larry summers hardest hit https://t.co/AP6KLdp1qw
— World Famous Art Thief (@CalmSporting) July 21, 2021
Opinion: The GOP’s favorite spin about Biden’s plans just took a big hit https://t.co/40B2FJnXHE
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) July 22, 2021
Biden on polling showing voters strongly support infrastructure legislation: "I think they're a little tired of infrastructure week for four years in a row." pic.twitter.com/kG1HQC1Olb
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 20, 2021
Fifty-one senators voted against opening debate on a $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure measure https://t.co/BcTjygHl9K pic.twitter.com/L6VozljL32
— Reuters (@Reuters) July 22, 2021
This is a dumb move on his part which just ups the likelihood that Dems pass reconciliation, because no Democrat is gonna let us default on the debt that Republicans left for us. https://t.co/0v87FrB2MR
— What Biden Has Done (@What46HasDone) July 21, 2021
Opinion: Pelosi calls the GOP’s bluff on the Jan. 6 committee https://t.co/mjOIZI4ojV
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) July 22, 2021
Baud
Not sure it’s reconciliation eligible. But it provides an avenue to eliminate the filibuster.
debbie
@Baud:
Why not both (reconciliation and filibuster) now? You know that if the GOP ever becomes the majority, they’ll get rid of it all. Let’s save them the trouble.
mrmoshpotato
I understand McTurtle hating everyone in this country who isn’t rich, but he hates our roads and bridges too?
Fucks wrong with this bastard?
prostratedragon
@mrmoshpotato: Evil.
Chief Oshkosh
@mrmoshpotato: You think the truly rich use roads and bridges? Helicopters and unicorns, bub. Helicopters and unicorns.
Chief Oshkosh
51 senators voted to not debate? Was there a couple of Democrats? If so, was this one of those procedural things that required a Dem to vote no so that the bill can come back? Or something?
Baud
@debbie:
I don’t know what they’ll do, but I dislike the current filibuster rules on principle.
Baud
@Chief Oshkosh:
The procedural issue.
raven
@Chief Oshkosh: Schumer voted against it so it could be brought up again.
Cameron
@mrmoshpotato: He’s got very simple priorities. Money for the rich,shit for the poor,wingnut judges for bible thumpers and the economically challenged.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone ???
PenAndKey
@mrmoshpotato: Single-minded ideological purity posturing and the pursuit of power. The modern GOP would rather see the country destroyed than not be in charge. McConnell is just more open about that fact than usual.
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
Baud
@PenAndKey:
They are like retreating army destroying everything behind them.
mrmoshpotato
@Cameron:
Never seen “racist, fascistic, white trash” spelled that way before.
rikyrah
@mrmoshpotato:
Anything that the government could be seen as doing successfully, Moscow Mitch is against.
All those jobs that wouldn’t require serfdom?
Uh uh
Gin & Tonic
Biden fucks Ukraine. That’s the prevailing assessment of the Nordstream 2 deal this morning from a lot of independent voices there. Zelensky gets the WH meeting he wanted so badly, and will be served a shit sandwich when he gets there. In the meantime, V. V. Putin gets everything he wanted.
mrmoshpotato
@rikyrah:
Yup. Break the government, then complain that it doesn’t work.
rikyrah
Miss Aja (@brat2381) tweeted at 1:49 PM on Wed, Jul 21, 2021:
Tom Barrack is going to snitch?
He’s 74 and they’re making him stay in jail for at least 5 days before his 1st hearing. He’s old, rich, and wyt…he’s not about that life?
(https://twitter.com/brat2381/status/1417919565380554752?s=03)
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
I’m pretty sure it’s reconciliation-eligible because pretty much everyone agrees there’d be a budgetary cost to defaulting on the debt.
Dems need to be saying “screw the parliamentarian” anyway. As Atrios keeps pointing out, the GOP replaced the parliamentarian the last time they got a ruling they didn’t like, and the furor was so huge that the NYT put the story on page A20.
mrmoshpotato
@rikyrah: Nice.
Baud
@Gin & Tonic:
Just read an article on it. Interesting politics surrounding it. Not the usual lineups.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
FWIW, I don’t look to the GOP for a model of right behavior.
JPL
@rikyrah: For whatever reason, they don’t snitch. ??
germy
@rikyrah:
As much as I like to see people like Barrack in jail, I assume he’s in white collar prison, not the jail they reserve for the rest of us. He’s probably playing tennis right now.
