Moscow Mitch McConnell

[Audrey2]

3 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

This made me laugh:

 

He's almost as good as Ben Stein in Ferris Buehler's Day Off.

[GreyhoundFan]

Moscow Mitch was able to hold on to his senate minority leader position despite the challenge from Skeletor Rick Scott. Mitch got 37 votes, Scott got 10 and  Hanley voted “present”.  

 

[AlmostSavedAtTacoBell]

7 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Moscow Mitch was able to hold on to his senate minority leader position despite the challenge from Skeletor Rick Scott. Mitch got 37 votes, Scott got 10 and  Hanley voted “present”.  

 

Yep. He’ll wait until just the right moment and then he’ll snap that turtle mouth of his right on the index finger! 

[onekidanddone]

52 minutes ago, AlmostSavedAtTacoBell said:

Yep. He’ll wait until just the right moment and then he’ll snap that turtle mouth of his right on the index finger! 

Come for the king, you best not miss

Omar Little

[GreyhoundFan]

I love when Rethuglikans go after each other! "McConnell slams Scott over plan to sunset Medicare, Social Security"

Quote

In recent days, President Biden has been hammering Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) for his plan that would require Congress to reauthorize even popular programs such as Social Security and Medicare every five years to keep them operating.

On Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) joined in the criticism, suggesting that provisions in Scott’s plan could hurt him in his bid for reelection next year in Florida, a state with the greatest share of seniors in the nation.

“That’s not a Republican plan. That was the Rick Scott plan,” McConnell told longtime Kentucky radio host Terry Meiners when asked about the provision calling for the sunsetting of Social Security and Medicare every five years.

“The Republican plan, as I pointed out last fall, if we were to [become] the majority, there were no plans to raise taxes on half the American people or to sunset Medicare or Social Security,” McConnell said. “So it’s clearly the Rick Scott plan. It is not the Republican plan. And that’s the view of the speaker of the House as well.”

McConnell was alluding to another provision in Scott’s broader 12-point plan that would require all Americans to “pay some income tax to have skin in the game.” As Scott noted, about half of Americans currently pay no federal income tax. That proposal was dropped from a revised version of Scott’s plan.

In his State of the Union address — and subsequent stops in Wisconsin and Florida, Biden has called out Republicans such as Scott and Sens. Mike Lee (Utah) and Ron Johnson (Wis.) who have talked about significant changes to the major entitlement programs to address the nation’s debt. The president’s remarks Tuesday night elicited jeers, catcalls and booing from some Republicans, but the White House sees it as a wedge issue as Biden is expected to announce he will run for reelection this spring.

Democrats also see the Republican proposal and statements as a way to cast the GOP as extreme and, in the run-up to presidential and congressional elections, appeal to a bloc that consistently votes — seniors. Johnson gave them fodder on Thursday when he stood by his description of Social Security as a “Ponzi scheme,” prompting Democratic attacks.

McConnell sought to distance himself from Scott’s plan as soon as it was released last year, recognizing the political peril it presented for Republicans. His comments Thursday put him squarely with Biden and sent a clear message that GOP leadership wants no part of the proposal. Last month, former president Donald Trump — the only announced White House candidate — warned the GOP to avoid cuts to Medicare and Social Security.

Scott, who presided over the National Republican Senatorial Committee during a disappointing midterm cycle for his party last year, subsequently sought to challenge McConnell for minority leader in the Senate and fell well short.

Asked Thursday if Scott’s leadership bid had anything to do with his views of Scott’s sunset plan, McConnell said that it “doesn’t have anything to do with that.”

“I mean, it’s just a bad idea,” McConnell said. “I think it will be a challenge for [Scott] to deal with this in his own reelection in Florida, a state with more elderly people than any state in America.”

Pushing back, Chris Hartline, a former communications director for Scott who is now a consultant on his reelection campaign, tweeted Thursday night: “Lol. Rick Scott knows how to win Florida a hell of a lot better than Mitch McConnell does. Some DC Republicans can keep parroting Democrat lies, but that won’t stop Rick Scott from fighting for conservative principles instead of caving to Biden every day.”

