The House passed:
* A CR (that both parties say they support)
* Disaster funding (that both parties say they support)
* Avoiding default (which both parties say they support)And yet now one party says they will filibuster it all for politics. It’s actually quite simple. https://t.co/rR4yjLd9Br
— Jesse Lee (@JesseLee46) September 22, 2021
Media be like…
Democrats are divided over how best to help people, while Republicans are united over how best to hurt people.
Advantage: Republicans
— Daily Trix (@DailyTrix) September 22, 2021
I really would like to see more headlines that express, "GOP Senators are fighting to make U.S. default on debt."
That is, in very neutral terms, what's happening.
— Mangy Jay (@magi_jay) September 22, 2021
There is nothing more fiscally irresponsible than fighting for the U.S. to default, which wouldn't just devastate our economy, but would also have global effects. So why are we giving them so much credibility in other debates, such as the cost of childcare & eldercare?
— Mangy Jay (@magi_jay) September 22, 2021
Maybe once again A Democrat will pay, for certain values of ‘Democrat’…
Holy Crap. Sinema is cratering back in Arizona even worse than I thought possible. https://t.co/ooAWRHeC6v via @TPM
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) September 22, 2021
Well, this is just sci-fi wishful thinking.
But what if I was to tell you I had a clone of a popular Democratic Arizona senator who could primary Sinema. https://t.co/R1En2v4wJu pic.twitter.com/oFfNKqbuZd
— Don Moynihan (@donmoyn) September 20, 2021
Spanky
Both Kelly twins in the Senate would be fucking awesome.
Baud
Can we cut through all this noise and put the blame where it belongs: Maine crossover voters.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone???
Steeplejack
Okay, I have been waiting for this thread. I am feeling perky today and ready to mix it up. Might even have the strength to watch the eight o’clock rerun of the Morning Joe opening.
First up:
@RSchooley, May 2016: “Remember the board of directors every time you read a story about Theranos.” [Picture]
@RSchooley, June 2016: “From $4.5 billion to nothing: Forbes revises estimated net worth of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes.”
@RSchooley, today: “What a journey!”
Click for “Who, me?” picture of Mad Dog Mattis.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Spanky
Also too, does Sinema even care if she’s cratering? Does Wine Mom even notice?
debbie
Sinema and Manchin have got to stick to their promises. NOW.
rikyrah
Guess whose furnace went out last night? Got in the call already for the repairman.?
Steeplejack
@rikyrah:
Good morning! ?
rikyrah
@Spanky:
I know.
But, she needs to be primaried
Baud
@Spanky:
Haha. I wish we lived in a time when one of the twins could be safely Republican. That would be even more fun.
Steeplejack
@rikyrah:
Shoulda scheduled this for June. Condolences.
Steeplejack
This is important:
Meredith Shiner:
Dorothy A. Winsor
@rikyrah: Yikes. I hope it’s warmer there than here. The high today is predicted to be 61.
Steeplejack
Some fuel for Kay:
Brian Murphy on Twitter:
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Steeplejack: Republicans will do anything to win an election, except get more votes.
rikyrah
???
#TuckFrump (@realTuckFrumper) tweeted at 5:30 AM on Thu, Sep 23, 2021:
Big Pharma, medical firms donated $750K to Kyrsten Sinema — then she opposed drug bill https://t.co/49drOnnpLp
(https://twitter.com/realTuckFrumper/status/1440986816149004290?s=02)
Baud
@Steeplejack:
It’s not like he teaches Critical Race Theory.
MomSense
@Baud:
Fine by me. Those same assholes have filled up our hospitals because they are the stupidest, meanest fucking assholes.
Suzi endorsed LePage yesterday.
Steeplejack
Code Blue! Mika is at the White House! In the rain!
Actually, the rain is kind of nice. It’s 61° and drizzly here in Threadkill Lane, very dark outside in that aquarium-green way that whispers, “Work from bed today, Steep.”
Back to the studio. Oh, shut up Joe. He’s blathering about how, since the Democrats control the presidency, the House and the Senate and “control their destiny,” if they don’t get a deal done they will end up in the minority. He is tits deep in Murc’s Law. (“Only Democrats have agency; Republicans are like the weather or something.”) No discussion from the panel of the Republicans or what they are doing.