PenAndKey
@Baud: and I don’t look to an unelected government employee to tell our elected members of Congress what they can and cannot debate and vote on. The very idea that the parliamentarian should have ANY authority to tell Congress they can’t debate and vote as they see fit is insulting.
Baud
@PenAndKey:
No it’s not. That’s the job the Senate gave the parliamentarian. If the Senate want to get rid of the position and do everything by majority rule, that’s their prerogative. Firing people for doing the job they were hired to do is not something we usually support.
lowtechcyclist
@rikyrah: For some reason they think Barrack is a flight risk. Can’t imagine why.
Speaking of flight risks, where the hell is Kyle Rittenhouse these days, and why the hell isn’t he in custody somewhere?
sanjeevs
PG&E are going to bury 10,000 miles of power lines in Northern California because of ongoing fire risk. Estimated cost is 20 billion.
Global warming is starting to get real expensive
Spanky
@sanjeevs: It’s quite possible that they’ve talked to the Biden admin about getting some of those infrastructure bucks.
Wonder if their Senators have made a pitch …
Kay
@mrmoshpotato:
An Ohio political guy on our side told me the ability to really zero in on voter demographics and individual preferences changed everything. So, for example, Republicans always knew that AA voters were predominantly Democrats but it was only with the advent of more sophisticated data collection and modeling that they could measure the effect of, say, a more restrictive voting law on AA turnout in Cleveland. That’s why we see what is to us inexplicable opposition to popular programs and yet they still manage to get elected. It’s the same concept as gerrymandering but applied to counties, states and the country. They know where their voters are and they know where our voters are- they know where a slight decrease in D turnout and a slight bump in R turnout makes the most difference. It’s gotten more and more sophisticated so the kind of crude targeting we saw in Bush 2004 (Catholics in Ohio! Same sex marriage! Hit them with a fucking brick!) is now parsed much finer, so almost invisible to the larger public but reaches the voters they need in a given area.
rikyrah
⚖️Tristan Langford (@Langford21) tweeted at 0:15 PM on Wed, Jul 21, 2021:
Some of you actually thought that Speaker Pelosi was gonna let gym Jordan serve on the 1/6 committee? How about you all just stop questioning Speaker Pelosi! She’s smarter than you!
(https://twitter.com/Langford21/status/1417895918783840263?s=03)
Dorothy A. Winsor
@rikyrah: I want to be like Nancy Pelosi when I grow up. She is bad ass.
MomSense
@sanjeevs:
Dirty fucking hippies were right.
rikyrah
Queen Thicktoria, Esq. (Paid Advertisement) (@VeeCeeMurphy76) tweeted at 0:53 PM on Wed, Jul 21, 2021:
I see the “Poor White People” pieces are circulating now that we know “the coloreds” aren’t the only ones dying of Covid in large numbers.
(https://twitter.com/VeeCeeMurphy76/status/1417905690262265858?s=03)
Baud
@Kay:
I wonder if there is a way to ban targeted advertising for electioneering ads on social media.
MomSense
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I don’t think my knees can handle those heels anymore, though.
sanjeevs
@Spanky: You’re probably right. PG&E were adamant costs were prohibitive until now.
Kay
@mrmoshpotato:
You see it with the “CRT” bullshit. So Biden makes what is a historic big investment in public schools (the stimulus is huge for public schools). All over the country. Every school gets some. Everyone knows about it -some people care, most people are mildly in favor of it.
Compare with the Right- a targeted campaign that starts in better-off Virginia suburbs and is designed to juice R turnout and reach maybe 5% of “independents”.
They no longer think in terms of “broadly popular”. They think in terms of put THIS suburb with THIS rural county and that equals “enough for this cycle”. Sometimes “broadly popular” can swamp that! But not always and especially not in midterms.
rikyrah
Uh huh ??
Sahdah Tay?? (@malika_imani) tweeted at 2:02 PM on Wed, Jul 21, 2021:
When I saw that quote from a doctor about how the families told them how they thought their skin color would protect them from covid… https://t.co/sueKwOqs4n
(https://twitter.com/malika_imani/status/1417923042899107840?s=03)
Cameron
@rikyrah: …and suddenly Republicans are urging people to get vaccinated. What a coincidence.
