US Politics, April 2020 -- Where's the Vax Returns?

LET'S GO AIRLINES!!! NICE!!!!!!

In case it wasn't sufficiently obvious, I made that up.

that richard burr thing seems like ... not a big deal. he sold a house for 12% over its assessed tax value. in a fast rising market like DC that seems totally reasonable? i paid 15% over the asking price for my house.

did you buy it from a politician of a senate committee that you were lobbying?

yes

well, then...

that makes you smart :D

CNN's fact-checker Daniel Dale (quoting a friend), in connection to Trump's modified claim now that he will grant permission to governors to do what they're already allowed to do: "It's like me giving all super models permission to date other people."

haha I guess it is pretty funny that so far all the big health care proposals to respond to the crisis (that have the support of leadership) are identical to the requests the health insurance lobby sent to Congress https://t.co/CKs8jCFK1N pic.twitter.com/venuHmZt76

— tyson brody (@tysonbrody) April 14, 2020

Gee really hope the msm pushes the “your check is delayed because of this dumb asshole” story

This is appalling on every level.

“The Treasury Department has ordered President Trump’s name be printed on stimulus checks the IRS is rushing to send to tens of millions of Americans, a process that is expected to slow their delivery by several days.” https://t.co/aTrWKoaHIc

— Frederick M. Hess (@rickhess99) April 15, 2020

and as surprising as the sunrise

It's the closest he'll get to having his picture on real money during his lifetime.

i mean you can electronically deposit checks nowadays, might as well wipe your ass with it first

https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/apr/14/coronavirus-us-live-donald-trump-briefing-deaths-rise-cuomo-fauci-latest-news-updates

great president you got there

Trump blaming the WHO for this is like someone blaming their alarm clock for being late from work , when they put it on snooze ten times before getting out of bed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NYFq7ZJg4c

Some of the most odious thugs in the Aussie government plus the prime minister lining up to back trump in the WHO.

The US spy base in Australia also still flying staff and cargo in unchecked, while anyone else entering the continent gets locked up for 14 days in a city.

for fuck's sake can somebody just put a bullet thru the cunt already?

*FBI knocks on door*

for fuck's sake can somebody just put a bullet thru the cunt in the middle of fifth avenue already?

^ there, this one is okay to say

Pretty sure Trump is defunding WHO because of Sidney Poitier marrying a white woman in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

He pointed out yesterday (like he'd just realized it himself) that the two bodies who are very unfair to the USA, the WHO and the WTO, both begin with a 'W," but he stopped short of extending that to the WWE.

Or the WAR

Wobblies also historically very unfair to the USA

I am sensing a pattern here

On a Saturday in early March, Donald J. Trump, clad in a baseball cap, strode into the Situation Room for a meeting with the coronavirus task force. He didn’t stop by the group’s daily meetings often, but he had an idea he was eager to share: He wanted to start a White House talk radio show.

At the time, the virus was rapidly spreading across the country, and Mr. Trump would soon announce a ban on European travel. A talk radio show, Mr. Trump excitedly explained, would allow him to quell Americans’ fears and answer their questions about the pandemic directly, according to three White House officials who heard the pitch. There would be no screening, he said, just an open line for people to call and engage one-on-one with the president.

But that Saturday, almost as suddenly as he proposed it, the president outlined one reason he would not be moving forward with it: He did not want to compete with Rush Limbaugh.

No one in the room was sure how to respond, two of the officials said. Someone suggested hosting the show in the mornings or on weekends, to steer clear of the conservative radio host’s schedule. But Mr. Trump shook his head, saying he envisioned his show as two hours a day, every day. And were it not for Mr. Limbaugh, and the risk of encroaching on his territory, he reiterated, he would do it.

One of the officials involved directly in the effort said it wasn’t the first time Mr. Trump had discussed hosting a radio show from the White House. But if some in the room were unsure whether the president’s proposal was a joke, they knew his deference to Mr. Limbaugh was anything but.

When it comes to the president’s favored media figures, most observers tend to fixate on the Fox News lineup of Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity. But several people close to Mr. Trump say that in the midst of a pandemic, he has come to keenly appreciate the extent of Mr. Limbaugh’s reach, and the fact that his show, perhaps more than any other source, offers a real-time metric of how the president’s decisions are playing with his supporters.

Now, as multiple voices vie for the president’s ear on the appropriate timeline for America’s path to normalcy, Mr. Limbaugh is amplifying Mr. Trump’s instinct for swiftness. And for this president, as well as much of his party, Mr. Limbaugh’s affirmation remains a powerful motivator.

“Talk radio is still a powerhouse when it comes to Republican voters,” said Jason Miller, co-host of the War Room podcast and a former Trump communications adviser. And the president, Mr. Miller said, “realizes how big a powerhouse Rush is.”

The White House declined to comment on Mr. Trump’s desire for a radio show.