Hmm, might have to check what’s on HGTV.
Baud
@MomSense:
Did she endorse LePage in his prior runs?
MomSense
@rikyrah:
Ugh.
MomSense
@Baud:
I think she stayed quiet first time, but I can’t remember.
Baud
@MomSense:
I’m referring to the people who voted for Biden and Collins, not the die hard Republicans.
Patricia Kayden
Here’s hoping that voters don’t punish President Biden for the nonsense going on right now in the Senate. He’s blameless and I’m so relieved that he is in the White House.
Kay
@Steeplejack:
They could absolutely get away with this and anyone who denies it is delusional. From the Eastman memo:
Replace “he” (the VP) with GOP members of congress or GOP state representatives or GOP judges or GOP governors.
During the attempted coup, there were a whole group of elite legal commentors who were basically arguing, “we won’t have a coup because coups are illegal”. You just want to bash your head against a wall. Thirty years of watching these people operate, they learned nothing.
Steeplejack
@Baud:
Touché. ?
Soprano2
@Steeplejack: My God, does he think we’re all that stupid? She was credibility-shopping, pure and simple. It’s embarrassing for all those older, supposedly smart men that she was able to hoodwink them so easily.
Betty
@Spanky: I believe Kyrsten has other plans than re-election. So, she doesn’t care. I just wish there were some way to embarrass her to at least stop the sabotage.
Kay
@Steeplejack:
Roe v Wade is still good law. Abortions are now banned in Texas.
“We won’t have a coup because coups are illegal”. Okey doke, counselor. Thanks for reciting the rules.
NotMax
@Dorothy A. Winsor
One option is to warm up and get the blood flowing by keeping time with some sprightly euphony.
;)
eclare
@Steeplejack: Yeah, I had to give up this morning on MJ. Jeez just get them some fainting couches and be done with it.
John S.
@Steeplejack:
This. Nothing else needs to be said.
Steeplejack
@Kay:
Inorite. It beggars the imagination.
And Anna Palmer, founder of Punchbowl News, was just telling Joe that Mitch McConnell has been “very clear” the last two months in [his opposition to everything] and that the Democrats are “dithering” in their response. Bad Democrats. I can’t even.
Soprano2
Yeah, that was super dumb, as if people ask permission before fomenting a coup. These people think our system is immune from this kind of manipulation, but this memo shows that it’s not. I wish the press were paying 1/100th of the amount of attention to this that they did to Hillary’s e-mail server management, which they deemed to be the most important issue of the 2016 election (and no, I’m never going to get over that, don’t ask).
Steeplejack
@NotMax:
My blood is flowing fine, mister! No euphony for me, sprightly or otherwise.
Geminid
@Spanky: Sinema has not had strong Democratic primary opponents before, but I think she knows she will face a strong one in 2024 if she thwarts the Democratic agenda. Congressman Greg Stanton, former mayor of Phoenix, is one possibilty. After electing Mark Kelly last year, Arizona Democrats know they can elect a Senator who does not pursue a centrist strategy. Job one for Democrats there is to reelect Kelly next year. That election will give them a sense of whether Sinema can be replaced.
Democrats will also know by then if Sinema is in fact an obstruction, or is just milking her centrist role and in the end votes for important initiatives like the second infrastructure bill and the revised John Lewis Voting Rights Act. Even then, a lot of Arizona Democrats will still want to primary Sinema as payback for all the heartburn she’s given them.
Steeplejack
Joe and the gang keep circling back to the French submarines issue. It’s like the house is burning down but let’s talk about how the neighbors want us to trim our tree that’s hanging too far over the fence.
Soprano2
It’s obvious to me that most of the press agrees with Republicans on this, that’s why they talk about it the way they do. If something like this had happened when TFG was president, they also would have blamed it on “Democratic intransigence” and asked why Democrats couldn’t just vote for it to keep from crashing the economy. It’s OK with them if Republicans don’t care about that.
Patricia Kayden
Betty Cracker
I read Marshall’s piece on Sinema yesterday, and his framing of the situation sounds right to me. Sinema’s bid to stake out a “mavericky” lane to collect enough votes from Democrats and independents might blow up, but it’s not because that lane doesn’t exist (it does!) but rather because she bungled the management of the split constituency by going out of her way to piss off Democrats.