MomSense
@rikyrah: ?
hueyplong
@rikyrah: Totally unsurprising, because (1) they’re not that bright, and (2) well, it did protect them from many other things.
The introduction of a not insignificant percentage of the population to the concept of consequences is probably something in which we’d take some satisfaction if it were possible to view things from 30,000 feet instead of here on the ground.
Kay
@Baud:
Right but it’s bigger than that. There’s a kind of centrist pundit thing on voter supression measures (for example) that says “won’t matter in the aggregate”. But elections aren’t run in “the aggregate” – they’re run on THIS county in GEORGIA swing it by .5.
Those incredibly detailed sets of data they use to draw districts? That info can be used all kinds of ways. Push a little down HERE and bump a little UP here, and they’re good.
PenAndKey
@Baud: If firing the parliamentarian is what it takes to do the job we elected them to do, I have absolutely no problem with them doing so. My ENTIRE life I’ve watched the Democrats get steamrolled because they treated “the process” as more important than the outcome. So excuse me if I have no sympathy for parliamentary technicalities that do nothing but help the assholes who have been systematically dismantling this country my entire life.
rikyrah
John Aravosis ?????️? (@aravosis) tweeted at 6:27 PM on Wed, Jul 21, 2021:
For everyone saying that Republicans are now freaking out about Covid because it’s killing their base — they knew it was killing their base a year ago. They didn’t care. Something happened in the last week that scared the hell out of them. I want to know what.
(https://twitter.com/aravosis/status/1417989738506727430?s=03)
rikyrah
John Aravosis ?????️? (@aravosis) tweeted at 6:47 PM on Wed, Jul 21, 2021:
And the fact that Scalise suddenly got vaccinated means it’s not simply polling data, fear of losing the House, or even fear of lots of constituents dying. The fear is far more personal if Scalise ran to get a vaccine just this past weekend. Someone told them the sky is falling.
(https://twitter.com/aravosis/status/1417994723676065798?s=03)
rikyrah
Blue Dog Dems (@BlueDogDems_) tweeted at 6:36 PM on Wed, Jul 21, 2021:
They were willing to let some of their voters die. The delta variant changed their calculus. Turns out the potential for tens of thousands of your voters dying needlessly would be a polling disaster and bring on a tidal wave of litigation. Only polling or money moves them.
(https://twitter.com/BlueDogDems_/status/1417991829392343040?s=03)
lowtechcyclist
@germy:
I thought they got rid of all the “Club Feds” as they were known back in the 1970s, because there was considerable outcry about some prisoners having a much softer life in prison than your run-of-the-mill criminal gets.
But it sure seems that the absence of such prisons has greatly increased the reluctance of prosecutors to seek prison sentences for people like this, and increased the reluctance of judges to apply them if requested.
I’d rather see a guy like Barrack spend several years in a Club Fed than several years on house arrest with an ankle monitor, if that’s the real choice.
germy
@rikyrah:
Here’s something good she retweeted
Kay
@rikyrah:
I agree. I want to know too. I was afraid something was going to come out about the after effects of a covid infection, which is something I look for since I know so many people who have had it including one of my (grown) children and I keep hearing anecdotal accounts of weird health shit that happens to them after they recover. I have heard tens of these stories from people I trust- a blood clot or a weird mild heart attack in a younger person or one I heard yesterday- a stroke in a 34 year old woman. It has worried me for months.
I hope not.
rikyrah
Paul Barnes (@PaulBar85039345) tweeted at 2:19 AM on Thu, Jul 22, 2021:
It’s clear their lack of action is the pipeline to the current surge which will soon be a tsunami, followed by the midterms. Hundreds of thousands of deaths don’t matter; losing an election does. Plus, disinformation lawsuits. It’s all inextricably linked.
(https://twitter.com/PaulBar85039345/status/1418108429508382721?s=03)
mrmoshpotato
@rikyrah: Yup. Who made some calls that started with “NOW LISTEN UP, FUCKNUTS!”?
Baud
@PenAndKey:
Firing the parliamentarian doesn’t do jack to solve the Machin/Sinema problem.
debbie
@rikyrah:
They didn’t have their mouthpiece TFG in office to cower behind.
mrmoshpotato
@germy:
My city is a lie. :(
Amir Khalid
Alas. For I tried to read the WaPo stories, but they were blocked by the dreaded Wall of Pay.
debbie
@Kay:
I’m fine with that side of the aisle keeling over simultaneously.