GOOD MORNING

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/15/us/trump-radio-show-rush-limbaugh.html

And were it not for Mr. Limbaugh, and the risk of encroaching on his territory, he reiterated, he would do it.

i've always wanted rush to die. but now that it's so close, i'm concerned about the consequences

Should Limbaugh die and Trump's out of office, Trump will get what he wanted (and expected to happen) in 2016 until he won the election: his own media network. And it wouldn't be as successful because Limbaugh's expert at his job.

And it wouldn't be as successful because Limbaugh's expert at his job.

Yeah of course Rush is the worst and in a just world would be punished for eternity being violated by red-hot pokers in every conceivable orifice (and some that are not yet conceivable but would be created specifically to violate him in).

But he does have a craft and a skill; these are well-practiced from long experience. Trump has some decent instincts for exciting his lizard-brain base, but lacks the discipline and attention span to pursue it as consistent, unremitting day-in/day-out labor. That would be work. He hates work. Other people do work; he waltzes in at the last moment and either blesses, or does not bless, the work of others. Then he takes credit or assigns blame. I hate both of them but they have different skill sets.

I've listened to Limbaugh enough in my life -- not since 2011 or thereabouts -- to hear the guy's pathological talent for mimicry, invective, and the ease with which he can slip under the carapace of an intellectual who purportedly reasons from carefully articulated and logical positions while also playing a slobbo from Podunk.

I cannot imagine too many people are gonna be eager to hear what Trump has to say the minute he's been stripped of any power

i think Trump is going to be the central animating force in conservatism until the day he dies. i don't think it's going to be like it was with Dubya; Trump isn't going to retreat from the spotlight and allow anyone else to fill the vacuum.

Obama, in his Biden endorsement video, explicitly called for a public option, which surprised me -- and then when I looked it up I realized Obama got on board with the public option years ago. It's funny, the way politics has moved, I've gotten used to the idea that Obama was a timid incrementalist who saw ACA/Romneycare as the best possible course for American healthcare.

He also said that if he was running now he wouldn't run the same campaign he ran in 2008.

Yep, that jumped out at me too.

I forget on which thread yesterday I pointed it out. It's rare a former president makes public an implicit rebuke against himself.

i see that as optimistic. it's more that he sees the winds have changed, largely due to Sanders and Warren

that's a pretty milk rebuke, though. what candidate would run the same campaign in 2020 that they did in 2008?

(ok, i just realized the answer to that is joe biden, but my point still sort of stands)

Amash considering run for President as a Libertarian. Can't see this impacting anything very much frankly.

maybe it'll have an influence on all the left-leaning people who have been approvingly retweeting Amash's tweets the last several months, like he's anything other than a lifelong republican who realized trump is a dick and rebranded into a libertarian

yeah once they get a wind of his actual stances on most things they'll come to their senses. I like Romney more than Amash.

i at least respect the consistency of his wrongness, that still feels preferable to me to the constant oscillation between mealy-mouthed "principled" stands and outright toadying as exemplified by Mittens.

maaaaybe he could complicate Utah, although that might have been more competitive without mcmullin last time.

i think Trump is going to be the central animating force in conservatism until the day he dies. i don't think it's going to be like it was with Dubya; Trump isn't going to retreat from the spotlight and allow anyone else to fill the vacuum.

I'm sure the QAnon types will follow him to the end of the earth but I feel like we're 1 or 5 years away from the Republican party memory holing him entirely. the GOP's fealty to him is entirely due to the power he wields and I really think as soon as he's out they'll treat him the same as they did during the 2016 primaries

i think amash has always been a doctrinaire libertarian, suckered into the republican party by believing hard in tea party nonsense

tbf to Amash I think he’s always been pretty libertarian, in a much more “principled” way than either of the Pauls. but also in the interest of fairness, someone should apprise Justin that there are about 53 white guys in America who actually align with this ideology, and that 99.63% of the internet “libertarians” that seemed to have such an outsized online presence during the Obama years have gone full-on alt-right pepe/ MAGA chud

lol yeah xpost

frogbs otm, I think. It's gonna be really rough when these bootlickers start pretending they always hated him and never supported him.

I've no doubt every Trump bootlicker in Congress loathes him beacuse they have to lick his boots, and they'll abandon him if he loses or leaves office in 2024.

Then they'll find another pair of boots.

there should be a distinction between other politicians and run-of-the mill alt-right dipshits. politicians, as alfred says, will drop him asap.

the masses of dipshits, though - they might stay with him longer than you all think. remember that they were into him before his presidency, too, when his main issue was obama's birth certificate. and they could stick with him afterward, too, in the same way that alex jones managed to find a large audience. it's almost better to not be in power, for incredibly dumb people on the right - much easier to be an opposition party and run rampant with conspiracy theories then running a government and dealing with crises

I'm hoping Trump endures an exile more humiliating even than Nixon's. (Probably not possible, in that Trump won't be calling up current presidents and abjectly trying to ingratiate himself by offering unsolicited counsel.)