United States Congress 5: Still Looking for a Spine

[AmazonGrace]

Pelosi cancels SOTU 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[formergothardite]

McConnell is terrified of Trump/Russia. He has to know that refusing to allow the government to reopen is political suicide. Whatever they have on him is very, very bad. 

[Cartmann99]

1 hour ago, AmazonGrace said:

Pelosi cancels SOTU 

 

Oh boy, that part about asking Trump to submit the SOTU in writing is going to set him off. 

Spoiler

I so enjoy watching Speaker Pelosi put Orange Donnie in his place. 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[fraurosena]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: most, if not all of the GOP has been bought and paid for by the GRU.

In essence, you are a vassal state of Russia and Putin is running the US. 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

This is so middle school

 

[AmazonGrace]

Hey GOP your racism is showing 

He's not from Puerto Rico

[AmazonGrace]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Every time I think I can't despise him any more, Bitch does something to increase my disgust. He wrote an op-ed in the WaPo: "Mitch McConnell: Behold the Democrat Politician Protection Act"

Spoiler

For the past two years, our united Republican government drained money and power from Washington and returned it to states, communities and families. From middle-class tax cuts to regulatory reform, we took this approach and watched the nation thrive more as a result.

Democrats have a different philosophy. After November’s elections, everyone knew Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the new House would send the Senate far-left proposals to retighten Washington’s grip on the country. And right on cue, even as their refusal to invest in border security prolongs this partial government shutdown, House Democrats have wasted no time rolling out a sprawling proposal to grow the federal government’s power over Americans’ political speech and elections.

House Democrats won’t come to the table and negotiate to reopen government, but they’ve been hard at work angling for more control over what you can say about them and how they get reelected. They’re trying to clothe this power grab with cliches about “restoring democracy” and doing it “For the People,” but their proposal is simply a naked attempt to change the rules of American politics to benefit one party. It should be called the Democrat Politician Protection Act.

Why else would the bill scrap the neutrality of the Federal Elections Commission and set it up for a partisan takeover? Since Watergate, the commission has been a six-member body so neither party can use it to punish political opponents. Apparently, Democrats have grown tired of playing fair. This bill would weaponize the FEC with a 3-to-2 partisan makeup.

It would also empower that newly partisan FEC to track and catalogue more of what you say. It would broaden the type of speech the commission can define as “campaign-related” and thus regulate. Many more Americans would have to notify the feds when spending even small amounts of money on speech or else be penalized. That partisan FEC would also get wide latitude to determine when a nonprofit’s speech has crossed that fuzzy “campaign-related” line and then forcibly publicize the group’s private supporters.

Apparently the Democrats define “democracy” as giving Washington a clearer view of whom to intimidate and leaving citizens more vulnerable to public harassment over private views. Under this bill, you’d keep your right to free association as long as your private associations were broadcast to everyone. You’d keep your right to speak freely so long as you notified a distant bureaucracy likely run by the same people you criticized. The bill goes so far as to suggest that the Constitution needs an amendment to override First Amendment protections.

Democrats aren’t only coming after free speech. They’re also taking aim at your wallet. Pelosi and company are pitching new taxpayer subsidies, including a 600 percent government match for certain political donations and a new voucher program that would funnel even more public dollars to campaigns. Maybe that’s why every Democrat opposed our tax cuts for middle-class families and small businesses. They’d rather use your money to enrich campaign consultants.

I’m as firm a supporter as anyone of vigorous debate and a vibrant political discourse — but I don’t think Americans see an urgent need for their tax dollars to be used to bankroll robocalls and attack ads, including for candidates they dislike.

Democrats would also like you to pay for generous new benefits for federal bureaucrats. Their bill proposes making Election Day a new paid holiday for government workers and six additional days’ paid vacation for federal bureaucrats to work the polls during any election. This is the Democrats’ plan to “restore democracy”: extra taxpayer-funded vacation for bureaucrats to hover around while Americans cast their ballots.