Geminid
@germy: I doubt if Barrack is playing tennis. I think he is in a jail, where the only special privilege he might have is isolation from the general population.
I’m glad Barrack gets to see some days of incarceration.* Hopefully this will impress upon him the merits of a plea deal. And I think Ms. Rickrah will be proven right when she says he will snitch. Barrack had a good life before he ever got involved with trump and his crowd, and he’ll have a good life when he leaves federal prison in a few years. I think Barrack will deal.
*Barrack is deemed a flight risk, and with good reason. Besides his fortune and private jets, Barrack has Lebanese citizenship, and the U.S. and Lebanon have no extradition treaty.
Cameron
@Gin & Tonic: I wonder what Merkel hit him with.
mrmoshpotato
@Cameron: Liverwurst ala mode?
Brachiator
Three things that I admired in Biden’s Town Hall meeting.
Refreshingly, Biden admitted that many issues are complex. No phony bluster or simplistic faux solutions.
He is giving Republicans an opportunity to be reasonable, but he never suggested that he would retreat from his core principles just to accommodate the GOP.
Periodically, Biden kept returning to the theme of his humane self-confidence, based on the idea that his long experience in public service, his tenure as vice president has forged a sincere belief that he knows what needs to be done, and that he will be able to get it done.
Call it low key braggadocio. And he’s not kidding.
It will be interesting to see how he applies his confidence to getting the infrastructure bills passed.
Cameron
@mrmoshpotato: With a a double schnapps on the side. I don’t think he cooked this deal up on his own, especially since he must have known how it would be received.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@rikyrah: OK, I know this is probably ridiculous, but is it possible the deaths in R states are big enough to affect the census and change the distribution of representatives
ETA: Wait. I take it back. The numbers are already gathered, I think
Woodrow/asim
This — and more. The reason the GOP firing the parliamentarian made no news is because they have a massive, loosely-connected network developed over decades to mute as much of this kind of news as possible. We all know it, and we should think about why the major media outlets treat Democratic concepts and people different, and what that means in terms of how we can and should operate.
The moves of, say, a McConnell may look a lot like a bull in china shop approach, but — as Kay noted above — there’s usually a lot of planning, of design, of thinking that we don’t see, in what the GOP implements. This is part of why the GOP mainstays never liked Trump, and will, in the end, only tolerate him as long as he has the ear of the people they’ve twisted the minds of.
Democrats and allied groups don’t tend to have that depth of resources around these plans, as we’re usually focused on actually delivering value to people who don’t have a ton of money or power in our system of government. Being the “good guys” has a cost, and breaking the rules without a plan of attack is going to bring a lot more backlash.
Skepticat
Or a retreating army destroying everything in front of all of us.
eclare
@MomSense: Both she and Kamala wear them, and they stand for hours. I can’t imagine.
Steeplejack
@germy:
Jail is different from prison. Reports are that Barrack is being held in the Los Angeles County Jail until his bail hearing next Monday. No tennis there.
Skepticat
@Cameron:
https://www.gocomics.com/jackohman/2021/07/22
As seen in a previous thread …
OzarkHillbilly
As he is still in LA, he would be held in the Metropolitan Detention Center. Being Federal, I suspect it is far superior pretrial housing than one gets in the usual county lockup.
According to the AP, “At an initial hearing in Los Angeles federal court, Barrack’s lawyer, Ronak D. Desai, agreed that his client could remain detained until a hearing next Monday after prosecutors submitted written arguments saying he should be denied bail as a risk to flee.”
which tells me they are in negotiations for pre-trial release.
eclare
@Skepticat: Cute
Starfish
@rikyrah: I wanted to talk about this one.
This was actually happening in the town I grew up in, in the South. They were spreading rumors that Black people could not get COVID-19. I was wondering, “Were their employers starting these rumors, so people would not quit their crappy jobs that were taking zero precautions?”
hueyplong
@OzarkHillbilly: Under the circumstances, the only person we’d consider a bigger flight risk would be Trump himself. So if he actually does get some kind of release, it will be interesting to learn the details of what would have to be the most restrictive release imaginable. Frankie Pentangeli-like?
Just One More Canuck
@sanjeevs: They probably saw a crossover point where the future liability costs are more than the cost of burying everything
Geminid
@Amir Khalid: “Who won’t Pay for the Wall? Malaysia!”