The antipathy between the two Republicans has been evident for months and has become more public in recent weeks.

Scott said McConnell’s decision to take him off the Senate Commerce Committee was retribution for challenging the GOP leader.

“He completely opposed me putting out a plan,” Scott said in an interview on CNN on Feb. 2. “I believe that everybody up here — this is not a Republican-Democrat issue — we all ought to be putting out our ideas and fight over ideas up here.”

“He didn’t like that I opposed him because I believe we have to have ideas — fight over ideas. And so, he took Mike Lee and I off the committee,” the former Florida governor said.

Lee had supported Scott’s challenge to McConnell.

During a radio interview Thursday, Johnson reiterated his contention that Social Security and Medicare should be eliminated as federal entitlement programs and that they should instead be considered by Congress annually as discretionary spending.

“We’ve got to put everything on-budget so we’re forced to prioritize spending,” Johnson told WISN-AM in Milwaukee. “That doesn’t mean putting it on the chopping block. That doesn’t mean cutting Social Security. But it does mean prioritizing.”

Johnson argued during the interview that the current structure of Social Security is unsustainable.

“It’s a legal Ponzi scheme,” Johnson said, echoing an argument he has made for years.

On Friday, congressional Democrats were seizing anew on the term “Ponzi scheme,” which is a type of fraud.

“The Extreme MAGA Republican crowd claims Social Security is a Ponzi scheme,” tweeted House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.). “More evidence they want to destroy it. Dems must stop them.”

In another tweet, Rep Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) cited Johnson’s use of the term, as well as Scott’s proposal for Social Security and Medicare.

“When people show you who they are, believe them,” Lieu wrote.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[fraurosena]

15 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

 

McConnell is an asshat. He could have convicted Trump for his 2nd impeachment for the arguments he now says he entirely assosiates with, btt he didn't. This statement is way too little and much to late. He could have forced the genie back into the bottle then, but instead deliberately chose to acquit. So distancing himself from Trump now with these pretty little speeches are, morally at least, worth less that the paper I wipe my butt with (to paraphrase a Dutch saying).

[GreyhoundFan]

Moscow Mitch has been hospitalized:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/09/politics/mitch-mcconnell-hospitalized/index.html

[Xan]

Nobody is talking about how bad McConnell's fall was.  I know he fell previously and hurt his shoulder/collarbone.  And he walks with a limp due to childhood polio.  At 81, he isn't going to heal quickly.  I know he loves power and he would hate to step aside but, with the possibility of more Trump looming in the background, maybe he'll consider retiring?

[GreyhoundFan]

I’ve seen some ugly memes and posts from people on the right and on the left. That makes me sick. I despise McConnell, but I can’t laugh about an octogenarian with a concussion from a fall. I do, however, agree with this:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Just when I think I can't despise Moscow Mitch more, the Washington Post published this op-ed he wrote. "Mitch McConnell: Neither party can count on the Supreme Court to be its ally"

Quote

Every June, the Supreme Court releases its most controversial opinions, and without fail, politicians complain about how those decisions came down. After cases such as King v. Burwell in 2015, which upheld the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, it was conservatives who voiced disappointment. More recently, liberals have taken up the cry.

Unfortunately, Democrats have moved from complaining about the Supreme Court’s reasoning to questioning its independence. The Senate Democratic leader has threatened justices by name that they would “pay the price” for not ruling the way he wanted and has taken to deriding the entire institution as a “MAGA Supreme Court.” Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee are trying to tell a coequal branch of government how to manage its internal operations, ostensibly to clean up its “ethics.”

President Biden, for his part, has gravely proclaimed that the court is “not a normal court.” On that count, he is correct — it is, as Article III of the Constitution put it, “supreme.”

These escalating attacks from the left betray a fundamental misunderstanding of the court’s structure and purpose. It is an ideologically unpredictable body that takes cases as they come and produces diverse outcomes. Recent rulings put that reality in stark relief.