Even more egregiously, the legislation dedicates hundreds of pages to federalizing the electoral process. It would make states mimic the practices that recently caused California to incorrectly register 23,000 ineligible voters. It would make it harder for states to fix inaccurate data in their voter rolls. Yet the legislation declines to address the sketchy “ballot harvesting” that upended the result in North Carolina’s 9th District — perhaps because the practice is perfectly legal in California, where Democrats made huge gains in 2018.

The whole package seems tailor-made by Washington Democrats to help their D.C. attorneys descend on local communities, exploit confusion and try to swing elections. The antics we saw in Florida in November would be only the beginning.

From the First Amendment to your ballot box, Democrats want to rewrite the rules to favor themselves and their friends. Upending the FEC, squeezing taxpayers, attacking privacy and jeopardizing our elections are a price they’ll happily pay for this partisan power grab.

Fortunately, the November elections that handed Pelosi the House also expanded Republicans’ Senate majority. I hope the two bodies can find common ground and build on the bipartisan successes of last Congress — but this outlandish Democrat proposal is not a promising start. My colleagues and I will proudly defend your privacy and your elections.

I am disgusted that he is taking space/resources on my planet.

[GreyhoundFan]

Because one Steve "Adolf" King isn't enough for the Repugs: "Republican Louie Gohmert doubles down on Steve King’s comments about ‘Western civilization’"

Spoiler

Last week, Rep. Steve King (R.-Iowa) wondered in the New York Times how the terms “white supremacy” and “white nationalism” got a bad rap.

Since then, Republicans have fallen all over themselves to distance the party from the lawmaker’s words. On CBS’ “Face the Nation,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said there is no place for King’s language in America. “Action will be taken,” he said. “I’m having a serious conversation with Congressman Steve King on his future and role in this Republican Party.” In the next few days, King was stripped of his position on House committees.

But the GOP’s relatively quick response to King magnified just how often they’ve allowed similar language and actions to stand without comment. For critics, the most glaring example is President Trump, who among other things called white nationalists marching to preserve statues honoring men who fought to keep black people enslaved “very fine people."

And now, we’re seeing a backlash to the backlash.

On Thursday, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R.-Tex.), known for making controversial statements of his own, defended his colleague and claims that King is not getting due process. He told the Tyler Morning Telegraph:

“He explained what he was saying. He was talking about Western civilization, that, ‘When did Western civilization become a negative?’ and that’s a fair question. When did Western civilization become a negative?"

“We have the only country that I’m aware of that would shed its most valuable treasure — American blood — for freedom, not for hegemony, just for freedom,” he went on.

By ignoring the fact that King literally used the words “white nationalism” and “white supremacy,” Gohmert’s defense of his friend is, at best, incomplete. At worst, could give the impression that he and King think “Western civilization” and “white supremacy” are synonymous.

As historian David Perry and professor Matthew Gabriele wrote in The Washington Post, there is a history of using the idea of “Western civilization” to “cover for racism”:

“King’s understanding of “Western civilization,” entwined as it is with white supremacy, offers little more than bad, outdated history. To combat this, history teachers are going to have to discuss both the newer voices and the old, those who use the history of the West as cover for racism as well as those both past and present who worked to challenge that narrative. Teaching the real story of the West — one that’s multiethnic, encompasses all genders, and takes account of both its horrors and its triumphs — will ensure that the Kings of the future will no longer be able to fall back on semantics to paper over their bigotry.”

Gohmert’s refusal to acknowledge any of this shows that King’s comments are not a strange anomaly. They’re shared by other members of the GOP. And if the Republican Party does not have a broader conversation about America’s real challenges with race and white supremacy, the GOP will continue to struggle to reach voters of color and the white Americans who empathize with them.

 

[47of74]

1 minute ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Because one Steve "Adolf" King isn't enough for the Repugs: "Republican Louie Gohmert doubles down on Steve King’s comments about ‘Western civilization’"

  Reveal hidden contents

Last week, Rep. Steve King (R.-Iowa) wondered in the New York Times how the terms “white supremacy” and “white nationalism” got a bad rap.

Since then, Republicans have fallen all over themselves to distance the party from the lawmaker’s words. On CBS’ “Face the Nation,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said there is no place for King’s language in America. “Action will be taken,” he said. “I’m having a serious conversation with Congressman Steve King on his future and role in this Republican Party.” In the next few days, King was stripped of his position on House committees.

