defense Production Act was only invoked a few days ago, but it seems reasonable to assume that Pfizer and Moderna were attempting to maximize production output already to meet anticipated global demand. The major problems seem to be downstream of manufacture and they arose from a shocking lack of centralized command and control, communication and coordination from the Trump/Pence administration. Biden's people have to undo the tangle and rebuild on the fly.

Don't get me wrong, I absolutely think we will get there and we are undoubtedly in a better position with a Biden administration than we were under Trump. Absolutely. At the same time, I find it frustrating that the one very specific metric he kept touting was not ambitious at all, in fact was what we were already meeting.

Trump was actually getting individual states to compete against each other over what pandemic medical supplies they got. Meaning there was even more of a mess. Definitely not first do no harm

apropos of nothing but I recognize that bike trail parking lot (Gordons Pond); I recently lost an argument with my son about a pine cone in that same spot

I forget the details, let us not speak of it again

i support Biden's bully campaign against Peter Doocy

100%. Didn't he say something the other day implying that Peter was Steve Doocy's kid? (They are brothers.)

whaaaa i thought they were father and son too!?

either way they are both putzes and should never enjoy an ounce of respect or a peaceful moment when in public

Yeah will OTM, who cares, they both suck

the one very specific metric he kept touting was not ambitious at all

I think the idea was mainly that the public needed to hear a clear and consistent message with hard numbers attached which could be reliably delivered. This is already an advance on the daily lies, vague hand waving and "people are saying it's a beautiful program, it's the best" messaging that we were getting out of the previous jackass-in-chief.

I'm sure some of that was just about communicating that there is a plan and allowing people to see ahead. I take comfort knowing that they're setting goals and not just letting things roll out in a slapdash manner.

(That was an xpost. Aimless OTM.)

My mistake; the Doocys are father and son. My position — that Biden should make every effort to reduce the younger Doocy to tears — remains unchanged.

The Canseco face turn has been a real delight for someone who discovered baseball at the height of the Bash Brothers.

Curt Schilling would be a disgrace to the Hall of Fame

— Jose Canseco (@JoseCanseco) January 26, 2021

xpost the lesser Doocy

55-45 vote against Rand Paul's motion that the impeachment is unconstitutional because Trump is no longer in office. Senate Minority Leader McConnell voted with Paul.

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) January 26, 2021

the walrus was Paul

if they didn't look so damned much alike (and comically assholish), one good bit would be to keep telling Peter that Steve's not his real dad

so 45 senators agreed that impeaching trump is unconstitutional

yeah he's not getting convicted, again

sorry to get very negative, but between that and not abolishing the filibuster, that's the end of the country. might be 2, might be 5, might be 10

ok it could be 20

Could he still be barred from running again?

when you're president, you can do whatever the fuck you want

getting to pin 90% of Republican Senators as being pro-insurrection and anti-America is still probably a good thing

they were already pinned as that. more than 90%

they realized they can get "pinned" and it doesn't matter as long as trumpists own the state GOPs and all the republican house districts, and 41+ senate seats

Meantime, here's a read.

https://theslot.jezebel.com/remembering-rahmbamarama-the-obama-eras-most-zealous-f-1845897371

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/424/149/2bc.jpg

me lreading Ned's link:

https://tenor.com/pbsQ.gif

Apropos of nothing, I go back and forth between thinking about Trump's value as a force that unifies and mobilizes opposition (and slighly fractures GOP unity now that he's out of office) and Trump's harm in keeping very dangerous people whipped up into stiff peaks of potential violence.

the $15 minimum wage legislation has been introduced

the raise will actually be to $9.50 this year if passed, lifting to $15 in 2025

From Ned's article:

Rahmbamarama is the ultimate encapsulation of liberalism in the late 2000s

er, uh

Re the minimum wage: Great, by then it won't be a living wage in most places, either. The loathing these people have for the workers of this country is so palpable.

the $15 minimum wage legislation has been introduced

the raise will actually be to $9.50 this year if passed, lifting to $15 in 2025

2027 would be more apt (the 15th anniversary of Fight for 15)

idk, it hasn't gone up in 12 years, doubling in 5 seems pretty signficant

they're about to break their promise on the supposedly "easy" thing of getting us all 2k i mean 1.4k the week after they're elected too.

Re impeachment: Even if it is in Republicans' collective long-term interest to convict, it is in each Republican senator's individual short-term interest to be seen as someone who didn't betray Trump. A vote to acquit will provide more political benefit, no matter the final outcome of the vote.

in that context it is certainly "significant" but yknow it's the context that's the problem xps