US Politics: The Republicans problem with small packages

[Mlle. Zabzie]

37 minutes ago, KalbearAnon said:

daaaamn

 

 

Honestly, I sometimes love me some Nancy.  I really do.

[DanteGabriel]

Surprising no one, Trumpkins are literally the worst. Observations from a DC food industry worker.

Quote

The week of the Jan. 6 insurrection attempt, the hotel at which my husband works as a chef reopened its Starbucks for the first time in eight months to serve the hundreds of out-of-town Trumpers who’d checked in to "Stop the Steal." The whole town had been in hibernation for the better part of a year, and the predominantly Ethiopian baristas were preparing to return to the unemployment rolls again at the end of the month. And despite the multitude of portentous red flags on the internet, no one at the hotel was prepared for what would happen if one of them asked a guest to please put on a mask before coming inside. "In 10 years of serving hundreds of customers a day, 52 weeks a year," one of the baristas told my husband, eyes wide, "no one has ever ... " It didn’t need to be said; a front desk employee confirmed that the N-word had been repeatedly invoked. Terrible customer behavior was not news. But until the anti-maskers stormed my husband’s hotel, the true legacy of Donald Trump had not quite hit us.

Trump couldn’t pull off a coup, but he had inspired thousands of regular-ass Americans to roam the streets of their own country like Blackwater mercenaries screaming obscenities to $12-an-hour retail workers and restaurant hostesses for having the audacity to ask them to don masks during a pandemic that was killing more than 100 fellow citizens every hour. 

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/02/trump-administration-tippers-fine-dining-dc.html

 

[Fragile Bird]

Marjorie Taylor Greene: "crazier than a rat in a sugar cane field".

That must be my new favorite American saying. From Rick Wilson, author of Everything Trump Touches Dies.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

Cheney survives with a little over two thirds of Congressional Republicans supporting her. 

[Fez]

On a secret ballot vote, House Republicans just voted 145-61 for Cheney to keep her caucus leadership spot (with one member voting 'present', who does that on a secret ballot?).

So between this, and the Jan. 6 certification vote, we know that about 1/3rd of the caucus are legitimately crazy, true believers; 1/3rd are utter cowards who know that everything the party is doing so wrong but will never speak up or act in public; and 1/3rd are still somewhat willing to stand up for democracy (though very few of them had the courage of going all the way on the doing-the-right-thing-train and vote to impeach Trump) 

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, Fez said:

(with one member voting 'present', who does that on a secret ballot?)

Congressman Hamlet?

[DanteGabriel]

1 hour ago, Fragile Bird said:

Marjorie Taylor Greene: "crazier than a rat in a sugar cane field".

That must be my new favorite American saying. From Rick Wilson, author of Everything Trump Touches Dies.

I used to use "rat in a coffee can crazy" a lot, which I think I got from Hunter S. Thompson.

[DMC]

Axios has a SurveyMonkey poll (not the greatest, but still) up on the favorables/unfavorables for GOP figures among Republicans that just about sums it up:

• McCarthy - 38 favorable/16 unfavorable
• Taylor Greene - 28/18
• McConnell - 31/46
• Cheney - 14/42

[Zorral]

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

18 minutes ago, DMC said:

Axios has a SurveyMonkey poll (not the greatest, but still) up on the favorables/unfavorables for GOP figures among Republicans that just about sums it up:

• McCarthy - 38 favorable/16 unfavorable
• Taylor Greene - 28/18
• McConnell - 31/46
• Cheney - 14/42

"Democrats need to show more unity!"

[VigoTheCarpathian]

2 hours ago, DanteGabriel said:

I used to use "rat in a coffee can crazy" a lot, which I think I got from Hunter S. Thompson.

“Crazier than a shithouse rat” is my preferred, I thought it was an HST-ism, but could be another source.

[Larry of the Lawn]

51 minutes ago, VigoTheCarpathian said:

“Crazier than a shithouse rat” is my preferred, I thought it was an HST-ism, but could be another source.

 

That one's tougher to pin down but a friend and I tried to trace it a few years ago and the oldest source we found was McCarthys's Suttree.

51 minutes ago, VigoTheCarpathian said:

 

 

[Larry of the Lawn]

4 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

Marjorie Taylor Greene: "crazier than a rat in a sugar cane field".

That must be my new favorite American saying. From Rick Wilson, author of Everything Trump Touches Dies.