But the GOP’s relatively quick response to King magnified just how often they’ve allowed similar language and actions to stand without comment. For critics, the most glaring example is President Trump, who among other things called white nationalists marching to preserve statues honoring men who fought to keep black people enslaved “very fine people."

And now, we’re seeing a backlash to the backlash.

On Thursday, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R.-Tex.), known for making controversial statements of his own, defended his colleague and claims that King is not getting due process. He told the Tyler Morning Telegraph:

“He explained what he was saying. He was talking about Western civilization, that, ‘When did Western civilization become a negative?’ and that’s a fair question. When did Western civilization become a negative?"

“We have the only country that I’m aware of that would shed its most valuable treasure — American blood — for freedom, not for hegemony, just for freedom,” he went on.

By ignoring the fact that King literally used the words “white nationalism” and “white supremacy,” Gohmert’s defense of his friend is, at best, incomplete. At worst, could give the impression that he and King think “Western civilization” and “white supremacy” are synonymous.

As historian David Perry and professor Matthew Gabriele wrote in The Washington Post, there is a history of using the idea of “Western civilization” to “cover for racism”:

“King’s understanding of “Western civilization,” entwined as it is with white supremacy, offers little more than bad, outdated history. To combat this, history teachers are going to have to discuss both the newer voices and the old, those who use the history of the West as cover for racism as well as those both past and present who worked to challenge that narrative. Teaching the real story of the West — one that’s multiethnic, encompasses all genders, and takes account of both its horrors and its triumphs — will ensure that the Kings of the future will no longer be able to fall back on semantics to paper over their bigotry.”

Gohmert’s refusal to acknowledge any of this shows that King’s comments are not a strange anomaly. They’re shared by other members of the GOP. And if the Republican Party does not have a broader conversation about America’s real challenges with race and white supremacy, the GOP will continue to struggle to reach voters of color and the white Americans who empathize with them.

 

Fuck them.  Fuck them both.  I fucking hate both of them with the heat of many white hot pointy objects.  Congress will be a trillion times better once they and Bitch McFuckstick are no longer in Congress.

[Cartmann99]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Every time I think I can't despise him any more, Bitch does something to increase my disgust. He wrote an op-ed in the WaPo: "Mitch McConnell: Behold the Democrat Politician Protection Act"

  Hide contents

For the past two years, our united Republican government drained money and power from Washington and returned it to states, communities and families. From middle-class tax cuts to regulatory reform, we took this approach and watched the nation thrive more as a result.

Democrats have a different philosophy. After November’s elections, everyone knew Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the new House would send the Senate far-left proposals to retighten Washington’s grip on the country. And right on cue, even as their refusal to invest in border security prolongs this partial government shutdown, House Democrats have wasted no time rolling out a sprawling proposal to grow the federal government’s power over Americans’ political speech and elections.

House Democrats won’t come to the table and negotiate to reopen government, but they’ve been hard at work angling for more control over what you can say about them and how they get reelected. They’re trying to clothe this power grab with cliches about “restoring democracy” and doing it “For the People,” but their proposal is simply a naked attempt to change the rules of American politics to benefit one party. It should be called the Democrat Politician Protection Act.

Why else would the bill scrap the neutrality of the Federal Elections Commission and set it up for a partisan takeover? Since Watergate, the commission has been a six-member body so neither party can use it to punish political opponents. Apparently, Democrats have grown tired of playing fair. This bill would weaponize the FEC with a 3-to-2 partisan makeup.

It would also empower that newly partisan FEC to track and catalogue more of what you say. It would broaden the type of speech the commission can define as “campaign-related” and thus regulate. Many more Americans would have to notify the feds when spending even small amounts of money on speech or else be penalized. That partisan FEC would also get wide latitude to determine when a nonprofit’s speech has crossed that fuzzy “campaign-related” line and then forcibly publicize the group’s private supporters.