I don’t know if Marshall’s read is correct — he admits he doesn’t know the state well. But he knows people who do, and they’ve informed his thinking, plus there is some data. Of course, she’s not up for reelection for a while and maybe believes she can mend fences. Now would be a good time to start.
MJS
@Betty: She clearly loves attention. I’d bet big money that when she gets bounced from the Senate, she lands at Fox as the “Democrat” on any number of panels.
topclimber
@debbie: Thanks to Mitch, Manchinema will have to put up or shut up on debt extension. They either vote to exempt it from the filibuster or agree to include it in reconciliation. Hopefully they don’t demand too high a price. Either they care about whether we default or not. At least we will know soon.
Cameron
Unlike Our Liberal Media, Asia Times seems to take the prospect of a US default rather seriously.
https://asiatimes.com/2021/09/us-default-a-greater-risk-than-evergrande-meltdown/
Geminid
@Betty: That’s an interesting take. Sinema seems to be a political animal, and being Senator is a good job in terms of prestige and working conditions. I would expect Sinema to want to keep her job, but maybe you are right and she intends to walk away (or in her case run away) from her Senate seat. Even if she knows she’ll be walking away from her political career.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Steeplejack: That’s just bizarre. Do they seriously think voters are going to be upset that jobs went to the US instead of France? France!!?
hueyplongex
@Geminid: Her actions seem consistent with both (1) preening and (2) the sweet pharma money inducing her to throw a monkey wrench into this year and then proudly announcing a party change because “the Democratic Party left me” ahead of her reelection campaign.
Don’t much care for (2).
Kay
@Soprano2:
The memo is the last war. Don’t fight that one. They don’t need the VP. They just need state election officials or state legislatures or governors. They’ll have state election officials and the state legislators and governors will follow the lead of the state elections offocials who are, after all, state election officials.
The next one isn’t going to look exactly like this one. That we have to tell “elite lawyers” that is just mindboggling. The problem is they are brittle. They cannot adapt to new or rapdily changing conditions.
The easy part of lawyering is reading the rule and applying it. They have to get past that and do real thinking outside the way they are familiar with the rule. If they don’t they’re just not that valuable to us. I can do that, “read, apply, result” and so can you. They have to do more.
Steeplejack
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I think it’s just the current shiny object that rolled into view. They don’t prioritize; they just sit and comment on what passes by.
Geminid
@hueyplongex: Sinema could not win a Republican primary in Arizona, any more than Jeff Flake could have. If she wants to stay in elective politics she has to remain a Democrat.
Butter Emails!
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I just keep thinking about how different the submarine issue would have been framed if it had occured under TFG. It would have been lauded as a triumph of his business acumen and the press would have been gloating about ‘merka pwning the wine drinking cheese munchers.
hueyplong
@Geminid: Agree. Just pointing out that her actions are so bad to date that they are as consistent with bad faith as they are with mere attention-seeking
To get the GOP nomination you’d have to announce your intention to shoot immigrants and declare any Dem victory anywhere fraudulent, prior to the election at issue.
Steeplejack
I’ma need a big dose of Perry Mason at 9:00 on MeTV to restore my sense of order in the universe. “The Case of the Gallant Grafter,” February 1960. Prime stuff.
Goddamn, Eddie Glaude. Question to Cory Booker: “What does it mean that we’re [Democrats] not delivering again?”
Baud
I’m as exasperated with Machin and Sinema as everyone else, but can we stop pretending that a McConnell controlled Senate wouldnt be worse? Foolish normies take our hyperbole at face value.
sab
@Steeplejack: Ohio’s Sec of State Frank LaRose doubted the constitutionality of the Republicans redistricting map, but voted for it anyway.
Steeplejack
@Baud:
Agreed.
hueyplong
@Baud: It’s fairly miraculous (2-0 in Georgia) that we don’t have a McConnell-controlled Senate right now. It’s not unexpected that we’d chafe a little under a Senema- and Manchin-controlled Senate but, sure, it could be worse.
Soprano2
@Kay: Sure, I was making the point that the existence of this memo shows that they can figure out a way around our system pretty easily, one way or another. And yeah, state election people standing between us and a coup is an unsettling prospect that the press isn’t taking seriously. Again, if the press thought this was 1/10 as important as Hillary’s e-mail server management everyone would know about it, because they would be covering it incessantly. But they aren’t, so too many people don’t take it seriously enough.