I don’t do paywalls, although sometimes the liberal Israeli newspaper Haaretz tempts me with their $1introductory offer. Maybe I’ll take them up during the next Israel election, which could end up happening next year.
The Washington Post is in many local stores, and I get a print copy about every other day. Also the Richmond Times-Dispatch sometimes, and occasionally the NYT. I have not gone to a recycling center since winter, and I now have a car load of newspapers to take.
OzarkHillbilly
@hueyplong: Assuming he gets PT release, and him being a rich white guy with powerful friends I assume he does and a little surprised he hasn’t already, It’s going to be pretty stringent and any associated costs* will be born by him.
* i read of one guy who was released to his own home with an ankle bracelet but he also had to hire private security guards to ensure he never left it.
ETA: It would make me ever so happy to be wrong and him be denied bail.
Baud
@Geminid:
What are you talking about? There’s still enough time left for at least three more elections this year.
rikyrah
PhDeezNutz (@D4Real8645) tweeted at 1:25 PM on Wed, Jul 21, 2021:
I’m genuinely curious as to what scared the shit out of the GQP so badly they’ve done a 180 for the first time since the pandemic began.
The economy crashed all of last year & 630,000 Americans have died, and they preached antivax shit the entire time.
What changed?
(https://twitter.com/D4Real8645/status/1417913622639034372?s=03)
opiejeanne
@hueyplong: I haven’t seen that movie, so could you explain?
Danielx
“Our voters are going to be dying like flies” is top shelf motivation.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Steeplejack:
Wonder how many requests he’s gotten for protection money already? And that’s just guards and staff…
OzarkHillbilly
@opiejeanne: The Godfather.
Baud
@rikyrah: DeezNuts got a PHd?
Gin & Tonic
@Cameron: I’m telling you, Blinken has wanted this all along.
Soprano2
@Kay: I have been concerned about that since I had Covid in December. I got my lab results yesterday (I have a yearly check up next week) and everything is in the normal range, so that reassured me somewhat. But yeah, I’ve been telling people since March 2020 that Covid is like Russian roulette – most of the time, you get an infection that’s not that bad, but you can also get really really sick and die, plus we have no idea what the long-term effects of having it actually are.
Baud
@Gin & Tonic: The question is why.
Soprano2
Well then for sure he should stay in prison. Look what happened with that guy in Japan, where they smuggled him out in a container on a private jet. It would be so, so easy for a wealthy person like Barrack to flee.
Geminid
@Baud: With seven new parties.
Frankensteinbeck
@Kay:
Facts very much not in evidence. I’m sure it affects gerrymandering and for people sending out fliers this is their life. The people working at the county level are neck deep in microtargeting. At the policy level, Republicans are all blunt force, our-voters-vote-for-hate one-size-fits-all legislation. Even their voter suppression is ‘stomp on whatever helped Democrats last time.’ They were already assholes and lost their shit when a black man became president, and that explains everything. McConnell certainly didn’t refuse a second Covid stimulus because of microtargeting. It would have dragged in the votes Trump needed in all the close states, and made the difference in Georgia. He was willing to take that chance because he’s a sadistic shit who likes watching people suffer and literally laughed when asked about the deaths Covid causes.
Gin & Tonic
@Soprano2: The guys who pulled off the Ghosn job, on the other hand, are in prison in Japan.
OzarkHillbilly
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: The Feds have their own pretrial lockup in LA. I’d be very surprised if it was so full they couldn’t make room for Barrack in it.
Soprano2
@OzarkHillbilly: MIchael Cohen says he can’t even go to the gym in the basement of his apartment building without asking for permission because it’s too far and would violate his parole. So they can make it extremely stringent if they want to. However, Cohen doesn’t have the friends and resources Barrack has. IMHO any release of him is too risky.
Soprano2
Sure, but they guy they smuggled is free, right? Since Barrack has Lebanese citizenship, if he ever managed to get to Lebanon that would be the end of it, we’d never get him back.
eclare
@Soprano2: I also recently saw a Dateline type show about a guy who committed fraud, I think, who escaped to Lebanon. US finally got him back when he was going through Cyprus, to somewhere.
Vague I know, just pointing out fleeing to Lebanon is a real risk.
jonas
Just like with Obama, his priority is denying Biden a second term, not doing anything positive for the American people.