Apparently the Democrats define “democracy” as giving Washington a clearer view of whom to intimidate and leaving citizens more vulnerable to public harassment over private views. Under this bill, you’d keep your right to free association as long as your private associations were broadcast to everyone. You’d keep your right to speak freely so long as you notified a distant bureaucracy likely run by the same people you criticized. The bill goes so far as to suggest that the Constitution needs an amendment to override First Amendment protections.

Democrats aren’t only coming after free speech. They’re also taking aim at your wallet. Pelosi and company are pitching new taxpayer subsidies, including a 600 percent government match for certain political donations and a new voucher program that would funnel even more public dollars to campaigns. Maybe that’s why every Democrat opposed our tax cuts for middle-class families and small businesses. They’d rather use your money to enrich campaign consultants.

I’m as firm a supporter as anyone of vigorous debate and a vibrant political discourse — but I don’t think Americans see an urgent need for their tax dollars to be used to bankroll robocalls and attack ads, including for candidates they dislike.

Democrats would also like you to pay for generous new benefits for federal bureaucrats. Their bill proposes making Election Day a new paid holiday for government workers and six additional days’ paid vacation for federal bureaucrats to work the polls during any election. This is the Democrats’ plan to “restore democracy”: extra taxpayer-funded vacation for bureaucrats to hover around while Americans cast their ballots.

Even more egregiously, the legislation dedicates hundreds of pages to federalizing the electoral process. It would make states mimic the practices that recently caused California to incorrectly register 23,000 ineligible voters. It would make it harder for states to fix inaccurate data in their voter rolls. Yet the legislation declines to address the sketchy “ballot harvesting” that upended the result in North Carolina’s 9th District — perhaps because the practice is perfectly legal in California, where Democrats made huge gains in 2018.

The whole package seems tailor-made by Washington Democrats to help their D.C. attorneys descend on local communities, exploit confusion and try to swing elections. The antics we saw in Florida in November would be only the beginning.

From the First Amendment to your ballot box, Democrats want to rewrite the rules to favor themselves and their friends. Upending the FEC, squeezing taxpayers, attacking privacy and jeopardizing our elections are a price they’ll happily pay for this partisan power grab.

Fortunately, the November elections that handed Pelosi the House also expanded Republicans’ Senate majority. I hope the two bodies can find common ground and build on the bipartisan successes of last Congress — but this outlandish Democrat proposal is not a promising start. My colleagues and I will proudly defend your privacy and your elections.

I am disgusted that he is taking space/resources on my planet.

Can someone please put some of that crap you have to drink to prepare for a colonoscopy in Mitch McConnell's coffee?

[GreyhoundFan]

"The GOP has become the drunken frat-boy party — and it sees no reason to sober up"

Spoiler

Traditional Republican presidents such as Calvin Coolidge, Dwight D. Eisenhower and George H.W. Bush were not very exciting, but they were very responsible. They wanted to manage the government effectively and to live within our means. Those days are long gone. The GOP has metamorphosed from the preternaturally mature “Father Knows Best” party to the perpetually juvenile “Van Wilder” party. It wants to live it up, moon the grown-ups and dodge the consequences.

The transformation began during the Reagan administration. That was when supply-side economics (what Bush called “voodoo economics”) and unremitting hostility toward government (“the problem,” Ronald Reagan called it, “not the solution to our problem”) became the regnant party orthodoxy. Eschewing the staid, green-eye-shade accounting of Republicans past, the supply-siders argued that cuts in marginal income tax rates could pay for themselves. It did not, of course, happen. The Reagan tax cuts, which slashed the top rate from 70 percent to 28 percent, caused the deficit to nearly double, from $79 billion in 1981 to $153 billion in 1989. The fiscal situation would have been even worse if Reagan, who was far more responsible than his most fervent followers, had not signed tax increases in 1982, 1983 and 1984 that clawed back about half of the 1981 tax cut.

The deficit spending of the Reagan years was at least justified because it boosted the economy out of a deep recession and helped the armed forces recover from their post-Vietnam nadir. But the political success of Reagan’s tax cuts has mesmerized Republicans ever since, leading them to advocate steep tax cuts regardless of the circumstances.