During the latest term, according to calculations produced by my staff, the court reached a unanimous outcome in about 45 percent of the 57 cases it heard. Yes, the Biden administration lost in Axon Enterprise v. Federal Trade Commission, but so did the state of Alabama in Allen v. Milligan. When the court put a stop to union thuggery in Glacier Northwest v. International Brotherhood of Teamsters, it ruled 8-1. When it declined to stop Biden’s outrageous open-borders policies, the margin was the same.

Of course, some cases are more wide-ranging than others. But only about 9 percent of this term’s cases produced the 6-3 decision commentators use to warn of hyperpolarization on the court. Even fewer cases — only about 5 percent — had five Republican-appointed justices make up a 5-4 majority. On the other hand, about 16 percent of the cases were decided by a majority coalition of the court’s three liberal justices joined by Republican-appointed justices.

Some “MAGA Supreme Court.”

Evidence from this past term indicates that the court’s defining characteristic isn’t polarization. It is, instead, a politically unpredictable center.

Take Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, for example. Those who have paid attention to his earlier career are familiar with his restrained, case-by-case jurisprudence. But those on the left who vilify Kavanaugh to this day might be surprised to learn that he was more likely this term to vote with Justice Elena Kagan (about 81 percent) than he was to vote with Justice Clarence Thomas (about 61 percent).

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, while more likely to side with the other conservatives than Kavanaugh was, was about equal when it comes to voting with Kagan (about 77 percent) and Thomas (about 72 percent). Of course, that did not stop Barrett from writing a highly technical and scholarly rebuttal to Kagan on the textualist justification of the “major questions doctrine” that has emerged in recent years as the most contentious and consequential issue in administrative law.

Even the court’s right flank turns out to be slightly less predictable than its left. Thomas and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. — generally agreed to be the most conservative justices — voted with each other about 79 percent of the time. By contrast, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson voted with each other about 89 percent of the time. Fidelity to the Constitution as it is written means checking ideology at the door.

Some court watchers are quick to speculate about whether conservatives will break ranks and join the court’s three liberals in key decisions. But few bothered to ask whether one or more of the liberal justices would break ranks and conclude that racial discrimination in university admissions is unlawful — or whether they would stand up to Biden’s student loan power grab. This is more than just the liberal peanut gallery rooting for its preferred outcomes — it reflects the reality, borne out by the decisions of the just-ended term, that the proper role of the court is ideologically unpredictable.

When Democrats complain about a crisis at the court, the crisis they see is its refusal to reliably advance their party’s priorities. They bemoan a conservative majority that puts jurisprudence above politics. Well, the evidence suggests that anyone who expects the court to function as a mere extension of legislative power is bound to be disappointed.

This latest term demonstrates that no party wins or loses before the Supreme Court every time. The court adheres to the Constitution and weighs each case on its merits. It should continue to do exactly that.

 

[danvillebelle]

Every time I see Mitch's thread jump to the top of the screen I think with great hope "Did he finally die?!?"  Alas, disappointed again.

[GreyhoundFan]

Philip Bump completed a nice analysis of whether Moscow Mitch's assertions are true. "Assessing McConnell’s argument that the Supreme Court is centrist"

Quote

There are two people on Earth who, more than anyone else, seem to have an active interest in presenting the U.S. Supreme Court as evenhanded.

One is Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., whose legacy is entwined with public perceptions of the court’s distance from partisan politics and its adherence to ethics — both of which are on historically shaky ground.

The other is Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). His gambit to refuse consideration of President Barack Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the court in 2016 — and his complete reversal of his stated reasons for doing so to rush President Donald Trump’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett four years later — is responsible for the court’s current 6-3 conservative majority.

McConnell probably has few qualms about having deployed his senatorial power to reinforce his party’s judicial power, but the court’s acceptance of and decisions on cases benefiting the political right have contributed to a backlash against the body. So McConnell is working to present the court as centrist, as he did in a Washington Post opinion essay Tuesday.

“Democrats have moved from complaining about the Supreme Court’s reasoning to questioning its independence,” he wrote. “… These escalating attacks from the left betray a fundamental misunderstanding of the court’s structure and purpose. It is an ideologically unpredictable body that takes cases as they come and produces diverse outcomes.”

To bolster that point, McConnell presented data showing how often the justices agreed on decisions — and how often ideologically diverging justices wound up on the same side of an argument.