Soprano2
@Gin & Tonic: Are you talking about the pipeline? Why do you think they want it? What I heard on the radio this morning is that we could put sanctions on those companies but they would build it anyway, and it would piss off Germany, so we decided it was more important not to get crossways with Germany. Is that incorrect?
Tenar Arha
@rikyrah: Yep, it isn’t the market or donors either. I wanna know why they’re scared so we can stick a thumb in that wound.
Geminid
@Frankensteinbeck: Even if the Republicans aren’t microtargeting when they make policy, they are definitely microtargeting when they fight elections. Democrats are still playing catch up in this area.
hueyplong
@opiejeanne: Sure, though my analogy wasn’t that great anyway.
In Godfather 1, Pentangeli was a Corleone guy who had agreed to testify against the family. He was kept on either a military base or a prison, apart from everyone else in an apartment-type thing, with FBI agents basically acting as roommates.
[He ends up killing himself to avoid testifying because the mob threatened family members, with the idea being that if he did so, nothing would happen to them. That’s the part that makes it a bad analogy, I hope.]
Long way around to the idea that any release should include people on the side of the govt on the scene watching him.
I’ve still never seen Forrest Gump so I’m not going to go down the tiresome “how is it you haven’t seen that movie?” road.
Gin & Tonic
@Baud: Ukraine’s MFA just issued a statement saying it was not involved nor consulted in the US-Germany negotiations. This directly contradicts what State has said.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@sanjeevs: Jobs!
eclare
@hueyplong: Don’t bother.
OzarkHillbilly
I suppose it was inevitable: Revealed: the people who signed up to Magacoin Trump cryptocurrency
Mining them for every last nickel.
Baud
@Gin & Tonic: Someone is wrong then.
Gin & Tonic
@Soprano2: Merkel wants it badly. But she is a lame duck, and her position is not necessarily a majority one in Germany. I fail to see why the US is acceding, and completely don’t understand ignoring Ukraine in the process.
hueyplong
@eclare: After 27 years it’s ok to assume the “omission” is intentional.
Cameron
@Gin & Tonic: Not arguing with you, it’s just that Biden and Merkel are the only names I see.
Uncle Cosmo
@Spanky: You know who else ought to be talking to the Biden admin about infrastructure bucks? The Baltimore metropolitan water and sewer department. We’ve been upgrading our infrastructure – and paying outrageously high water bills ($80+ per month for a small rowhouse with a single occupant) to cover the cost – for the last 6-7 years, ever since Obama’s guys inspected the system & told us it had to be fixed ASAP. We ought to be able to recover some of that cost (and pass the savings along to the users who’ve been paying through the nose for it).
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Alternatively as to why the GOP might have found Science is because Trump was making some weird ass announcement there wouldn’t be a 2024 election unless his conditions were meet. I took that as Trump’s way of saying he’s not going to run again. Notice his rallies seemed to have stopped. Might just be as simple that with Trump gone no one is ordering the Republicans to be anti-vacc now.
Geminid
@hueyplong: Barrack probably can incriminate Jared Kushner and others, maybe even trump. Whether he makes bail or not, I hope Barrack lives to testify. I think he will flip.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@OzarkHillbilly: Trump cryptocurrency, that makes it official to even the hard core belivers that cryptocurrency is a pyramid scheme.
Betty Cracker
I’m back in my swamp after a trip to the Pacific Northwest where I spotted the elusive Tufted Puffin on a giant rock off the Oregon coast. No pictures since I was only able to see it through my spotting scope. So y’all will have to take my word for it.
Spanky
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Now we get to separate the suckers from the real suckers. And how can I get a mailing list of these real suckers? Uh, for reasons. Yeah, that’s it.
Spanky
@Betty Cracker: No pic, didn’t happen.
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty Cracker: High fives!
OzarkHillbilly
@Spanky: Aren’t Voter rolls public info? Just ask to see who voted in the last GOP primary.
opiejeanne
@OzarkHillbilly: Thanks, but I know it’s from The Godfather, I was asking what the restriction was on Pentangeli’s release?
hueyplong
@opiejeanne: I thought that’s what I gave you. It wasn’t really a “release,” it was protective custody.
hueyplong
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Trump cryptocurrency, that makes it official to everyone on Earth except the hard core belivers that cryptocurrency is a pyramid scheme.
opiejeanne
@hueyplong: Thanks, I couldn’t find that bit of information, although I did find out that he killed himself and what the circumstances were that caused him to do so.