In 2017, the Republican Congress passed, and Trump signed, a massive tax cut that delivered a sugar high to the economy that is already wearing off (2018 was the worst year for the stock market in a decade) while bequeathing debt that could take generations to pay off. As Bloomberg News notes: “Total public debt outstanding has jumped . . . by $1.9 trillion since President Donald Trump took office,” or “roughly the size of Brazil’s gross domestic product.”

The GOP’s proclivity for using government shutdowns to force through its agenda is another example of its drunken frat-boy antics. The three longest government shutdowns in U.S. history were all caused by Republican temper tantrums.

In 1995-1996, Republicans led by House Speaker Newt Gingrich (Ga.) shut down the government for 21 days to force President Bill Clinton, who was committed to a balanced budget, to accept steeper cuts in domestic spending than he wanted. That was a public-relations debacle that contributed to Gingrich’s downfall. In 2013, Sen. Ted Cruz (R.-Tex.) and his tea party allies forced a 17-day shutdown in a futile attempt to defund the Affordable Care Act. In both cases, Republicans were willing to halt the vital operations of the government and risk the creditworthiness of the United States to try to shove their ideological demands down the throat of a president who disagreed with them.

The current, partial shutdown — the longest on record at more than three weeks and counting — is even more reckless and ill-advised, having begun on Dec. 22 when Republicans still controlled both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. The “border emergency” used to justify the funding stoppage is a figment of the xenophobic imaginations of Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and Donald Trump. The number of apprehensions at the southern border declined 75 percent in the past two decades — from 1.6 million in 2000 to 397,000 last year. The number of undocumented immigrants in the United States is at a 15-year low. Immigrants, both legal and illegal, commit fewer crimes than the native-born. And there has never been a terrorist attack in the United States carried out by terrorists who entered the United States from Mexico.

There is, to be sure, a long-standing problem with undocumented immigrants and drugs entering the United States, but spending, as Trump proposes, $5.7 billion to build an extra 200 miles of wall along a 2,000-mile border will not solve anything. Most drugs and roughly half of all undocumented immigrants arrive through legal ports of entry.

Trump has conjured an illusory solution to an imaginary crisis. But, having taken the country hostage, he and his Republican allies are inflicting real suffering on 800,000 federal workers and real danger on 325 million Americans. FBI agents, Transportation Security Administration officers, air traffic controllers and Coast Guard members are working without pay — or, as with a growing number of airport screeners, not working. Morale is plunging and financial worries rising among the men and women charged with keeping us safe.

A party that felt an iota of responsibility to the country would be alarmed by these developments and would reopen the government even if it meant overriding the president’s veto. But for the drunken frat-boy party, the damage inflicted by its ideological bender is no reason to sober up. Indeed, for the most antigovernment Republicans, the shutdown is a feature, not a bug, because it is shrinking, at least for a few weeks, the size of the government. The Republicans of yesteryear would send today’s Republicans to their rooms without any supper.

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

Will Mitch let them vote?

[AmazonGrace]

Is this weird? Did he resign before Bad Things come out about him? Why do you run If you're not going to last a month?

 

[Penny]

10 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

Can someone please put some of that crap you have to drink to prepare for a colonoscopy in Mitch McConnell's coffee?

You made my day! 

[CTRLZero]

2 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

Is this weird? Did he resign before Bad Things come out about him? Why do you run If you're not going to last a month?

This is weird.  Is something bad coming out about him, personally, or is he getting out before Big Bad takes down the republican party?  I recall a few others resigning before their terms are up, and a couple republicans have switched to democrat.  It would be nice if this was an indicator some sanity was being restored, but I hesitate to get my hopes up.

 

[onekidanddone]

12 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

Can someone please put some of that crap you have to drink to prepare for a colonoscopy in Mitch McConnell's coffee?

Thank you for that visual I will never be able to get out of my  head. I have a colonoscopy in a few weeks,

[onekidanddone]

2 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

Is this weird? Did he resign before Bad Things come out about him? Why do you run If you're not going to last a month?

 

His supporters and campaign contributors must be really pissed.  I'd think he would peddle the lie about spending more time with his family instead of admitting he was getting a higher  paying job.

[AmazonGrace]