“Evidence from this past term indicates that the court’s defining characteristic isn’t polarization,” McConnell argued. “It is, instead, a politically unpredictable center.”

Well, not really.

Looking at the nearly 60 cases the court heard in its most recent session, it is true that the justices agreed more often than not. Roberts and Justices Brett M. Kavanaugh and Barrett were more likely to be in the majority than their colleagues, but each justice was in the majority at least three-quarters of th

(The charts in this story identify justices appointed by Democrats with gray bars.)

But there is an important subset of cases. In those major cases, the picture is different; there, the justices appointed by Democrats — I’ll just call them the liberal justices — were less likely to be part of the majority.

Granted, there weren’t a lot of those cases, only a dozen as identified by SCOTUSblog. But you can see below the difference in agreement that existed between cases overall (in shades of gray) and in major cases (in shades of red).

By our tally, about a third of the decided cases yielded either a 6-3 or 5-4 result. Half of the 6-3 cases were split between justices appointed by Republican presidents and the three appointed by Democrats. In 5-4 cases, just under half were decided with solely the votes of Republican appointees.

That said, the liberal justices were consistently less likely than their colleagues to be in the majority in those more narrowly decided cases.

When we look at the major cases, though, the divide is more stark. There, the liberal justices were in the majority on only two of seven cases: Allen v. Milligan and Moore v. Harper, both of which dealt with the power of state legislatures to set election rules and both of which saw the liberals joined by Roberts and Kavanaugh.

It is true that the Supreme Court’s decisions are not always neatly categorized. Justices join majority opinions or write their own dissents or join the concurring or dissenting opinions of their colleagues in full or in part. It is also true that the justices often join with seeming ideological opposites to agree on a decision.

And it is also true that this court delivered important victories for conservative actors, powered by the conservative majority McConnell helped orchestrate.

 

[Dandruff]

Mitch had a moment while speaking on camera and was temporarily taken away.  He returned and said he was fine.  I wonder.

Mitch McConnell escorted away from cameras after freezing mid-press conference

[Xan]

9 minutes ago, Dandruff said:

Mitch had a moment while speaking on camera and was temporarily taken away.  He returned and said he was fine.  I wonder.

Mitch McConnell escorted away from cameras after freezing mid-press conference

That was weird.  Mini-stroke?  Dementia?

[47of74]

Former President Charming has a new nickname for Mitch. 

Quote

As the night went on Trump shared posts that labeled Romney a “scumbag swamp creature” and Cornyn a “Globalist sellout traitor.” But Trump kept going, and by around one in the morning he’d shared a post calling Cornyn – we’re quoting here – a “Bitch McConnell boot licker.”

 

4 minutes ago, Xan said:

That was weird.  Mini-stroke?  Dementia?

Yeah, could’ve been a Transient ischemic attack.  My understanding is that freezing up can be a symptom and they don’t last very long.  But they could develop into something worse if left untreated  

I am probably wrong but I don’t think it’s a drop everything and run to the ER but more of a something to call the doctor about and see how soon they can have a person seen  

[Xan]

20 minutes ago, 47of74 said:

Former President Charming has a new nickname for Mitch. 

 

Yeah, could’ve been a Transient ischemic attack.  My understanding is that freezing up can be a symptom and they don’t last very long.  But they could develop into something worse if left untreated  

I am probably wrong but I don’t think it’s a drop everything and run to the ER but more of a something to call the doctor about and see how soon they can have a person seen  

My grandmother had TIAs.  You could see her stop and freeze up that way.  It did, unfortunately, contribute to her dementia.  They probably ought to go ahead and replace McConnell.  This isn't going to get a lot better.

[GreyhoundFan]

I had forgotten about this.

 

[47of74]

20 minutes ago, Xan said:

My grandmother had TIAs.  You could see her stop and freeze up that way.  It did, unfortunately, contribute to her dementia.  They probably ought to go ahead and replace McConnell.  This isn't going to get a lot better.

And we'll probably all be hearing from the GQP about how Mitch is just fine and how he can keep going as he wants.  I just checked and he's 81 years old, so about a year older than the President.  But the GQP won't say a fornicating word about whether or not Mitch is fit to serve or not all while attacking Biden incessantly over his age. 