I haven’t seen it because, even though it’s iconic and a masterpiece, I just haven’t had the interest. No comparison to Forrest Gump, which I have seen despite my lack of interest
I was very, very sick for a year and while my tastes have always run to comedies, that year really cemented it.
opiejeanne
@eclare: I don’t understand your comment. He shouldn’t bother to explain it to me? If that’s what you meant, why not?
gvg
@rikyrah: Yeah, my curiosity is really biting me, plus it might be important to know.
They were in denial about the killing their people too but I don’t see why a beginning upward trend that is still small compared to last winter would be the cause. I really want some facts. all we have so far is logical speculation. And logical hasn’t been all that good a predictor of these weirdos.
opiejeanne
@hueyplong: Yes, you did. Thank you. My comment was before I saw your explanation.
Betty Cracker
@gvg: This is just speculation too, of course, but I can’t help but notice the sudden Republican interest in pushing vaccines seemed to coincide with the stock market taking a giant hit on fears that the Delta variant will stall the recovery.
eclare
@opiejeanne: Sorry for the confusion! I meant the movie. Just my opinion. YMMV.
opiejeanne
@eclare: Yes, I figured it out.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: This may be a coincidence, but trump tried to bluff his way through the pandemic until the stock market crashed in March of last year. I’ve also read that Republicans have been seeing some very bad numbers in internal polling regarding Covid response.
Soprano2
But that would actually make them happy, because they could blame Biden for it and run on it next year. It has to be something else. The wealthy benefactors would take a hit if it meant Republicans would retake the House and Senate next year. I hope a reporter figures it out and tells us what happened, because it was so obvious that they all did a 180 degree turn on vaccines at the same time.
eclare
@Geminid: I fully believe Scalise got the shot because he realized, “Holy shit, I could die!”
Soprano2
I have no evidence, but I think it’s this. They have realized they really shit the bed with middle class conservative-but not-MAGA voters over Covid, so now they’re trying to fix that. Way too little, way too late I think. I was talking to a supervisor earlier today who I know didn’t get vaccinated. He wants me to be in a weekly meeting that I used to be in until Covid hit. He said they had been doing them in person for awhile, but now they’re back on Teams, and I said “Yeah because people won’t get vaccinated”. He took some offense to that, and said one didn’t have anything to do with the other! Yeah, sure, we’re the epicenter of one of the worst outbreaks in the U.S. because people like him think their immune systems are just fine and all kinds of other stupid shit and so won’t get vaccinated, but it’s just a coincidence that they put meetings back on Teams. *rolleyes* Based on his reaction I think the ship for Republicans to do anything about their response has already sailed.
OzarkHillbilly
My assumption has always been that that was the goal of the anti vax push from the beginning. Trashing the economy sets them up for better electoral results in ’22 and ’24.
Betty Cracker
@Geminid: Was just reading that FL Gov DeSantis is doing a renewed vaccine push too and taking credit for getting seniors vaccinated. He also tried to explain away the huge spike in infections here as a consequence of the weather. That’s almost certainly partly true, but it was also the weather that blunted the winter surges here and in other Sunbelt states, when DeSantis and fellow wingnut Southern govs took credit for “leadership” on the pandemic and criticized people like Gov. Whitmer.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@hueyplong: I was assuming that hard core belivers (otherwise known as Libertarians) view the pyramid scheme as desirable. Much like how they think the Wasteland of the Fallout games a good thing.
opiejeanne
@eclare: That made me laugh, in my sleep-deprived state this morning. Scalise was the guy who got shot at the baseball game, right? It didn’t move his needle one tick on gun control, so I wonder what changed.
Betty Cracker
@Soprano2: & @OzarkHillbilly: Good points since the team in power in a recession typically gets blamed, but maybe Republicans are seeing polls that tell them people will blame Republicans if COVID makes a big comeback? The GOP has definitely made COVID denial and vaccine resistance a part of the Republican brand, whereas Biden and Dems have made taking COVID seriously and pushing hard for vaccination our brand.
eclare
@opiejeanne: Just my guess, who knows. And yes, he was the guy who got shot. Glad you got a laugh!
hueyplong
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Ha ha, I thought you meant hard core Trump followers.
I get it now.