Baud
@Butter Emails!:
I agree.
What’s pernicious is that, since Biden is pushing diplomacy over war, the media are treating this as a failure of diplomacy. Even though war with France is not an option, the idea is to discredit diplomacy generally.
Starfish
@Baud: I would vote for the lobster lady. I know she would be the oldest member of a governing body and the strategy would be bad, but…
zhena gogolia
Open thread, so: Carmen Balthrop, RIP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukgWU6JCZkg
Cameron
@Baud: Plus the fact that it wasn’t the US that had the deal with France. Why we’re at fault for Australia’s actions stumps me – yes, it would have been nice to give the French a heads-up, but it wasn’t our show.
Ken
I posted this in the overnight thread on whining reporters, but it seems appropriate here too:
Every reporter’s dream is to make ten million dollars for their book, titled: “U. S. OF ATROCITIES — How the United States became a dictatorship, and how I knew about the plans three years before it happened”.
Though I feel they haven’t really thought through the plan, or they’d realize they’d have to be paid in euros.
Steeplejack
Now on MSNBC, Garrett Haake in for Stephane Ruhle. “We start in Washington, where the Democrats have a mess on their hands.” Almost gleeful delivery.
Okay, over to Perry.
Starfish
@Steeplejack: “Law school” dean. Chapman University is ranked #134 in US News and world reports. They had him sitting in the CU seat for conservative thought. I feel like they are bestowing fake credentials upon a dude.
Baud
@Ken:
Fixed.
oldgold
Just watched Cory Booker on Morning Joe.
Booker was beyond awful. We have no chance.
Baud
@Steeplejack:
How do you make legislative sausage making seem dramatic?
Steeplejack
@Starfish:
I don’t think that’s the “elite institution” being referred to. It’s the Federalist Society, the Supreme Court (via its clerk system) and the legal aristocracy in general.
zhena gogolia
@zhena gogolia: Truly, everybody, I can see you’re all upset, so take 6 minutes out of your day and watch the video I linked at #61. The great Carmen Balthrop singing the finale from Scott Joplin’s Treemonisha. She just passed away. I’ll link it again. It will give you a lift.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukgWU6JCZkg
burnspbesq
@Soprano2:
She ended up with what she needed: a board full of credulous old white guys with no conception of fiduciary duty.
She needs to go down hard and spend a long time as a guest of the BOP. And she needs to be followed by a whole bunch of others. White-collar crime can be deterred, but only if the threat of losing everything and doing time is credible.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Counterpoints: 1) I don’t think anyone who’s bitching about Manchinema is pretending that a McConnell-controlled senate wouldn’t be much worse, and 2) normies by definition wouldn’t read this blog, but if they did, it’s probably helpful to the cause for them to get the impression that it’s two Democratic senators jamming up the works than “Democrats” as a brand who can’t get their shit together.
Starfish
@Steeplejack: Can the federalist society be banned from law school for being organized crime? Can I ask Popehat if this is RICO?
burnspbesq
@sab:
Any state official who can dump their problems in Merrill Garland’s lap is ALWAYS going to do so.
Ken
As with many such questions, the answer is “You can, if you are willing to suffer the consequences.”
OzarkHillbilly
Because everybody hates the US.
Kay
@Soprano2:
Democrats need their own memo writers. Not as a blueprint for action or a set of instructions but to open it up and start thinking about what they can do on both defense and offense when a scenario like this comes to pass. Instead we’ll get analysis of that memo, in the same way we got endless analysis of “what will happen post-Roe” and none of them even imagined an end run. We can’t be that far behind. I mean, we CAN, we can continue to analyze far Right actions and insist they’re not legitimate and they can continue to take those actions.
This is a radical, anti-democratic movement. An effective response to it will not be the same as the responses we have used in the past – we will need people who can think outside what has gone before. The Right has them. The Left needs them too. What the “elite liberal legal academy” can do if they can’t help – and it seems clear they can’t help- is at least allow different thinking and different discussions. They have to stop shutting that down.
burnspbesq
@Starfish:
I have a friend on the Chapman Law faculty. They’re happy Eastman is gone.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
See # 47 for an example of #1.
