US Politics January 2018: "You All Just Got A Lot Richer"

Just wait until The Don issues his executive order that all of America's faucets and AC units must be run 24/7. We're gonna kill off this biosphere yet!

a tire fire on every corner, a song in every heart

a pokemon go-style app where you get points for actually shooting endangered animals

also Trump cheerfully gloating that the "DEMOCRATS CAVED!!!" over and over despite spending the whole weekend sulking is pretty depressing too

We wouldn't even need to bother with other alternative energy sources if we could figure out a way to harness the power of the nihilistic spite and resentment that fuels the pleathery corpus of our president.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/23/us/politics/jeff-sessions-special-counsel-russia.html

Someone explain something to me: what the Dems got, if anything, was the promise of some sort of DACA vote in the next couple of weeks. But Mitch said it's an up or down vote, which means no filibuster, so ... it just needs a majority, 51. What are the odds it won't be some shitty pseudo-DACA bill will all sorts of horrible stuff attached in the amendment process that then passes, just by picking off some chickenshit Dem or two? What do the Dems do then? For that matter, what do they do when Mitch says he fulfilled his promise for a DACA vote and either a) they don't vote for it, or b) they threaten to shut down the government again? How does that put Dems in a better position?

CHIP.

The bill will be loaded with poison pills that are only meant to be surrendered as pawns for arming up ICE like a branch of the military and imposing unmeetable income/employment standards on those who are allowed to say.

This is possibly the first time the President has really shown his negotiating chops. He didn't take DACA away to throw the dreamers out. He took it away to hold it hostage for a whole slew of stuff that would never have otherwise even made it to the table. We are actually going to have a wall, or big stupid parts of one.

CHIP

a program popular with both republicans and democrats. democrats get the thing that everyone wanted anyway, never should have lapsed, and never should have been a part of any negotiation. not necessarily blaming democrats for it. the current republican strategy is to turn every mandatory event (passing a budget, raising the debt ceiling) into a hostage situation.

The Democrats were utterly humiliated yesterday. This can only be seen as a huge loss and display of weakness from Schumer and the rest of the dead weight in the Senate. We are doomed if they are our best hope.

Seriously, And this during a weekend when millions of people were mobilized and out on the streets again. They lasted ... a weekend. Before any polls even came out.

it's almost like they don't want the same things as the people that keep voting for them.

It's almost as if that's what being in the minority is like.

Then why not just accede to every dumb GOP demand?

My senators Durbin (who wrote the original DACA bill on 2001, I think) and Duckworth, they are not (always) cowardly centrist water-carriers, for all their flaws. So who knows what is up with them.

The Dems are going to get exactly what they wanted on or before Feb 8, and they're not going to like it. They are going to get some sort of half-assed DACA "fix" (with caveats), and then be asked to accept a bazillion dollars for a wall, limitations to legal migration, hell, more tax cuts and attacks on the ACA, who knows. And they'll either accept it, like a bunch of assholes, or they'll say no, and the GOP will have them in the exact same place. "Oh, I thought you wanted DACA? Do you care more about these illegal immigrants than you do security? Then you do freedom? Then you do Christmas?" And it will be "their" shutdown again should they choose to go that route.

hey but Donny didn't get to go to his party so there is that .

winning!

not to get all nate silver up in here but I dont think anyone is going to remember this shit in 6 months

It's almost as if that's what being in the minority is like

i feel like the GOP would have handled differently. now ultimately what ends are ayone's guess. i guess.

*to what ends

(minority GOP)

You can't win with nihilists, and this particular group of nihilists didn't give a shit about CHIP; now it's off the table for six years. That's a big deal in South Florida!

Also, as 2013 proved – when everyone knew the Obama administration was not going to pull funding or whatever for its own health care program – the public has a short memory for shutdowns. I don't think the GOP gives a shit about DACA either. its recipients waiting on the good will of Mitch McConnell are in a terrible spot, but the reporting this morning suggests that Susan Collins and her Merry Moderates, a dozen strong, haven't forgotten the other promises he made to them and intend to humiliate him in February should he fall short. And the Dems will have another villain to run against in November.

i don't know what this measure's chances are on the ballot, but this seems like very good news

Florida election officials have verified that the voting rights amendment that would restore voting rights to as many as 1,500,000 convicted felons has gotten enough signatures to make the ballot this November. https://t.co/ywciSYVH0f

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) January 23, 2018

was about to post that!

wow!

They won't remember this in 6 months because now CHIP is off the table and, in a few weeks, DACA will be as well. And all sorts of other horrible shit will have passed to get those things done.

There was no real disagreement in DC or among the public with CHIP or DACA. It's the GOP that had been putting them both off, for weeks, for months, for years. The Dems just seriously risked dividing their support and slowing momentum/hindering enthusiasm, in an election year, by fighting and sacrificing for things that both sides wanted and have in the past agreed on.