PST
@lowtechcyclist:
I read the recent New Yorker article on the Rittenhouse case. It’s dry and factual, and quite informative. Rittenhouse is free on $2 million bond. The reporter met with him at an undisclosed location. He is now being defended by a legitimate criminal defense lawyer who has done his best to depoliticize the case. No more RWNJ lawyers, like Lin Wood, using the case as a platform for money and publicity; no more consorting with Proud Boys. That’s why we don’t hear much about it any more. The case will probably end in a plea bargain. It’s one in which self-defense can be argued with a straight face. I’m definitely not saying that’s the right outcome, especially with respect to the killing of Joseph Rosenbaum, but there is material that a serious lawyer not using the case for self-promotion can make something out of. On the other hand, Rittenhouse is indisputably guilty of several crimes and will do time for something.
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty Cracker: I have no idea what prompted the sudden change of heart, I am every bit as baffled as the next person.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
You’re right, it doesn’t. But you’ve got the Manchinema problem, you’ve got the limits-on-reconciliation problem (which is where the parliamentarian comes in), and you’ve got the filibuster problem.
Fixing one problem doesn’t fix them all. But would you rather have more or fewer obstacles in the way of passing legislation? Each one we can get rid of expands the possibilities.
Didn’t the parliamentarian boot the minimum wage hike from the first reconciliation bill? Sure, Manchin and Sinema (and several others) were against $15, but even Manchin was OK with $11 by next year, and we could at least have gotten that in the bill if we hadn’t kowtowed to the parliamentarian.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@opiejeanne: What did he argue that the only way to stop a crazy man with a gun is an even crazier man with more and bigger guns?
Steeplejack (phone)
@Betty Cracker:
Yeah, sure, Cracker. ?
Bet the pooches were glad to see you home.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist: Your assumption is that “defenders of Senate tradition” Manchin and Sinema would simply ignore the firing rather than react vociferously to right-wing howls about it.
sdhays
@lowtechcyclist: There’s really only one problem – Manchinema. Everything else is just details. Even with the parliamentarian ruling X, as long as Manchinema are ok with it, the Democrats can just overrule him/her and move on. No need to fire anyone.
mrmoshpotato
@OzarkHillbilly:
But but but, the Soviet shitpile mobster conman told us all he was “really rich!”
Omnes Omnibus
@lowtechcyclist:
They did. Minimum security prison is still prison. They aren’t playing tennis. I have visited clients inside them. Prisons are scary places to even visit.
jimmiraybob
My only suggestion for the “No Fire!” cartoon would be to add,
NotMax
@Omnes Omnibus
(sound of tin stemware being rattled across bars) “Phooey! Let the warden drink these martinis!”
Robert Sneddon
@Gin & Tonic: Germany desperately needs a secure source of fossil-fuel gas to replace their existing coal and domestic oil consumption (about a quarter of German homes are heated by oil at the moment) as they try to ramp up renewables over the next century or two. Right now the only large-scale gas pipelines from Russia to Europe pass through Ukraine which has in the past diverted gas meant for western Europe to burn for their own needs in winter while stiffing the Russians for the bill. The only thing the Russian gas companies could do would be to shut down the gas pipelines in response, cutting off Germany and other parts of eastern Europe from much-needed fossil fuel supplies.
The NordStream 2 pipeline runs down through the Baltic, bypassing Ukraine completely which is something the Ukrainians don’t want to happen. The US is getting involved in a political dispute ten thousand kilometres from its shores because, well, it’s America and it’s in charge of everything everywhere. Team America, World Police! fuck yeah.
Brantl
@Baud: Removing a stupid position, that is supposed to tell these people (Senators, for Christ’s sake!), what they are already supposed to know, is right up our alley.
tam1MI
@Geminid:
I’ve also read that Republicans have been seeing some very bad numbers in internal polling regarding Covid response.
I suppose it’s too much to hope that polling is also showing that their Critical Race Theory nonsense has backfired on them.
Chris T.
@sanjeevs:
PG&E (which some say stands for Peculation, Greed & Extortion) stole* the undergrounding funds that the city of Piedmont had been paying for a decade, back when they had their subsidiary go bankrupt in 2001 or so. They’ll probably steal these funds too.
*All nice and legally of course. Lucky for me I didn’t live in Piedmont, but I kept my eyes on all the stuff that was happening at the time.