As to #2, I doubt the hyperbole is confined to this blog.
Steeplejack
@Starfish:
Do not ask Popehat if anything is the RICO!
Steeplejack
@OzarkHillbilly:
Including us!
Starfish
@burnspbesq: In Colorado, we are also happy that Eastman is gone, but we would prefer that the entire Bruce D. Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization (a.k.a the place we store conservative cranks) would be gone.
zhena gogolia
I am not paying any attention to news these days. You’re telling me this Australia story has legs? After all the multiple, blatant, obscene insults TFG dealt out to our allies without even a hiccup?
OzarkHillbilly
@Steeplejack: One need look no further than the GOP to confirm that.
Kay
@Soprano2:
We don’t need fewer trillion dollar coin people- we need more of them. It’s not the coin! That’s not the thing! The coin is pretty dumb. But the 5th or 6th or 7th “trillion dollar coin”- like idea will have something worthwhile in it that we can use either in response to or to affirmatively use against what is a whole group of radical thinkers on the Right. The choice really ISN’T “follow existing law exactly as we always have” or “violence”. There’s a whole unexplored world between rigid and brittle reliance on what we have done in the past and “buy your weapon and prepare for war”.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: The commenter at #47 is disgusted with Sinema, but I don’t think it’s reasonable to interpret the statement as a failure to acknowledge that a McConnell-controlled senate wouldn’t be worse. They say Sinema is setting up to switch teams, which I don’t think it right, but no where do I see them imply that would be a positive development.
As for #2, my point was maybe it’s better for low-info voters to hear about two senators who are gumming up the works than to believe it’s “Democrats” writ large. Do you disagree?
The senators in question should be treated fairly, i.e., no one should lie about their positions or falsely attribute quotes to them. But speculating about their strategy or saying they’re doing the will of their donors seems like fair game to me. We do that a lot around here.
Steeplejack
@Steeplejack:
Now d.b.a. ThousandIslandVaccineHat. ?
rikyrah
@Kay:
Truth
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
There’s a third possibility. She doesn’t care that much if she loses the seat because now she’s really valuable in a private sector position and she can make a shit-ton more money as a former senator than she did as a senator.
Geminid
@hueyplong: From what I read, the Arizona Republican party is divided between conservatives and radicals and and there is no room for a centrist ex-Democrat. Sinema probably knows this.
As the first Democratic Senator elected in Arizona since Dennis DeConcini, Sinema may be thinking of the Arizona electorate she grew up with. Last year Democratic voter registrations only exceeded Independent by 32-31.7%, and had lagged behind before then. Republican registrations were at 35%. But Mark Kelly’s reelection contest will give a good picture of where Arizona voters are headed.
In the meantime, I suspect Sinema will accept a compromise on the second infrastructure bill and move on. The next test could be the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.
Soprano2
@Kay: I actually like the trillion dollar coin idea, both because it would solve the problem and would make the press and Republicans howl bloody murder. I also agree that our side needs people who can come up with novel ways to fix these problems, rather than wring their hands about how everything is oh so unfair. Of course, I still reserve the right to complain about how the press covers these issues, because they are still not taking TFG’s coup attempt and the Republican tendency to claim cheating every time they lose seriously enough. They are still acting like Joe Biden getting elected fixed all those problems.
I was glad to see that when Biden met with these people he gave them concrete ideas for how to negotiate their differences, and told them to quit doing it in public. I think that’s the most maddening thing to me – was it really necessary for Joe Manchin to take to the pages of the WJS to air his unhappiness with the reconciliation bill? That seems like a stab in the back that he did because he knows he can.
Did you check out that “Serial” podcast I suggested?
Another Scott
@Cameron: I saw a blurb that said that Australia told France 3 months ago that there were problems with their proposal. I think Macron did this fainting couch stuff for domestic reasons.
This is less of a nothing burger than when Obama apologized to Merkel for the NSA spying on her cell phone… (They hoover up everything outside the US – it’s their job and everyone knows it.)
Cheers,
Scott.
Steeplejack
@Baud:
I didn’t interpret #47 that way. Just thought it was talking about Sinema contemplating a party change.
numfar
@Baud:
He effectively controls it now.