Please tell me your not giving Rick Wilson any money.

[Martell Spy]

Kyle Rittenhouse Violates Bond, Prosecutors Seek Arrest Warrant
“Rarely does our community see accused murderers roaming about freely,” prosecutors warned the court in a filing Wednesday.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/kyle-rittenhouse-bond-arrest-warrant_n_601b186cc5b67cdd1a750eae

Quote

 

Kyle Rittenhouse has violated his bond agreement by apparently moving out of his home without notifying the court, and now Wisconsin prosecutors are seeking a warrant for his arrest. 

In a court filing Wednesday, prosecutors said several attempts to contact the teenager have failed. The 18-year-old faces multiple homicide charges related to the shooting deaths of two unarmed Black Lives Matter protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin, this summer.

On Tuesday, Kenosha police detectives visited the address Rittenhouse filed with the court after he posted a $2 million bond in November, only to be greeted at the door by a different person entirely.

The man, who has no relation to Rittenhouse, said he’d been living there since Dec. 14. Earlier court notices, mailed to the address in mid-December, had also bounced back.

Under the terms of Rittenhouse’s bond, he is supposed to update his address with the court within 48 hours of moving.

 

 

[Fragile Bird]

14 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

Please tell me your not giving Rick Wilson any money.

No, he was on CNN.

[DireWolfSpirit]

Am pleased Biden has been swiftly sweeping the Trump rats out of the Labor Department.

https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_601ac57ec5b6f41348c5ee86

[Varysblackfyre321]

12 hours ago, Fez said:

So between this, and the Jan. 6 certification vote, we know that about 1/3rd of the caucus are legitimately crazy, true believers;

Or at the very least think Humoring the crazies will help the gop

 

[Fez]

Huh. Interesting. 

Romney's amendment is deficit neutral since it includes pay-offs in the form of other cuts (though per experts the overall net effect would be to dramatically reduce poverty rates), which means that it would be a permanent program; whereas the current Democratic plan is a one-year program. Going to be real curious to see how Democrats react to this one. Also, since it is entirely paid-for, there might be a few Republicans willing to vote for it too.

[Fragile Bird]

14 minutes ago, Fez said:

Huh. Interesting. 

Romney's amendment is deficit neutral since it includes pay-offs in the form of other cuts (though per experts the overall net effect would be to dramatically reduce poverty rates), which means that it would be a permanent program; whereas the current Democratic plan is a one-year program. Going to be real curious to see how Democrats react to this one. Also, since it is entirely paid-for, there might be a few Republicans willing to vote for it too.

I sure hope this goes through. As I already mentioned, the Liberal government here in Canada did something similar (but more money, $6,765 for children under 6, $5,708 for children between 6 and 17, maximum, geared to income) and it has had a huge effect on reducing childhood poverty.  

[Martell Spy]

Inside the Forbidden Fantasies Of Democratic Deficit Hawks
Fiscal discipline has gone from being a virtue to a sin.

politico.com/news/magazine/2021/02/04/democratic-deficit-hawks-465727

Quote

 

That demolition, of course, has also transformed politics for Republican politicians, who no longer regard spending restraint and resistance to debt as an important policy objective, except when a Democrat happens to be president.

For the moment, however, it is on the Democratic side that the shift on deficits — not just on politics but on the actual substance — is more consequential.

For much of the past 30 years, the idea that progressives should reckon forthrightly with the costs of government and propose credible ways to pay for the programs they favor was considered a basic test of seriousness for Democrats. That test, incidentally, was administered in part by journalists, most of whom fully embraced the underlying premise.

Budget politics was not merely a matter of numbers. It had moral overtones. In the old days, concerned about deficits showed that an officeholder was not letting good policy be diluted by irresponsible political considerations—specifically the temptation to surrender the long-term interest in sound budgeting for the short-term reward of popularity.

These days, concern about deficits raises suspicions that an officeholder is letting good policy be diluted by irresponsible political considerations. As the choice is now framed, the temptation involves surrendering the short-term imperative of helping individuals and the broader economy to a bogus pursuit of bipartisanship or a foolish adherence to discredited orthodoxies about the long-term dangers of deficit spending.

For younger people, the notion of Democrats obsessing about fiscal restraint may seem like smoking on commercial airline flights: Did that really used to be a thing? Yes, and not that long ago.