[Loveday]

After watching the clip on the news just now, it's blatantly clear that McConnell is NOT fine. He looked frail and confused, as if for a few moments he had no idea where he was. My mother was like that after what we and her doctors suspected were TIAs in her last couple months of life. McConnell needs to retire now, on his own terms, before a TIA turns into a full blown stroke and removes his choice in the matter.😕

[47of74]

1 hour ago, Loveday said:

After watching the clip on the news just now, it's blatantly clear that McConnell is NOT fine. He looked frail and confused, as if for a few moments he had no idea where he was. My mother was like that after what we and her doctors suspected were TIAs in her last couple months of life. McConnell needs to retire now, on his own terms, before a TIA turns into a full blown stroke and removes his choice in the matter.😕

Yeah, now that I think about it I saw that too in my maternal Grandma the Christmas before she left us.  It now leads me to wonder now 20 years later if she had been having a TIA when we all got together for the traditional Christmas Eve party.  She had the blank, frozen stare for a few minutes where she had no idea where she was.  It passed after a couple minutes but just the way she looked I knew her time with us was limited.  (She left us the following July).  Thing I really noticed more than anything else was how gray her hair looked at the time because her sister also turned really gray in the last months of her life. 

I doubt very much ol Mitch would willingly retire anytime soon.  He probably will not retire as long as the other GQP Senators keep propping him up.  No matter how obvious it is that he needs to retire back to Col. Sanders land and enjoy the time he has left on this Earth.

And my maternal Grandpa died from brain cancer at 76 years old.  My paternal grandparents got up to or over 90.  All three of them had been going rather strong until the last few months before their passings.  My paternal Grandpa was still out on his tractor at age 87 doing field work.  Even though he had to stop in the last few years and move to assisted living he seemed to be doing well until right up close to the end.  My paternal Grandma was largely the same.  She had been doing well right up to a few weeks before she passed. 

I miss all my grandparents.  But at the same time I hope they're all doing really well upstairs and hope to see them again someday. 

[GreyhoundFan]

The Washington Post reported that McConnell said that Biden called him to check how he was doing. It’s nice to have a leader who is a human. If TFG was in office, he’d just tweet something ugly.  

[Xan]

Since the governor can't replace Mitch with a Democrat, I've decided that I'm fine having him wander around the capitol occasionally spacing out.  Even if he's having TIAs, he's still got more sense than Tommy Tuberville.

[fraurosena]

We've had to put my 81 year old mother in a fulltime care facility six weeks ago because her fourth large TIA caused the mild vascular dementia that began after her third big TIA to excacerbate so much that my father couldn't take care of her at home anymore. We suspect that she had many mild TIA's in between, as she would often freeze up and completely forget what she was doing and wander off. McConnell looked exactly like that. 

It's a terrible condition, with no way of treating it or predicting the way it develops. My mother had three TIA's for which she needed to be hospitalized within a few months of each other, five years ago. The fourth, and by far the worst, came at the beginning of this year. My father is still in complete shock, losing his wife of 61 years, and essentially becoming a widower with a wife, as he puts it. My mom is somewhat aware of her condition, and cries about it when yhe realization hits her again...and again. She wants to come home and talks about that incessantly, even though in her more lucid moments she knows it's not realistic. It's horrible to see your mom deteriorate and suffer like that. As her legal executor, I'll be having to sign the paperwork that will legally will keep her in the care facility (against her will) this Friday. Not something I'm doing lightly, nor without some mental anguish. 

So, whatever I may think of McConnell personally, I wouldn't wish this condition on him -- or anyone else, for that matter.

[Loveday]

@fraurosena, we were in that situation with my mother in law a few years ago, although with her it was Alzheimer's. It was heartbreaking. I think my father in law felt as your father does, except he couldn't really articulate his feelings as HE was in the beginning stages of vascular dementia himself. I agree with you, much as I cannot STAND McConnell, I hate to see this happen to him and would hate seeing it happen to anyone else. 😢 

💐❤️