I'm more hopeful for gains in the House and/or senate thanks to grassroots mobilization and legal decisions, but for all I know these kinds of shitty moves on the parts of mainstream Dems could put even safe races at risk.

xp apparently it needs 60% to pass

I know we like horse races and shit on a thread that updates every few minutes, but let's wait until after February before we consider long term effects.

I think of all the disappointing news yesterday the 30% tariff on solar panels is by far the most depressing

― frogbs, Tuesday, January 23, 2018 6:17 AM

I have a lot to say about this but I'm going to stick with this: The blame here lies squarely on Solar World and Suniva, the two companies who initiated the trade case. Trump didn't give them nearly what they wanted here, which means that instead of a total disaster this is just a bump in the road, and not as bad as the 2012 retroactive tariffs.

see also the Solar Power thread

I know we like horse races and shit on a thread that updates every few minutes, but let's wait until after February before we consider long term effects.

― morning wood truancy (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, January 23, 2018 4:59 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the twitter thread had a relevant take on this thread this morning -

One of the warning signs for me is when I can’t tell the difference between a big problem and a small problem. My brain stops prioritizing. Every problem comes at me at exactly the same size. This is depression taking away a major coping mechanism. And that’s exactly what was happening on Twitter. Every outrage was becoming the exact same size.

xposts if ever there was a demagogue-able ballot initiative, cue Willie Horton ducking darkly behind the voting booth curtains. Not gonna happen esp at that threshold

I guess we'll have to wait 3 weeks to see how much of a spine the Dems actually have but for now I suppose you can say getting CHIP off the table when the GOP was using it as a hostage is sort of a win for the Dems. Now all they've got is DACA? Also, as pointed out, the Dems are the minority party, they don't have all that much leverage to begin with.

That said the Dems caving one day after one of the largest protests in US History is exactly the sort of thing that will lead to disappointment come midterms. If they don't fight like hell for this in 3 weeks I'm never giving them another dime.

xp apparently it needs 60% to pass

Budget requires 60 votes. "Promised" DACA or whatever vote is up/down vote, which is simple majority, afaict. And this bullshit about negotiation ... there have been several DACA bills and compromised. There was one just a couple of weeks ago! Why couldn't the Dems have just said Durbin/Graham or GTFO?

imo we're all gonna die, but we're supposed to think that's a good thing now

wait i thought the 60% was about the florida referendum

yeah my 60% comment refers the florida felon enfranchisement vote

oh, whoops, yeah

via Corey Robin

Democratic institutions are presumed to be permeable and responsive to the popular will. When they aren't, voters begin to view them as illegitimate.

The problem didn't start with Donald Trump, but he makes it far worse — by giving democratically unresponsive institutions a high-minded justification for doubling down on the status quo at the very moment when popular agitation on both the right and the left is demanding more dramatic change. (Would a democratic-socialist president be permitted to pass and implement a single-payer health-care system? Or would the courts immediately declare it unconstitutional? We may find out with the election of our next Democratic president.)

This may be the paradoxical way that Trump contributes to the longer-term breakdown to democracy in the United States: Not by seizing power in the name of the people, but by inadvertently demonstrating that the people possess remarkably little power under the current system to change anything significant at all.

http://theweek.com/articles/750016/against-great-rethinking-about-trump

But how can McConnell hold a debate on DACA that can't be filibustered? Cloture only comes in at the end.

for now I suppose you can say getting CHIP off the table when the GOP was using it as a hostage is sort of a win for the Dems

Try replacing "the Dems" with "poor children who need health insurance" and see how you feel.

lol yeah I know but I feel like the Dems actually care about sick kids to some extent, while the GOP would be more than happy to let it expire just so they can blame the Democrats for it

Heard some House idiot float the idea of allowing Dreamers to stay for renewable (which I guess means potentially not-renewed?) 3 year spans while they wait in "line," not (immediately) deported but not given citizenship, either. That's the sort of shit we're going to get.

most depressing is the Facebook friends I've got posting shit like "Let's say a father and daughter broke into your house. After they've already ransacked it, the US Government says that the daughter gets to stay, and you have to house her and pay for her education!! Does that seem FAIR?? Well now you understand DACA..."

i am glad i am not friends with people posting that shit

ransacked it? by working and paying taxes?

no no, these people are all attended public schools and are now on welfare

fuck this damn monsters and their pathetic nonsense unfriend them

brb unfriending 2/3 of white americans

We really should be taking down names for the day when fuckers like that no longer have an implicit mandate to just say whatever xenophobic bullshit springs into what passes for their minds.

brb unfriending 2/3 of white americans

And a large percentage of nonwhite Americans, especially legal immigrants who've been here a long-ass time and hate illegal immigrants as much as any redneck strawman.