Kay
@rikyrah:
You can have two groups in a political party or broader ideology. You can have mechanics and designers. You need more mechanics than designers but you still need designers. We haven’t cultivated enough designers and we haven’t let them float enough wacky memos, because our mechanics insist on “THAT won’t work”. The mechanics will always rein them in. No one needs to be afraid of them. Just let them go. Give them the Eastman memo and ask them to think about all the possibilities. In time, maybe they can write a liberal memo.
Kay
@rikyrah:
I actually think it will happen anyway, I think “necessity is the mother of invention” and as the ordinary routes are closed off liberals will open new ones, because it’s happened before. FDR was radical and upending the traditional order because the traditional order was “conservatives run everything”. So it can happen now before we lose more or it can happen later when we’re in a corner but it has to happen, so it will. They’re going to adapt or they’re going to disappear. They’ll adapt.
Baud
@numfar:
Lots of judges and political appointees disagree with you. So do people who benefit from the child tax credit. But, hey, hyperbole is important to our side. Don’t let me stop the rhetoric.
Geminid
@Cameron: I think we should have given the French better notice, but this problem will be worked out. The U.S. and France will still cooperate in important endeavors like restarting the JCPOA talks regarding Iran’s nuclear program.
VOR
Don’t think for a minute that Secretary of State candidates believing TFG won the election is a new =, fringe element. This is mainstream orthodoxy. Remember, back in 2006, right after the mid-term elections, George W. Bush fired a bunch of US Attorneys supposedly because they weren’t doing enough to investigate (non-existent) voter fraud.
I wish someone would ask these Republicans point blank “Do you think Democrats can ever legitimately win an election?”
James E Powell
@burnspbesq:
I will be shocked if she is convicted of anything.
Another Scott
@VOR: “I’m sure it can happen sometimes, but not here! People are saying that they think there was fraud and we have to get to the bottom of it!!1. Next question!”
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
numfar
@Baud: All he’s gotta say is no, and the filibuster begins.
piratedan
@Kay: I think there’s a lot of merit to this take and to what Geminid is triangulating as well.
In regards to Sinema, she’s drawing all of the wrong conclusions… she dug the John McCain iconoclast persona, problem is, she hasn’t got a history of crashing expensive aircraft, nor has she enjoyed the POW gig and cutting a similar swath as an apolitical bi-woman fashionista doesn’t have the same cache outside of Scottsdale.
I almost get the idea that to Sinema, this is role-play and that she doesn’t really have a good grasp on what good politics actually is. If she was a weather vane, hurricane warning flags would be up but she’s still behaving unconcerned and I imply doesn’t care, because she’s gonna get paid.
She may flutter back for some Dem initiatives and until she votes for the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, I will remain skeptical as an Arizonan. I fully expect in two years she will announce that she’s not seeking the office and will take the corporate/media route. Even less work, all the pub, loads of perks and no more constituents.
She strikes me that she sees politics as a means to an end and that end means keeping her flush with cash and comfort.
Ben Cisco
@rikyrah: I feel ya – waitin gfo rHVAC guy for a dead AC here.
Just One More Canuck
@MJS: Being a senator is work. To be a talking head, all you have to do is let the idiot wind flow
WaterGirl
@Another Scott:
Absolutely. If he had seen this coming, people would rightly hold him accountable. If they hid the whole thing and sprung it on him 45 minutes before it was announced, he believes that he can’t be / won’t be held accountable. He doesn’t want it to blow back on him.
I feel certain that this is his play.
WaterGirl
@numfar:
I can’t believe anyone would say that with a straight face. Let alone expect to be believed.
McConnell is most definitely obstructing everything he can AS THE MINORITY LEADER.
If he was MAJORITY leader, things would be 100x worse. We wouldn’t be chairing committees, for one thing. Joe probably still wouldn’t have a cabinet yet, let alone a cabinet of talented people of like mind.
Ksmiami
Biden should Mint the fucking coin. Do it- the people are wearing thin of GOP games
J R in WV
@Steeplejack:
I understand the French were trying to redesign their nuclear-powered boats to run on modern non-nuke power plants. The problem with that redesign was that the delivery dates kept slipping dramatically.
Both the US and the UK can build nuclear-powered subs with a reasonably certain due date, which Aus can rely on. Sooner than the date the French were looking to provide their new subs by too.